#internet issues

WATCH DUMB VIDEO ESSAYS!!

I am so goddamn serious. If you have a short attention span, the best thing I've found to help with that is video essays. Please bear with me on this post, or read the tldr:

My attention span was, and still is, totally fucked from my years on the internet and my adhd. I would spend hours on tiktok, instagram reels, yotube shorts, etc, and could barely sit through a TV show episode without opening pintrest to get even more mental stimulation.

But fast-forward to mid-fall last year, where I got really into video essays. Started out with 5 minute "storytime stickmen" videos, then 10 minute explanations of game lore bits, then 15 minute videos on punk subculture stuff, etc, and even though I was still using pintrest and reels relentlessly outside of that, after a little while, I realized that I had stopped pulling out my phone mid-video. The videos were actually grabbing and KEEPING my attention, even if I had little to no prior interest in the subject.

And by now, I've finished multiple 2.5 hour long videos on totally random stuff like the characterization of king candy, the making of a now lost-media tinkerbell movie, weird random stuff in fnaf security breach, etc. Now I actually SEEK OUT these longer videos, and even find myself getting involuntarily disappointed when a video essay I'm watching cuts out at 20 minutes! I actually enjoy sitting through long videos now!

And sure, I don't always watch them in one sitting, but if anything that's even better! I can come back to a video I was in the middle of and STILL keep my attention on it!

This is all to say, you can't just cold-turkey your way out of the instant-dopamine-rush of shortform content. It's just not gonna work. But if you do it gradually, you will likely find yourself getting actually INTERESTED in just the act of watching a longer video. And maybe by extension, you'll find yourself being more engaged in things like your classes because you're already GOOD at being engaged with lectures on random stuff, which will likely make you want to find MORE of that class content (the coursework) because you're used to the information being given for even longer periods of time than the classes are.

Now, this won't work for every type of content, and it obviously won't completely fix your attention span. Hell, I'm still addicted to plenty of online shortform content. But it is undeniably helpful to have even just one facet of your attention span be over an hour.

TLDR (since this IS a post directed at people with short attention spans); I used to have a detrimentally short-as-fuck attention span, but I basically exposure-therapy'd myself into enjoying long videos, and it did WONDERS for my attention span. I want to help you do the same.

So please, for the good of your brain,

Might explode later. Idk.

I've got a replacement post in draft (saved this time) right now, but I have to get ready for work, etc., so I'll have to post the rest of this chapter a while later.

Maybe... come back in a few hours to check for updates/continued posts.

Overall the news of recent days were really affecting me and my state, but I started to draw again, and if I'm feeling it right I'm finally getting somewhere.

But now I wanted to talk more about circumstances around myself: in Russia there are tons of rumors right now that the access for the "outer" internet (meaning every non-russian web resource) might be shut down even on cable internet (wi-fi). There have been same blockings on mobile internet in big cities, luckily I hasn't been affected by them, but only yet. Those aren't the usual blocks, internet basically works, but only for "allowed services" (aka whatever gov has approved and it's a small list of russian basic services), no access for the rest of the internet. No, VPN doesn't help with those, it's a different scheme of blockings. No other solution exist.

Regardless, if I lose the direct access for tumblr, deviantart and bluesky and literally everything else, I will still try to contact my commissioners to provide the work I'm doing, most likely through my friends. Right now my focus is on saving the references and links, and a hope that whatever is coming it won't last forever (and preferrably will end as soon as possible, but we have this situation for more than half a year now and it only becomes worse, so...)

So, for a few days I've been having power and internet issues. The snow came Thursday night and the internet dropped out. The next day we had power issues before that also stopped working completely for a few hours. I still don't have reliable internet but that should hopefully be fixed tomorrow. I've gotten three chapters written in that time though, so that's something.

I'm going to try and get an update or two out tomorrow. And though I’m aiming for a weekend update after Monday, it might not happen at the moment. I'll keep you posted on that if I can. I will try and get back to more regular updates next week but can’t yet promise if it’ll be two or just one for now. And this next week now is going to be hectic probably until Friday.