Maybe Short Videos Are Killing People
I hate short videos. Not because people who run at me often watching short videos while walking, but because everytime I tell myself "watch for 10 minutes only" becomes an hour or so.
Also, attention is rare resource. Short videos drain most of it. The time and attention spend on watching short videos would have used on living or working or studying. I hated myself everytime I get stuck in those endless doomscrolling. The worst part of it is you'd never noticed that you are being caught by it.
I delete Douyin for several times. But there are short videos in Xiaohongshu, Wechat and Weibo. Once you started, time just flows away. Even worse, when you eventually find out you have spent hours of time doing this, you regret, and it affects your emotion for what you are going to do next. It just kills the rest of the day, or night.
Then I realized deleting them is not a solid solution. I should look at it in another way. I set usage time limit, it works for a while. But I can always click on the 'ignore' button. So this one failed too.
Finally I choose to giving up on controlling my time using it. I just watch them. But I seek for things more attractive to me. I build a large bookshelf everywhere, on my phone, computer and my home. I can see a book unread anytime anywhere. Then I put the reading app on the first homepage of my phone. I put books near my pillow. I write down this line:
Just go do something. Anything. Think about what you've been done in the past one or two hours.
And it somehow works.
I still watch short videos now. But I watch them far more less than before. I notice I am watching short videos everytime while I watch them, and I notice quickly. Because I convinced myself that short videos are just poisons that kill a person slowly and inevitably, if one doesn't realize the fatal truth of short videos.
Day 7.