4 ms·

I'm totally with the author - what he calls 'insight porn', I think of as 'grind porn' - as underneath the 'insights', I believe what the genre is really sellin

by mft_ 4y ago

I'm totally with the author - what he calls 'insight porn', I think of as 'grind porn' - as underneath the 'insights', I believe what the genre is really selling is the paradigm that you're not achieving enough, and you need to work harder, and because there are only so many hours in the day, you need to work smarter too, and to do that you need our insights to help you be much more efficient. So I'd take it a step further - not just avoid insight-/grind-porn, and grind-adjacent-porn too. By this, I mean the equally large industry around life optimisation - and consider it adjacent because of course you need to optimise your health, wellbeing, sleep, weight, muscle volume, whatever, to be a fully productive human and achieve the heights that are expected of you. Take (possibly) the Daddy of the all: Tim Ferriss' blog/podcast. I believe it's basically well-meaning, but holy hell if you wanted to learn from and apply the life optimisations of all of his guests, you'd almost need to make it a full-time activity. (I guess that's why some of them --Peter Attia, for example-- are really appearing on the podcast to advertise their business, which [if you're rich enough] will take most of the hard work out of figuring everything for yourself.) And of course, don't get me started on trying to follow any of the advice while living in the Europe, without easy access to many of the items recommended. And some of this slips out of the recrational space into the professional, too. A while back, I became aware of a professional/life coaching business[0] which was more holistic than the usual behaviourally-focussed professional coaches I'd experienced. Lots of well-meaning advice... until it hit me: maybe if I need to employ all of the little lifestyle marginal gains --green tea, optimised sleep, optimised diet, exercise-- just to cope with my f*cking job, the toxic demands of job itself is the problem? Is it possible we've gone too far towards accepting and adapting to the grind... and maybe it's time to wind it back a little? [0] https://tignum.com/ https://tignum.com/

nonrandomstring 4y ago
I think what's really being sold is "simplicity" > It’s so, so simple. Complexity is overwhelming us all. Who doesn't want simplicity? Simplicity is to thinking what convenience is to labour. All you must do is reject all that baggage of education, moral struggle and "overthinking" things, and embrace the banal. Behind many "Epiphanies", IMHO, is a message to "Let us do your thinking for you".
ChildOfChaos 4y ago
I've followed Tim for a good amount of years and the thing that hit me the most was when he talked about using tools for his socials to make sure he never saw the time line. It made me think, he is happy to use the tool for his own gain, but opening acknowledges that it's bad for him, of course, most people in his situation would be the same, but it made me think, how all of that is mostly for his gain, not what a lot of the content consumers assume, for there gain. It's really just entertainment disguised as something more, might as well just watch Netflix. Also it's abundantly clear that a lot of these creators don't listen to other podcasts etc, why is that? Being a creator and having a big following is a decent and fun life, but it's completely separate to being a consumer and all these consumers following this content wanting to learn to be more like the person that is creating the content, when the irony is, the biggest step they could take to doing that, is stop consuming it all.
- piaste 4y ago
  > using tools for his socials to make sure he never saw the time line I don't use socials, so I need some help understanding this sentence, please. What does it mean to "[not] see the timeline" and why is it important?
  - ChildOfChaos 4y ago
    Basically, the timeline was just another word used for the feed. He didn't want to see the feed that everyone was posting because he knows it just saps your attention / can be toxic, but he wanted the ability to post on other people's feeds so they would see the content he wanted to promote.

by mft_ 4y ago

nonrandomstring 4y ago

I think what's really being sold is "simplicity" > It’s so, so simple. Complexity is overwhelming us all. Who doesn't want simplicity? Simplicity is to thinking what convenience is to labour. All you must do is reject all that baggage of education, moral struggle and "overthinking" things, and embrace the banal. Behind many "Epiphanies", IMHO, is a message to "Let us do your thinking for you".

ChildOfChaos 4y ago

I've followed Tim for a good amount of years and the thing that hit me the most was when he talked about using tools for his socials to make sure he never saw the time line. It made me think, he is happy to use the tool for his own gain, but opening acknowledges that it's bad for him, of course, most people in his situation would be the same, but it made me think, how all of that is mostly for his gain, not what a lot of the content consumers assume, for there gain. It's really just entertainment disguised as something more, might as well just watch Netflix. Also it's abundantly clear that a lot of these creators don't listen to other podcasts etc, why is that? Being a creator and having a big following is a decent and fun life, but it's completely separate to being a consumer and all these consumers following this content wanting to learn to be more like the person that is creating the content, when the irony is, the biggest step they could take to doing that, is stop consuming it all.

piaste 4y ago
> using tools for his socials to make sure he never saw the time line I don't use socials, so I need some help understanding this sentence, please. What does it mean to "[not] see the timeline" and why is it important?
- ChildOfChaos 4y ago
  Basically, the timeline was just another word used for the feed. He didn't want to see the feed that everyone was posting because he knows it just saps your attention / can be toxic, but he wanted the ability to post on other people's feeds so they would see the content he wanted to promote.