I will proceed by definition → principles → classification → consequences → contrast, grounded in Objectivist epistemology.

1. Definition: What Is a Media Diet?

A Media Diet is the total set of informational inputs a person regularly consumes—news, entertainment, social media, commentary, art, and education—evaluated by their cognitive and moral effects, not by popularity or intent.

Just as food affects the body, media affects cognition:

• What you attend to
• How you form abstractions
• What premises you accept
• Which values you normalize

A media diet is therefore epistemological nutrition.

2. The Standard of Evaluation (Objectivist)

Under Objectivism, the standard is man’s life as a rational being.

From this follow four non-negotiable criteria:

Reality Orientation
Does the content respect facts, causality, and identity—or does it evade them?

Conceptual Integrity
Does it clarify concepts—or blur, invert, or corrupt them?

Value Alignment
Does it uphold reason, individualism, and achievement—or sacrifice, collectivism, and ressentiment?

Psychological Effect
Does it strengthen focus, efficacy, and self-responsibility—or undermine them?

Anything that systematically fails these is unhealthy, regardless of entertainment value.

3. Healthy vs. Unhealthy Media Diets:

A. Healthy Media Diet

A healthy media diet is selective, hierarchical, and intentional.

It consists primarily of:

Fact-oriented information

• Data-rich reporting
• Primary sources
• Economic, scientific, and historical analysis grounded in causality

Conceptually rigorous philosophy

• Clear definitions
• Non-contradictory ethics
• Explicit metaphysical premises
  (e.g., Objectivism)

Art that projects values

• Depicts purposeful action
• Celebrates competence, independence, achievement
• Portrays man as capable of understanding and shaping reality

Limited, deliberate recreation

• Used consciously
• Does not displace productive focus
• Does not smuggle irrational premises

Key trait:

Nothing is consumed by default.

B. Unhealthy Media Diet

An unhealthy media diet is passive, compulsive, and premise-poisoned.

It is dominated by:

Emotion-driven content

• Outrage cycles
• Fear narratives
• Victimhood framing

Anti-conceptual noise

• Sound bites
• Memes replacing arguments
• Context stripping

Moral inversion

• Success portrayed as guilt
• Failure portrayed as virtue
• Sacrifice elevated above achievement

Chronic distraction

• Infinite scroll
• Algorithmic novelty
• Fragmented attention

Key trait:

Consumption replaces thinking.

4. Consequences of Over-Consuming Unhealthy Media

Over time, the effects are predictable and lawful:

Cognitive Effects

• Reduced attention span
• Impaired abstraction
• Inability to hold long chains of reasoning
• Dependence on emotional cues over facts

Moral Effects

• Cynicism toward achievement
• Suspicion of excellence
• Acceptance of unearned guilt
• Moral paralysis (“everything is corrupt”)

Psychological Effects

• Chronic anxiety
• Learned helplessness
• Identity diffusion
• Loss of agency

Behavioral Outcome

The person becomes:

• Reactive instead of proactive
• Opinionated but incoherent
• Informed but not understanding
• Stimulated but not directed

Result: a mind crowded with content but empty of integration.

5. The Objectivist, Non-Compromise Media Diet (Contrast)

Now contrast this with a contextually strict, non-compromise, nutritious media diet.

Such a person:

Cognitively

• Maintains long-range focus
• Thinks in principles, not episodes
• Integrates new information hierarchically
• Rejects contradictions immediately

Morally

• Judges ideas by their relationship to life
• Identifies value-promoters vs. value-destroyers
• Does not grant moral sanction to irrationality

Psychologically

• Experiences clarity, not chaos
• Confidence rooted in understanding
• Emotional responses aligned with reality

Behaviorally

• Chooses media as a tool, not a habit
• Limits exposure to irrational culture
• Engages deeply rather than widely

Result: a mind that is quiet, ordered, and potent.

Final Principle

A media diet is not about information quantity.
It is about epistemological hygiene.

You cannot think clearly if you habitually consume content that treats clarity as optional.

Continue conversation

For most people, a phone is where work goes to die.

It is the object most associated with distraction, compulsion, fragmentation, and the quiet erosion of attention. For a long time, I accepted that framing myself. The phone was something to manage, to defend against, or to escape from.

That changed when I stopped treating the phone as a temptation problem and started treating it as a tool-design problem.

Removing the Enemy, Not Fighting It

Over a year ago, I stripped my phone back to almost nothing.

I replaced the launcher with Olauncher, and for a long stretch my home screen consisted of just Kindle.

No social feeds.
No notification pings.
No “just checking something quickly.”

What surprised me was not how much distraction disappeared — that part was expected — but how natural the phone began to feel again. With no cognitive landmines waiting for attention, the device stopped pulling and started responding.

The phone became quiet.

Phones Are Excellent Creation Devices — If You Let Them Be

During the holiday period, this became obvious in an unexpected way.

I started creating AI-assisted Warhammer 40k stories — text and images — entirely from my phone. Not as a compromise. Not as a fallback. As a deliberate choice.

The phone turned out to be ideal for:

• Short, focused creative bursts
• Visual iteration
• Writing without the psychological weight of a “workstation”

The absence of a keyboard did not reduce thinking so long as I was focused on creative output, not distracting input.

What emerged was a rhythm closer to sketching than drafting. More direct. Less self-conscious. More honest.

The Next Logical Step: Building a Website From a Phone

That trajectory naturally led to the current experiment: building and maintaining this site using SimDif, primarily from my phone.

Again, this is not about convenience. It is about matching tools to modes of thinking.

The phone is excellent for:

• Writing Structuring ideas
• Publishing small, complete units of thought
• Reviewing content as a reader would experience it

The computer, by contrast, I now reserve for:

• Heavy analysis
• Long-form editing
• Complex visual or structural work
• Tasks that benefit from spatial expansion

This separation matters.

Different tools encourage different kinds of cognition. Blurring them creates friction. Respecting them creates flow.

Messenger as Email (And Why Notifications Matter More Than Apps)

One of the more counterintuitive changes I made was to start using Messenger like my email.

Not by adding more messaging apps — but by removing everything else.

I turned off nearly all notifications.
I removed social apps entirely.
Messenger remained not because it is inherently better, but because it became quiet.

When notifications stop competing for attention, communication becomes intentional again. Messages are checked deliberately, responded to deliberately, and then set aside.

This principle generalizes.

The problem is not phones.
The problem is undifferentiated signals.

When every app can interrupt you, no app deserves your attention. When signals are filtered, tools regain their proper function.

The Broader Principle

What I’ve learned is simple but far-reaching:

You do not need fewer tools.
You need clearer roles for your tools.

This applies to:

• Phones vs computers
• Messaging vs publishing
• Work vs reflection Input vs creation

By redesigning how tools are used, rather than trying to rely on discipline alone, the positives of modern technology can be amplified while the negatives quietly disappear.

Not through abstinence.
Through structure.

Closing Thought

A phone can be a slot machine.
Or it can be a notebook.

The difference is not the device.
It is the system you build around it.

For me, working from my phone is no longer a compromise. It is the result of deliberately aligning tools with intention — and letting reason, rather than habit, decide how technology fits into life.