Our lives are bombarded with hyper-stimuli that make normal existence seem dull and subpar. Powerful algorithms and high concentrations of sugar and alcohol make up some of the many problems humans struggle with. Daily life consists of walking through avalanches of mind-numbing, brain-degrading, anti-longevity neuro-hacks which humans themselves have constructed for the detriment of those willing and ignorant to the respective effects.
For me, I have always had a sweet tooth. Eating merely one donut was impossible; ditto that for Halloween candy. I assumed this was normal, since every other kid on my block was devouring the cookies and candies in their cabinets at an equal if not faster pace to mine. The same can be said for consuming cannabis, alcohol (as a legal adult), and social media. Everyone else was doing it, so in that case, it seemed okay—a normal endeavour for a human to partake in, whereas cybercrime or murder was and still is completely against the cultural norm.
Of course, I had an inkling, a recurring thought, that these substances were bad, and a small minority of specialized individuals sporadically made headlines to condemn the use of these aforementioned demons. But I always forgot about their prophetic warnings as I scoured the aisles of grocery stores and gas stations, stocking up for my next inevitable sugar high.
Glass Demons
I have nicknamed this idea the “glass demon.” We know it’s there, and we know its really bad for us, but we usually look past it in favour of what we want: whether to satisfy a food craving, get a buzz from alcohol or cannabis, achieve less stress through opioids or benzodiazepines, or something more…self-intimate.
I encounter a glass demon every time I make myself a cocktail. I know its bad for me, but I still do it because there is a UFC fight taking place. Billions of people would agree with me in saying they are cognizant that some of their conscious and willing actions detriment their health, but they look past this to achieve their changed mental state. This interesting facet of human existence is the crux which this blog post stands on.
In our society, we encounter a conglomeration of glass demons I call the Absurd and the Dangerous. To me, the mere existence and proliferation of these substances, physical and digital, is…absurd and dangerous to society’s longevity. In this post, you will see why I have come to this conclusion.
Let me get a few things out of the way beforehand:
- Uh, isn’t alcohol a drug?! How could you not consider alcohol a drug? Yes, alcohol is a drug, but I will not be discussing the properties of alcohol per se, but the way it is used and overlooked as a diabolical substance in society. Most people don’t consider they are “taking drugs at dinner,” they think having a glass of wine with a meal as perfectly reasonable. This distinction is important and will be expounded upon.
- How has food hacked us? We need it to survive. Are you being sarcastic or stupid? Neither. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the foods in our grocery stores are not being sold to us to increase our longevity, but to increase the respective company’s quarterly earnings. Our relationship with food has metamorphosed in recent decades, and we must discuss how this is affecting youth and their growing addiction to food, and subsequently, comfort.
- What do you mean by “technology?” Are you saying that rocks and arrows are harming our society? Haha, no. Technology, in this context, refers to our pocket smartphones and their unrestricted access to the digital infinity. Picking up a rock doesn’t overload your dopamine circuits, but watching adult films does. Moreover, watching these adult films triggers a cascade of chemical releases, which if neuro-hacked, can lead to a faulty and dangerous life/style.
Enlightened Drugs
The use of the word “drug” seems to change with the year. In recent decades, the word has undergone a very interesting — and necessary — rejuvenation. In my mind, it is because we have started taking substances out of the stigmatized category “drug,” and put them into other categories; for example, “psychedelics” or “medicine.”
Cannabis, LSD, DMT, peyote, and psilocybin (the chemical compound found in magic mushrooms) have all been taken out of the category “drugs,” which has predisposed stigmas, and placed into categories that more accurately detail these compounds’ effects on the human body. Why? Because there are truly beneficial aspects to ingesting these substances. Scour scientific resources and podcasts to catch yourself up with the advancements of using LSD or psilocybin for near-death patients, cannabis for patients with PTSD, and even DMT for those with addiction and/or grief.
Moving on, if we are continuously taking out substances from this category of “drug” on the grounds of health (mental and physical), then what is left, and why write about it? I find that drugs in the 21st century are given allowance when inappropriate. I was standing in line at YYC with a woman who said she was on a boatload of Ambien, a drug which helps with sleep but is very similar in effects to benzodiazepines or opioids. Not a single look of concern or weirdness overtook any faces in the line when she asserted her state of consciousness. Now, it may be an assumption, but nonetheless I posture that this would not be the case had she instead said she was on boatloads of LSD, DMT, or magic mushrooms (psilocybin).
My overarching point concerns the extremely subtle use of dangerous drugs in our society. Drugs that serve no *real* health benefits — if life-long addiction is a side effect, then all benefits are washed away in my mind — are given free rein on our brains and bodies. Weirdly, most are comfortable taking these drugs daily, overlooking their disastrous consequences. When discussing the incredible work going on at Johns Hopkins regarding psychedelics, its almost taboo to think about “LSD the DNA scrambler,” for example, as beneficial to overcoming addiction or mental illness. Putting the obvious fact of pharmaceutical monopolies on drugs and prescriptions aside, there needs to be a “drug enlightenment” for future generations, where we can talk about the harmful effects of prescription drugs while simultaneously washing away the narrative of LSD, DMT, psilocybin, cannabis, peyote, and others as completely hippie or dangerous.
The Romanticization of Alcohol
“You’re in university, you’re supposed to drink.” These words have been said to me many times before. Still, I struggle to make sense of them. There is a certain time in our life where we’re expected to take a harmful, poisonous substance? Not just expected, but frowned upon if we do not partake in the activity.
The Huberman Lab podcast on alcohol (thankfully!) created a ruckus around the Internet, describing the short- and long-term effects of alcohol and how detrimental the substance is on the human body. However, this podcast is not the first information-bomb of this kind to create digital shockwaves. Many, many times have people come out of the woodwork to discuss the harmful effects of alcohol on the brain and body, how it leads directly to cancer, and more.
This begs the question: if this news is circulating and available, and people at the highest levels are cognizant of alcohol and its effects on the brain and overall productivity, why is alcohol still consumed around society like no new information about its destructive nature on our biology (and neurology) has come about? Similar to cigarettes, people were ignorant because there was no influential science which explained the health detriments; there was also a massive Big Tobacco monopoly to prevent these kinds of data from going viral. In my mind, alcohol assumes the same role in this century as cigarettes did in the last.
It costs money, it doesn’t impact the human body in any beneficial way when consumed, it requires recovery for possibly days after consumption, it has a high rate of addiction, and it destroys your body internally and externally.
So why do people drink? Because the act, substance, aftereffects, and settings that surround alcohol are all romanticized. From dates to dinners, depression and celebration, alcohol is found at the heart of these activities and social gatherings. Go to any party, and alcohol is served; any celebration is upgraded via bottles of champagne; breakups are (said to be) made easier with wine; getting drinks on a first or second date is customary, especially in a city, where bars are profitable and highly sought after 5pm on any given day of the week.
All around us exists racks and shelves full of poison that we willingly, sometimes eagerly, ingest on a regular basis. Described in this way, does this not sound like an entire species with mass psychosis, or in more extreme words, suicidal tendencies? Paying for poison for any event imaginable, knowing full well there is no health or societal benefit, is completely asinine. It feels like a demon has possessed our society, forcing us to consume alcohol — this would be a better explanation. Unfortunately, we consume it willingly and free of any collective possession.
This type of observation is daunting and ridiculous. Need I say, confusing. Even more so, that I partake in this collective psychosis is equally frustrating and confusing. What role does alcohol serve in our society other than to degrade the health of the consumers? I still am searching for this answer, and I fear most that one may not be found.
Food Heavens
I have never had an issue with food. In stark contrast to this blog post’s earlier paragraphs, having a constant sugar craving — and eventually indulging — was not considered, by myself or those around me, as having a “problem.” In fact, it was normalized: “you’re a kid, you should have this stuff, as much as you want.” Candy, soda, ice cream, cakes, pastries, and cookies all developed my palette from an early age to be overly dependent on sugar fixes. As I learned about the true effects of sugar on my brain and body, I was shocked beyond belief. How is this stuff legal? How is it normalized? But it’s not just sugar. Unhealthy eating habits plague our species, in North America specifically. The land of plenty provides plethoric opportunity for bottomless eating, and no one bats an eye. But, somehow, when we talk about the negative effects of overeating and how obesity is unhealthy, we are cancelled, marginalized, dubbed a “fat shamer” and excused, sometimes booted, from society.
Obesity Epidemic
The obesity crisis in North America is out of control. Millions of people suffer the consequences from overeating, which result in physical and mental illnesses. In spite of that, even bringing up the topic of obesity results in PC backlash. “Love people for who they are,” they say. “Do not body shame anyone.” There should absolutely be a method of talking about a “controversial issue” without utilizing insult or shame as argumentative tools — or as rebuttals. The epidemic of overeating and abstaining from exercise can be attributed to two key areas: the land of plenty and the lack of public communication.
Land of Plenty
In the United States alone, over 70 million citizens suffer from obesity. Over 99 million are overweight. Somehow, at some point in history, people stopped caring about their health — specifically their weight — and started consuming en masse. How, and crucially, why, did this happen?
Feeling low? Have sugar. Feeling great? Grab a pizza. Celebration? Here’s a cake, McDonalds, and a fatty steak. At a coffee shop? Take your selection from our vast number of pastries filled to the brim with sugar, salt, and fat. The inevitable retort follows: “You don’t have to eat these things.” Of course, this is too simplistic an argument.
Why are these unhealthy substances widely and abundantly available for cheap in contemporary society? The land of plenty makes it easy to see how and why the idea of not consuming as much as possible would very easily slip from people’s minds. The basic gist concerns the wide variety of unhealthy, cheap, accessible “foods” that don’t serve any nutritional benefit. Fast foods are great examples, as well as the increasingly growing options of cookies, cakes, pastries, and candies in grocery stores and gas stations. Ditto that for chips, breakfast cereals, granola bars, etc. There is so much to eat, all of which taste much better than bland, healthy food; saying “no” and abstaining from consuming is near impossible. But there is more.
Publicity
The lack of widespread acknowledgement of the obesity epidemic is another factor. Mainstream news outlets rarely, if ever, talk about healthy diets and exercise regimes. There is no constant communication on billboards, in shopping centres and airpots, and high-traffic areas talking about the need to exercise for a certain duration every day and to avoid certain foods.
You have semi-fringe outlets like JRE (I consider Joe Rogan “fringe” because even mentioning his name or podcast gets eye-rolls and dismissals, even if what he is talking about is valid and backed up by evidence and research) talking about the importance of health through diet and exercise. For some, this is enough to “get after it” as Jocko Willink portrays. But for most people who don’t consume absorbent amounts of different podcasts, there is no dialogue pertaining health to be found.
Why? One can only guess. Food industry lobbyists spent upwards of $150 million in 2021, but this doesn’t tell the whole story; even if Coca-Cola spent an average of $7 million per year on lobbying between 2015-2020. It is clear, at least to me, that there is an information-tsunami that is being prevented from accumulating mind-share. Allowing the masses to understand the true importance of exercise, and the faulty nature of chocolate bars, sodas, McDonalds, and more, surely will plummet stock prices and vitalize a social revolution of health and wealth. Thus, these messages sink to the bottom of the mainstream discussion, never seeing the light of day, and when they do, being dismissed as “Joe Rogan nonsense” and associated with anti-vax movements.
The lack of public communication about exercise, overeating, and dieting is incredibly disturbing. The news forecasts, which millions of people watch every night, suggest that people still think of mainstream news outlets as the town square of relevant information. Why then, we must ask, is there little to no communication about the short and long-term effects of uncontrolled food intake? Surely, to retain and increase their relevance and status in the global playing field, countries should prioritize the health of their citizens. After all, a healthy population means a healthy country, right? This doesn’t seem to be the case. Whether it resides in a lack of care by governments to mandate exercise and physical health or a lack of understanding of how unhealthy most people really are, these all fall short of one thing: the ability to discuss overeating and obesity.
Cancellation
Cancellation is a superpower that people wield with no remorse. Stepping a mere inch outside of the seemingly unanimous contemporary narrative results in name-calling and reputation collapse almost overnight. Talking about obesity gets you called a “fat-shamer” or “insensitive to lifestyles.” But why is this the case? Surely, talking about science cannot be considered rude to lifestyles? If we talk about the constant intake of alcohol being unhealthy, this wouldn’t — as far as I know — be considered offensive to alcoholics. Wherein lies the difference when talking about food intake?
From my perspective, the words used to describe obese citizens are inherently different to literally any other group of people afflicted with an addiction. People who consume too much cannabis are stoners and potheads. People who consume a host of other substances are druggies, crackheads, and hippies. People who consume too much alcohol are known as boozers or, in some cases, fun. Looking closely at these words, none of them resemble appearance, just a lifestyle choice. For example, “boozer” has no correlation to physical appearance.
Let’s look at words used to describe obese folks: fat, ugly, heavy, chubby, thick, large, pudgy, plump, bulky, round, the list literally goes on forever. See the problem already? Imagine suffering from obesity — I use the term “suffering” seriously, as no addiction is easy to overcome, let alone deal with — and going around society, knowing full well that people are referring to your physical appearance in this matter. The vitriol from these names and insults induces people to deal with hate and negativity in the only way they know how: consuming more.
However, there is a flip-side to this. Not everyone talking about obesity is using these words, and yet, there is still hate directed towards them. Why? Obesity has become a lifestyle. Like Buddhism, lifestyle choices cannot and should not be frowned upon. With this integration of obesity into the category of lifestyle, it makes “sense” why people get upset when scientists and influencers come out to condemn over-eating and offer pathways out. In some minds, this is similar to saying, “we have found the practice of Buddhism to be internally harmful, here is evidence that you are doing a disservice to your body by meditation and such. Please stop this at once.” If this were to actually happen, people would be up in arms, saying how dare anyone tell me what lifestyle I should lead. This exact same argument applies to obesity, where people who have fallen into this lifestyle trap see no way out, and treat any attempts at society telling them they are unhealthy as personal attacks which results in cancellation and destroyed reputations.
Cyberspace Crisis
In cyberspace, there exists social media and por….adult films. Unprecedented digital mediums, we are not the same species with these two tech-induced hyper-stimuli. In both, there is an infinity of bits for any user to scour, and that is a massive — but not entire — part of the problem. Speaking anecdotally, I have found myself lost in Twitter threads and YouTube binging. No one told me about the mental tax I’ll take when consuming massive amounts of hate comments — even if they aren’t directed at me — on a daily basis. Rarely was it mentioned that my focus and attention, vital skills which separate the successful from the complacent, are being degraded every time I swipe around on Instagram or TikTok. And last but not least, our relationship to adult films is just that: a relationship. It is clear that some young folks in this world prefer the sexy screen time to a romantic first date. What is going on here? How have we come to this horrid juncture in human history, and overall human culture? What is happening to our species through the consumption of these malices?
Dopamine
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, a molecule that act as the middlemen of communication between neurons. It acts with a reward function, the outcome of which involves the experience of pleasure. Dopamine will be a character constantly revisited as it is one of the pillars of why the cyberspace glass demons are not, cannot, and probably will not be vanquished.
How and why does dopamine work as the base mechanism for addiction of all sorts? Dr. Anna Lembke, who has made waves in communicating the effects of dopamine on various addictions in her book Dopamine Nation, details dopamine with a seesaw mechanism. When spiked (through the consumption of food or other substances), the baseline of dopamine goes up and you feel pleasure. However, this pleasure is not long lasting, and as the dopamine falls back down, it doesn’t go back to baseline; it goes lower than baseline, and thus, you feel pain. This pain prompts you to reach for another cookie, another drink, to swipe more, to click on another video, all in order of bringing that pleasure back up to the “high” it was at. Here’s the kicker: upon re-ingesting or redoing whatever it was that spiked your dopamine, however much you do of it, you won’t get back to that same high. Instead, you will get continuously less amounts of dopamine. And of course, the less you get, the more you’ll want to do whatever it was that got you to that high. Do you see how incredibly powerful dopamine is? And moreover, do you see how zombie-fied humans can become if companies target dopamine and hack your brain to correlate dopamine release with consuming or using their respective product?
Social Media
I am tired of social media. Truly. The mental exhaustion and dread I feel scrolling through the endless hate comments and exaggerated lifestyles creates a sadder and lesser version of myself. But this is an existence I have come to tolerate on the basis of cultural normality and an inability to escape from it. I need social media: for communication; for business; for information; and most importantly, dog videos. Without it (social media) I would be left out — inducing FOMO, or the fear of missing out. Social media revolves around everything now. Go to a restaurant and snap a picture of your food. Go to a nice rooftop bar and make others jealous of your view of the city skyline. Hang out with friends but don’t forget to publicly document your social endeavour. In fact, let me rephrase: society revolves around social media now. According to the Pew Research Center, 69% of adults and 81% of teens in the U.S. alone use social media on a daily, if not hourly, basis. What are the global, societal, and individual effects of social media? Let’s start small and work our way up. At an individual scale, social media is destroying — yes, destroying — self-esteem, lifestyle choices, and influencing rash and attention-seeking behaviour. In addition, it is polarizing and radicalizing populations, while spreading misinformation and disinformation at the speed of light. It seems a wonder how this technology is even legal, or how it remains unregulated. Let’s begin.
At the individual scale, social media has been reported to ravage mental health. Remember dopamine? Christine Stabler writes that social media acts as a slot machine, so when we open the app, dopamine is spiked because we don’t know what kind of reward we’ll get. Thus, we gravitate to these hits of dopamine because it’s fast, convenient, and free. Next, the interactions we derive from social media and perceive to be the most important thing in the world. Why did this photo get more likes than that photo? Do I look worse in this photo? Why aren’t people commenting as much now? If you’ve experienced these thoughts before, and I admit I have too, then you have been directly affected by the unhealthy nature of social media. Lastly, FOMO: the fear of missing out. Another enticement of using social media, because you never know when your friends will send a message or post something tasty for you to comment on and be a part of. As humans, we strive to feel included; abandonment from tribes is a real feeling, and social media exaggerates that feeling massively. This social isolation is actually a product of social media, as it was reported that users who spent more time on these platforms had further perceptions of social isolation. But FOMO also acts in a different, more sinister way: creating jealousy and frustration, at others and ourselves. Looking at everyone’s happiness on social media, all the cool places they’re travelling and all the fun activities they’re partaking in, has a double effect: first, it makes us bitter towards them because they’re doing something we aren’t; and second, we get frustrated at our seemingly stagnant situation, further depressing our feelings and creating resentment towards those around us for not allowing us to participate in the fun activities we constantly see online. These individual factors directly relate to how social media affects overall societal structure and functionality.
On a societal scale, social media remains a culprit. The so-called “echo chambers” we find ourselves in when using platforms like Twitter or Facebook only compounds the polarized observation we’ve all had. Seriously, it feels like every time we log onto any social platform, people are always fighting about something or the other. Was it always like this, and social media has just given us a transparent view of how argumentative and frustrated we all are? Or has something else happened, something that has amplified the vitriol online users have towards others? I believe the latter case to be the most likely, and in fact, I am backed up on this assessment. According to the Pew Research Center, 64% of Americans feel that social media has a negative effect on their country’s predicament — and it has to do with artificial intelligence (AI).
As we know, AI is designed to make our lives easier. It learns certain things about us from the data we give it, and can start tailoring certain things to our liking to keep us engaged and remaining on the platform. For example, on YouTube, if you watch a lot of dog videos, then your YouTube algorithm will start recommending more dog videos. Why dog videos and not cat or zebra videos? Well, because that is not — according to the data which is your watch history, watch time, and engagement in the form of likes, comments, and shares — going to keep you on the YouTube platform, which means you won’t be consuming advertisements on the site, which means less money for YouTube. Makes sense, right? Algorithms tailor themselves to you to enhance your experience which creates dollars in the end. But what if I told you that this also creates polarization within populations.
For example, if I am a liberal, what will get me to stay on Youtube: a video recommendation for Joe Biden’s speech or a video recommendation for Donald Trump saying slurs against minorities? Assuming the later is the majority answer, why is this the case? Why not the positive speech from the current President? It has to do with emotions. Social media sites feed off of controversy because that is what riles people up, making them angry and frustrated, and gets them to comment, share, and consume more; it’s what amplifies engagement. We don’t have to look far to see the obviousness of this statement. Who was the most popular person in the world in the latter stages of 2022 for saying ridiculous and horrid things against women? Writing the name is not even necessary. However, why were these messages projected across cyberspace? Simply because they triggered people, who were quick to comment and share these messages with similar hatred and anger. Then the formation of groups emerges, where people either agree or disagree with the message and also project those feelings into cyberspace. And then those groups start infighting, further spreading the message but also mutating the message entirely — we’ve all played the game of broken telephone, where people are tasked with repeating the message until the end of the line to see how and where the message changed as it passed from person to person. The exact same thing happens with social media and polarizing content. As a result, people are furious at the state of the world because of what they consume online, but in fact, what they’re interpreting as news is actually just hokum. Finally, they take this hatred from and around society, augment it with the individual effects of social media, and go about their day. We are starting to build a greater picture on the anarchy of social media in the 21st century, but we aren’t done yet.
Global information circuits contain the power to alter cultural trajectories and divide populations irrevocably. All it takes is one piece of disinformation curated by a bad actor (now its possible to fabricate a scientific paper with real sources using GPT-3 or ChatGPT), thrown into cyberspace at a time of virality. After the meme latches onto its intended hosts (us) there is no stopping its spread and subsequent evolution. Before long, society could be dominated by an immutable memeplex that serves no other purpose than to instigate implosion.
The immediate global effects of social media were felt, for the first time, in March of 2020. The organic spread of misinformation and disinformation was parallelly astonishing and frightening. Information is unique on a global scale. Small mutations in the language or conjugation of how things are represented can have unpredictable effects down the road. The difference between a “China-made bioweapon” and a “virus that emerged from Wuhan, China” can significantly change the amounts of, for example, xenophobia in other countries towards East Asian folks. With the foundation laid out for individual — FOMO, frustration, self-esteem — and societal — polarization, heightened emotions, the misinterpretations — effects of social media, let me pose an intellectual question: what the fuck do you think will happen when an unprecedented, uncontrollable, misunderstood virus takes control of all information platforms and shuts the world down for an unknown amount of time? The answer: mayhem, and that is what we experienced.
Everyone’s opinion trumped everyone else’s. For the first time as well, scientists no longer had an answer that was sufficient to the majority. (Nietzsche would be laughing profusely at that situation.) Theories, conspiracies, and truths were all thrown into a Wheel-Of-Fortune-esque melting pot, with no one knowing or caring what their ticker landed on. All news was considered equal, taken on face value and treated as absolute truth. The effects of this continue to be felt, as nanobots in the vaccines and lab leaks from BSL-4 laboratories are still talked about in the same breath.
Contemporary social media clearly contains little benefit and massive detriment to individuals, societies, and civilizations. Without focused transformation, we cannot reap the real advantages of planetary connectivity. We have indirect access to almost eight billion people via pocket technology, and yet we don’t have the wisdom to respect this access.
NSFW
Intimacy. Love. Romance. Words that have meaning, and words that cannot be thrown around without serious commitment — and possible consequences. Translated from physical reality into digital fantasy, adult films have ravaged every nook and cranny of the daily lives of adolescent teens, young adults, and even fully-formed humans (my tongue-in-cheek joke about adults over 25 years of age with fully developed brains). We cannot underestimate the impact of this tool, an outlet for lust, expression, frustration, fantasy, disconnection, rebellion, and boredom.
Users between 18 and 34 years of age make up 51% of the leading adult film site (you know which one). In the United States alone, viewership — which was at 130 million users per day — increased by 42% at the start of the pandemic. The correlation between watching these films and loneliness is clear; worse, the neurohacking is creating an alienated and addicted generation who don’t — want or care to — partake in natural human activities like finding a mate and creating tinier versions of themselves. The addictive nature of these films has to do with price, the ease of access, the lack of regulation, and dopamine. The first two points are coupled together because they are the main attractors. Accessing this NSFW content is free and easy, unlimited in variety and non-judgemental of selection. Simply navigate to a private browser, type in the domain of choice, and you are faced with endless possibilities of orgasmic potential. Furthermore, the lack of regulation means that while this content is free and unlimited, there is no potential for crime or anything of the sort*. Just click and c**. Last but not least, our good old friend dopamine. Of course, orgasms are a kind of high we feel, a massive release of oxytocin — the “love” hormone.” However, from what we know about dopamine, the reward molecule, we fully understand the implications. Since this high increases our dopamine levels, and decreases them as the high subsides, we will naturally seek this stimuli out. Since our access to it is laughably easy, and doesn’t force us any financial or repetitional cost, seeking out NSFW content on a weekly, daily, even hourly basis makes total sense; now we can talk about the implications of this absolute socio-romantic collapse.
Alienation of users who consume massive amounts of NSFW content cannot be underestimated. Starting with aggression, it has been shown that 88% of scenes of the top-rated content portray anger and violence from men towards women. A shocking study conducted in the United States revealed that people who watched this violent content were six times as likely to commit sexual violence down the road. What’s more, with the direct link between sexual content and erectile dysfunction, not being able to have any kind of healthy sex life induces further frustration, self-esteem issues, and alienation — and a stronger gravitational pull towards consuming more.
Constant usage, from such a young age, alters perceptions of sex, romance, and what an ideal partner is. It causes unwanted and subconscious biases to develop, like the objectification of males and/or females as “only relevant due to their genitalia.” In addition, for males specifically, the more content watched, the more likely the depicted acts are requested for in the bedroom. Instead of adult films being an outlet or tool in times of romantic scarcity, it has become the bedrock for youth and young adults to learn about sexual encounters — and suffer the detriments because of these exaggerated and unrealistic situations and expectations.
Even things like low testosterone in men can heavily influence lifestyle choices, like having the energy to even get out of bed and work out. As it stands, the new generation of digital fanatics are becoming less interested in the romantic reality of exerting energy to create their toolkit of attraction (containing things like status, skills, hobbies, dreams), with more interest in their anonymous and low-bandwidth fantasies that alter their expectations, require no effort to access or enjoy, destroy their lives in the process, and because all of these issues, further addict them.
Coherence
This isn’t an end-of-speech preach, more like a call-to-action. A consensus has emerged, one that I find bizarre, that the world is declining and there’s nothing that we — individuals — can do about it. An interesting mindset, one which feels directly responsible for the collapse of our civilization. Oh, the world is ending anyway, so I don’t and won’t need to act in any helpful way to try and stop it. Besides, what difference will a lowly individual like myself be able to make? Utterly preposterous, those who subscribe to this ideology must understand why they are also contributing to humanity’s fall and decline.
The root cause of our insufferable collective irresponsibility of taking care of our source-planet and its inhabitants is predicated upon the lack of acknowledgement that things are going wrong specifically because individuals don’t care to change their actions. Yes, if one person doesn’t litter, and everyone else does, that makes no difference; but if everyone thinks that their abstinence from littering won’t affect the environment, roads and sidewalks will be found filled with garbage. We have, as singular entities, the power to change the future of the world. Talking about billionaires in private jets contributing more pollution from one flight than a single society would in a generation is necessary to point out, but negligible in the long run. Reclaiming responsibility for our planet’s outcome, and crucially, for our species’ outcome, should be a new individualistic goal for all of us — it is for me.
I know now that sugar is bad for me; I also know that wasting water by having a longer shower is bad for overall water consumption. Applying a different filter, not thinking, “why shouldn’t I be able to do this when everyone else is doing it?” Instead, acknowledging, “My contributions, even if they are small in my eyes, can serve a long-term benefit if I can maintain them and inspire others to follow in my footsteps.”
The forces which pervade our lives are not going away anytime soon. The way we see them, as the glass demons they truly are, can be the first of many ways to tackle these nightmares. Now, every time I go into a grocery store, inevitably finding myself in the section with candy, cookies, and sugary delights, I don’t see what I used to. As a matter of fact, I don’t see anything at all. I walk right past, knowing full well that if I step into the nightmarish landscape that sugar cravings bring, even when enlightened by all the harms that sugar causes my body and society at large, it would be incredibly absurd and very dangerous.