How I Escaped the Internet and Found the Truth

Let me tell you everything I used to get wrong about myself—so we can fix it together (Pub. Jan. 2024)

Almost 100% of my time is spent indoors in some capacity, at school or home. My day is usually unplanned: I go between classes, do work, and maybe do some stuff for my channel, but I often waste time online. I'm secluded from many friends because I spend so much time on my endeavors that few know about (this channel) and have little social contact or romantic prospects. I pray most days (but not all) but am still undisciplined in many aspects I pray for (following through on my intentions, love, and kindness). Though I frequently extol their merits, I have average love and compassion despite frequently extolling their value and above-average productivity, but I need to improve. I often prioritize frivolous internet use over reading and working on set goals because I get more stimulation from dreaming and setting goals than from the discipline of achieving them. I am a right-leaning principled centrist, but I mostly use politics to distract and generate anger rather than create positive change. It is rarely a productive use of my energy. I'm selfish and arrogant in some respects and have never truly banished my ego and pride. All the worse, I have as much attention online as I do. 

I can trace many of my struggles to the internet and forces that prey on its users' vital energy and vigor. It is easy to get lost on the internet, full of beasts all trying to kill you. And they are all best friends. Let's break it down. These are the four monsters of the internet in the schema created by Meme Analysis.

The Alien is that which alienates. People whom the Alien possesses will seem foreign and unrecognizable to somebody outside of the technological haze. They are so poorly adjusted to life and antisocial that they must continue down the path of using the internet until they are entirely 'plugged into the web,' totally unrecognizable as sovereign human beings. The Alien is a passive nihilist with no hopes or dreams, just a mindless automaton that consumes information and entertainment. I would give myself a 2/10 on this. I am more active and open to reality. I have great dreams and visions for what I could do. I still have more potential and energy for my endeavors than almost anyone I know.

Moloch is the monster of entertainment, the god of bad games. There are good games where when you win, you become a psychically balanced and healthy individual, like running or lifting, and there are bad games where when you win, you become demoralized and sick of life, such as becoming the best subway surfer player or watching all 26 seasons of South Park. I am obsessed with metrics such as subscriber count, etc., and getting through the goals I've set for myself. However, this game is pretty good, and Moloch is the God of bad games. Still, there is always a negative tendency for the metric to become the target. I give in most to Moloch when I become distracted by short sound bites and bad online content, thereby sacrificing my human potential to Moloch. 4/10.

The Spider is the digital anima, the feminine eros you devote energy to. The anima is the contrasexual suppressed feminine soul within every man, just as the animus is the suppressed masculine soul in the woman. The anima is eros -- erotic energy -- and is always the expression of some inner psychic need left unaddressed. The internet weaves humanity's psychic energies and deficiencies into an oversoul into which we plug in and have no faintest understanding. The digital anima is the Spider, which weaves the internal psychic experience of the collective digital oversoul, the 'World Wide Web' if you will, which is poisoned and corrupted by the four monsters. I devote a smaller portion of my psychic attention to such *cough* mature media than many of my peers. Still, the Spider is also at the helm of the entire World Wide Web (not just a clever name) and is the archetypal structure of the Matrix. In that sense, you are not free from the digital anima until you develop a healthy relationship with the internet as a whole, have a healthy and non-online-based sexuality, and integrate your sexuality and desire with Logos, which is the eros's masculine counterpart of order and reason. Like a web, it's all interconnected, and if you are not a healthy individual, you will get caught like a fly in the web. 4/10.

The Minotaur is the monster of anger and radicalization. I'd give myself a 7/10 on this. I spend a decent amount of time, and it is the most rewarding activity for my lower appetites, to consume extremist political content, which makes me angry and destroys my drive more than any other force.

Genuinely think about this and give yourself a score for each of these traps: Alien, Moloch, Spider, Minotaur; 1-10? This number will be your media-induced alienation score. And then tally it up. Based on what I shared, I get a 17 out of 40, or a 4.25 out of 10. An actual extraterrestrial would be a 9 or 10 out of 10; this means someone the internet has entirely consumed, which I am nowhere close to. I still have excellent grades, live everyday life, am normal psychologically (i.e., no significant mental disturbances), and work towards positive goals.

The converse of the extraterrestrial is the hero, defined as "Someone able to utilize the internet without falling into a hole. They follow their own Golden Thread." They can create value and meaning out of digital interaction without becoming entranced. The hero is who I ought to be like because I need the internet to spread my message effectively of teaching metaphysics and ontology and setting forth an expansive knowledge of humankind's spiritual identity. Still, I can't become corrupted by it. To be on the internet, but not of the internet. That is the goal, my dear friends.

The hero is someone who has conscious control over their life and destiny. To be a hero takes mental discipline, and you can't allow yourself to be distracted. You have to participate in your future. Reality is built to consider your needs and intentions and satisfy them, but if you let yourself be used by the monsters of the internet, they will crush all of your dreams and intentions. Your hero score can be calculated by subtracting your digital alienation score from 10, which would be a 5.75/10 for me, which is better than I thought. "The hero can follow the Willed Path, which is the path chosen by a Hero." That means that they can do whatever they want. 

When you are entirely a hero, you can integrate the digital anima and have a healthy sexuality. You no longer are angry or resentful towards others online but rather have sympathy for e-girls who have allowed themselves to become vessels for the digital anima, online extremists who have fallen pray to the radicalization monster, secluded incels and video game addicts who have allowed the web to squash their potential and recognize that they've become lost in the most complex psychological maze ever created. No human has ever had to deal with energies of such magnitude before. 

What is the antidote? I will give you a way: Touch grass. 

For the next three months, I will go outside and exercise every day. Get down to a 5:30 mile and a 185 lbs bench. Get to 2000 subscribers on YouTube.

I spend almost all my time indoors, so daily 30-minute runs will change my life and mind. I long to breathe air. I will document my journey of slaying these monsters and climbing my way out of their rabbit hole, which is nothing but the path towards a monster. The antidote is to touch grass and interact with real people, such that they call you out when the things you believe sound crazy. If I'm online only, I can just as quickly be a Muslim theologian, an Antifa radical, a Nazi skinhead, or a socialist revolutionary. But if you live in the real world, you must check your opinions against reality.

YOU COULD BE GREAT. But some in the digital oversoul wish to keep you weak and angry. We are fighting four higher beings hosted by internet users' thought patterns and directed by their psychic energies. Defeat the Minotaur. Defeat the Spider. Defeat Moloch. Defeat the Alien. YOU COULD BE GREAT. We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Do not be trapped like a fly in the World Wide Web. 

These ideologies will straight-up lie to you. There are these "black-pillers" who say that their physical characteristics predestine the vast majority of men to be lonely forever. It's a gospel of losers. And it's not true. And you'd know that if you got off the computer for a minute. Go to a restaurant; most of the couples there are average-looking girls with average-looking guys; go to a party, normal-looking guys are hooking up with beautiful girls.

The whole black pill movement is like the fox without a tail from Aesop's Fables: they don't have tails, so they tell everyone else to cut theirs off, to resign to a life of involuntary celibacy, and never endeavor to live life or participate in their destiny. It's not a game you can win because you get more points by becoming cynical and misanthropic. This game is the trap of the Minotaur. Here's some top-tier direction: Do not listen to the advice of him who seeks to lower you to his level.

Do not make yourself a vessel for hatred and violence. As Dostoevsky so brilliantly said, Hell is the suffering of being unable to love. You are putting yourself in Hell. Ideology will only make you more antisocial and isolated from reality and polite society, which the Minotaur wants.

We must elevate the energy of the internet to a higher frequency, that of love and understanding and intelligent unity. The internet can be a positive force for good connections. But it is a cesspool of hatred and sickness now and needs saving. If you know what these monsters are doing to you, they can no longer defeat you because you are vibrating at a higher frequency. The signal you are putting out into the world is not something these monsters can latch onto. Know Thyself. The unexamined life is not worth living. In the words of Meme Analysis, "The problem is that essentially nobody has self-knowledge, but pretty much everybody has internet access." 

YOU COULD BE GREAT. You could be significant. You could matter. These monsters will only get better in the future. There will be a divergence into mass man, the group of those who are swept up by the online egregores, and another group, maybe 10%, who actively work on improving themselves to the point where they become whole and live a healthy and balanced life. Be in the latter camp. 

The sages teach that the antidote to the yetzer hara isn’t to escape the world—it’s to sanctify it. Not Tao, not archetypes, not metaphors. Torah. The living structure of the world as spoken by the One who made it. If the internet’s monsters want to destroy your soul, the mitzvot are how you armor it. Prayer. Shabbat. Tefillin. Torah learning. Honoring your parents. Guarding your eyes. These aren’t rituals—they’re weapons. You don’t need to invent the path. Hashem already gave it to you. Walk it.