Dispensing your opinions online tends to degenerate most people as they develop an e-personality that corrodes their real life.
I started blogging in 1997 and I’ve experienced my share of the perils of the e-personality (carelessness, impulsiveness, thoughtlessness, self-aggrandizement, audience capture, over-sharing). Aside from these dangers, there’s also the cost of what you did online eliminating other possibilities for your life.
Here are some possible ways that livestreaming (and I have deleted less than 1% of everything I’ve produced live) makes me a better man:
* I learn that almost everyone I talk about hears about what I have said, and so I have to stand behind my words, or apologize for them.
* I get a regular test for prioritizing my real self or my e-self? The more priority I put on my e-self, the more off track I get in life.
* I learn to make peace with making mistakes and trade-offs. When I start a show, there are many things I want to explore, but as soon as I press the button to go live, the technical and social demands of the show eat away at my energy, enthusiasm and cognitive powers, and so my conversational palette narrows. I lean on my notes as the ideas fly from my head (and I consistently fail to do adequate preparation). There are so many things to look after with a live show, with sound quality being number one, and paying attention to one aspect of your show takes you away from other things. For example, I try to write down time stamps on every show, but when I’m doing that, I’m not saying anything or listening to anything or paying attention to anything else.
* I recognize that most people are better off without my show, and that people who were key parts of my show have moved on for good reasons.
* I learn to stand on my own two feet and to not need audience approval. I’ve often said things on a show that everybody in the audience strongly disagrees with (for example, I believe the establishment views on combatting Covid have been more right than wrong, and I don’t believe that our elites are evil and bent on our destruction). I risked and lost relationships for the sake of saying what I believe to be true. That is a good test in life. You can cuck to your relationships, or you can heedlessly burn your relationships, or you can try steer a middle path, valuing both things and making considered choices.
* I learn to listen to many points of view and to talk to people from all over the world.
* I learn to present my ideas in ways that will have the widest opportunity to be heard. I learned to talk about controversial topics in ways that are the most socially acceptable.
* On every show, I confront who I am, what I look like, what I sound like, how prepared I am, and the quality of my choices. You often get more honest feedback from anonymous people online than you do from people you see face to face.
* I get to bring on the show a feeling for my most important relationships, and when I carry that love, I make better choices. A large part of me, when undisciplined by gratitude, loves the cynical blistering remark a little too much.
* A large part of being a man is protecting and providing. Livestreaming is one more opportunity to do this.
* With every social media post, you finetune your circle of friends by making public what you are about.
