People who love online life \ stacker news ~mostly

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2496 sats \ 32 comments \ @elvismercury 23 May mostly_harmless

I'm working on something, and just wrote in my notes:

Why does online life feel gross? Why does it feel like it's overwhelmingly subtractive and corrosive? (Notable examples of people who feel the contrary)

At first I thought the premise of the first two questions would be more-or-less universally shared; but then I recalled some hazy examples of people violently asserting the contrary, which led to the third line.

For instance, I seem to remember Tyler Cowen talking somewhere about how his engagement strategy makes online life an unequivocal blessing, although my mental model of TC is roughly highly advanced robot who behaves exactly the way an economist would expect a human being to behave, so TC crafting a rewarding online life seems on-brand.

Anyway, now I'm interested in people who, like TC, are living their best lives online, and sucking all the juice from the orange. I'd be interested in examples that come to your mind (including yourself, if applicable). Also I'd be interested in your thoughts on the first two questions.

(Related: @k00b recently posted a good link on a proximate topic.)

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101 sats \ 1 reply \ @unschooled 5h

I am expressly indifferent. If I couldn't busy myself online I'd surely find other equally engaging ways of doing so.

Like others wrote about already, I try to curate my online experiences carefully. I'm strictly anti-algo, and while I have X, I only use it to stay current with those I follow, seldom engage on nostr, and try to participate meaningfully to online forums/blogs like SN.

This practice has made me to become more aware of the output in mental bandwidth required of digital activities (similar to reading a book, solving the daily sodoku puzzle, or chatting with colleagues at lunch, engaging meaningfully requires thought and considerstion. Unmeaningful uses, like doomscrolling, also sap our energy, but these do so in a more vampyric manner). Since I don't usually forego the real life things, being a mindful user results in a net overall increase in energy output, which is good on some days, and less on others.

My SN persona wants to popularize the idea that mainstream education is simply a well-curated information delivery system, and that one can be very well cultured and educated through carefully curated content, without having the traditional schooling experience. I haven't quite figured out the right means of doing so, yet....

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 1h

being a mindful user results in a net overall increase in energy output, which is good on some days, and less on others

This is what I want -- to be filled up by it, in a good way, like getting together with a friend over a beer and talking intensely for an hour fills you up, even as it wrings you out. You feel like something has been accomplished vs this kind of experience.

How have you done it?

227 sats \ 7 replies \ @Undisciplined 23 May

Can you unpack what "online life" means?

I basically just talk to people on Stacker News, goof around on Predyx,, and watch sports. All three activities are very enjoyable to me. I don't want to substitute "real life" for those things, though.

31 sats \ 5 replies \ @elvismercury OP 23 May

Can you unpack what "online life" means?

Probably each person has a particular definition? You've just given a good workable definition for you. Maybe a general one would be something like:

Interactions, with people or other cognitive agents, mediated by computers and the internet.

Then the form that takes would vary widely, from your relatively sparse engagement on those platforms, to chronically online folks doomscrolling Twitter, maniacally refreshing 4chan, etc.

I basically just talk to people on Stacker News, goof around on Predyx,, and watch sports. All three activities are very enjoyable to me.

This is a good example of what I was getting at. I often enjoy talking to people on SN (like to you, now) but I also often take damage from reading people being aggressive assholes. I get stirred up by it, even if I'm not the target of their dickishness. It's like there's some machinery in me that does not distance from it and so I react as if they were standing next to me.

I think a lot of people have something in the ballpark of that. (There's more pathological types of interaction, too, but that's the most vivid and easy to characterize example.) But maybe some people have none of it?

115 sats \ 2 replies \ @plebpoet 23 May

I often enjoy talking to people on SN (like to you, now)

aw look at you guys being pals

I can relate to how you described not being able to gain distance from the dickishness. It's because of this that I am a careful participant online, being thoughtful when I want to engage and taking a long break in between engagements. How does anyone else do it? I would guess it's a similar approach.

Anyway, it's possible to have a good time - you don't have to drink the piss water

65 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 23 May

Calibrating your expectations is important.

Getting to occasionally chat a little with fun interesting people who I can't hang out with in meatspace is a huge value add from online life. That's something it can deliver, if you use it selectively.

36 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 1h

Anyway, it's possible to have a good time - you don't have to drink the piss water

I should get "Don't drink the piss water" as another tattoo. Would enjoy explaining that one at the bar, maybe :)

101 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 23 May

I decided to be a little looser with the mute button, because I have the same reaction as you to dickishness. Those interactions stick with me for a while and I'm not very good at disengaging.

24 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 1h

It seems a crucial skill. I wonder if there are related skills that are less obvious? But also maybe less generalizeable.

36 sats \ 0 replies \ @NovaRift 22h

O.o you're doing all right! I see "online life" as a coping mechanism from real life's difficulties you know? A way of escaping.

101 sats \ 1 reply \ @rootmachine 10h

I feel you on this one. Online life can indeed feel overwhelming and even toxic at times. However, I believe it's all about how we engage with it. Curating our online spaces, setting boundaries, and focusing on meaningful interactions can make a significant difference. You have to learn to navigate the chaos of mainstream social media, what to waste time on and what not. For example, engaging in thoughtful discussions here feels more rewarding and less draining. It's also essential to remember that taking breaks and disconnecting when needed is okay and needed by your brain and those around you. Balancing our online presence with offline activities does help maintain you well-being. Great job for bringing up this topic. People should take it as a valuable reminder to be mindful of our digital lives.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 1h

What makes a discussion thoughtful, and life-giving, vs the opposite? The frontier between thoughtful discussion and arguing / trying to win is so permeable...

134 sats \ 2 replies \ @grayruby 23 May

If you are referring to social interactions, I generally don't care much for online life outside of SN but I like access to online life for when I want or need it. Being able to text with friends who I rarely see anymore, accessing information instantly when needed, getting news instantly, listening to podcasts, streaming shows/movies are all features of online life I enjoy.

40 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury OP 1h

That's an important distinction -- online tools to expand the bandwidth / way of relating to 'real life' offline loved ones is still mostly 'pure' and free of the grossness I mentioned.

Although the 'accessing information instantly' part is not without cost, at least for me (#988236).

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 1h

There are always trade offs.

134 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 23 May

I enjoy both my online and offline lives. I don't feel any grossness towards the online life.

It may be because I don't engage on some of the more toxic platforms like X or Reddit. Most of my social media engagement is just here on Stacker.News, or watching videos or listening to podcasts. So I don't often have to wade through waves of negativity or idiotic thinking. I also don't use instagram or facebook so I don't get caught up in the comparison game either.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 1h

I would like to have what you have. On some occasions I feel that way, too; but even me self-selecting into sources that I like starts to make me feel washed out and ghostly (#988236).

I think there's a kind of curation I need that most don't. Or at least, most here don't. Selection effects, perhaps -- people like me disappear after a while (like I did, last year around this time.)

I wonder how such a thing might be designed for.

134 sats \ 2 replies \ @plebpoet 23 May

heard theo von talk about the algo recently, and just found it interesting to hear about this experience, as they describe here, of a barrage of highly charged information from x specifically. I feel shielded from that because of my interest in bitcoin. Having this productive focus in my interactions online plus choosing to turn off news and noise because there's no information in it, means an experience online that is what I want it to be. And that's in large part due to what I find here, sn is better than any other place.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @plebpoet 23 May

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 2h

Hadn't heard of Theo Von, but that is exactly right. Or at least, everything that's said is true to my experience. But there's more than just that.

A lot of comments to this post have a core message I might summarize as:

Aggressive curation to see only people that you choose, and like, makes online life valuable and affirming.

I get that. Makes logical sense. There's definitely upside I can feel to that strategy, vs the default.

However, the 'grossness' for me is more than that. It's not enough to eliminate assholes, as much as possible, from your attentional field. There's something about the barrage of voices and opinions and takes, and the effects it has on my inner world, that corrodes over time. It reminds me of accounts I've read from autistic people describing the overwhelm they feel when they sit on a bus, or go to McDonalds. Not as extreme as that, but in that direction.

And the mode that comes with it, switching attention, checking things, going down rabbit holes, spinning up entire new research agendas in my mind, adding things to the list of Really Interesting Shit I Want To Understand Better. It fills me up with ghosts, not just the ghosts of the people and their voices, but the consequences of what the voices say. Entire architectures of ghostly construction, in a constant state of accumulation and disrepair.

This all sounds v dramatic and weird, I realize. And based on the conversations here, I'm more convinced than before that I'm at some extreme. Which is why I'm so interested to hear other accounts of how people 'live' online, and what the sociality of it means to them/you. What, aside from just controlling the dose, I might be able to steal to get more out of it. Or less.

149 sats \ 0 replies \ @beejay 23 May

Online life can feel gross for people who attempt to look to it as a source of dopamine. I think it's very easy for people who might ordinarily not like "the IRL world" to feel like online can bring them closer to people they might understand better, agree with, or even idealize.

I enjoy parts of online life such as SN and nostr, in which I find others who hate and enjoy things as I do (e.g., the state, and self-sufficiency, respectively)

But like everything in life (online or off), moderation is key.

60 sats \ 0 replies \ @Artilektt 23 May

I spend a lot of time online and love it. I love reading keeping up with current events and watching shit on youtube. It's social media that I think is mostly poison.

101 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 23 May

Why does online life feel gross?

Has this always been the case for you?

I ask because for me it seems more recent. I want to blame the macro environment for being relatively zero sum, and the internet is just amplifying things with a bias toward the corrosive as it always does.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 2h

It's a good question. The macro is def an exacerbating part of it. When the world was less heightened it felt different, which was surely partly the world, and surely partly me having taken fewer arrows, thus having more capacity to absorb them. I remember the delicious feeling of having found my tribe and connecting across geography.

But the payload of what you got when you stared at your computer included fewer things, then. There was less to come to terms with, or be buffeted by, which seems to be important (#988236 -- would be interested to know if you recognize any of yourself in this).

Now I seem to need shields for things it's hard to describe exactly, and hard to describe the design of the shields sufficient to the job.

27 sats \ 1 reply \ @Riberet 23 May

Life online isn't so bad, but I prefer to have a good life online and also offline.

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 2h

Yeah, whatever the situation, online is not a substitute. Hard to imagine anyone being remotely healthy without a strong offline foundation.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Maximux 23 May

I really like online life (maybe too much 😅).

120 sats \ 3 replies \ @guerratotal 23 May

Online life feels corrosive because it abstracts the soul from embodiment — connection without presence, knowledge without wisdom, noise without silence. But for those who master the medium, it becomes a sovereign tool: a cathedral of thought, a forge of opportunity, a mirror reflecting not chaos but intention. The internet isn't the problem — unconscious participation is.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @plebpoet 23 May

it does abstract the soul from embodiment! you're right hello welcome, you said a cool thing, we like that. was it you or the robot? ....does it matter, idk

cathedral of thought

like do you read books or do you prompt well

30 sats \ 0 replies \ @guerratotal 23 May

it does abstract the soul from embodiment! you're right hello welcome, you said a cool thing, we like that. was it you or the robot? ....does it matter, idk cathedral of thought like do you read books or do you prompt well

Haha love that. Honestly, a bit of both—I enjoy good books, films, and series that spark reflection and shift perspectives. But prompting well is starting to feel like a new form of reading too... like entering the cathedral of thought through dialogue.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 1h

I can't tell how much of this is you actually saying a real thing, but yeah, you're touching on it -- the embodied aspect, and the elements you get from that high-bandwidth being-in-the-world, is something. It gives you something meaningful. And online seems to take something. But perhaps not the same something.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Akg10s3 23 May

Thanks for sharing @elvismercurio

Your posts are interesting and tell us things that make us think from a different perspective!!

I also agree that there's a phobia or rejection toward the fact that a person spends two or three hours in front of their laptop, even when they're working!! People criticize and start to only say things about what I'm doing wrong or not using "the online world" for long periods of time. To what extent could this be positive or negative?

And who's right in the end?