#so this is both writing adjacent and dopamine adjacent >:)

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: A SHINING by Jon Fosse.

Reading this next! It's a shortie (to the tune of seventy-four (74) pages), and the whole thing appears to be one (1) unbroken paragraph, but, hey: at least there's punctuation, I guess? It's about a guy who's driving directionlessly, gets out of the car at a forest, and wanders around on foot as it starts to snow, and when he inevitably gets lost, he meets some weird glowing....entity. The jacket copy calls this "strange, haunting, and dreamlike," which. yeah. I'm here for that. Will report back on how this goes!

[leeknowslaughh]

Chemical Reaction - Bakugou x (F)Reader

I don’t write a whole lot but Bang Bang by K’Naan and Adam Levine made me really inspired! 

Background: You are a vigilante whose quirk is Chemical Manipulation: The user can manipulate the biochemicals within others by infusing a chemical reaction into an object, causing various effects. Special moves would be serotonin changes (makes the target incredibly sleepy, or nauseous,but can also speed up healing processes), dopamine rush (causes the target to get so happy they don’t want to attack her or fight back), and endorphin boost (gives a boost to pain receptors causing everything to hurt more). For safety reasons, you like to stay far away from your target, opting to use a bow with felt tipped arrows to transfer your quirk into. But you can use a rubber knife as well. For your quirk to work, the object just needs to touch the other person. 

Running down the alley, you could hear the angry yells of a certain blonde haired hero student. It wasn’t your fault that you stumbled upon his training with pro hero Endeavor, but how could you resist messing with the two hotheads. 

A few moments earlier…

Watching their training from an adjacent rooftop, you were surprised it took them so long to notice you. ‘Some heroes they are, if I were a villain I could have ended both of them,’ you thought, sighing at their obliviousness. 

This is why you decided to become a vigilante instead of applying to hero school. There were too many politics and rules involved with being a hero, so instead of signing a deal with the devil government, you decided to just save people. 

And you were dang good at it too. News article after news article argued about whether or not you were a threat or a good samaritan. The people seemed to like you, there was little pushback against your actions within the general public. Aside from the fact that you sometimes killed the villains you ran into, you were no different than a hero. 

Stretching, you stood, pulling your bow from your shoulders and notching a soft arrow, aiming right for the student hero. A smirk graced your lips as you released the arrow with a soft thwap as it quickly crossed the distance, hitting the boy in his chest with a soft thud. 

Both of their attention was quickly on you, the boy's palms heating up as he prepared to attack when he suddenly doubled over, a giddy laugh breaking through his lips as he fought the urge to lay back and relax. 

Endeavor looked at the boy curiously before turning his attention back to you, “Hi! I’m a big fan of your hero work Endeavor! Your job as a father leaves much to be desired though.” you called out, a big grin on your face. 

“Oh and don’t worry about your student, the dopamine rush will go away soon!” you called out as you moved to get off the roof quickly. Playing a trick was all well and good, but the look on Endeavor’s face told you that this may have been a mistake. 

Once you were on the street, you pulled off your mask, folding your bow into its pocket on your hip as you blended into the crowd of civilians. All was well until you heard a series of small explosions behind you and a bellow of your vigilante name. 

Turning around in horror, you were met with the blonde student, a fierce glare on his face. Yelping, you took off through the crowd, running with a newfound energy. 

Current time…

“Get back here you extra!” he yelled at you as he maneuvered through the alleyways. “No, thank you! You seem awfully angry!” you called out over your shoulder, not looking where you were going when you ran into a trashcan. 

Tumbling onto the ground, you began crawling to your feet when you froze. Heavy footsteps stopped just behind your crouched figure. Peering up at the angry boy's face, you cringed, ‘this really might be it for me’ you thought. 

He growled as he grabbed you by the shirt front, lifting you off the ground as his face got closer. You knew he was yelling at you, his face contorted in anger, but you were mesmerized by his beautiful crimson eyes. 

“You’re really hot up close” you blurted out when he paused for breath, ‘oops, didn’t mean to say that outloud.’ You just smiled as he froze, his face morphing into confusion. “What the hell!?” he yelled, but there was a lot of malice in his voice as he tried to sort through what you had said. 

Reaching a hand down to your thigh, you pulled out a toy gun, putting a large amount of energy into the faux bullet as you pushed the barrel into his chest, “sorry handsome, but I really don’t feel like getting beat up by you today” you said with a smile.

Pulling the trigger, he was hit by a soft foam bullet before looking down at the weapon. He scoffed, “what is it with you and soft weapons huh!” he yelled, shaking you in his group when he was suddenly overcome with exhaustion. 

He fought the heaviness of his eyelids as you slipped from his grasp, gently helping him to the ground. “You’ll just have to take a quick nap here, but you should totally find me some time when you’re not mad at me!” you whispered to him, running a soft hand across his cheek before he succumbed to your quirk. 

When he awoke a few minutes later, he felt his face go red as the memories of his interaction with you flooded his mind. He went through a wide range of emotions, he was angry, embarrassed and definitely more than a little curious about you. “She shot me, twice!” he groaned out in the empty alleyway. 

He was definitely going to find you again, he had a score to settle, and maybe he also wanted to know more about you. 

[meaninglessblah-writes]

Writing Prompt Wednesday

It hasn’t even been a full hour before Tim hears the clack of the handheld clicker again. It’s been plaguing his every waking moment for the last week, with increasing frequency, and whilst it hasn’t yet emerged into the realm of unbearably annoying, the mystery behind its use is starting to grate on Tim’s nerves. 

He turns to face Damian where he’s sat at the conference table, gloves shucked and a blueberry muffin in his hand. There’s a sprinkling of crumbs dotting his cheek that Tim is compelled to point out to his compulsively hygienic tendencies, except that his attention is drawn - once again - to the small black device resting in Damian’s other palm. 

“Damian,” he hedges, and braces for the staccato clack-clack. 

“Yes, Timothy?” Damian responds once the sound has settled firmly in Tim’s eardrums, turning to face him. Jason’s chin lifts a notch to watch their interaction where he’s sprawled back on the chair adjacent, tilting back precariously on two legs as he rocks his heels against the lip of the table. 

Tim shoves down the uneasy turn of his stomach and asks, “What on earth is that?” 

Damian inspects the device like he’s only just noticing it. “It’s a behavioural stimulant. Primarily used on dogs. I’ve been training Titus, and found it quite effective in bridging the gap between positive reinforcement and reward distribution.” 

Tim feels his brow pull into a tight crease. “So why do you have it down here?” 

“I’m experimenting,” he replies cryptically and shortly, and doesn’t seem to feel the need to elaborate. Tim frowns but returns to his post-patrol procedure, stripping back his cowl and setting the cape aside. 

Clack-clack. 

This time he turns entirely to glare at the pair of men at the table, meeting twin blank, innocent expressions. “Okay, what is going on here? What’s with the clicking?” 

“He told you,” Jason interjects. “We’re experimenting.” 

“Experimenting on what?” Tim snaps, though he suspects he knows the answer. 

“Whether subjects’ inadequate habits can be curbed and replaced with satisfactory behaviours,” Damian says primly. “Specifically with regard to cleanliness and environmental tidiness.” 

Tim blinks, and tries to digest that. “That doesn’t explain why you clicked at me, just now.” 

Damian pauses a moment, like he’s considering whether to explain or not, and says, “You folded your cape.” 

Tim glances down at the material in his hands, which is sure enough folded with neat precision into a compact stack worthy of display case. It’s a little surprising to see, given how haphazard he usually is with tossing the cape over any available surface in his post-patrol haze. He doesn’t even remember folding it. 

It makes him a little uneasy, as he drops into his chair and brings up his digital report. The sooner he can make his notes, the sooner he can duck out from under Damian and Jason’s lingering presences. He can’t help but feel how he’s being watched, the sensation dragging up his spine as he begins to type. 

He does his best to shove the thought from his mind. The less attention he gives them, the more likely they are to grow tired of whatever game they’re playing and leave him be. 

Tim almost manages to forget their presence after a few minutes, swept up in the tide of pattering keys and scrolling text, when he reaches for his mug of cold coffee. Lifts it to his lips without pausing, takes a sip, and sets it down. 

Clack-clack. 

It ratchets Tim’s shoulders up, snaps him right out of whatever focused reverie he’d managed to achieve, as he spins to stare pointedly at Damian’s palm. The man doesn’t break beneath the glower, except to shift his thumb off the button and chew silently. 

Tim lifts an eyebrow, and Damian eventually swallows. 

“Coaster,” he says, with a slight tilt towards Tim’s desk, and sure enough, when he glances down to where his fingers are still wrapped around the handle of his mug, it’s resting on the cork coaster to the left of his keyboard. 

He doesn’t even remember putting it there. Has only the vague recollection of Alfred huffing and shifting his mug time and time again, of it gradually becoming buried beneath the clutter of his desk, the coaster swamped with more mugs than it could possibly ever hold. 

Glancing down the width of his desk now, Tim is stunned to realise how… tidy it is. He hadn’t even noticed. 

“Damn,” Jason murmurs, almost too low for Tim to hear. When he glances back the man is nodding above the weave of his arms over his chest, an impressed smile tugging at his lips. “I still haven’t managed to train that one into Dickie yet. That’s impressive.” 

Damian looks a little too proud at the praise, and several dots connect in Tim’s head. 

“Are you testing me?” Tim asks, too shocked to be as incredulous as he intends. 

“Training,” Damian corrects, and Tim pulls to his feet. Shoves his chair back loudly into the desk on habit, hard enough to rattle the mug on its coaster and the handful of pens arranged neatly beneath the monitor. 

Not loud enough to drown out the resulting clack-clack. 

“Stop that,” Tim demands, frustration rising, and yanks his hand back from the tucked-in seat. Since when did he ever treat his furniture so well? Since when was he organised enough to do anything other than leave a careless trail of clothing and belongings behind him on his half-comatose trudge up to his bedroom? 

It’s downright spooky, and he doesn’t like the implications. 

“How long have you been training me with that thing?” Tim snaps in a sudden spiral of fear. Surely it can’t have been that long, or he would have noticed sooner. Wouldn’t he? 

Unless it’s been so pervasive that everything but his subconscious has tuned out the noise of the clicker, releasing a helpful little dose of dopamine into his sleep-addled brain every time Tim completes a designated task. 

Tim doesn’t think it’s been that long. It can’t have been. Otherwise the compulsion would be harder to shake. Right? 

Damian and Jason share a look that does nothing to ease Tim’s concerns. 

“How long?” he demands. 

“Three weeks,” Jason admits, folding his hands behind his head as he tilts. “Same time I started training Dick. We didn’t think it would work so quickly, but our apartment is the tidiest I’ve seen it in literal months. He even cleared the dining table without so much as a look from me the other night.” 

Tim’s burning gaze swings to Damian. “And you’re training me why?” 

“Because you’re filthy, Timothy,” Damian replies airily, and reaches for another blueberry muffin. Since he filled out his third upgrade of the pixie boots and came into as many inches, the current Robin’s appetite has been unquenchable. He’s rivalling Jason at the breakfast table most days, shovelling down eggs and pancakes with gusto only for Tim to find him hunting through the pantry an hour later. 

“Your mess was becoming unbearable,” Damian continues, with a corroborating nod from Jason, “and you respond poorly to advice from either of us. So we took matters into our own hands.” 

“By training me,” Tim accuses, “like a dog.” 

Jason shrugs, and Damian echoes the sentiment. “The results justify the means.” 

“You’re conditioning me,” Tim stresses, crossing over to the table to stand over the squirt. It’s not nearly as impressive as it used to be, now that Damian’s actually packing on and holding muscle weight. “Without my consent, without my knowledge. For your own selfish benefit.” 

“Have you not benefited?” Damian retorts with a pointed sweep of Tim’s very tidy workspace. He can’t bring himself to turn around to look, to be betrayed by his own unwitting compliance. 

“That’s irrelevant.” 

“I think it’s very relevant. Both Richard and you have made incredible progress in such a short time. Both your lives have become more manageable since we implemented your training. Your organisation has improved, and as a result, your demeanour. It can only improve further from here.” 

“So what comes next? You buy me a collar and start teaching me tricks?” 

Jason snorts, loud and obnoxious, as colour rises on Damian’s cheeks. Tim doesn’t give him a chance to draw in a full breath before he fixes the other man with a cold stare. 

“I’m sure Dick’s going to be just thrilled when he finds out you’ve been training him like a circus seal. I expect that’s going to do wonders for your sex life, Hood.” 

Jason’s laughter snaps off, his expression bleeding into sudden hesitant concern. “Now, wait a second-” 

Tim smirks. “You haven’t seen how bad his cold shoulder gets yet, have you? Dickie’s got a temper, Hood, and you’re about to find out exactly how bad blueballs can get when you set it off.” 

“That’s uncalled for,” Jason tries to defend, tucking his legs back under the table as he sets his chair down. Tim cuts him off with a sharp cluck-cluck of his tongue, stunning both men into sudden silence as he grins. 

“You know, that’s actually pretty useful,” Tim murmurs, malicious satisfaction filling his chest when both their expressions fall into wary horror. “Don’t even necessarily need a clicker to achieve the results either. But you’re both missing an important element of the training process.” 

“Which is?” Damian entreats with the hesitance of a man feeling blindly for a bomb. 

Tim makes sure he leans down close enough to see the individual crumbs on the teen’s face, to feel the sharp intake of his breath when Tim grins sharply and purrs, “You have to follow up the immediate approval with a reward.” 

Damian swallows hard, the blueberry muffin making an odd protrusion as it travels down his throat. 

“Good boy,” Tim murmurs, low and coaxing, and feels an immense wash of gratification when Damian’s cheeks flush red beneath his complexion. 

Damian’s mouth opens and closes, producing no sound as Tim straightens and glances over at Jason, who’s just as cowed. 

“I’m going to bed now. If I so much as hear the sound of that clicker in my dreams, I’ll flood your public social media profiles,” he threatens, pointing his index finger at Jason to watch him pale before it swivels to fix on Damian, “with his very inventive furry art.” 

Jason spins to fix Damian with an accusatory stare that he flounders to rebut, the muffin slipping from his fingers in his defensive panic. Tim smirks and turns up the stairs to the sounds of an argument erupting behind him, letting his shoulders slide out of their tense curl with the assurance that he doesn’t need to worry about any pesky clickers anytime soon. 

“Goodnight, boys,” he calls back, drowned by the shrieking below, “and be good.” 

You can send me a prompt here!

[dazzlegradual]

girl offline

this past new years eve, while many of our peers avowed to avoid alcohol for the next month, my friend delaney and I exchanged our instagram passwords and asked each other to change them and keep them a secret. while the both of us agreed that critically examining one's relationship to alcohol is great, particularly with how casual alcoholism is enabled throughout our culture (looking at you, wine mom tea towels at homes goods). 'dry january' didn't feel like the right fit for either of us. neither of us are huge drinkers.

I didn't drink for most of the pandemic. now, my nights out dancing with friends, hangs at breweries, occasional trail beers (one of life's greatest pleasures), and bottles of wine shared at board game nights fall within the realm of (what i'd categorize) as healthy.

anyway, my 'month off social media' passed with little consequence or fanfare. I didn't yearn to check instagram once. after delaney and I exchanged passwords, I decided that staying off instagram should also mean staying off all other social media. I already don't use snapchat, tiktok (usually), or twitter. I did continue using pinterest, tumblr, and reddit. I decided that the way I used them was non-addictive and thus probably fine. but I did remove the apps from my phone. I did also stayed on BeReal.

throughout january, all the instances in which my new less-online proclivities were points of discomfort were purely external. my internal world went on uninterrupted, but around my peers, I did notice that my ability to participate in our shared culture subsided. a few occasions transpired, for example, where a friend wanted to send me the instagram account of a tattoo artist they liked, or they referenced a TikTok audio in conversation that I didn't get. (I was reminded that the least funny thing someone can do is try to explain a TikTok audio to you. I wish people didn't do this.)

besides secondhand embarassment, these instances didn't really bother me. life moved on. January rolled into February, and it did not occur to me to re-download social media. when I realized this, I texted Delaney, and we shared a short conversation about it:

honestly, thank god for Delaney. it felt so good that I had a confidant in this experiment, but it did get harder as the month went on. during the latter half of February, I had a few compulsions to check instagram, though, notably, they weren't born out of pure, idle boredom. they were for specific reasons: I wanted to look up a podcast host's page after they mentioned something on their show; I met someone cool at a concert and they wanted to exchange handles; I was curious if a local venue I liked had shows coming up, and they update ig more than their website. I resisted these temptations, deciding it would be worthwhile to hold out for the rest of February. though of these instances I took note that, given all the new reasons I craved checking instagram reflected actual intentional thinking and reasoning, it might be worthwhile to consider a use of instagram as a information hub rather that a social channel. this shift would mirror more closely to how I use reddit -- I go on for specific information relating to my interests, like for paramore set lists (lol) or how to hem a pair of pants (i'm short).

as i'm writing this, it's now March 1st, and I caved this morning. I asked Delaney for my ig password back. I felt weirdly anxious logging back in, critical and suspicious of any dopamine-rush adjacent feelings. I logged in, and the algorithm eagerly delivered all the posts I wanted to see on a shiny silver platter: a friend had an anniversary, another posted beautiful photos from a recent trip, another recently got a puppy, an author I like announced a new book, my 10 year high school reunion is this year (lol), and my mom had sent me a cool travel account. cool. things I was genuinely excited to see.

with that settled, the novelty wore off rapidly. good god, there were so many ads! there were literally ads every 3-4 instagram stories: pod shaped toothbrushes (why is everything a god damn pod these days), CBD gummies, running shoes, artisanal coffee, birth control. it seemed like you could get a subscription for everything you could ever need. scrolling through stories felt like I was listening to an endless mid-episode ad reel of a podcast.

i then went to the explore page and encountered a truly horrendous amount of ads: actual humans blending seamlessly into an mirage of makeup tutorials, clay pots, cute cats, and hiking trails. everything there that wasn't an ad was still trying to sell me something: a new recipe to try, a dress I don't need, a planter that looks expensive, a face oil that probably does nothing, a buy-guide on how to recreate a hayley williams makeup look. the entirely of the explore page was coded exactly to my interests and proclivities, and it weirded me out how well these algorithms seemed designed to sell me shit I truly didn't need.

this was about the point where my crisis began. did I want to be here? was staying up to date with hundreds of acquaintances, friends, past lovers, old classmates, brief coworkers, and literally all of my family members from the worth the millions of generated e-billboards designed for other young millennial, white, feminist, childless, tastefully ironic (BUT NOT TOO ONLINE), fiona apple listening, anime watching, west coast-coded, leftist, sophia coppola loving, queer, outdoorsy, well-read college educated girlies just like me? (who are all also extremely individually unique, obviously).

did I need to buy supplements, or did I just like the container they came in? did I actually like the headband, or did a pretty girl get paid to post a picture of herself in it? did I need a new jumpsuit or did the big bud press model look cool in it? do I need a new claw clip or do I just like the font that the advertisers chose?

what could I possible gain by being on instagram? what did it add to my life besides benign inadequacy, inferiority, and an excessively long shopping list?

the truth is boring and painfully obvious, and yet we all continue scrolling. but why? fomo? addiction? anxiety? a mere lack of reflection? shortened attention spans? the fraught hope for an occasional dopamine rush when in reality most of us feel worse after spending time on instagram?

to be frank, I'm of sick of feeling this way. and so: this post officially marks the beginning of my attempt to spend the rest of 2023 off of social media. glory be all. what follows below are the (loose) parameters I am setting for myself for this experiment. i'm using parameters because i'm not setting any official rules. if I mess up, it literally doesn't matter and no one will care. I also don't wait failure to dissuade me from keeping up the effort; say, for instance, in 6 months, I re-download instagram. in my opinion, that would still be a success, because I still stayed off instagram for 6 months. I don't want to put arbitrary rules on myself. this is a lifestyle change. adjustments can be made. and again (this cannot be overstated), literally no one but me cares. thus, starting today, these are the only 'social' things I will still use, as I don't have an unhealthy reliance on them:

spotify, cause I like sharing playlists with friends, and I use it for podcasts.

bandcamp, cause I like following artists.

goodreads. I like sharing what I'm reading and seeing what my friends are reading.

tumblr/reddit/pinterest, as I don't use these websites as social media. (though pinterest is on thin fucking ice cause the bitches on there REALLY want us to all have eating disorders). I am probably going to keep tumblr on my phone, as a treat.

lex, which is like a craigslist for gay people. it's fun and harmless, and I barely check it anyway.

an anonymous instagram account that has no followers, and that I will use to keep up with bands/venues that I like. but this account will only be logged into on my computer and checked for SPECIFIC reasons.

linkedin and facebook, because I will be looking for a full-time job later this year. tragic.

email, unfortunately. see number 8.

when i've told people i'm attempting this experiment, i've been asked the following question a few times: what are you going to do with your free time?

this strikes me as an odd question, and I guess I think it's strange because for most of human history, the internet has not existed. though I suppose that cannot be a reasonable justification for offing the internet because there are plenty of things that we humans used to do that I do not think we should reinstate. (see also: the jungle by upton sinclair). maybe some things have improved as a result of the internet, but i'm not entirely convinced it's a net positive. (it definitely isn't for me.) still, there is a lot of solo free time to be had in adulthood, and it's a valid question, and one I will endeavor to answer:

reading, duh. love audiobooks and my city has great libraries.

I listen to a lot of music, and really enjoy going to shows. they provide a great deal of scope for the imagination. one of my favorite times in the whole world is the time in-between sets at shows. I love to stand in the crowd and watch everyone: couples, friends, other strangers just meeting. if you're a fan of people watching, this (and airport bars) are the true mother loads of people watching. it's a bit too loud in these concert crowds to make out exactly what people are saying, but that's the best part. you have to rely on your storytelling abilities to make sense of the world around you. (sorry to all the people in the seattle area i've stared at unabashedly at shows. it will continue to happen.)

podcasts are what they are. but I like some! my favorites tend to veer towards the theme of history, lolz, and feminism. my favorites right now (that I would recommend to others) are: Who? Weekly, Rehash, Maintenance Phase, You're Wrong About, Not Past It, and It's Been a Minute.

walking, walking, walking.

reading (the sequel): I really enjoy long form journalism. right now, I like The New Inquiry, Long Reads, The New Yorker, Blood Knife, The Baffler, and The Atlantic. I have also been starting to explore the world of Substack, but generally find its formatting extremely dystopian. I can't quite put my finger on it. someone smarter than me please write a thinkpiece about this.

it is honestly weird to be a 27 year old who is trying to live a life off of social media, especially after being someone who's spent so much time online. this is a short life of some things that inspire me to stay offline:

bragging rights. if nothing else, I can feel comforted by a trite sense of superiority.

the luddite community in NYC. literally my idols.

this binchtopia podcast episode.

how good I feel seeing my weekly screen time average go down.

how much I enjoy spending time with my friends, and not looking at my phone once.

reading books and watching movies about people spending time outside and note using technology.

remembering that there are ways to live more slowly, and not always in big, demonstrative, political ways.

Studio Ghibli movies, especially ones like From Up on Poppy Hill and My Neighbor Totoro. they connect me to the idleness of my childhood, especially in the summer, and that I can live without the internet because I already did it for the first 10 years of my life.

'How to Do Nothing' by Jenny Odell

'Trick Mirror' by Jia Tolentino

remembering that after deleting my twitter account in 2021 I have not missed it once.

remembering that I am worth more than just the things I produce.

in conclusion, mostly I am just attempting this to see what it feels like, and to see how I can connect to the world in different ways. I do yearn connection to the larger world around me, but I feel a deep repulsion at the social internet as it exists now. the internet was originally designed to help us build connections to each other and to exercise our free speech rights, and while it does do that, it also means fringe conspiracy groups can gain traction at unparalleled speeds. knowing this, being online stresses me out, on top of all of the zillions of advertisements it forces me to look at (and already discussed above). i've always been a pretty online person. I like staying up to date with the world around me and keeping up with contemporary discourse. but the speed at which news is moving feels unsustainable and frankly dangerous. honestly, the safest thing it feels like I can do, for myself, is step back from it. I want to learn how to form opinions and write them down in a journal, and not espouse them to the world. and, like the singer from my favorite band, "I feel useless behind this computer".

lastly, on a personal note, i've noticed that it's really easy for me to fall into patterns where I am constantly body-checking myself compared to others on social media. I tried to combat this at first by following a bunch of 'body positive' accounts on instagram, and while it was nice to see actual human bodies, it really only compounded the sheer amount of bodies I had to compare my own to.

regardless of how I feel about it, i'm stuck in the body I got. I want to form a healthy opinion and relationship to it without the ever alluring capabilities of the 'gram. no one else gets to live in my flesh prison, ergo, no one else gets a say as to what it looks like. the fact of the whole matter is that the only person who suffers if I don't like the way I look is me, and, advertisers have everything to gain the more unhappy i fare. thus, out of spite, i will fare well.

[nancygduarteus]

The Ice Guru in Brooklyn

The Cortex Is the Enemy

Greenpoint is a historically working-class Brooklyn neighborhood full of industrial buildings. In the last two decades these have been turned into lofts with skyline views, and skyscrapers are going up, and there are waterfront parks and coffee shops adjacent to other coffee shops. The old pencil factory is condos. The old rope factory is an event space. Along with adjacent Williamsburg—which now has an Apple Store, a Whole Foods, and an Equinox all on the same block—Greenpoint has become New York’s most rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.

In the heart of it is a 60,000-square-foot, glass-walled building called the Brooklyn Expo Center, which opened in 2014. It’s a single story with 24-foot ceilings. Inside on a Friday in May, roughly 400 people sat on the floor facing a makeshift stage. Above it was a screen that read, “We can do more than we think we can.”

On the stage stood a Dutch man in black shorts and a synthetic blue shirt. His grayish hair flopped as he paced. He looked somehow robust despite an absence of prominent musculature and a sort of convex abdomen. This was Wim Hof.

He is The Iceman.

“Depression, fear, pain, anxiety—you name it,” Hof’s voice boomed through the speakers. “We are able to get into any cell and change the chemistry. We are able to get into the DNA.”

Hof claims that people can address, prevent, and treat most any malady by focusing the mind to control the metabolic processes in their cells. For example, we can will our bodies to heat up in cold situations. He told the audience “we can beat cancer” by shutting down malignant cells. “I challenge any university in the world to test this out,” he roared.

For a four-hour seminar in The Wim Hof Method, attendees paid around $200. The ticket offered an opportunity to hear Hof speak and to perform his famous breathing exercises, and then to take a brief dip in an inflatable pool of ice water.

Almost the entire first half was Hof speaking extemporaneously, shoelessly. “You are the alchemist,” he said, gesturing out to the people, who sat rapt, mostly silent. “Nature is so merciless—but so righteous.”

This isn’t the exact sequence in which the aphorisms flowed. I wrote them down as quickly as I could, trying to follow. I wanted to know more about exactly how to focus one’s mind—to use “mind control,” in a way that would alter the metabolism of cells. We never entirely got there.

“It’s scientifically endorsed. It’s all in the books,” Hof said.

I barely had time to process one claim before he moved to the next, but if these claims are all in the books, that seems at odds with the challenge to the universities to study them.

“The cortex is the enemy,” he said. “That evil cortex needs to SHUT THE FUCK UP.”

Hof was energized, and his mouth was too close to the mic there. I worried about hearing damage for the audience. The people mostly just nodded or laughed. They were roughly 99 percent light-skinned and 90 percent men, 90 percent fit-looking, and 90 percent under 40.

They regard Wim with something not less than love. The program included a 45 minute break, and when it finally arrived, a crowd flocked to The Iceman. A line formed. At least one person was in tears as he hugged him. Most wanted a photo, and many wanted to pour out their personal stories to the man. Hof’s litany of meandering and sometimes fantastical claims seemed to have done nothing to alienate anyone.

That may be because Hof is irrefutably exceptional. And his refusal of physical and logical limits is itself the source of his appeal.

Hof during a performance to raise awareness of global warming in 2010 (Kin Cheung / AP)

The Iceman

Wim Hof’s curriculum vitae includes holding his breath for six minutes, running a marathon above the Arctic circle in only shorts, and achieving a Guinness world record for the longest ice bath (nearly two hours). Hence the name.  

His book Becoming The Iceman describes Hof’s initial transformation from civilian to daredevil as, at least in part, a reaction to his wife’s 1995 suicide. Looking for control, he turned to his body. In ensuing years, a second transformation seems to have taken place, the journey of self-discovery turning into an ice-based lifestyle brand. Hof, based in Amsterdam, now travels the world spreading the word, peddling medicinal claims at seminars and guided cold-weather excursions.

The Hof family has built a business around packaging and distributing Wim’s ideas, and the idea of Wim. It’s called Innerfire, and it controls intellectual property for the Wim Hof Method, which is still primarily sold by way of an online video course that leads students through exercises in breathing and cold exposure.

The method has indeed been the subject of some scientific study. In Brooklyn, Hof referred multiple times to findings published in 2014 in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. Twenty-four people were injected with E. coli endotoxin, and researchers tracked their immune responses. Half the people had previously spent 10 days going through Hof’s training, and the other half had not. The former fared better once injected with the toxin, showing more effective immune responses than the control group. This led the researchers to conclude that “through practicing techniques learned in a short-term training program, the sympathetic nervous system and immune system can indeed be voluntarily influenced.”

In other words, mind control.

In a related study, tests of Hof’s blood found exceptionally high levels of the stress hormone cortisol. This is generally not desirable in the long term, but researchers have theorized that it could be related to Hof’s ability to fight infections. Still the mechanisms and basis for many of Hof’s claims remain unstudied and even implausible, based primarily on anecdotes and extrapolations of The Iceman and his many followers.

Many among the Brooklyn event staff were volunteers, motivated by devotion to Hof and free attendance at the seminar. One told me he started the method because he’s training for the Navy SEALs, and that involves enduring cold temperatures. Another was ex-military and dealing with chronic pain and PTSD. Sometimes the breathing techniques make him lose consciousness. (This is listed as a side effect on Hof’s site, in bold, underlined font: “Never practice it before or during diving, driving, swimming, taking a bath or any other environment/place where it might be dangerous to faint.” There have been reported deaths among practitioners of the method while swimming.) The fainting happens when a person’s oxygen levels get low, and the system shuts down. This sometimes does the trick of clearing one’s mind.

Among the paying attendees was Brian Van Duyne, a 25-year-old from Long Island. He doesn’t consider himself an athlete. He got into Hof after he watched a Vice documentary. It started with an innocent curiosity: “Who’s this crazy guy running in boxers along glaciers?” But Van Duyne’s interest got real after a family member of his was diagnosed with cancer. He started doing the breathing exercises—mostly long, conscious exhales—and taking cold showers. As he put it to me, speaking of cancer, “Anything that can limit my chances.”

Several hundred people sat on the Brooklyn Expo Center’s floor to listen to Hof speak. (James Hamblin)

The Power of Conscious Breathing

After the lecture at the Brooklyn seminar, everyone was invited to lie down. This was the first of two interactive portions of the afternoon. The breathing was about to begin.

Hof explained, “Breathing exercises produce brain waves.”

He asked for music to be turned on, a song he loved. Through the speakers came a cut from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, “Breathe.”

Breathe, breathe in the air, Don't be afraid to care, Leave but don't leave me, Look around, choose your own ground

“If you’re depressed, go breathing,” Hof said. “Make some dopamine. You don’t have to go to a doctor.”

People lay down and closed their eyes. Hof directed: “In. Out. In. Out.” The commands accelerated and descended into guttural yells. When the song ended, other tracks from Dark Side played, which made less sense lyrically. At some point someone put it back to “Breathe.” The intensity of the leader’s calls and the psychedelic rock and the people lying prone, their chests rising in unison, was a lot to take in. There was about a half hour of breathing. By the end most people looked dazed, and everyone told me they felt amazing. I saw no one lose consciousness.  

A less intense DIY version of the breathing regimen goes something like this: Inhale deeply from the diaphragm, then exhale slowly and fully. Repeat. After 30 or so breaths, hold on exhalation until you experience a clear need to breathe. Then inhale deeply and hold that breath as well, but only for about 10 seconds.

Many high-performing athletes swear by this and similar methods both to boost performance and focus attention. Non-athletes use it as a tool in the quest for calm and mental clarity. Still others use it to ameliorate specific symptoms, or in an attempt to curb outbreaks of oral herpes.

A Skeptic Becomes a Disciple

Among the latter is Scott Carney, a journalist who has made a career of debunking bad science. He met Hof several years ago, expecting the story of a charlatan in need of exposure. Carney put it to me straight: “When I went to meet him, I thought he was full of shit and that he was going to get people killed.”

But then Hof and Carney ended up summiting Kilimanjaro together topless.

Carney went on to write a whole book about the experience: What Doesn’t Kill Us: How Freezing Water, Extreme Altitude and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength. It tells readers, “Exposure to cold helps reconfigure the cardiovascular system, combat autoimmune malfunctions, and is a pretty darned good method to simply lose weight.” Hof even wrote the foreword.

I was curious to hear from Carney how that metamorphosis happened. Was he won over by a charismatic leader?

“Well, first, I separate Wim from Wim’s organization,” said Carney, “because Innerfire is — it’s become more about the money than about, you know, breaking into your body and finding something really cool.” He describes commercial pressures on Hof as external—the man himself owns little more than a handful of t-shirts and would be fine to remain that way. I didn’t get to speak with Hof directly at the event and he was unavailable afterward, but Carney gave vivid accounts of spending prolonged periods with The Iceman: “Wim is nuts. You know this, right? He’s disorganized, he smells bad, and he talks nonsense about half the time. So, he’s a flawed individual. This is how I deal with it in the book. Despite all his flaws, he imparts a bit of knowledge that’s really special. And I think only a crazy person could have started doing that.”

But how do you reconcile faith in a person who’s saying things that are only partly true, even plainly not true?

“The hype comes from Wim glomming more and more claims onto what his method can do,” said Carney. “We don’t know it can cure cancer or kill bacteria. But for autoimmune disease, and with regard to metabolism, there’s a tremendous amount of evidence. That’s something I completely believe.”

Carney has experienced very real benefits. He’s convinced that after 20 minutes of breathing, he can do twice as many push-ups. He used to get canker sores “like constantly,” but not since starting the Wim Hof Method. He still does the breathing exercises every morning, as well as cold showers, and has no plans to stop.

This gets to the point that the Wim Hof Method isn’t really a method in any traditional sense. Method implies a systematic study with an end goal, whereas this is more a set of principles—basic concepts and a couple techniques—to be continued throughout life. Cold exposure is supposed to help people train themselves to suppress a fight-or-flight response, and holding one’s breath teaches an ability to suppress a reflex to gasp. Through these exercises, you’re meant to gain a sense of control over the body’s autonomic processes.

“You could probably train yourself, using these concepts, to stop your heart,” Carney said, not lightly. “But I don’t know if you’d want to. You could train yourself to hold your pee indefinitely.”

You really think that’s possible?

“Yeah, I do. You could maintain an erection as long as you wanted to. Anything where there’s an autonomic response that you have some control over, you can train yourself to take it to an extreme,” he said. “But just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.”

“You Should Talk to Laird”

Hof isn’t the only living extremophile who harnesses this sort of focus. Nor is he the only evangelist of the effects of deliberate breathing and cold exposure.

Laird Hamilton is a legendary big-wave surfer known for death-defying rides. As the site Surfline put it, “There is no bigger set of balls in the universe than the pair in Laird Hamilton’s shorts. He continues to amaze humanity by putting himself in the most harrowing situations imaginable and emerging unscathed.”

Hamilton and Hof met several years ago, and the surfer became a vocal advocate of The Iceman—a self-described “warrior for his cause.” In 2016 Hamilton effused about the Wim Hof Method, “There’s not a person alive who wouldn’t benefit from this. Not only does it bring calmness to the spirit, but it has enhanced my performance, and I believe this is a tool I’ll be able to use in the future to combat sickness and disease.”

He still does regular ice baths year round and he believes in the health benefits. But the surfer and The Iceman have had a bit of a falling out, according to Carney, and it’s not unrelated to the fact that Hamilton is now doing his own workshops that involve ice baths and breathing exercises.  

“The Making of the Iceman had a profound effect on me in my quest for, I would say, enlightenment,” Hamilton told me by phone. He has, like Hof, become a lifestyle brand—a sort of celebrity who practices medicine through media appearances, writing, videos, etc. If you live long enough, it seems, you become a lifestyle brand. While we spoke he was backstage at The View.

“I think a majority of people in the world have no conscious relationship to their breath,” he told me. I asked him if he would still consider himself a warrior for the Wim Hof cause, and he danced around that. “I think in that moment in time, I was enjoying that, and, I’m a warrior of any breath work, any type of consciousness brought to breath.”

Hamilton also said his own interest in ice pre-dates meeting Hof. “I always naturally craved ice,” he said. “Whenever I was near frozen lakes or rivers, I always went in them, since I was a kid it was an instinct. The cold is a teacher we’re drawn to. It may be because of an unconscious understanding that it benefits our health.”

There is sound science behind the idea that living in climate-controlled environments year-round affects human health, in ways good and bad. I’ve written about this before, including an adventure in wearing an ice vest and enduring a “cryotherapy” chamber, ultimately concluding that a healthy thermal environment doesn’t necessarily involve either of these things, but probably does mean spending a little more time away from the 70-ish-degree perfection so many of us have been trained to think we need in the office and at home.

There is some overlap between that idea and Hof’s more extreme message. But Hamilton plays down the uniqueness of the Wim Hof Method. He’s now more into tummo, a type of meditation that involves breathing exercises. “Wim’s technique is really a derivative of that,” said Hamilton. “I don’t know if Wim will ever say that. I would like him to say that.”

The unoriginality criticism has been raised before. Innerfire’s marketing sidesteps the matter, describing The Wim Hof Method as “similar to tummo meditation and pranayama. Yet it is something else entirely.”

Meanwhile Hamilton said his own seminars are not derived from Hof’s. His method is called XPT. A beautiful Instagram profile describes XPT as “a lifestyle system focused on breath, movement, and recovery methods.” As he clarified it to me, “XPT really is a lifestyle, and a holistic approach to health and wellness. Obviously breathing is a critical component of that. But so is diet. So are relationships. So is sport. Breath work and ice baths isn’t enough. There are all these spokes in the wheel. I spent time with Wim, but I think in the holistic approach to wellness, we’re way down the road from that.”

A crew readies the pools. (James Hamblin)

The Ongoing Quest for Adversity

The Brooklyn seminar was notably missing spokes in the health wheel. Any mention of nutrition was fleeting, and lunch was Mediterranean fare (hummus, falafel, a pile of pita bread, etc), nothing uniquely healthy. Attendees also sat the entire time—on the floor, no less. (I wasn’t sure if this was intentional. The website for the Brooklyn Expo Center doesn’t list the cost of renting 400 chairs.)

The only physical activity apart from the breathing was when everyone rose at the end and meandered out the glass doors onto the back patio. There were a handful of blue inflatable pools filled with ice. Everyone stripped down to the bathing suits they had been asked to wear. Some changed in the bathroom stalls. In groups of six or seven, they got into the pool for about a minute. Wim led his pool in singing, or sort of chanting, the chorus of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on repeat. Other pools joined in at different times, so the overall effect was discord.

People emerged from the pools, their pale white skin blotched with red. Everyone I talked to told me some variation on “it wasn’t that bad.” All said they felt somewhere on the spectrum of good to great. It was hard to get much insight, though conversation was difficult over the singing.

At points, Hof led the crowd into the chorus of “Who Let the Dogs Out.” The who-who-who’s were chest-rumbling grunts. And then back into “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” No one rolled their eyes, or even really even hesitated to get into the pool. Many seemed to be more accepting of Hof not despite his absurdity, but because of it. A more cogent speaker may have drawn more scrutiny. More cohesive thought processes may have precluded all that he has been able to accomplish in the physical realm.

I didn’t get into the pool. I’ve been in ice water. It’s an experience that’s easy to replicate, cheaply. I don’t think all the excitement and euphoria on the patio was about that. It also wasn’t about physiological facts or research data everyone had just taken in. It seemed to be about getting close to this man who seems to have something figured out, and who makes everyone believe they can do more than they think they can. As Carney put it, “The way I deal with Wim is, I’m honest. I say there are some fucked up things about this. He makes claims that are nonsense. But if you squint your eyes, you can see the truth. It’s not quite as grand as he claims, but it’s pretty awesome.”

At 4 p.m, people dried off and looked around and realized that the program had concluded. They put their clothes back on and wandered back into the empty hall of the expo center and then out onto the street, mostly alone or in pairs, maybe a little more conscious of their breath, to find some way to experience adversity.

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/06/brooklyn-ice-guru/529293/?utm_source=feed