Hello fellow EMC friends, you may know me as Otus, the sometimes cheery, sometimes gets in trouble fiend that you all love! Well, I may want to express my enthusiasm within this thread, but thus, I cannot, as something from my past grips onto me like a leech on wet legs. You see EMC friends, my past is a dark one, and a past I wish to never remember, but through these 300 days that I have been with you, I cannot hold that secret in for much longer... This is my story... Recently, my activity on this website has been somewhat active, yet it wasn't always that way. Before I got addicted, I would hop on the forums, type a few sentences, then leave. Now, I cannot rest without thinking about alerts. Yes, my friends, I'm addicted to checking my alerts. Sometimes after school, I would come back to my computer and rush to see my recent activity. "Yes, finally I'll be able to see what has been happ- Oh..." There, the dreaded Alert button, with no ominous red square, highlighting a large multitude of digits. I was tricked. And I was tricked again. If I were having a conversation with someone on a thread late at night, I would wait for 20 minutes, refreshing every time, wondering if they were going to answer, but alas, it did not. I stayed up till 12:00 at night yesterday refreshing the page over and over again, until I could reply to that suspenseful "Someone has quoted your post." This suspense kills me to no end, what could it be? Ah yes, someone answering "ok." This addiction started to kill me inside, I would always check my alerts to feed my hunger for messages. Oh boy, the messages! I eventually came to my senses though, and I stopped. I downloaded StayFocused, an effective extension on google chrome which tracks the time you spend on websites and blocks it once you get to your time limit. I block it from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM. I just wanted to share my story, so the life of us Alert Addicts can be addressed to the world. You are not alone, get StayFocused now. Thank you.
Yes, very recognisable! I fortunately didn't need any apps: when I realised I was showing this worrisome behaviour I tried to correct for it by going to bed after checking my alerts once before bed, or checking my alerts and then doing something else like reading or watching a video, and not checking them again after that. It was hard sometimes, but it was effective, and nowadays I think my behaviour is healthy again, in this regard. I should keep watching out, though, as one day I might 'relapse' by checking my alerts 10 times before bed, on a lonely evening.
I've had my days where I'm constantly looking for alerts, especially after a big news announcement. Of course, I'm never going to put a time limit on EMC, but I understand those that may need to. Thanks for the info Otus.
I can definitely relate. After upgrading my smartphone to a newer Android, I got the Digital Wellbeing application, which shows how much time I spend on my phone and on which app. I was shocked how much hour per day I waste. The app also allows your mentioned timer how much I can use an arbitrary app per day. I set some timers and try to focus on my work first and only use it in breaks or when I have finished my studies for today. I think you took the first step by realizing you have to change something and even took another step by posting it hrer public.
Why is what so popular? The LLO was by far the most active outpost of EMC, and the thread seems to have been one of the main way people shared things related to it, and besides, people also seemed to use it to talk to other people in the LLO when they weren't online, about unrelated topics. A subcommunity, if you will.
Honestly, in all fairness, this is truely imo the longest thread as I dont count forum games as there is absolutely no discussion Not everything is unrelated, the majority is related.
That seems arbitrary, but you can consider whatever to be the longest thread. You're right though, the majority was related. I just wanted to add that I also saw people just talking to each other. Which, actually, has also happened in Counting with Pictures, the actual longest thread on EMC () for a time: besides posting a picture and discussing that, there would be good night wishes and such, if I recall correctly. I feel like this isn't really relevant to the subject of the thread, but it is actually related, as the smp7 jungle outpost and Counting with Pictures both at multiple points got multiple posts per hour, so it would certainly be a thread where you could wait for new posts to pop up by repeatedly refreshing the page.
