While pornography as a subject is always subject to heated debate, modern- day living is not bereft of the pornographic on a day-to-day basis.
Life porn is a thing, and we may as well all be addicts, with or without our knowledge.
This is because the modern-day professional is caught up in addictive habits, much like the hapless penchant for adult entertainment. It does not take long for an innocuous start to slowly get out of control in the shadows of your mind, when it comes to addiction.
So what is life porn really like?
Life Porn
Why focus singularly on morning ablutions, when that red marker pings on your phone to give you that first shot of purposeful living, or dread, depending on what job you work.
Who said you cannot brush your teeth with your phone in one hand, as you start bathroom-scrolling?
Insta notifications, email notifications, Facebook notifications, you get notified on the regular, every minute. That witty comment you mulled deleting was validated, nine times over, including the person whose profile you have been mild-stalking online for a week.
Targeted ads mundanely motivate you to ‘hustle,’ while they hawk their mantras and their self-care-wares. Everyone needs to get out of the race according to them. They miss telling you where exactly this ‘out-of-race’ place is. You are convinced, however. You will quit tomorrow. Tomorrow may never come. You are aware, but scared.
Meanwhile you are getting bombarded with life porn. People who wax eloquent over cascading superhero string music about 20-hour days, exotic trips, luxurious minimalism and technicolor-toned get-togethers, travelling and dining with interesting people.
Life porn frustrates you. Your life could never be this, it might, but most probably won’t. Just like the expectations near-perfect physical specimens in 4k mode cast on your love life, it is unrealistic to expect your life experiences to be the same.
The Money Shot
Making money is as easy as as showing up, working smart and not too hard. Right? Well, not quite.
If making money was so simple, wed all be Uncle Scrooge-ing it on our ready stashes in our ‘money rooms.’ You would never have to suffer the ignominy of a humid armpit in your face on the 7:30 am train downtown.
You cannot beat the cache of ‘cash will solve all your problems.’
Money won’t do a thing for you though, without fulfillment. It may be better to ‘cry in a Mercedes’ at first, but after day 378, not so much.
In fact, money can make your life worse, not better, if you have not discovered what makes you pogo-stick out of existential inertia every morning.
If you’ve dialed life down to a zero-sum game, where everyone has to lose for you to win, things will get lonely and meaningless pretty fast.
Work That Asset
Enter the entrepreneur. Why work an honest job, when you can start one of your own? Sounds good, on paper.
All you need is your own business and everything will be fine. Except for that small caveat, you know, that 90 per cent of startups don’t really survive. Yes, nine, oh. I may not be a math wiz, but that seems like a lot.
Work porn is therefore setting you up for a premature exit strategy. Since when is anything ‘premature’ good?
Business is risk, no two ways about it. There will come a time when you have to take a judgement call and dive deep, hook, line, sinker and the rest of your businessperson life will be to prevent from sinking under the stress.
Adding too much risk to your life is bound to stress the best of us. Stress causes bad decisions, and later, regret.
You can be happy without a startup, by bringing your entrepreneurial zeal to your current job. You know what they say, ‘you can do whatever you want, as long as they are hiring.’ That goes both ways.
FOMO Porn
One only need see the comments section of any popular Insta or YouTube post to see the extent of FOMO porn disseminated by its enthusiastic advocates.
Schadenfreude is the flavor of all seasons, as self-obsession reaches its zenith and people lose the empathy switches in their brains forever.
Doing unto others as you would want them to do unto you is as antiquated a notion as the word ‘unto’ itself. It’s leading to a lot of unhappy practitioners of the zero-sum game.
Nowhere is it more obvious than the shiny, happy corridors of social media.
Branding On Your Person
It’s difficult to talk about social media without the current-day scourge, prior to COVID-19. The social media influencer.
Ah, that intrepid breed of Gen Z ‘business people’ that deals in the currency of followers. Cause be damned, when you have products to peddle in an insidious fashion, the more insidious the better.
If you fall for it, you are as much a follower as the thousands who follow you. Who wins? You? Your brand? Certainly not the people glued to your every virtual move.
If you want to create your own personal brand, more power to you. If you want to blindly follow influencers whose main aim is to make you stick to their feed, it would be a good idea to revisit your priorities.
The Real ‘Unreal’ Deal
And finally, there is the actual thing. Adult entertainment, notwithstanding the medium of consumption, via books or on that really steamy soap opera they call a web series nowadays, streaming on a platform near you, has people indulging in amorous activity in situations and lighting conditions out of the reach of the mere mortal binge-watcher.
Acts you can never replicate with partners you may never have is a textbook case for anxiety, and who needs that in a lock down?
Keeping your expectations realistic is better for you in the bedroom, as in much of your life.
Is There A ‘No Fap’ Button?
So is there a silver bullet that can rid you of the downfalls of an unhealthy addiction to ‘life porn’? What does one do when there is no VPN or incognito mode to help you navigate your settings and preferences in day-to-day living.
The answer is going to be a self-help standard. Self-control is key to ensure you avoid the pitfalls of ‘life porn,’ much like a phone addiction.
Getting rid of distractions is not easy but is the only way to set you about your life’s work. ‘No Fap’ means not engaging with other people’s life porn and focusing on your own ‘purpose,’ if you can find it. ‘No Fap’ doesn’t work when you have ‘No Purpose.’
That is where you need to start then.
You can get yourself off with life, rather than life porn. It feels better too.