Hivemind: Study by Scrolling

I’m using Hivemind to review med school level biochemistry. I was skeptical at first but I think I’ll keep the subscription. It is walking me through key metabolic pathways in a logical way and I seem to retain it better than I did in med school. Once you get to the end of the feed it lets you decide where to go next. It uses a teach back method that’s fun and helpful.

This is such an incredible idea and is executed relatively well, so it feels wrong to give it a 3/5. But that rating is exclusively because of how much potential this app has. Even in its current state it is good and useable. There are some places here and there where I feel like the immersion is broken, but I can look past them for the most part. For example, many of the generated usernames are a bit too on the nose. If you’re learning about math, most of the usernames will be something like “AlgebraAndy” or “MathMan123”. Every post almost always has 11 or 12 comments. There’s also some cross contamination between queries/generated feeds, where something I was learning about yesterday may be referenced in what I’m learning now. Which may be intentional, and sounds great on paper, but I wanted to learn about a conspiracy theory I don’t necessarily believe in and don’t want the app to be including that in feeds going forward. Overall, it’s a great app. With some more refinement it could truly be exceptional. It really delivers on the promise of hacking into your existing social media addiction to get you learning things

Because of constant (addictive) phone use, I now realize how much I think about what I see on my phone through out the day. How? Because now when a random thought about Kubernetes or AWS flies through my brain, I know that it came from here. That’s an impressive psychological feat. And this sort of thing is exactly how you learn subjects better. By constantly thinking about them. And the doomscrolling is addictive but now useful. I really think you guys/gals (app creators) have figured something out here. Now I think you should exploit the other negative aspects of social media for good like rage baiting and emotionally charged discussion, as emotion-linked memories form stronger neurons. Edit: all you dummies downvoting a developer trying to make a successful app just because you don’t want to invest in your education…smh