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Comment by redeux | Hacker News Reader

Last November I made a commitment to myself to avoid social media and the news and I've noticed a very positive impact on my outlook and demeanor. The only social media I've consumed since then has been HN, but even then I've found myself becoming more irritable as topics I'd rather not think about have started to come in.

In fact, dang asked me to reign it back just yesterday because that irritability has started to come through in my comments here. So, now I find myself in a position where I have to start cutting back on or removing HN as well, which honestly sucks, because I want to interact with people online in a meaningful way, but I'm also having a problem not engaging on divisive topics that I feel strongly about.

Somewhat related - I was just thinking this morning how I wish I could have a phone that only did calls, text, GPS, and music without any of the other distractions. I think I would be much happier if I had something like that.

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> Last November I made a commitment to myself to avoid social media and the news and I've noticed a very positive impact on my outlook and demeanor.

You and me both, life is much less stressful if you ignore all the useless theater that permeates our society now.

> I was just thinking this morning how I wish I could have a phone that only did calls, text, GPS, and music without any of the other distractions.

You should be able to do that by just uninstalling all the apps that contribute to that? If you're on an iPhone, you can disable Apple News notifications, etc. I refuse to have any Google or Meta apps installed on my phone, and it helps greatly. I use Lemmy but have a very curated list of communities I visit. Even then I have to step away sometimes and avoid the "all" feed at all costs.

> topics I'd rather not think about have started to come in.

I'm not an HN doomer, but I will say that I have distinctly noticed, in the last week or two, that some topics that would normally be flagged out have been allowed to persist and garner thousands of angry talking-past-each-other comments.

I imagine this to be a temporary experiment for extraordinary circumstances/events, which will be dialed back to normal soon.

I hope I'm right. This experiment, if it be so, has shown that we here are the same kind of lousy uncharitable communicators as the rest of the world. I miss believing otherwise.

My strategy is to avoid topics that negatively affect me at all, unless the topic at hand directly and immediately impacts me in some way. I cut off all social media except HN and don't browse anything else. (Except YT I guess, but I don't comment a lot there so I don't count it.)

Commentwise, I always ask myself if I'm about to comment because I have something meaningful to add, or if I'm commenting to argue with the parent. If it's the latter, I just close the tab. Life's too short to argue on the Internet.

It is relatable. I think we could all be more charitable when we interact with an "irritated" comment. It can be hard to express compassion in these scenarios without sounding patronizing. There can be a high difficulty when someone is wrong on the Internet. Sometimes you just have to let it pass.

You might try adding all of your problem domains to your DNS blocklist. This has helped me in the past. Not suggesting that you should leave HN if you are still enjoying it. I suspect we're all the same as you. We want to interact.

If you are music fan or listen to podcasts, you might try silence. Focusing on only one thing has been helpful for my usage. I've noticed that when I listen and code or read, I'm fine. Irritation can begin when the third item distracts me. Removing the music or podcast leaves me with my primary focus and the interloper.

There are a few phones on the market that aim at this, to varying degrees

https://www.thelightphone.com/

https://hisenseeink.com/products/hisense-a9-pro-e-ink-smartp...

It’s invite only but the Lobsters website is like what HN should be, without the totally off topic content that seems to take up a third of any given front page now here.

Yeah, I want a phone like that. There's definitely a market

I'm on the waitlist for a Minimal Phone and am hopeful that will help my phone-related compulsions.

I can doom scroll HN to the last page on my phone, but I never do that on a computer.

https://www.minimalcompany.com/

Thank you for this, I'm strongly considering adding myself to the queue.

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