Yesterday afternoon Twin 2 came to me for help with her math homework.
There’s no doubt that she’s inherited the Perryman family temper.
She wants the answer Right Now, and the idea of sitting for a moment to think about what you are doing does not register with her.
I can’t blame this on the internet since she has no access to devices. But it makes me glad all the same that she and her sister had basically zero screen time until quite recently.
Whatever impatience and hot-headedness may be in-born, having access to screens, and using them to scroll, is a psychological Chernobyl event waiting to happen.
By coincidence I got to reading an article over on the Substack which dived deep into this world of social-media algorithm culture that has taken over bodybuilding and what we used to call the “fitness” world.
Here’s one of the interesting selections:
What social media actually did was make visible extremity as a unit of exchange, and then ensure that exchange was profitable for everyone except the person providing the body. Algorithms reward what requires no explanation which, in laymen’s terms, is what is extreme or eye-catching. A heavy deadlift requires context to appreciate. A 340-pound man eating four chickens requires none.
I spend very little time on socials, and what I do see is mainly meme pages, which I find more interesting and valuable than any of the allegedly serious content.
The “fitness” content is either things I was already writing about 15 or 20 years ago, or it’s numbskulls making fools of themselves.
The last decade I’ve become more and more dissatisfied with this online world. The escalating ratchet effect that turns ordinary fit-bros into psychotic clowns maximizing entertainment value is one reason for that.
There’s something darker though which the article touched on.
I can speak from personal experience on the theme that the peer-pressure and algorithmic feedback loops do uncanny things to us, warping mind and spirit, if we let them draw us in.
Back in 2006 I weighed over 60 pounds more than I do right now. I was a lot fatter to be sure, but a good chunk of that weight was muscle mass. Fat doesn’t get you a 6-wheel deadlift and easy reps with a belt-less 425 pound squat.
That’s sixty extra pounds on a frame that would be content at 160, and that 160 is already a 30-pound bump over my starting weight when I began lifting.
All up, I’d packed on close to 100 pounds between age 18 and 26.
The article talks about Rich Piana dying at 46, the age I am now, from an enlarged heart. That landed with me because a nurse warned me about that same condition during a medical exam when I was at my biggest.
At the time I didn’t care. I was too busy running from myself, and the basic pieces of this algorithm doom-loop were already well in place back in the 00s, even if they were confined to the old forums and chat-rooms.
With the phones, the endless scroll, and the flip to video that turns everyone into a clown dancing for attention, it’s 1000x worse today.
I’ll be real with you. I don’t even know what I’m doing here anymore.
I’m not the strength-and-bulk guy I used to be, and I don’t want to be. Snapping myself out of that trance very likely saved my life and I have no desire to look back at that time of my life, much less throw myself back into it.
The total indifference to anything I write and post now has made it crystal-clear that nobody is interested in what I’m saying about getting in shape for the later half of life.
So be it. People want what they want, and that is not under my control.
But it leaves me with a problem.
I have less than zero interest in wading into that cess-pool of social media influencing.
Even if I wanted to, the consensus I get from observation and conversation with others is that if you aren’t ready to spend 10 hours a day sending DMs and creating “content”, with a 5 figure monthly ad budget to promote it, don’t even bother.
Those are not options for me, not least of which because I e-fame is the last thing I want. I enjoy my privacy, I have a face built for radio and a voice suited for text, and starting my own media company just to get seen is not on my bingo card.
Long story short, I don’t know what I’m doing here, if I’m going to continue writing about health, strength, longevity et cetera, or if there’s any point in doing so.
In the mean time, if you have any interest in the dysfunctions behind the online fitness world, or the messed-up dynamics and personalities of social media, the article is worth a read.
Use the link to read the whole thing:
https://physicalculture.substack.com/p/the-sport-working-exactly-as-designed
Matt Perryman