I started this Substack at the height of COVID, when the word “doomscrolling” entered our lexicon.
I’ve been very grateful to share my thoughts and tips with you guys through some of the most difficult years of my life, and today I am extra pleased to introduce the idea of the Normie Restoration to you all.
I’m convinced that cooking our brains online and our increased loneliness are BAD things.
I am also convinced that malicious governments such as the current one in the Kremlin seek to turn good people against each other, and that this is also a BAD thing.
I also believe that dating apps are affecting many people negatively — by locking them into endless swiping cycles.
I believe the loneliness epidemic is real (and smart people agree with me), and that it ungood for our collective well-being.
Think of your typical plane crash: Usually, a sum of different problems causes the incident. I am seeing a multitude of problems in the online world that are combining to enshittify our lives.
This newsletter has always been dedicating to helping people achieve good outcomes online — and everywhere — and I’ve decided to get more aggressive about it.
I want to hear from you on this subject. How do you navigate the online world? How do you seek to preserve and multiply your happiness? What are the challenges you are facing as you use social media and read the news? And what topics do you want to hear about?
One of the reasons I stepped away from traditional opinion writing years ago has to do with the fact that so much of it is simply unhelpful. It’s meant to enrage you, or scare you, sometimes for good reason, but when it offers no practical solutions for the problems it highlights and for the bad feelings it encourages it does something bad to us. Participating in that can get you money and attention, sure, but there is a danger of developing cancer of the soul.
So I am thrilled to have people supporting my work and ideas away from all of that static. I am thrilled to have you read my writing, and I hope you continue sharing it with the people you care about!
I’ve got big changes on the horizon in my life, and I am hoping these changes will be beneficial to spreading the message of the Glorious Normie Restoration.
In the last few years, I dealt with immense professional upheaval, buried my beloved father, watched Russia invade my native homeland, and took a rapist to court. I’m saying this not because I want your to feel bad for me, but because I want you to understand that if *I* can make positive changes in my life, so can you. So can many other people.
I thank you for being here. You fucking rule.
Get out, and do something real. Ideally find people in real life that you enjoy spending time with for a common interest / cause / whatever. There is much emptiness online, a hole that no amount of YouTube / TikTok / whatever short dopamine hits to the brain can ultimately fill. We are social creatures and that hole is companionship.
and if alone-time is your thing, that’s ok too. But online time should be treated like just about everything else, ie in moderation and ideally with a purpose other than endlessly scrolling for the latest (fake) affirmation.