My Day Away from Reddit

I quit visiting Reddit daily 6-7 years ago. The reason is very simple: I asked myself what value Reddit provides in my life. What will I remember from yesterday&#x27;s browsing? Or last week. Or last month. Am I really going to miss out on anything? I made the same exercise with several online newspapers. If I can&#x27;t remember what I read yesterday, whatever I read was probably a waste of time. I stopped reading at least 3 low quality newspapers in roughly the same period.<p>Reddit isn&#x27;t worth hours every week. You are not getting that time back. It isn&#x27;t quality time spent on things that enrich you. You have to care for yourself and be more picky about what you spend your time and attention on.<p>Quitting stuff is good for you.

It did highlight to me how often I circle back to Reddit almost subconsciously when idling surfing the internet. Will need to do something about that…

I mod a few subs (largest is just over half a million.) While they&#x27;re relatively easy to mod, I really enjoyed not having to check a queue, not having to deal with a lot of whiners in modmail, and definitely not having to deal with trolls and spammers. Pretty nice.<p>I blew that time today on browsing through a Lemmy node, but for the next two days I&#x27;m going to focus that time elsewhere... maybe I&#x27;ll make fresh pasta.

The IPO was a blatant attempt to pluck out all the golden eggs by killing the goose, what happened yesterday was a very natural and predictable outcome of that event.

The blackout made me aware how much I visited reddit. And a lot less reddit is probably a good thing. Am gonna lurk more than actively participate probably.

I quit Reddit, what, two years ago, was it? This past week, I did what I&#x27;ve been putting off; I erased all my posts, while the API is still there.

I&#x27;ve also spent a day away from Reddit, but unfortunately, Lemmy has completely replaced my Reddit addiction. Net effect is that nothing has changed, and I bet I&#x27;m not the only one in this boat.

A bit hyperbolic in their narration. I think the ones here talking about how addictive it was and how you keep reaching for it bring more to the table.<p>I deleted my account and removed it from Firefox&#x27;s quick link. I also uninstalled Instagram and Facebook to not replace it with mindless scrolling.<p>And here I am, visiting other pages a bit too much.<p>I guess it&#x27;ll take some time to disconnect completely from it and replace it with something useful.

I&#x27;m not a redditor, not even a lurker, but I&#x27;m going to repost my sub here from a few days ago, how I was banned from WSB in a matter of one post:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36262192">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36262192</a><p>And follow this up to say that in the days after that, I was subjected to a vast array of hate and abuse, including things like &quot;groomers should die&quot;, etc. when I wasn&#x27;t even beginning to an express a political opinion about what Target sells or who should sell what bathing suit, or anything like that.<p>I was super happy to see the (stupid, pointless, pathetically idiotic) &quot;strike&quot; go into effect the next day, because my fondest wish would be for that entire ecosystem to fall over and choke on its own vomit.

I have been off Reddit for almost a year, it’s too addictive. The thing that worked for me was the iOS ScreenTime feature with a thrown away PIN.

Read, Eval, Diagree, Downvote, Insult Treadmill

I&#x27;ve attempted to quit social media several times, so this article really resonates with me but breaking away completely is difficult. Often, online searches steer me towards threads on Reddit, which makes it hard not to get pulled in. I believe it&#x27;s train yourself to use these platforms intentionally, rather than just mindlessly scrolling.

blackout reminded me of checking other websites which is nice change of pace. Probably reduce time in reddit in the future

A few years ago I noticed the phenomenon where I would walk outside and couldn&#x27;t for the life of me remember what I&#x27;d been doing for the few hours. It happened a few times and then I realized that this happens when I was on Reddit (or other similar online endless scrolling).

I posted this already on a similar thread. I’m very aware during deliberately not visiting Reddit these last two days, that I’m missing the ‘dopamine hits’ from the controversial posts and outrage bait more than the loss of information and discovery.

I should have spent the day away from reddit but I didn&#x27;t, and actually this was the best experience I&#x27;ve had using the site in a while!<p>there&#x27;s significantly less politics, I discovered some cool new subreddits due to so many of the biggest communities being closed, threads were pleasantly concise, and I just felt like it was a much more mentally healthy scrolling experience.<p>it&#x27;s too bad that this is all going to end in a couple days and it&#x27;ll be back to normal except without rif.

If you are going to &#x27;leave&#x27; the platform, do not take just one day. Delete your entire account forever.<p>Staying on the platform just prolongs the addiction and replacing it with another social network is not the solution.

This looks like a trip report