Escaping the Doomscroll

(Warning: Ramble ahead!)

You probably know at least one person who spends hours and hours scrolling on their phone, most probably consuming content that provides barely anything of entertainment value, let alone something actually stimulating. Maybe you are one of those poor souls who have sold their souls to The Algorithm, succumbing to its infinite feed.

Algorithmically curated, infinitely-scrolling feeds are an unfortunate staple of pretty much all the major “social” media platforms (henceforth called “antisocial media” because that’s more accurate in my opinion). As you probably already know, these antisocial media platforms make money by showing ads. Targeted ads. And how are they targeted? By carefully analysing every little move you make and every word you say on their platforms and beyond, and building a profile out of it that knows more about you than your closest family does. Data mining is scary but that’s a discussion for another day.

It is obvious that it is in the antisocial media platforms’ best interests to keep you on their platforms for as long as humanly possible, and what better way to do it than target the novelty-seeking nature of our brains!

Users can’t really be blamed for being addicted to this infinite-scrolling conveyor belt to hell, as these are carefully crafted by psychology and neuroscience experts to keep you hooked for as long as possible. Addiction is not a bug here, it is the biggest feature.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc

I am happy to say that I never had an account on Facebook or Instagram, and I won’t be making any in the near future if I can help it. Even if I do make an account due to real-life social reasons (unfortunately that is a possibility thanks to the network effect, the same reason why I use WhatsApp) I believe that I know better than to scroll on it all day and progressively ruin my general mood, as I’ve seen so many people do.

I did make a Twitter account once, just out of curiosity. I don’t think I have access to it or the email I used to create it any more. I barely used it for a day so I don’t think it really counts either.

Seriously, the best option is to simply never touch these unless you absolutely have to. (eg: promoting a business, unreasonable acquaintances)

TikTok

Brainrot. Banned in my country.

Although the moral implications of the government exercising control and banning software from app stores are pretty chilling, I’m happy to say that TikTok will not be missed. At all.

YouTube Shorts

Several apps tried to fill the pathetic void left by TikTok in my country. The only one that actually succeeded was YouTube with its YouTube Shorts. This steaming pile of garbage is still pushed very aggresively in the official YouTube app.

I had switched to NewPipe long before YouTube Shorts was even a thing. Shorts show up like normal videos on the NewPipe app, as opposed to the infinite strand of spaghetti in the official YouTube app that brings you closer and closer to the Singularity with every scroll.

Miscellaneous

I had an account on Reddit, and I had a tendency to doomscroll on it. However the Reddit API changes that broke third-party clients cured my addiction. The official Reddit client is so broken and unusable that it’s impossible to get addicted. Good job, Reddit!

I do have an account on Lemmy and Mastodon. The Lemmy one was made right after the Reddit API disaster and I use it to occassionally look at some memes. Lemmy is still pretty small, so it doesn’t take me long to exhaust the supply of memes and I can put my phone down afterwards. I barely use Mastodon. It’s too messy for my taste.

Conclusion

If you have the attention span to read all the way until here, you’re doing just fine. Your brain hasn’t completely decomposed yet and your soul is still within you and has not been sucked away into the depths of some algorithmic feed.

Thanks for reading!