Louis C.K. Hates Cell Phones | CONAN on TBS
Why Hacker News recommends it
Commenters bring it up in threads on phones, boredom, attention and children's screen use as a funny but resonant take.
What it is
Louis C.K. on Conan explains why he won't give his kids cell phones. He argues that phones keep people from sitting with sadness and being alone with their thoughts, and that kids lose empathy when they cannot see another person's reaction.
Recommended by 5 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2013 to 2021.
What Hacker News said
Recommends Smudge · 2014-04 · on “A Gossip App Brought My High School to a Halt”
It's no surprise that, when left unchecked, teenagers (whose brains actually lack some capacity for empathy) would generate extremely un-empathetic content. And it is certainly not limited to children -- adults can be just as bad or worse. This is a topic that has come up in different forms many times as the Internet has grown. One way to reign in the vitriol would be to force everyone to use their real names (see Google+'s 'real names' policy), but I don't feel this should ever be a requirement for participation in an online service. For the service itself to require it is one thing, but if the government ever tried to enforce this I'd consider it a human rights violation. (The debate over
Recommends itchynosedev · 2016-05 · on “Why I Deleted My Social Media Accounts”
Sometimes people coerce me into using services, eg development team found a cool service to manage the project issues or designers want to check out the tool to manage the assets. There's no way around it. I found password manager tools to be invaluable in maintaining the accounts, "fire and forget". They usually opt you in for the marketing emails, but unsubscribing is just one click away in 99% of the cases. You are spot on about the mobile devices enabling addictive behavior. I used to have an old Nokia phone, with physical buttons during the smartphones craze and wasn't able to consume entertainment media while away from my computer. I though I'd upgrade to be able to interact better wit
Recommends whitepaint · 2021-04 · on “Dear Zuckerberg, We're writing to urge you to cancel Instagram for children [pdf]”
Everyone's insane so I must be as well. Come on man. I totally agree with the OP, take personal responsibility. You raise your children not Zuck. Louis CK had great comments about this: [this video]
Recommends Apocryphon · 2021-06 · on “Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment”
The best interpretation of this post is in its warnings against digital submersion, but when it veers into cultural critique it itself is being very middlebrow and dismissive ("just listen to classical music! Modern music sucks!") There is a good post in here about how externalizing negative emotion to the internet is indeed addictive behavior, an emotional crutch. Unfortunately this one ain't it. Not to mention it's hardly breaking new ground with this thesis- pre-cancellation Louis C.K. arrived at the same conclusion much more concisely nearly a decade ago: [this video]
Recommends jonplackett · 2021-06 · on “Doing something is better than doing nothing for most people: study (2014)”
This reminds me of a clip of Louis CK talking about losing the ability to just sit with your own thoughts and be really sad. [this video] Shame he turned out to be a sexual deviant because he said some interesting things.
Cites adnzzzzZ · 2014-01 · on “How to stop feeling lonely”
My experience with curing loneliness is very contrary to what the article states in the sense that I found a way to not feel lonely by being more disconnected from other people. I realized that I only felt lonely when my expectations as to how other people should give me their time/attention were not met, so I purposefully decided to decrease the number and intensity of interactions with other people. I haven't felt that soul crushing loneliness that cripples you in about a year now, and I like to think that that only happened because of lowered expectations (over time as you interact less intensely with people you'll naturally come to expect less of them) and because of learning how to be a
Cites chuckcode · 2015-07 · on “This Industry is Fucked”
The level of abuse the author has endured is ridiculous and she certainly has my sympathies. It reminds me of Louis CK's routine about why he doesn't give his kids cell phones ( [this video] ) which boils down to without seeing the other person they can't empathize about the effect their words will have on other people. I can't help but wonder how these pseudo-anonymous people will feel when they find out that they aren't all that anonymous in the long run. When gawker unmasked "Reddits biggest troll" Violentacrez he certainly had a change of feelings when he had to stand behind his words and actions[1]. Freedom of speech is one of our most important values and anonymity is an important source fo
Cites copsarebastards · 2015-09 · on “Boredom is not a problem to be solved, it's the privilege of a free mind”
This article is basically just a different definition of the word "boredom" than is being used by most people. It's trying to communicate something insightful (that we should be okay with being alone and undistracted with our own thoughts). But I don't think that's what most people mean when they say "boredom", and there's plenty of deeper discussion on this topic in literature about mindfulness. Louis C.K. also talks about this: [this video]