thejdizzler
1d ago
Interested in following along as you try and navigate this this year. For me the big goal this year is to defeat my pornography/masturbation addiction, spend less time online, and continue to participate in social spaces without expectations for dating.
thejdizzler
3d ago
It's so interesting that other people seem to have a very different perspective on this than me. Maybe the key difference is the first vs. third person photos? I can definitely say what you're saying about the photo helping with trigging memories of the landscape/city and I suspect this might be true for me as well. The problem for me I think principally is third-person photos (i.e. photos that I am in). These just absolutely wreck my memories.
thejdizzler
3d ago
Yes that is a better use of the technology, but I still think it's ultimately destructive to actual first person memories. You don't need photos for that, although perhaps they can serve as a helpful catalyst!
thejdizzler
3d ago
Against Photography
When I think back on the best time of my life, I always come back to the fall of 2015. I’d overcome some of the most noxious parts of my adolescent personality and finally established some solid friendships. It was my senior year of high school and I’d gotten most of the hard classes and tests out of the way, leaving time for subjects I loved like biology and global literature, with the added bonus that my homework load was far lower, especially compared to the year before when I was taking an early-bird extra class. And perhaps most importantly, at least for me at the time, was that I was running extremely well. I had started taking an iron-supplement over the summer at the behest of my coach, stopped playing video games, and started cross-training to up my aerobic volume. In the first meet of the season I loped 40 seconds off my 3 mile PR, and then the next weekend axed another 35, going from a 16:00 to a 14:45 in the span of 2 weeks. I ended up being all-state that year, and I credit that season for getting me into MIT and transforming my mindset around running and life.
The fall of 2025 was exactly ten years since that season, and so for much of these past few months I have been in a reflective mood, seeking out old friends from that time, scouring record books, and examining photos and videos of those races. While this reflection was generally a positive experience: I’ve been reinspired to commit fully to endurance training, and realized that one my old teammates lives in DC, it also brought with it a fairly terrifying realization. Most of my memories of that time are not actual memories, but memories of photographs and videos of those moments. I don’t remember coming up the final stretch at Detweiler Park during the state meet, but I sure as hell remember the photograph of me passing a Sandburg runner right before crossing the line. I don’t remember what it was like during the triathlon I did that summer, but I do remember the photo I took with my coach after. I don’t remember the gag gifts pasta party we organized as captains, but I do remember the blurry photo I took of my friend Zack holding a wrapped dildo that we planned to give out. The clear memories that I do have: sitting on the floor of the bus talking to my coach as we drove back from Peoria, performing Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis in English class, doing math proofs on the way back from California, or eating watermelon after summer long runs on the Des Plaines river trail were never captured in photographs. Those that have, have been distorted and impoverished, reduced to a flat, third-person copy of what that memory originally was or could have been.
It’s not surprising that this happens. Memories tend to distort over time anyway, as you begin to recall the memory itself rather than the actual event. Thus, all memories tend to distort and narrow; even the above things that I do remember independent of photographs are indistinct, a few images, a smell, a feeling. Yet all of them still come from inside of me, not from detached third person observer. I don’t want to replace my memories with photographs, my first person experience with fragments of my life captured as if they happened to someone else.
It’s not just the corruption of memories that’s made me sour on photography. 2015 was three years after the iPhone year zero of 2012. Everyone had a phone with a front and forward facing camera with Facebook and Instagram installed. People were taking a lot of photos even back then. But in the ten years since things seem to have gotten exponentially worse. It seems like many in my generation are in constant documentary mode: every meal, every pretty sunrise on every morning run, every meeting at the brewery with friends makes its way into a photo that’s shared on a social media platform or in a group chat. At best this is a misguided attempt to hold onto the present moment, at worst it is a commodification of real life for the benefit of one’s personal brand or online persona. In either case, the act of capturing the photo creates separation: both between you and the people you’re with, and between you and authentic experience. When you take a photo you step out of the flow of your life into the chair of an observer. Done too frequently I think that represents a genuine loss.
Of course it’s not like I’m particularly good at putting this into practice. Before I went to Madrid this year I told myself I wouldn’t take any photos. I broke this rule quite quickly: both to send things to my mom and for attention fodder on Instagram and Strava. I too am just as much a slave to the exhibitionist world we all find ourselves in. But this year I hope to do better. Take less photographs, make more memories. Do more things out of genuine passion and curiosity, and less because they look good on a screen for other people. Live more in time A and less in time B.
thejdizzler
3d ago
10,000 FU is what I've heard recommended
thejdizzler
5d ago
Nattokinase!
thejdizzler
5d ago
Netti pot has been helping me a lot with this!
thejdizzler
5d ago
He is in a lot of ways! Definitely making a much more honest effort to thread the needle between Christianity and esoteric practices than I am (I have basically given up on the Christianity part, which is laziness). However, he's also very dysfunctional in a lot of other ways: he doesn't have a whole lot of agency so he ends up stuck in ruts/patterns that he doesn't like but can't get out of.
thejdizzler
5d ago
My roommate gave it to me for Christmas last year! I will let you know what I think after I've read it: I'll likely make a post on here and on my blog.
thejdizzler
5d ago
Have that book and am working my way through it slowly!
thejdizzler
5d ago
For me it started when I was broken up with in the summer by a girl who was just not interested in me sexually. This did not make me feel good: not being desired sexually has always been a weak point in my otherwise pretty self-confident/self-assured persona. This left me pretty vulnerable to falling down the PornHub sales funnel of a star I liked. The experience made me feel pretty good in the moment: the women/bots are fairly good at making you feel wanted sexually, although if you look at it from the outside it's absurd because they have so little information about you (maybe a photo and a dozen messages). Afterwards I pretty much immediately regretted it: I deleted my account seconds after satisfying myself. Of course I didn't forget that the high was much better than regular porn, so whenever I felt particularly bad about myself I would relapse. I have, however, been completely clean since shortly after the New Year.
In terms of my moneys worth, if one thinks about it like a drug, it's not a terrible deal. These women's pages are usually around ~$5/month, but you end up paying extra for better content when you're interacting with them. I probably spent about $20/session, which is a lot, but not worse than what you would have to spend on alcohol or stronger drugs (weed I think is much cheaper).
I don't generally have problems with addictions in other areas of my life. I've never felt the need to drink more than a beer or two, and always need months or years long breaks between using weed or LSD. But sliding down the OnlyFans rabbit hole was a wake up call that maybe I do have some kind of masturbation/pornography addiction. The OnlyFans stuff really is a step up in degeneracy as you point out, but the whole edifice is rotten and needs to be knocked down. I'd like to stop caring so much about if women desire me or not (which is something I frankly can't control, and judging from statistics, is something that most men have to face). I also would be completely turned off by similar behavior from the opposite sex (gooning to romance novels), so before bitching more about how I don't have a girlfriend/am not married I should genuinely try to fight this addiction, which maybe means going to stuff like AA meetings.
Anyway thanks for reading all this.
thejdizzler
5d ago
New Year's Goals Planning on doing these updates every week to keep myself accountable
- Work: Finished a figure this week. Instituted a Cold Turkey block on texting/whatsapp/distracting websites (including theMotte) that has been a huge help for productivity. Raw hours still not there.
- Fitness: hit 8.5 hours last week and will be at 9 this week. Build up from here will be much slower. Still haven't been able to fully kick my cold, but NetiPot has been helping a lot.
- Intellectual stuff. Feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the books I'm wanting to read +making sure I get in Spanish and Italian immersion. Just got be disciplined about hitting my minimums and not multitasking.
- On track for this month financially! Cat sitting to earn a bit of extra money.
- This week has been bad for porn and masturbation. I'll come out and say it that I was really disregulated last year. Masturbating every day and sometimes even paying for OnlyFans despite knowing that this was terrible for me and that I was probably talking with a bot. I've luckily stopped doing that, but still have a long way to go.
- Tarot continues to go well.
- Screen time is hovering around 2 hours on my phone but is down on my computer after I implemented two rules: the block on distractions during work hours and no browsing while eating.
thejdizzler
6d ago
About a quarter of the way through Deathly Hallows in Italian and loving it. Finished Half Blood Prince two weeks ago and while I love many aspects of that book, the last third is super rushed.
Also starting on Spinoza's Ethics and am reading a Spanish Historical fiction novel called Aquitania about Eleanor of Aquitaine.
thejdizzler
11d ago
Vegan (or vegetarian/pescetarian, basically don't care too much as long as they don't demand we cook meat for dinner every night), environmentalist, tolerant of many religions, not woke. Of course #4 doesn't go with 1,2,3 and unfortunately I can't stand woke because it usually means there can be no compromise in the relationship. Hence the compromising.
thejdizzler
11d ago
I feel you on the romantic front. I'm a little more self-confident than you, but have found dating to be absolutely soul crushing. I need time to get to know a woman before I am attracted to them but by the time I do that it's the friend zone for me. I'm not a shut-in: I have social activities almost every night (dancing, run clubs, language happy hour, hanging out), I've continually compromised on my standards (veganism, environmentalism, religion, wokeness) and still nothing seems to work out, although tons of women seem to want to be friends with me.
thejdizzler
12d ago
-
Work: Have been working since Monday and feeling on the upswing. Raw hours still aren't there, but I think I will get there much faster than expected. No longer feel stressed, but rather excited!
-
Fitness: hit 7 hours last week, and am track for 9 this week.
-
Intellectual stuff. First blog post of the year is up and I finished Harry Potter 6 in Italian!
-
Finances. Lots of unexpected subscriptions this month, but planning ahead for the Boston marathon has saved me a bunch on travel.
-
Haven't looked at porn or had sex, but have masturbated two times. These have both been because of times and situations that exposed me to softcore porn (instagram) at times when my willpower was low (early in the morning/late at night).
-
Tarot is going well, breath work hasn't happened yet.
-
Phone screen time is down under 2 hours again!
thejdizzler
12d ago
Any tips on getting over a cold? Have had this chest cough/sore throat/congestion since Christmas Day that I cannot seem to kick. Think I got it on the Madrid Metro.
thejdizzler
12d ago
Because prediction markets are basically gambling and always have been. The stock market at least represents productive assets (or used to) that can be used to raise capital for firms and provide value to investors in terms of growth or dividends. There is no asset in a prediction market, just betting on a certain outcome. Same shit with sports betting or casino gambling. It's shitty, unproductive behavior, but for some reason the rationalist community endorses it because it helps to provide more quantitative information as to the mood of the population towards a specific topic.
thejdizzler
16d ago
Good luck with your century! I think you'll find very doable and perhaps pleasant if you pick a good day and fuel well!
thejdizzler
17d ago
Great post!
thejdizzler
18d ago
Thanks man. Been thinking about this proverb wrong the whole time.
I've seen this realization hit one of my older female cousins: she's 43 now. Absolutely desperate for a boyfriend/husband because she really wants children. Wealth isn't a problem because my uncle and aunt are loaded, but she just can't seem to find anyone who works long term. She's been continually lowering her standards, in all the wrong ways, for the past 10 years, and I think is slowly coming to the realization that she's never going to find someone. I have a lot of sympathy for her: she got screwed over by a Kiwi expat who had another girlfriend back home that she probably would have married, and her sister (my favorite cousin who actually shares my birth date, but not my birth year) has been happily married to her highschool sweetheart for 15 years (and has never dated another man). Both have got to sting. Yet it's been absolutely tragic to see the vicious combination of parental and internal standards make it impossible for her to settle down.
Long-term this is only going to end with either an internal reversal of the feminist position (unlikely but possible, I see some signs of this in the corners of YouTube), or the forcible return of strict marriage laws probably through Islam in Europe and Evangelical christianity in USA. In the meantime, I don't think there's much we can do personally other than try to be realistic about our own standards (selecting for traits that actually matter in a marriage) and not simping.
I'm in the 20-29 age cohort and it's a wasteland for a lot of men. When I used to go to church every single guy in the young adult group was either married or completely single (and this ratio was something like 10:1 in favor of single-men). And this was a Catholic Church where people are supposed to getting married early. At work it is similar, although in my family things seem to be better (my sister and all my female cousins have long-term boyfriends who are certainly not chad, although my sister's boyfriend is 6' 4").
I tend to agree with you that many of the put "women back in a box" solutions are pretty unworkable. Although stable, happy marriage might be far preferable on long time horizons, dating an average person as another average person is much less exciting than freedom and independence. I see this in myself with dating: why would I go out to a bar or another coffee date, when reading/exercising/friend activities are so much more exciting and less stressful. It's probably even worse for young women, who are constantly bombarded with attention and opportunities.
I don't find the political speculation to be particularly useful, but perhaps we can glean some personal self-improvement type stuff from all of this. I think both men and women could be better about selecting for traits that actually would matter in a marriage. Stability, kindness, physical fitness, etc., rather than raw sex appeal or charisma. That kind of selection is something that you as an individual can control (and advise your friends about). For men I think this means desexualizing your brain (no more porn and masturbation), and under no circumstances simping. Seeing women as human beings like you not only helps you to evaluate them more accurately, but also makes them more attracted to you. For women, I think I would recommend something similar: stop consuming fantasy romance slop.
Re-reading The Blade Itself. This time around it's so obvious thatBayaz is one twisted evil MF . I've also been pleasantly surprised by how well this book held up.
Almost done with Marx as well which is a relief!
More options
Context Copy link