Pen's Blog

Wow, Doing an Article About Cell Phones Being Bad? How Original.

 Sorry about my return to this blog after so long being on such a generic topic. It’s just what I had the motivation for at this moment.


 Cell phones suck. Why?
 Well, cell phones are, at this point, just hyper-portable computers. But while I love my laptop and desktop, I hate my phone. Why is this. How do my activities differ between these two pieces of technology.


Here’s a list of the main things I use computers for:

And now the main things I use my phone for:


 So, I can’t throw my phone away. I can’t even just get a dumb phone. For some insipid reason, my college doesn’t issue physical ID cards any more. You have to scan your phone to get into your dorm, eat a meal at the cafeteria, or use the funbucks that let you eat at restaurants from the meal plan. This means that you have to have a cell phone advanced enough to have a NFC chip.


 I do LIKE some of the stuff. Just having a calendar on me 24/7 is a life saver. I like being able to take calls, and even if I chucked my phone in a lake and never bought another one, I’d still probably keep a music player around.


 And it’s not like I don’t use social media on my computer. I feel like social media is a nebulous term sometimes, but I’m talking about Tumblr, Reddit, and YouTube Shorts. I don’t use anything else. Actual YouTube videos aren’t quite social media to me, but I do watch a lot of them.


 So, even when I use these websites on my computer, I don’t feel awful like how I do on my phone. Why is this?


Monopolizing Your Attention

 The way smartphone UI is designed makes it incredibly easy to start doing something but difficult to stop.


 On a computer, you have to turn it on, enter your password, open the browser, and type in the address of the page/open a bookmark to use social media.


 On a phone, you open an app. Retinal and Fingerprint make logging on as easy as pressing the on button.


 The walled garden AOL deigned to create in 2007 has come to fruition. For many mobile users, the internet has been segregated into fiddly little apps. Is there a reason ANY website needs an app instead of just making a mobile version of the site? Heck, most apps ARE the mobile version, since they’re usually just wrappers around chrome or react apps. Apps exist for the sole purpose of limiting your horizon. The fact that they can be opened from your home screen the second the device is on trains your muscle memory to the point where the first thing you do after turning it on is opening one.


 It’s not the content that’s different between a laptop and a phone, it’s the ease of accessibility. Every time I go to my browser, I have to make a conscious decision to visit social media. Every time I log onto my phone, my finger makes the decision for me.


Main Culprits

 So; I can’t throw my phone out, but I can’t keep doing this. What are the top apps that are making me miserable. This list is from most miserable to least miserable.


 To be honest, you can skip it if you want. This is mostly crazed ranting and unsolicited opinions once I get past YouTube Shorts.


Reddit

 Reddit is a miserable app full of miserable people. There are some communities I love. It’s fun being part of weird niche subreddits and knowing nonsensical in-jokes from them.


 However, the popular tab is basically just a news aggregator for whatever horrific thing is happening at the moment, and the replies will either be people going “WE’RE FUCKED!” or the most bigoted shit ever. That’s not a good media diet for a hopecore fledgling like myself.


YouTube Shorts

 YouTube shorts doesn’t make me want to kill myself. When I was a mere nestling, I used tiktok for about 2 months, and I hated it because it assumed since I live in Arizona I hate immigrants. Suffice to say, it was summarily uninstalled. Immigrants aren’t even real. Borders are imaginary lines and should not exist. Freedom of movement is a human right.


 YouTube shorts isn’t like that! I actually like most of the stuff it serves to me, at least I do when it’s not spoiling a game I’m interested in. But it absolutely has that monopolization effect. I’ll click on a short and then get sucked into the algorithm for hours. It doesn’t make me feel absolutely awful, but it’s a MASSIVE waste of free time.


YouTube

 I have a very special relationship with YouTube. Actual YouTube, not shorts. I practically grew up on this website. YouTube is a fascinating view into the both the endless depths of human creativity and profit seeking behavior. There’s a fair bit of useless content on YouTube. Nowadays, I mainly watch educational videos and a bit of gaming discussion, but back in the day I would’ve watched minecraft gameplay for hours. I remember staying up after my bedtime so I could watch DanTDM review whatever the mod of the day was.


 YouTube was the first place I ever tasted freedom from my parents. My mom is quite controlling. When I live at home, I’m scared to leave the house because I think she’ll be mad at me. YouTube is the first place I really got to choose anything in my life without my mom sticking her nose into it. I got unmonitored internet access with a time limit when I was 8, and I latched onto it hard.
 I also avoided most of the trauma and radicalization of being a young and (supposedly) male internet user in 2013 because I’m autistic and I perceived most rules as being actual objects that existed in reality instead of simple social agreements. My parents told me the only site I was allowed to visit was YouTube, and to avoid anything that looked like it wasn’t for kids. When I turned 10 I screamed and cried when my dad told me it would be fine to order off of the 9 and under kids menu. Luckily, I am cured of this, and recognize that pretty much every rule except “don’t be an asshole” is bullshit. Just context for the type of poindexter I was as a child.


 I love YouTube. The story of most YouTube trends is the story of my childhood. It’s a fine enough substitute for a personality if you know what you’re doing (I am being sarcastic. I was not doing okay. YouTube is still very important to me, even if I was using it as an unhealthy coping mechanism.)


 However, it still isn’t exactly good for me. It IS an algorithmic website, and I can’t really muster the self control to stop myself from watching political content. Politics is important to me; don’t get it twisted. Politics is entwined with nearly every facet of modern human life, and I’m one of the types of people who can’t afford to ignore it. Even if I weren’t queer, I would still be autistic, and it looks like the Trump admin is gearing up to make us the next big scapegoat. It would be MORE concerning if I NEVER thought about politics. It just kinda makes me feel miserable, and I’d prefer to engage with it on my own terms when I want to instead of having it be served to me through YouTube recommendations.


 I think YouTube will be the hardest habit for me to break.


Tumblr

 Tumblr is a very strange app. It’s a bit archaic, but that’s why I love it. In a world where every social media website has decided they want to shove algorithms down people’s throats, tumblr is the only website that still lets you see content EXCLUSIVELY from people you follow, and CHRONOLOGICALLY. You can even turn off endless scroll on the web version.


 Discourse on tumblr sucks, though. Every “hot take” on this site has a 10% chance of being the least thought out statement to exist, or a 30% chance to be generally agreeable but delivered so condescendingly that it makes me want to disagree from sheer gut reaction. The whole point is that you curate your own experience by following accounts you like and ignoring or blocking ones that get to annoying, but most of these annoying takes are reblogged by people I consider to be my friends, and it would be rude to unfollow them.


 Tumblr is less actually depressing like the other websites and more just annoying. If you stick to the chronological dashboard, there’s no algorithm whatsoever, and the for you page’s algorithm is kinda just a remix of the chronological page and the tags you follow. While there are some annoying people on the site, it’s just that. Annoying individuals. It doesn’t feel like the entire world is insufferable, and it’s not really that addicting. I mostly just get to see fan art and cool aesthetic posts.


Quantity Over Quality

 Free time is a good thing. It is okay to have a good time. But I think the quality of that matters. Bumming around on Reddit is the popcorn of entertainment. There’s a lot of it, but it probably isn’t providing much nutrition at all.


 Social media shovels massive quantities of low quality entertainment into your mouth. But, in the end, you can’t survive off of popcorn alone. You’d probably get a disorder, and honestly, a lot of popcorn is probably bad for you even if it’s not the only thing you eat.


 So, I’m trying to decrease the amount of low quality recreation (social media) and increase the amount of high quality recreation, and honestly, pretty much anything that’s not scraping the bottom of the barrel is better than social media.


The Actions I’m Taking

 Synchronize your Pentirin mental breakdown watches, people.


As of today, 2025/09/24, I am UNINSTALLING the following apps:

 Yes, I use the Firefox app instead of Google. What are you going to do about it. I’m uninstalling it so that I don’t go to the web version of these sites.


 Most of my time on my phone is spent to listening to YouTube videos like they’re podcasts, so I will be choosing to listen to actual podcasts and audio-books instead. I don’t think the time I spend on Reddit or Tumblr is really doing anything other than distracting me from doing other stuff, so I won’t be seeking out a replacement.


 I will NOT, however, be stopping these activities on my laptop. My hypothesis here is that it’s the availability of a phone that makes me feel so bad, so I won’t be consciously making any changes to my habits on the computer.


 I will return in October on the same date to share results.