Nicotine.

I stopped counting when my last nicotine hit was, which I think might be the key here. A couple of years at least.

No urges, never even think about it.

When I used to work in the office I probably worked about 5 hours a day at most. The rest was spent on personal projects, fucking around, whatever

Now that I work from home it varies between two and four.

My production is exactly the same.

“Putang ina.” (“Son of a whore”)

They said this charming Filipino phrase whenever I did something stupid. So, often enough to count as a catchphrase.

True.

Also, not only are people nicer on Lemmy, I find that I’m nicer on Lemmy.

Seems like a nice enough guy, but I’m not a fan. Which is fine, since I’m not his intended audience.

Mostly Harmless.

Allies.

This isn’t the 90s anymore. Today, unmoderated/poorly moderated online spaces are breeding grounds for the usual toxic assholes who ruin everything.

Blackadder, Red Dwarf, Fawlty Towers, the IT Crowd, and (oddly) The Good Place.

I still subscribe to a couple of niche subreddits because their lemmy equivalents haven’t taken off yet. But aside from the occasional check-in, I don’t really visit any more. Amazed at how much time I wasted each day on nothing.

The level of research is evident—Tim Powers doesn’t skimp on the details at all. I normally don’t like espionage thrillers but he makes the Great Game come alive. And that’s before the weirder elements come in.

I’m finally reading Declare by Tim Powers. All I can say is holy shit I never knew how much I needed this book in my life.

If they gave in on day one or two, I may have stuck around.

But as it stands, a week without Reddit has effectively broken my addiction. I’ve already uninstalled Sync from my phone, deleted my comments, and I only see Reddit pages when they show up as relevant search results.

So they could reverse direction tomorrow and I would be indifferent at best.

Reddit is going to be fine. It will lose a few thousand conscientious, tech-oriented users. But with a lowing herd of millions who don’t care about anything more than internet points and scrolling, they’ll hardly be missed.

Today was the first day in a decade I didn’t check the front page. So I’ll also be fine.

At this point, I’m not going back out of pure spite.

I’m spending a lot less time online than I did

Removing Sync from my phone was huge in terms of changing my habits. Without ready access to the dopamine drip, I am using my phone so much less than I did even a week ago. And as you said, I’m reading more and scrolling less.

I’ll admit it’s very much like getting over an addiction.

I popped into one of the few subreddits I participate in and the consensus was mostly, “Who cares about the API/third-party apps, I just want my Reddit back.” Whatever, they can have it.

I’ve been working to curate my RSS feed in the last couple of days so I never need to visit Reddit at all (outside of being directed there by a Google search result).

360k and ten years.

Such a waste of time. This was what I needed to make healthier choices. Less time spent scrolling, less time commenting. Lemmy is my methodone right now.

Most everyone who left will return. Some thousands of users will actually leave Reddit permanently—but they will be replaced by users who have never used a third-party app, don’t care about privacy or accessibility or anything but memes and boobs and endless scrolling.

I wish them no ill will, but I no longer wish to be in their company.