Yeah... They're pointless, unless you're an athlete - where ice baths actually work.

Is taking cold showers like a machismo SV thing?

Possibly, but it doesn't have to be only that, or without any merit. Cold baths and even winter swimming [1] (in icy water) are a thing in many parts of the world.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_swimming

Is thinking that everything is a Silicon Valley thing, a Silicon Valley thing? Is it really plausible that no one thought to feel manly about cold showers until a bunch of nerds came along?

>Is it really plausible that no one thought to feel manly about cold showers until a bunch of nerds came along?

No, but it's quite plausible that it was a niche thing that might have been a fad at some points in the past, only to be revived by a new generation that includes many fad-chacing types, SV people, and BS-artists (aka influencers)...

I'm pretty sure cold showers have been a thing to show your ability to live without comforts ever since hot showers became a possibility.

And the term fits here, I believe: cold showers do very much wake you up and bring you into reality quickly. There's no dreaming about hypes when you're under a cold shower.

An old fad, probably. Romans did this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frigidarium

No, it is more of a euphemism for "sobering up." Existed for quite awhile, usually used for drunks though. Has minor connotations of being an oddball health nut-people extolling the benefits of being immersed into chilly water.

Yes. Like stoicism. You aren't emotionally insensitive/unintelligent, you're a masculine Roman general!

How is stoicism a SV thing? It's kinda been around for a while...

Stoicism hasn't been popular since Victorian times. I think SV types and rationalists kind of revived it, since it was moral austerity without any real religious background. To an extent they do the same with meditation; it's somehow gone from being something associated with New Age thinking, to something atheist rationalists tout the benefits of while carefully avoiding any hint of spirituality.

Everyone I know who identifies as a stoic is an emotionally stunted software engineer who realistically isn't tasked with stoically shouldering very much of anything.

As a counterpoint, most of the people I know whom I would consider to follow a Stoic philosophy don't self-classify all that much.

I would also say that there's a pretty big difference between "stiff upper lip/no emotions" that people imagine when using the the adjective "stoic" and the Stoic writings of Marcus Aurelius and the like.

> I would also say that there's a pretty big difference between "stiff upper lip/no emotions" that people imagine when using the the adjective "stoic" and the Stoic writings of Marcus Aurelius and the like.

A quick way to find out what sort of self-proclaimed lover of Meditations you’re dealing with is to ask what they think of its physics and metaphysics.

Gotta love all the HN armchair gatekeepers in this thread

Taking amusement in catching little social lies isn’t exactly gatekeeping. More like sport.

I don’t give a damn whether people call themselves Stoics or not and whether they’re sincere—whatever that means—or not, but I’m very sure, specifically, that there are a lot more fans of Meditations than people who’ve read it or even meaningfully read about it, which is funny in that “oh boy, aren’t we humans goofy” sort of way. It’s also an easy phenomenon to stumble on innocently while trying to discuss the book, though I think that goes for a lot of Very Important Books that more people claim to have read than actually have. IIRC someone wrote a whole tongue-partially-in-cheek guide to pretending at having read books, for the reason that it’s pretty common.

One of my hobbies is asking christians if they know about the time god told a bear to maul some kids for making fun of a bald guy. When they say they aren't I dab, tip my fedora, then moonwalk out of the room. Aren't humans goofy?

That probably says more about the composition of your social circle than anything else.