
Another small adjustments to my habits that will hopefully result in a much happier me is to use the menu to open YouTube directly to my subscriptions, rather than to the algorithmic feed. It’s a hard habit to make, but I’m trying my best.
Another small adjustments to my habits that will hopefully result in a much happier me is to use the menu to open YouTube directly to my subscriptions, rather than to the algorithmic feed. It’s a hard habit to make, but I’m trying my best.
Over the last month or so I’ve started to read more on micro.blog, follow links to articles, slowly trying to get me out of the habit of doomscrolling YouTube or always numbing my mind with a podcast. I’ve been away from regular RSS based reading for quite a while and I desperately need to look over my subscription list in NetNewsWire to get more reading material that way, but I’ve at least started checking the inbox there every now and then. I’ve also spent more time reading the columns posted by Seconds Wind on Patreon. Finally, I read my local paper every morning. All in all, I’m trying to get away from ”consuming content” and get more into actually reading (or for that matter watching) things that I can then think about and that gives me anything other than a simple distraction. It’s a bumpy ride, and particularly my habit of always having something playing in my ears are a hard one to break. It’s also really easy to fall back into the YouTube hole. Due to this, a few days ago I reinstalled Instapaper on my devices.
I used to love Instapaper and I can find posts on my blog as old as June 2010 praising it but some years ago I just fell out the habit of using it. There was never a ”f* this app, I’m out” moment with Instapaper. I just started putting fewer and fewer articles into it, and started using it less and less. Eventually I started uninstalling it because is was never every used. Now, I feel a strong need for it again. If I get back into the habit of putting things I don’t have the time to properly read right now into Instapaper, and then get back into reading rather than consuming when I have the time I’m pretty sure I’ll be a happier person. There is no joy in the consumption, though sometimes it has been a necessity to hide from the lack of joy in the bigger picture of life. Iv’e not had the time to use it much yes, but it appears to be exactly the same app that it used to be. It’s easy to save articles to it, the reading experience is nice and free of distractions. Sure, it hasn’t evolved at all but why would it need to do that?
Yesterday I also reinstalled Instagram. This was for a quick one-off thing, but once it was on my devices I figured I should try it a bit. I was quite an early adopter of Instagram and I really enjoyed it for a few years. It its case there was a clearer feeling of ”all right, I’m out” some years ago. I realized that I didn’t get any joy from browsing either my timeline or recommendations. At best, I saw interesting things that I wasn’t part of and got strong FOMO, at worst I just got irritated by the stupid things I saw. So I intentionally uninstalled it and refused any impulse to reinstall. Occasionally I’ve followed a link on the web to a profile or post on instagram but as the years have gone by the web experience of it has gone from terrible to horrible. Instagram has always hated the open web and these days I don’t even understand why it pretends to be accessible that way when all it does is try to coerce me into getting the app.
So how was the experience of using Instagram the app again? Well, it was terrible. Not in the way that the web interface is, but in what it showed me. There where som posts by the people I followed but it was also riddled with ads, payed for posts and ”recommended posts”. Once I had scrolled through what my friends had posted for the past three days it was only promoted posts and ads. I then tried to look at the discover posts (or whatever it’s called) and was met with more or less nothing but AI slop and half-naked butts by ”genetically gifted” people. Thanks but no thanks. Uninstalled.
In the end, here we have two apps, both being ”Insta” something. Both appealed to me a great deal when they were new. One of them is largely still the same, one has changed a whole lot. Sure, progress is nice when it comes to the big things in the world, but being the same old, boring thing is probably a good thing when it comes to apps and services that is already good.
I just fell upon a trailer for a documentary on the tv show Lost on YouTube and as I glanced at the comments the black hole opened up. ”Great show, terrible ending.” ”Worst ending of a show ever.” ”The creators should be sent to prison over the ending.” (Yes, that was an actual comment.) And so on, and so forth.
I was really into Lost when it started and I kept watching up until season four, I think, then I stopped and later got back into it via the DVD box sets. A year or two ago I rewatched two or three seasons but it’s been quite some time since I’ve watched the whole thing, so this is not going to be a post about details of Lost. I’m going from memory here so things are inevitably colored by the bit rot the mind. Regardless, in my opinion whatever problem Lost had was not the ending. It dragged in the middle but the very end, in particular the last episode, was great.
But arguing whether the ending was good or not is sort of pointless. What I do want to argue is how much I think we keep missing the point of the art, yes, art, of stories when we keep coming back whether the plot was all tied up, whether there where any ”plot holes” or not, and only judging it by what can be summarized in a wikipedia plot synopsis. If that is all that matters, why even read books? Why watch movies and tv shows? Why not just read the wikipedia page and have time to consume so much more content?
I took special note of a comment from someone who was so mad that the show demanded an ”English major” to understand. Why not just spell it out plainly? At first I wanted to reply to that comment but I quickly realized that that would be pointless, so I started writing this instead.
Maybe I’ve become that artsy fartsy, high brow person that I despised when I was nineteen, but these days I care much more about how a story, regardless of medium, makes me feel and the journey I took with the characters than I do about exact plotting. Because again, if I only care about plot why even spend the time engaging with the story when there are so many great summaries to read online?
Maybe me changing my opinion this way over time is something I should be ashamed of. Maybe I’ve let my past self down. Or maybe it’s a natural part of growing and evolving – after all, nineteen years have passed since I was nineteen – and it’s much worse that so many people seem stuck in their teen mindset. Maybe that mindset and single-mindedness stops stories from being art and instead turns them into more content, more slop for us to consume.
Linn and I have started watchning the latest season of Black Mirror. (Season 6, I think.) So far we’ve only seen the episodes ”Joan is Awful” and ”Loch Henry” and I think both were good.
In the past I’ve thought that the problem with ”Black Mirror” is that it’s rarely as clever as it thinks it is.Its good ideas have usually been explored better in earlier works of sci-fi and it has this air of baby’s first dystopia. Two episodes in and I feel that this problem is less present in this season, even though the meta narrative stuff they’re doing at the moment are balancing on the edge of becoming masturbation.
But I’m not here to complain about Black Mirror. I’m here to complain about Netflix.
The problem isn’t the service Netflix, it’s the Netflix apps. They’re just so noisy. When I want to find something to watch I want to browse a list of recommendations, of I’m searching for something specific and want to see the results of a search. Netflix does present a list to browse but doing so is like browsing a minefield. Whenever I stop the cursor for just a second to read something or look at a poster, the thing I’m currently highlighting starts autoplaying.
I’ sure there’s lots of data that suggests that this maximizes the consumers engagement with the content. But I don’t want to consume or engage with content. I want to watch a movie or a tv show. Sometimes to relax and to take my mind off of things and sometimes to challenge myself to new ideas and perspectives!
When I finally find something to watch in this endless sea of content to consume, if that something is a tv show the next annoyance shows up.
”Skip intro”
I HATE the ”skip intro” button. If what I’m watching is something that’s really meant to be watched for its artistic merits, the intro is part of the experience. The director and editor has crafted the pace of the film (or show) with the intro in mind. Is sets the tone, tells part of the story. The ”skip intro” button just tells me that I should rush past this boring thing and get to the content.
And then, after I finished watching an episode of something, enter the stress again. As a movie or an episode ends I like to remain immersed in the world I just visited and think about what I saw while the credits roll. Oh now you don’t, says Netflix and starts pushing the next thing. If I want to stay with the credits I have just a few seconds to find the remote and quickly tell it that yes, I’m actually watching this and I want to continue doing that.
Why, Netflix, are you so afraid of me actually getting a few seconds to think? Are you that worried that I’ll realize that so much of what You present to me are just meaningless, artless content meant to distract my mind and keep me subscribed?
Post scriptum: The rest of the season was good as well.