5/? – No More Idols

When embarking on a journey of introspective discovery with no clear destination, taking pit stops to rest from your travels is inevitable. As much as you may enjoy the progress and revelations along the way, staring into the fractured mirror of your soul can raise the levels of fatigue to the point that you must take a break to prepare for the next leg of your journey. This may be only in regards to my personal experience, but then again this is my ride and you accepted the invite, so this will be through my eyes as you willingly choose to sit shotgun. And as much as I appreciate the company, I must warn you that the road ahead is not for the faint of heart or those unable to table their own emotions while processing harsh truths or views. With that said, I suggest you buckle up and be prepared for the winding turns and weathered roads ahead.

After I recently made the call to take my foot off the gas for a bit, even though perhaps more as a necessity than an elective course-correction, I decided it was way past time for me to venture outside of the digital territory that I had spent the last half decade living in. Not as a tantrum child running away from home, but more so a search party for understanding of other worlds and lifestyles outside of my own. A common theme of recent history has been much preaching about avoiding echo-chambers and becoming close-minded, of which I entirely agree with and wanted to check my own mental status for any such shortcomings. Now, that is not necessarily a slight towards any specific situation or the overall territory that I’ve called home, but more so a realization that I wasn’t giving myself the best chance to be well-rounded in any perceptions or understandings that I may sculpt of the world in general. Part of my motivation was the potential to acquire better critical thinking skills or other various metaphorical tools that have been up until now entirely foreign to me. However, I would be lying to you if I said I wasn’t partially prompted to venture out because of a growing discouragement I’ve had with the direction that my homeland was trending. I guess after you’ve spent so much time laser-focused on the goals of the collective and then end up stepping back to evaluate your surroundings, you very well could be blindsided with disappointment over what you perceived as reality compared to the actual functions and rogue-like uses of the machine you volunteered to help build and maintain.

The rising tensions of the world stage can create such callous feelings towards what is understood as opposition, even though I wouldn’t expect anyone to be able to fully comprehend my true stance on life without spending a decent amount of time in my orbit. Even still, their decodes of my points of view would be educated guesses at best, as anyone has the freedom to have a forever revolving door of updated opinions and pivoting takes whenever new information arises. An easy example of this misguided hate would be the act of giving catch-all labels fueled by negativity and hatred by the polar opposite ideological spectrum, riddled with accusations and claims I could easily laugh off due to them being almost comically false. Another bitter pill I had to swallow when I stepped back was that it’s not just the adversary’s camp that can resort to such similar tactics, which in all honesty has been an increasingly depressing scenario to witness; a soulless lack of compassion for humanity in an environment fueled with hubris-driven influence is what I’d imagine would be the societal landscape of a dystopian nightmare, of which I pray is not becoming an impending reality. A quote about pride and falling comes to mind.

I went into this expedition with the understanding that I would need to disregard my preconceived notions about anyone in order to best see the world through their eyes. This is by no means giving a pass to any of their views or actions, but I couldn’t allow my emotions to cloud the type of understanding I was seeking out. Many times throughout my work in spreading a variety of material needed as artillery in the information war, I would be consistently greeted with cries about being unable to even consume the content, due to the pure disdain and blinding hatred of the people or actions within it. It troubled me greatly to see someone get in their own way by being so disgusted and angry with the characters involved, that they would immediately tune out the information intended to equip themselves with in order to wake up others, all because they couldn’t balance out their own emotions. Those who have followed along with my thoughts since the turning over of presidential leadership can attest to my hyperfocus on the ability to keep a firm grip on the wheel of one’s emotions. As I write this now, I believe in that more than ever, especially with the weight of the world becoming heavier plus the overall toxicity that seems to transpire when casually questioning the intentions or beliefs of others.

Due to my obsessively curious nature and my tendency to chase butterflies for clarity, one of the common themes I ran into across my random lurking ventures was the apparent and disheartening addiction to easily-debunkable information. Observing people getting offended and often becoming defensive and spiteful whenever their stance is questioned or even disproved, is probably one of the main culprits whenever I had to step away for a little bit so I didn’t become just as cold-hearted. It truly had baffled me to watch someone be knowingly wrong while the factual elephant of truth wasn’t just in the corner of the room but actually center stage, and yet both the falsehood dealer and their customers would rather win the argument through brute force instead of practicing humility and respecting fact over fiction. However, while trying to wrap my head around such a counterproductive dynamic between the chosen leader and their followers, I had an epiphany that I had not considered to include until then.

Maybe it’s because of the skyrocketing tensions in life due to a variety of actions by the insidious power structures of the world, or perhaps it’s just as simple as despising one’s current status or reality, but I have noticed an abundance of examples that I consider to be long-term effects of escapism. Not just the bizarre trends of fiending for doomporn hypotheticals or blindly joining in dog-piles that are championed by their favorite content creators in order to exile criticisms that may tarnish brands and egos, but the wildly concerning comfortability with potentially being lied to as long as the lie is the correct milligram levels of dopamine. It is quite possible that as a society we have become varying degrees of professional liars, not so much to the people around us, but to ourselves.

I’m not stating that every single person who reads this or even on this planet is a downright garbage person, but I have zero problem admitting just how flawed of a human I’ve been up to this point in life with absolutely no perfection ability in sight. With that said, I’ve had many times while publicly attempting to be a difference in the world where I had to remind myself to not take things personally whenever my presentation of information was successfully disassembled. A recurring thought I’ve had about this is the concept of ego death and how society continues to coax people into being their own gods instead of actually having faith in God. A good friend described it perfectly to me when they said that the world creates a void in your soul while offering earthly desires to fill it, therefore creating dependency on the world to keep providing them. I believe a major factor with this issue has to do with how the internet has become essentially a reality simulator. For example, we take offense to words on social media that were created with the lowest energy imaginable to type out, as if we had a knock on our door and then were greeted with them being yelled directly in our faces. I’m sure we can all agree that nearly all rage interactions online would never play out IRL. Hell, people nowadays even have problems making eye contact, let alone get into a war with words while standing face to face.

Now that I’ve laid some groundwork for you to hopefully be picking up what I’m putting down, It would be wrong of me to not address a side note that comes with this social infrastructure consisting of avatars and follower counts. I don’t care how much you tell yourself that it doesn’t matter how many followers you have or notifications blowing up your phone, the system’s impact itself is unavoidable. How many times have you seen someone say things like “well I’m just a nobody with x amount of followers” or “you only have x amount of followers, you must be a bot” or anything similar? How many times have you seen people or perhaps even yourself believing something blindly because a high-follower account said it? What about people stating their digital resumes as a sign of flawlessness? Now I’m definitely not saying that anyone with a top-tier reach is nefarious, but I am trying to prove the point that social media is the social credit score of our time. Ask any content creator how they feel when the next video doesn’t do nearly as well as the previous ones or if they feel some kind of way when the live viewers noticeably decrease. Imagine a preacher who typically has a congregation of let’s say 500 people, but on a random Sunday morning the attendance happens to be 250. There could be a variety of reasons like weather, illness going around, holidays, etc., but what if it happens two weeks in a row? What about three? I’m sure the preacher could easily internalize the problem and consider it their fault. Now take that same formula and apply it to live-streamers or notification interactions, except now the attendance is based on having the endless competition of the entire internet, which already attempts to condition us to have goldfish levels of attention spans by granting us a false sense of omnipresence.

Another issue that stems from this digital environment is the ability to take advantage of it; to present a facade that is welcoming to those who would otherwise avoid those types of people like they’re a plague. I have zero desire to give any examples of this because a lot of the time, the conversation goes sideways and becomes a hubris thunderdome with opposing beliefs or communities at war with each other. It is not my intent in writing this to smear whatever names or entities that might be going through your head about this right now, that’s for you to work through and decide if it’s true or not. I do however find it detrimental that even the attempt to discuss the issue on a public forum is met with outcries about causing division or infighting. I get it, a tribe will almost always come to the defense of their chosen leaders and feel noble in doing so. However we cannot deny that such hedges of protection are hiding spots that ill intentions can thrive in. Couple this with my previous thoughts about using the internet as an emotional escape, and to me it becomes a little bit more understandable as to why toxicity occurs in a multitude of corners throughout the interwebs.

Besides addressing what I consider topics that are much avoided and long overdue, there actually are some positive takeaways I had with this that I wanted to save for the end, in hopes that you truly consider them in order to evaluate in your own life. First off, I learned that I should not only step away and truly develop my own opinion outside of the collective, but I should also value it enough to not blindly give it away to those who don’t respect it. It can become a practice in futility when people sometimes listen only for the chance to speak. An unpopular opinion is still an opinion, not something that should be decimated because it’s uncomfortable or counteracts the opinion that one wants to believe. Another thing would be to remind yourself that the internet isn’t real life. Yes, online activities can have real world consequences, but you weren’t born with a phone in your hand or a wi-fi antenna for a reason.

Something I’ve become a fan of reminding myself about is to check my levels of digital consumption as compared to me living life offline. How much natural dopamine I create for myself by setting real world goals and accomplishing them, instead of my self-esteem and mental state being dependent on whatever the black mirror presents to me. I really think we are losing the ability to respect our own species because we are constantly looking to them to fill the void, like a jester who is there for our entertainment and anything short of that is considered almost criminal. Yes, there are bots and trolls intended to disrupt your internet experience, but you can’t forget that a lot of the time the person on the other side of the internet connection is just as human as you, who also goes through their own trials and tribulations. Maybe they are looking to escape life for a bit and also vent or take out their frustrations online, being a wounded animal instead of a beast foaming at the mouth.

Regardless, I implore you to consider how much time and energy you put out into the world and ask yourself how much of it needs to be put into being a well-rounded, better version of yourself. I remember being told growing up that I was going to be the main person I would be around my entire life, so I should probably try to level up that person as much as I could. I also ask that you consider regulating how much digital intake you have as compared to having original thoughts and individual accomplishments.

I pray that you’re reminding yourself that you are just as important as anyone else, even if you feel like your phone screen is telling you otherwise.

When embarking on a journey of introspective discovery with no clear destination, taking pit stops to rest from your travels is inevitable. As much as you may enjoy the progress and revelations along the way, staring into the fractured mirror of your soul can raise the levels of fatigue to the point that you must take a break to prepare for the next leg of your journey. This may be only in regards to my personal experience, but then again this is my ride and you accepted the invite, so this will be through my eyes as you willingly choose to sit shotgun. And as much as I appreciate the company, I must warn you that the road ahead is not for the faint of heart or those unable to table their own emotions while processing harsh truths or views. With that said, I suggest you buckle up and be prepared for the winding turns and weathered roads ahead.

After I recently made the call to take my foot off the gas for a bit, even though perhaps more as a necessity than an elective course-correction, I decided it was way past time for me to venture outside of the digital territory that I had spent the last half decade living in. Not as a tantrum child running away from home, but more so a search party for understanding of other worlds and lifestyles outside of my own. A common theme of recent history has been much preaching about avoiding echo-chambers and becoming close-minded, of which I entirely agree with and wanted to check my own mental status for any such shortcomings. Now, that is not necessarily a slight towards any specific situation or the overall territory that I’ve called home, but more so a realization that I wasn’t giving myself the best chance to be well-rounded in any perceptions or understandings that I may sculpt of the world in general. Part of my motivation was the potential to acquire better critical thinking skills or other various metaphorical tools that have been up until now entirely foreign to me. However, I would be lying to you if I said I wasn’t partially prompted to venture out because of a growing discouragement I’ve had with the direction that my homeland was trending. I guess after you’ve spent so much time laser-focused on the goals of the collective and then end up stepping back to evaluate your surroundings, you very well could be blindsided with disappointment over what you perceived as reality compared to the actual functions and rogue-like uses of the machine you volunteered to help build and maintain.

The rising tensions of the world stage can create such callous feelings towards what is understood as opposition, even though I wouldn’t expect anyone to be able to fully comprehend my true stance on life without spending a decent amount of time in my orbit. Even still, their decodes of my points of view would be educated guesses at best, as anyone has the freedom to have a forever revolving door of updated opinions and pivoting takes whenever new information arises. An easy example of this misguided hate would be the act of giving catch-all labels fueled by negativity and hatred by the polar opposite ideological spectrum, riddled with accusations and claims I could easily laugh off due to them being almost comically false. Another bitter pill I had to swallow when I stepped back was that it’s not just the adversary’s camp that can resort to such similar tactics, which in all honesty has been an increasingly depressing scenario to witness; a soulless lack of compassion for humanity in an environment fueled with hubris-driven influence is what I’d imagine would be the societal landscape of a dystopian nightmare, of which I pray is not becoming an impending reality. A quote about pride and falling comes to mind.

I went into this expedition with the understanding that I would need to disregard my preconceived notions about anyone in order to best see the world through their eyes. This is by no means giving a pass to any of their views or actions, but I couldn’t allow my emotions to cloud the type of understanding I was seeking out. Many times throughout my work in spreading a variety of material needed as artillery in the information war, I would be consistently greeted with cries about being unable to even consume the content, due to the pure disdain and blinding hatred of the people or actions within it. It troubled me greatly to see someone get in their own way by being so disgusted and angry with the characters involved, that they would immediately tune out the information intended to equip themselves with in order to wake up others, all because they couldn’t balance out their own emotions. Those who have followed along with my thoughts since the turning over of presidential leadership can attest to my hyperfocus on the ability to keep a firm grip on the wheel of one’s emotions. As I write this now, I believe in that more than ever, especially with the weight of the world becoming heavier plus the overall toxicity that seems to transpire when casually questioning the intentions or beliefs of others.

Due to my obsessively curious nature and my tendency to chase butterflies for clarity, one of the common themes I ran into across my random lurking ventures was the apparent and disheartening addiction to easily-debunkable information. Observing people getting offended and often becoming defensive and spiteful whenever their stance is questioned or even disproved, is probably one of the main culprits whenever I had to step away for a little bit so I didn’t become just as cold-hearted. It truly had baffled me to watch someone be knowingly wrong while the factual elephant of truth wasn’t just in the corner of the room but actually center stage, and yet both the falsehood dealer and their customers would rather win the argument through brute force instead of practicing humility and respecting fact over fiction. However, while trying to wrap my head around such a counterproductive dynamic between the chosen leader and their followers, I had an epiphany that I had not considered to include until then.

Maybe it’s because of the skyrocketing tensions in life due to a variety of actions by the insidious power structures of the world, or perhaps it’s just as simple as despising one’s current status or reality, but I have noticed an abundance of examples that I consider to be long-term effects of escapism. Not just the bizarre trends of fiending for doomporn hypotheticals or blindly joining in dog-piles that are championed by their favorite content creators in order to exile criticisms that may tarnish brands and egos, but the wildly concerning comfortability with potentially being lied to as long as the lie is the correct milligram levels of dopamine. It is quite possible that as a society we have become varying degrees of professional liars, not so much to the people around us, but to ourselves.

I’m not stating that every single person who reads this or even on this planet is a downright garbage person, but I have zero problem admitting just how flawed of a human I’ve been up to this point in life with absolutely no perfection ability in sight. With that said, I’ve had many times while publicly attempting to be a difference in the world where I had to remind myself to not take things personally whenever my presentation of information was successfully disassembled. A recurring thought I’ve had about this is the concept of ego death and how society continues to coax people into being their own gods instead of actually having faith in God. A good friend described it perfectly to me when they said that the world creates a void in your soul while offering earthly desires to fill it, therefore creating dependency on the world to keep providing them. I believe a major factor with this issue has to do with how the internet has become essentially a reality simulator. For example, we take offense to words on social media that were created with the lowest energy imaginable to type out, as if we had a knock on our door and then were greeted with them being yelled directly in our faces. I’m sure we can all agree that nearly all rage interactions online would never play out IRL. Hell, people nowadays even have problems making eye contact, let alone get into a war with words while standing face to face.

Now that I’ve laid some groundwork for you to hopefully be picking up what I’m putting down, It would be wrong of me to not address a side note that comes with this social infrastructure consisting of avatars and follower counts. I don’t care how much you tell yourself that it doesn’t matter how many followers you have or notifications blowing up your phone, the system’s impact itself is unavoidable. How many times have you seen someone say things like “well I’m just a nobody with x amount of followers” or “you only have x amount of followers, you must be a bot” or anything similar? How many times have you seen people or perhaps even yourself believing something blindly because a high-follower account said it? What about people stating their digital resumes as a sign of flawlessness? Now I’m definitely not saying that anyone with a top-tier reach is nefarious, but I am trying to prove the point that social media is the social credit score of our time. Ask any content creator how they feel when the next video doesn’t do nearly as well as the previous ones or if they feel some kind of way when the live viewers noticeably decrease. Imagine a preacher who typically has a congregation of let’s say 500 people, but on a random Sunday morning the attendance happens to be 250. There could be a variety of reasons like weather, illness going around, holidays, etc., but what if it happens two weeks in a row? What about three? I’m sure the preacher could easily internalize the problem and consider it their fault. Now take that same formula and apply it to live-streamers or notification interactions, except now the attendance is based on having the endless competition of the entire internet, which already attempts to condition us to have goldfish levels of attention spans by granting us a false sense of omnipresence.

Another issue that stems from this digital environment is the ability to take advantage of it; to present a facade that is welcoming to those who would otherwise avoid those types of people like they’re a plague. I have zero desire to give any examples of this because a lot of the time, the conversation goes sideways and becomes a hubris thunderdome with opposing beliefs or communities at war with each other. It is not my intent in writing this to smear whatever names or entities that might be going through your head about this right now, that’s for you to work through and decide if it’s true or not. I do however find it detrimental that even the attempt to discuss the issue on a public forum is met with outcries about causing division or infighting. I get it, a tribe will almost always come to the defense of their chosen leaders and feel noble in doing so. However we cannot deny that such hedges of protection are hiding spots that ill intentions can thrive in. Couple this with my previous thoughts about using the internet as an emotional escape, and to me it becomes a little bit more understandable as to why toxicity occurs in a multitude of corners throughout the interwebs.

Besides addressing what I consider topics that are much avoided and long overdue, there actually are some positive takeaways I had with this that I wanted to save for the end, in hopes that you truly consider them in order to evaluate in your own life. First off, I learned that I should not only step away and truly develop my own opinion outside of the collective, but I should also value it enough to not blindly give it away to those who don’t respect it. It can become a practice in futility when people sometimes listen only for the chance to speak. An unpopular opinion is still an opinion, not something that should be decimated because it’s uncomfortable or counteracts the opinion that one wants to believe. Another thing would be to remind yourself that the internet isn’t real life. Yes, online activities can have real world consequences, but you weren’t born with a phone in your hand or a wi-fi antenna for a reason.

Something I’ve become a fan of reminding myself about is to check my levels of digital consumption as compared to me living life offline. How much natural dopamine I create for myself by setting real world goals and accomplishing them, instead of my self-esteem and mental state being dependent on whatever the black mirror presents to me. I really think we are losing the ability to respect our own species because we are constantly looking to them to fill the void, like a jester who is there for our entertainment and anything short of that is considered almost criminal. Yes, there are bots and trolls intended to disrupt your internet experience, but you can’t forget that a lot of the time the person on the other side of the internet connection is just as human as you, who also goes through their own trials and tribulations. Maybe they are looking to escape life for a bit and also vent or take out their frustrations online, being a wounded animal instead of a beast foaming at the mouth.

Regardless, I implore you to consider how much time and energy you put out into the world and ask yourself how much of it needs to be put into being a well-rounded, better version of yourself. I remember being told growing up that I was going to be the main person I would be around my entire life, so I should probably try to level up that person as much as I could. I also ask that you consider regulating how much digital intake you have as compared to having original thoughts and individual accomplishments.

I pray that you’re reminding yourself that you are just as important as anyone else, even if you feel like your phone screen is telling you otherwise.