A couple weeks ago, I deleted social media off my phone. Insta and reddit was all that was left, but I noticed how much of a useless time sink they were becoming. My daily mood has also improved.
Now, I’ve been reading manga and playing chess online to fill the gap. But I’m still looking for suggestions on what else there is to do besides doom scroll. It’s not like I’m outlawing the internet entirely, I still have interests and hobbies etc, but I’m open to just about anything.
Play the NYT wordle, mini crossword, connections for the day. I have some small simple games that can be stopped at any time. My most played ones are cake sort, water sort, sudoku and sometimes minesweeper. Also scroll lemmy sometimes, it’s small enough that it doesn’t take long to see everything that is new, so there’s no risk of getting sucked in for long
Physical Games
Not sure what your personal in-person social circle looks like but playing physical games (board/card, etc) with people is great. Spent 2 weeks with family and we had a blast playing some games every night.
A few I really enjoyed:
- 5 Crowns
- Phase 10
- Cribbage (good grief the rules are nuts)
- Hues and Cues
- Organ Attack
3D Printing
A time sink hobby is 3D Printing. It’s a challenge enough, and can be so low cost per part, that it’s fun. Starting with a lower cost 3D printer means the cost of entry is not much. Once you get a printer dialed printing things for people and functional prints for home is great. You can also learn 3D Modeling enough to design your own prints. Definitely gonna take some time to do so.
Retro Gaming
If you like retro games setting up a retro handheld is a ton of fun and then playing the games is great too. Handhelds from Anbernic, Retroid, or Powkiddy is a low cost of entry and much higher quality than you think, and they can run up to PS1/N64/Dreamcast. Took me ~1 month to go from never having done one to having a great OS with a tailored UI (Anbernic RG40XXV running Knulli OS). Going over guides from Retro Game Corps (YouTube and website) was easy but took long enough to teach me a ton.
Gardening
Obviously depends on your personal circumstances but even if you’re in a city/apartment a lot of cities/towns have community gardens. Setting up a raised garden is pretty easy and doesn’t have to cost a ton. Maintaining it is a challenge based on your location and takes learning many different skills. We grow Lettuce, Cucumbers, Zucchini, Green Beans. We had no success with Tomatoes in our climate (although a lot of people have no issue growing them). We’ve had limited success with potatoes (another really easy to grow crop, that we suck at, lol).
Canning
My wife LOVES canning. That’s a massive rabbit hole in its own right. Cost of entry is decently mid due to having to buy canning supplies like the glass jars (called cans), lids, rings, canning pots, pressure cooker, etc. You’ll get incredible quality vegetables and fruits out of it and can can meats and other things. My wife has been canning for 5 years now and we don’t buy store bought canned vegetables and fruits anymore. You wont really save any costs but you will know exactly what you’re eating. Does take having access to fresh produce at local markets to make it as cheap as the grocery store.
I actually made a great setup for retro gaming at home. I have my Linux PC connected to a KVM over LAN to the living room TV. Hyprland lets me set keybinds to run scripts to turn off my computer monitors, turn on the TV, switch audio (still working out a few kinda with audio actually), and then launch emulationstation-DE which is a front end for launching the games on each emulator.
It’s great running everything on a PC with decent specs, I have a 5800x and 6700 XT. It can do all the old games obviously, and up to PS3 and switch games, upscaled to 4K and with a bangin audio system.
Surprisingly, there’s very little latency issues or lag over the kvm. Or if there are I can’t notice them.
It might be worth a go to play the handheld ones on my phone however. Playing GBA and DS games on my big living room TV seems a bit silly haha
A few reasons I prefer the exclusive handheld game route.
- Gets you away from your internet connected device. No distracting notifications coming in
- It’s dedicated to it so it’s really good at it.
- No battery life hit to your phone.
- Higher learning curve (this goes to time filler which is what you wanted).
- Sitting on the couch, playing it outside/while traveling is great with it.
Organ attacks a good one.
Haha cribbage is great. And I think it’s a good math game for kids too
Lemmy mostly
Honestly, as someone who largely disliked social media and was typically a lurking doomscroller that was ready to quit social media altogether at the reddit app ban, what made the best change ever was becoming someone who is primarily a poster.
I post what I want, when I want, and I get to start the conversation that way. It’s always a topic I want to talk about, and it’s something there isn’t much to argue about, and all the interactions will be 99% positive.
It’s a small crowd here, so you can get people that are ready to talk with whoever reaches out to the masses first.
You can take time replying to people, and if no one is talking at the moment, it gives you time to plan a next post.
Pick a topic you enjoy and make yourself our local expert. That prompts you to keep actively learning about something you enjoy too so you can answer people’s questions they ask you.
switching to lemmy has made my social media consumption SIGNIFICANTLY less doomscroll-ey
How is so?
I was like most Americans doom scrolling things things like r/latestagecapitalism and a r/aboringdystopia because I was aware that things were fucked; like most of us are.
It felt like the fuckery was permanent and that there was nothing I could do but accept that this was reality and try to make the most out of it; filling me w despair about life and leading me to doomscrolling all the time.
Lemmy showed to me in writing that this fuckery was predicted almost 2 centuries ago and that there’s actually very few people perpetuating the fuckery (for their own benefit) and they’ve engineered this system to create the mass false belief that all the fuckery is permanent and that there is nothing we can do about it except push for small, ineffectual changes.
Lemmy, tiktok, and rednote have shown me that people like me are living significantly better lives simply because the ultra rich are not allowed to perpetuate the type of fuckery that was keeping me trapped in a doomscroll loop.
Rednote, in particular, was eye opening for me: I learned from them that most people on that side of the planet assume that life altering medical bills, housing unaffordability, & student loans like mine were nothing more than anti-american propaganda from their governments.
us media has a way of sucking the life out of you. internet, movies and even games.
It’s like refined sugar both addicting and difficult to avoid
no addictive algorithm to keep you hooked and lemmy actually encourages you to act instead of just scrolling endlessly.
Don’t replace social media with something else on your phone.
Put the phone down and walk away.
deleted by creator
I hear heroin is nice.
Probably less addictive.
This was my philosophy, then I realized I prefer crossword puzzles and sudoku on my phone because I can do it one-handed so I can pet my cat at the same time.
I also tried watching shows on my TV instead of my phone but it’s harder to block ads.
I read ebooks.
Libby is an absolute blessing.
Oooo, I should try that! I have been using KU, which I know isn’t awesome, but did allow romance authors to break the publishing model (fascinating story: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/romance-novels/). And there’s a part of me that wants to give the middle finger to publishers who took in a bunch of money from romance books to pay for books/authors that would never recoup their costs.
My friend Anna started up an archive of some sort; you should check it out. At least that’s what she told me over dinner the other night.
And a certain archive my friend Anna seems to be running. Not that I know anything about it; she mentioned it at dinner the other evening.
Duolingo. My whole family has caught the bug. I hear the little ba-ding! noise from all corners of the house all evening long.
Y todavía no puedo hablar bien español 😕
I wish there was a foss option that was so good for, for lack of a better description, mindless learning
It is not as game-ified, but you can have a look at anki. There are plenty of premade decks about various topics to learn with.
I’ve found premade decks tend to be extremely over done in a way that makes them actually pretty ass. However, I do love anki so much. I’m using it for Japanese , 2000 words in so far.
Various solitaires via LÖVE Solitaire.
Simon Tantham puzzles
And, due to a Lemmy post I saw the other day, a game called Slice and Dice.
Yes slice and dice! I would hate to know how many hours I’ve played on that game over three different phones.
If you haven’t tried them yet, slay the spire and balatro are also brilliant.Slay the spire has so many hours on my PC. I absolutely adore that game. For some reason I bounce off of Balatro, it doesn’t hook me in the same ways and I’m not sure why. I don’t feel smart enough for it lol
I came here to see if anyone else suggested Simon Tathams puzzles - it’s a real gem! Perfectly dull, all-quality puzzles with no bullshit!
Balatro
I see you too replaced heroine with meth
I can quit anytime. Right after I see what’s after the next blind.
the next negative foil joker will tie this run together. Just put faith in the nope wheel
Have to play in moderation , bcus balatro’s hell of a battery drainer
Mostly tiktok scrolling. It’s got a bad rep, but there’s a huge amount of seriously talented people on there doing amazing and creative things. I’m a 50-something year old guy and it quickly figured out I like videos about mine explores and restoring vintage vehicles. Once you learn to downvote stuff you don’t like, it’s quick to learn and aside from the comment bots or obvious trolls (Typically pro-Russian or Pro-Trump, if there’s a difference) it’s generally a positive thing, in moderation.
I totally get your desire about avoiding socials and have experienced the mood swings it can bring too. That’s made me quite tuned into how the algorithms are steering me. For me (and everyone’s experience is different) - Facebook is mostly bland generic stuff but quite useful for local content - just avoid the drama llamas), and use an advert blocker. Reddit is mixed. I used to be on there a lot and contributed and modded a bunch of stuff, but quit for a year after spez screwed over the app people. I skim it a bit now, but don’t give it much mind. X is awful, won’t go near it. Lemmy is less of a shitpost zone than most but still has too few people to be significant. We’re all helping with that though.
Lemmy aside, I think most algs will figure you out pretty quick. If you get involved in nasty commenting, it’ll feed you more of that. If you do the odd positive thing (as I try to) then it can be less toxic - but with all things, remember why you’re there. The more you feed it, the bigger to you it becomes. Balance is important, and be aware of how stuff is affecting you.
Anyway, beyond TT, crosswords, some news sites and the occasional candy crush.
Good question though, I’m reading other comments as it’s harder to find stuff outside of the main channels now.
I hang out with all y’all jokers on lemmy
Lemmy
Uhhhh
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
I read lots of books. Libby is an app to electronically check out books from your local library for free. You can also read lots of amateur stories online on various sites. Royal Road has been one of my favorite sites for regular stories that you can read in public.
+1 for Libby. Also shout out to Z-Library, Library Genesis, and the Internet Archive for all the book epubs and pdfs you can find there
