[pickledoyster]

This is nice. A few thoughts:

It's sad to know that sobriety groups use addictive tech for check-ins.

> Replace scrolling with building - building out my RSS reader, my website, my personal link connections, my skills in using a static site generator, etc.

I've personally found that this approach is just not enough. Sure, I might be "building" something with distracting stuff just a click away, all the while I'm still sitting, staring at a screen, and, fundamentally, in denial that life is possible without the Web.

Took me a couple of years to come to this realization, I went through the whole schtick of getting off doomscroll portals by deleting accounts and using alternative frontends, using addons on my browser to limit and then block those sites, using screentime limits, removing apps, reducing colors on my phone, getting into static websites, web publishing, audio editing, etc. – all of this effort to end up here, commenting on a VC-backed forum during my working hours, because it requires me to sit in front of a screen.

It's like strapping yourself into the chair from A Clockwork Orange (and managing/maintaining each strap) just to pretend that, for many of us, this tech is not a clear net negative, and that those negatives don't come from all sides, i.e., it's not just particular apps or sites we use, it's the tech itself that makes us stationary, distracted, obsessed, overstimulated, etc.

There's something fundamentally wrong if I'm picking up my distraction device because of a "touch grass" notification, much like trying to fix radiation poisoning by trying a different isotope.

Then again, those that make a more radical shift and get off the web don't waste time publishing blog posts about their framework to get off the web. Of, for that matter, comment on said posts...