I stopped scrolling, watching, reading, and nutting for 77 days. It fixed everything.

Reflections from Media Fast 2024

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.

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:

1. Set phone alarm, have phone in my bed

2. Alarm goes off. Snooze alarm

3. snooze again, maybe again

4. Scroll on phone for a bit in bed

5. 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:

1. Empty space for my mind to boogie helped me remember these tips:

   1. phone sleeps outside the bedroom

   2. put alarm clock across the room so you have to get out of bed to turn it off

2. 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

3. 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:

~ Spiritual Results ~

Result 1: Bhajans x10000

As a kid, I grew up going to a weekly Puja/Kirtan/Satsang (Hindu devotional singing worship) where we’d sing bhajans (Hindu hymns) for about two hours.

I remember a lot of the bhajans to this day, but some of the more obscure ones I had only fragments of verses left in my head.

Turns out, ChatGPT is really good at reconstituting lost bhajans/mantras/slokas from the disparate fragments in my head.

Here’s its output when I ask “can you help me remember a sloka that has something like poornameeda purnamidam?” A very clunky question with very questionable spelling:

Certainly! The sloka you're referring to is a beautiful and profound verse from the Isha Upanishad. Here is the full text along with its meaning:

Sloka

Sanskrit:
Om purnam adah purnam idam,
Purnat purnam udachyate,
Purnasya purnam adaya,
Purnam evavashishyate.

Meaning:

"That is whole; this is whole.
From the whole, the whole becomes manifest.
Taking away the whole from the whole,
The whole remains the whole."

Explanation:

This verse is a declaration of the completeness and infinite nature of the universe and the Divine (Brahman). It reflects the idea that everything—both the seen and unseen—is inherently whole and interconnected.

Even when a part (an individual or creation) arises from the whole (the source), it does not diminish the completeness of the source. The essence of the whole remains undivided and eternal.

(there was even more, left out for brevity)

With the help of Chat Gupta, I was able to mine a number of bhajans, mantras, and slokas from fragments of memory. This was meaningful not on just a spiritual level, but on a personal and cultural one as well.

I was able to learn to play many of the dredged bhajans on my bansuri flute, which ended up being a deeply rich combination. Being able to reconstitute and reimagine hymns from my childhood with a new and deeper understanding and in a different form brought about a peaceful satisfaction I’ve never really experienced before. People will say “God’s plan is long”, and I think this experience is the type of thing they’re talking about when they say that.

~

Result 2: Actually meditating consistently

Meditation has never stuck for me. Or at least, it hadn’t until this media fast. I never understood why it’s so important. I had played around with techniques but I lacked the conviction // faith to actually do it.

I understand it now. I do it now.

So much of the story of the fast is about the times when I broke the fast. During the 19-day sickness my mind tricked me into watching some YouTube. “We’ve been sooo sick but still kept up with our morning runs—we deserve to have a little toobies as a treat~!”

The video I watched was a livestream from Dr. K of Healthy Gamer, a Harvard psychiatrist who also studied to become a monk in India for 7 years. As far as I can tell, he’s learned the 🔑s and is a regular source of inspiration and wisdom for me.

The video (paywalled smh) was an in-depth discussion of the idea of inner Shakti, or ones “inner well of energy”, and how to grow it.

It’s too long of a topic to cover here, but I’ll be writing a post titled smth like “The mental shift that got me to meditate every day” soon, and you can get notified when that drops below.

I do a simple mantra meditation with rudraksha // mala beads.

I lost track of how many days it has been (over 70? No misses).

Most nights I chant 33 repetitions. Some nights 12, and rare nights just 3. The important shift is the space for it exists now.

Crucially, this space was hollowed out during the media fast, when I had an abundance of empty space/time. It would’ve been much harder to claw out space for meditation when that space was already filled (with media and the bs that comes with a clouded mind).

I’m still a baby with meditation. Haven’t had any mystical or transcendental experiences. Haven’t nut the zafu using only the power of the mind. No otherworldy visions etc. It makes no difference. I have 2/3rds of a life left to continue on. Grateful that it seems to be sticking this time around.

~ Soft Results ~

When trying to explain my 2024 media fast experience, people get an idea in their heads that it was joyous or ecstatic or felt cleansing and healing. Like on an emotional level.

The reality is that, on an emotional level, the fast didn’t feel very different from “normal” life. If anything it felt worse as I had fewer places to run from my “negative” emotions.

Parts of it felt very meaningful, and parts felt exciting too. But parts of normal life often feel meaningful and exciting.

I think it’s very important that the key results of the fast were not directly emotional in nature.

A purely emotional result would’ve been “too shallow” or “too temporary”. The fast worked on a deeper level, of overall orientation in the world. On the level of clarity of what is true and/or worthwhile.

Also on the level of sowing seeds that may bear fruit years and decades after the fast is over. The fast has ended, yet I am still running and meditating every day.

An eternity of moments transpired during the fast and words cannot even come close to expressing the full effects. I’m not even consciously privy to most of them yet.

Conversations became more potent and entertaining. With the empty mental space I’d often revisit conversations and turn them over in my head, imagining different things I could’ve said or follow-up questions. I felt genuinely more interested in what people had to say and I think they could feel that sometimes as well.

~

If I had to sum up this year’s fast in a word, that word would be “clarity”.

Clarity of my emotions, avoidant compulsions, clarity on what is genuinely worthwhile and what is just another “waste of time” or “staying stuck”. Clarity on how I might be called to exist in the world, and clarity on how to change. Clarity on how to move forward.

The horrors are neverending. But we can all move forward.

~

This year we had a groupchat with about 40 folks who participated in various capacities. Some cut out just TikTok, some attempted to meditate every day, and so-on.

If this sort of challenge sounds interesting to you, I’ll be doing it again next October (and every year following), so feel free to subscribe below or follow me on Facebook to be notified. Thanks for reading the whole thing!

-Cuckfucius