It used to be different....

.... it used to be better. Noticeably, more people are reading the blog, many more, and this comes with certain repercussions. I look back with nostalgia, for example, at those January winter evenings when I wrote my posts, it was -10 degrees Celsius outside, and only 30-50 people at most read Lifetilt daily. It was good, very good. It was more liberated and much, much freer. Back then, I could still calmly write that there's no bigger sandbox in the world, even by media standards, than RTL Klub, but now we're at a point where if the word "asshole" and the name Kristóf Steiner appear in the same sentence, a letter from Amnesty International immediately arrives.

The blog is outgrowing itself, and once something reaches a certain level, it can't really be what it used to be. Too many people are reading it now for it not to step on toes, and the characters travel too far. This blog was able to outgrow itself, among other reasons, because it is what I always imagined it to be. An uncompromising, independent civilian blog, where I write down my thoughts, my opinions about the world, feelings, politics, people. A civilian blog from a civilian in Budapest in 2011. Because I'm sitting next to you on the tram, I'm standing in line in front of you at the Post Office, I'm swearing in the other car in the traffic jam, I'm that jerk next door, and you walk past me at Oktogon. Just a guy who decided to change a few people's lives through training, and who is fed up with this public cesspool we've been wading in for years, and who is really getting tired of the conditions in this country.

Everyone fights their own daily battle, and everyone with even a little more sense than a tree frog sees exactly what's going on in this country and what processes are unfolding before our eyes every day. Everyone here is fed up with everything, but I certainly am. The dickhead bosses, the untalented ass-faced colleagues, the stream of unacceptable, generation-deforming garbage spewing from the TV, the helpless, thieving incompetence of governments that have been in power for almost 21 years now, the unlivable public conditions, the unqualifiable existence of the Roma, and generally everything. What sets everyone off on both banks of the Danube varies.

Sometimes they ask me what I think a perfect world would be like. I have no idea, but the internet's web2 world resembles it. People who can be whoever they want and can say what they can't do, can't say, can't tell to go screw themselves in real life. The most powerful opinion-shaping platform, where one wants to write, especially on their own damn blog, so that no one's fingers itch on the keyboard sending letters, even if perhaps the activity they display is really not to my liking, or I consider it crappy garbage on the level of Budapest TV. Lifetilt and I have already received negative comments. In fact…. But never, not for a single minute, did I think of going down into the comments or writing emails and shaking my fists.

It's a bad sign if what I write no longer comes from the heart and soul. Every one of my posts is born by writing down whatever comes to mind without overthinking it, without checking if it's politically correct; I simply write down the image I see in my head and express what I think about the world and the processes within it. The other day, I can't even remember which post it was, I noticed myself deleting what I'd written, rethinking it, revising it... and that's when I said, stop right there. We're not living in fucking Cambodia, where I don't know what conditions prevail, but certainly not British freedom of thought and speech.

They scared the hell out of people with Anna Szalai, saying that Fidesz was coming and press freedom was in danger. Some even rushed to Strasbourg, right to Cohn-Bendit's door, and a few had already started packing that proverbial "anything can happen at any time" suitcase. Well, what can I say, they were really wrong. The proverbial wolves do exist, but they were looking in the wrong place because it's not the government that is endangering everything we call democracy. The real wolves, you see, live among us. The wolves, whose interests, if offended, come forward and with a speed and efficiency that shames communist authoritarian methods, pull everyone off that certain thin ice. This is ridiculous and at the same time infinitely sad. That's why it hurts that I wrote the BA article, because the blog irrevocably changed with that post. I, like every blogger, craved attention, but not this kind. I wanted the blog to be talked about because of the workouts and healthy lifestyle, not whether more Julia Roberts go to the Technical University or BGF.

I miss those times when the blog only had 6-800 readers. Back then, nobody cared what I wrote about whom, because either they didn't know about the blog, or if they somehow stumbled upon Lifetilt, they either clicked away immediately, or they simply didn't give a damn because they thought there were enough self-proclaimed assholes on the internet.

I have ambivalent feelings. On the one hand, if I could, I wouldn't write it again, because Lifetilt and the phrase "prostitutes in higher education" have been irrevocably linked for life. On the other hand, this is how the blog got the attention that allows my helpful and inspiring posts, which make writing this blog worthwhile at all, to reach the masses. I wrote earlier, perhaps in the Budapestaurant post, that we should open a place where only and exclusively healthy food would be available. One that doesn't change due to popularity, and whose basic concept isn't distorted just to reach as wide a mass as possible by trying to please them.

I was wrong. Unfortunately, I was terribly wrong, because these processes are unfortunately unavoidable, as they are inherent in development and a changed state. András Giró Szász once said about Jobbik before the 2010 elections, that it's quite different to rant on the street in front of 3-4000 people and completely different to politic within legal frameworks in parliament. The basic idea is always instinctive, the real one. After that, the concept, the ideal, becomes corrupted, and principles are distorted under the pressure of money, power, or a higher force, and here the topic is no longer Jobbik but anything else we undertake in life. News reports about major tragedies and sensational events are usually only worth paying attention to for the first hour, after that it's all just fluff. The first big hit, the first movie, the first album. The band Belga could tell us about this. They will never release an album as big in Hungary as "Majd Megszokod" (You'll Get Used to It)... Success came, the Sziget main stage instead of basement concerts, and that pretty much closed the door. The second album, "Jön a Gólem" (The Golem Is Coming), was merely a weak imitation.

I hope everyone understands what I'm talking about and what I'm getting at. Unfortunately, there are very few examples of businesses or movements that, once they broke through a certain noise level, were able to remain true to their original idea and the direction they initially set out on. These directions and ideas are good, because they had to grow out of the weeds for some reason. Facebook or Critical Mass are perhaps such examples.

Lifetilt is an independent blog and will remain so for as long as possible, with health and sports remaining its central focus, supplemented or interwoven with my thoughts, opinions, and stories. Supplement companies have approached me to sponsor the site. In return, they asked for a series of articles about their products and a banner in a central location on the blog. Does it really not occur to them that this blog cannot accommodate such bracketed paid advertising crap? Of course, I refused, just as I will refuse everything in the future that wishes to interfere with the life and appearance of the blog. This is my blog, and if I ever realize that I can no longer write as I used to, if there are too many compromises, then I will personally burn this whole thing down behind me, leaving no memento for posterity. Lifetilt is a new initiative that, if it's good, will eventually make its own way, and if not, it will have its rightful place in the graveyard of failed ideas. In any case, time will provide the answers, sooner or later.