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Why blockers don't work

2 min read

I’ve installed every website blocker there is. Each one worked for about a week.

Then I’d find a way around it. I’d turn it off “just for a minute” and end up scrolling for hours. And I think I finally understand why.

How a habit forms

Every addiction starts with a feeling.

You feel bored, anxious, lonely, or stuck on something hard. Then you do something that makes the feeling go away: you light a cigarette, open a bag of chips, pick up your phone. That makes you feel a little better.

Your brain remembers. The next time that feeling shows up, it already knows what to do. Do this enough times and it stops being a choice and becomes a habit/addiction.

So there are three parts to it:

  1. The feeling. Boredom, discomfort, restlessness.
  2. The action. The thing you do to escape the feeling.
  3. The relief. The small reward that teaches your brain to do it again.

Why taking the action away fails

A blocker goes after the second part. It removes the action.

But the feeling is still there. You’re still bored. And now the one thing your brain knows what to do about it is gone.

It feels like an itch you’re not allowed to scratch. So you disable the blocker to get around it.

Willpower is a bad strategy when it comes to situations like these.

What actually works for smokers

Look at how people really quit smoking.

Very few people stop by locking their cigarettes in a drawer. What tends to work is nicotine replacement: patches, gum, sometimes a vape. The craving still comes, and there’s still something to reach for.

The habit isn’t removed. It’s swapped out with something that does lesser damage each time, until one day it fades out.

That’s the part I finally understood.

Do the same thing with the feed

If the cigarette is the infinite scroll, then the blocker is the locked drawer. What we need is the patch.

So instead of removing the feed, keep it, just make it boring.

When you get there, there’s nothing new waiting.

What makes a feed addictive?

A typical X feed full of food photos, celebrity gossip and travel shots, next to the line "Your feed is designed to keep you scrolling."

What makes a feed addictive isn’t the scrolling. It’s the novelty: the chance that the next post will be the interesting one. Take that away and the reward goes with it.

With each wasted attempt your brain learns the action isn’t worth it, and learns to not repeat it.

Boring, on purpose

This is the idea behind Boring Feed. It doesn’t block anything. It replaces your social feed with things you already know about yourself. You can still open it whenever you want. There’s just nothing new there.

Boring Feed on X, where every post is a plain fact about yourself, like your name and age.

The first few days, you’ll still open it out of reflex. That’s fine. That’s the point. Every time you show up and find nothing, the loop gets a little weaker.

Try it yourself: Add Boring Feed to Chrome →