About 2 years on Reddit and I’m getting addicted to doomscrolling when I can’t sleep
I’m really glad to have found this forum—I’m a relatively new user to Reddit and have something of an addiction to the platform.
I guess I can’t be blamed really. Reddit employs armies of data scientists and product managers to study user behavior and optimize the platform to maximize engagement for their advertisers. They have my likes, my comments, my interests, my screen time, my location, really everything about my consumption habits related to this platform.
As I’ve gotten to learn the platform I find that I like opening up Reddit when I can’t sleep which admittedly is fairly frequently. To be honest I have an alcohol problem and it has absolutely torpedoed my sleep. I pass out early, wake up damp with sweat around 2 or 3, and will sometimes not go back to sleep until 4 or 5. If we hit 5 I’m usually up for the day.
In those times when I can’t sleep I’ll lie in bed at night watching the ceiling fan cast shadows on the ceiling as it whirs. In those moments the seconds turn to minutes and the minutes turn to hours as I toss and turn.
When it’s obvious I won’t be going to bed anytime soon I’ll often leave my bedroom where my fiancee is sleeping and come out to the couch to doomscroll on Reddit.
The house I’m living in is a rental and we have these shoddy curtains in the front of the house where there is not a lot of privacy. I often have the thought that someone, if they were quiet enough, if they were motivated enough, and they got right up to the window, they could be peering through the gap between the curtain and the window and watching me scroll.
I’m not proud to admit it but sometimes I’m scrolling though NSFW subreddits which I probably shouldn’t be looking at.
Most of my scrolling is pretty vanilla. I usually have my go-to subreddits. Cars, motorcycles, my local city where people complain about every driver but themselves, where to send tourists looking to eat somewhere good (how about the search bar?), etc.
Tonight I did something that really freaked me out. I was readjusting my position on the couch when my thumb dragged across my Reddit timeline and updated my feed from my regular timeline to posts filtered by “Latest”.
The first post that appeared had just one upvote and was posted within the last minute. I looked at the first post and could feel my heart beating in my throat. It was unmistakably a picture of the front of my house at night with the light of a phone screen dimly lit glowing through a gap between the window and my curtains.
I felt a tightness in my chest and a chill against my skin. I slowly moved on the couch to look outside the window and there was no one there. I looked back at my phone one more time. The post was gone.
Sufficiently creeped out I kept the lights off and quietly walked back to my bedroom to tell my fiancee. Before I could say anything she said groggily, “were you getting something in the backyard? I thought I heard the gate.”
Again, I’m a pretty new user and I want to make sure I’m posting this in the right place. I want to find out any details I can about the poster who posted that pic.
Is there a mod or anyone who can help?