I have a specific ask at the end, but any and all musings on this topic are invited.

Lately it's become apparent that the endless fire hose of content and subsequent extinction of boredom is one of the most insidious shifts of modern life. While social media and the internet have accelerated this, upon further reflection I realize this battle to hijack our time and attention is something basically all of us were born into (and an even steeper climb for those of us blessed with ADHD).

These reflections have been borne out of a desire to protect my toddler's curiosity and passion for life outside a black mirror for as long as I can reasonably manage.

The issue as I see it is not the existence of content beyond what one could ever consume (books have been that way for centuries). It's the evaporation of friction. One click and you're on an infinite loop, optimized and engineered to keep you there.

I used to think this was a symptom of the smartphone & tik-tok era. However, looking back at my own childhood TV habits, cable TV was the precursor: dozens of channels that never went dark and 24/7 news cycles that bred fear and never stopped churning.

The ask: How have you set up an environment for your kids (or yourself!) to delay the hedonic content treadmill as long as is reasonably possible?

The goal is to avoid a smartphone until we can't. I'm not anti-screen. There are loads of great educational TV and movies, I just want to introduce them slowly and with intention. But unfortunately now every TV front-end is ad-stuffed and every streaming app is basically a recommendation engine in disguise.

How do you share content with your kids without letting the algorithm worm its way inside their brain? How do you give them access to the collective wisdom of mankind in the internet without turning it into a slot machine?

not sure if this is the appropriate sub group for this question or if its even allowed but figured I'd try.

I am curious the demographics of tildes users. You can be as specific as you feel comfortable.

I am in a dude in my 30s in Canada who works in software development.

Happy New Year everyone! For January, Tildes Book Club will be reading Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bissen. It's short at 167 pages. I'm looking forward to discussing with everyone who participates. Lurkers, you are absolutely welcome to read along and follow the discussion at the end of the month.

We have books lined up monthly through September. I haven't read most of the books and I'm excited to see how the discussion goes.

I'm being brief because I'm not trying to stir up trouble.

Is it common for threads here to be locked without a reason given? In cases where it's not obvious, can we ask or is that grounds for being moderated?

For full transparency, I'm not asking about a topic I was part of, but was following and surprised to see locked.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Hello Tildes,

My partner and I are at the point where we need to get more care for my dad and I could use some advice from people who have been down this road. He's in his early nineties and still living in his home, and the family has been lucky in many respects. Dad still has good cognitive function, he has excellent health care through his military retirement (USA: Tricare for Life). My brother is living in the family home, so there's someone in the house overnight in case there's a fall or other serious issue.

Last year we got Dad set up with a medical alert service, so he's only one button press away from talking to a helper if he's in crisis. My partner and I are down visiting him about once a week to help with chores and hang out. Same with my other brother. We've been holding things together.

But Dad's having difficulty with normal life stuff (walking, bathing, eating) and he's transitioning into a bedbound state, losing weight and eating very little. He seems fairly comfortable, just extremely tired and increasingly frail.

To be clear, I'm not asking for medical advice. Where I'm stuck is: How do we initiate and navigate the process of getting him a home health aide? His medical team was entirely unhelpful when we asked about case management. They say "if he's struggling, bring him to the ER" but he absolutely does not want to go to the ER, and we're loathe to force him at his age unless he's in crisis. Also, the ER is full of people with the flu right now.

We've reached the "we can't put this off any longer" moment, I think. Any advice on getting the ball rolling would be appreciated. Do we just randomly call up home health agencies? How do we figure out what his insurance will and won't cover?

Thanks so much.

GP

Important: This will be a noisy topic. If you do not wish to see it in your feed, please use the Ignore feature to hide it!

Tip: If the large number of comments are cluttering up the topic and you just want to see the main giveaway posts, click Collapse Replies at the top of the comments.

🎵 It's the most wonderful time of the year 🎵

This is our annual holiday game giveaway topic. Spread some goodwill and holiday cheer with others!

Before you participate, please make sure you read the rules below.

Rules

-Gifters

Post your available games, the platform and method of delivery, rules for your giveaways (e.g. first-come first-serve, random draw, etc.), and any additional info or requirements. Feel free to get creative!

-Giftees

Request giveaways. Please make sure you follow the gifter's posted guidelines.

-Guidelines

Anyone can choose to be a gifter, giftee, or both! Giveaway rules are set by individual gifters, but there are handful of guidelines everyone should follow:

1. No grey market keys! Only give away games from reputable sources. If you're not sure what this means, please ask.
2. Requests for games should be done in this topic, but if the gift is a key, those should be delivered by PMs only. Please don't post keys publicly in this topic, even obfuscated ones.

If you're new to these, check out previous giveaway threads to see how these usually go.

So, here on tildes we can link to users with an @, as in @user, or we can link to a group using a ~, as in ~tildes, but we've never had a way to link to a tag. Long ago I proposed using an octothorpe for that, as in #tag, but it's never been implemented.

Yesterday I noticed there's a somewhat easy way, just use: [tag](/?tag=tag). It's not as easy as #tag, but it's easier than what I used to do, which was go to the front page in a new tab, right click on any tag, copy link, go back to my draft in the other tab, paste it, edit the tag, surround it in brackets, etc.

Not revolutionary, I know, but "slash questionmark tag = whatever_tag" is a much easier shorthand.

I love the tagging system here, and feel it's underutilized. It's really helpful for providing context by linking other topics that have been posted here before. Thanks to the tireless work of several tildeans, especially @mycketforvirrad, who will not be named, this site is fantastic for digging up previous related topics.

That's all, folks!

Thought I'd post the thread this year as I haven't seen it pop up yet.

It's been an eventful 2025, and we certainly live in some interesting times. If you made predictions for this year, how did they turn out? What are your predictions for the next year?

2019 thread

2022 thread

2023 thread

2024 thread

2025 thread

I’ll try to keep this post as brief as possible.

I spend a lot of time on the internet. Twitter and TikTok mainly. And I’ve been extremely online since I gained unlimited access to it in the early 2010s. I would say that the biggest shifts in attitudes and styles on the internet occurred throughout the 2010s, with 2016 marking a clear-cut turning point.

We transitioned from the hipster aestheticisms and YOLO branding of 2010-2012 to the more “baddie” Instagram aesthetic popularized by celebrities like Kylie Jenner, Selena Gomez, and Ariana Grande.

Now, some people have confused that early 2010s aesthetic for what we actually saw during 2016. Which was a cleaner, less quirky idea of what “style” was. Music also showed this as we went from Party Rock Anthem by LMFAO being a chart topper to One Dance by Drake and Sorry by Justin Bieber being the club-friendly radio hits. Things were less ironic; in order to be cool, you had to be calm (if you listen to the 2016 songs, they don’t feel as aggressive as LMFAO’s songs).

I was 16 during most of 2016. Old enough to remember everything and young enough to still be “hip” with the culture (although I’ve always been kind of an old man mentally). Most of my internet use around this time was on Reddit. Specifically, the meme subreddits such as dank_memes and me_irl. The tone back then was super depressing. Saying you were gonna kill yourself was a common punchline. Everyone circle jerked about how sad they were. These are common on the internet now, but were relatively new for the mainstream back then. The running joke was that 2016 was the worst year in history. Many high-profile celebrities died during this year (Prince, David Bowie, George Michael, Carrie Fisher), which led to people saying “DAMN YOU 2016!” every single time. That saying “damn you [year]” became normal for every subsequent year.

Reflecting on this period, I will say, I do not recall much nostalgia for say 2006 back then on the internet. I saw more nostalgia for the 00s from Zillennials and older Zoomers throughout these past four years than I ever did back then.

So what is it? Why have we been seeing so many people longing for the days of 2016? I’ve seen videos like this for the past two years, and they’ve only accelerated now that we’re exactly 10 years removed. Videos, such as this, are making the rounds, glorifying the aesthetics of the time.

My first instinct has always been: these are people around my age who miss being a teenager. This is still the likeliest explanation. A time before you worried about bills or felt like you were behind in life. I also miss that time period for that reason, and I also wish I could wake up exactly that year and do everything over and better this time.

But, this general analysis of the human condition doesn’t explain why this specifically. Why 2016, why not 2010, why didn’t this happen ten years ago for 2006? In which case, I don’t really know.

I suppose 2016 felt less cringe. The aforementioned millennialisms of the early 2010s weren’t as prevalent, so the time period doesn’t feel as dated. Speaking of things feeling “dated,” many of the interfaces we use now are not so far off from what we were using in 2016. I remember watching the 2014 film Whiplash and being shocked at how old the cell phones looked there, but if you put on Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016) the technology doesn’t really stand out that much. Many of the social media apps we use are the same as they were in 2016. You could realistically have had the same Instagram and Twitter accounts for nearly 20 years now. With the exception of TikTok, the way in which we use the internet today is about the same as we used it then.

Which is why 2016 is this comforting year. Where everything is the same, except you’re younger. It was right before politics got really weird. It was before we lived through a global pandemic. Clubbing still felt like a thing that people did. Youth had a defined image that we currently lack. It felt like a party compared to the way we experience life now.

Without going into details, my partner's parent is sick with an unknown prognosis (1-5 years; 1 year has passed). I admire how they've come to support their parent and have tried to both be supportive and keep myself busy so my partner could focus. Still, it's created a lot of distance for me. Where I see the future as exciting and exploratory for us, for my partner, they imagine their family in shambles and their favorite person gone. With the uncertain prognosis and the aftermath, it's hard to imagine that really changing for the foreseeable future.

I am looking for insight from people who have been in similar situations. Perhaps it's the sort of ridiculousness of how selfish this is or sounds, but I don't know if I've ever heard much about how this affects romantic relationships.

Sadly, I think I need to reduce my coffee intake. I only ever had a cup a day, but I've always been in to light roasts... roasted within walking distance of my house*... super fancy shit. Anyway, I'm trying to nail down some health things, so coffee has to go for a time.

I am now a tea person. I don't really like it, but I need something like that in the morning. I've started with Lapsang Souchong. This is pretty much the only tea I've ever had. I don't have any dairy in my diet, either, which seems to be a big part of tea-life.

Any top tips for getting into tea? I was just mocked for weighing tea... I guess that isn't as important in this scene.

* not joking about this :)

edit: thanks everybody! the first round of teas are:

• Lapsang Souchong
• Hojicha
• Irish Breakfast
• Margaret's Hope

so far so good!