over last few days i found it more and more difficult to dedicate any time to things that actually need getting done like ordering protein, shampoo etc. because i was more and more stuck on social media.
in my infinite wisdom i even upgraded my Twitter to Premium again ( after having cancelled my premium before )
finally after two straight days of doing LITERALLY ABSOLUTELY NOTHING except browsing social media i realized i can’t go on like this and decided to quit cold turkey.
my previous Social Media / Dopamine Fast / Detox was a huge success. it lasted maybe a week or two but completely shifted the priorities in my brain for the better.
if i remember correctly it was after going on that fast that i went to Micro Center, got a laptop and with it drove first to DC ( twice ) then to Boston ( three times ). if i haven’t quit social media then none of that would have happened - i would just continue browsing my timeline without even being able to make time to buy things like soap.
so i don’t actually have any plans for what i want to do on this Social Media / Dopamine Fast / Detox but i know it has to be done.
i will still be on here because this place doesn’t have the same kind of paralyzing effect as Twitter does.
Twitter used to ban me from time to time but it seems like they gave up. for the last couple days more than half of my tweets were nothing but straight up bashing of Jews but i still couldn’t get banned, so i am also giving up. instead, i must ban myself, like that meme with the dog carrying his own leash.
social media addiction to me is exactly like heroin addiction is to normal junkies. except instead of laying in a ditch all day i sit in front of my computer all day. but my life is getting destroyed in exactly the same way as if it was heroin.
the reason i never got addicted to drugs or alcohol is because i was warned so many times against it and was wary of the danger. i developed a rule where i would only do drugs and alcohol socially and only on weekends.
with social media i was also warned, but only by one person - a Psychology Professor and Venture Capitalist on Twitter - but i dismissed his warning. he was advocating dopamine fasting and i said that was ridiculous - that my brain knows what is important to it and that’s why it is on Social Media, not because it is addicted.
I WAS WRONG.
at some point i realized that i am not getting any value from being on Social Media. that it’s the same BS over and over - Palestinians getting blown up the same way they have been for the past 75 years. there is zero content in that - i already knew a decade ago ( probably longer ) that Israel will keep Murdering Palestinians and stealing their land until Palestine is gone. I know that - so why do i keep watching it happen ? I am not solving any mystery - i already know everything there is to know. why can’t i stop ?
it was at this point that i had to face the reality that i am addicted.
it’s like Porn except with porn every time i ejaculate i have to take a break for a few hours, but with Twitter i never need to take a break, except to sleep. which means nothing ever gets done. most importantly NO THINKING gets done. instead time simply passes …
that Professor was right. I was wrong.
my assumption was that my brain is going after what is interesting and it’s interesting because it’s important but that assumption was completely wrong …
some people believe in intuitive eating - that you simply eat what you want and and the brain will know what it needs - that is of course wrong and we can all understand why - because you’re just going to end up eating Ice Cream, Pizza and Donuts when what you really need is Meat and Vegetables …
Social Media is that - it’s junk food for your soul - and i was dying from soul obesity so to speak
Just because something tastes good doesn’t mean it’s good for you. It is equally true of information as food. I over-estimated my brain’s ability to know what’s good for it.
what i am saying is that the danger of addiction is real. i have under-estimated it and paid the price.
every person is different and you should develop your own approach to managing that risk. maybe you can limit social media to certain hours or days - it’s entirely up to you. or maybe you find social media boring and you don’t need to do anything. some people are naturally thin for example without any diet or exercise.
for me, the approach i am currently using is whenever i see i am getting extra dysfunctional i have to quit social media cold turkey until i get back on track. then i can consider re-introducing social media.
i may change the approach in the future - the point is to be aware of the danger - to realize it can destroy your life. well it can destroy mine at least.
i mean realistically i spent the last 15 years on social media just watching Palestinians get slaughtered with nothing to show for it.
reminds me of a dude in my gym who was really tall, muscular successful businessman … but an alcoholic.
he said every time he would open a bottle of wine he would save the cork, and at some point he started running out of space to keep those corks and that’s when he realized he had a problem.
of course by that i don’t mean you should avoid information that you need to succeed
quite the contrary - you should avoid information you do NOT need to succeed so you become hungry for ANY information and then you feed your mind information it needs to succeed
same as how if you want a child to eat vegetables you don’t let them eat candy
not saying vegetables are healthy but let’s say they are for the sake of argument
vegetables = information you need to level up professionally
candy = moral indignation over children being raped and murdered
in case of shampoo i buy this one because it’s cheap.
in case of protein i buy this one because under the printed wrapper the tub is translucent which is useful for storing things as i don’t throw the tub out. also if you rip the wrapper off you can easily judge how much is left. i appreciate this attention to detail from Dymatize.
also Dymatize really puts in a LOT of sweetener in these. with other proteins i always have to add my own stevia to the shake but with Dymatize it’s almost too sweet out of the box.
i used to buy protein in bulk bags and then transfer them to my own containers but it was annoying. interestingly it was again Dymatize who had the 10 pound bags. no other mainstream company did. only boutique sellers.
of course ideally you would find 3rd party independent results for protein content etc. but honestly i’m too lazy for that. i buy a familiar product with free same day delivery.
i have whey protein first thing in the morning, during workout and first thing after workout.
this tub lasts about a month.
sure you don’t need to use supplements but why not.
of course i still eat meat, fish, chicken, eggs and liver every day but i save slower digesting foods like this for times of lower demand.
solid protein from real food is too slow digesting for breakfast or post workout and obviously i can’t take it with me to the gym in my protein bottle either.
I’m partly doing the same thing. I have a lot of IRL duties right now and I haven’t been feeling well. But I also need to update my skill set because programming changes all the time and there have been a lot of changes in full stack development, mobile development, even things like Wordpress (which still runs a huge part of the Web) in the last few years, and online addiction from the Covid years made me lazy. You can get by with slightly rusty skills at a job without doing this – since you’re usually working with legacy code anyway – but it might be a problem if I interviewed somewhere else. There’s just no downside to it except that it’s hard work. So I’m experimenting with the dopamine fasting myself. My productivity is up but I’m still in the early stages of this.
Will resume shitpoasting at some point when my discipline is more on point.
i think it isn’t shitposting that is the issue but infinite access to infotainment or whatever you want to call it.
our brains like to consume information but they seem to prefer meaningless noise like " Trump announced that if elected blah blah blah " or " Hunter found guilty of 3 felonies blah blah blah " … none of this information is going to help you get anywhere.
on other hand updating your coding skills is more valuable but is not your brain’s first choice for entertaining itself …
think of dopamine as light - if there is sun shining you won’t see the stars - if you want to see the stars you must turn off the sun, so to speak.
the issue is people like the sun, and believe its making them see - when it’s actually blinding them.
you need to create an atmosphere of dopamine darkness / boredom where you will suddenly be able to focus on otherwise boring things - like seeing stars, which we’re not able to do in daytime.
my point is that dopamine fasting is more about limiting inputs than outputs. i can continue posting here because that’s an output, but i can’t browse twitter because that’s an input.
the objective is to stay bored. i can’t entertain myself by writing. i can only entertain myself by consuming information.
writing actually clears the mind as you can get things off your chest and not think about them any more. browsing Twitter does the opposite - it keeps loading you up with other people’s problems ( like the plight of Palestinians ) until there is no more space left in your mind for your own problems.
information diet is same as any other diet. if you want to be healthy you need to be hungry. and you need to make sure you only consume what your mind / body actually needs, and reject things that taste good but are of no nutritional value.
it seems humanity reached calorie overload a few decades before it reached information overload. so i learned the value of dieting when i was 12 or so … but only learning the value of dopamine / social media fasting / dieting now.
BUT IT IS EQUALLY AS IMPORTANT AS FOOD DIET. we just didn’t hit FATAL levels of information overload until recently. our parents already had to diet with respect to food but they never had to diet with respect to information. so nobody taught us how to do it.
but it’s a real issue of life and death same as morbid obesity.
as with food you can’t make up for eating junk food by eating more good food. that was actually a joke where a dietitian tells a fat woman that she should eat stuff like vegetables etc and she asks " should i have these vegetables before or after eating ? " …
but with information people still believe you can have as much junk information as you want as long as you also learn things you need to know - WRONG
just as candy will spoil the appetite for a baby and he won’t eat his veggies so your mind will never be focused on that coding stuff as long as you are entertaining yourself with fun stuff on Twitter …
you can’t use will power to overcome brain chemistry. do you think you could CHOOSE to stop sleeping for example ? no you will just die. same here.
will power is an illusion. you have to engineer the right state of mind.
If you think about it, the whole “content avalanche” or “too much information” thing was insidious because it didn’t start off that way. Most of the big social media were founded in the late 2000s. But as I recall, the first 5 years of Facebook were just people sharing pictures of their food or trips, what they did during the day, and so on. There weren’t as many features or as many users of the services and a lot of the content was pretty dumb.
It was probably completed by the mid-2010s. That was when you could go on Twitter, IG and other more public social media sites and find an endless stream of content and information. Some of it was good, but it was far too seductive to be safe. That was when I started spending way too many hours scrolling content and also my skills and creative hobbies started to get rusty. Covid and the economy being basically shut down for 2 years certainly didn’t help.
I should admit that there was one win that came out of that era, which was the health/fitness/nutrition peak era (2017 until early 2020 maybe). The information there was key in getting back into shape – I lost about 50 lbs around that time and I’ve only gained about 10 of it back since Covid. The Black Pill Fitness Medium account was part of that, but so were Galen, Chris Masterjohn, etc. So obviously if used strategically the content can help you. I’ve just been way too permissive in what I allowed over time.
yeah i miss that scene too. what happened is Covid came along and suddenly anybody who felt they had any ability to research and analyze information about health shifted discussion focus from health to Covid.
unfortunately we can’t really go back because while Covid itself may be over the genocidal medical Tyranny it exposed is with us for the long haul.
if you think about it though the same folks who gave us the FDA food pyramid and said you must eat grains and seed oils and avoid meat - are the same folks who said you must take statins for your heart - are the same ones who said you need to Vaxx the children - are the same ones who said that FOR YOUR HEATLH you should “stay the fuck home” - don’t go to park or beach, and wear a mask outside - are the same ones who are now saying cockroach milk ( blended cockroaches ) is 3 times more nutritious than cow milk ( because cow farts cause global warming apparently ) - are the same ones who are closing farms in Netherlands and pouring milk down the drains in Canada - are the same ones who are blocking the roads to protest climate change as people die in stuck ambulances and so on …
so when you consider that it is one and the same issue we didn’t really stop discussing it … we are just looking at it from a different angle
please note this conspiratorial angle to nutrition is separate from the practical knowledge required to stay fit. you don’t need to understand the conspiracy against meat to be fit. any bodybuilder knows they must have plenty of protein, lift heavy and count calories. most bodybuilders also know they should supplement omega 3 and vitamins.
the only issue is that this isn’t a real understanding - it’s just a set of instructions that if followed will produce superficial results like a bicep vein.
i always had a problem with this type of “knowledge” - that’s what was killing me in electrical engineering. you have this giant book called National Electrical Code ( NEC ) and it describes PRECISELY the rules how everything must be done. the rules are sound, in the sense that if they are followed everything will work, but they don’t explain anything and are not meant to be understood - just followed. the arbitrary nature of those rules is mind numbing to a thinking person. if you’re a thinker you want to understand things - not follow rules.
we as humans tend to organize knowledge into such rules ( like age of consent represented by arbitrary number ) because we know people are dumber than shit and cannot be trusted to think and must instead be given orders like slaves. i understand the need for this, but that doesn’t make being treated as a slave any less pleasant.
going back to nutrition if you simply understand that we are genetically hunter gatherers and that all of the medical literature is written by WEF shills who think we are all cattle who should live in cages and eat hog feed … suddenly you do not need to memorize any rules and you just intuitively know what to do.
all you need is to eat like a hunter gatherer while also periodically being physically exhausted and often being hungry as our hunter gatherer ancestors would be.
this type of approach may not win you any bodybuilding contests but here is the kicker - women PREFER a man who looks like a hunter gatherer to a man who looks like a bodybuilder. women want a man that looks like he slaughters Taliban for a living, not a man who looks like he will be thrown off the roof by Taliban for being a stripper in a gay club.
i do not endorse crossfit however for one reason - i once saw a meme where crossfitters were making fun of a hypothetical dude who won the swimming event at the games but wasn’t good at lifting. this basically means cross fitters are the same kind of brain dead retards as bodybuilders and powerlifters.
crossfitters are not more enlightened - it was just a different business model. swimming is a more fundamental skill than lifting. and running is the most fundamental of all. the fact cross-fitters can’t understand that means they are not worth listening to.
lifting is the most artificial type of exercise. it has only very limited value. yes i lift but only because it is practical and safe. i don’t delude myself into thinking that lifting weights equals “strength” which is something old farts like Taleb, Mangan and Rippetoe want you to believe.
in the real world speed is far more important than strength, and the strength that matters is the strength of a muscle you never trained, not the strength of the muscles you did train.
try moving some furniture or wrestling or doing any other kind of real world strength exercise - you won’t feel any muscles that you train weekly - you will feel every muscle you never knew existed, though. like something in your neck or in your ribs or something crazy like that.
also in the real world you need strong feet ( to run ) and hands ( to punch ) and gym training does little for either of those. no amount of leg presses will make you run faster and although lifting might strengthen your wrists it won’t be nearly as effective as simply using a punching bag.
so run, swim, use a punching bag. wrestle, move furniture, shovel snow, hike etc.
even dancing and sex are better exercise than lifting because they train a skill that is actually useful, unlike leg press or some other gym nonsense.
yes you should still go to gym and lift just don’t delude yourself into believing that because you can leg press X lbs that now you’re fit or “strong” or whatever.
so basically there seem to be two fundamentally different approaches to things - whether it is diet, exercise, electrical engineering - whatever. you can have high-level understanding or you can have a set of instructions to follow. what you really want is to have both - that way you can do sanity checks by cross-examining one against the other.
that is also true more generally - you want to be able to analyze the same problem in multiple ways - and every one of them should give the same answer. if they don’t - then there is a hole in your knowledge or you’re missing part of the picture.
the other thing is something Biolayne quoted once, namely " knowledge without mileage is bullshit " … again, you need both.
frankly if you want to be attractive to women all you have to do is take masculinizing steroids.
not all steroids are created equal. most guys make the mistake of using steroids that result in largest muscle mass increase - but that is not what women find attractive.
women are attracted to lean, masculine guys. bloated muscles are only attractive to homosexuals who want to fuck you in the ass.
some steroids are specifically popular with women because they are less masculinizing - those are definitely a waste of your money.
instead the ones you want to take are the ones that athletes take - the ones that increase PERFROMANCE rather than size. why ? because performance comes from masculinity.
men aren’t stronger because we have bigger muscles - we are stronger because we are more masculine.
very feminine women will have very large muscles in their ass and thighs and yet will still be easily out-squatted by a male UFC fighter with chicken legs. because ass muscle of Jennifer Lopez is made out of marshmallow and ass muscle of UFC fighter is made out of steel.
the mistake guys make with steroids is they basically turn themselves into Jennifer Lopez instead of into that UFC guy. then they wonder why women won’t talk to them ( but gay guys will ).
basically find out the steroids that women are told to never ever take because it will turn them into a man and those are the ones you as a man want to take LOL.
i don’t actually recommend drug use by the way, but i had to mention this because this is something people don’t understand.
i have once taken something called M1T ( Methyl 1 Testoterone ) but i got scared and quit. after ONE PILL the next day i lookd TWICE AS GOOD as the day before. literally i took a pill, went to sleep and woke up with abs. what happened is M1T simultaneously made all my muscles pump up while also sucking all the water out of my fat so literally the next day i looked like i was training and dieting for a month.
the reason i quit is because M1T was known to be toxic. i never intended to use long term - i just wanted to see what sort of effect it would have. it was certainly an interesting experience - not something i ever imagined to even be possible.
yet other popular steroids will do the exact opposite - they will make you bloated and puffy etc. idiots take them because they think bigger muscles is better. but the only ones who like a man with bloated puffy muscles are other men who want to fuck you in the ass.
you want to look lethal, not huggable. the difference between the two could literally just come down to the drugs you take.
realize that Testosterone, in the body, converts to both Estrogen and DHT. Estrogen is feminizing while DHT is masculinizing. Estrogen is what makes women attractive. DHT is what makes men attractive. M1T was basically DHT times 1,000.
actual drugs change with the times but the TYPES of drugs available remain mostly the same …
and of course it is the adipose tissue that converts Testosterone to Estrogen which is why women are repulsed by fat men whereas men still enjoy thicc women.
if you understand how women think ( game ) and understand how diet, training and drugs work getting women is trivial. the average man does literally everything wrong and is not competition at all. if you know what you’re doing the only competition you will have will be from guys like Andrew Tate who also know what they’re doing.
the horror with this dopamine fasting thing is you never know what it will make you do.
forcing yourself to do something specific the only uncertainty is whether you will do it or not.
but with Boredom Maxxing where it will take you is entirely uncertain.
you just keep banning yourself from doing things which are clearly a waste of time until eventually you end up doing something that isn’t a waste of time.
removed all social media, including youtube, from my bookmarks bar in Chrome - that really helps fight muscle memory that would just automatically click on those icons without even being aware i was doing it.
so far the only benefit is it seems i am hitting the gym more and also getting better workouts there for some reason. maybe i enjoy working out more now because there is nothing else to enjoy.
