I'd make that a gift link but I'm out of them, but I think you can figure it out..
November 28, 2025
"Think of all the lost boys who have disappeared into their rooms, only to return as something unrecognizable, like a modern changeling."
That's my favorite sentence in "Your Phone Isn’t a Drug. It’s a Portal to the Otherworld" (NYT).
Posts
55 comments:
Gift link: "Your Phone Isn’t a Drug. It’s a Portal to the Otherworld"
'If you believe in nothing, you will fall fof anything' chesterton supposedly remarked
If your belief system is so fragile you will fall for transgenderism hamas worship 'white fragility' et al
“The internet is a place crowded with uncanny entities and enchantments. Sometimes these enchantments reach back into our physical world. If we hope to travel wisely, the old instructions still apply: mark the threshold, remember that time moves differently there and know that every gift from the otherworld carries a price.
Above all, keep part of yourself rooted in the real world — grounded, embodied and tethered to other people. We’ve seen what happens when someone wanders too far. Think of all the lost boys who have disappeared into their rooms, only to return as something unrecognizable, like a modern changeling. Or the many adults who have fallen victim to conspiratorial thinking, caught the way wanderers once followed will-o’-the-wisps into the marsh, seduced by lights that were always illusory.”
The author is correct that there is no going back voluntarily. However, reality has a way making things happen involuntarily.
When family church and school built up the country instead of instilling hatred against one or another party
Thats the granscian walk through the institution that folks from allen bloom to chris rufo have tracdd
It's brain fungus for our children. And if you take away the phone, curtail the internet, then you're a luddite parent of a child in full explosive mode.
Similarly western media and education dissolves traditional institutions abroad so consequently traditional cultures rebel
Good advice from Inga. This advice also for those who wander too far into the signposts that are planted by legacy media. Do not wander too far into the bubble. There lie dragons.
Thanks, Tim.
A.I. is Grima Wormtongue.
If you call young white men racist and toxic and drive them out of school and belittle the honest trade work most of them are good at there will be consequences.
We let rich white over educated women take over the education system and they have predictably turned our public schools into a Misandrist cult that systematically turns young men into angry broken vessels.
The next decades will be a revenge tour. And the college educated Karen's who prompted this have earned everything that follows.
There is something to mcluhsns medium is the messagd
But the message is as important
Those messages are not unique to these shells however
Those alienated from these progressive cultures will find some
Oasis some shoal to attach themselves to
"Or the many adults who have fallen victim to conspiratorial thinking,"
Yes, believe Dr Fauci when he says it wasn't him or his bat virus chimera research investigating the STING pathways!
Believe what the news tells you!
The problem for the ruling elite is that they no longer control information or the asking of questions, and therefore the application of logic to that information.
Sure, phones are a problem for young minds, and sure, you should stay grounded to your friends, but to extend that to the idea that one should not question narratives presented to us by the media or politicians is more three card monte, slipping in an unrelated point.
If it weren't for conspiracy theories, how much actual news about Trump would make it to the MSM, for example. I don't think that Inga really understands what she is asking, or are only people hired by the billionaires who own the media allowed to form theories about conspiracies?
Data shows that parents want children to have phones in classrooms - in case of a emergency or school shooter.
Data also shows that children learn to engage with other children and subject matter when phones are banned from the class room.
We have told young men to work for 15$ and hour so they can pay a $2200 dollar mortgage and get married to a woman that will divorce him and take the house and the kids and make him pay her half his paycheck for 18 years for the last several decades.
And now we are shocked when men decide to play video games instead.
95% of people in jail are men.
Nearly twice as many boys drop out of school.
Males have 4 times the suicide rate.
95% of work related deaths are men.
90% or wartime casualties are men.
We really need to take a hard look at universal suffrage.
I do not believe that it is possible for a person with a normal moral understanding to be cynical enough to get to the truth of what is going on, and labeling the people sniffing around their BS illogical narratives as "conspiracy theorists" is day to day maintenance of their narrative power.
The irony of the new york times pushing this viewpoint well its ouroboros
You don't have to give your children free reign of the Internet. They don't have to have a phone when they're twelve. But parents have to also buy in. One TV in the house. One computer in a family area and everyone socializes together every night instead of retreating to a screen.
Jaq said...
I do not believe that it is possible for a person with a normal moral understanding to be cynical enough to get to the truth of what is going on, and labeling the people sniffing around their BS illogical narratives as "conspiracy theorists" is day to day maintenance of their narrative power.
Illegitimate Regimes have followed this pattern for millennia.
They have always consolidated power in a shrinking number of hands as they progress because their natural foundation is greed.
And they always fall once a critical mass of the population no longer feels like they are a part of the social contract.
What phones have done in current times is transfer the conflict from physical force to information force.
But Elon buying X has created a new paradigm much like the Gutenberg Press did.
If the narratives from the New York Times, for example, weren't so laughably illogical, and obviously aimed at manipulating people that they must consider either deluded or moronic, if they printed news that mapped better to the real world, you know, things like it's possible that certain men take advantage of their gender rules to commit rape or exhibitionism, or just peeping tomery; that they pretend that this is not possible? Well, there you have fertile ground for people to look elsewhere for some ground truth.
And he is as much a target as thd owner of telegram which transmits samizdat some of it foolish
Back when dorsey and zuckerberg held the reins
So the best friend was entranced by lesbian porn only to return from the threshold and soon she and Katya Ungerman will be scissoring as the toddler looks on. Did I get that right?
https://open.substack.com/pub/boriquagato/p/backing-up-the-shark-truck?
Achilles at 11/28/25, 9:12 AM appears to be advocating that men should lose their right to vote. Or is he advocating that women should lose their right to vote so that men will be better men?
In other words, the phone lets you get around the lefty gatekeeping of school and the press.
Its such a gaseous effusion anyone can make anything from it
Kids these days!
What’s the matter with kids these days?
You know right
of course pink floyd was wrong 'they wanted thought control'
That song was so much self indulgent tripe
Just as with python they poured acid into the institutions and then there was no foundation
The NYT is a portal to an otherworld where boys disappear into their rooms and return as girls.
And to think my generation was raised on 2 hours of TV a night!
Electronic interfaces have shaped our consciousness in ways that are not fully understood yet. We have not yet seen the effect of cradle-to-grave exposure or reliance on electronic life, so it is not yet possible to comprehend its reach. Yes, it's super efficient knowledge transfer. Yes, it's insidious and further-reaching than you first assume. Yes, it's changing your brain and your sensory system, fundamentally. Yes, there are good and bad aspects to all of this. The perception is that it's a big 'net positive', and this is my perception too.
Increasingly, our young are being educated using tablets and other electronic interfaces. What is 'too much'? We, as the older beings still familiar with the pre-electronic ubiquity, are seeing the quickened intellects, the easy familiarity with electronic systems, the souped-up focus, the instantaneous distancing when attention is taken hostage by the device.
My grandkid's screen time is limited. There are days when they go without. But they're not missing it, because their parents focus instead on creative play, on outdoors time, on physical and mental development. Both parents actively engage with joking, comedy, active play, screeching and hollering right along with the kids when it's play time. There's also church time, work time, serious time, quiet time. It's not undisciplined, quite the opposite.
What will happen when they enter school? Local public schools are OK, but not exceptional. The region is growing by leaps and bounds, so right now capacity-building is the priority. But I know one thing: I don't want to see my grandkids raised by the internet, by 'knowledge systems' and curriculum that is based on delivery by electronic interface. I've seen enough of that to be able to compare it to more traditional methods. It needs to be the latter.
Or the many adults who have fallen victim to conspiratorial thinking, caught the way wanderers once followed will-o’-the-wisps into the marsh, seduced by lights that were always illusory.
"Always illusory", MY ASS. If there's one thing we can be certain of these days, it's that there's a sizable subset of conspiracy theorists who are owed an abject apology.
Yes, there are rivers of conspiratorial trash on the Internet, from 1000 year old blood libels against the Jews to the latest comet/UFO/Nazi pyramid alien bases in Antarctica horse shit. And certainly AI is only going to magnify this, from here forward.
But transparency in the Internet age has also revealed the truthful basis of many other conspiracy theories that are more mundane, but ultimately more corrosive.
Are the legacy news media coordinating and shading and suppressing coverage for the benefit of leftist political goals and governmental aggrandizement, and in some cases even falsifying stories for the political gain of the Democrat party? You bet your ass they are.
Are Democrat politicians and Democrat government workers and Democrat NGO's and bigfoot Democrat donors looting the public treasury for the financial advantage of the Demcrat party? No doubt they are, or at least were until DOGE came along.
Are leftists in every organ of government from the IRS to the CIA to the FBI to the New York Attorney General's office conspiring to misuse the fearsome powers of government to suppress the civil rights of their enemies, from Donald Trump down to Tea Party grandmas in Betsy Ross costume? Oh, for sure, going on for decades now.
Is the "climate change" racket driven by a cabal of co-conspirators who are not just suppressing dissenting scientific studies, but outright falsifying official government records and scientific data stretching back decades? Right again.
Are Bond-villain billionaires like Soros and Hoffman financing violent Antifa/BLM mobs, NGOs that import armies of angry young men of military age from the dumbest and most violent countries on earth, and implanting communist termites in state and local government offices across the country, in hopes of triggering a Cloward-Piven event to destroy the US and replacing it with a collectivist global dictatorship? You got it.
The average person has not been nearly conspiratorial-minded enough. They have no idea of the diabolical wickedness that is arrayed against them in the shadows.
“Are Democrat politicians and Democrat government workers and Democrat NGO's and bigfoot Democrat donors looting the public treasury for the financial advantage of the Demcrat party? No doubt they are, or at least were until DOGE came along.”
Never vote blue, no matter who.
For the Record' Investigation: It Was the Deadliest Insider Attack During the War in Afghanistan. Who Paid the Man Who Pulled the Trigger? | Blaze Media https://share.google/JhotmDXUgdk4wqjmB
“ Just as with python they poured acid into the institutions and then there was no foundation”
Very true, stick with C23 , small and close to the metal. Python is the new basic.
Iswdt
Excellent essay.
Thank you for the link. Ungerman also understates the problem: AI doesn’t just enlarge the portal to the Otherworld; it uncritically casts the user as the hero.
>Peachy said...
Data shows that parents want children to have phones in classrooms - in case of a emergency or school shooter.<
I hear theses two batches of shit all the time.
Yes, how did we ever survive without these critical implements for handling emergencies?!
And, just wondering...In the case of a school shooter, what exactly is the critical role of a cell phone with a kid? So he can call Mom and tell her that there is a shooter in the school? And then?... (Don't worry Ma, more than you could ever want to know about it will be on every television station in the country within minutes.)
Electronic information access is extremely efficient, but it doesn't stick. The original meaning of the term "grok" in the sci-fi novel meant more than just to understand something, it meant to understand it, understand its implications, to completely internalize it. Well maybe Grok does that, but the person using Grok doesn't.
For example, you can explain scales and modes to a music student in ten minutes, all of them, how to calculate them, how the student should use them to improvise or compose music, but, if that student doesn't practice that knowledge every day for months, at least, they will never truly grok it; incidentally "truly grok" is a redundancy.
If you are driving down the interstate, can you describe where you are right now? Sure, will you be able to describe it in an hour? Hmmm... "efficient knowledge transfer" works between electronic devices.
Altcels
If you are still skeptical of the power and reach of electronic communication, just take your kid, infant through late toddler, and pull up Ms. Rachel on your device. They are instantly and totally glued to the screen, unbreakable. It's freakin' scary, because she's so non-toxic, but your imagination takes over on the potential.
I tend to agree with Achilles' overall points earlier in the comments. I might even go further noting that classroom teachers were directed, some years ago, to quit calling on the boys who were aggressively raising their hands or speaking out of line with the answers. And encourage the girls, who were more reserved, to speak up and come up with the answers. Also- daily curricula were refocused to gain more of the attention and enthusiasm of the girls, and tamper down the boys. All the while, boys are diagnosed with ADHD 3 times as much as girls. Boys are boys. Twitchy. Get bored easily- especially with nonsense talk. Like puppies, they are highly energetic, so it's difficult to keep them down in classrooms. Nature is what nature is. But we decided to drug our boys for being boys. Generations of boys and young men have been on 'ADHD drugs' for years, stunting their very essence in some cases (yes...it helps some boys, but over-diagnosis has definitely taken place).
Add in the teaching of men being toxic and masculinity as a trait being toxic, well...boys become discouraged at all of it. And young men pull back, remove themselves from the regular flow of life around them. Into their bedrooms, social media, games, and whatever follows that.
We did that to our boys. I don't think it's up for debate. Some got past it. Some were unaffected. But far too many were wrecked by the combination of things stated here and in Achilles posts.
Never vote blue, no matter who.
----------
Keep voting red, soon you'll be dead.
Seriously, no need to have a slogan pisser. Vote independent. Think for yourself throughout your life. Not that hard really...
Some people can handle independence.
Some people can't. Who are you?
If your belief system is so fragile you will fall for transgenderism hamas worship 'white fragility' et al
--------
You can't get infected, like w/AIDS/HIV.
Talk to your children. The world evolves...
Protect them; teach them to protect themselves.
(yes, we will lose some, especially early on. That's life, and death. Same as it ever was...)
Temujin said...
We did that to our boys. I don't think it's up for debate. Some got past it. Some were unaffected. But far too many were wrecked by the combination of things stated here and in Achilles posts.
The one thing I want to add to Temujin's post is that I believe history has always been cruel to the majority of boys.
For almost all of history about 20-40% of men live a life of wealth and privilege, they take, and care for most of the women who live in relative comfort, and 60-80% of men live shitty short brutal lives in pain and loneliness.
For a brief period of time Christianity imposed a pair bonding mating pattern on society and elite men and women were forced to live in a society where adultery was shamed.
This turned the majority of men into a positive influence on society and that is why the United States lifted billions of people out of poverty.
But women and elite men rebelled against pair bonding. Women decided they wanted to share Chad and Tyrone and shit on the little men again.
Now the 60-80% of men are going to turn into a negative influence on society and women will suffer for it.
Women hate taking responsibility for their choices for a reason. If you give 100 women 100 choices to make most of them will be bad. Some women will make a lot of good choices and some will go 50/50. But women are not programmed to think about systems and long term effects.
Thanks for nuthin'? I just got this from The Free Press.
Welcome back to A Man Should Know, a weekly column from Elliot Ackerman about how today’s lost boys can become tomorrow’s good men. This week, as we celebrate Thanksgiving, Elliot reflects on gratitude—and why feeling thankful is no less important than how we express it.
Like drugs aren't a "portal to another world"?
More seriously perhaps: reading is a window on another world. Virtual reality is another world and one that you may not make your way back from. It may be that much more attractive than the "real" world.
Less seriously, perhaps: remember young Tom Hanks' movie about Dungeons and Dragons and how the game drove him insane.
Social media is an extractive industry.
We have family with teenage children and we talk to them relentlessly about protecting themselves — their time, their energy, their creativity — from tech products.
The goals are dark. Addiction is a feature not a bug.
AI will be manyfold factors worse than social media. A better mousetrap, it uses information it extracts (via "chat") about what engages (worries, infuriates, activates, loves) the user to keep them hooked.
Humans are so hackable, some users "fall in love" with the data the algorithm feeds them. Tech companies encourage this behavior by calling the data a 'bot' to give it some personification. Plainly, the 'bot' it is just text. Adding imagery facilitates the hack.
I'm just one uncle protecting young family members, but the scope and scale of the grift perpetrated by tech companies -- who are highly, highly pressured to generate ROI for the off charts investments in AI should tell you everything you need to know about how far they will will go and how hard they will fight government regulation so they can freely access your kids.
I want to push back a bit on "women screwed the boys in school and now men are rage-filled and society will pay." This isn't a society that just screwed men. Starting in grade school, the women now over thirty were all told to get ahead - Ignore the boys, don't think of children, think of careers. At thirty-five an extraordinary number of liberal women have done just that - no men, no children, a career. And they are appalled, terrified. Their bizarre responses are being chronicled by the NYT as normie life in NYC. But if you are a woman yourself you can feel the fear and desperation as these women look out on a life which is exactly what they chose or, anyhow, exactly what society told them to choose. And it's "too much of nothing."
"Starting in grade school, the women now over thirty were all told to get ahead - Ignore the boys, don't think of children, think of careers."
Just a guess, but they were probably told that by other women.
Post a Comment
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.