There is a certain type of person everywhere now, especially online. He consumes endless information every day: philosophy, psychology, productivity, spirituality, neuroscience, business, self-improvement, history. He knows a little about everything and deeply experiences almost nothing. His entire identity becomes built around understanding instead of living. He watches videos about confidence instead of speaking confidently. Reads about discipline instead of becoming disciplined. Studies relationships instead of learning how to love. Consumes motivational content instead of taking action. He feels intelligent because he is constantly mentally stimulated. But stimulation is not transformation. Most of the time, knowledge becomes emotional protection. Reality is unpredictable. Reality humiliates. Reality exposes weakness. Books and ideas do not. Inside information, he can continue imagining himself as intelligent, deep, insightful, different from ordinary people. So he remains trapped in preparation. He constantly feels as if he is "becoming" someone, while his real life remains strangely untouched. He develops sophisticated language for problems he never confronts directly. He can explain human behavior beautifully while being unable to handle ordinary discomfort, rejection, uncertainty, loneliness, or risk. He slowly turns life into observation instead of participation. The internet rewards this personality heavily. He receives validation for sounding aware rather than becoming capable. Eventually, he begins confusing self-analysis with growth and information with wisdom. But beneath the intelligence usually exists the same thing: fear. Fear of failure. Fear of embarrassment. Fear of reality answering back. Because action destroys fantasy. The moment he truly acts, he can no longer hide inside potential.

why is the dating pool full of men who are so shy and awkward

Nobody warned me that if you start feeling your feelings all at once there’s a chance you go temporarily insane Like “has an ambulance called for you at the airport” insane

Toronto's towering temporary FIFA bleachers perfectly safe, builder says, especially on game day nationalpost.com/news/canada…

Staying cool under pressure is part of the job. Happy National Iced Tea Day to everyone keeping Canada secure, one calm, collected sip at a time. Strong brews. Stronger defenses.

JUST IN: Redditor claims he can now “use ChatGPT” in his head & accurately predict what it would say.

One of the things that seems so stupid and infantilizing about modern culture is that you can’t just talk to people like an adult now and reason through things and make the case for this or that and encounter people with agency to do anything about it. There’s nobody at the company to whom you can give a firm handshake and the sales pitch. In its place as a process. You follow the process. And then a decision is made in the background. Everything is like applying to college. So for example I ordered a water heater and I guess I didn’t notice that there was a separate option to have the guys carry it in for you. I got one of these fancy new heat pump water heaters and it’s much heavier than a normal water heater, which is already pretty bulky and heavy, and I can’t get it downstairs by myself. So I called to see if we can’t get the guys back out here to get it down into the basement. But of course there’s no making that happen. There’s no amount of money I could offer, no sweet talking. You can’t get anybody on the phone who has any agency to make this happen. There’s a process. And what I want is not part of the process. So instead what we have to do is I’m returning the original water heater and I ordered a new one and this time I checked the box to have the guys carry it into the basement. So later today, some people will come in a truck to take the original, perfectly fine water heater away. And then later different people will deliver a different water heater and carry it into my basement, because this time I checked the box that says they’re allowed to do that. This is all completely absurd. I am capable of understanding that everything is optimized for the more common case and that this is probably more efficient at scale. I can understand the benefits of that just fine. It’s just that the society it creates when things go wrong is one that feels very stupid and unsatisfying to normal people. And that’s a downside that actually does need to be registered.

So the solution is a bigotry of low expectations against men?

Nobody ever said it was 100% safe and effective. There was always a non-zero rate of serious side effects. The question was always whether the risks outweighed the benefits.