You're my favourite waste of time

We have discussed how police waste your time and how endlessly moaning about the new Bond film you don't like is a waste of time. And how giving out free advice is generally a waste of time.

What are the biggest wastes of time (apart from the above)?

Playing video games excessively
arguing online*
dealing with clutter/lost things/searching

What do people approaching death regret

not spending enough time with their children
living in the past - failing to live in the present
not letting go - brooding resentments
listening to others, not following instinct
letting golden friendships slip by over the years.

There I am again, waking up 10 minutes later from a self-induced Twitter fugue. What was I even reading? Why am I so angry? What was the point? Turns out there never was one. I'm done with social media. I've deactivated my Facebook and Twitter accounts, and I don't intend to go back. - Ben Gilbert

The ~~bugman~~ person who wrote this rant about how he was getting off twitter etc - @RealBenGilbert - is at time of writing and for some considerable time now back online. These people chasing clout can't stay away. He was tweeting about farts when I looked him up. The tweet has 4 likes and two replies.

For the record, the Wordle dictionary accepts the word "FARTS." So that could be the word on any given day and, inevitably, it will be.
— Ben Gilbert (@RealBenGilbert) January 15, 2022

Now you might argue that Ben Gilbert is a public person, a writer, who needs social media to promote his work. But there is already a twitter account for that. Also other writers such as Cal Newport manage a successful career as a writer (as well as an academic) without antisocialmedia accounts. In fact Newport has written about the value of 'deep work' without distraction. As someone who used to run social media accounts for writers, I have to tell you the time put in trying for 'engagement' - ie trying to increase booksales - was not worth it. Television and radio exposure and blogging at the time was far more important. Antisocialmedia is merely a distraction.

There is no benefit for the average person to be on antisocialmedia. Friendships have ended over stupid online arguments. It is a huge timesink, making lots of money for the owners of these sites but giving you back nothing for your sense of 'engagement'.

We are on the Fediverse which is a much healthier way of 'engaging'. Your data is not harvested by huge spy companies, you are not bombarded with adverts.

There are ways to debugman yourself from antisocialmedia. The first step is to remove social media accounts from your phone. Only deal with these sites on your laptop or desktop. That immediately gets rid of the most insidious ways these sites impact upon your life. The second is to turn off notifications, so that you block 'allow this site to send you notifications'. This means that you will have to consciously go and check these sites yourself. Block cookies so that you have to login again each time. Next set up RSS feeds so that you can follow accounts you want to via an RSS reader app or online. You can take email apps off your phone so that you can only easily access via laptop, desktop or tablet. You should only reasonably be accessing email once or twice a day anyway. Turn off connctivity on your phone, tablet even laptop as much as possible. if you're not actively looking up a website or retrieving email, switch off WiFi and 4G/5G etc.