r/nosurf

No comments please only valid relevant short text.

i noticed something recently that kind of scared me. i'll pick up my phone, open something, scroll for 20 minutes, put it down, and realize i didn't enjoy a single second of it. like none of it. not one post. not one video. nothing

it's not entertainment anymore it's just a reflex. my hand does it before my brain even decides to. i'll be mid conversation with someone and catch myself reaching for my pocket. i'll wake up and my phone is already in my hand and i don't remember picking it up

the other night i was watching a movie i'd been wanting to see for months and i paused it to check my phone. checked nothing. scrolled nothing. put it down. picked it up again 2 minutes later. i couldn't even sit through something i WANTED to watch

(i'm not even exaggerating this is literally every day)

the weird part is i remember when i used to enjoy it. like 2019 era when stuff was actually funny and i'd send things to friends and we'd laugh about it. now it's just slop and rage bait and AI garbage and i still scroll through all of it like a zombie

i've been trying stuff recently. my friend got me to try page lock where you have to read a book page before your phone unlocks and it's helped a bit in the mornings but by nighttime i'm still doing the same zombie scroll. it's not a willpower problem it's like my brain literally doesn't know what else to do

i started reading before bed instead just to give my hands something to do. it's only been a few days but falling asleep is already easier

i don't really have a success story. i just wanted to say it out loud because nobody in my life gets it

does anyone else feel like they're not even getting dopamine from it anymore? like it's just pure habit at this point

I’m not saying no one should ever have a strong opinion. Some things deserve strong opinions.

I’m talking about how everything turns into a moral purity test now. You’re either fully for something or fully against it, and if you hesitate or point out an inconsistency, people act like you betrayed them. The same crowd will praise something one week and condemn it the next like they didn’t just switch sides overnight.

Nuance doesnt matter. Context barely matters. Everyone just wants to take the strongest possible stance on everything so they can stand out and get attention and can be on the “right” side of whatever the current thing is. It’s exhausting. Upvotes and likes are starting to be taken way too seriously by people, and people are desperate to give whatever edgy or contrarian opinion gets them the most attention and likes that day.

Half the time people I see arguing are arguing just for the sake of arguing. I could say “the sky is blue” and a group of people would assemble to tell me how wrong I am about the sky. It’s insane.

Translation from Google translate: "You're an idiot, man. What's with the "Egyptian" thing? And the guy's so clever. He understands conspiracy theories and online trolls."

Just for being against the west......like my god just let people have a different opinion if it doesn't haem others.....is that so hard to do?!?!

Welp Reddit, it's been a wild ride over the past 8 years. You've done a lot for me over such a defining stretch of my life, good and bad. You filled what would've been a lot of empty, boring hours at a time in my life when I had nothing better to do, but the time has now come for me to relearn how to live life without you. Goodbye everyone! I shall now make the final next step and hit the "delete" button — for good.

Signing off for the very last time,

u/SomebodysReddit

For years I bounced between hard blockers (cold-turkey, leechblock, hosts file) and nothing at all. Hard blockers always ended the same way — I'd get annoyed, disable them, and then not turn them back on for weeks.

The thing that actually changed my behavior wasn't a stronger wall. It was a delay. A few seconds of "are you sure" between the muscle-memory keystroke and the dopamine. Long enough that the autopilot breaks and I notice I'm not actually here for a reason.

Most of the time, when I notice, I just close the tab.

Curious whether others here have landed on the same thing, or if friction-based approaches have failed for you and walls worked better. What's the mechanism that actually does it?

Over the past five or seven years, while working a pretty demanding job, I started to feel that the “quality” of what I consume began to decline. Even my music consumption. As a teenager, I used to listen to very rare or experimental music, with tracks that were at least 10 to 20 minutes long.

Now I barely stand any. The same with reading. I used to read actual books. If not books, I get lost in long form articles on different themes: science, philosophy and even religion. Mostly from blogs of actual people that now are impossible to find or re-discover.

Idk... I feel that I need to make a conscious effort and choice to turn around this automated pilot consumption of life.

What are your thoughts? What you started to do to avoid overindulge in modern digital slop (ai and human one)?

I've been stuck at 7+ hours screen time daily and couldn't read more than 2 pages without checking my phone.

Found a Harvard Medical School ophthalmology study where Dr. Aditi Nerurkar mentions the 20-20-20 rule isn't just for eyes - it resets attention span too.

Tried it for 7 days: every 20 minutes of screen time, look 20 feet away for 20 seconds. No phone during those 20 seconds.

Went from 7h 42m to 4h 11m average. Still scrolling, but I'm actually finishing work blocks now.

Anyone else tried this long term? Does the effect wear off?

How I'm supposed to fill my time If I stop going on internet / phone ?

Just did all my chores (I live alone), walked 1h outside, did my sport (1h) but what I'm supposed to do now.

Reaching my phone is so tempting rn. I'm a slave of screens.

Personally, I’m a firm believer that social media can be good if used with intention and curated suitably.

For anyone who still uses social media, I’m curious how you go about it while trying to be intentional/ a digital minimalist.

What devices do you use? Which Platforms? Reasons for using? Time spent per day/week using? How you curate your feeds in terms of pages/people you follow, any browser extensions you may use?

Any tips or recommendations you’d make too would be much appreciated.

Thanks guys!

I noticed something about myself:

Every time I try to "limit" my time online, I fail.

Not because I don't know it's bad.
But because in the moment, I just ignore everything.

Timers, reminders, even screen time warnings — they don’t work once you're already hooked.

So I tried a different approach:

What if I just can't continue after a certain point?

I built a simple Chrome extension that:

• lets me set a limit (time or number of videos)
• blocks playback completely when I hit it
• shows when the limit resets

Right now it supports YouTube and Instagram, focusing on the most addictive parts.

Honestly, I'm still testing it on myself.

Curious:
Would something like this actually help you?
Or would you just uninstall it after a day?

Does anyone have a demanding career, but still find they spend lots of time on phone during the day?

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Overall, Mad Rabbit Tattoo Balm is a good option if you have tattoos and want a dedicated product for daily maintenance. It is more premium-priced than regular lotion, but if you care about keeping your ink moisturized, bright, and looking its best, it’s easy to see why the brand has become so popular.

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The thing is that I don't enjoy reading novels and I love playing videogames once in a while, sometimes I feel that I might give off the vibe of being a loser or something if I play videogames everyday haha, should I just cut myself some slack?

I can't help but feel that my problem of hyperfixation/obsession has a simple solution

Feeling like the only to get off screen would be a contest like this in local communities with money reward.

Just an idea because im feeling that it is an underrated pandemic.

My current blockers of 1 hour on - 1 hour off are no more than the equivalent of a cigarette and wont break the dopamine loop.

I keep blocking the entire internet except for site I actually need (email, budget, bank) but I wind up resetting my PC.

Work won't let me install stuff on my PC; and also I don't keep the same PC every day.

Any ideas? Can't really get rid of my PC, physically, for now -- but when I eventually get a new job I want to throw this mind-control device off a cliff.

I obsess and overanalyze stuff way too much lmao.

Youtube must have been the worst addiction I’ve ever had.

Th YouTube became that nectar for me, that cocoon where people lived in the movie "The Matrix."

YouTube was my matrix – I'd go in and nothing else mattered. All problems disappeared in that moment, no pain. No need for friends anymore, why bother when there's MrBeast and endless entertainment? No need for smart people around you, when you can just watch pop-science videos? No need to act yourself, take risks, put in effort and time, when you can just watch others do it?

A habit formed. Whenever I felt bored, anxious, sad – I'd open YouTube, distract myself, and the problems would magically disappear.

Not only was I numbing my problems just to face them again later – which meant more pain and more escape – I also developed a habit of passive information consumption.

I'd open YouTube to escape the pain, and those damn algorithms would pick what I watched next. I'd mindlessly click on whatever thumbnail caught my eye and just... watch.

And that recommendation feed – that's the real evil. It just pushes you to consume without thinking. It plays on your animal instincts. You get shown the most clickbaity, the most provocative, the most outrageous thumbnails and titles – it's pure manipulation, and we do it to ourselves voluntarily.

And that kind of information bingeing doesn't pass without consequences. I constantly had brain fog – no clarity, a flood of thoughts, images, random sounds. Absolute chaos in my head. My head was literally buzzing.

And when you finally snap out of that haze, the problems are still there. I just forgot about them for a while, and reality hits twice as hard. You want to escape again.

Broken sleep, because you don't want to face reality. Falling asleep to some video, waking up feeling like garbage, not remembering anything from the day before. I developed digital dementia – living day to day, moment to moment, retaining nothing.

I was like that neighbor who comes home from the factory and turns on the TV first thing – just to forget everything. To avoid facing the horror of reality. More comfort, less pain. Except in a very, very amplified form. And that's not a figure of speech – that was my actual reality.

YouTube itself isn't bad – it's just a tool. A tool with a heavy bias toward superficiality and harm, designed to maximize consumption. Actively engaging with a lot of material is hard, so passive consumption – just watching – is extremely profitable for them and extremely damaging for you.

YouTube is a double-edged sword. You can use it for good or use it against yourself. But by default, YouTube is configured for passive consumption – with its recommendations, with a complete absence of any ethical approach to information.

And that's the problem. YouTube has genuinely useful content – lectures, tutorials, courses, interesting video essays – but at the same time it pushes you toward passively consuming random garbage, and most of the time that's exactly what you end up doing.

But that doesn't mean it has to be that way. It doesn't. And here's what I did:

I started with willpower (telling myself I'd use it less) – didn't work.

Then I blocked YouTube completely so I wouldn't watch it – but I'd come back after a day or two.

Then I used browser extensions to hide all the addictive mechanics (remove recommendations, gray out thumbnails, hide comments, disable autoplay) – but eventually I'd just turn the extension off and go back to my old habits.

So I realized I couldn't rely on myself and I needed a system I couldn't change. An environment I'd have to adapt to, because I couldn't alter it.

And here's what I came up with:

Block YouTube completely. Make using it impossible, or at least very inconvenient.

Then, I vibe-coded a simple YouTube player – a site where I can paste a video link and watch it.

To find videos, I search directly in the browser.

That's it. That's the whole thing. After this, my usage dropped from 6 hours a day to 20–30 minutes.

YouTube stopped being a toy I play with when I'm bored, sad, or feeling low – and became a tool I use when I actually need it, to watch what I actually want, not what the algorithm feeds me.

And that barrier – having to decide what you want to watch and go find the link – kills all impulsive behavior. Because now watching something requires thinking, and thinking feels like effort, so the motivation to mindlessly consume just drops.

Friction kills addiction. Impulsive behavior only survives in an environment without obstacles. Look at how easy it is to get lost in YouTube, how low the barrier to entry is – same with TikTok, same with Instagram. It's designed that way on purpose. But that doesn't mean we can't do anything about it.

This was my solution for YouTube – one I've been living with for over a year now, and it works beautifully for me.

Ask questions if anything isn't clear, and share your own solutions.

I go on X like 2 hours a day and some other websites. I'm sure there is enough interesting content on the internet to show me only what I want to see.

There is a fundamental problem with existing social media algorithms in that they're not aligned with the user. They are optimised to maximise use, where my goal is to see the most interesting content. This is why you get triggering stuff, like emotional content, people complaining about politics, engagement bait etc.

I'm sure it's possible now to create my own feed (I'm a coder), I can just vibe code something that works. It will require access to APIs, it only needs to be read only. To be honest, if it was only for X, that would be fine.

What does everyone else think of this? Does it already exist?

I'm sure it could work pretty simply by me just pressing up and down on things that I like or don't like.

Edit: I think it's possible. X API provides a candidate feed, which my algorithm then filters. Over time, it should learn what I like, no incentive misalignment.

I used to get huge amounts of engagement. Over 50-60 likes per post. 200 plus views per story. Im down to less than half of those numbers the last 2 years.