No.200
I can remember really starting to be cognizent of the cancer that was killing halfchan /b/ when the doubles guy showed up. Here are people who are wasting time - but what is really going on when they do this? It seems that people can get into some weird sort of rut where they are too lazy to get up and do something, but still want their mind "stimulated" to some degree, so they spend an afternoon "rolling" to try to see a pattern of numbers come up on their screen, which occupies them enough so that they don't think of going and doing something else. It really makes you think about the habits of human nature - are there other things that are less obviously useless that you are doing?
Another is the "passive request" that you see sometimes on topic forums, like "how can I invest $X" on /biz/ or "redpill me on X" in /pol/. The mind gets satisfaction from having other people find the answers, and whatever need might rouse a person to the action of finding out for yourself is squelched.
Has anyone else observed similar "anti-patterns" on imageboards or other message boards?