h-l and her livejournal compulsion problem - Geeks Give GAS

[baratron]

This is a reply to the comments I've had regarding my last post. I wanted to reply to the various things people had said, but I didn't want to repeat myself over and over by replying to everyone individually. But I was worried that people might not look at the comments again unless they got an email to say someone had replied to a comment of theirs, so I figured it was best as a main journal entry.

Now sleep is getting hard to get
'Cause you never know what you'll forget
And I've got to know of all the views
'Cause one day there'll be news for me

I never let a headline by
'Cause every one will catch my eye
And though it's tough to keep alert
You never know what could hurt me

But it gets me down
You know it gets me down
It really gets me down
Yes it gets me down

Info Freako,
There is no end to what I want to know

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Suggestions of ways I could cut down how much I read:

inquis asked Have you thought about just catching up on actual friends and dropping communities? Actually, I've been doing that for a long time. For at least six months, I've only been reading the journals of actual people and a handful of low-traffic communities that I have a very strong interest in. This makes things easier.

elfgeek wrote I have this filter on LJ now and if I am away for like 3 days I only read the friends that are on my filter (which are the most important and closest friends). I found it helped a great deal, because there *are* ppl who annoyingly post several times a day with total nonsense. The problem is, I have quite a few friends who post sensible, interesting, informative posts *and* complete crap! Filtering people simply by who they are doesn't work very well. What would be useful would be if there was an easy way for us to tag our posts according to how important they are, so that people with a lot of online friends and not much time could read only the things that interest them, but there isn't. Hmm. Perhaps someone should write that up as a suggestion? Of course, all that will happen will be that halkeye or someone will say "Someone's suggested that already, it's coming in S2" or "That would be too big a hit on the database" *humph*.

You know, I am getting more realistic about my time limits. When I first started reading newsgroups, I would read every single message in my important groups. These days, I'm able to skim my livejournal friends page, and only read posts in depth and the comments to posts if they genuinely interest me. Whilst this might sound like stating the bleedin' obvious, until quite recently I'd read all the comments and follow lj-cut tags even if I knew they were to silly online test results.

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The REAL Problem:

Several people said I should stop being compulsive about reading everything. The problem is, I've had An Issue about Missing Something since I was a very small child. When I was a kid and we used to go on long journeys, I would stay awake for the entire journey in case I missed something interesting out of the window. It's quite possible that my sleep disorder is somewhat self-inflicted, from this and other behaviour traits. I've gradually got better as I've got older, but I've still got a long way to go.

Why is this? Well, inquis optimistically stated if you've had a few days off reading it, just make your own post, and mention that you haven't had time to catch up, and ask people to post links to any important entries in the comments section, thus making sure that a) people know you haven't read things and b) anything worth reading is brought to your attention. But I know this doesn't work! I've done this several times, and it hasn't worked. Look at my request for mobile phone numbers. Having lost my phone, and with no recent backup of many people's numbers, I posted in LJ twice asking for them again. I even emailed some people individually. Five or six people replied. Likewise aegidian said If a thing is important people will tell you about it - with words and vibrating air molecules and stuff. But in even very recent experience, they patently don't!

If I have a tendency to be paranoid about missing out on information, this isn't going to be helped by discovering that I really am missing out on information.

inquis said If you're feeling guilty about it, that's a really bad thing. It's only a livejournal.
I don't think "guilty" was the right emotion for how I was feeling. "Left out of the loop, again" was more like it. Not having time for the internet makes me a third class citizen in information terms. Being a member of several different social groups, which overlap to some extent, and which contain a large number of poly geeks means that a huge amount of information is exchanged very quickly. And people forget that you don't know something. How many people here have had the situation of thinking they've told Partner A something and finding that actually they'd told Partner B twice? After a week, the majority of news is ancient history.

She said If *anyone* got pissed off at you for not reading their entry, they're really not worth having as friends.
I should clarify that no one's moaned at me in recent history for not having read something. I doubt anyone I know has a problem understanding that many people are too damn busy to be net connected 24 hours a day.

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I suppose I feel that, whilst I'm pleased that people have been responding and trying to be helpful, that everyone's been working on the wrong problem. I'm already working on the problem I have with wanting to read everything. But I need everyone else to work on the problem of keeping communication flowing to offline folk. Let's face it, if people can forget which of their partners they've told something to, how are they supposed to remember which of their online friends they've told? This is the issue that needs brainpower now, 'cos I haven't got a clue where to start with it.

Comments

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

I would stay awake for the entire journey in case I missed something interesting out of the window

(nods) I used to worry similarly, and I still rarely sleep while travelling (even on boring airplane trips on routes I've flown a hundred times).

When I first started reading newsgroups, I would read every single message

When I first started reading newsgroups, rec.arts.sf.* had perhaps three posts a day. And was usually delivered as a digest. Tools for managing and prioritizing newsfeeds and things like LJ haven't kept up well... I no longer feel guilty for skimming threads of Usenet groups once a week. Otherwise, 400 posts/day is just too much to read. But this makes it hard in turn to join in discussions, which have usually moved-on before one is aware of them.

And one's own time-available varies... what seems overwhelming during a time crunch may seem very manageable, even entertaining during a slack period.

[lovingboth]

an easy way for us to tag our posts according to how important they are

I think that many people stick the most important stuff in friends-only posts, and they're visible as such, but yes, you're right.

When I first started reading newsgroups, I would read every single message in my important groups.

When most of 'us' started reading newsgroups, you could read everything... and now you can't.

Remember the response to someone who said 90% of SF was crap? 90% of everything is crap? For some things like most newsgroups, it's more than that.

For world news, we have newspapers and TV to do the (very crude) filtering. For certain aspects of say sports or politics news, there are magazines and websites that filter more finely (but still crudely). For more personal stuff, there's... nothing I suppose.

I suppose the answer's something along the lines of the automated agents that were the Next Big Thing a while back - show a program what you like and say 'get me more stuff like this, please' and let it do the filtering.

Either that, or pay someone in someway to read everything and edit it into 'the uk bi poly journal'.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Either that, or pay someone in someway to read everything and edit it into 'the uk bi poly journal'.



*Laughs out loud* That's a great idea!



Actually, I think you touched on the solution earlier. Perhaps the problem is that there's too much out there for one person to read? So what one needs to do is to team up with a couple of others, and each of you read part of what's available. You said you and Lisa do this - you read LJ and she reads uk-poly and you tell each other about interesting stuff you've read. It occurs to me that I've just acquired a partner (? - not sure about that word) girlfriend Non-Random Cute Person who has enough time to read alt.poly. Aha!

[elfgeek.livejournal.com]

I am that way too: constantly paranoid about missing out on something. This was most obvious when I was the only person in our house who didn't have LJ and felt very out of touch with the other three, because I only found out half the things that were happening, whereas ppl who weren't living with us knew a lot more.

Like you, I am still looking for a solution. As you said, my attempt at a solution is far from perfect.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

I can so relate to the compulsion to *know* stuff. I can't remember not being able to read and ever since have read everything that has stayed still long enough (if they start putting advertising on dogs or small children, I'm stuffed...) It's probably a big reason why I'm applying to the civil service - I want to be in the know and have an office full of paper and actually be *meant* to read things unlike now where I read too much and write too little...

I think the out of the loop bit is a corollary of the maxim "Most people are just a bit crap really". I think of the phone numbers I've repeatedly lost and the emails I've repeatedly answered, and now I'm used to phoning people and asking for someone else's address/number.

Feel free to phone for a summary of londonpolybigeekwotsit life - but don't be surprised if I've left my mobile uncharged yet again! Ask and ye shall be told.

I'm quite good at summarising gossip - conflux doesn't go to the LL and being dyslexic is always behind on LJ and email, so I often give him the rundown on life. As well as opening all the post every so often and telling him if there's anything urgent in it...