I heard my daughter say that to my wife a few days back.
The kids learn so young.
Okay, sure, so she’s heard me say it dozens of times.
She’s not wrong. There are lies on the internet. Plenty of ’em. Better that she understand that going in.
If I had my way, she and her sister wouldn’t even know what an “internet” was. That’s hard to do when half their friends are getting not-so-smart phones and the schools insist on letting them use computers. Meanwhile you can’t even go out in public without seeing toddlers with their eyeballs wired into a screen like a Borg drone while Youtube does the parenting.
We’re already seeing kids who don’t know how to interact face to face with other people, that have to be taught how to understand facial expressions when they show up at school. That’s how bad it’s getting.
The lies, though. I don’t mean the “mis/disinformation” that the bureaucrats lecture you about. Fringe conspiracy dissidents are fun and interesting, unlike the humorless drones from the government. I mean lies on a deeper level.
Last year I read about this “Dead Internet Theory” which says that there’s no real people online. There were once, but after all the mess of 2015-16, what you see online is fake. Like 98% of it is bots and AI-created reality.
That’s believable to me, frankly. When I do tune in to “the feed” every now and then, every time it’s less and less real. “Social” media is as honest a name as the Ministry of Truth. (An accurate comparison with all the spooks tracking your every move.)
There was a time when I knew real people online, made friends, had interesting conversations. That hasn’t been true for a long time. The people I know online today I met before 2012.
The fitness content that I see out there hasn’t changed in any serious way from the ideas I was teaching as far back as 2005-2007. It’s kinda funny to see all these guys under 30 selling ideas that were old news to me a decade ago.
Now, there’s always been an element of unoriginality there because fitness is a mostly-solved problem. Whether you want to get stronger, buffed up, or sick shredded, there’s only a handful of principles you need to use. The rest is down to putting in the work.
That’s where marketing takes over. Take a naturally good-looking guy or gal, put them on camera and let them show off all the facts they memorized and BAMM! instant fitness expert.
What can I say? The sizzle always does more work than the steak itself, no matter how many times I remind my tiny readership of the difference between knowledge that you can put into words, and the skilled know-how to create results (which is mostly unconscious).
Being in shape, getting yourself in shape, and knowing how to get those results in other people are three different things.
I could go deep into that topic, but then, you aren’t real, are you?
If you are real, maybe this will interest you.
Matt Perryman