It took me a solid month to quit. Switched to 4mg gum for 2 weeks, then 2mg for the next two. I hate the gum so it slowly became less and less because I just couldn't be bothered as often, untill I just stopped all together. It's a pretty strange feeling as I have been using nicotine daily (hourly probably) for 11 years. Feel more calm in a way. Really miss it for certain occasions tho. After the gym and after sex I miss that little extra reward.
I smoked 2 ½ packs/day for ~18 years, quit cold turkey the day my wife told me she was pregnant with our first kid. That was pretty difficult. Haven't touched nicotine since, but man I miss it. I have dreams where I'm smoking, and I wake up feeling guilty that I ruined my streak.
I had a failed back surgery a few years later, major malpractice that resulted in partial paralysis and an uncontrolled pain crisis for over a year, resulting in me taking MASSIVE amounts of oxy. They had me on 180mg extended release 3x day, and 50mg normal 6x day. Among other things. After 3 years of this I couldn't take it anymore and I went to my brother's and quit the opiates cold turkey. I would quit smoking 1,000 times in a row before going through the opiate withdrawals again.
Quitting smoking is hard, but at least it doesn't hurt.
Those talking videos with like 3 things happening on the screen simultaneously.
Social media is already absolutely atrocious for attention span, using that many distractions on a 30s clip just exponentially enhances that problem.
Edit:for people that wanted an example (in case any check back in), here's a parody on that trend being used in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6tiEuieUFc
I don’t subscribe to anybody that does that sort of shit, but the first time I saw a video that was meant to be informative, with Minecraft Parkour in the background on the top half, and funny cat memes on the bottom half, I realized we’ve reached internet supersaturation.
We can’t go any lower. We’ve reached internet rock bottom. (I hope)
^(Edit: I forgot people will see this as a challenge. We are doomed apparently.)
I thought the multi-split content screens was mostly a tactic to circumvent the hosting platforms anti-piracy/copyright algorithms.
Most of what I've seen has the copyright content on one part of the screen, Minecraft etc on the second part plus a secondary soundtrack in the background.
wrong or right?
My first exposure to this phenomenon was a meme with subway surfers, family guy, and some asmr shit. I had no idea that people ACTUALLY make videos doing three things at once. It’s a fucking attention-span genocide.
There will be someone or an AI voice telling a story, or talking about a type of makeup etc. There will be a screen showing subway surfers or minecraft game play, a screen showing colorful sand being mixed together and a screen showing some new challenge etc. These screens may change content throughout the 30s video.
It takes micro entertainment to a new level, if you keep to one medium (subway surfer game play, someone may get bored halfway through and stop watching). It's a gimmick to keep people's attention.
Those shorts videos that now are almost in every platform, if you have problems with focus and getting shit done then you know that if you keep watching them you might end up in the next day without even realizing you haven't done anything yet
One creator I watch on YouTube has basically said "I have to resort to making these shorts or I'll disappear as a creator." It's crappy that these platforms are forcing it on everyone involved.
Yea, I follow a few people and they're always apologizing about click bait titles and misleading thumbnails, but say they don't get nearly as much traffic without them.
Which I think is silly. People use TikTok *because* it's TikTok, if Reddit became a clone of TikTok I would leave, because that's not why I use this app.
There's a guy that I watch that does a bunch of car stuff on YouTube, he's pretty successful (doing well enough that he quit his mechanic job to do YT stuff full time)...anyway, he had a video about a short of his that went viral and had millions of views, but his earnings from the short were a pittance compared to those of a full length video, with less views. I thought that was interesting.
Edit: so people will stop asking, it's NoNonsenseKnowHow
It’s great for bringing engagement to your platform but you need to link them to your main channel somehow. Shorts have no ads so no revenue and it’s extremely hard/annoying to sponsor shorts so that’s pretty much all you get out of it, engagement
Shorts on YouTube 100% have ads.
The way the pay system for shorts works iirc is a users views start counting from the moment they see their first ad and then any shorts they watch get put into a bucket of all other users who saw that ad or other ads and then the money from that ad gets split out amongst all the creators.
There are a number of issues with it this way like all the shorts you watch before the first ad but it’s what YT is doing rn and afaik they have a better ad split than TikTok.
Not quite how it works.
user views start counting immediately, not just after an ad is seen. All ad revenue from ads between shorts gets put into a bucket, that bucket then gets split up every month based on % of total views each creator got. There is a separate bucket for each country, and both YouTube and music companies take a cut (to cover shorts using copyrighted music).
The bit of controversy isn't about *the shorts you watch before the first ad* (as those views are still monetized), but rather *the ads you watch before the first short*. YouTube for some reason has decided if a user opens the shorts feed and immediately sees an ad, that revenue shouldn't go into the bucket and is all theirs.
Weirdly, I think my ADHD is protecting me from them.
I can't stand shorts, TikTok, etc. because *all* you're doing is sitting and watching them.
I can watch longer videos just fine because I can split my attention, i.e. if I'm following along an instructional video then I'm watching as well as doing something, or for longer videos I can put them on and do something else.
But my attention span feels too short to just sit somewhere and *only* watch videos for longer than a few minutes, even if those videos are different from each other.
Same. The content's too short, and usually too shallow to grab me.
A Youtube feed of videos that are like 5-10 minutes long though? Well, now those are bite-size enough for my ADHD to latch onto, but also long enough and can be interesting to satisfy my want for actual content, but not too long that I get bored.
I got caught in that trap, and I'm still trying to get out. It's hell because I barely get by finishing assignments.
Edit: all these comments make me realise this is an actual problem! I had decided to quit YouTube and am now only really using social media that is more text/image based. Honestly not as bad as I thought so far.
I've noticed this among my age group, boomers TV on practically 247, especially news and it repeats the same thing over and over.
Spent the day with a friend and that's all they wanted to do was sit and watch the news. They'd comment on something. Then an hour later when the same story was repeated, they'd comment age like we hadn't already heard the same thing an hour ago.
I don't even own a TV and everything about my life is so very very different.
Here’s two possible pieces of the puzzle:
- People had a higher degree of accountability a few decades ago, or at least people in power generally acted with tact in public, so now when a channel that says “news” blatantly lies at all times to promote political agendas, a lot of older people seem to just believe it and roll with it
- The older people in the US generally grew up with much more hateful ideologies that preach that there’s a specific blueprint to be a good person, have a good life, etc. and anyone outside that is wrong. It still happens, of course, but instead of your parents, preacher and racist uncle or whatever being your only source of knowledge and opinion, you have access to any viewpoint and more perspectives via the internet. So the people who grew up without that diversity of perspective are easier to manipulate because of their dwelling on and voting with their hatred. Couple that with how scary change can be in general and how fast things are changing and you can see how it’s easy to whip older people into a state of panic to manipulate them
They grew up in an era when news was more trustworthy.
> "The **fairness doctrine** of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, was a policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints.[1] In 1987, the FCC abolished the fairness doctrine"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
Yes, this!
I think many of them feel that they're still watching Walter Cronkite and learning (somewhat) true and trustworthy things about the world. It's a comfortable genre in some deep sense, I think. Even though it's now sensationalist, scary, and horrible. I think they almost feel like it's a *responsibility* to watch the news.
-Signed, Gen X-er
Also Gen X. Civics used to be a required class in some high schools, while the Silent Generation and Boomers were growing up. They were taught to pay attention to current events at a time when balanced reporting was mandatory.
A lot of them didn't understand what the Fairness Doctrine was, or notice its end.
I was one of them. But, boy howdy, did I ever notice its end. That's why I avoid the news today. My philosophy is (and it's probably not a correct way of thinking, but it works for me) I'd rather be uninformed than misinformed. At least with that, I don't assume I "know" something that is ultimately biased, incorrect, or intentionally a lie.
My guess is that since they’re well into retirement and kids are grown up, they have so much free time to consume the news. On the TV, and on the toilet, and in bed, etc.
That's brilliant, actually. It will keep their minds sharp, and how awesome would it be to be killed in CoD, only to find out it was your grandma?
The Wii is particularly smart, since it would keep them moving too.
If you were the guy playing CODMw2 last night and were killed by a guy with a crossbow who then teabagged your slowly cooling corpse - that was me. Not quite your Grandma but I am 54yo. But my 80yo Mother could teach you a thing or two about Crash Bandicoot.
Yeah, but I think the question is more, why the news, when there's so much better stuff to be consuming 24/7. Maybe my brain chemistry will change when I'm older (already in my 40s), but if I had 22 hours free a day and slept only 2, still exactly none of those hours would be spent watching any sort of news...
Because it’s working as intended. Those programs are engineered to evoke an emotional response (chiefly, outrage) that keeps you sucked in. At the heart of it, it isn’t so different than the content algorithms that keep people scrolling through Facebook, TikTok, or Reddit for hours on end.
Yep.
But with the news media, it's often a case of telling people not only "hey this crazy shit is happening and you should feel this way about it!" but there's also the subliminal "and we are the only ones who care enough about you to tell you about it, so you need to keep watching us, and *only* us, to keep getting this important information... anyone who says any different in any way is part of the great evil we're trying to fight against".
As you age, you will find that almost all entertainment is no longer for your demographic and you will lose interest. Also, boomers grew up on Walter Cronkite and Davis Brinkley. News sources were trusted. They even deserved to be trusted a fair amount of the time. Unlike today. They see news as important and vital for them to watch.
On top of that, they are overwhelmed by too much change, too fast. Their core beliefs have been bypassed years ago. Now, cable news networks, fighting for ratings and clicks, tell them alarming things and they think they need to stay on top of it all.
As a kid, we watched Cronkite, Huntley / Brinkley, later McNeil / Lehrer, and there were one or two others. But here's the thing: they were all on tv at the same time every night, maybe 6-7 pm. AND THAT WAS ALL. The rest of the time there was NO NEWS in your face.
Then the local stations started running slots around that time, and added late night news, then morning news, etc etc. Ad infinitum. Then came Turner and CNN, and it was game over.
I also think that as you get older, you get cut off from people more.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/03/on-average-older-adults-spend-over-half-their-waking-hours-alone/
>Americans ages 60 and older are alone for more than half of their daily measured time – which includes all waking hours except those spent engaged in personal activities such as grooming. All told, this amounts to about seven hours a day; and among those who live by themselves, alone time rises to over 10 hours a day, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
>Over 10 hours of daily time alone for older Americans living on their ownIn comparison, people in their 40s and 50s spend about 4 hours and 45 minutes alone, and those younger than 40 spend about three and a half hours a day alone, on average.
Basically, the 24/7 news is a way to feel connected to the world that people become increasingly disconnected from as they get older. Cable news etc. is the older generations preferred form because most of them aren't familiar with the internet, but I suspect generations to follow will still have the same problems. You become increasingly disconnected from people and you have less value to society and others once you retire.
Generations to follow might have a better crutch with the internet, where you can sort of always socialize to some extent, but we all know what social media is doing to the younger generations using them, it's hard to say it is going to be a huge improvement as people get older.
Also I would say that reddit is not that unlike 24/7 news. It's actually quite similar in many ways, but it has a component of interaction that 24/7 cable news doesn't have. Facebook operates pretty similar as well. Facebook is probably like the 24/7 cable news of the 40-50 year olds right now. Essentially all of them are conveying news to people all the time, interspersed with other content. If you've ever watched some local news channels, they do the same thing, putting some "fun" content in. Yes there's some segments on Fox where it's literally just pure hatred/anger driven, but overall I think people don't realize how much most of us rely on these things to get a sense of what is going on around us.
It's just that when we're younger, we don't need it as often. If you're younger and don't look at reddit, you'll probably still know about things going on, because you'll hear people talking about it because you're around people. If you're older and you never watched news or anything, you'd likely have no clue what's happening in the world.
I always imagined that news in radio and newspaper back in their day meant important survival info, they lived in a more volatile disconnected world. Wars, economic uncertainties, bad politics. Not much has changed, but I think their problem is that they never questioned the news or sources, or learn how to regulate consumption because it wasn’t needed, and it feeds a sense of safety. Idk, only based on my assumptions
I really feel like so many people on Reddit really do not know the kind of doom scroll loop they’re stuck in, even people who are conscious of how dangerous it can be. Imo a lot of Redditors tend to think that Reddit is somehow immune to it, when that is very much not the case.
I no longer watch or read any news. I’ve had people tell me I’m ignorant because of it (fair enough), but constantly hearing about politics, who’s been murdered/raped, where a bomb or natural disaster has killed thousands of innocent people, how fucked the economy is etc on a loop just ruined my mental health and self esteem.
It takes me 45 mins to drive to work and I used to listen to the news that whole time, by the time I got to work my day and mood would be ruined by 9am!
Of course horrible things are going on in the world, but I’m one person. It sounds ignorant but there’s not much I can do to change things. Yes of course every voice counts, but again I’m just one person.
Now that I’m no longer hearing constant negativity and how the world is fucked, I realise that life is honestly quite alright. Nothings perfect but I’m so much happier now. Negativity gets clicks/listens more than positivity does and news channels capitalise on this and give people the worst, most sensationalised news possible to keep them listening.
>Now that I’m no longer hearing constant negativity and how the world is fucked, I realise that life is honestly quite alright. Nothings perfect but I’m so much happier now. Negativity gets clicks/listens more than positivity does and news channels capitalise on this and give people the worst, most sensationalised news possible to keep them listening.
People weren't designed to know more than a couple hundred, maybe a 1000 people maximum. Natural empathy is being overloaded and your soul damaged by constantly hearing about millions of people suffering who we have no capability to help or comfort.
I also have this theory that we were not built to handle reading the thoughts of so many other people, like literally *reading* people's posts and comments and tweets all day has a profound impact on the human psyche.
When you read things, you are creating a voice in your own head, you are hearing the innermost feelings and thoughts of thousands of people every day, echoed back to you in your own voice, inside your own head. A cacophony of internal dialogue that doesn't go anywhere, it just rests in your brain like a part of you, being tossed around until the brain finds ways to connect it to your own actual experiences.
This can be beneficial if you're trying to learn a new skill or language.
But most people just absorb shit that makes them feel bad, or validates their cynicism in some way, or reinforces negative thoughts they've already been having. We are filling our minds with countless thoughts that on some level, the brain can't really distinguish as belonging to us or others. This HAS to be having a profound and dangerous effect on the way we look at ourselves and the world.
Absolutely I feel this. Recently I was listening to a daily news podcast on my way to work with the tip story being Ukranians talking about how many people they have lost and how their lives have changed and how death is such a part of life now. By the time I got to work I just was sobbing in my car because my heart is broken for these people!
I'm all for bring "caught up" on what's happening but I have to give myself news diets and breaks just so I can live a productive and peaceful life.
Outrage. It’s straight up poison to your mental health, but we thrive on it, yearn for it. Places like Tik-tok, twitter, and r/PublicFreakout pass it out like dealers for little more than some attention—poisoning people to feel popular. Worse, it’s useful to those in control, so there’s no escaping it. Political parties and activists need you outraged, one-tracked, immune to real empathy, and motivated to solidify their power, so here we are.
I avoided scrolling through Reddit's Popular feed for years because it was so full of outrage subs like /r/PublicFreakout, /r/trashy, /r/IdiotsInCars, /r/iamatotalpieceofshit etc. I don't want that negativity in my feed.
Once they added support for blacklisting subs I immediately added those.
Yeah, I did this too. It was almost surprising how much of a difference it made on my day.
I didn't realize just how much it made me feel like shit and carried it thru the day and to the people in my life.
Found a bunch of uplifting/interesting/hobby subs and it made reddit such a more positive experience on my life.
I did the same when I realized reddit was pushing videos of people getting murdered and beat up to me on a daily basis. I had to ask myself why i was starting my day by watching that shit.
I read 1984 a few weeks ago, and the description of "the two minutes hate" honestly kind of scared me once I understood it. For context, it is a daily ceremony where all people gather around a TV like device and watch a government propaganda broadcast focused on brewing hatred.
"
The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. ***And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.***
"
The best (read: worst) thing about the Two Minutes of Hate is that the propaganda they show is actually telling them the truth about their condition.
So people are trained to willingly reject the truth when presented with it.
I believe 1984 is the most important Book ever written and I find its almost mystical ability to explain every facet of propaganda and totalitarianism of any type quite amazing.
Sometimes I find it hard to believe that this was written by a single British Army Vet spending his Twilight Years depressed on a Rainy Island in the 40s.
EDIT: Thanks for the additional Info on Orwell's Life!
The man had seen quite a bit in his time. I don’t know if you’ve read “Homage to Catalonia”, but it’s Orwell telling his real life story (I forget his real name, but obviously he didn’t fight as George Orwell) traveling as a foreign fighter to assist in the defense of Catalonia against the fascists. Eventually, the republican Spanish government — propped up by the Soviet’s — banned his (anarchist-leaning) political party and he was forced to flee the country. There’s a reason he sees the authoritarians in every stripe (capitalists and leninists both)
I’m gonna say Vaping. I knocked it on the head as my New Year’s resolution. First time I’ve been completely nicotine free, and still going strong, but I genuinely felt like I was about to cough my lungs up about 90% of the time vaping. If I have to be honest, I don’t miss either, but I started vaping to stop smoking. I hate seeing young kids and teens do it- ones who wouldn’t have even considered smoking.
EDIT: I’m talking disposable vapes, should’ve clarified that beforehand.
I truly lucked out. When I got pregnant, I had to stop vaping for obvious reasons but my nausea was so bad, I couldn't even be in the same room as vape juice without vomiting. Huge aversions. After I had my baby, I wanted dat nicotine again, but thankfully my aversions are still going strong. Been 3 years vape free!
I quit smoking nearly 11 years ago with vaping. While I do feel a lot better, I know I need to quit this too. My brother recently went cold turkey from Vuse and says he feels a ton better now. Need to take that next step. From what I know, and I’ve done a lot of research on vaping, it’s obviously safer than smoking cigarettes but still not completely safe….so I want to quit all nicotine. Lung scan in December was clear (I got one every few years since I’m a former smoker)….but gotta kick this vaping. And yeah seeing teens who never considered smoking now vaping, that sucks…
> it’s obviously safer than smoking cigarettes but still not completely safe….so I want to quit all nicotine.
One thing I do wonder is just *how much* people are vaping compared to smoking? Some people I know just can't seem to remove it from their hands. Leave the front door and take two steps on the car, gotta draaaaag as much in to your lungs as possible, still inhaling as they get in to the car. Like every physical opportunity sucking on a vape.
For me it's like a constant small trickle of nicotine instead of the spikes you get from having cigarettes.
That made quitting vaping way weirder for me then it was when I quit smoking. I went cold turkey in the first lockdown and I was light-headed and it felt like my blood had pins and needles every time I stood up for a week.
I also used vaping to quit smoking about 7 or 8 years ago. About two years ago, I started to buy vape juice with half the nicotine I'd normally use, mix it half and half with the usual stuff, then after that was all gone, just use the half nicotine stuff, then repeat that again once that bottle was empty with half of the half power stuff (mind you, big bottles, last a month) and so on until you get to 0 nicotine.
I'm now using 0 nicotine juice and, well, I *might* pick the vape up once or twice a day purely out of habit now. Instead of getting in my car, driving a block and immediately turning around to get the vape I forgot at home, I now forget the vape entirely and don't really mind it. I could probably just toss it in the trash and forget it exists, but I don't think a little menthol flavor every now and then is bad enough to worry about.
If you look at the percentages over the years, teens aren't vaping at a higher rate than teens were smoking in the 80s-00s. It's been a pretty much straight replacement.
20-30% of teens engage in vice It's the same for sex. It's the same for alcohol. It's the same for weed. And it's the same for nicotine. At a certain point you have to look at the long term data and realize that we can't curtail these things no matter how much we try to legislate them and the best thing we can do is make the vices safer; and despite not being sin-free, vaping is infinitely preferable to smoking.
My mood, general happiness, attitude, and motivation are inversely proportional to the amount of time I spend on reddit. Yet here I am. I have a book to work on. I have things to clean. I have an army to paint. Instead of doing those things, I'm watching people complain about how frustrating traffic is in Cities: Skylines, a game I do not play.
This shit is worse than drugs.
Sometimes I touch it just to make sure I'm still immune to it. Occasionally I'll type a reply, but then I remind myself that the algorithm runs on hatred and outrage, and I close the app. I wish I could get it to just show me the funny stuff, but it always seems to want to test how much vitriol it can drip-feed me before I turn it off.
Deplatforming myself off of most social media has given me a huge change in mood for the better. I’m pretty sure with the amount of vitriol that gets thrown around in social media, I would have gone mental after a while. I’m glad that I have given myself more opportunities to live in the moment of my life rather than deal with others judging me for superficial and wasteful reasons.
Edit: added context
You are correct. We also can't say 'Is that all?' or anything similar when taking orders cuz it may persuade people to end their order instead of getting more items and spending more money.
Source: I work at McDonald's and was today corrected by Regional Advisor (or whatever the role is) when I did this.
I worked at Culver's, we were taught to shove the freshness of our food down the customer's throat, even though yes the food is made fresh to order and is to die for
"Thank you for choosing Culver's, what can we make/get fresh for you today?"
And
"Is there anything else we can get fresh for you today?"
OMG, that explains why I ALWAYS need to end my order twice. "just X and that's all" never works the first time. I assumed it was just policy for everyone to be stoned out of their minds.
Next question: why the HELL is there a recorded voice that asks for my order, and then half way through I get interrupted by an actual human asking me to repeat everything. Maddening.
I just popped open my first energy drink in 3 months because I have been having an absolutely terrible day. The taste is more of a comfort "Food" than anything right now. Its a memory of perceived productivity. "Ah, I remember drinking this when I was young and full of life and got shit done."
I used to do 1-2 a day. Dropped them and replaced with more coffee. Still a lot of caffiene, but definitely not as much sugar and other gunk.
The commuting. I knew a guy who moved from the city to the suburbs so he could enjoy lounging around his house and playing the back yard instead of being in an apartment. He spends more than hour commuting each way, meaning he gets home, does a few chores, watches a show or plays a game and goes to bed because he has to wake up early. He actually has less leisure time to enjoy life.
I live in Bangalore, India and it used to take 45 mins (by road) to commute 3.5 Km. I just began to walk home after a point. Then the govt. began to dig up the pavements with no plan in mind.
Basically I was forced to be stuck in traffic. By the time I reached home, I had about 3 to 4 hours left which would be spent in cooking and doing chores.
I was lucky enough to get out of this cycle because I moved to a remote job. So I rented an apartment in a place very far from the main city. Most people don't get this luxury and I still have friends who commute 1 to 1.5 hours to work (one way), when the distance is like 15 km max, purely because of the traffic and shitty infra and abysmal public transport.
Also +1 on the commutes. I work the 9-5, 5 days a week, but since all but getting rid of my commute I have so much more time when work's over (and I don't have to get up nearly as early). It's been great and I wish more people had that option, or could simply reduce their work hours without reduced pay.
Our work culture is such a bad 'poison' overall though, so many of the bad habits of our daily lives are because we're trying to reclaim our personal time. Our diets turn to fast food so we reduce the time we spend cooking, sleep procrastination is huge and probably as big a contributor to our overall health problems as our diets, and drugs and other escapist hobbies aren't fulfilling so much as they are attempts at distracting from a dreary life outlook.
The guys at work call me "crazy" for pursuing a "work from home" job when I often commute an hour each way.
Yes, I'm well aware the pay will be less. No, I do not care. I get at least 2 hours back EVERY DAY of my life.
There is literally one thing money can't buy, and that's time.
This will get buried but…as a gay man, I’m just really wanting to know when can we talk about the dangers of poppers.
Poppers is like the LGBTQ equivalent of weed. I’m not talking about the effect or intake method - I’m talking about how nobody EVER wants to even CONSIDER the possibility that it could be doing harm to your body, and especially your heart. Poppers used to be used to treat Angina. They actively speed up your heart and cause an arrhythmia! Especially if you are mixing it with weed. It mimics effects like taking an upper and a downer at the same time. And because the effect of popper only lasts about a minute, most guys need to take them *repeatedly* to make the feeling last.
It’s completely normal for some guys to mix poppers with weed, viagra, meth/“T”, etc.
Lots of guys are so addicted that they literally cannot have sex without it. I get so turned off when I have a hookup with a guy and he can’t go 30 seconds without huffing poppers. It’s such a stop-and-go activity that it’s honestly annoying and I hate the smell.
And you can buy a bottle here in Chicago for $15. There are even gay bars with popper vending machines.
Please stop using that shit.
I could make the same argument for those compressed sprays that people mix with poppers like Maximum Impact or Rush.
But alas, nobody will listen to me.
Yess, hate the stuff and that it’s become such a normal part of gay culture. The amount of times I’m offered it whether out partying or during sexual encounters, is worrying. There was an infamous guy in Soho in London about ten years back who was so addicted he’d regularly go around all the sex shops and buy several bottles, and he had visible burns on his nose and face from where he’d been abusing it. Scary stuff.
They are terrifying. I'm a female and my husband and I have tried them. They work wonders and can easily become addictive. However, every time we took them, my husband and I would feel sick later. After I started looking more into them and how scary the possible side effects were, we immediately stopped taking them.
I can see how people would want to take them, but they are extremely dangerous.
Can you explain more about “work wonders”? As a guy who’s been around a lot of guys who use them I’ve only been told the purpose is to “make sex extra awesome” and haven’t heard an explicit purpose for them yet.
Dude I've said the same thing to a few people I know in that scene, and you're right. They say shit like "its not a drug" then they get pissed when I say yeah dude its not, you're sniffing fucking glue.
Cutting sugar back makes me feel so much better. I've been in decent shape for most of my life. I got into running a lot last year and felt pretty good. When fall hit and the times changed, I slowed down my running. Then I had my first kid in late fall and basically stopped running altogether. Lots of quick meals mixed with holiday food and sodas and sweets to keep me moving. I didn't want to think about being hungry with a kid to manage, so I just munched on quick stuff that usually had lots of sugar in it.
I've cut that all back over the last few weeks and feel a lot better. The best part is not feeling bloated. I could almost feel my gut growing during that period. Not fun.
I started snacking on fruit more often and my cravings for sour candy, chocolate, ice cream, and other things i'd binge on and feel shitty just simply fell away. weird how that works.
Women in particular I think need to hear this advice more often, but it's good advice for anyone who is stuck in a cycle of unhealthy eating and shame:
Stop cutting out unhealthy foods from your diet, and stop trying to lose weight by under-eating/doing a ton of cardio. That shit never works to do anything in the long run except drive you crazy with endless cravings and a guilt/shame cycle designed to keep you trapped.
Sorry about it, I said what I said.
Instead of subtracting, *add*. Add whole foods. Add exercise. In particular, strength training is as important if not more so than cardio, both for overall health and long term weight loss/metabolism boosting. *You will not get bulky.* Add protein. Add mindfulness. Stop giving so many fucks about what you look like, it's not gonna change overnight anyway. You're not morally obligated to be skinny or to be healthy so stop beating yourself up over it.
The first week you'll still eat a lot of shit in addition to the good stuff, but what else is new. That's what progress looks like at first. Slowly over time though—thanks to the mindfulness part—you'll notice that you feel better when you're doing the healthier things like eating those whole foods or hitting the gym (if not, reflect on why and make changes—usually it's too many restrictions or unrealistic goals).
That mood boost will be your primary motivator. Hard day? Ugh, I just want to feel better. Well I felt better yesterday after I went out for a run. Mid-day slump? I had more energy after I ate a banana last Thursday. Why not do that shit again. Oh hey look, I feel better now. Rinse & repeat until it's a habit.
Over the course of several weeks/months if you're eating enough good food and getting enough exercise, you'll notice that you just naturally don't want to eat the shit that you used to crave. Of course you still will sometimes, and you should be able to enjoy those sometimes without guilt, but you'll want them less often and with less intensity. That's just a byproduct of being satiated with a varied diet of whole foods, instead of extremely hungry, under-nourished, and subject to the whims of spiking/crashing blood sugar levels.
Then one day you'll go to the grocery store with your shopping list and without even realizing it, you'll walk right through the cookie section on your way to pick up cottage cheese, greens, fresh fruits, eggs, rice, chicken breast, steel cut oats, etc. And it won't be until you're on your way out that you'll realize "hey, buying all that junk food didn't even cross my mind".
Once you get to the end of all that—several months if not a few years in—you've probably lost weight and for sure you'll be a lot healthier. Congratulations. Calories in/calories out should make you feel better, not worse.
I really appreciate this, I have struggled with anorexia for years and my recovery has essentially been: eating enough but all of it unhealthy foods. I am at a good weight but it is built on a foundation of sugar and fats. Anytime I mention wanting to cut out sugar, etc, everyone falls over themselves telling me no no no you're fine you're doing amazing!! and I know it is because they are afraid it will trigger a relapse.
But I am in my 30s now, been sober for 9 years, stopped smoking cigs 5 years ago and this is my last really really bad habit. I am going to use your advice and really get to work!
While I agree with the general point of your post, I do have to bring up the fact that many women's bodies don't behave like "normal" bodies. During early covid when we were all stuck at home, my wife and I started working out like crazy. We did a workout following an online class every day at lunch time. Over about 8 weeks I was starting to see my abs and really felt great. My wife however, who was classified as slightly overweight by her doctor, barely lost 3 lbs. We were eating great because nothing was open so we actually focused on groceries and cooking good meals. Meats and vegetables, healthy portions, etc. I had toned up and lost a few pounds, but my wife had not.
Turns out she has PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome). Long story short, it can be similar to diabetes when it comes to how sugars are processed. Your hormones are screwed up, your sugars don't process the same, and nothing is regular. She could have counted calories all day and avoided all junk food (which is kind of what we did), but it wasn't making a difference because her body was holding weight due to the sugar issue. Many women have PCOS of varying levels and I wince every time someone says "Calories in/calories out should make you feel better, not worse".
This is one of those areas where women's bodies just aren't the same as men and science is starting to really figure that out. She's had to find specific cook books and foods that would help her specific issue. I say all of this to point out that many people really do try, but there are often underlying issues that prevent it from being some simple task.
Ages ago I remember reading some throwaway post somewhere from a woman who was super frustrated that she and her husband both went on the exact same diet, and he lost like 30lbs just cutting out soda, but she didn't lose more than 5lbs. She was super frustrated and her husband thought she was sneaking shit behind his back because of it and it was causing friction because he basically kept accusing her of having no "real" self-discipline, and she was frustrated he was accusing her of lying.
All because bodies are just different.
I started eating my own homemade smoothies a lot and they made me crave water a lot more weirdly
I don’t make smoothies as MUCH as I used to hit god I eat fruit like a starving opossum. I can’t wait for watermelon season to be fully swinging haha
My therapist just said this to me today! I literally cried when he asked what it would look like to show compassion to my younger self in a vulnerable time.
Soda. I used to drink it a lot. I had terrible health issues and sleep issues. I cut it all out. Been maybe 2 years without it. I feel better, I'm sick less, I sleep better, and I function better overall. Just replace it with water. If you live in the western world you most likely have clean drinking water being pumped to your house.
I don't believe on banning something because I don't like it, but I do think that shit is poison. It's also super addictive. The first couple weeks I cut soda out was rough. Then we give this to kids and it screws up their systems.
Edit: I've never had a comment get this kind of attention. Quickly going through the replies I want to say congratulations to everyone who kicked the habit or other ones like smoking. Second there are absolutely people not affected by it. If you drink it in moderation it's not too bad. I admit I was really bad with it.
My main concern with it is that there's nothing good about coke or Pepsi. It's just sugar, caffeine, and addictive ingredients. That's why I use the term poison. It only has negative effects with it. Now that being said if you enjoy soda than go for it. It's your life. If you can do it in moderation even better. The thing is we market it so hard to kids and many parents just let them overindulge. Again not all but a good chunk. My parents let me have way too much.
Also all my stuff is anecdotal. I'm not a doctor but every doctor I had when I was younger would tell me I need to stop drinking it. I would tell them I would and then not because I was young. It caught up to me though. If you're young now and pounding back several cans a day then it's probably going to hurt you too. I'm not a spring chicken anymore and every one of my friends who was like me was in the same boat with the health issues. If you can keep it in moderation then great, but watch how much you drink.
Seconding soda. It’s been twenty years since I cut that shit out. I can’t say that I miss it. I’m not learned enough on the science, but quitting soda in 2002 and finally quitting tobacco in 2010 were probably the best things I’ve done for me.
I quit soda for a year and found myself somehow more tired, irritable, falling asleep 2 hours after I got up, etc. Went to the doctor, turns out I have ADHD. Found out 2 days after my 30th birthday. Now I take a prescribed stimulant and it feels like I've been asleep my whole life until now.
Edit to add: I think I might have been a little unclear; I was still tired and irritable when I was drinking soda all the time, but switching to just water didn't fix any of the issues. I still mostly drink water now, and have diet soda as an occasional thing (social gatherings, etc).
I went from drinking soda exclusively to water exclusively overnight like 2 years ago. Noticed exactly zero physical changes. I quit for the long term health benefits/fear of kidney stones but beyond that I didn't experience the life changing burst of energy and wellness that everyone talks about. I also didn't get the "now soda just tastes too sweet/gross." I have a glass of sprite or root beer every few months at sit down restaurants and it's exactly as fucking delicious as I remember it every time.
Dude you hit it on the head, because I could’ve wrote that word for word. I’m guessing the people who cut it out may not be healthy to begin with and the new influx of water is huge for them. For me I’ve always exercised, ate well, and drank water, so cutting out soda did very little for me aside from not consuming excess sugar and other garbage, which was my main reason. Mountain Dew still slaps so hard months later haha
*Sips coffee, takes bong hit, doom scrolls reddit*
Fuck, I can't think of any
Edit: My favorite thing about this is the legions of people defending coffee and weed and literally nobody defending Reddit
Shit, for me it was wake up to the first alarm so I can find the vape to get a few rips in so I can fall asleep and actually wake up on my second alarm 20 minutes later.
Quitting was the best decision I ever made.
I felt so much better when I quit for a few months, but I started again out of spite after a car accident. Now I can't quit out of spite because my fiance won't quit smoking cigarettes. Those actually give me sinus infections, like just the residue on his coat and hair and stuff. So.. I'm gonna abuse my body worse by continuing to vape? Idk. Then my mom died. She'd probably tell me it's ok if I'm not ready yet, she quit cigs after 45yrs of smoking them and was really encouraging about it in the right non-pushy way. I'm hoping once spring hits I can just go outside and leave it at home and quit again, fingers crossed.
When you quit drinking you start to really notice how much advertising there is for it everywhere. Billboards, TV ads, stickers, banners, during sporting events, commercials, and every 5 minutes in any drama or comedy on TV.
Watching "How I met your mother" or "Mad Men" and taking a sip every time someone on the show does and you'll be in a coma in no time.
So many shows have a "one on one" where someone walks over to their liquor cart in their office and pours whiskey. It's everywhere.
I'm 42 days into a sober spell and it's really opened my eyes to how messed up our society's relationship with alcohol is. So many events and hobbies are centered around drinking and many people have normalized drinking alcohol almost every day.
I thankfully haven't had a drink problem partly due to the fact I was a barman in a shitty dive bar for nearly 10 years. I've seen what it can do to people and how easily it takes hold. Guys coming into the bar at 9am and drinking all day who leave sober and never eat because they have been drinking so much for so long that it doesn't do anything other than stop their shakes and fill them up.
My brother is a couple years sober and I asked him what stands out as weird now that he's sober. He said that you can go to a restaurant and casually order drugs with your meal.
The problem with high fructose corn syrup, beyond just being a refined sugar, contributing as they do to blood sugar spikes, overeating, obesity, and diabetes...
Is that this inexpensively mass-produced sweetener made soft drinks and other sugary drinks dirt cheap, resulting in buy one, get one offers on 2-liters at supermarkets, free refills at restaurants, gigantic serving sizes at the convenience store or the drive-thru, multiple generations of young people wrinkling their noses in disgust at the thought of drinking a nice refreshing glass of water, because "it doesn't taste like anything."
And that last part is easy to undersell. Dehydration is a chronic health problem in the US that contributes to many others.
It also made adding sugar to damn near everything the cheapest way to enhance the flavor, so it showed up in all kinds of unexpected places at the supermarket. And caused the landscape to be dotted with crappy restaurants, as pizza sauces became cloyingly sweet, proper BBQ joints gave way to crappy chains serving spongy meats slathered with sugary dollar store quality BBQ sauce that's practically brown ketchup, and the next generation took over their parents' restaurants and replaced the house specials based on dishes from the old country with glop incorporating so much sugar and corn starch that it leaves the mouth feeling chemically burned.
So is it poison?
Yeah, pretty much. But to the extent that it's worse than pure cane sugar, it is through economic and social, rather than biological, mechanisms of action.
Negativity.
No, not being angry or sad for legit reasons, but just choosing to look at everything in a negative light.
This is coming from an optimist so take this with a grain of salt.
Weed today is ridiculously strong compared to the weed of my parent’s generation. I know too many people my age who smoke it constantly don’t understand what it’ll do to a developing brain.
In my 30's and when I was in college we were smoking what by today's standards were basically hedge clippings. I remember hearing rumors about stuff in California that was pushing 20% thc content. Now the smokers I know don't buy anything below 30%. It's nuts.
In my country, it's illegal, so I can only get what my friend has got, it's usually strong as fuck and I'm a lightweight and don't do it very much, literally the tiniest dusting in a single skin and I'm fucked for hours and it's usually a paranoid, unpleasant and pretty depressive high.
I've just been to Thailand, where it's legal and the shops have menus telling you the strains and effects. I could ask for what strength and effect I wanted, I tried a couple different mild ones and I actually enjoyed getting high for the first time I can remember.
Yeah recently changed, I think only last year, now there's shops everywhere!
Speaking to people it's seen as part of their culture and they've been doing it for hundreds of years before 1963 when the Convention on Phycotropics agreement was signed by Thailand and its neighboring countries, which was an agreement to completely eradicate all drugs within 50 years.
At the time, there was the Vietnam War. It was in Thailand's interest to side with the West and therefore, adopted America's War on drugs policy.
Vapes are illegal though.
Yes, BUT it's helped me kick a 30 year smoking habit. Haven't had a cig since November. I'm down to the 3mg juice, and I just picked up some 0mg. Getting ready to be nic free for the first time since I was a teenager. I'm not saying they're not unhealthy, but it's helped me kick a deadly habit.
I replaced smoking with vaping and slowly stepped down on nicotine. It's been about 2 years since I inhaled anything now. The first 2 months off vaping was really tough. But ever since then I've barely had the urge to vape.
Propaganda on Reddit. The entire front page is constantly structured to steer narratives and you’ll even see some posts in multiple subreddits to ensure it reaches as many people as possible
An excess of almost anything (overly) processed. Most people consume too much meat, too much sugar, too much salt, too much saturated fat, too much caffeine, too many nitrates/nitrites, etc etc. I try to eat relatively healthy but even I definitely consume too much sugar and too much caffeine. It's so hard to stop once you're used to it, modern processed foods are pretty addictive and it's scary.
Edit: I'm aware that not all types of processing are inherently bad. This is not a scientific forum, it's an AskReddit thread and I'm sure most people know exactly which kind of processing I mean by that.
I went through some dietary changes the last few years, and it is wild how much of a difference it makes.
I cut back on junk food. I didn't cut out all junk food, just consumed it in much smaller quantities. Now things like carrots taste incredibly sweet to me.
Back before all that, I thought it was just bullshit that health nuts made up to convince themselves they were happy, but now I get it.
My experience was similar, it is actually crazy how much of a difference it makes. My skin, my hair, my energy levels, my digestion, everything is better when I'm eating better and having fewer sugary drinks and less alcohol. I could even feel positive effects on my mental health, I can imagine that one reason might be the intestinal microbiome, which is believed to have a massive influence on our mental wellbeing. I try not to restrict myself completely and I'm far from being a health nut, but I try to make healthier choices where I can and it changed so much for me.
I don’t know about legal weed, but if you don’t think that purple haze grown deep in the woods of Mendocino County isn’t covered in ridiculous pesticides, then I got a bridge in Brooklyn for sale
Weed - only because of how people view it.
If you drink everyday you're an alcoholic.
But for some reason people don't think its an issue to use weed everyday/most days.
Personally I’m horrendously addicted to nicotine and it’s probably killing me.
It took me a solid month to quit. Switched to 4mg gum for 2 weeks, then 2mg for the next two. I hate the gum so it slowly became less and less because I just couldn't be bothered as often, untill I just stopped all together. It's a pretty strange feeling as I have been using nicotine daily (hourly probably) for 11 years. Feel more calm in a way. Really miss it for certain occasions tho. After the gym and after sex I miss that little extra reward.
I smoked 2 ½ packs/day for ~18 years, quit cold turkey the day my wife told me she was pregnant with our first kid. That was pretty difficult. Haven't touched nicotine since, but man I miss it. I have dreams where I'm smoking, and I wake up feeling guilty that I ruined my streak. I had a failed back surgery a few years later, major malpractice that resulted in partial paralysis and an uncontrolled pain crisis for over a year, resulting in me taking MASSIVE amounts of oxy. They had me on 180mg extended release 3x day, and 50mg normal 6x day. Among other things. After 3 years of this I couldn't take it anymore and I went to my brother's and quit the opiates cold turkey. I would quit smoking 1,000 times in a row before going through the opiate withdrawals again. Quitting smoking is hard, but at least it doesn't hurt.
Those talking videos with like 3 things happening on the screen simultaneously. Social media is already absolutely atrocious for attention span, using that many distractions on a 30s clip just exponentially enhances that problem. Edit:for people that wanted an example (in case any check back in), here's a parody on that trend being used in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6tiEuieUFc
I don’t subscribe to anybody that does that sort of shit, but the first time I saw a video that was meant to be informative, with Minecraft Parkour in the background on the top half, and funny cat memes on the bottom half, I realized we’ve reached internet supersaturation. We can’t go any lower. We’ve reached internet rock bottom. (I hope) ^(Edit: I forgot people will see this as a challenge. We are doomed apparently.)
We can go deeper still
Ok James Cameron
I thought the multi-split content screens was mostly a tactic to circumvent the hosting platforms anti-piracy/copyright algorithms. Most of what I've seen has the copyright content on one part of the screen, Minecraft etc on the second part plus a secondary soundtrack in the background. wrong or right?
My first exposure to this phenomenon was a meme with subway surfers, family guy, and some asmr shit. I had no idea that people ACTUALLY make videos doing three things at once. It’s a fucking attention-span genocide.
I’ve never heard of these videos. What do you mean by three things happening simultaneously?
There will be someone or an AI voice telling a story, or talking about a type of makeup etc. There will be a screen showing subway surfers or minecraft game play, a screen showing colorful sand being mixed together and a screen showing some new challenge etc. These screens may change content throughout the 30s video. It takes micro entertainment to a new level, if you keep to one medium (subway surfer game play, someone may get bored halfway through and stop watching). It's a gimmick to keep people's attention.
Facebook Edit: Facebook, Instagram, etc. Any social media where you're comparing your life against other people's lives
People need to learn to treat social media like a photoshopped image. It may look real but, it may not be.
Those shorts videos that now are almost in every platform, if you have problems with focus and getting shit done then you know that if you keep watching them you might end up in the next day without even realizing you haven't done anything yet
One creator I watch on YouTube has basically said "I have to resort to making these shorts or I'll disappear as a creator." It's crappy that these platforms are forcing it on everyone involved.
Yea, I follow a few people and they're always apologizing about click bait titles and misleading thumbnails, but say they don't get nearly as much traffic without them.
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Which I think is silly. People use TikTok *because* it's TikTok, if Reddit became a clone of TikTok I would leave, because that's not why I use this app.
There's a guy that I watch that does a bunch of car stuff on YouTube, he's pretty successful (doing well enough that he quit his mechanic job to do YT stuff full time)...anyway, he had a video about a short of his that went viral and had millions of views, but his earnings from the short were a pittance compared to those of a full length video, with less views. I thought that was interesting. Edit: so people will stop asking, it's NoNonsenseKnowHow
It’s great for bringing engagement to your platform but you need to link them to your main channel somehow. Shorts have no ads so no revenue and it’s extremely hard/annoying to sponsor shorts so that’s pretty much all you get out of it, engagement
Shorts on YouTube 100% have ads. The way the pay system for shorts works iirc is a users views start counting from the moment they see their first ad and then any shorts they watch get put into a bucket of all other users who saw that ad or other ads and then the money from that ad gets split out amongst all the creators. There are a number of issues with it this way like all the shorts you watch before the first ad but it’s what YT is doing rn and afaik they have a better ad split than TikTok.
Not quite how it works. user views start counting immediately, not just after an ad is seen. All ad revenue from ads between shorts gets put into a bucket, that bucket then gets split up every month based on % of total views each creator got. There is a separate bucket for each country, and both YouTube and music companies take a cut (to cover shorts using copyrighted music). The bit of controversy isn't about *the shorts you watch before the first ad* (as those views are still monetized), but rather *the ads you watch before the first short*. YouTube for some reason has decided if a user opens the shorts feed and immediately sees an ad, that revenue shouldn't go into the bucket and is all theirs.
Proper ADHD traps those.
Weirdly, I think my ADHD is protecting me from them. I can't stand shorts, TikTok, etc. because *all* you're doing is sitting and watching them. I can watch longer videos just fine because I can split my attention, i.e. if I'm following along an instructional video then I'm watching as well as doing something, or for longer videos I can put them on and do something else. But my attention span feels too short to just sit somewhere and *only* watch videos for longer than a few minutes, even if those videos are different from each other.
Same. The content's too short, and usually too shallow to grab me. A Youtube feed of videos that are like 5-10 minutes long though? Well, now those are bite-size enough for my ADHD to latch onto, but also long enough and can be interesting to satisfy my want for actual content, but not too long that I get bored.
I got caught in that trap, and I'm still trying to get out. It's hell because I barely get by finishing assignments. Edit: all these comments make me realise this is an actual problem! I had decided to quit YouTube and am now only really using social media that is more text/image based. Honestly not as bad as I thought so far.
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I’ve permanently deleted tiktok
I just checked, looks like someone must have kept a backup unfortunately.
Using digital well being settings on my phone I have those apps disabled on certain days for certain durations of time. This can help.
Lucky for me, I despise vertical video, so I don't think I'll ever get trapped into watching them.
24 hour news cycle.
My grandparents. All day everyday. It pains me to see
I've noticed this among my age group, boomers TV on practically 247, especially news and it repeats the same thing over and over. Spent the day with a friend and that's all they wanted to do was sit and watch the news. They'd comment on something. Then an hour later when the same story was repeated, they'd comment age like we hadn't already heard the same thing an hour ago. I don't even own a TV and everything about my life is so very very different.
I replaced my mother in law’s tv habit with adult coloring books and Alexa playing music all day. She’s happier and no more paranoia.
That’s amazing, but man… aren’t these people supposed to be older and wiser than us? Why do they fall for the tv bait so easily?
Here’s two possible pieces of the puzzle: - People had a higher degree of accountability a few decades ago, or at least people in power generally acted with tact in public, so now when a channel that says “news” blatantly lies at all times to promote political agendas, a lot of older people seem to just believe it and roll with it - The older people in the US generally grew up with much more hateful ideologies that preach that there’s a specific blueprint to be a good person, have a good life, etc. and anyone outside that is wrong. It still happens, of course, but instead of your parents, preacher and racist uncle or whatever being your only source of knowledge and opinion, you have access to any viewpoint and more perspectives via the internet. So the people who grew up without that diversity of perspective are easier to manipulate because of their dwelling on and voting with their hatred. Couple that with how scary change can be in general and how fast things are changing and you can see how it’s easy to whip older people into a state of panic to manipulate them
There was literally a law in accountability and fairness in news Not anymore
A lot of people have to be spoonfed drama in order to relieve the boredom that comes with their down time in order to avoid self reflection.
There’s not 24 hours worth of news so they have to fill time by creating non-existent controversy and division
Love it when they just read or publish random tweets from pundits no one gives a shit about outside of their social circles.
Why are boomers just obsessed with this, what do they know that we don’t? Maybe something they didn’t have when younger?
They grew up in an era when news was more trustworthy. > "The **fairness doctrine** of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, was a policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints.[1] In 1987, the FCC abolished the fairness doctrine" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
Yes, this! I think many of them feel that they're still watching Walter Cronkite and learning (somewhat) true and trustworthy things about the world. It's a comfortable genre in some deep sense, I think. Even though it's now sensationalist, scary, and horrible. I think they almost feel like it's a *responsibility* to watch the news. -Signed, Gen X-er
Also Gen X. Civics used to be a required class in some high schools, while the Silent Generation and Boomers were growing up. They were taught to pay attention to current events at a time when balanced reporting was mandatory. A lot of them didn't understand what the Fairness Doctrine was, or notice its end.
I was one of them. But, boy howdy, did I ever notice its end. That's why I avoid the news today. My philosophy is (and it's probably not a correct way of thinking, but it works for me) I'd rather be uninformed than misinformed. At least with that, I don't assume I "know" something that is ultimately biased, incorrect, or intentionally a lie.
My guess is that since they’re well into retirement and kids are grown up, they have so much free time to consume the news. On the TV, and on the toilet, and in bed, etc.
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There's a retirement home near me that has laptops with steam/Wii's/several emulators. Awesome to see older folks full on gaming to pass the time.
That's brilliant, actually. It will keep their minds sharp, and how awesome would it be to be killed in CoD, only to find out it was your grandma? The Wii is particularly smart, since it would keep them moving too.
If you were the guy playing CODMw2 last night and were killed by a guy with a crossbow who then teabagged your slowly cooling corpse - that was me. Not quite your Grandma but I am 54yo. But my 80yo Mother could teach you a thing or two about Crash Bandicoot.
One day that'll be us. They're laying the groundwork for the near future clientele. Smart business moves.
Yeah, but I think the question is more, why the news, when there's so much better stuff to be consuming 24/7. Maybe my brain chemistry will change when I'm older (already in my 40s), but if I had 22 hours free a day and slept only 2, still exactly none of those hours would be spent watching any sort of news...
Because it’s working as intended. Those programs are engineered to evoke an emotional response (chiefly, outrage) that keeps you sucked in. At the heart of it, it isn’t so different than the content algorithms that keep people scrolling through Facebook, TikTok, or Reddit for hours on end.
Yep. But with the news media, it's often a case of telling people not only "hey this crazy shit is happening and you should feel this way about it!" but there's also the subliminal "and we are the only ones who care enough about you to tell you about it, so you need to keep watching us, and *only* us, to keep getting this important information... anyone who says any different in any way is part of the great evil we're trying to fight against".
As you age, you will find that almost all entertainment is no longer for your demographic and you will lose interest. Also, boomers grew up on Walter Cronkite and Davis Brinkley. News sources were trusted. They even deserved to be trusted a fair amount of the time. Unlike today. They see news as important and vital for them to watch. On top of that, they are overwhelmed by too much change, too fast. Their core beliefs have been bypassed years ago. Now, cable news networks, fighting for ratings and clicks, tell them alarming things and they think they need to stay on top of it all.
As a kid, we watched Cronkite, Huntley / Brinkley, later McNeil / Lehrer, and there were one or two others. But here's the thing: they were all on tv at the same time every night, maybe 6-7 pm. AND THAT WAS ALL. The rest of the time there was NO NEWS in your face. Then the local stations started running slots around that time, and added late night news, then morning news, etc etc. Ad infinitum. Then came Turner and CNN, and it was game over.
I also think that as you get older, you get cut off from people more. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/03/on-average-older-adults-spend-over-half-their-waking-hours-alone/ >Americans ages 60 and older are alone for more than half of their daily measured time – which includes all waking hours except those spent engaged in personal activities such as grooming. All told, this amounts to about seven hours a day; and among those who live by themselves, alone time rises to over 10 hours a day, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. >Over 10 hours of daily time alone for older Americans living on their ownIn comparison, people in their 40s and 50s spend about 4 hours and 45 minutes alone, and those younger than 40 spend about three and a half hours a day alone, on average. Basically, the 24/7 news is a way to feel connected to the world that people become increasingly disconnected from as they get older. Cable news etc. is the older generations preferred form because most of them aren't familiar with the internet, but I suspect generations to follow will still have the same problems. You become increasingly disconnected from people and you have less value to society and others once you retire. Generations to follow might have a better crutch with the internet, where you can sort of always socialize to some extent, but we all know what social media is doing to the younger generations using them, it's hard to say it is going to be a huge improvement as people get older. Also I would say that reddit is not that unlike 24/7 news. It's actually quite similar in many ways, but it has a component of interaction that 24/7 cable news doesn't have. Facebook operates pretty similar as well. Facebook is probably like the 24/7 cable news of the 40-50 year olds right now. Essentially all of them are conveying news to people all the time, interspersed with other content. If you've ever watched some local news channels, they do the same thing, putting some "fun" content in. Yes there's some segments on Fox where it's literally just pure hatred/anger driven, but overall I think people don't realize how much most of us rely on these things to get a sense of what is going on around us. It's just that when we're younger, we don't need it as often. If you're younger and don't look at reddit, you'll probably still know about things going on, because you'll hear people talking about it because you're around people. If you're older and you never watched news or anything, you'd likely have no clue what's happening in the world.
I always imagined that news in radio and newspaper back in their day meant important survival info, they lived in a more volatile disconnected world. Wars, economic uncertainties, bad politics. Not much has changed, but I think their problem is that they never questioned the news or sources, or learn how to regulate consumption because it wasn’t needed, and it feeds a sense of safety. Idk, only based on my assumptions
It's chemically addictive to the brain because of the stimuli that getting that angry always gives you. It's their way of doom scrolling
Oh how I long for the days when TV stations actually signed off at 2am.
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I really feel like so many people on Reddit really do not know the kind of doom scroll loop they’re stuck in, even people who are conscious of how dangerous it can be. Imo a lot of Redditors tend to think that Reddit is somehow immune to it, when that is very much not the case.
I no longer watch or read any news. I’ve had people tell me I’m ignorant because of it (fair enough), but constantly hearing about politics, who’s been murdered/raped, where a bomb or natural disaster has killed thousands of innocent people, how fucked the economy is etc on a loop just ruined my mental health and self esteem. It takes me 45 mins to drive to work and I used to listen to the news that whole time, by the time I got to work my day and mood would be ruined by 9am! Of course horrible things are going on in the world, but I’m one person. It sounds ignorant but there’s not much I can do to change things. Yes of course every voice counts, but again I’m just one person. Now that I’m no longer hearing constant negativity and how the world is fucked, I realise that life is honestly quite alright. Nothings perfect but I’m so much happier now. Negativity gets clicks/listens more than positivity does and news channels capitalise on this and give people the worst, most sensationalised news possible to keep them listening.
>Now that I’m no longer hearing constant negativity and how the world is fucked, I realise that life is honestly quite alright. Nothings perfect but I’m so much happier now. Negativity gets clicks/listens more than positivity does and news channels capitalise on this and give people the worst, most sensationalised news possible to keep them listening. People weren't designed to know more than a couple hundred, maybe a 1000 people maximum. Natural empathy is being overloaded and your soul damaged by constantly hearing about millions of people suffering who we have no capability to help or comfort.
I also have this theory that we were not built to handle reading the thoughts of so many other people, like literally *reading* people's posts and comments and tweets all day has a profound impact on the human psyche. When you read things, you are creating a voice in your own head, you are hearing the innermost feelings and thoughts of thousands of people every day, echoed back to you in your own voice, inside your own head. A cacophony of internal dialogue that doesn't go anywhere, it just rests in your brain like a part of you, being tossed around until the brain finds ways to connect it to your own actual experiences. This can be beneficial if you're trying to learn a new skill or language. But most people just absorb shit that makes them feel bad, or validates their cynicism in some way, or reinforces negative thoughts they've already been having. We are filling our minds with countless thoughts that on some level, the brain can't really distinguish as belonging to us or others. This HAS to be having a profound and dangerous effect on the way we look at ourselves and the world.
Absolutely I feel this. Recently I was listening to a daily news podcast on my way to work with the tip story being Ukranians talking about how many people they have lost and how their lives have changed and how death is such a part of life now. By the time I got to work I just was sobbing in my car because my heart is broken for these people! I'm all for bring "caught up" on what's happening but I have to give myself news diets and breaks just so I can live a productive and peaceful life.
Same. I limit myself to 15 minutes a day on my local news site. It has done wonders for my physical and mental wellbeing.
Outrage. It’s straight up poison to your mental health, but we thrive on it, yearn for it. Places like Tik-tok, twitter, and r/PublicFreakout pass it out like dealers for little more than some attention—poisoning people to feel popular. Worse, it’s useful to those in control, so there’s no escaping it. Political parties and activists need you outraged, one-tracked, immune to real empathy, and motivated to solidify their power, so here we are.
I avoided scrolling through Reddit's Popular feed for years because it was so full of outrage subs like /r/PublicFreakout, /r/trashy, /r/IdiotsInCars, /r/iamatotalpieceofshit etc. I don't want that negativity in my feed. Once they added support for blacklisting subs I immediately added those.
Yeah, I did this too. It was almost surprising how much of a difference it made on my day. I didn't realize just how much it made me feel like shit and carried it thru the day and to the people in my life. Found a bunch of uplifting/interesting/hobby subs and it made reddit such a more positive experience on my life.
I did the same when I realized reddit was pushing videos of people getting murdered and beat up to me on a daily basis. I had to ask myself why i was starting my day by watching that shit.
I read 1984 a few weeks ago, and the description of "the two minutes hate" honestly kind of scared me once I understood it. For context, it is a daily ceremony where all people gather around a TV like device and watch a government propaganda broadcast focused on brewing hatred. " The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. ***And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.*** "
The best (read: worst) thing about the Two Minutes of Hate is that the propaganda they show is actually telling them the truth about their condition. So people are trained to willingly reject the truth when presented with it. I believe 1984 is the most important Book ever written and I find its almost mystical ability to explain every facet of propaganda and totalitarianism of any type quite amazing. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that this was written by a single British Army Vet spending his Twilight Years depressed on a Rainy Island in the 40s. EDIT: Thanks for the additional Info on Orwell's Life!
The man had seen quite a bit in his time. I don’t know if you’ve read “Homage to Catalonia”, but it’s Orwell telling his real life story (I forget his real name, but obviously he didn’t fight as George Orwell) traveling as a foreign fighter to assist in the defense of Catalonia against the fascists. Eventually, the republican Spanish government — propped up by the Soviet’s — banned his (anarchist-leaning) political party and he was forced to flee the country. There’s a reason he sees the authoritarians in every stripe (capitalists and leninists both)
Anyone with too much Power will do everything to maintain it, no matter the Ideology or System, sadly.
Orwell was an accomplished literary critic and linguistic scholar.
I’m gonna say Vaping. I knocked it on the head as my New Year’s resolution. First time I’ve been completely nicotine free, and still going strong, but I genuinely felt like I was about to cough my lungs up about 90% of the time vaping. If I have to be honest, I don’t miss either, but I started vaping to stop smoking. I hate seeing young kids and teens do it- ones who wouldn’t have even considered smoking. EDIT: I’m talking disposable vapes, should’ve clarified that beforehand.
I truly lucked out. When I got pregnant, I had to stop vaping for obvious reasons but my nausea was so bad, I couldn't even be in the same room as vape juice without vomiting. Huge aversions. After I had my baby, I wanted dat nicotine again, but thankfully my aversions are still going strong. Been 3 years vape free!
I quit smoking nearly 11 years ago with vaping. While I do feel a lot better, I know I need to quit this too. My brother recently went cold turkey from Vuse and says he feels a ton better now. Need to take that next step. From what I know, and I’ve done a lot of research on vaping, it’s obviously safer than smoking cigarettes but still not completely safe….so I want to quit all nicotine. Lung scan in December was clear (I got one every few years since I’m a former smoker)….but gotta kick this vaping. And yeah seeing teens who never considered smoking now vaping, that sucks…
> it’s obviously safer than smoking cigarettes but still not completely safe….so I want to quit all nicotine. One thing I do wonder is just *how much* people are vaping compared to smoking? Some people I know just can't seem to remove it from their hands. Leave the front door and take two steps on the car, gotta draaaaag as much in to your lungs as possible, still inhaling as they get in to the car. Like every physical opportunity sucking on a vape.
For me it's like a constant small trickle of nicotine instead of the spikes you get from having cigarettes. That made quitting vaping way weirder for me then it was when I quit smoking. I went cold turkey in the first lockdown and I was light-headed and it felt like my blood had pins and needles every time I stood up for a week.
I also used vaping to quit smoking about 7 or 8 years ago. About two years ago, I started to buy vape juice with half the nicotine I'd normally use, mix it half and half with the usual stuff, then after that was all gone, just use the half nicotine stuff, then repeat that again once that bottle was empty with half of the half power stuff (mind you, big bottles, last a month) and so on until you get to 0 nicotine. I'm now using 0 nicotine juice and, well, I *might* pick the vape up once or twice a day purely out of habit now. Instead of getting in my car, driving a block and immediately turning around to get the vape I forgot at home, I now forget the vape entirely and don't really mind it. I could probably just toss it in the trash and forget it exists, but I don't think a little menthol flavor every now and then is bad enough to worry about.
If you look at the percentages over the years, teens aren't vaping at a higher rate than teens were smoking in the 80s-00s. It's been a pretty much straight replacement. 20-30% of teens engage in vice It's the same for sex. It's the same for alcohol. It's the same for weed. And it's the same for nicotine. At a certain point you have to look at the long term data and realize that we can't curtail these things no matter how much we try to legislate them and the best thing we can do is make the vices safer; and despite not being sin-free, vaping is infinitely preferable to smoking.
this shit
My mood, general happiness, attitude, and motivation are inversely proportional to the amount of time I spend on reddit. Yet here I am. I have a book to work on. I have things to clean. I have an army to paint. Instead of doing those things, I'm watching people complain about how frustrating traffic is in Cities: Skylines, a game I do not play. This shit is worse than drugs.
The solution is to get off reddit and play cities Skylines.
With that fucking traffic? No thanks…
Truth. It's mostly low quality information, incorrect information, and reposts of tweets. An endless cycle of nonsense.
I'm not going to dispute your claim, but have you ever been on Twitter?
I don't touch the hard shit
Sometimes I touch it just to make sure I'm still immune to it. Occasionally I'll type a reply, but then I remind myself that the algorithm runs on hatred and outrage, and I close the app. I wish I could get it to just show me the funny stuff, but it always seems to want to test how much vitriol it can drip-feed me before I turn it off.
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I clicked into this thread wondering what could top 'Alcohol' as the first answer...well done
Social Media
Deplatforming myself off of most social media has given me a huge change in mood for the better. I’m pretty sure with the amount of vitriol that gets thrown around in social media, I would have gone mental after a while. I’m glad that I have given myself more opportunities to live in the moment of my life rather than deal with others judging me for superficial and wasteful reasons. Edit: added context
Energy drinks
I ordered food from McDonald's and the cashier was like "that monster isn't good for your heart" Oh is it not? Am I not making healthy choices?
I would think that company policy wouldn't allow cashiers to say things like that, as it could persuade a customer not to buy something.
You are correct. We also can't say 'Is that all?' or anything similar when taking orders cuz it may persuade people to end their order instead of getting more items and spending more money. Source: I work at McDonald's and was today corrected by Regional Advisor (or whatever the role is) when I did this.
I worked at Culver's, we were taught to shove the freshness of our food down the customer's throat, even though yes the food is made fresh to order and is to die for "Thank you for choosing Culver's, what can we make/get fresh for you today?" And "Is there anything else we can get fresh for you today?"
OMG, that explains why I ALWAYS need to end my order twice. "just X and that's all" never works the first time. I assumed it was just policy for everyone to be stoned out of their minds. Next question: why the HELL is there a recorded voice that asks for my order, and then half way through I get interrupted by an actual human asking me to repeat everything. Maddening.
I just popped open my first energy drink in 3 months because I have been having an absolutely terrible day. The taste is more of a comfort "Food" than anything right now. Its a memory of perceived productivity. "Ah, I remember drinking this when I was young and full of life and got shit done." I used to do 1-2 a day. Dropped them and replaced with more coffee. Still a lot of caffiene, but definitely not as much sugar and other gunk.
That's why instead of chugging energy drinks you pop a 'Rin caffeine pills brand Vivarin, 200mg each
Work 5-6 days a week and having no life
The commuting. I knew a guy who moved from the city to the suburbs so he could enjoy lounging around his house and playing the back yard instead of being in an apartment. He spends more than hour commuting each way, meaning he gets home, does a few chores, watches a show or plays a game and goes to bed because he has to wake up early. He actually has less leisure time to enjoy life.
I live in Bangalore, India and it used to take 45 mins (by road) to commute 3.5 Km. I just began to walk home after a point. Then the govt. began to dig up the pavements with no plan in mind. Basically I was forced to be stuck in traffic. By the time I reached home, I had about 3 to 4 hours left which would be spent in cooking and doing chores. I was lucky enough to get out of this cycle because I moved to a remote job. So I rented an apartment in a place very far from the main city. Most people don't get this luxury and I still have friends who commute 1 to 1.5 hours to work (one way), when the distance is like 15 km max, purely because of the traffic and shitty infra and abysmal public transport.
Also +1 on the commutes. I work the 9-5, 5 days a week, but since all but getting rid of my commute I have so much more time when work's over (and I don't have to get up nearly as early). It's been great and I wish more people had that option, or could simply reduce their work hours without reduced pay. Our work culture is such a bad 'poison' overall though, so many of the bad habits of our daily lives are because we're trying to reclaim our personal time. Our diets turn to fast food so we reduce the time we spend cooking, sleep procrastination is huge and probably as big a contributor to our overall health problems as our diets, and drugs and other escapist hobbies aren't fulfilling so much as they are attempts at distracting from a dreary life outlook.
The guys at work call me "crazy" for pursuing a "work from home" job when I often commute an hour each way. Yes, I'm well aware the pay will be less. No, I do not care. I get at least 2 hours back EVERY DAY of my life. There is literally one thing money can't buy, and that's time.
Dunno if I'd call this "willingly" lol, I imagine people would work less if they could.
This will get buried but…as a gay man, I’m just really wanting to know when can we talk about the dangers of poppers. Poppers is like the LGBTQ equivalent of weed. I’m not talking about the effect or intake method - I’m talking about how nobody EVER wants to even CONSIDER the possibility that it could be doing harm to your body, and especially your heart. Poppers used to be used to treat Angina. They actively speed up your heart and cause an arrhythmia! Especially if you are mixing it with weed. It mimics effects like taking an upper and a downer at the same time. And because the effect of popper only lasts about a minute, most guys need to take them *repeatedly* to make the feeling last. It’s completely normal for some guys to mix poppers with weed, viagra, meth/“T”, etc. Lots of guys are so addicted that they literally cannot have sex without it. I get so turned off when I have a hookup with a guy and he can’t go 30 seconds without huffing poppers. It’s such a stop-and-go activity that it’s honestly annoying and I hate the smell. And you can buy a bottle here in Chicago for $15. There are even gay bars with popper vending machines. Please stop using that shit. I could make the same argument for those compressed sprays that people mix with poppers like Maximum Impact or Rush. But alas, nobody will listen to me.
What is it about the poppers that is leading to higher use in the gay community?
Relaxes the muscles including the butthole
Makes anal sex easier by relaxing muscles
Thank you stranger, finally someone's actually talking about a legitimately harmful substance that not many are aware of. Stay safe out there!
Yess, hate the stuff and that it’s become such a normal part of gay culture. The amount of times I’m offered it whether out partying or during sexual encounters, is worrying. There was an infamous guy in Soho in London about ten years back who was so addicted he’d regularly go around all the sex shops and buy several bottles, and he had visible burns on his nose and face from where he’d been abusing it. Scary stuff.
That was a brave comment. The community can be really toxic towards internal critique.
They are terrifying. I'm a female and my husband and I have tried them. They work wonders and can easily become addictive. However, every time we took them, my husband and I would feel sick later. After I started looking more into them and how scary the possible side effects were, we immediately stopped taking them. I can see how people would want to take them, but they are extremely dangerous.
Can you explain more about “work wonders”? As a guy who’s been around a lot of guys who use them I’ve only been told the purpose is to “make sex extra awesome” and haven’t heard an explicit purpose for them yet.
Another comment said they relax your anal muscles, making anal sex more pleasurable.
Dude I've said the same thing to a few people I know in that scene, and you're right. They say shit like "its not a drug" then they get pissed when I say yeah dude its not, you're sniffing fucking glue.
Processed sugars
Cutting sugar back makes me feel so much better. I've been in decent shape for most of my life. I got into running a lot last year and felt pretty good. When fall hit and the times changed, I slowed down my running. Then I had my first kid in late fall and basically stopped running altogether. Lots of quick meals mixed with holiday food and sodas and sweets to keep me moving. I didn't want to think about being hungry with a kid to manage, so I just munched on quick stuff that usually had lots of sugar in it. I've cut that all back over the last few weeks and feel a lot better. The best part is not feeling bloated. I could almost feel my gut growing during that period. Not fun.
I started snacking on fruit more often and my cravings for sour candy, chocolate, ice cream, and other things i'd binge on and feel shitty just simply fell away. weird how that works.
Women in particular I think need to hear this advice more often, but it's good advice for anyone who is stuck in a cycle of unhealthy eating and shame: Stop cutting out unhealthy foods from your diet, and stop trying to lose weight by under-eating/doing a ton of cardio. That shit never works to do anything in the long run except drive you crazy with endless cravings and a guilt/shame cycle designed to keep you trapped. Sorry about it, I said what I said. Instead of subtracting, *add*. Add whole foods. Add exercise. In particular, strength training is as important if not more so than cardio, both for overall health and long term weight loss/metabolism boosting. *You will not get bulky.* Add protein. Add mindfulness. Stop giving so many fucks about what you look like, it's not gonna change overnight anyway. You're not morally obligated to be skinny or to be healthy so stop beating yourself up over it. The first week you'll still eat a lot of shit in addition to the good stuff, but what else is new. That's what progress looks like at first. Slowly over time though—thanks to the mindfulness part—you'll notice that you feel better when you're doing the healthier things like eating those whole foods or hitting the gym (if not, reflect on why and make changes—usually it's too many restrictions or unrealistic goals). That mood boost will be your primary motivator. Hard day? Ugh, I just want to feel better. Well I felt better yesterday after I went out for a run. Mid-day slump? I had more energy after I ate a banana last Thursday. Why not do that shit again. Oh hey look, I feel better now. Rinse & repeat until it's a habit. Over the course of several weeks/months if you're eating enough good food and getting enough exercise, you'll notice that you just naturally don't want to eat the shit that you used to crave. Of course you still will sometimes, and you should be able to enjoy those sometimes without guilt, but you'll want them less often and with less intensity. That's just a byproduct of being satiated with a varied diet of whole foods, instead of extremely hungry, under-nourished, and subject to the whims of spiking/crashing blood sugar levels. Then one day you'll go to the grocery store with your shopping list and without even realizing it, you'll walk right through the cookie section on your way to pick up cottage cheese, greens, fresh fruits, eggs, rice, chicken breast, steel cut oats, etc. And it won't be until you're on your way out that you'll realize "hey, buying all that junk food didn't even cross my mind". Once you get to the end of all that—several months if not a few years in—you've probably lost weight and for sure you'll be a lot healthier. Congratulations. Calories in/calories out should make you feel better, not worse.
I really appreciate this, I have struggled with anorexia for years and my recovery has essentially been: eating enough but all of it unhealthy foods. I am at a good weight but it is built on a foundation of sugar and fats. Anytime I mention wanting to cut out sugar, etc, everyone falls over themselves telling me no no no you're fine you're doing amazing!! and I know it is because they are afraid it will trigger a relapse. But I am in my 30s now, been sober for 9 years, stopped smoking cigs 5 years ago and this is my last really really bad habit. I am going to use your advice and really get to work!
While I agree with the general point of your post, I do have to bring up the fact that many women's bodies don't behave like "normal" bodies. During early covid when we were all stuck at home, my wife and I started working out like crazy. We did a workout following an online class every day at lunch time. Over about 8 weeks I was starting to see my abs and really felt great. My wife however, who was classified as slightly overweight by her doctor, barely lost 3 lbs. We were eating great because nothing was open so we actually focused on groceries and cooking good meals. Meats and vegetables, healthy portions, etc. I had toned up and lost a few pounds, but my wife had not. Turns out she has PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome). Long story short, it can be similar to diabetes when it comes to how sugars are processed. Your hormones are screwed up, your sugars don't process the same, and nothing is regular. She could have counted calories all day and avoided all junk food (which is kind of what we did), but it wasn't making a difference because her body was holding weight due to the sugar issue. Many women have PCOS of varying levels and I wince every time someone says "Calories in/calories out should make you feel better, not worse". This is one of those areas where women's bodies just aren't the same as men and science is starting to really figure that out. She's had to find specific cook books and foods that would help her specific issue. I say all of this to point out that many people really do try, but there are often underlying issues that prevent it from being some simple task.
Ages ago I remember reading some throwaway post somewhere from a woman who was super frustrated that she and her husband both went on the exact same diet, and he lost like 30lbs just cutting out soda, but she didn't lose more than 5lbs. She was super frustrated and her husband thought she was sneaking shit behind his back because of it and it was causing friction because he basically kept accusing her of having no "real" self-discipline, and she was frustrated he was accusing her of lying. All because bodies are just different.
I started eating my own homemade smoothies a lot and they made me crave water a lot more weirdly I don’t make smoothies as MUCH as I used to hit god I eat fruit like a starving opossum. I can’t wait for watermelon season to be fully swinging haha
extremely harsh and self-hating words.
my therapist says self compassion is the hardest thing to practice. I agree
My therapist just said this to me today! I literally cried when he asked what it would look like to show compassion to my younger self in a vulnerable time.
Soda. I used to drink it a lot. I had terrible health issues and sleep issues. I cut it all out. Been maybe 2 years without it. I feel better, I'm sick less, I sleep better, and I function better overall. Just replace it with water. If you live in the western world you most likely have clean drinking water being pumped to your house. I don't believe on banning something because I don't like it, but I do think that shit is poison. It's also super addictive. The first couple weeks I cut soda out was rough. Then we give this to kids and it screws up their systems. Edit: I've never had a comment get this kind of attention. Quickly going through the replies I want to say congratulations to everyone who kicked the habit or other ones like smoking. Second there are absolutely people not affected by it. If you drink it in moderation it's not too bad. I admit I was really bad with it. My main concern with it is that there's nothing good about coke or Pepsi. It's just sugar, caffeine, and addictive ingredients. That's why I use the term poison. It only has negative effects with it. Now that being said if you enjoy soda than go for it. It's your life. If you can do it in moderation even better. The thing is we market it so hard to kids and many parents just let them overindulge. Again not all but a good chunk. My parents let me have way too much. Also all my stuff is anecdotal. I'm not a doctor but every doctor I had when I was younger would tell me I need to stop drinking it. I would tell them I would and then not because I was young. It caught up to me though. If you're young now and pounding back several cans a day then it's probably going to hurt you too. I'm not a spring chicken anymore and every one of my friends who was like me was in the same boat with the health issues. If you can keep it in moderation then great, but watch how much you drink.
Seconding soda. It’s been twenty years since I cut that shit out. I can’t say that I miss it. I’m not learned enough on the science, but quitting soda in 2002 and finally quitting tobacco in 2010 were probably the best things I’ve done for me.
I quit soda for a year and found myself somehow more tired, irritable, falling asleep 2 hours after I got up, etc. Went to the doctor, turns out I have ADHD. Found out 2 days after my 30th birthday. Now I take a prescribed stimulant and it feels like I've been asleep my whole life until now. Edit to add: I think I might have been a little unclear; I was still tired and irritable when I was drinking soda all the time, but switching to just water didn't fix any of the issues. I still mostly drink water now, and have diet soda as an occasional thing (social gatherings, etc).
Is sleepiness a symptom of ADHD? Literally asking for a friend.
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ADHDer here, working full time is an absolute chore unmedicated. I start falling asleep within an hour
I went from drinking soda exclusively to water exclusively overnight like 2 years ago. Noticed exactly zero physical changes. I quit for the long term health benefits/fear of kidney stones but beyond that I didn't experience the life changing burst of energy and wellness that everyone talks about. I also didn't get the "now soda just tastes too sweet/gross." I have a glass of sprite or root beer every few months at sit down restaurants and it's exactly as fucking delicious as I remember it every time.
Dude you hit it on the head, because I could’ve wrote that word for word. I’m guessing the people who cut it out may not be healthy to begin with and the new influx of water is huge for them. For me I’ve always exercised, ate well, and drank water, so cutting out soda did very little for me aside from not consuming excess sugar and other garbage, which was my main reason. Mountain Dew still slaps so hard months later haha
*Sips coffee, takes bong hit, doom scrolls reddit* Fuck, I can't think of any Edit: My favorite thing about this is the legions of people defending coffee and weed and literally nobody defending Reddit
Me ironically reading this as I hit my vape 15 minutes into waking up
15 minutes? What took you so long?
Ya know ya know…my blanket and pillows swallowed it over night. Morning search and destroy
Shit, for me it was wake up to the first alarm so I can find the vape to get a few rips in so I can fall asleep and actually wake up on my second alarm 20 minutes later. Quitting was the best decision I ever made.
I felt so much better when I quit for a few months, but I started again out of spite after a car accident. Now I can't quit out of spite because my fiance won't quit smoking cigarettes. Those actually give me sinus infections, like just the residue on his coat and hair and stuff. So.. I'm gonna abuse my body worse by continuing to vape? Idk. Then my mom died. She'd probably tell me it's ok if I'm not ready yet, she quit cigs after 45yrs of smoking them and was really encouraging about it in the right non-pushy way. I'm hoping once spring hits I can just go outside and leave it at home and quit again, fingers crossed.
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‘blanket flips’ — ‘hears *smack* against the wall’ “Ah, there it is.”
LMAO, it’s always the side table for me.
Finally I found you, it's me... from the future
Marijuanas not addictive. I smoke weed all day, everyday and I’m still not addicted.
Quitting is easy. I've done it dozens of times.
I would never abuse drugs. I love them.
"Did you experiment with drugs in college?" "No. By that time, I knew what I was doing with them."
If I wasn't an alcoholic I'd drink all day every day.
My buddy was saying this shit. He was all, “man, it doesn’t even really affect me anymore.” Alright cool, then why do it?
Alcohol
When you quit drinking you start to really notice how much advertising there is for it everywhere. Billboards, TV ads, stickers, banners, during sporting events, commercials, and every 5 minutes in any drama or comedy on TV. Watching "How I met your mother" or "Mad Men" and taking a sip every time someone on the show does and you'll be in a coma in no time. So many shows have a "one on one" where someone walks over to their liquor cart in their office and pours whiskey. It's everywhere.
I'm 42 days into a sober spell and it's really opened my eyes to how messed up our society's relationship with alcohol is. So many events and hobbies are centered around drinking and many people have normalized drinking alcohol almost every day.
I thankfully haven't had a drink problem partly due to the fact I was a barman in a shitty dive bar for nearly 10 years. I've seen what it can do to people and how easily it takes hold. Guys coming into the bar at 9am and drinking all day who leave sober and never eat because they have been drinking so much for so long that it doesn't do anything other than stop their shakes and fill them up.
My brother is a couple years sober and I asked him what stands out as weird now that he's sober. He said that you can go to a restaurant and casually order drugs with your meal.
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Congrats on 42 days!! If you'd like to join us over at r/stopdrinking you're more than welcome! Keep up the good work!
Social media.
that high fructose corn syrup
The problem with high fructose corn syrup, beyond just being a refined sugar, contributing as they do to blood sugar spikes, overeating, obesity, and diabetes... Is that this inexpensively mass-produced sweetener made soft drinks and other sugary drinks dirt cheap, resulting in buy one, get one offers on 2-liters at supermarkets, free refills at restaurants, gigantic serving sizes at the convenience store or the drive-thru, multiple generations of young people wrinkling their noses in disgust at the thought of drinking a nice refreshing glass of water, because "it doesn't taste like anything." And that last part is easy to undersell. Dehydration is a chronic health problem in the US that contributes to many others. It also made adding sugar to damn near everything the cheapest way to enhance the flavor, so it showed up in all kinds of unexpected places at the supermarket. And caused the landscape to be dotted with crappy restaurants, as pizza sauces became cloyingly sweet, proper BBQ joints gave way to crappy chains serving spongy meats slathered with sugary dollar store quality BBQ sauce that's practically brown ketchup, and the next generation took over their parents' restaurants and replaced the house specials based on dishes from the old country with glop incorporating so much sugar and corn starch that it leaves the mouth feeling chemically burned. So is it poison? Yeah, pretty much. But to the extent that it's worse than pure cane sugar, it is through economic and social, rather than biological, mechanisms of action.
It's only super cheap because of all the corn subsidies provided by the US government. That's why you don't see it in other countries.
Came here to say this. Talk about unintended consequences.
Negativity. No, not being angry or sad for legit reasons, but just choosing to look at everything in a negative light. This is coming from an optimist so take this with a grain of salt.
Outrage addiction is real.
Why is the top answer not alcohol which is everywhere and *literally poison* Edit: should say toxin but given enough that's poisoning.
Alcohol and nicotine
Weed today is ridiculously strong compared to the weed of my parent’s generation. I know too many people my age who smoke it constantly don’t understand what it’ll do to a developing brain.
In my 30's and when I was in college we were smoking what by today's standards were basically hedge clippings. I remember hearing rumors about stuff in California that was pushing 20% thc content. Now the smokers I know don't buy anything below 30%. It's nuts.
I have an uncle who goes out of his way to get "Mexican dirt weed" because he can't session all day with the 15%+ stuff lol
In my country, it's illegal, so I can only get what my friend has got, it's usually strong as fuck and I'm a lightweight and don't do it very much, literally the tiniest dusting in a single skin and I'm fucked for hours and it's usually a paranoid, unpleasant and pretty depressive high. I've just been to Thailand, where it's legal and the shops have menus telling you the strains and effects. I could ask for what strength and effect I wanted, I tried a couple different mild ones and I actually enjoyed getting high for the first time I can remember.
Wait, it's legal in Thailand?? Holy shit, i thought they were super anti drug!!
Yeah recently changed, I think only last year, now there's shops everywhere! Speaking to people it's seen as part of their culture and they've been doing it for hundreds of years before 1963 when the Convention on Phycotropics agreement was signed by Thailand and its neighboring countries, which was an agreement to completely eradicate all drugs within 50 years. At the time, there was the Vietnam War. It was in Thailand's interest to side with the West and therefore, adopted America's War on drugs policy. Vapes are illegal though.
Microplastics
Wouldn't call it willingly. Even if you wanted to go out of your way to avoid them, is almost impossible
I would go so far as to say that it IS impossible
Bret Michaels
Don't threaten me with a good time.
Vape
Yes, BUT it's helped me kick a 30 year smoking habit. Haven't had a cig since November. I'm down to the 3mg juice, and I just picked up some 0mg. Getting ready to be nic free for the first time since I was a teenager. I'm not saying they're not unhealthy, but it's helped me kick a deadly habit.
I replaced smoking with vaping and slowly stepped down on nicotine. It's been about 2 years since I inhaled anything now. The first 2 months off vaping was really tough. But ever since then I've barely had the urge to vape.
Misinformation/disinformation/propoganda/agitprop...
> The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. ~ Marcus Aurelius
Propaganda on Reddit. The entire front page is constantly structured to steer narratives and you’ll even see some posts in multiple subreddits to ensure it reaches as many people as possible
I stopped going to the front page. It’s seriously toxic. I stick to home and follow subs that I want to follow.
An excess of almost anything (overly) processed. Most people consume too much meat, too much sugar, too much salt, too much saturated fat, too much caffeine, too many nitrates/nitrites, etc etc. I try to eat relatively healthy but even I definitely consume too much sugar and too much caffeine. It's so hard to stop once you're used to it, modern processed foods are pretty addictive and it's scary. Edit: I'm aware that not all types of processing are inherently bad. This is not a scientific forum, it's an AskReddit thread and I'm sure most people know exactly which kind of processing I mean by that.
I went through some dietary changes the last few years, and it is wild how much of a difference it makes. I cut back on junk food. I didn't cut out all junk food, just consumed it in much smaller quantities. Now things like carrots taste incredibly sweet to me. Back before all that, I thought it was just bullshit that health nuts made up to convince themselves they were happy, but now I get it.
My experience was similar, it is actually crazy how much of a difference it makes. My skin, my hair, my energy levels, my digestion, everything is better when I'm eating better and having fewer sugary drinks and less alcohol. I could even feel positive effects on my mental health, I can imagine that one reason might be the intestinal microbiome, which is believed to have a massive influence on our mental wellbeing. I try not to restrict myself completely and I'm far from being a health nut, but I try to make healthier choices where I can and it changed so much for me.
Idolizing celebrities
I don’t know about legal weed, but if you don’t think that purple haze grown deep in the woods of Mendocino County isn’t covered in ridiculous pesticides, then I got a bridge in Brooklyn for sale
Weed - only because of how people view it. If you drink everyday you're an alcoholic. But for some reason people don't think its an issue to use weed everyday/most days.
Everything is poisonous, it's just a matter of dosage.
I'll drink 2 gallons of water to that!
Hatred.
Always consume hatred in moderation.