[Music] a lot of people have been feeling as if though something sinister is happening to their brains they feel as if though their excessive use of the internet and the types of videos they watch on there is making them dumber and this probably isn't news to anybody it is abundantly clear that basically every social media app now has some sort of short form content tab that you can click to and they kind of want you to click on it because they know that you will spend a lot of time on there because of the novelty
of it and the content itself is designed to keep you watching as long as possible by any means necessary sometimes even by playing two videos at the same time to keep the novelty up to keep the dopamine flowing but people have really started to notice that the more they consume this content the Dumber they feel the more useless they feel to the point where people have now coined the term brain rot content insinuating that by consuming this content your brain is rotting it is degenerating in some way and there's some truth to this Studies have
found that the human attention span is decreasing to the point now where the average phone pickup lasts about 10 seconds and that was in 2021 but people have been talking about this for a long time I'm not saying anything new here and the term brain rot wouldn't have been coined if nobody was talking about it but is it actually true is the modern internet landscape rotting holes in all of our brains to the point where we are just degenerate human beings now we are zombies just a slave to the algorithm prisoners to our phones and
is there nothing we can do about it well of course there's nothing you can do about it it's over we're doomed pack it up but here's the thing I think we're asking the wrong questions I think Society has become pretty obsessed with the IDE idea that external forces cause them to do certain things it's like oh this short form content is now on the internet and it's there and it's so addictive that it's making everybody just watch it and people are getting hooked on it and it's frying their brains and now we're just a bunch
of NPCs but the truth is nothing can make you do anything you know short form content is inanimate it can't make you watch it and there are plenty of things that might be really bad for you that you are currently not tempted to go and consume now there is something to be said about giving smartphones To Toddlers and turning them into iPad kids but if you're watching this then chances are you have a fully formed brain or something close to it and if that's the case I want you to know that you are in full
control over all of your actions in life even though it might not seem like it at times you know people who have anger issues they say man I just can't control my anger it's like well you can and a lot of people who go through Rehabilitation learn that they do have control over their anger and getting over their anger issues is about learning that they have had control is learning to exercise that control in a healthier way now this leads me to what I believe is the actual brain rot in society there is a pervasive
sentiment going on right now and I don't know how long it's been going on for I suspect a lot longer than social media has been around and it's this parasitic idea that you are not in control over your own actions it's this idea that the things that are around you in your environment inanimate objects situations can make you do things that you don't want to do that's just not true the real brain rot is thinking oh you know I should be doing my work but you know I'm just so addicted to my phone and I
I get down this rabbit hole and I can't stop or once I beat my internet addiction I will finally be a productive human being then I can start living the life I want I just need to you know reel it in I need to just learn how to beat this thing that type of belief system is a feedback loop that you will never get out of it's subscribing to this idea of helplessness it's determinism it's rejecting the idea that you have free will and when it comes to your own behaviors a lot of the time
the ideas that you subscribe to become true for you if you believe that you are helpless that you're just a leaf blowing in the wind in your own life then that will become true for you you'll wait around for some perfect situation to line up up the Stars will align perfectly and that will make you do something that you already want to do you make on average 35,000 decisions every single day a decision implies that there are multiple options on the table and that you have the autonomy to actually choose from an array of options
otherwise it's not really a decision which means that you have the ability to make a different decision every single one of these decisions can be different and just because certain decisions are a little bit harder or easier or they might feel that way doesn't mean that you don't have the option and that you don't make the decision so a really good example of this Distortion of control is the election that just happened in the United States I'm up here in Canada so I have a degree of separation from the drama so with the election you
have an outcome that shapes the shapes what it feels like to live in a certain country and right the country that you live in is your environment there are certain laws and there are certain rules and when those laws and rules change it can feel pretty different but whatever the outcome of an election is is the outcome right like you individually don't make a difference in that outcome you only have the illusion of making a difference you have very powerful people who Lobby and control things and have all of the money and power and they
present you with this option right here's your control citizen you can choose this candidate or this candidate and it makes you feel like you're really making a difference it's like oh cool I get to make a choice now the fate of the country is in my hands but it's like no it's not you individually don't get to decide what the food supply is or what the border security is like like you don't make all these decisions like you only have the illusion of decision so to argue about what that decision ultimately came to in my
opinion is really dumb doing that is like being involved in a poker game you're sitting there at the poker table and the dealer hands you a card and instead of trying to maximize the hand that you're dealt even if it's a horrible hand instead of trying to decide for yourself what you do when you get that hand you don't play the game and you argue with the dealer you argue with everybody at the table about like how stupid this hand is but it's like no matter what the hand you're dealt is the hand you're dealt
you may have an opinion and you might know for certain what a good hand looks like but even if you get the best hand in poker somebody else could have a better hand just based on the mixture of car at the table no matter what ultimately the decisions that you make will determine the outcome of the game for you you have far less control over the hand you're dealt than you think you do and you have way more control over how you play that hand than you've been led to believe so what does this all
mean how do we solve the problem of brain rot how do you take control over your own life and actually change your behavior so you stop feeling like a passenger in your own life and get back into the driver's seat well we'll go over some practical tips after I think the sponsor of today's video which is skillshare and I'm very happy that skillshare specifically is sponsoring this video because it's a great example of a platform that's not trying to farm your attention it exists to help you develop realworld skills that will help equip you to
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who use my link in the description below will get a one-month free trial of skillshare so make sure to take advantage of this amazing offer and thank you to skillshare for sponsoring this video okay so now that you're equipped with the mindset that will help you counteract brain rot which I believe is the most important step what are some practical ways that you can actually remember this mindset and stay on track so that you can start attacking life instead of being a passenger who just consumes stupid videos all day and regrets it later well the
number one thing that you can do is be conscious of this thing that I call mental posture and structure your day with that in mind so what the hell am I talking about so everybody kind of already in instinctually feels what I mean when I say mental posture you know when you're kind of consuming content all day say you're down a YouTube rabbit hole it feels like almost mentally your brain itself is lounging Back and You're scrolling content and you have this sort of passive mindset you know you want things to entertain you you want
things to affect you you don't really want to do anything the goal here isn't to be a perfect human being it's to feel as if though know that you're doing a better job of being a person the person that you want to be so what I've done is I've really made sure to structure my day so that I am starting the first half of the day with a more aggressive and proactive mental posture and it's really hard to get into that framework if the first part of your day is riddled with this sort of passive
mental posture which means don't start your day by getting into this YouTube rabbit hole don't start your day by being a passenger and a consumer of things and you do that by just doing nothing really right instead of going on your phone don't go on your phone it's that simple go get your coffee or whatever you want to do start your day off slow with very little stimulation and start thinking about the things you want to do that day and I think naturally your motivation kicks in if you don't flood it with consumption if you
have absolutely no stimulation except the delicious cup of coffee that you have and the sound of the rain hitting the window then your imagination will actually have time to breathe you'll think oh you know maybe you have to go to work I think most people have to go to work but it's like okay how do I want this work day to go you start thinking of ways that you can play your poker hand to the best of your ability you know what hand am I going to be dealt today and how can I play that
hand better whereas if you start the day and you you know for the first hour of the day before you go to work you're just in this YouTube shorts or Instagram reels bit then you're just going to start that day off being affected by things you have this mental posture of passivity and you're not going to attack life and mold it to your will and the second thing you can do is to eliminate things that pull you into this habit of consumerism one of the most useful things that you can do is a delete stupid
apps from your phone that you waste a lot of time on number one you know I make chronic Instagram deleter I'll download Tik Tok like once every two months when somebody sends me a Tik Tok and they and I have to react to it or respond to it and Tik Tok does that stupid thing where it makes you make an account or something I don't know just delete stuff that you don't want on your phone it sounds obvious but a lot of people don't do it they just have all these time wasting apps on their
phone and they expect that they won't click on it one day you don't have to delete your account although that's what I did you'll probably get there to be honest but just delete the app and then secondly go into the settings of your phone and disable like 99% of all of your notifications for things what do you really need to be notified about other than somebody sending you a text message directly or receiving a phone call you don't need Adobe PDF scanner texting you and causing a phone pickup Adobe PDF scanner what the so do
a serious vetting of your phone making sure that you are reducing phone pickups that will pull you out of being a proactive person in your life and back into being this tax seat driver and the third thing I would say is do as many things as you can that make you present you know I play hockey I go to the gym these things kind of pull you into the present moment and it gets you in the habit of actually doing things and moving things in space and time and contributing to the world physically and these
things can be things that you genuinely enjoy doing you know these are nice moments where you're not a mere battery for a giant corporate oligarchy these are moments where you break free of the Matrix and you're a real person in the real world doing real things maximize the time in your life where you're doing stuff like that even if you're going for a walk or grabbing coffee with a friend be a person in the world the Internet isn't real it's kind of just like pictures on a screen so stop looking at pictures on a screen
so much and go and live the life that you actually want to live
