Cinemorphosis

Category: Uncategorized

  • The Day My Wife Met the Quietest Refugees

    The Day My Wife Met the Quietest Refugees

    Before our twins were even born—more than fifteen years ago—my wife told me a story that still sits in the back of my mind like a ghost that refuses to leave. She and her best friend, A, drove to Long Beach to visit what would soon be A’s new home. She and her partner had bought it a month earlier, but escrow delays, termite fumigation, and bureaucratic nonsense kept the place stuck in a strange limbo: theirs legally, but uninhabitable in practice. The house was technically empty—no furniture, no boxes—just an address waiting for its owners to arrive.

    Inside, my wife and A heard voices drifting from somewhere near the kitchen. They followed the sound and found a couple, perhaps in their early fifties, sitting at the counter with steaming cups of bouillon broth. They were calm, unthreatening, even dignified. Two shopping carts stood beside them like faithful dogs, packed with precision: folded clothes, cans of food, hygiene supplies, diabetic needles, prescription bottles—everything arranged with military neatness. My wife used the word squatters, but they looked more like survivors who had finally found a safe harbor.

    They spoke kindly. They’d been living there for nearly a month, they said. The house sheltered them from the cold; they cooked simple meals, washed, slept. They didn’t pretend it was theirs—only that it was a rare oasis in a city allergic to mercy. My wife described them as being sweet, especially toward one another. More than anything, my wife was moved by their sweetness and tenderness.

    Then A told them in a gentle tone that she was the homeowner. The couple apologized, almost embarrassed. The man rolled his cart out first, down the hallway and out through the front door. His companion followed—until she stopped mid-stride, panic rippling across her face. He had forgotten one of his medications. She sprinted back to the kitchen, grabbed the bottle, and hurried after him.

    That moment—her urgency, her loyalty, the fragile bond of two people clinging to each other against the world—burned itself into my heart. Even now, whenever I remember it, my eyes well with tears.

  • The Other Place Has QR Codes

    The Other Place Has QR Codes

    Of all the Twilight Zone episodes that have taken up residence in my psyche, none clings more tenaciously than “A Nice Place to Visit.” A petty crook named Rocky Valentine gets gunned down during a botched robbery and wakes up in what appears to be paradise. He’s greeted by Pip, a genial, rotund guide played by Sebastian Cabot, who grants him everything his larcenous heart ever wanted: money, women, luck, luxury. No struggle, no stress. Every desire fulfilled on command.

    At first, Rocky revels in this frictionless dreamscape. It’s Vegas without losing streaks, heaven without requirements. But gradually, pleasure without purpose curdles into a thick, syrupy dread. He realizes that gratification without resistance is just another form of punishment. Bored out of his mind and desperate for meaning, Rocky pleads with Pip to send him “to the other place.”

    Pip laughs and delivers the gut punch: “Heaven? Whatever gave you the idea that you were in Heaven, Mr. Valentine? This is the other place!” And then, with glee, Pip cackles like the well-fed devil he is.

    Which brings me to paid parking.

    There is a hell, and it lives in the infrastructure of modern urban parking. It’s a realm of QR codes, license plate entries, and apps that want your soul—or at least your email and billing zip code. Some kiosks accept coins, others demand smartphone apps, two-step verification, and an MFA code just to stand still without being ticketed. My wife, tech-literate and cool-headed, usually handles this logistical hellscape while I loiter nearby, pretending to study the map of downtown like it’s a sacred text.

    But this week she’s out of town at a teaching convention, and I’m taking our twin daughters to Laguna Beach. This means I have to drive, find a parking structure, and—here’s the true horror—navigate the digital rigmarole of paid parking without her guidance. The thought of it has me sweating harder than Rocky in his silk suit.

    The absurd part? It’s not the traffic, the tides, or the teenagers that unnerve me. It’s the parking meter. The existential shame of standing in front of a digital payment kiosk, poking at it like a confused ape while my daughters wait patiently (or impatiently) beside me. I don’t fear the unknown. I fear looking like an idiot in front of my kids.

    But here’s the deeper, darker realization: this is just a symptom. My wife, through years of effort and mental load, has become the de facto logistics commander of our household. She knows which airport lines move faster. She’s the one strangers approach at terminals, sensing her Jedi-level calm. Meanwhile, I shuffle behind her like an NPC in a bad video game—directionless, frictionless, practically translucent.

    Frictionless living has a cost. It breeds detachment. It robs you of engagement, resilience, and presence. And like Rocky Valentine, I’ve grown too used to being served instead of showing up.

    Ironically, I’m obsessed with watches—those exquisite tools designed to remind you where you are in time. And yet, I’ve spent years drifting, distracted, floating outside the dial. It takes a solo day trip with my daughters—an hour drive, some shopping, a good lunch, and possibly a tantrum or two—to pull me back into the present.

    When my wife heard about my plan, she said, “You don’t know how happy this makes me.” And I believed her. She wasn’t just relieved that I was giving her a break. She was glad to see me step into the friction. To stop spectating and start parenting in real time.

    No, I don’t want to be Rocky. I don’t want a life where every parking spot is perfect, every line is short, and every meal arrives on time. I want the chaos. I want the curveballs. I want the real thing.

    Even if it means downloading the stupid parking app.

  • Eschatology with a Side of Mangoes

    Eschatology with a Side of Mangoes

    Exactly three months from today, I’ll turn 64. Which means I now live in that strange hinterland between actuarial footnote and walking myth. If adolescence introduces a 13-year-old to waves of chemical chaos and operatic feelings, one’s sixties bring their own interior weather system—gusts of existential dread, sudden squalls of nostalgia, and long humid stretches of unnameable longing.

    One thing I’ve learned: I detest cowardice in the face of mortality. I’m not after false bravado or some barrel-chested denial of death. What I want is a middle path—courage without spiritual negligence, composure without cosmic amnesia. My Jewish relatives on my mother’s side don’t see the need for salvation—certainly not in the harrowing Christian sense of eternal stakes. Meanwhile, my Catholic father’s family insists you better not die with your pants down. Meaning: be ready. Eternity, like a TSA agent, does not tolerate surprises.

    These opposing legacies leave me bouncing between Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and Pascal’s cold-blooded Wager. What if belief is a cosmic bet and I’m holding a busted flush? The writer Jerry L. Walls offers a possible lifeline with his arguments for post-mortem salvation—but only if you squint hard enough and don’t mind a theological gray zone. Still, I’m annoyed—and I mean truly annoyed—that I remain agnostic on the most important question of all. 

    But let’s leave eschatology for now and talk about something far more pressing: my inexplicable, almost primal desire to move to the tropics.

    More specifically, Florida. Yes, that Florida—the state of my birth, the national punchline. But in my dreams, it’s not today’s meth-and-misrule Florida. It’s a mythic, fragrant Eden—a sensual vision of coconut palms, mango air, tropical rain falling like music, and an ocean that feels more like the Mother’s Womb than a giant salty death trap. It’s not a real place. It’s Jung’s beach resort.

    Unfortunately, my wife refuses to move there. Too many reasons to name. So I’ve drafted a respectable Plan B: South Carolina. Still sticky, still green, still filled with those sweet tropical mangoes that perfume your skin. Close enough to my psychic homeland. Good enough for the myth to survive.

    And while we’re speaking of myths—let’s talk about the one in my mirror.

    I want to look like the teenage Adonis I once was. Not in some delusional “Silver Sneakers” sort of way, but with genuine conviction. I hit the garage gym, slam down protein and fish oil, and pop creatine like I’m prepping for Mr. Olympia 2089. Deep down, I know my aging joints and erratic hormones are staging a quiet rebellion. But I lift anyway, as if my Mythical Self must match the Mythical Seascape. Call it folly, call it denial—but when reality stings, myth becomes the better moisturizer.

    Then there are The Big Questions, hovering like philosophical fruit flies:
    Does life have meaning?
    Is ennui a moral failure or simply being awake in a stupid world?
    Is anhedonia just a side effect of broadband internet?
    Are our souls sculpted by divine intention or evolutionary leftovers?
    Why are the most sincere believers often either morally wholesome or the most toxic people alive?
    And why is sincerity—God help us—no guarantee of goodness?

    I should care about these questions. But honestly, I care more about my morning bowl of buckwheat groats slathered with mango slices and a French-press tsunami of dark roast. I care about losing ten pounds before my doctor lectures me about cholesterol. I care about making it to 64 with most of my joints intact and my mind still more interested in Kierkegaard than clickbait.

    And I suppose that’s the final humility: I’ve lived long enough to know I don’t have the answers. Like any person, I wish I could be comforted by certainty and absolutes. The only certainty and absolute I have is to be humble in the face of my skepticism and doubts. 

  • The Stories We Tell About Finding Happiness Are Probably False

    The Stories We Tell About Finding Happiness Are Probably False

    The other night, I released a video arguing that variety in a watch collection is overrated. Instead of chasing endless categories—divers, pilots, field watches, dress pieces, and the like—we should focus on our personal style and keep our collections small, tight, and true. That was the premise.

    But if I’m honest, I’m not sure I fully believe it. The video was part thought experiment, part self-intervention—an attempt to persuade myself to stop buying watches I don’t have the time (or wrist real estate) to wear. The argument had internal logic. It also had a faint scent of self-justifying desperation.

    And that’s okay. I enjoyed making it. Wrestling with the ideas sharpened my thoughts, and the feedback I received from many of you helped me realize something essential: passion without dialogue is narcissism. Ideas need to be tested by others—challenged, probed, broken open. That’s how belief is forged. Not in solitude, but in the noisy, messy public square.

    It was gratifying to hear from so many who, like me, have felt tormented by a sprawling watch collection—agonizing over wrist time, managing rotations like a circus act, and wondering if maybe the hobby was no longer bringing joy but anxiety in disguise.

    Then came a comment from one of you—Captain Nolan—who posed a question that cut through all my watch-reducing rhetoric:

    “How can you discover what your identity is without trying out watches in the various categories (divers, pilots, field, dress, digital, quartz, mechanical, etc., etc.)?”

    It’s a fair question. One I initially wanted to swat away with a tight two-sentence reply and move on. But I couldn’t. The question lingered—because it isn’t really about watches. It’s about identity. And once you start poking at identity, you’re no longer in YouTube comment territory. You’ve stepped into the philosophical deep end—an arena better suited for Aristotle than for a guy with a camera and a strap obsession.

    The second reason I hesitated is more personal: I only make videos when there’s a spark of fun, curiosity, or joy. The idea of producing a moody think-piece on self-discovery sounded like a slog. Dull. Pretentious. The video equivalent of being cornered by someone at a party who wants to discuss their enneagram type.

    Still, Captain Nolan’s question lodged itself in my mind. How do we figure out what we actually like in watches? And how—after two decades of collecting—did I land where I am now?

    The answer is both simple and brutal:

    There’s the true answer, and there’s the false answer.

    And most people—including YouTubers, influencers, and algorithm-chasing content creators—prefer the false one.

    The False Answer

    The false answer is a story. A myth. A satisfying narrative that wraps things up in a bow. We’ve been telling these stories for millennia. They bring moral clarity, personal triumph, and a happy ending. They sell. They go viral. They’re designed for applause.

    In the watch hobby, this tidy fable is called The Purification Myth.

    It goes something like this:

    You start off as a giddy newbie, blown away by the sheer number of watches out there. You binge. You buy everything from entry-level divers to Swiss Grails. You accumulate far too many watches to wear, and you convince yourself that this is happiness.

    But then comes the crash—maybe financial, maybe emotional, maybe romantic. The fever breaks. You wake up, ashamed of your bloated collection and the dopamine-fueled mania that built it. You sell off everything except a small, tasteful core collection. Peace is restored. Cue soft jazz. Fade to black.

    It’s a good story. It even has some truth in it. But like most recovery narratives, it’s cleaner than reality.

    Because in real life, the fever doesn’t always break for good. You relapse. You sell everything and then buy it all back. You swear off watches on bracelets, only to fall for a titanium chrono six months later. You go minimalist—and then buy a G-Shock with solar charging, atomic syncing, and more features than a fighter jet. Your tastes mutate.

    This is the part the Purification Myth leaves out: people are irrational, compulsive, and deeply inconsistent. And the stories they tell—about clarity, simplicity, “knowing what they want”—are often PR campaigns for whatever identity they’ve temporarily settled into.

    Let me give you some real-life examples.

    The Myth of Pete Rose

    I grew up on the myth of Charlie Hustle–Pete Rose, the man who played baseball like his hair was on fire. The story was simple: if you hustle like Pete, greatness will follow. The world will respect you. You’ll win.

    Turns out Pete Rose hustled only on the field. Off the field when it came to examining his moral flaws, he was a lazy, selfish, self-mythologizing gambler who bet recklessly and burned bridges like he lit cigars with them.

    The moral? The story was inspiring. It just wasn’t true.

    The Sedona Illusion

    My family recently went to Sedona, Arizona—a place that sells its own myth: come sip matcha, get a mud massage, and experience spiritual rebirth in the vortexes.

    What you get is overpriced kitsch, fake mysticism, and conspicuous consumerism wearing a tie-dyed robe. Crystals, smoothies, celebrities in Lamborghinis. It’s Disneyland for people who think they’re too enlightened for Disneyland.

    So yes, I could tell you a satisfying story about how I finally landed on a curated set of Seiko divers, all on straps, and how I found inner peace. But I won’t. Because that’s not the whole truth.

    The real story is messier, and ongoing. It contradicts itself. It evolves. Sometimes it forgets what it believes and remembers something else entirely.

    If you want to find your identity—watch or otherwise—know this: you won’t find it in a story. And you certainly won’t find it in someone else’s.

    You find it in the space between obsessions. In the quiet after the hype fades. In the awkwardness of realizing the thing you thought would make you whole… just doesn’t.

    That’s where identity lives. Not in clarity, but in contradiction.

  • Goodbye, Sedona: A Town That Priced Out Its Soul

    Goodbye, Sedona: A Town That Priced Out Its Soul

    Sedona served me one final contrast in my short stay: banana protein pancakes that flirted with greatness at Wildcraft Kitchen, followed by a dinner at the hotel restaurant so bland it felt like punishment for having taste buds. Downtown reminded me of Mammoth—if Mammoth got a chakra alignment and started microdosing moonlight. It was pleasant enough, sure, but I won’t be back. The energy is a little too “manifest your soulmate through sound bowl therapy” for me. I can only dodge so many crystal shops before I start craving asphalt and cynicism.

    This morning, around 7 a.m., I picked up breakfast burritos and coffee from a quiet Mexican restaurant while my family slept off their kombucha hangover. The owner, cheerful despite the early hour, struck up a conversation while assembling the food. She confided that business was in the gutter—record lows, in fact. Politics, she said. Canadians—once reliable, cheerful spenders—have stopped coming. Apparently, the local talk of making them our 51st state didn’t go over well. Imagine that.

    She told me she can’t even afford to live in Sedona anymore, despite running a business there. Rents are out of reach, so she commutes 17 miles each way to serve overpriced burritos to tourists on spiritual quests.

    Sure, a few celebrities still parachute in, revving up their Lamborghinis and flaunting their bored wealth. But the town’s energy has thinned. The quartz glows less brightly. The chakra vortex feels like it’s in foreclosure. And I, for one, won’t be adding Sedona to my “must-return” list anytime soon.

  • Borderline Strauss Disorder: A Dream of Intellectual Despair

    Borderline Strauss Disorder: A Dream of Intellectual Despair

    Last night, around 2 a.m., just as Jonah Goldberg of The Remnant podcast was deep in philosophical flirtation with Yale’s Steven Smith over Leo Strauss, I passed out—headphones still in, brain still humming.

    And then the dream began.

    I found myself in my grandfather’s old house in San Pedro, a stuccoed mid-century bunker that always smelled faintly of pipe smoke and baked ziti. Inside the library—yes, he had a library—Goldberg and Smith were now with me, and the three of us were doing what all good podcasters and aging humanities majors dream of doing: pulling crumbly tomes off dusty shelves, quoting Epictetus, Hobbes, and Plato as if our curated selections might finally bring Western Civilization back from the brink.

    Each book we grabbed opened, magically, to the exact passage we were about to reference—as if we were wielding Philosopher’s Stones bound in cracked leather. This was not casual reading. It was apocalypse-proof intellectual spelunking.

    Then I noticed something troubling.

    Through the window, I saw a teenage blonde girl in a baby-blue station wagon idling at the curb. She looked like a cross between a cheerleader and a Bond villain’s niece—beautiful, yes, but with the dead-eyed calm of someone about to burn down your ideas with surgical precision. Turns out she was an operative, dispatched by some shadowy organization convinced that our late-night Straussian exegesis was a threat to human progress.

    Naturally, I sprinted outside, confronted her, and commandeered the station wagon—which, of course, was loaded with weapons. Jonah, ever the podcast professional, called “his people” to secure the contraband.

    But there was a cost.

    Simply standing too close to the weapons cache scrambled the circuitry of my brain. My synapses went sideways, and a mysterious doctor appeared—seemingly conjured from a BBC miniseries and a Jungian archetype—with a scroll. Not a Kindle, not a clipboard. A scroll.

    He began to read aloud. Stories, essays, fragments—some of it fiction, some of it possibly academic, none of it optional. He read in a solemn, droning cadence, pausing only to gesture that I join in. At times, we performed the text together like an absurd Socratic duet. This was not medicine. It was literary waterboarding.

    The treatment drew attention.

    Soon, Goldberg turned the whole ordeal into a dinner party. Somehow, he located several of my retired faculty colleagues and invited them, with their long-suffering wives, to my grandfather’s house. I wanted to talk to them—reconnect, reminisce—but the doctor stuck to me like a parasite with tenure. Wherever I went, he followed, reading, always reading.

    My colleagues grew irritated and drifted off one by one, muttering about boundaries and bad acoustics. I tried to hide in the bean bag room—yes, this house apparently had a bean bag room—but the doctor found me, unfurled his accursed scroll, and picked up where he left off.

    I realized, in that moment, I was trapped. Pinned inside a philosophical purgatory where the punishment wasn’t fire or ice, but relentless interpretation. Eternal footnotes. Bibliographic water torture. I would never leave. Not until I understood the real meaning of the text. Or until a full bladder awakened me.

    Thankfully, the latter came first.

  • Is a $400 Million Jet Really Free?

    Is a $400 Million Jet Really Free?

    Is a $400 foreign jet really free? Or does the taker suffer from a malady that impedes him from seeing the true cost? Let us look at this malady more closely. 

    Freemium Delirium (n.): A catastrophic collapse of judgment caused by the sight or sound of the word “free,” triggering a euphoric brain fog in which dopamine floods the system, common sense goes on sabbatical, and the recipient willingly gallops off a financial cliff waving a complimentary tote bag like a victory banner. Those afflicted experience an ecstasy of acquisition so potent it renders them blind to the small print, the asterisk, the national security briefing. One minute they’re unboxing a “gift,” the next they’re staring down a multibillion-dollar forensic disassembly project worthy of NASA.

    Take, for example, an avaricious hypothetical Commander-in-Chief, struck dumb by Freemium Delirium in the presence of a “gifted” $400 million foreign jet. So enamored is he by the glittering concept of free, he fails to consider the trillion red flags waving in his face. No concern for spyware, sabotage, or sovereign dignity—just glee. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, a battalion of analysts and mechanics is forced to gut the plane like a blue whale on an operating table, its metaphorical intestines stretched across five football fields, each component tagged, bagged, scanned, and ritually exorcised to ensure there’s no Cold War bug in the cupholder. The final bill? A billion dollars and the last shreds of taxpayer sanity. But sure, free.

  • Performance and Collapse: How Platforms Devour the Liver King and Jordan Peterson: A College Essay Prompt

    Performance and Collapse: How Platforms Devour the Liver King and Jordan Peterson: A College Essay Prompt

    In today’s algorithm-driven media landscape, individuals who achieve fame on platforms like YouTube and social media often face a hidden, corrosive pressure: the demand to become ever more extreme, performative, and detached from their authentic selves.

    Watch the public mental unraveling of two figures — the Liver King (as documented in a series of YouTube videos) and Jordan Peterson (as depicted in The Rise of Jordan Peterson documentary). Compare the trajectories of their psychological and behavioral decline, analyzing how the platforms they used amplified their worst tendencies.

    Incorporate insights from:

    • The Rise of Jordan Peterson (documentary)
    • YouTube videos chronicling the Liver King’s exposure and decline
    • Black Mirror episode “Joan Is Awful” (how algorithms push people toward performative self-destruction)
    • Jaron Lanier’s arguments about social media’s corrosive effects on personality (from his interviews and talks)

    Your essay should argue that social media algorithms don’t just reward extremism — they demand it, often pushing creators toward psychological collapse as the price of staying visible.

    8-Paragraph Essay Outline:

    Paragraph 1: Introduction – Define the Problem

    • Introduce the idea that social media algorithms act as accelerants for personality decay.
    • Briefly introduce the Liver King and Jordan Peterson as case studies of public decline.
    • Reference Black Mirror’s “Joan Is Awful” as a fictional mirror to this real-world dynamic.

    Paragraph 2: Thesis Statement

    • Example thesis:
      The mental decline of the Liver King and Jordan Peterson reveals how algorithm-driven platforms reward extremity and self-caricature, pushing once-complex individuals into performative collapse — a phenomenon accurately foreshadowed in Black Mirror’s “Joan Is Awful” and analyzed by Jaron Lanier.

    Paragraph 3: The Algorithmic Trap (Black Mirror and Lanier)

    • Analyze “Joan Is Awful”: how ordinary people are manipulated into grotesque caricatures for audience pleasure.
    • Bring in Jaron Lanier’s view: social media turns users into exaggerated, degraded versions of themselves through engagement-driven systems.
    • Apply these ideas to real-life figures.

    Paragraph 4: The Rise and Decline of the Liver King

    • Outline the Liver King’s initial rise to fame: primal masculinity, simple rules, raw liver eating.
    • Show how algorithmic rewards (clicks, virality, outrage) pushed him into increasingly absurd and dishonest performances.
    • Discuss the steroid scandal and public unmasking as an inevitable consequence of the “always escalate” platform culture.

    Paragraph 5: The Rise and Decline of Jordan Peterson

    • Outline Peterson’s early rise: thoughtful critiques of political correctness, psychology, and meaning.
    • Show how algorithmic fame pushed him toward more extreme, polarizing, and messianic posturing.
    • Discuss his health collapse (addiction, hospitalization) and how his public persona hardened into something nearly unrecognizable.

    Paragraph 6: Comparative Analysis – Common Patterns

    • Compare how both men became trapped by audience expectations and platform demands.
    • Emphasize the “performance feedback loop”: initial authenticity gives way to exaggerated, brittle public personas.
    • Show how neither could retreat without losing relevance.

    Paragraph 7: The Psychological and Societal Cost

    • Discuss the personal toll on the Liver King and Peterson: mental health decline, public backlash, loss of nuance.
    • Discuss the broader societal cost: platforms training audiences to demand caricatures instead of complex human beings.

    Paragraph 8: Conclusion – Dramatic Reflection

    • Dramatically restate that the algorithm does not merely reflect public taste — it actively degrades the performers and the audience alike.
    • Suggest that escaping the “Joan Is Awful” trap requires recognizing the hidden machinery of amplification before it devours more public (and private) selves.

    Required Research List

    1. The Rise of Jordan Peterson (2019) — Directed by Patricia Marcoccia

    • Why:
      Documents Peterson’s public transformation and growing extremism as he grapples with sudden fame and cultural polarization.

    2. Black Mirror: “Joan Is Awful” (2023) — Episode from Season 6, created by Charlie Brooker

    • Why:
      Fictional but eerily accurate portrayal of how algorithmic platforms co-opt and exaggerate individual identity for mass entertainment and engagement.

    3. YouTube Videos Chronicling the Liver King’s Rise and Decline

    • Specific Examples to Use:
      • Liver King’s public apology video admitting steroid use (December 2022)
      • Exposé videos by major YouTubers (such as Derek from More Plates More Dates) analyzing the performance pressure and false branding.
    • Why:
      Real-time documentation of how the Liver King’s public persona escalated and collapsed under algorithmic pressures.

    4. Jaron Lanier’s Commentaries on Social Media’s Psychological Effects

    • Specific Sources to Pull From:
      • Jaron Lanier’s YouTube interviews, such as:
        • “Jaron Lanier on How Social Media Ruins Your Life” (WIRED, 2018)
        • “Delete Your Social Media Accounts Right Now” (TEDx, various recordings)
    • Why:
      Lanier provides critical, first-hand insight into how algorithmic platforms manipulate users’ personalities, rewarding outrage, distortion, and performance.

    Optional/Recommended Supplemental Sources (Choose Two):

    5. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (2018) — by Jaron Lanier (Book)

    • Why:
      Lanier’s full-length argument about how social media platforms degrade both individual users and society at large.

    6. Critical Media Analysis on Platform Extremism

    • Example sources:
      • “YouTube, the Great Radicalizer” (The New York Times, 2018)
      • Zeynep Tufekci’s articles on algorithmic amplification (The Atlantic, Wired)

    Citation Format:

    • MLA Style required (author, title, publisher/site, date, and URL if applicable).

    Summary:
    At minimum, students would need to engage with:

    • The Rise of Jordan Peterson documentary
    • Black Mirror’s “Joan Is Awful” episode
    • Liver King’s YouTube apology and exposé videos
    • At least one Jaron Lanier video
    • Two additional credible sources on platform psychology or digital manipulation

    Works Cited

    Brooker, Charlie, creator. Black Mirror: “Joan Is Awful.” Season 6, episode 1, Netflix, 2023.

    Lanier, Jaron. “Jaron Lanier on How Social Media Ruins Your Life.” WIRED, 2 Oct. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc_Jq42Og7Q.

    Lanier, Jaron. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Henry Holt and Company, 2018.

    Marcoccia, Patricia, director. The Rise of Jordan Peterson. Holding Space Films, 2019.

    More Plates More Dates. “The Liver King Lie — The Full Story.” YouTube, uploaded by More Plates More Dates, 1 Dec. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW8j9Mz3LJY.

    The Liver King. “Liver King Confession… I Lied.” YouTube, uploaded by Liver King, 1 Dec. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nfiRbw2yW0.

    Tufekci, Zeynep. “YouTube, the Great Radicalizer.” The New York Times, 10 Mar. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politics-radical.html.

    Notes for Students:

    • Double-space the Works Cited page (WordPress formatting may squish it, but official MLA = double-spacing).
    • Alphabetize entries by the first letter (usually author’s last name or the creator’s name).
    • If there’s no individual author, alphabetize by the organization or channel name (like More Plates More Dates).
    • Use hanging indent formatting: first line flush left, following lines indented 0.5 inches.

  • The Pillar of Salt

    The Pillar of Salt

    Few things are as dangerously addictive as mainlining nostalgia, that sweet, brain-rotting drug that turns the past into a golden-hued fantasy while reality rots at your feet. One minute, you’re basking in euphoria over a memory that probably wasn’t that great to begin with; the next, you’re sinking into a pit of melancholy so deep you might as well set up permanent residence. Keep it up long enough, and—just like Lot’s wife—you’ll calcify into a bitter, immovable pillar of salt.

    Which brings me to today’s piano piece: “Pillar of Salt.” Watch closely, and you’ll see me gradually ossify into a brine-crusted relic—equal parts tragic and well-seasoned.

  • Bill Burr’s Drop Dead Years: Rage, Reflection, and the Long Road to Emotional Literacy

    Bill Burr’s Drop Dead Years: Rage, Reflection, and the Long Road to Emotional Literacy

    At 56 years old, Bill Burr strides onto the stage looking like a man who hasn’t just survived middle age but has trained for it—lean, sharp, and decked out in a blue sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers, the unofficial uniform of a guy who’s seen some things but hasn’t yet gone full sweatpants. His latest special, Drop Dead Years (streaming on Hulu), finds him at a crossroads: He’s entered the danger zone—the phase of life where men his age can drop dead at any second. And so, standing before a Seattle crowd, a city he awards first prize in rain-soaked despair, he does what any man staring down mortality would do—he takes stock of his life.

    Burr has baggage, and he knows it. Anger issues? Check. Outdated, offensive language? His wife is on him about it. Emotionally repressed male conditioning? Oh, absolutely. For decades, he’s kept his demons on a leash by staying busy, but when the work stops, his personal hellscape begins. He decides to test a theory: After returning from a tour, instead of distracting himself with projects, he sits in a corner, stares at the TV, and marinates in his own misery. His wife, alarmed, asks if he’s okay. For the first time in his life, he admits the truth: I’m sad. A historic moment for a man raised on the doctrine of shut up and push through.

    But does Burr actually offer any solutions for his emotional demolition derby? Not really—at least not in the special. While he drops breadcrumbs in radio interviews about his self-improvement quest, including the occasional reference to psilocybin therapy, the special mostly stays in the realm of self-awareness rather than self-help. And don’t worry—the fangs are still sharp. Burr unloads on racist conservatives and hypocritical, self-congratulatory liberals with equal fervor, and despite the obvious political leanings of his Seattle audience, no one seems too offended. Maybe that’s part of Burr’s charm—he’s an equal-opportunity agitator, and the crowd knows they’re getting a sermon with a punchline, not a TED Talk.

    Here’s the thing: While I love Burr, I found Drop Dead Years a little… safe. The premise—that wisdom comes with age, that unchecked emotions can consume us, and that kindness and patience improve relationships—is undeniably true but hardly groundbreaking. The performance is solid, his honesty is refreshing, and his intelligence undeniable, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was more compelling when I heard him on Terry Gross’ Fresh Air a couple of weeks earlier. There, in a rare good-natured sparring match with the NPR icon, Burr revealed more of himself—and in funnier ways—than he did in his actual special.

    That said, Bill Burr is always worth watching. Even when he’s not at his absolute peak, he’s still one of the sharpest, most brutally honest voices in comedy. So, do I recommend Drop Dead Years? Absolutely. But if you want peak Burr, you might want to queue up that Fresh Air interview right after.