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[return to "In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse"]
1. mlsu+IP[view] [source] 2024-11-28 17:26:36
>>bertma+(OP)
The experience of passive consumption (cable TV, tiktok, etc, pointed out in another comment here) is essentially the experience of psychological obliteration.

When you get sucked into reels, you go from "here" to "there," and in the process, while you are "there," your entire whole self is destroyed. The same psychological phenomena happens to gambling addicts, alcoholics, or users of heroin. It has fewer physiological downsides and side-effects as those things; the only material loss you have is the loss of time.

But far more remarkable than that it's simply a waste of time, and rarely articulated, is this psychological loss. The destruction of the self. That echoes through a person's life, to their relationships, their self-construction, etc. It is those echoes that we are now dealing with on a mass sociological scale.

By the way. "There" has a lot of upsides too. People can be creative, productive, expressive while they are "there" too. Creating, being funny, being social, etc. That's why this is so hard.

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2. martin+JR1[view] [source] 2024-11-29 05:11:04
>>mlsu+IP
Is reading HN comments also passive consumption that destroys ones self?

Asking for a friend...

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3. Jensso+iE2[view] [source] 2024-11-29 14:15:47
>>martin+JR1
Not if you scan for opportunities to write comments, lurkers yeah maybe but not active users.
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