Our Culture is Fading

social media IS real. everything is the exact same as it is online and it's toxic.

Going down to Mobile for the Senior Bowl is always a positive culture shock. Spending a week with people who write and are coherent/literate for a LIVING means having intelligent, funny, memorable conversations with those who share common interests with me.

Then I come back to Orlando, where I have an intramural flag football practice: something I’m really excited for, and considering I really don’t know anyone here (outside of my girlfriend), it should be a great opportunity to meet new people.

But this story, to this point at least, hasn’t been a positive one. Rather than being surrounded by football lovers who are accepting and kind, this group is full of judgment and insensitivity. And even more so, it's an amalgamation of the things that I see on social media every day. There is no personality. There is only argument and arrogance without evidence.

And this follows me everywhere. Last year I was on a different flag football team with my roommates, who, despite my best effort, wouldn't give me a lick of respect. Trying to make friends with men, especially college aged ones, is this process over and over and over again, to the point where I feel like I don't belong. The ideology that college creates indoctrination into left-wing values is a piece of misinformation that haunts me. The majority of people I come across who share even remotely similar interests to me, are walking embodiments of Barstool podcasts, unfiltered misogyny and racism, and what they’ve picked up from people who our current climate deems as successful.

I feel a moral weight every single day when I wake up, and it's largely due to where I live. I'm watching civilians get murdered in the street. I'm watching a group of elites trying their damnedest to cover for one another. I'm watching an economy that is holding on by the thread of businesses that are designed to take jobs away from people who need them. And all of this is something that I can't speak out against on my biggest platform because it's the only one that pays me and it's owned by someone who would 100% suppress my videos or potentially ban me. Even someone like myself, who cares so much about the world they live in, and wants to be able to talk about all of it, is a slave to the profit motive. One false step and I'm out of a job, not because I spread hate, but because I bring awareness about those who are performing it.

It truly doesn't feel like escapism works either. Sports, for a while, was something that I considered both entertainment AND a passion of mine. But just like any other corporation, I'm watching these leagues crumble. It doesn't look that way from a profit perspective, but morally, ethically, and sustainably, it's all falling apart. And time and time again, it's not enough to pull me away from this society that I am often ashamed of being a part of.

The fueling of the pockets of the view is what drives our society. You're taught in elementary school that these basic principles of empathy and respect are what matter. You taught that those will get you far enough. You're given classes like English and math with the idea that they will make you a more well-rounded person who is educated and respectable. But none of it matters when you look up, you see that we have this hierarchy that is all based on this green piece of paper, and the people who have the most of it push harder and harder to make the lives of those who don't worse and worse.

Everything, and I mean, everything, feels like a social ladder. The thing you were taught to avoid in middle school by every single movie you ever watched is what drives everyone. Everything is competition. Everything is one person succeeding, while another one fails as a direct consequence of the former. Public life, since I've entered college, has only shown me this.

I know that humans are social creatures, and there are so many people that I can't thank enough for bringing me into a writing and content creation, community of people who are like-minded and kind, but it almost feels like I'm playing a different game then almost anyone I come across. The willingness to push people down is something that I truly believed, for a long time, was only on the Internet and in places where you're worth tied to a follower count. But social cachet, and more importantly, money, is a follower count, and not wanting the social media senses where everyone can find a niche. But rather one where your success is almost entirely tied to the failure of others.

I'm not sure that any of this is coherent, but these are my thoughts. Because it feels wrong to give up on public life and society (combined with the fact that we are all addicted to our phones), I won't do so. I'm going to continue to try to share empathy and positivity in everything I do. Those moments in Mobile, Alabama, the moments I share with my girlfriend, and anytime I've been able to have a real conversation has taught me that people are worth investing in. But this system, the one that is designed to tear us apart. The one that is leading to so much hurt and heartbreak, is bringing the same to me.

I wish I had any sort of solution, besides simply providing content to those who can find escapism, but that's what I'm going to try to do: continue to give love to those who have similar goals, find more of those people, and find larger communities that I have not been able to in my 22 years of living.

With that being said, help your loved ones, continue to protest ICE, and find ways to not be put through mental hell by the profit motive. We have to hope that moral people are listening somewhere.

Love,

Tyler.