“The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.”

– Arthur Schopenhauer

Earlier this year I bought a copy of The Wind In The Willows. For those unfamiliar with the book, it’s the story of some talking animals who go on adventures. Written in 1908 the intended audience is children. Here’s a brief excerpt from it:

“He saw clearly how plain and simple – how narrow, even – it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one’s existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.”

This children’s book, written over a hundred years ago, was more difficult to read than most contemporary fiction. I’ve read books that were marketed to adults that were written in a simpler style. Right now the bestselling book on Amazon is called Divergent. While I haven’t read the entire thing, I did look over some of it. Here’s a brief excerpt:

“He leans his face close to mine and wraps his fingers around my chin. His hand smells like metal. When was the last time he held a gun, or a knife? My skin tingles at the point of contact, like he’s transmitting electricity through his skin.”

While I’m not going to knock the book, it’s back cover proclaims it to be “A Brainy Thrill-Ride Of A Novel.” From what I can tell, the standards for “brainy” have sunk a lot over the past century. Past societies children’s books explored themes of nostalgia, friendship, wanderlust, and fear. Our current culture lauds a story concerning two people boning each other.

If you were 12 in 1908 and someone gave you a book, you read the book. Aside from playing outdoors and helping with household tasks, you didn’t have anything else to do. There was no TV with 6,000 channels, no YouTube, no Reddit, no Imgur. If you wanted to be entertained you had to use your imagination.

Now when people try and get facts of learn something, they do so in the laziest manner possible. They read some post off  Science Facts and then declare themselves to be “such a nerd.” In reality they’re basically read the electronic equivalent of a Snapple cap.

They didn’t exercise their brain. They simply read two sentences, with zero citations I might add, and looked at a picture. A first grade biology book would have more accurate and useful information.

Modern intelligence is basically a joke. You can read a book written at an eight grade reading level and look at some “educational” memes. Last year I bought an introduction to philosophy book at Barnes & Noble. I breezed through it. Afterwards I picked up Ecce Homo and struggled with it. I doubt that half the people who subscribe to Nietzsche quotes on Twitter have ever actually read a single one of his books. Yet they’ll smugly post quotes on their atheism forums while mocking Christians for never having read the bible.

Aside from the faux learning material, the internet also creates a superiority complex. While old media, like the news, typically relied on manipulating fear, the internet cultivates a lot of hate. Almost every single forum or group has some kind of nemesis. Republicans, “Leftoids,” Feminists, Misogynists, Sheeple, Conspiracy nuts, thin privilege, fat people, white people, black people, or a plethora of other groups. Most websites pander to the lowest common denominator and become little more than sideshow attractions. “You might be a loser, but at least you aren’t that guy!”

I haven’t checked my Twitter all week. As a result I stopped looking at clickbait articles. Instead of reading some nonsense I used my internet time to listen to an audiobook on YouTube. Until this week I’d never realized that YouTube even had free books. Now I’m listening to them every time I’m at my desk.

I’m probably going to take a permanent hiatus from Twitter. I might also take a break from treating the internet as a source of entertainment. While I had a lot of fun goofing off on it, I wasted a lot of time. Arguing with someone on Reddit, looking at viral videos on YouTube, and browsing Imgur didn’t actually improve my life. They just provided temporary little jolts of happiness, gone the second I clicked a new link.

I’ve quit the internet for now. There are a ton of books I want to read and the weather is warming up. I’d rather go for a hike and thumb through a paperback than sit inside and stare at a screen. I’ll still be posting on here every day and I’ll be working on my web businesses, but I’m not going to do anything related to social media.

Men have gone millions of years without Twitter feeds and list articles. They built empires, mastered the power of flight, and landed on the moon without ever taking a break to look at cats wearing funny outfits. I think I’ll be alright.

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

– Arthur C. Clarke

I grew up in Chicago. At the age of 13 I moved to my parents house in Iowa. My first night was sheer terror. Their house was remote. There were only three other houses nearby. The closest was two miles away.

My parents driveway alone was longer than most roads. Twisting through forests, rolling across hills, and running parallel to lakes it stretched on for an eternity. The feeling of isolation began to set in.

When night fell I learned just how alone I was. All across the landscape coyotes howled and barked. Even inside I could hear them. I’d never been in a situation like that before. Surrounded by darkness, emptiness, and the savage cries of predators. It was horrifying.

As time went on I adjusted to the emptiness. I read books, wrote constantly, and even began exploring my surroundings. One day while walking around in the woods I stumbled on a series of stones. They looked like someone had laid them there. I was perplexed. The stones were huge and it was obvious that someone had moved them, yet they sat in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t make any sense.

Later I learned that what I had found was once the foundation for an old church. Early pioneers had built a whole settlement. They had come from Scandinavia, English was their second language. The church had held all its services in Norwegian.

Not since my first night, surrounded by the howls of hunters, had I felt insignificant and alone. The settlers had built their little town and worshiped their little god, yet they were no more. Nature had reclaimed the landscape. Only a few faint clues alluded to them ever existing. Whatever they had done, whatever progress they had made, was all erased by time. It was an unsettling thought.

For a long time I thought those stones represented something. I thought they showcased how meaningless and futile everything is. Man can fight nature and his environment, but he’ll always lose. Some of the greatest empires in the world have vanished. Their only remnants are dilapidated ruins and legends.

Only recently did I realize that I’d been wrong. While the settlers didn’t have much left, they’d still left their mark. Almost two hundred year after they’d built their camp there was still evidence of its existence. Men who wrote books thousand of years ago are still being read. Art that was crudely drawn on walls is still being enjoyed and analyzed. Most of the things that man built have withstood the test of time. They’re indelible, living on forever.

“Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Last weekend I downloaded a Migos mixtape and decided to listen to it. The record was about an hour long but only had 10 minutes of actual content. Every song rehashed the same subject matter without even putting a clever spin on it. One song was about selling drugs. The next track was about having sex. And the third was about drugs and sex. The entire album could have been compressed into a single 16 bar verse and nothing would have been lost.

When I was 18 I read two books. One was Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, and the other was Tucker Max’s I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell. Both had been recommended to me. I thought Outliers was overrated. The book took something that I considered to be common knowledge, nurture trumps nature, and stretched it to the point of being repetitive and uninteresting. The entire book could have been condensed down to a long-form article. There was nothing new or exciting, no revelation.

After being letdown, I read I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell. I thought it was awesome. The stories were funny, the jokes were witty, and the escapades were outlandish. I lent the book out to all my friends and every one of them thought Max’s work was hysterical. I liked the book so much that I went out and bought it’s sequel.

Like with Migos or Malcolm Gladwell, I discovered that Tucker Max had zero range. His second book was the exact same as the first. In fact, reading it made me realize that all of his stories were basically just slight variations of each other. While the jokes might have been different they all boiled down to getting drunk and having sex. There was no variety.

The fact that Max’s subsequent books and movie flopped didn’t surprise me. You can’t sell a man the same joke four times. What did surprise me was Max’s change of character. Rather than continuing to beat a dead horse, Max then decided to steal from the manosphere.

Instead of restating what a lot of bloggers have already said, I’m going to focus today’s post on why the manosphere cannot be copied.

Scope

From what I can tell, Max is going to try and take the easy route. He noticed the popularity of sites about women and gender differences, and decided to take their content. In reality the manosphere encompasses almost every interest and hobby. Bloggers even have multiple sites dedicated to their various interests and expertise. Off the top of my head, these are just a few subjects that have “manosphere” blogs dedicated to them: Exercise, bodybuilding, making money, fashion, culture, women, current affairs, travel, books, health, radio broadcasting, psychology, politics, cooking, hunting, finishing, art, history, law, philosophy, juicing, and humor. Additionally, blogs have taken detours into other subjects like: cars, computer programming, the effects of industrialization, home repair, coffee brewing, cigar buying, swimming, sewing, meditation, fatherhood, video games, photography, poetry, crossword puzzles, life lessons, poker, club promotion, the occult, hitchhiking, and countless other activities that I can’t remember at this moment.

Max’s site looks like every post will inevitably read “Why Do Men Do [X] And Women Do [Y]?” It’s going to get old fast. His lineup already has such hard hitting investigations as “Why You Are A Boob Guy.”

While the site might do alright because of Max’s fame, it’s going to run out of steam. Even the manosphere guys who blog about sex and women have to change the topic every once in a while. There’s only so much to be said. Additionally, Max’s information is going to be inaccurate. Max isn’t testing any of the information that he’s writing about, instead he’s posting the results of various surveys experiments. Considering the fact that scientists couldn’t confirm that the female orgasm was a real thing until the 1990’s, I wouldn’t put too much trust into a lab full of dweebs.

Diversity

Critics of the manosphere typically argue that all the sites are authored and read by angry middle aged white dudes. They basically imagine everything as an online version of a Tea Party rally. While I’m sure there are sites like that, the main bloggers are pretty diverse. Men, and even a few women, from all walks of life have contributed to the manosphere. There are liberal bloggers, gay writers, atheists, and dudes from every race and culture.

This mixture allows for a lot of different opinions and viewpoints. No two writers will ever have the same take on a subject. Even multiple author sites have differing inputs to certain thoughts or events. In contrast, Tucker Max just has himself and Geoffrey Miller. While I don’t know enough about Miller to comment on him, I do know enough to safely assume that him and Tucker will play it safe. Their site will probably end up being something akin to a Men’s Health type site. They’ll write articles with titles like “7 Reasons She’s Breaking Up With You” and “14 Great Home Date Ideas.” Occasionally Tucker might reach into his back catalog and pull out a funny story so that Miller can analyze his actions. It’s basically going to be Cosmo for men.

Just looking over their site’s recommended reading list provides some clues as to how tame the content will be. Books like Nickel and Dimed and The Game are both cited as required reading. This is basically a high school reading list crossed with a few “edgy” books that could be found at any Barnes & Noble.

While I can’t be certain that Max and his new site will flop, I don’t think that it will destroy the manosphere. Guys who read Max’s post are the same types of dude’s who read Men’s Health. Additionally, I doubt Max will actually poach any readers. A guy who’s into Good Looking Loser or Danger & Play probably won’t jump ship just because a washed up writer and his accomplice were able to make a watered down blog.

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”

– Groucho Marx

[Note: Today’s post is a true story and I was inspired to write about it because of this article.]

Back in January I broke my phone. Rather than paying through the nose for a replacement, I switched over to my old Razr. I had to use an analog phone until November when my contract allowed me to get a new Droid. I went almost a year without a smartphone. Here are a few differences between then and now:

No smartphone

• I checked Twitter when I was at home or during my free time.

A few weekends ago I was eating in Chicago and went to check my Twitter feed. For whatever reason the restaurant wasn’t giving me access to the data network. My actual phone still worked, but I felt naked and alone. I had been cut off from making witty statements and checking to see if anyone new was following me.

Back when I was using my old analog phone, this problem never happened. If I was bored I would have looked around and observed my surroundings, or picked up a book, or jotted something on a piece of paper. Even though I’m pretty introverted, it actually wasn’t uncommon for me make friends on buses, trains, and flights simply because I didn’t have a phone to bury my face in.

• No one cared.

When I started using my analog phone I was really worried that people would make fun of me. This sounds like a dumb fear, but I thought I’d get ostracized for not seeing the latest Vine or Snapchat. In reality nothing happened. No one asked about my phone and my friends were really into Vines and things like that were too self absorbed to notice. I could probably have used a rotary phone and still maintain a decent social life.

• I listened to books on tape.

Every time I drove somewhere I listened to a book on tape. I knocked out a ton of great literature, some good self help stuff, and even a bit of philosophy. It was great and I learned a ton.

With my smartphone it’s hard for me to get through an audiobook. Instead of having on set of CD’s to listen to, I have a cornucopia of songs at my disposal. Even if I start on an audiobook, I’ll usually get distracted by my phone.

• I read more books.

Similar to audiobooks, my reading habits increased when I didn’t have a constant source of electronic entertainment with me. I could sit and read for hours on end. Now I’m lucky to get through an entire hour without checking something online. I’m struggling to finish Sir Gawain and the Green Knight because of the never ending stream of stimulus that my phone provides.

Because of all the negative influences that my phone has brought, I’ve decided to take a three day hiatus from Twitter and social media. Around this time last year I deleted my Facebook and, depending on how my experiment goes, I think I might take an indefinite break from Twitter too.

“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.”

– Muhammad Ali

Once upon a time a young man bought a gym membership. He quit watching Netflix and started spending his evenings learning how to bench and squat. He went to the gym every day, ate a high protein diet, and started to care about his health. During this time a lot of his friends got upset and started to mock him. They said things like “I guess you’re too goo to eat pizza” and “you’ve been to the gym every night, but you’re still scrawny.”

The young man had to make an important decision, he had to chose between doing his own thing or returning to his friends. After some deep though he decided that “friends are f*cking gay.” For the next two months he did everything by himself. He went to bars alone, he ate alone, and he lifted alone. At the time he thought that he was a one man army, reliant on no one and fully control of his own destiny.

I was that guy. From December of 2012 until the beginning of March I spent most of my time by myself. While I wasn’t antisocial, I ended up doing my own thing and parting ways with most of my old crew. Although I had big plans for my year and felt that I needed to work free of criticism, I was also scared. Failing with my goals would be a lot harder if other people knew. They’d smirk and smugly tell me that I shouldn’t have tried in the first place.

In March I ended up becoming really good friends with another guy who went to my school. We became lifting buddies and hung out almost every day. Although my friend transferred schools and I dropped out, we’re still pretty close.

From the beginning of March until the end of July I went to bars and clubs almost every weekend. Since then my interest in nightlife has dropped to almost nothing. Over the weekend I tried to figure out why.

Going out was fun because it was something I always did with my best friend. It didn’t matter if we got blown out by girls, or if the party sucked, or if the bar was a sausage fest. We still had a lot of fun. There was a night where everything was dead so we left early and got Jimmy John’s. While we were there a drunk guy came in, tried ordering tacos, and then argued about what chain restaurant he was in. We ended laughing about it for the rest of the night.

Going out was fun and didn’t feel like work. I also got better at stuff like lifting. Having a partner to compete with made me put in extra work at the gym. It provided motivation.

Nowadays I have a new lifting partner, some great mentors, and plenty of friends. Working with others and sharing goals feels natural to me. However, when I first started to improve myself I thought that I could do everything on my own. Going your own way is still something that I think is important, but it isn’t as effective as having a good friend or quality mentor. Having someone else will help push you along and make the journey more enjoyable.