Arts Vanity: Top 5 Websites I’ve Had to Block This Year to Save My Productivity

A possibly unknown fact about me is that I’m bad at staying on task. This is mostly due to one phenomenon: that the Internet is a vast, endlessly searchable sea, and I am but a simple sponge carried along its currents. But as much as I would like to live by following my online whims, preferably while eating peach slices out of a dish and learning that I’ve inherited a ludicrous sum of money from a previously unknown relative, I’m regrettably subject to the efficiency-driven hellscape that defines modern society and the #grindset that plagues the Harvard student body.

So in January, I took the plunge and installed a site-blocking extension to make all those distracting little sites inaccessible to me. However, cutting myself off from one distraction almost always just leads to me finding another one. After a year, I’ve amassed quite the list of time-wasting sinkholes, from the general to the embarrassingly niche, that I will never allow my browser to navigate to again. Here are the top five websites I’ve had to block this year to save my productivity.

1. YouTube

We’ll begin with the obvious. 93% of Gen Z adults use YouTube, and for six days of the week, I am now part of that other 7%. And believe it or not, when I’m not watching four-hour video essays on financially and ethically dubious theme parks, I actually get more done.

2. Letterboxd

Film review site Letterboxd is not just for film bros and one-sentence comedians — it’s also for me, when I need to spend two hours agonizing over whether “Bodies Bodies Bodies” deserves three or three-and-a-half stars. I would justify this as helping me practice the skill of media criticism and defense of my opinions, except for the fact that this would be a big lie. After Letterboxd became the first suggestion when I typed the letter L into the search bar, onto the blocklist it went.

3. WeHeartIt

A shameless ripoff of Pinterest and a hub for rampant art theft, WeHeartIt is a home for everyone who wants an aesthetic Instagram feed without actually having to take pictures themselves. Don’t be fooled by its relative obscurity — this website is like crack. The hypnotic charm of sorting images into niche collections — one for photos with Victorian gothic vibes, another for anything that reminded me of “Euphoria” — can be irresistible, luring you into a calming sense of relaxation. It’s like tending a garden. Except the garden is your WeHeartIt collection, and the flowers are little square boxes on a screen.

4. Receiptify & Spotify Pie

Perhaps the most baffling entry on my blocklist, Receiptify — the evil-genius creation of Carnegie Mellon student Michelle Liu — generates a “receipt” of a Spotify user’s most-played songs each month. Why subject yourself to the horrifying panopticon of Spotify Wrapped when you could instead obsessively track your own listening data in real time? My Receiptify use got to the point where I was checking my silly little music receipt daily, following what changes each day of listening brought and cheering on my favorite songs like sports teams when they moved up a rank.

Also deserving of a shoutout (and a hard block during working hours) is Darren Huang’s Spotify Pie, from which I learned that I was listening to music genres I never knew existed. I’d like to thank Darren for giving me the vocabulary to now call myself an anti-folk etherpop indie poptimism girlie.

5. LinkedIn

Unilaterally the worst of all social media platforms, LinkedIn is nonetheless the website I turned to after eliminating each of my better options one by one. Despite the site being actively hostile to human life, I found myself mindlessly scrolling through post after post of internship announcements and accepting requests from anyone who seemed remotely nice. Is this a cancellable offense? Perhaps. But I own it with pride and joy.

—When she’s not using Arts vanities as a cry for help, incoming Books Exec Samantha H. Chung can be reached at samantha.chung@thecrimson.com, where you can help her find new and creative ways to avoid writing a paper.