Winning is losing

The worst insult in our society is to be called a “loser”. “Weed turns you into a loser.” They will tell you. But as the world grows more ridiculous, it gets hard to feel bad about losing. In fact, it starts to feel like not losing is a sign that you’re a terrible person.

Remember, we live in a world where Bitcoin is the best performing investment, where Elon Musk is the richest man in the world and where Donald Trump is president of the most powerful country. When you live in a world like that, it starts to feel embarrassing when you manage to win for once.

I haven’t always lost, sometimes in life I win, although it becomes increasingly rare as I grow older. I had some Youtube videos, some memes and some articles go viral. I used to win prizes in chess competitions as a kid. And I have some money. I had a nice girl once. But all the times I remember winning in life, felt empty.

I tried cocaine exactly once in my life at a party a few years ago. It was just a small amount, but it felt exactly the same as winning does to me: Empty, like something is going wrong, like I broke the game or violated some rule, like I stooped to a level so low that the world just did not expect me to stoop to it.

I made this deliriant meme video a while ago, the algorithm eventually made it go viral. It felt bittersweet. Now I have a bunch of new subscribers, but my most successful video is about taking drugs that can kill you. I made that explicitly clear in the video itself, but it still felt dirty. I never get a clean, dignified win in this world anymore. Even my chess victories feel dirty in hindsight, I was older than the other kids.

Women love winners and hate losers. But again, we live in a world in which winning now feels terribly dirty. Women start to feel like a trap or like a consolation prize, in a world like ours. But just look around you in this world and you see that you’re better off losing.

The most successful Youtuber is named “MrBeast”. You can look up for yourself what this guy does, he figured out what the algorithm rewards and that’s just exactly what he does. It is like the algorithms are a kind of Satanic beings and we are all competing to shape ourselves in accordance to what the algorithms will reward, becoming manifestations of the demons ourselves, learning to adjust perfectly to their mold.

He now has the most successful show on Amazon prime, but his show is basically just Squid Game. He is just 26 years old and grew up in pretty unremarkable circumstances. There’s nothing special about him. He was just best at obeying the algorithm. The algorithm rewards slop, he first went viral spending more than a day counting to 100,000. That’s not a skill thing, that’s just dedication, letting Satan humiliate you, the equivalent of standing in front of the door of his infernal palace for a day before he lets you in.

The Youtube algorithm now wants you to stand in the corner of your video with your hands to your face, pulling a terrified expression. It’s basically just a humiliation ritual, the older guys who have had a channel with a bunch of subscribers for a few years don’t bother doing it. But young guys have no other choice, as this is now what the algorithm wants you to do.

I think social media is really kind of a mistake, especially now that it’s combined with algorithms. When you turn on your TV, you have a choice between a bunch of stuff, all produced by a societal elite of movie directors and actors. Low status white males will complain about this, insisting that they’re “librul elites”, but then they begrudgingly watch their movies anyway.

But now with social media, you don’t have that. You’re not forced to adjust to the tastes and ideas and experiences of the “librul elites”. No, the algorithm now tries to adjust to the lowest common denominator among a bunch of average people. So instead of watching a horror movie like the Exorcist or Poltergeist with an actual story and a script, you will watch some clickbait bullshit of a bunch of dudes goofing around with an EMF reader in a “haunted house”.

When this first started out, it appealed to us due to the “authenticity”. “Woah, this is just a regular guy going on adventures.” But when you’re watching something because of a sense of “authenticity”, what’s really going on is that it’s filling a void that should be filled by actual face to face social interaction. You’re not supposed to watch some guy explore an abandoned asylum, you’re supposed to hear some guy talk to you about how he explored an abandoned asylum in a pub somewhere.

But the lowest common denominator crap produced on Youtube now migrates to the television through streaming services. It becomes our culture. We’re now getting movies based on True Crime podcasts. The algorithms are beginning to dictate our culture to us. The problem is also that your brain adjusts to it. You don’t want to see an actual movie with a story anymore eventually, as it takes mental energy to follow a story.

You eventually just find yourself wanting to passively absorb moving imagery that evokes a particular vibe. I asked this guy at a party what sort of movies he likes. I didn’t really get an answer to that, he likes to just passively watch people fix stuff. That’s the sort of stuff people are starting to watch. For me to even just have this blog that people read is a privilege, because reading itself is just dying.

The brain maintains a limited group of skills, new skills tend to come at the cost of others. Brain-rot content is an outgrowth of that phenomenon. Even as a young man I noticed that movies from the 50’s and 60’s just felt too slow to me. Well, the movies I like now start feeling too slow to Zoomers. The brain damage from COVID also makes it difficult for people to focus.

The solution to this is really just to detox. You could just retreat to a mountain cabin for a few days with just some books as entertainment. But what also works is just blocking Twitter, TikTok, Reddit and other sites that offer your brain highly processed content.

The most important thing to comprehend is that your brain is constantly rewiring itself. Because it’s constantly getting exposed to clickbait brainrot content, that’s what the brain starts adjusting to. Over time you won’t even find yourself remembering there is a world of other stuff out there. You actively have to train yourself, to increase your attention span.

And equally important, every once in a while you have to just go to a quiet place, like a park, sit down, close your eyes and ask yourself:

“What did I like to do when I was thirteen?”

“What did I like to do when I was sixteen?”

“What did I like to do when I was nineteen?”

Really try to immerse yourself in those sensations. From there, you can then branch off towards other aspects of the world again.