"What?" you maybe thinking.
I've been browsing the popular [soul sucking, time wasting] website, Reddit, going on four years now. I started soon after entering uni, and it quickly slurped up my time. When I began to show it to Adelaide, she was hesitant at first, but soon it latched on, and then she began to browse it (although still no where near the same degree as me, I might add). For the uninitiated, Reddit is a pretty simplistic (limited styles) website, where people can share links and comment on them, and you can sort these 'shares' into relevant subjects, called subreddits. Theres really not much else to the website. It sounds simple in theory but it becomes very addictive because of the amount of information on display in a short amount of time.
I learnt a fair bit during my time there. /r/Fitness opened my eyes to... well... fitness (or at least a part of it, I'll explain later), and many of the other subs taught me about their relevant subject matter. It's also been a big source of entertainment for me, and only recently did I see my own 'social shift', so to speak. Since I was a kid, I've always identified as a gamer because I would play copious amounts of video games, for hours on end. Perhaps it's just because I don't get the same amount of time to play anymore, or, perhaps it's because my interests have shifted, but recently I noticed that this isn't the case anymore. In fact, I haven't played a game at my own leisure for a week or two, but I've more than made up for that time on Reddit.
"And so he became, the redditor"...
I would spend hours and hours on Reddit, mostly habitual. Wake up in the morning, check AskReddit, Brisbane, WorldNews. Get off the phone after anywhere up to 30mins of browsing, go and get brekkie, and eat it while (you guessed it), redditing some more. This time checking All, Brisbane in more detail and usually videos. Go to Uni, and check some of my favourite subs in my spare time between classes or when I needed a break from paying attention. Come home, dump bags, check one thing and suddenly I've lost another hour or two. That doesn't sound toooooo bad at face value, but if I happen to find a sub or thing which was remotely interesting, then I could easily say goodbye to up to an hour (or more if I didn't have anything on).
Ironically enough, I consolidated my YouTube subscriptions not a few months ago because I was sick of being a slave to watching 30-90mins of it each morning. It's nice now and then, but not everyday. I guess with Reddit it is a bit different though, there's less of a drive to watch so much stuff from beginning to end; I can just drop it, and come back once I've done something else, far easier than YT.
It wasn't just the habitual redditing that was causing me problems, but it was any other time. On the bus, at work, and it was getting to the point where I was redditing when it was unnecessary, or when I had already checked it. The worst part was when I would get home, dump my bag, and find that link, and before I knew it, I'd lost my train of thought from the commute home, and I'd be all over the place trying to remember what I had planned to do.
My satisfaction with the site was beginning to wain as well. There's a concept on Reddit called "circlejerk", whereby content, memes, responses or stereotype (the list goes on) become so engrained and overused, that you can almost always expect it. It's the atrophy of the site, which the mods seem to be forever fighting by developing new ways to keep things interesting. It's an interesting phenomenon too. As new users come to the site, they pick up the stuff they think is funny/interesting/new, and try to share it off as cool content, which the rest of the user base has already seen. At this point you'd think it'd get voted down, but no, for some reason lots of this content still makes the front page, much to the displeasure of the 'veteran' users (and I guess you could say me too).
In particular, AskReddit was one of the main sources for wear and tear on my opinion of the site. Askreddit was a sub where people could only post text-based threads, where they could ask the opinion of the sub (open ended questions with the intention of fostering discussion - e.g. How long would the world take to notice if we stopped sneezing). As a new user it's a great concept, and a source of reading for hours, but as time goes by you begin to see the same threads get through, time and time again. At my stage of the game, I would see maybe 1 original thread a day, if I were lucky. What made matters worse, was the 'circlejerk' hivemind. Despite the sub wasn't even one of the ironic ones which blatantly poked fun at itself, AskReddit had a criminal reputation for hving generic or funny responses
for posts, so much so the mods needed to implement a 'serious' tag, so
that proper discussions could actually take place.
With a lot of work to do over the coming few weeks, I decided I needed a break from the place, and so I thought I'd set myself a goal of not visiting the site for a month. Sounds ironic, and kinda dumb that it gets to such a point, but to be honest, I welcome the challenge, and it'll be nice to go back to what it was like before I knew about it. I'll lose most of my newsfeed (which was far and above the most accurate, timely and encompassing), but in exchange, I expect to gain much of my free time and discipline because I'm not filling the gaps [making the gaps larger] with a futile activity.
Reddit is an awesome and toxic place at the same time, but sometimes you just need a break.
