I'm defending my brain against enshittification with Belvita cookies and jazz
Defending my own brain against enshittification
A tech worker who traded startup chaos for a corporate job describes how small rituals—like a 3pm tea-and-Belvita break, a train commute, and dressing impeccably—help him resist the dopamine firehose of modern life. He argues that embracing slight discomfort and slow pleasures builds resilience against enshittification, and shares his plan to bring similar routines to his work-from-home days.
Taking comfort in activities that deliver small drips of dopamine slowly instead of a truckload of it instantly is helping me a lot, I think.
- askonomm
I couldn't get over the amount of time lost to commuting. Not saying that OP is living their life wrong or anything, to each their own of course, but I prefer working from home precisely because of how much more _life_ I get to live as a result. The time most people spend commuting, I spend going on hikes with my dog in a forest or working out. For those who lack social activities as a result of working from home I suggest making friends to go out with or join activities that are positively minded towards strangers chatting, like indoor bouldering, which is my workout of choice, and every workout session is always filled with great conversations and fun.
- m_w_
This was a very pleasant read. There's (justifiably) a lot of debate about AI prose on this forum, which has become tiring. It's refreshing to read something so grounded. Doubly so while looking at a packet of Belvita breakfast biscuits on my own desk.
As far as lo-fi goes, I must recommend Leavv. Mind Garden and Tales of a Flowing Forest. Both pre-AI music albums that are lovely to work/study to.
- Semkas
It's interesting that this article is mostly focused on the merits of living a simple / predictable life, whereas I get the impression that the main improvement here might be just not working from home anymore (I guess the author agrees since they link to this older post: https://mrmarket.bearblog.dev/remote-work-is-bad-for-you/).
- Havoc
Yeah starting to feel the need to play Defense here too. Especially on YouTube. Even with a subscribe driven flow of known creators it’s getting bad. Everything is about something negative with emotive thumbnails and clickbait titles even from the better creators. And Google has now crammed their unwanted “relevant for you” along with shorts into the top of the subscribe feed. So now even that last trick to get a non algo feed is infested.
It’s rapidly getting unusable even with Adblock etc
- stinos
But taking comfort in activities that deliver small drips of dopamine slowly instead of a truckload of it instantly is helping me a lot, I think
Would be pretty interesting to figure out if the amount of dopamine really is smaller. I'm not convinced.
But anyway: the bigger picture I've been wondering a lot about lately is whether this dopamine addiction is ok to begin with. I've never had much issues with the 'truckloads' OP names but all things considered my life is basically a journey from one dopamine shot (coffee ritual, sport, problem solving, sex, music, drugs) to the next and everything in between feels not too interesting. And I'm fearful for what's going to happen when I can't do some of those anymore when getting older.