The irony of the No Surf subreddit

First, the No Surf subreddit's description, in case you're not familiar:

Stop spending life on the net.
NoSurf is a community of people who are focused on becoming more productive and wasting less time mindlessly surfing the internet.

Okay.

This so-called laser focused and productive community is actually all about making posts and giving advice about "how they got rid of social media"... in the /r/nosurf subreddit... while they're still on Reddit. Does Reddit not count as social media? And have you seen some of these people's profile and history? I thought I considered myself a very active Redditor, but they're on that platform as if it was oxygen. And actively engaging on all the wrong subreddits too! Subreddits I would never even dare step my foot into!

Then you got the people who do count Reddit as social media, posting on Reddit about how toxic Reddit is and that you should delete the app and go outside... Meanwhile these same people who just gave you that advice are still on Reddit, crossposting this "advice" in a dozen other subreddits and counting their karma points, and still linger to respond to every single comment they receive, hours and days and weeks later! And they're still heavily active in their usual meme, politics, gaming and the horrific / disgusting "shall-not-be-named" subreddits long after those "I hate Reddit, YOU should quit" posts.

How on earth do these people dare claim success and what qualifies them to dictate to others on what they should do and how to do it?

Of course, the small percentage you're left with in that sub, is people who do want to get off social media and stop doomscrolling, asking how to do so... Welp, it sure is a blessing then that we have all those "experts" I just mentioned to sacrifice their precious productive time to spill all their secrets on how they did it. 🤷🏻‍♀️ (Will someone please invent a global formatting button for sarcasm?)

I'm not going to act holier-than-thou though. The only reason I know all this is because I'm on Reddit too. I despise myself for allowing to be on this platform, considering that I successfully gave up on all the other social media platforms (Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter etc) 7+ years ago and never looked back!

I made the announcements to my "friends" and "followers" that I'm leaving, gave contact information (*cough* email address *cough*) in case some would like to stay in touch (they didn't), downloaded my data, deleted the accounts, lost "friends" and gained several hours of my day and precious space in my brain for more important stuff!

Until...

The problem with Reddit is that Google search results are heavily loaded with Reddit "solutions" to whatever problems you searched about. So after a few years, seeing how much of a mess it was to browse that platform without an account to cut out all the crap, I decided to make an account. And we're back to intoxicating my brain with filth and noise and successfully frying my brain cells. I didn't even go to any seemingly toxic or questionable subreddits. I swear to whatever God you believe in, these are the subreddits I've been to:

• r/productivity (oh the irony; probably the worst subreddit I've ever been in)
• r/ticktick (probably my favorite subreddit)
• r/todoist (this one is actually a cult)
• r/googletasks
• r/googlekeep
• r/obsidianMD
  
• r/habitica (just a bunch of kids folks that get too excited with pixelated pets and swords, and thus successfully ignoring what the app is truly about)
• r/OneBigTextFile (not enough action on this one, what a shame; guess where this post was conceived and written: yup, in my one big plain text file)
• r/ADHD (a place for neurodivergents (whoops, I just said the n word; I can already hear the Great Mods from above going "I'm going to find you, and I'm going to ban you")... So, a place for ADHDers to praise, push, and worship stimulants, call everything else "pseudoscience", while still throwing really massive pity parties to complain and rant about how they're still massively struggling with their ADHD)
• r/fibromyalgia (just like all the other health related subreddits, a place to cry about how your life sucks, how tired you are of your pain, while downvoting to oblivion all the (really rare) good, actionable advice that would bring you relief, and at the same time allowing all the ignorant and dangerous "advice" (that would guarantee to make things worse) go through with upvotes and awards. It must be the brain fog.)
• r/CrohnsDisease (same as above)
• r/carnivore + r/zerocarb (the rare places on Reddit where everyone thinks the mods are assholes, but in reality, these 2 (u/partlyPaleo and u/Eleanorina) are actually a blessing to anyone who wants to successfully incorporate this diet for serious health reasons. They have my respect and appreciation. This diet (when done right) is lifesaving for those with chronic gut diseases, chronic debilitating pain and inflammation, autoimmune conditions, diabetes and hypertension, autism and ADHD, etc)
• r/carnivorediet (one of the many subreddits loaded with misinformation and bad practice of a regimen. If you want to get sicker and make diarrhea a part of life, this is the place to be.)
• r/omad (another bad practice of a good regimen: a bunch of folks who think they can lose all their excess weight in just 6 days, by eating all their crap in one meal, without any alterations (nor discipline) in their diet. And yes, this deserves a post on its own. On it.)
• r/myNoise (a separate post about this wonderful service will come soon, but the Slack group for premium members is a better place for this one)

And later on, just to make sure the irony bucket was full, as I slowly started feeling disgusted with my time on Reddit:

• r/digitalminimalism ("we are digital minimalists at heart; just not in execution. Therefore, we massively downvote you for being a true minimalist instead of reading all Cal Newport's books and just waste your time talking about digital minimalism")
• r/stopgaming (only briefly interacted, but this one is actually not so bad. I do feel sorry for the spouses of the gamers though. They need a subreddit of their own).
• r/nosurf (I'm dumb, dumb, dumb)

I must have been really naive to think that all the above subreddits were a good way to spend my free, idle time, with no negative effects to my mental health. I'm dumb, no question about it.

There is just so much negativity, rants and complaints, even for problems that are completely made up! I laugh at some of these "problems". Clearly most people on there haven't faced real struggles yet.

And there's this very foul odor of superiority complex in the air. Most people on there must be heavily insecure, constantly seeking to boost their egos by trying to bring others down. And with that unfortunately, comes with a lot of stupidity too!

I mean, if you're a certified genius and a living proof of your "good advice", then by all means my Lord, enlighten us! Please demonstrate just how wrong we all are! But unfortunately most of the highly confident "advice" on there is either vague nonsense at best, or some seriously dangerous BS.

So what now?

Well, I obviously don't want to use Reddit anymore. And this "just block the site" advice is not going to work for me (I've tried). And I can't spend time reading You Should Quit Reddit (a book by Jacob Desforges) unless I free up time by giving up Reddit. And if I succeed at that, then I don't really need to read the book anymore, do I?

The truth is, I can't get rid of a bad habit without replacing it with a good one that excites me just enough and in all the right spots to forget all about the bad habit (that's how I got rid of the other social media and mobile gaming after all). More details on what I'm thinking of doing in the next post. This already got ridiculously long. My sincere admiration if you read this far.