Habit. Decide that you want to read more than you want to YT. Go to bed just a half hour early at first and decide that you’re done with screens for the day. Force yourself to read for 30 minutes. With enough regularity and a good book you’ll want to go to bed earlier and earlier until you realize that you want to also read at other times during the day.

> they need good DNA samples to try and clone from and folks wiping species from existence weren’t really in the habit of preserving remains

Couldn’t they just fill in the missing gaps in DNA with that of similar specimens? Frogs capable of asexually reproducing, for example?

Excluding medications, medical diagnoses, or any other stuff I am not qualified to speak on:

Read faster

I’m not joking, often when my mind wanders and I realize my eyes have been following the words but my mind has been elsewhere it’s because I’m slowly scanning. I think to myself “ok. I am reading now” and try to read at a much faster pace. This always draws me in and doesn’t allow my brain to drift off to other stuff.

Crime and murders as a whole spiked from 2020 on in the United States. I don’t have a dog in this fight or know anything about the two but showing info like this is tantamount to saying “number pandemics between the two.” Kind of a correlation is not causation issue, isn’t it? (Genuine question, I’m not being snotty).

Yeah, I would have said The Office but it hasn’t been on Netflix in the U.S. since January 2021.

They’d never reveal that 60% of their viewership is just watching Seinfeld reruns on repeat

I’m such an idiot.

I’m like “Woah how can you tell what everyone watched on Wednesday?”

She’s a better man than I

Yeah I know I was just joking. I definitely hit a wall on some bosses my first play through and just grinded out souls to go in with crazy STR and whoop ass. There’s always a way.

Ya just as long as you get gud

You tried that’s all that matters

It was very clear their only strat was “let Messi do it”

They looked pitiful.

No I’m just talking about Google the search engine. Yes, sites use a service called AdWords from Google to allow Google to put “hooks” into their code to deliver Google ads and track users across the web.

If you have a Google account and have logged in then you go to website.com directly (even without using Google search) and website.com uses AdWords, Google tracks that you go to that site (because AdWords tells them) and then they (Google) delivers ads to you on website.com and pats website.com for it as well as delivering ads across the web to other AdWords sites. It’s why the “allow cookies” pop ups happen now because in the EU they’ve started passing regulations against this type of networked tracking.

So if I want to make a some money I’d make a site called “downfallOfTwitter.com.” I’d use a bot to fluff up content with bullshit, format the site to googles SEO specifications, sign up for AdWords and link it into my site (you basically just copy/paste what they give you and plop it into the header section of the HTML in your site) and then wait for the $$ because right now “end of twitter” “twitter dying” “downfall of twitter” and stuff like that are big time search words on Google. Inevitably my garbage site will rank high due to SEO compliance and key search word similarities yet I’d actually deliver no content. I’d have another one of those sites you’d land on and bounce away from after 8 seconds- BUT- I’d have delivered ads to you and made pennies (or fractions of cents). Throw in a quick Facebook ad campaign for my site to boost traffic, add a low dollar twitter and Reddit one. Make a Reddit account to post a link to my site as though it’s legitimate news in r/News or r/JusticeServed or literally any sub with even the most tenuous connection and then I’m making some dough.

Multiply that by whatever other current topics are trending and I’m officially part of the reason search results are garbage and people know within 8 seconds what bullshit looks like online.

I was referring to Googles requirements for higher placement and their SEO requirements in general.

Think recipe sites: you ever wonder why every site has a backstory about discovering the recipe and changes made and how their hubby just can’t get enough and basically a mini novel before the actual recipe? Google won’t rank pages that are simply the ingredients, pictures, and instructions. They have word count requirements which “fluff” whatever you’re looking for and add pace needs to deliver their advertising. Another one is game sites that are basically written by a bot. Google “does NEW GAME have coop?” And you’ll inevitably find a link to a site that’s fluffed so much that it starts with “NEW GAME is a GAME TYPE coming out on date. It’s made by xxx and releases on yyy. In the game…” and just goes on and on and on despite the page title being “does game have coop?”

The only reason those shit sites rank high are because they can game the SEO requirements AND use google adwords to deliver advertising for Google. So there are bogus sites AND “Ad” placed sites (which tbh I don’t see because I use Brave). This waters down the quality of what most users actually want. Couple that with Google stripping answers from legitimate sites and not paying revenue and delivering the information on their home page it creates a scenario where they’ve disincentivized companies from running legitimate information or news sites and instead conform to what Google wants adding to the shit pile and letting one corporation control our primary source of information.

2 thoughts.

1. From the source:

“In fact, scientists reckon we now have shorter attention spans than goldfish, which are able to focus on a task or object for 9 seconds.”

Phrasing is key. Goldfish are able to focus for 9 seconds meaning that’s their ceiling. I’m sure they regularly focus on things less. Using this shows bias in what they want to portray.

2. How we use the web has changed

We spend substantially more time on any one of the “big” sites. Facebook, Reddit, instagram, twitter, etc. when we Google search and go to a site we are looking for something. Who really goes to a non social media site and parks for a minute to read all they have? We’re looking for addresses, contact info, pictures, store hours, answers to questions, etc.

Why this matters: Google’s advertising structure has made it so there’s plenty of shit sites out there that only exist to trick us into clicks to serve us ads. If I’m searching for “how to tie a bow tie” and click on the first non YT link I’m 90% sure I’ll bounce from it quickly because it won’t tell me how to tie a tie but is instead trying to sell me a tie.

Rather than frame bounce rate as a representation of user attention spans I think it’s more likely a reflection of users being savvy and quickly recognizing internet bullshit before looking elsewhere. It’s a statement on the overwhelming “junk” on the internet rather than a shortcoming of people.