Oddbean

Scrolling means you have to limit yourself by time, rather than being able to prioritize. This is the essential issue. You might get caught up in a really fun shitpost thread and laughing over a funny joke, because they appeared higher up, and then your time alloted runs out and you close the app, to go cook dinner... and miss your fren writing that her dad died. It be like that.

Another problem with a scrolling-interface: it encourages grandstanding, overuse of flashy images, piles of emojis and hashtags, and SHOUTING because it's so hard to get anyone's attention, when you have something important to say. You have to try to frantically signal to them ***PLEASE LOOK HERE, DON'T MISS THIS❗❗❗❗❗ *** And this quickly leads to everyone shouting rather randomly and adding an AI pic to every post, so the signaling effect is reduced and it's just a long scroll on #Nostr past ❤️❤️😋❤️❤️🌟🌟❤️ and what appears to be a never-ending supply of old men who have lost their hearing aid. I'm old enough to remember when memes where just pithy one-liners written with normal capitalization... and everyone saw it... and everyone laughed. And if you put effort into (digital) art or photography, everyone was impressed and it got a lot of views, because the text threads weren't full of random, superfluous, dull-but-colorful generated images. nostr:note1dtg6lc5m8k3t6d7q0d5kenlyjqdwrjf3l9p6wj9tvmaergckq7xqu7du9h

The issue your describing is not a scrolling issue but a personal one. The way you scroll cannot encourage anything because it goes in 2 directions up & down. As for hard to get anyones attention it's not people read & either keep reading or ignore. What anyone feels is important to say will say it but if you go that extra mile to do what you call shouting which is add a pic make extra spacing or spam a icon thats the type of stuff I just scroll right past. Everyone feels what they say is important thats why they say it & one is not less then the other. Anyways to solve this issue you're experiencing follow the people you like then at the top of the feed where it says global hit that & change it to your follow list. When you find something interesting you want to keep up with follow it & you won't miss anything!

Oh, I’ve done this before! Am on board with breaking free. You suggested something like a personal/limited relay right? Doesn’t solve the scrolling issue but limits the pool of potential distractions, I guess. Seems like it will always come down to intent though - being deliberate in where I would allow myself to become distracted.

I'm about a few hrs away from coding my own client because i can't take this scrolling anymore, and i don't care if anyone doesn't like my client i need to be able to sort people the way i want to and read those feeds independently, OR start creating separate accounts for following different groups