Cerebral Heavy Lifting on Social Media? Not Me. Not with a Herniated Prefrontal Cortex, I Don't.
Cerebral heavy lifting on social media? Not me. Not with a herniated prefrontal cortex going for me (and not when the simplest explanation is usually the best, and no explanation is even better).
By John G. Stamos
Not too long ago, I was diagnosed with a herniated prefrontal cortex. As such things go, and as any orthopedic surgeon or neurologist will tell you, they can be caused by the most seemingly innocuous of activities – sitting up in bed too quickly, sneezing, bending over the wrong way, twisting your neck one too many times, or, as in the case of my particular injury, trying to sound smarter than I actually am – any one of these things can do it.
The typical treatment for this kind of injury is as you’d probably expect: alternating hot and cold applications, bed rest, and, of course, avoiding strenuous activities – like participating in sports. So for me, chess is out. Sudoku? Too dangerous. Wordle? No way. Cerebral heavy lifting on social media? Are you kidding? Sounding off on a bunch of SM platforms about smart people stuff was the thing that got me laid up in the first place.
Listen, I’m an aging ex-jock. I know my body pretty well. I know what it’s capable of, and what it’s not. For the most part. The problem with being a competitive athlete when you’re young and turning into a sedentary ex-athlete when you’re old lies in ambitious thoughts of re-creating past glory days. This kind of thinking is what caused a few lower back disk herniations for me over the years (a double-leg takedown is a dish best served by twenty-somethings), and is what admittedly caused my current prefrontal cortex herniation. Just because I read Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago when I was in high school, and came out of it healthy as a horse, doesn’t mean that I should be drawing inferences from the guy (and others just as smart as him) and extrapolating on them or drawing real time parallels from them right out there on social media for everyone to see, and expecting to come out of it intact. No way. Not at my age. Not with my brain. I sure learned my lesson, didn’t I?
A really smart guy in a movie once said that a man’s got to know his limitations. (Ouch! I really felt that. Better take it easy. Even this kind of talk is pushing it.) One’s own limitations can be very valuable assets, and thoroughly understanding them – and being aware of the consequences of trying to exceed them – is really important, I’m learning. Thank goodness for my neurologist. He’s a really smart guy. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to match wits with him. Believe me. I know better now.) What I’m going to do is recount a conversation I had with him in his office during my most recent post-prefrontal cortex herniation follow-up visit in which he laid out some basic guidelines for not overheating my brain and aggravating its herniation. Below is what I remember most clearly about that conversation. You’ll understand if there are gaps. I’m icing my brain right now, and I know you wouldn’t want me to overexert myself. At any rate, it went something like this:
Neurologist: Tell me again about what happened. You know, what you were doing when the injury occurred.
Me: Ok, so I’m on my phone, on Twitter, or X, or whatever it’s called now, and I’m reading some posts flying back and forth between some really, really smart people. I’m talking about Twitter intelligentsia (at this point, I wince because “intelligentsia” is a big word and I use it sort of sarcastically and it aggravates my herniated prefrontal cortex to do it, and my doc starts to rise from his stool with a look of concern on his face, but I wave him off and continue), you know, that sort of group. (The doc nods, and still looks just a little worried.) Well, the conversation is centered on some heavy existential shit, and one really smart gal is examining Kafka’s obvious recalcitrance vis-à-vis Jung’s postulates about the collective unconscious, and a couple of other really smart people – two dudes – join in. Since this is happening in my feed, I’m about to toss something in myself about the underlying theme of time and change in “A Hunger Artist” and how it enjoys some consistency with at least one of Jung’s principal theorems – but I’m thinking I’m going to try be kind of witty about it – when all of a sudden… (here, I have to stop for a second and catch my breath since my herniated prefrontal cortex has also sapped my endurance, and my doc starts to rise again, but once more I wave him off and continue)… when all of a sudden – POP! – I feel a real sharp pain in my forehead and I can’t think of anything to type. Zilch. I’m telling you, it was the mental equivalent of rupturing a lumbar spine disk. Paralysis of the mind. It hurt like a son of a bitch, I couldn’t think straight, and the next thing I know, it’s two days later and I’m in your office. That’s about it. That’s what I remember about the accident.
Neurologist: (Nodding sagely) Hmm… Classic presentation of a PFC herniation. The causal events are not all that uncommon, especially given the social media factor. I’ve seen an inordinately large number of social media-induced prefrontal cortex herniation events over the last few years, and I’ve given the subject a great deal of thought, Mr. Stamos.
Me: Wow. Ok. So, social media… Well, you know that I write for a living, and you know that I spend more than a little of my time and energy on a few different social media platforms. Got a lot of people in those spaces that I consider friends, and I like to pass around some of the material I write. Since I got hurt overtaxing my brain out there, what are the things I should and shouldn’t be doing? You’re familiar with the SM scene. You’ve been thinking a lot about it. So what do I do? How do I conduct myself on social media? I mean, assuming you think it’s even safe for me to be there at all.
Neurologist: I’m glad you asked. It’s a good question… hey, you didn’t overdo it just now coming up with it, did you? (I shake my head – gently – and he continues.) Ok, so the thing about social media interactions, especially for somebody who writes for a living, is that it’s always tempting to weigh in on things… on things that might be considered… esoteric. Literature that not everyone’s read, only really smart people. Films that are obscure, but which enough people have seen so that the expert who’s doing the weighing in seems suitably intelligent to a big enough audience. Politics. It’s important, if someone like you wants to seem relevant, to be able to draw arcane parallels between the things elected officials do and cataclysmic, profound metaphysical shit. (I’m not kidding. He actually says the word “shit.”) Philosophy is another big one. And psychology. You know, the kind of stuff that can make someone sound really smart when they talk about it, but in reality is just nebulous, fatuous theorizing. Oh yeah, and one more thing I just thought of. AI. You know, Artificial Intelligence? You writers are always concerned about it stealing your work and using it to train more AI. Is AI bad? Hell, it’ll probably end up usurping humanity’s position as the planet’s dominant collective intellectual component. Probably exterminate all of us, too. But right now, trying to weigh in on all of that is a bad idea for a man in your condition.
Me: (My injury is starting to throb a little by this point, but I really want to know how to keep my presence, my writing, and my professional and personal identities alive within social media’s evidently dangerous context. So I continue questioning my neurologist.) Ok, let’s talk about AI. Should I try coming up with really clever-sounding op-ed commentary about AI and its existential threat to the material that I, and my fellow writers create? Or, should I just keep writing like I always do and continue to share what I write on my social media accounts? You know, damn the torpedoes, and all of that?
Neurologist: Look, I’m not going to kid you. AI is a genuine concern. From what I’ve read, and even as we speak, AI bots are searching cyberspace, scouring it, really – particularly that cyberspace occupied by social media platforms – and gleaning original material from writers all around the world. AI is taking all of that collected original writing, incorporating it into its massive collective database, massaging it, altering it, tweaking it, and, ultimately, using it to create its own writing. In effect, it’s using original, human writing to train itself to write in an exponentially growing, “more human” fashion. Human writers write things, AI steals those things, eats them, digests them, and uses them to train itself and make itself even smarter and more human-like. That’s the current theory behind it anyway. So, in light of AI’s threat, I think that writing original material and sharing it on social media platforms can be a dicey proposition, to say the least. But in your case, I will tell you that your injury is obviously a taxing one, and trying to filter, modify, limit, or otherwise adjust the content, quality, or output level of what you typically write would only delay your recovery. It’s simply too trying for a man in your physical state. So my advice to you is to just keep writing and sharing that writing wherever you feel like sharing it – whether published in your website or in a printed book or ebook, or shared on social media. Besides, your writing is so bad that if AI is really devouring, assimilating, and digesting it, it’ll probably work just like the perfect poison pill and kill AI at the global level. Just think of it like an infection of highly toxic crap, deadly to AI as a whole, with your social media sharing activity as its vector. Yeah. Definitely keep writing just like always, and keep spreading it around on social media. If your shitty writing ends up killing AI, you might just win a medal or something. (My neurologist scrutinizes me, peering intently over the rims of his eyeglasses, and then shrugs.)
Me: (My injury is causing me no small amount of discomfort, and I’m now struggling to not take my doctor’s opinion of my writing to heart, but I continue with one short, final line of questioning.) So, doc, as far as all of these other topics that get tossed around on social media are concerned? The esoterica? The high-brow stuff? Obscure literature, arthouse films, political analysis, philosophy… all the questions that get asked by the really smart people, the resolutions the really smart people are seeking, the explanations the really smart people are expecting… how do I keep mum on that stuff and maintain even the remotest semblance of relevance as a writer?
Neurologist: You’re asking my professional opinion and I’m giving it to you now. You’re familiar with Occam’s razor? (I nod, and he continues.) It’s an accurate principle, but in my opinion, it doesn’t go far enough in this particular case. (I raise an eyebrow and it sort of makes my brain hurt to do it.) All of these high-brow social media conjectures, the debated positions, the questions that you’re talking about, and all of the high-brow explanations that might possibly be, and usually are, offered in response? Occam’s razor is the intelligent man’s counterpoint to the whole mess. The simplest explanation is usually the best explanation. But sometimes, no explanation is even better. It’s an intellectual shit storm out there, and even maybe more accurately, a pseudo-intellectual shit storm. A smart man could do worse than to keep out of it. And a man with a prefrontal cortex herniation should keep his mouth shut – and his fingers and thumbs still – at least until that storm passes. Rest your brain, my boy. Stop at the front desk. I’ll see you in a month.
That’s more or less how it went down during my last visit at the neurologist’s office, and now, I’m sitting here telling you the story and icing my head, which is starting to feel pretty numb. (I’m getting used to this lack of sensation and finding it not unpleasant.) Through the veil of numbness, I review my doctor’s orders and I think about all he’d said. Ok, according to him, I’m never going to win any O. Henry Awards, but I might just receive The Congressional Medal of Honor for saving humanity from the ravages of artificial intelligence. Which, I’m thinking, is not a bad booby prize. And speaking of thinking, it seems like maybe now it doesn’t hurt quite so much to do it. I can’t be sure whether this is because of the numbing effects of the ice pack on my brain, or because my PFC herniation is starting to de-herniate. I do know that this respite from the pain allows further thought on my part to continue in relatively unimpeded fashion, if still a little gingerly. This modest, reclaimed freedom of brain wave flow permits a gossamer glimmer of glass-half-full sort of optimism to emerge from my mind’s receding murk. I consider my injury – my prefrontal cortex herniation – and realize that this situation really isn’t entirely horrible. In fact, at this moment I feel sort of fortunate. I thank my lucky stars that it was only my brain that got blown out. It could have been much, much worse. It could have been one of my knees, or my throwing arm. You know, something really important.
“Cerebral Heavy Lifting on Social Media?” ©2024. John G. Stamos and The Renaissance Garden Guy
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Awesome read!!!
I prescribe Laughter and Mind Relaxation…. Value an Empty mind 🌸🙏😊
Thanks for reading the piece, Roxxy. It’s much appreciated. And as far as the “empty mind” part is concerned, I’m pretty sure I’ve personally got that covered. Thanks once again, Roxxy!
Cleverly written story. Very witty and enjoyable to read.
Many thanks, Rick. Glad you enjoyed it – I appreciate your giving it a read.
I think you need more bed rest John. Relax that prefrontal cortex. A stressed prefrontal cortex is not a happy prefrontal cortex.
Listen to some nice soothing music – like ACDC or Scorpion. Rexlax. Let Go. Breathe.
Good advice – I like it.
Keep writing! It will heal your head, heart, and soul. Your writing is an elixir for your readers as well. I think you’ve found a doctor that gives great advice.
You are too kind, Kevin – thank you!