[BiteCode_dev]

Pretty sure it destroys something in you as well. So many context changes with no relation whatsoever and regular hooks that give you a pinch.

We haven't evolved for that. Our brain is trying to figure out a narrative between two things following each other. It needs time to process stuff. And there is so much shock it can absorb at once. So many "?!" and open loops in a day.

I made a TikTok account to at least know what people were talking about. After 3 months, I got it.

And I deleted it.

I felt noticeably worse when using it, in a way that nothing bad for me, including the news, refined sugar and pron, ever made me feel. The destruction was more intense, more structural. I could feel it gnarling.

In a way, such fast feedback is good, because it makes it easy to stop, while I'm still eating tons of refined sugar.

[rmunn]

Thirty years ago, I read a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, in which he made very similar points about broadcast television. I don't remember all his points, but I vividly remember how talked about how you'll be watching a news story about something awful, maybe an earthquake in which hundreds of people died, and then with practically no warning you'll be hearing a happy jingle from a toothpaste commercial. The juxtaposition, he said, was bad for the human mind, and was going to create a generation that couldn't focus on important things.

I suspect that the rapid-fire progression of one one-minute video after another does something similar, and is also equally bad for you.

[noahjk]

I've noticed that I can read or see something very emotionally engaging - something that really resonates with me, so much so that I'm maybe even choking up over it - and while I'm still having that emotional response, move onto the next post. I almost always have a moment of meta-reflection that scares me - why wasn't I content to just sit there and process these big emotions? How is the dopamine part of my brain so much more powerful than even the emotional part, that it forces me to continue what I'm doing rather than just feeling?

[Aerbil313]

That talking point - that rapid-form media creates attention deficit problems is honestly overdone and there's no evidence that it's true at all (that I know of). ADHD exists and is a mostly genetic condition, you can't catch it without something serious like cPTSD. Amusing Ourselves To Death emphasized way more the angle of densensitization.

I used to think doomscrolling broke my brain before I was diagnosed. Later I realized I was "doomscrolling" way before I got my first digital device, rereading the same fiction books late into the night.

I can buy the argument that rapid-form media consumption acutely creates symptoms like ADHD (for at most a few hours after exposure) because I see it even in NT people.

[MonkeyClub]

The same is true with the "In other news..." technique of seguing to the next story: its end result is overall desensitization and passive consumption.