I took the protest as an opportunity to quit my 12 year Reddit addiction cold turkey and never came back, seems like I'm not the only one. Sometimes I miss /r/houseplants but I'm better off overall.
Reddit opened up a world of computer programming to me back in 2007. I read blogs and books I'd never of heard of otherwise. It expanded my world view. I wish I'd been reading it when I was 14 instead of 25 after I finished university (I scrapped by in a shitty IT degree). I would have focused on maths and programming. It expanded my world view and opened me up to a lot of good influences.
Yeah it has an addictive dark side. Also most of the user comments went to shit years ago. But overall a net win for me.
Many of the technical and science stuff is still pretty good. Not like it used to be, but it's a recurring theme, when the Internet expanded, UseNet also became rubbish, "infested by AOL'ers and spam" was the complaint in 1996.
Yup, same here. Also spent quite some time on it. Very pleasant surprise how easy it is to stop. Had a similar experience recently with youtube, worked well too.
Last week I clicked some link leading to reddit, I was surprised I am still logged in.
Why do you think spending time on HN is better than Reddit?
Serious question, because I’m not sure I understand. Hope it doesn’t come off as antagonistic. I too wonder if the negative things Reddit does to me outweigh the positive, but never considered it was unique to Reddit rather than being true about all anonymous online communities.
Hacker News has much less content and less content diversity. I very rarely go beyond the first page of HN, and only like a quarter of the posts at most are something that I'm interested in enough to actually spend time looking at.
The velocity of HN is also much lower than Reddit. If I check the front page again an hour from now it'll be mostly the same set of posts.
It also helps that comment sections here are smaller and that HN doesn't have pictures or other easily-bingeable content.
HN is also less likely to get me worked up over nothing. Partially because the comment section is more mature, partially because the community doesn't regularly discuss topics that get me worked up.
Edit: Another thing that came to mind: If I do accidentally visit HN too often, seeing nothing new on the front page make me realize I'm checking it too often and helps me realize I need to focus better or seek out something more productive to do.
Thanks for sharing. Makes sense and I can relate to many of the things you say about Reddit (too bad it’s so hard to do things in moderation these days).
Reddit was a bad habit for me, so I've resisted outright replacing it. (I basically haven't even looked at Lemmy.)
I mainly read Hacker News more than I used to and started reading Ask a Manager[0] regularly.
A big benefit of both is that they aren't "bottomless" like Reddit so I won't waste too much time on them.
AAM fulfills my desire to learn about others' lived experiences, but the relatively narrow topic range means it becomes uninteresting if I read the archives for too long.
I like the idea of replacing the time I spend on Reddit with blogs that provide new insights.
One big place I’ve found Reddit helpful in recent years is a niche community about a chronic illness I have. Initially for collecting more information and insights than I can get in a 15 minute doctor appointment, then a sense of community and realizing I’m not alone, and then over time by giving me a chance to pay it forward by sharing information with others. Last few weeks I’ve realized ChatGPT can be helpful for the first one. The second I’ve started to shy away from because I’ve realized I don’t want the condition to be a core part of my identity, and the third there might be better ways to achieve (likely offline).
Think you’ve inspired me to get off of it for a while. Thanks!
Hopefully nothing, since they described it as an addiction and mentioned they’re now better overall.
But your question isn’t atypical, which is weird when you think about it in comparison to any other addiction. If an alcoholic said they stopped drinking, asking what drug they replaced booze with would be a weird and possibly insensitive question.
This reminds me a lot of discussions I've had with people over the years about why I'm an atheist.
For many, it seems like religion fills an important void in their life. When they imagine me without a religion, they see me having that hole. But I never felt an absence in the first place. I didn't adopt a religion the same way most people don't, say, adopt a giraffe. I never woke up with "the pain of giraffe-less-ness", so never decided to get a giraffe.
I don't think anyone was asking "What addiction did you replace your addiction with." I interpreted it as more of a "What better habit did you replace your addiction with."
I actually read it as the former, but I found it amusing more than insensitive.
That being said your interpretation is much more charitable, although I also don't currently feel like I have a great answer to that variant.
I've definitely made an effort to get out of the house more often, and I've been better at getting my less interesting house projects done.
I have a few hobbies I want to explore further (especially music stuff) but that's on hold while I job search after making the decision to move on from contract work. (Hobbies tend to consist of "learn a new thing" and my brain will always gravitate towards learning a new thing over stressful work like job searching.)
When I left reddit I didn't "switch to" anything. When I left I found it didn't leave a void that needed filling. When I was using I thought I needed reddit or something like reddit, but I was wrong.
For me, mindlessly heading to reddit have been replaced by equally mindlessly heading to either here, discord, twitter, or bluesky. Overall I think the variety is probably a net positive, even if I haven't addressed the root issue of spending time mindlessly.
Mindfully heading to reddit (relying on various subreddits as a resource for product reviews or technical support) is even more varied: gaming sites instead of r/games, googling for product reviews instead of heading to a niche subreddit, etc. I'll also visit reddit if it's a promising google result, but resist the old habit to add "site:reddit".
Lemmy is pretty great and I still use it now and again, but I've mainly just stopped consuming content in that way. I subscribed to a quality newspaper for news / analysis / opinion; I stay on HN for the technical news & discussions.
Honestly once you break the (to me addictive) loop of opening reddit/lemmy you're not missing out on much. Whenever I get a reddit search result it redirects to my selfhosted libreddit instance (connect through tailscale). Public libreddit instances are basically always broken, but a single user one which is just used for the occasional search result works perfectly fine.
Not the parent, but ClickSpring is one of my favorites, though they don’t post much anymore. Also, ThisOldTony. BenEater, TechnologyConnections, Jeff Geerling, GreatScott!, Wintergatan, bigclivedotcom, JK Brickworks, The 8-Bit Guy, and Usagi Electric are more on the tech side of my subscriptions.
It would be great if there was an easier way to share subscriptions.
If you like ThisOldTony, give InheritanceMachining a shot. Similar explanations of machining, clean shots, regular posts (every 2 weeks), and you can often see him using previous builds when making the next thing.
I grew up with ZackFreedman. We were good friends as kids for a year or two, but then lost touch. Remember hearing vaguely that he had gotten into stuff like this a couple years back.
I'm going to hit up my history and looks like it's mostly just the basics when it comes to "general" makers.
BPS Space, Simone Giertz, Stuff Made Here, DIY Perks, Aaed Musa, This does not compute, rctestflight, Tom Stanton, lftkryo, upir, Nerdtronic, Design Prototype Test
And then just stuff I like - Adrian's Digital Basement, Cathode Ray Dude, Retro Recipes, Tim Traveller, Dave's Garage
I am heavily addicted to YouTube now that I've curtailed my Reddit use. I get a tremendous amount of value, educationally and professionally. The trouble is that there's no good content filter in place, and a couple of mindless clicks later and I'm in a tidal wave of imbecilic, mind rotting, dopamine-inducing distractions.
I never found an equivalent alternative. I still log on to my local city subreddit occasionally (~1x/month) to see if there's any local news I missed. But otherwise I've just moved on to doing other things with my time.
I'm spending some time on Tildes now, but the real answer is that I replaced it with not using social media much anymore. None of my niche subreddits really left so I just don't follow things I care about anymore.
