Welcome to the Cyber Ascetics Collective.
The world has been full of disasters lately. At time of writing, California is burning (again), there’s a genocide raging through Palestine, and Elon keeps tweeting. The horrors are neverending, and each turn of the world will bring with it a fresh new stock of horrors.
Yet we must persist.
Despite the horrors, the Problem for the Individual today is the same as it has been for millenia:
Distraction.
With social media and a 24-hour news cycle, the problem of Distraction now grows at an unprecedented rate.
This post is about my attempt to conquer Distraction.
edit: this essay has since been distilled into a YouTube video, if you prefer watching over reading.
Part 1: The Challenge
For 77 days from Oct 17 ‘24 - Jan 2 ‘25, I did not**:
scroll any social media (fb, ig, twitter, snapchat, etc)
watch any video content (youtube, netflix, anime, etc)
listen to any music or podcasts
read any books
engage in dating/porn/masturbation
**disclaimer: I don’t have Herculean discipline. There were days when I “folded” and scrolled a little or watched a movie with friends. But for the most part, I stuck to the protocol and created a radical change from my normal media-consuming day to day.
I did this same media fast last year, but this year yielded far more results.
It shook my reality and I will continue to do it each year until I die.
This post is on the longer side, but the media fast is by far the most worthwhile thing I did in 2024, perhaps even the past decade. I hope it encourages you to try fasting from media for yourself, or even join me in next year’s fast.
Part 2: The Experience
At the beginning, things were easy. Excitement and willpower carried me through the first few days without trouble.
Things quickly became difficult.
I don’t use drugs and drink maybe 5 times a year with friends. Thus, media is my weapon of choice as an emotional coping mechanism and light dissociative.
Ripping away the media didn’t address the underlying motivations/causes that led me to use it in the first place. Ripping off a bandaid doesn’t heal a cut.
All of the angst and loneliness and boredom that would usually be dulled by media no longer had a place to go. So during the first week of the fast I noticed myself turn to the place of comfort for millions of Americans:
Amazon.com
Historically I’m not a shopper. My brain just wanted something to scroll through. Needless to say, I (thank god) wasn’t spending 3-4 hours a day scrolling Amazon.
It took me a day or two to fully notice and tone down the Amazon window shopping. I knew something would come to fill the media vacuum (it always does), but never expected it would be Amazon. This would have a domino effect later (surprisingly not in a bad way!) which I’ll get to.
The second “cheat” I noticed was finding myself talking to ChatGPT more. Just to have something to read.
Rebellion characterized this first part of the fast. My mind would find some cheeky, less potent new way to distract itself, and I’d reel it back in.
I bought a Demon Slayer (Zenitsu) lego sword set. Building it was fun and fully engaging, but left me with a palpably hollow feeling afterwards. A sense of “what was the point of this?”
I spent a lot of time lying on the floor looking up at the ceiling. I texted and hung out with friends more. I played more music.
This “primordial chaos” phase of the fast meandered about for the first week or two.
Little by little, everything started to fall into order.
Part 3: The Results
I’ll go ahead and split this section up into four+1 main categories:
sleep
exercise
creative
spirit
soft benefits
~ Sleep Results ~
Result 1: Consistent sleeping from 11pm - 8am
Boredom permeated my waking life during the fast. Especially at night. I ended up getting so bored that I literally had this feeling of shrugged shoulders and “damn.. might as well just sleep ig”.
Before, my evenings would be a smorgasbord of youtube and/or anime while eating dinner. I’ve had a love affair with the manic creative energy of 2am for as long as I can remember. But with no media, I no longer had a reason to stay up so late.
In the boredom, I was inspired to set a bedtime alarm. It still goes off every night at 9:31pm. I wrap up what I’m doing, shower, stretch, meditate, then sleep at ~11pm.
Today is 13 days post-fast, and this result has largely stuck. Especially the:
Result 2: Easy wake up at 8am
Historically, I’m an alarm snoozer. My previous pattern was:
Set phone alarm, have phone in my bed
Alarm goes off. Snooze alarm
snooze again, maybe again
Scroll on phone for a bit in bed
finally peel myself out of bed
I think a lot of people follow this same pattern. I cannot emphasize enough that pre-fast, I almost NEVER left my bed in the morning without a snooze and/or scroll.
Why did this change? A combination of factors:
Empty space for my mind to boogie helped me remember these tips:
phone sleeps outside the bedroom
put alarm clock across the room so you have to get out of bed to turn it off
This reminder + early fast Amazon scrolling led me to purchase a cheap sunlight alarm clock, which I put on the other side of the room
A secret third thing I’ll touch on in the exercise results section
I snoozed the alarm clock maybe once during the whole fast, and have not snoozed in the 13 days post-fast.
Crucially, I already KNEW these tips. More information did not help my sleeping issues. What helped was having enough empty space to REMEMBER the tips, and then ACT on them.
You likely already know what you have to do. You just don’t have the empty space to let it simmer in remembrance and then crystallize into action.
These sleep shifts on their own would be monumental, life-altering changes. But they don’t even scratch the surface.
~ Exercise Results ~
Result 1: Running 1-2 miles every morning
With my newfound consistent and juicy sleep routine set up and a bunch of head empty time, I remembered an inspiring old instagram reel I’d forgotten about.
Something told me to revisit the reel and I broke the fast for 1 minute to re-watch it. It’s about Larry Lewis, an assistant to Harry Houdini who would run 6 miles every morning even past the age of 100.
A switch flipped, and crystallized into action.
When I started the fast in October, I had no idea that I’d arrive at January 2nd with a consistent daily morning jogging practice. Today was day 51.
I started my morning runs on November 25th, the Monday before Thanksgiving. On November 26th, I woke up sick—sore throat, mucous, headache, etc.
Coincidences don’t exist.
I ran that morning, and the next, and the next, and so-on. I ended up being sick for 19 days (probably due in part to the running), but made it through the sick without missing a single day.
Result 2: More gym time
One theme kept coming up during the fast. Historically I’ve been an expert at knowing what to do but not actually doing it. I think Many people are in the same boat. But during the fast, I actually started doing those things.
Latent “wisdom” started crystallizing into action.
I “realized” that I could just go straight to the gym after work (duh!), but I started doing that more often. Upping from an average of twice a week to four times a week.
Before the fast started I sort of knew in my brain that I could potentially go to the gym after work. I knew the option existed. I even knew it was a good option, convenient, efficient, and would be good for me. Yet, action eluded me completely up until a few weeks into the fast.
I don’t know how to put my finger on this. It goes back to the notion that I/you/we already have the answers we need. We just don’t take action. For some reason, the empty space created by the fast allowed action to take place. Yin spills over into Yang.
Result 3: Did a marathon
In April of 2024, I decided to try running and signed up for (and completed, somehow) a 50km ultramarathon. I happily retired from running after that hot pile of ass, but when my admirable coworker asked me to sign up for another marathon in November I knew I had to dust off the ol’ shoes for one last rodeo.
Long story short I did it. I did not do it well. I beat out a 72 year old lady by a whopping 10 seconds. Out of ~2k runners I was in the slowest 1.5%. Two miles out from the end I asked multiple cops (politely) to put a bullet in my third eye.
Just for the record, I did both marathons wearing these monstrosities:
Which I think counts for something. Take the barefoot pill, struggler. Ease into it and expect it to feel normal after a year or two.
~ Creative Results ~
Result 1: Flute Mania
In the boring primordial chaos of the fast, I often turned to the piano or bass guitar or bansuri (Nepali/North Indian bamboo flute) to quench my thirst for stimulation.
CREATING music was totally allowed—just not consuming it.
Over time, I’d reach for the bansuri more and more. With nothing coming into my head, I had a lot of thoughts and other things rumbling around up there. Specifically a LOT of different melodies.
Azalea Town from Pokemon, Despacito, Rosalina’s Observatory from Mario Galaxy, Animal Spirits by Vulfpeck, etc.
A melody would come into my head, I’d figure out how to play it on the flute, and then write it down on a sheet of paper. Slowly the paper filled.
This combined with the early Amazon scrolling led to a rapid increase in the flute supply. The arsenal added a Chinese Dizi, a Japanese Shakuhachi, an Irish practice flute, and a few more bansuris.
I played for an hour or two a day, sometimes up to four hours in a single day.
Cultivating this skill felt very worthwhile, especially with regards to how it meshed with my spiritual practice:
