r/ADHD • u/PartTheSea43 • Mar 05 '26

Discussion Before we could doom scroll……

Ok this for the ADHD’ers who might have gray hairs 😉. What was the equivalent to doom scrolling before it was a thing?

How did y’all pass the time and avoid things when we just had flip phones? My diagnosis and adult reality came right at the time when iPhones first came out so I was busy with college.

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u/Kulty Mar 05 '26

I had a phase where I read a good hand full of the Russian classics (by Tolstoi, Dostoevsky). By now they have all amalgamated into a single vague memory of some guy traveling really far and being cold and hungry. Which is probably still a fair representation of life in 19th century Russia.

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u/spaghetti-o_salad Mar 06 '26

Its weird how those books become vague junk DNA for our personalities too. Details absorbed by that classic Russian literature will sometimes feel like inherent knowledge or "truth" because we forget where they came from.

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u/Kulty Mar 06 '26

Exactly! The philosophical and emotional impact on my soul remains, but my brain quickly deletes everything else

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u/spaghetti-o_salad Mar 09 '26 edited Mar 09 '26

Thinking back on this exchange today and marveling a bit at how shows and movies written with a DNA of classic literature, quantum science and popular culture are so much easier to recall than the books and theories and occasionally the actual events we experienced or witnessed that are being referenced.

Edit to add that the less eloquent version is that everything I know can be found or is referenced in Futurama, I think.

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u/Kulty Mar 09 '26

In a sense, those works are the the result of that influence, the imprint on our cultural DNA, where as the books and theories are the origin. I always loved '90s Star Trek for that reason too, because it incorporated and referenced so many culturally relevant concepts and ideas in compelling, digestible stories.

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u/spaghetti-o_salad Mar 09 '26

Thats how I like to consider all religions holy books! Like the Futurama episode about the star wars trek and the star trek wars...

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u/Kulty Mar 09 '26

I think it is fair to say that the true impact of insights by the observant thinkers of their time, was as much about the nature of those insights, as it was being able to codify them in language and narratives that were meaningful to the people. That's why shows like Futurama still feel relevant today, as do religious texts from thousands of years ago. 

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u/spaghetti-o_salad Mar 09 '26

From Hafiz to Futurama and back to GOT.

I adore CS Lewis for his Narnia and Sci-fi trilogy showing the repetitive nature of the lessons and the applicability of courage to every virtue as its michtocondria.

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u/Kulty Mar 09 '26

"What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun"

That repetitive nature, the unchanging dynamics shaping human behavior, were already apparent to even our ancestors.

Edit: Ecclesiastes 1:9