I have a tendency to become a fanboy of certain people or franchises, and the most recent reincarnation of this is my consumption of the majority of Luke Smith’s content. Granted, most of this consumption is mindful and towards practical or personal goals, but I’m not quite able to shake off some cringe at doing so. This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve let someone’s virtual words affect my real life; I called myself atheist after watching George Carlin and I gave myself permission to shave myself bald in honor of DT (Derek Taylor) and his stoicism. This time around, I’m letting some conservative indo-european elitist in the woods influence me into nerfing my cell phone, frantically memorizing the keyboard shortcuts of his custom linux distribution, and focusing my efforts into living the better part of my life in the rural countryside.
Granted, most of these ideas have been part of larger life movements; I’ve spent years evading mindless internet usage, I’ve dabbled in keyboard oriented programs and window managers, and I’ve been crunching the numbers time and time again to see what I need to own my property and have a place I can call my own. Cutting off all of my social media and getting rid of every aggregator (YouTube subscriptions, following Reddit pages) has already paid dividends in freeing my time, with a gradual phasing out of more suggestive content guarenteed to seal the deal. Additionally, I loved the terse, well-paced rhetoric of the Unabomber’s Manifesto, and have determined to take reading more seriously as a fast and easy way to truly get big brained.
The aspect of Luke that clicks the most with me, for better or for worse, is his antagonistic and judgemental nature. There are one or two ways to think about any given topic or solve any particular issue, and he has specific names for anyone else who deviates from them, usually something with normie or cuck in the name. He and his cult are big brain and red pilled, and everyone else are bugmen (people who instead of using inmutable family or ethnic history to describe their character, use pop culture and trends to describe their personality) or so he would have you think. He has insinuated he has choice words for LGBTQ individuals that probably stem from his strict Christian upbringing.
Would a friendly, welcoming Luke Smith even be possible? Maybe Mental Outlaw? Either way, I need to constantly check my ego in my pursuit of living a more Luke-like life and constantly remember that while I may aspire to be like him, I was dealt with a different set of cards and have the responsibility to pave my own path there. I take myself far less seriously, am less inclined to talk to people, and haven’t yet built the skills to study for extended periods of time. Consooming anime is the perfect marriage of indulging my inner child and sharpening the art of learning languages for me. Luke believes in God; I don’t (although he’s probably the most reasonable religous zealot I’ve ever heard, and has convinced me to apprecitate religion and all of its auxillary functions).
If there’s anything Luke has taught me, it’s that I can’t take my mental convictions for granted. I write this because there are many facets of Luke’s character that I might have either misunderstood or misinterpreted just now, but the sentiment still rings true.