Using Home Assistant, adguard home and an $8 smart outlet to avoid brain rot

I don't know if this'll help anyone else or if it's just specific to me but I'll throw it out there anyway.

Drop the idea that short form content like youtube shorts or tik toks or whatever is somehow ignoble and worthy of scorn. Recognize it's just a fun way to kill some time.

Internalized that? Cool.

Now find a comfy place to sit or lie down and binge that shit. For hours. Do it for as long as it brings you joy. Had your fill? Cool.

Keep doing this, whenever you've got some free time and there isn't something else you want to do more binge that short form "brainrot" content. Do not let the thought that you're somehow "wasting" your time enter your mind. You're having fun, and that's all that matters.

If you're anything like me once you've internalized the idea that it's just dumb short videos for fun and you've watched hours of them, you'll just get bored of it. Maybe you'll spend 20 minutes scrolling occasionally but your brain aint gonna rot.

I think this is dangerous rhetoric.

I’m glad that you had an experience where you found the corner of your internet to be boring. I do not think this is the common experience.

And simply because you didn’t feel impacted by it, does not mean that it’s not bad. This is obviously hyperbolic, but your comment reads to me like someone saying, “I used narcotics all of the time when I was younger, and I’m fine now. So everybody chill out.” That doesn’t mean narcotics are ok.

Social media does change your brain. It doesn’t take much to find research on this, but here’s an example of a longitudinal study of US adolescents [0].

This type of online content is a form of a non-pharmacological “drug”, so to say, as it can dramatically impact reward system connectivity.

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9857400/