Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
The Hook with sites like Reddit, HN, etc is that they ARE addictive. Actually addictive in the sense of gambling. In gambling addiction the gamblers aren&#x27;t addicted to winning, they are addicted to losing, or &quot;almost winning&quot;. Now if they never ever won the addiction wouldn&#x27;t form. If they ALWAYS won the addiction also wouldn&#x27;t form.<p>The old thing was email that people were addicted to checking because you MIGHT get an interesting email. It&#x27;s the same way with training a dog. You don&#x27;t always give them a treat for behavior. If you only randomly give them a treat they are more likely to perform the behavior because they don&#x27;t want to miss the reward. If they know they will get the reward then they know the exact opportunity cost and can weigh that against performing the behavior.<p>That&#x27;s how social media and more specifically sites like reddit and HN are addictive.<p>I think we all feel that we occasionally get some beneficial information from them. I know I do, and even this very post I feel has some benefit. But we also see it as time wasting because the majority of the time, that&#x27;s what it is.<p>But we are compelled to continually check because of the fear of missing out on some piece of beneficial information. If we were always presented with good information then we could more easily delay checking the sites.