Cinemorphosis

Tag: writing

  • When Evil Goes Viral

    When Evil Goes Viral

    In “Andrew Tate’s Empire of Abuse,” Heidi Blake examines the disturbing world built by influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan from their base in a wealthy enclave north of Bucharest known as the American Village. What emerges is not merely a pornography business but an entire ideology. According to Blake’s reporting, the Tate brothers are accused of recruiting and exploiting women while simultaneously constructing an online empire designed to sell young men a vision of unrestrained power. Through a private network called the War Room, Tate promises liberation from what he describes as the imprisonment of conventional morality. In its place, he offers a creed of domination in which women become trophies, commodities, or servants to male desire. One woman’s experience illustrates the cruelty of this worldview. After recruiting her, Tate reportedly subjected her to humiliation, financed cosmetic procedures, and had the words “Tate Owned” tattooed on her body, branding another human being as though she were property.

    Tate’s worldview is so grotesque that it often feels less like reality than an abandoned screenplay rejected for lacking subtlety. Hollywood villains are usually granted complexity, vulnerability, or redeeming traits. Tate seems determined to eliminate all such nuances. He openly cultivates the image of a man who views empathy as weakness and domination as virtue. Yet what makes him truly alarming is not the extremity of his beliefs but the enthusiasm with which he markets them. Tate does not hide from accusations of evil. Instead, he recasts himself as a prophet. To his followers, he presents himself as a shepherd leading lost men toward a promised land of wealth, sexual conquest, and absolute freedom from moral restraint.

    The nightmare grows darker when one considers the size of his audience. Tate possesses what our culture increasingly values above wisdom, character, or integrity: clout. He commands a vast social-media following and uses it to promote a lifestyle assembled from luxury watches, cigars, supercars, conspicuous wealth, and an aggressively performative version of masculinity. His genius, if one can call it that, lies in understanding the mechanics of attention. In an age where visibility often substitutes for virtue, influence itself becomes evidence of success. The result is that millions of young men encounter Tate not as a fringe extremist but as a glamorous symbol of aspiration.

    Tate is also intensely political. He boasts of shifting the Overton window, expanding the boundaries of what can be publicly said and tolerated. In his telling, this is a triumph. In reality, it often resembles an effort to normalize ideas that were once regarded as beyond the pale. The objective is not simply to win arguments but to redefine the moral landscape itself, widening the escape hatch through which cruelty, misogyny, and contempt can pass into public life disguised as courage or authenticity.

    When Tate faced arrest on human-trafficking charges, he was defended by a collection of prominent allies and media figures who viewed him as useful to broader political and cultural battles. In a polarized age, alliances are increasingly forged not through shared principles but through shared enemies. The question ceases to be whether a person is decent and becomes whether that person can help advance a cause. Under such conditions, moral judgment is replaced by strategic calculation.

    It has often been said that shamelessness is a superpower. There is truth in that observation. Shame restrains. Conscience hesitates. Moral reflection slows us down. The shameless suffer from none of these inconveniences. They can say anything, excuse anything, and justify anything. But if shamelessness is a superpower, it is one purchased at a tremendous cost. To embrace figures like Tate is to announce that power matters more than virtue and influence more than decency. It is to make one’s bargain with the devil publicly visible.

    What Blake’s article ultimately reveals is not merely the story of Andrew Tate but the story of a culture increasingly intoxicated by clout. In a society obsessed with metrics, followers, engagement, and influence, visibility itself becomes a moral credential. The result is a world in which people who openly celebrate cruelty can become celebrities while those who practice humility and integrity are rewarded with obscurity. Tate thrives because he understands this reality better than most. He has discovered that in the attention economy, notoriety often pays better than goodness. The tragedy is not simply that men like Andrew Tate exist. The tragedy is that so many people have decided he is worth following.

  • The Wellness Club

    The Wellness Club

    Lost in the rhythms of suburban hibernation and nightly true-crime binges inside my bat cave, I had gradually drifted away from my college friends. Like me, they had married, raised children, worried about healthcare costs, and stared nervously at college tuition calculators. What I didn’t know was that they had been gathering every summer for years at a luxury wellness resort on Coronado Island.

    I learned of these reunions from my daughter Maggie, who monitored my friends’ social-media activity with the diligence of an intelligence analyst tracking foreign adversaries. She discovered photographs of them lounging poolside at the Wellness Island Resort and seemed genuinely saddened that I had been excluded.

    The drive from Torrance was only a couple of hours. Somehow Maggie contacted Bart, one of my old college friends, and persuaded him to invite us. My wife Lara and Maggie’s twin sister Alison couldn’t attend because they had dance rehearsals all weekend.

    I didn’t question Maggie’s intervention. Partly because I was touched by her concern for my introverted condition, and partly because Maggie had inherited a taste for luxury that far exceeded her budgetary circumstances. She approached five-star experiences the way medieval knights approached the Holy Grail.

    When I asked about the cost of the resort, she informed me that Bart was placing our expenses on the group’s Action Account, a fund they had apparently maintained for years to finance these annual gatherings.

    This struck me as suspiciously generous.

    I couldn’t shake the feeling that my old friends were attempting to relieve themselves of decades of guilt. Perhaps they had looked at the guest list, noticed my absence, and decided that paying for Maggie and me was cheaper than confronting their consciences.

    The Wellness Island Resort was impressive in the way wellness resorts are always impressive. Everything appeared optimized. The pool gleamed with the artificial perfection of a pharmaceutical advertisement. Guests reclined beneath canopies and gazebos while drinking green smoothies whose ingredients sounded less like food than graduate-level botany. Men and women with improbably low body-fat percentages sipped cucumber water and projected the serene confidence of people who had never eaten a gas-station burrito at midnight. Servers circulated with trays of artisanal sandwich bites containing salmon, tofu, sprouts, and microgreens so delicate they looked as though they might require emotional support animals.

    The entire place smelled faintly of citrus, sunscreen, and self-improvement.

    I assumed Maggie and I would spend the afternoon lounging by the pool.

    Instead, we met Chase Rangeman.

    He materialized beside us moments after we checked in. Tall, angular, and radiating managerial hostility, he wore the expression of a man who regarded joy as a policy violation. His smile looked professionally installed.

    “You two are members of the Wellness Club,” he said.

    “We are?”

    “Of course.”

    “What does that mean?”

    “It means everyone contributes.”

    He proceeded to explain that club members rotated through various duties including mopping floors, serving coffee, preparing food, and performing other tasks one generally does not associate with a ten-thousand-dollar wellness retreat.

    “Where are my friends?” I asked.

    “Out and about,” he replied. “You’ll see them eventually. Meanwhile, you’re on sandwich duty.”

    Maggie looked at me and shrugged.

    “Do you realize how expensive your stay is?” Chase asked as he marched us toward the kitchen.

    “Actually, we’re covered by the Action Account.”

    His eyes narrowed.

    “I’m very aware of the Action Account.”

    He said the phrase the way a district attorney might refer to a criminal syndicate.

    “That doesn’t exempt you from your responsibilities.”

    The kitchen resembled a laboratory dedicated to extending human life by thirty years. Salmon rested on beds of ice like museum pieces. Whole-grain loaves cooled on wooden racks. Homemade organic mayonnaise occupied crystal bowls. Every avocado appeared individually selected by a committee of experts. Microgreens stood at attention in refrigerated displays like tiny green soldiers awaiting inspection.

    Chase surveyed the room with paternal pride.

    “You and your daughter will make sandwiches for the guests.”

    “What kind?”

    “I’ll leave that up to you.”

    Then he glanced at his phone, announced he had an urgent matter requiring his attention, and vanished.

    The responsibility seemed straightforward enough.

    I selected salmon.

    After all, what could possibly go wrong with salmon?

    I mixed it with mayonnaise, celery, onions, shallots, paprika, salt, pepper, and chopped gherkins. I spread the mixture onto tiny squares of whole-grain bread and arranged the sandwiches on polished trays.

    The servers carried them away.

    My work was done.

    Or so I thought.

    An hour later Maggie and I had finally settled into our room overlooking the pool. I had just removed my shoes when the black telephone beside the bed rang.

    It was Chase.

    “You made salmon sandwiches with mayonnaise.”

    His voice sounded as though he were reporting a homicide.

    “Yes.”

    A long silence followed.

    “That’s the one sandwich you don’t make.”

    “You never told me that.”

    “It should have been obvious.”

    “How?”

    “The mayonnaise will curdle in the sun.”

    I considered pointing out that every ingredient at this resort appeared capable of surviving atmospheric reentry, but Chase continued.

    “You’ve exposed us to liability.”

    “What liability?”

    “You’ve committed a violation.”

    He sounded pleased.

    “That violation voids your discount. You now owe the resort nine thousand dollars.”

    Nine thousand dollars.

    For salmon sandwiches.

    I informed Maggie that we were facing financial ruin.

    Moments later there was a knock at the door.

    It was Bart.

    He looked sunburned, exhausted, and mildly irritated by my existence.

    “So,” he said, “you made salmon sandwiches.”

    I explained the situation.

    Bart listened without surprise.

    “Don’t pay anything,” he said. “We’ll cover it.”

    I felt relieved.

    Then he added:

    “But you and your daughter should leave immediately.”

    “Why?”

    “Within an hour Chase will forget you were ever here.”

    He delivered this statement with the calm certainty of a man explaining local weather patterns.

    Maggie and I were packed before Bart reached the elevator.

    As I said goodbye, he regarded me with an expression that suggested twenty years of unresolved grievances.

    Then he left.

    We raced to the parking lot, threw our luggage into the car, and drove back to Torrance.

    That evening I settled into my recliner and resumed watching a true-crime documentary.

    I was back in my bat cave.

    Safe.

    Yet as I thought about my old friends, the annual vacations, the Action Account, Bart’s contempt, and Chase Rangeman’s vendetta, I felt a familiar ache of exclusion.

    Clearly they had not wanted me there.

    Clearly they had spent years gathering without me for a reason.

    Clearly I had become an interloper in my own past.

    Strangely, as these thoughts swirled through my mind, I developed an overwhelming craving for salmon.

  • P-1426

    P-1426

    There are two people inside me. I have known this since childhood while sitting in dentists’ waiting rooms, flipping through dog-eared copies of Highlights for Children and encountering the two boys who seemed to possess custody of my soul: Goofus and Gallant.

    They appeared in countless moral tableaux. The boys faced identical chores, temptations, conflicts, and dilemmas. Goofus was the patron saint of poor decisions—a sniveling malcontent drawn instinctively toward selfishness, slovenliness, dishonesty, and shortcuts. He seemed to regard the human condition as a personal insult. Gallant, by contrast, beamed with the radiant confidence of a child who had never once disappointed a guidance counselor. He was truthful, virtuous, punctual, generous, and relentlessly wholesome. If Goofus represented original sin, Gallant represented a Hallmark card come to life.

    My parents never subscribed to the magazine. I encountered it only in medical waiting rooms during the early 1970s, so for years I assumed Goofus and Gallant belonged exclusively to my own childhood fever dream. Decades later, I discovered that much had been written about them. Julie Beck, writing in The Atlantic, described the comic strip as a kind of Calvinist morality play in which “their essential nature was preordained by a higher power long ago—Goofus forever doomed to be a screwup, Gallant to be a smug little do-gooder.”

    I’m glad I read Beck’s article because it rescued Goofus and Gallant from the fog of my childhood and confirmed that they were not merely figures from some private fever dream. For years they seemed less like characters from a magazine than recurring visitors from a half-remembered mythology that had taken up residence in my imagination.

    I need that kind of verification because I am one of those unfortunate people whose dreams refuse to remain confined to sleep. They leak into waking life. I rise carrying their residue like smoke trapped in my clothes. Long after the dream has ended, I can still sense its lingering odors, feel its unpleasant film coating the day, and endure the emotional aftershocks of its dark allegories. Some dreams fade by breakfast. Mine can haunt me for days, leaving behind a vague but persistent conviction that I have witnessed something both absurd and deeply accusatory.

    In my dreams, however, I am neither Goofus nor Gallant.

    I am Condemned.

    I am not the villain. I am not the hero. I am merely the witness forced to watch his own downfall unfold. My dreams place me on trial, convict me, and then require me to sit through the sentencing.

    Of all the symbolic collapses I could describe, one stands above the others. To understand my predicament, we must travel to the 2002 Los Angeles Tofu Festival.

    There, I encountered a portable toilet.

    The remarkable thing is that I spent no more than five seconds inside it. I never actually used it. Yet those five seconds altered the trajectory of my life.

    The structure stood alone at the edge of the festival grounds like a forgotten monument to human overconfidence. Its blue plastic walls had faded beneath years of relentless California sun into the color of a bruised sky. Scratches, stains, and scars suggested it had survived several natural disasters and perhaps a minor military campaign. The door sagged slightly on its hinges as though exhausted by the burden of existence.

    Near the top was a peeling service sticker bearing its identity:

    ManCo Portable Solutions

    P-1426

    The designation carried the cold authority of a prison number or military serial code. This was not merely a portable toilet.

    This was P-1426.

    The moment I opened the door and felt the blast of hot air strike my face like the breath of an infernal beast, it became clear that certain human experiences were never meant to be endured.

    I will not describe what I saw. I have no wish to relive the trauma.

    Let us simply say that I appeared to witness a squadron of bat-demons conducting an emergency evacuation from the lower circles of hell. The atmosphere possessed the density of a hostile planet. Heat, stench, and oxygen deprivation united into a perfect storm of biological aggression.

    Then I heard it.

    A voice.

    A cry rising from somewhere deep within the abyss.

    “Help me.”

    The words were unmistakable.

    I staggered backward. I uttered a curse in a voice that did not sound like my own. Then I fled before my body could be officially declared a casualty.

    The experience injured me.

    I required convalescence.

    For nearly a year I lived like a Victorian invalid. I drank herbal tea with ceremonial solemnity. I listened to motivational speakers while lying motionless with my eyes closed and my lower lip trembling. Most of all, I read the Book of Psalms in search of reassurance that humanity had survived comparable ordeals.

    King David had his enemies.

    Job had his boils.

    Ahab had his white whale.

    I had P-1426.

    And the plea for help.

    That plea tormented me because Gallant would have answered it.

    Gallant would have descended into the darkness and rescued the lost soul.

    I did what Goofus would do.

    I fled.

    I abandoned the suffering stranger to whatever horrors lurked within the suffocating blue chamber. I crossed the Valley of the Shadow of Death and returned carrying not triumph but shame.

    I was forty years old at the time. I had endured heartbreak, financial anxiety, family crises, and professional disappointments. Yet standing now in my mid-sixties, I can say with complete confidence that the most transformative event of my life occurred inside a portable toilet during a five-second encounter at a tofu festival.

    I have given this trauma a name:

    The Latrine of No Return.

    A Latrine of No Return is a formative experience so grotesque and spiritually destabilizing that it divides existence into two eras: Before the Incident and After the Incident.

    Before the Incident, I possessed innocence. I trusted civilization. I believed progress was real. I assumed humanity had solved certain fundamental problems.

    After the Incident, those illusions were gone.

    The man who approached P-1426 still believed he might someday become Gallant.

    The man who emerged knew better.

    Being a college writing professor, I naturally attempted to intellectualize the matter. Goofus and Gallant sounded far too juvenile for a man of my sophistication. I therefore rebranded the struggle.

    Goofus became Egregious.

    Gallant became Unctuous.

    I hoped a little linguistic flourish might elevate me above my malaise.

    It did not.

    For twenty years I remained haunted by the cry for help.

    Far from fading, it grew louder.

    Year after year, dream after dream, the voice returned.

    Until one night I awoke with a horrifying realization.

    The soul was still there.

    And if redemption was possible, there was only one course of action left.

    I would have to return.

    I would have to locate P-1426, descend into whatever infernal dimension existed within its blue plastic walls, rescue the forgotten prisoner, and emerge from the depths not merely as a survivor, but as a redeemed man.

    At long last, I would have to become Gallant.

    Hidden in my bedroom one evening with a true crime show on in the background, I called the number for ManCo Portable Solutions while my family was watching TV in the living room. I talked to a man by the name of Manny about my desire to examine the inside of P-1426, but omitted the part where I’m trying to rescue a hostage or a survivor or something like that. Manny repeated P-1426 like it was a familiar utterance, a long-standing part of his world. He said I could come visit P-1426 the next morning, but I’d have to be there at seven. He had to go for a medical appointment at nine regarding kidney stones. 

    The next morning, I drove to an industrial district in Los Angeles. The warehouse stretched across the industrial lot like an aircraft hangar devoted to an unusually specific religion. Row after row of portable toilets stood at attention beneath fluorescent lights, their blue plastic walls reflecting a cold industrial glow. Hundreds of them filled the cavernous space in military formation, creating long corridors that disappeared into the distance. The faint scent of disinfectant hung in the air.  Forklifts sat idle in corners like mechanical beasts resting between campaigns.

    At the center of the warehouse, as if occupying the command post of a strange sanitation empire, sat Manny behind a battered metal desk. The desk looked absurdly small amid the vast kingdom of portable toilets surrounding him. On either side stood two of his newest models, gleaming under the overhead lights. Their plastic surfaces were immaculate, their doors perfectly aligned, their ventilation systems polished and modern. They looked less like portable toilets than luxury automobiles unveiled at a trade show. One could easily imagine Manny regarding them with paternal pride.

    Manny himself appeared less pristine than his products. He wore a blue jumpsuit with the company logo embroidered above the breast pocket. The fabric was clean but permanently wrinkled, as if no amount of laundering could erase decades spent in the sanitation business. His dark hair was combed straight back, and a thick, bushy mustache dominated the lower half of his face. Yet it was his eyes that commanded attention. They were sad eyes, ringed with dark bags and carrying the exhausted expression of a man who had spent a lifetime confronting aspects of human existence most people preferred not to acknowledge. Those eyes suggested that Manny knew things. He had witnessed things. Entire chapters of human history.

    He sat quietly behind his desk, surrounded by his gleaming fleet of state-of-the-art portable toilets, looking less like a businessman than the weary curator of one of civilization’s least celebrated institutions. The new models stood around him like luxury sedans at an auto show, their polished plastic surfaces glowing beneath the fluorescent lights. Manny studied me with a look that combined skepticism, friendliness, and the exhaustion of a man who had spent decades confronting aspects of humanity most people preferred not to think about.

    “What brings you to P-one-four-two-six?” he asked. “That’s an old model. I’ve got newer, much better ones.”

    “I had an encounter with P-one-four-two-six,” I said.

    Manny nodded with surprising seriousness.

    “That happens,” he said. “Some people go to Disneyland. Some people go inside a portable toilet and come out with a story they tell for the rest of their lives.”

    He squinted at me for a moment.

    “You have claustrophobia, don’t you?”

    I nodded.

    “I knew it.” He pointed toward one of the newer units. “Forget P-one-four-two-six. Go with the new Q Series. Far more spacious. Better ventilation. Interior comfort package. Practically a studio apartment compared to those old units. The luxury, my friend. Oh boy.”

    His enthusiasm failed to reassure me.

    “Is everything okay with P-one-four-two-six?” I asked. “Have you inspected it?”

    “Of course.” He nodded. “Clean as a whistle. As good as the day it rolled out of the factory.”

    Then, without warning, his face tightened. He grabbed his side and bent forward.

    “Kidney stones,” he muttered.

    The words came out like a confession.

    I asked him how he got them.

    Manny leaned back in his chair and stared toward the warehouse ceiling.

    “Spinach,” he said bitterly.

    “Spinach?”

    “Spinach. Kale. Spirulina. Green smoothies. The whole wellness cult.”

    He shook his head.

    “My wife got cancer. No insurance. One of the doctors who treated her wouldn’t accept payment plans. Sixty thousand dollars. Maybe more. I paid it. Every penny. I emptied accounts. Took loans. Did whatever I had to do.”

    His voice softened.

    “She got better.”

    He paused.

    “Then she left.”

    The fluorescent lights hummed above us.

    “After that, I figured maybe I should improve myself. Lose weight. Become one of those optimized people you read about. Every morning I drank a blender full of spinach, kale, and enough oxalates to pave a highway.”

    He laughed darkly.

    “Turns out I didn’t become healthy. I became geological.”

    At that moment another wave of pain hit him.

    He clutched his side and let out a cry.

    The sound froze my blood.

    I had heard that cry before.

    Not in this warehouse.

    Not in this city.

    Not even in this decade.

    I had heard it twenty years earlier.

    Inside P-one-four-two-six.

    The same desperate pitch. The same wounded note. The same plea rising from some place of suffering and abandonment.

    My pulse quickened.

    The years collapsed.

    The dream.

    The guilt.

    The voice begging for help.

    It had never come from the portable toilet.

    It had come from Manny.

    Manny was the lost soul.

    The realization struck with the force of divine revelation. For twenty years I had imagined descending into an infernal portable toilet to rescue a stranger trapped in darkness. The entire quest had been wrong. The soul I was searching for had been sitting in front of me all along, wearing a blue jumpsuit and suffering from kidney stones, heartbreak, and the accumulated disappointments of a hard life.

    At that moment I understood my purpose.

    I had not returned to find P-one-four-two-six.

    I had returned to find Manny.

    Manny and I became friends after that.

    At first we met for coffee. Then we played racquetball. Soon we were taking kettlebell classes and struggling through power yoga sessions together, two middle-aged men attempting to negotiate peace treaties with joints that had long ago declared independence. We launched a YouTube channel devoted to men over fifty dealing with loneliness, depression, regret, and the peculiar sensation of realizing that life had quietly become shorter than the road already traveled. We hosted livestreams for men who felt discarded by modern life. We exchanged our recurring nightmares like war veterans comparing old battle scars.

    Most of all, I listened.

    Manny possessed a gift.

    For thirty years he had delivered portable toilets to concerts, festivals, political rallies, county fairs, marathons, and public gatherings of every conceivable variety. In doing so, he had become an accidental anthropologist of human desperation. He had witnessed people lose their minds while waiting in restroom lines. He had watched drunken concertgoers engage in territorial disputes over portable toilets with the strategic intensity of military commanders defending a contested border. He had seen people vandalize his property, attempt athletic feats that defied both physics and common sense, and occasionally injure themselves in ways that seemed to require active imagination.

    Each story was more absurd than the last.

    A man who tried to crowd-surf into a portable toilet.

    A wedding guest who locked himself inside one to avoid dancing.

    A festival attendee who attempted to tip a unit over and succeeded only in tipping himself into a cactus.

    Manny told these stories with the solemn authority of a man delivering ancient wisdom.

    Before long, people couldn’t get enough of him.

    The channel grew.

    The livestream audience expanded.

    Viewers tuned in from around the country to hear Manny explain how portable toilets occupied a strange intersection between civilization and chaos. He could discuss sanitation logistics with the seriousness of a philosopher while describing a music festival toilet emergency with the pacing of a Hollywood action film. He somehow made human waste, loneliness, redemption, and rock concerts feel like chapters from the same grand narrative.

    People adored him.

    I watched as Manny became a minor celebrity.

    His stories were clipped and shared online. Viewers quoted him. Fans approached him after events. Some even asked for selfies with the man who had transformed portable sanitation into a lens for understanding the human condition.

    And I found that I didn’t mind.

    In fact, I was proud.

    For once, I did not feel the need to compete for attention, to claim authorship, or to stand at center stage. I stepped aside and watched Manny flourish. The spotlight suited him. The lonely man who had once sat in a warehouse surrounded by portable toilets now had an audience hanging on every word.

    My wife noticed the change.

    One evening she looked at me and smiled.

    “You know,” she said, “this might be the nicest thing you’ve ever done.”

    I knew what she meant.

    For decades I had worried about obscurity. I had measured myself against impossible standards and imagined success as some distant mountain peak crowned with applause, recognition, and glory. Yet here I was, helping another person find his voice and discovering that the experience brought a deeper satisfaction than any personal acclaim I had ever chased.

    Only then did I understand what had happened.

    I had spent twenty years searching for the lost soul trapped inside P-1426.

    I thought I was rescuing Manny.

    The truth was that Manny had rescued me.

    And in surrendering the spotlight, in helping another person become fully himself without demanding credit or recognition, I had finally achieved the impossible.

    After all these years, I had become Gallant.

  • The Death of the Sacred Bond Between Writer and Reader

    The Death of the Sacred Bond Between Writer and Reader

    Fiction instructor Walt Hunt’s essay “The Death of the Reader” begins with a development that would have sounded absurd only a few years ago: an AI-assisted short story winning a major literary prize. The winning story, Jamir Nazir’s “The Serpent in the Grove,” took home the Granta Commonwealth Short Story Prize, prompting the now-familiar debate about authenticity. Was the story really written by a human? How much AI was involved? Can anyone tell the difference anymore? Hunt acknowledges that AI-generated prose often leaves fingerprints—certain stylistic tics, tonal smoothness, and suspiciously frictionless sentences that alert attentive readers. But he argues that critics are fixated on the wrong problem. The true casualty of AI fiction is not the writer. It is the reader.

    Before the arrival of AI-generated literature, reading rested on a fragile but meaningful act of trust. A reader entered a private room where another consciousness was waiting. Across centuries, continents, and cultures, readers formed intimate relationships with authors they would never meet. The writer offered a distinctive voice, a recognizable sensibility, a particular way of seeing the world. Sometimes the writer was a provocateur. Sometimes a companion. Sometimes a guide carrying a lantern through the darker corridors of human experience. Whatever form the relationship took, readers believed there was another person on the other side of the page.

    Now there is Claude.

    Claude is not a novelist struggling with heartbreak, obsession, grief, jealousy, or longing. Claude has never stared at a hospital ceiling at three in the morning. Claude has never fallen in love, buried a parent, betrayed a friend, or sat alone with regret. Claude is not a presence. It is a process. And because readers know this, a corrosive uncertainty enters the reading experience.

    What am I reading?

    Who wrote this?

    Did anyone write this?

    Does it matter?

    The machine turns every page into a cross-examination.

    Hunt argues that this uncertainty damages the reader more profoundly than it damages the author. The old covenant between writer and reader begins to dissolve. In its place emerges suspicion. Instead of surrendering to a voice, readers interrogate it. Instead of entering solitude, they become detectives hunting for evidence of fraud. Every elegant sentence becomes a potential counterfeit. Every emotional insight becomes grounds for skepticism.

    As Hunt observes, readers increasingly adopt a style of reading that is “self-conscious, hyperaware, restless, and anxiety-driven.” The reading experience becomes less like entering a cathedral and more like passing through airport security. We no longer relax into the rhythm of a trusted voice. We remain on guard, scanning for contraband signs of machine authorship.

    This defensive posture may prove fatal to the deepest pleasures of literature. Great reading requires vulnerability. It requires a willingness to let another mind rearrange your own. It requires trust. If every text becomes a potential deception, then reading loses its sense of encounter and becomes an exercise in verification. The reader ceases to ask, “What is this work trying to tell me?” and begins asking, “Who—or what—wrote this?”

    That shift may be the most consequential literary event of the AI age. The danger is not merely that machines will write books. The danger is that they will transform readers into skeptics incapable of the very surrender that literature requires. Long after the arguments about authorship fade, the deeper loss may remain: the disappearance of the sacred bond between a solitary reader and a solitary voice.

  • Who Controls the Story Controls the People (college essay prompt)

    Who Controls the Story Controls the People (college essay prompt)

    The documentary We Beat the Dream Team suggests that history is not merely a collection of facts but a contest over narrative power. The film explores how individuals and groups compete to shape public memory, define legitimacy, claim symbolic victory, and control the stories that future generations will remember. Although the documentary focuses on sports, it demonstrates that struggles over narrative ownership extend far beyond athletics into race, education, art, film, and cultural identity.

    Using this idea as your conceptual framework, write a 1,200-word argumentative essay comparing two of the following works:

    • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
    • “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” by bell hooks
    • Summer of Soul directed by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson
    • Is That Black Enough for You?!? directed by Elvis Mitchell

    In your essay, analyze the claim that controlling narrative, memory, and representation is one of the most powerful ways dominant groups maintain authority and one of the most important ways marginalized groups resist erasure.

    As you develop your argument, examine how the works portray struggles over literacy, education, historical memory, cultural visibility, artistic representation, and identity. How do powerful institutions shape public understanding of reality? How do marginalized individuals and communities reclaim the right to tell their own stories? To what extent do autobiography, education, music, film, and art function as tools of resistance against cultural invisibility?

    You should also analyze the rhetorical and artistic methods used by the creators. Consider how autobiography, storytelling, archival footage, music, imagery, editing, voice, and narrative structure influence audience perception and challenge dominant narratives.

    As part of your essay, address at least one counterargument. For example, some critics may argue that representation and cultural visibility are insufficient forms of resistance because they do not necessarily produce economic equality, political power, or institutional change. Others may argue that dominant cultures eventually absorb and commodify resistance movements, transforming them into marketable products. Evaluate these criticisms and explain the strengths and limitations of cultural expression as a form of resistance.

    As you conclude, consider the broader implications of narrative control. Why do individuals, institutions, and societies fight so fiercely over memory, legitimacy, and representation? What happens when people lose the ability to preserve and narrate their own histories? Finally, consider how social media, AI, and algorithm-driven platforms continue to shape who gets to tell the story and whose stories are forgotten.

    Requirements:

    • 1,200 words minimum
    • MLA format
    • Compare two of the four works
    • Include a clear thesis with mapping components
    • Include at least one counterargument and rebuttal
    • Analyze specific scenes, passages, or examples rather than merely summarizing
    • Develop a focused argument about narrative ownership, cultural memory, identity, and power
  • Voyeurs of Violence: Media Spectacle and the Commodification of Crime

    Voyeurs of Violence: Media Spectacle and the Commodification of Crime

    Few crimes provoke stronger public outrage than the exploitation of children. In the digital age, however, the pursuit of justice has increasingly merged with the logic of entertainment, viral media, and online spectacle. Social media platforms, livestreams, YouTube channels, and reality-style investigations now allow audiences to consume criminal exposure as a form of emotional entertainment. While many of these productions claim to protect vulnerable victims and raise public awareness, they also raise troubling ethical questions about voyeurism, vigilantism, humiliation, and the commodification of suffering.

    The 2025 documentary Predators and the film Nightcrawler both explore societies increasingly addicted to turning pain, fear, scandal, and criminality into spectacle. Predators examines the culture surrounding online predator stings, public exposure, and internet vigilantism, asking whether these efforts genuinely serve justice or merely transform human tragedy into viral entertainment. Nightcrawler similarly critiques a media culture in which violence and suffering become profitable content consumed by emotionally detached audiences. Together, these works suggest that modern media systems often blur the line between public service and exploitation.

    Write a 1,200-word argumentative essay responding to the following claim:

    The transformation of crime, suffering, and public humiliation into entertainment ultimately corrupts justice by encouraging voyeurism, emotional exploitation, and spectacle-driven morality.

    In your essay, you may defend, challenge, or complicate this claim. As you develop your argument, consider questions such as: Does public exposure deter criminal behavior and raise legitimate awareness, or does it encourage reckless vigilantism and mob psychology? At what point does crime reporting become entertainment? Can media exposure serve justice responsibly, or does the pursuit of ratings, clicks, and viral attention inevitably distort moral judgment? Why are audiences drawn to spectacles involving humiliation, revenge, fear, and public punishment?

    You should also analyze how both works critique audience complicity. To what extent are viewers themselves participating in the commodification of suffering? How do modern media systems reward emotional extremity, outrage, and voyeuristic curiosity? Does the public consume these stories out of genuine concern for justice, or because tragedy and scandal have become emotionally addictive forms of entertainment?

    In addition to analyzing the themes of both works, examine the rhetorical and cinematic methods used by the filmmakers. Consider how tone, imagery, editing, suspense, emotional manipulation, interviews, satire, and spectacle shape the audience’s reaction. How does Nightcrawler especially critique the relationship between media consumers and those who profit from violence and tragedy?

    You must also include at least one counterargument and rebuttal. For example, some critics may argue that aggressive public exposure is necessary because traditional institutions and law enforcement often fail to protect vulnerable victims. Others may argue that disturbing media coverage serves an important social function by forcing society to confront uncomfortable realities. Respond to these objections by evaluating the ethical responsibilities of media creators and audiences alike.

    As you conclude your essay, consider the larger cultural implications of these works. What do Predators and Nightcrawler suggest about modern society’s relationship with violence, humiliation, revenge, and spectacle? What happens to a culture when entertainment and morality become increasingly inseparable?

    Requirements:

    • 1,200 words minimum
    • MLA format
    • Use evidence from both works
    • Include a clear thesis with mapping components
    • Include at least one counterargument and rebuttal
    • Analyze specific scenes, quotations, or examples rather than merely summarizing
    • Develop a focused argument about media spectacle, voyeurism, justice, and audience complicity

  • Who Controls the Story Controls the People (college essay prompt)

    Who Controls the Story Controls the People (college essay prompt)

    Using Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, bell hooks’ essay “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class,” Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson’s documentary Summer of Soul, and Elvis Mitchell’s documentary Is That Black Enough for You?!? as your central texts, write a 1,200-word argumentative essay analyzing the claim that art, music, film, education, and literacy function as weapons against cultural erasure and oppression.

    As you develop your argument, examine how dominant cultures maintain power not only through physical oppression and economic inequality but also through controlling memory, representation, literacy, visibility, and storytelling itself. Consider how marginalized groups are often denied the power to narrate their own existence and how reclaiming narrative ownership becomes an act of resistance, survival, and humanization.

    In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, analyze how slavery denied enslaved people literacy, birthdates, ancestry, and historical identity in order to reduce them to property rather than persons. Consider how Douglass presents reading and writing as revolutionary acts that allow him to reclaim his humanity and resist a system designed to silence him. How does his memoir itself function as an act of historical recovery and resistance against cultural erasure?

    In “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class,” analyze how bell hooks describes education as both a pathway toward empowerment and a site of alienation, performance, and cultural conflict. How does hooks show that race and class shape access to power, belonging, and self-definition? Why do marginalized students often feel pressure to erase or reinvent parts of themselves in elite educational spaces? To what extent does education demand assimilation into dominant cultural codes?

    In Summer of Soul, analyze how the Harlem Cultural Festival celebrated Black artistry, spirituality, joy, and political consciousness during a period of racial upheaval. Why was this massive cultural event largely erased from mainstream historical memory while Woodstock became mythologized as the defining music festival of the era? How does Questlove use archival footage, music, interviews, and storytelling to recover a forgotten history and challenge the marginalization of Black cultural memory?

    In Is That Black Enough for You?!?, analyze how Elvis Mitchell critiques Hollywood’s long history of reducing Black identity to stereotypes while marginalizing Black filmmakers, actors, and stories. How did Black cinema in the 1960s and 1970s challenge Hollywood’s control over representation? How does Mitchell argue that recovering overlooked Black films and artists becomes an act of cultural restoration and resistance against historical erasure?

    As part of your argument, analyze not only the ideas presented in these works but also the rhetorical and artistic methods used by the creators themselves. Consider how autobiography, music, archival footage, imagery, storytelling, editing, voice, and film structure shape audience perception and resist cultural invisibility.

    You must also address at least one counterargument. For example, some critics may argue that art, music, and representation alone are insufficient forms of resistance because symbolic visibility does not necessarily produce economic equality, political power, or institutional change. Others may argue that mainstream culture eventually commodifies resistance movements and transforms them into profitable entertainment. Respond to these objections by evaluating the actual power and limitations of cultural expression.

    As you conclude your essay, consider the larger implications of narrative control. Why do oppressive systems repeatedly attempt to regulate literacy, storytelling, education, historical memory, and representation? What happens to individuals and societies when marginalized groups lose the power to preserve and narrate their own histories? Finally, consider how modern digital culture, social media, AI, and algorithm-driven entertainment continue to shape which voices are amplified, marginalized, archived, or forgotten.

    For your introductory paragraph, explain how the struggle for the dominant narrative is presented in the documentary We Beat the Dream Team and how the film shows that battles over narrative power extend far beyond race into many areas of culture. Analyze how individuals and groups compete to control public memory, define legitimacy, shape historical perception, and claim symbolic victory. Show how the documentary demonstrates that the fight for the dominant narrative is ultimately a struggle over identity, status, recognition, and cultural power.

    Requirements:

    • 1,200 words minimum
    • MLA format
    • MLA Works Cited page with 5 sources
    • Use evidence from all five texts
    • Include a clear thesis with mapping components
    • Include at least one counterargument and rebuttal
    • Analyze specific scenes, passages, quotations, or examples rather than merely summarizing
    • Develop a focused argument about the relationship between narrative ownership, cultural memory, identity, and power

  • How G-Shock Flattened Twenty Years of Watch Collecting

    How G-Shock Flattened Twenty Years of Watch Collecting

    Yesterday I was watching myself play piano on my YouTube channel when I noticed something strange. I could barely focus on the music because my eyes kept drifting toward the Casio G-Shock GW-7900 strapped to my wrist. The watch looked so perfectly correct, so deeply aligned with whatever strange creature I have apparently become, that I caught myself thinking: “That’s it. That’s me. I’m a G-Shock guy.”

    A few hours later I was watching a true-crime docuseries when one of the detectives appeared wearing a Casio G-Shock GWM530. The moment I saw it, some invisible courtroom inside my brain slammed down the gavel.

    Case closed.

    I only want atomic time now.
    I only want resin on my wrist.
    I only want G-Shocks.

    The realization was both satisfying and faintly disturbing, like discovering your subconscious has quietly joined a militant survivalist sect while you were out buying groceries.

    What makes the experience unsettling is that I already possess five beautiful Seiko divers—carefully curated watches representing more than twenty years of obsessive collecting. Those Seikos were not random purchases. They were the result of decades of refinement, experimentation, buying, selling, regretting, and gradually arriving at what I believed was horological enlightenment. They sat in the watch box like sacred artifacts of a fully realized identity.

    Then, roughly four months ago—which psychologically feels more like four geological eras ago—I bought a Casio G-Shock Frogman.

    And the wrecking ball swung.

    The entire architecture of my watch hobby collapsed like a condemned casino in Las Vegas. Out of the rubble emerged a new religion constructed from resin, atomic synchronization, solar charging, and Japanese apocalypse-proof overengineering. I now own five G-Shocks.

    One of them, the Casio G-Shock G-9300 Mudman, was supposed to be its atomic sibling, the GW-9300. The eBay seller made an honest mistake and shipped the non-atomic version instead. Under normal circumstances this would have triggered a small existential crisis because I have apparently reached the point where the absence of Multi Band 6 synchronization feels like spiritual imprecision.

    But strangely, I didn’t care.

    I bought the watch for half price and immediately designated it my “Hawaii Watch,” reasoning that one does not require atomic synchronization while standing beside an edenic waterfall in Kauai pretending, however briefly, that mortality and property taxes do not exist.

    The whole experience reminds me of something my wife once said about men: they crave violent conversion experiences. In my heart, I know she’s right.

    A suburban man often longs for cataclysm without actual destruction. He wants upheaval without bankruptcy. Reinvention without divorce. Apocalypse without inconvenience. Since detonating one’s real life would be irresponsible, the energy gets redirected into symbolic conversions:

    • watches,
    • motorcycles,
    • kettlebells,
    • backpacks,
    • audio systems,
    • tactical flashlights,
    • sourdough starters,
    • wilderness knives.

    The external change may seem trivial, but psychologically it lands like a thunderclap because obsessive men experience identity through systems of allegiance.

    Objectively speaking, shifting from Seiko divers to G-Shocks is not an event of civilizational importance. No treaties were signed. No governments fell. The stock market did not tremble. Yet inside the mind of an obsessive enthusiast, the transition feels spiritually seismic.

    It genuinely reminds me of Losing My Religion.

    The old religion was:

    • mechanical divers,
    • steel bracelets,
    • sweeping seconds hands,
    • vintage romance,
    • and maritime mythology.

    The new religion is:

    • Tough Solar,
    • Multi Band 6,
    • atomic precision,
    • resin cases,
    • and watches designed to survive tectonic activity.

    The funniest part is that I fully recognize the absurdity of all this. I understand perfectly well that I am a grown man psychologically reorganizing himself around timekeeping devices like a monk discovering a new denomination of Protestantism.

    Which is precisely why I can’t help laughing at myself.

  • The Loneliness Entertainment Complex

    The Loneliness Entertainment Complex

    There is something faintly dystopian about solitary people spending hours online watching other solitary people perform the microscopic rituals of daily life: tying shoelaces, cracking open cans of diet soda, pouring kibble into a cat’s bowl, unloading groceries with monk-like precision, folding laundry beneath soft lighting while melancholy piano music drifts through the background like emotional Febreze.

    At some point loneliness ceased being merely a condition to endure and became a genre of entertainment.

    You are not simply alone anymore. You are curating aloneness, aestheticizing it, monetizing it, and binge-watching it as though isolation itself were a luxury lifestyle brand. The modern internet increasingly resembles a vast digital aquarium filled with emotionally sedated people observing one another through glass while reassuring themselves that this counts as connection.

    I sometimes wonder if this phenomenon functions as a form of emotional jiu-jitsu. Instead of confronting the pain of alienation directly, people transform it into a consumer product. The loneliness does not disappear; it merely changes costume. By packaging solitude into soothing, carefully curated content, the sharp edge of disconnection becomes dulled. The ache remains, but now it arrives with ambient lighting, artisanal tea preparation, and a Scandinavian throw blanket.

    We now inhabit a condition I would call Consumptive Solitude: the state in which loneliness evolves from a painful human experience into a consumable form of entertainment. Isolated individuals compulsively watch other isolated individuals perform the mundane choreography of domestic life in order to simulate companionship without assuming the emotional risks, obligations, friction, compromise, or unpredictability of genuine human intimacy.

    This pathology is explored in Faith Hill’s essay “The Strange Appeal of the Solitude Influencer,” in which she examines the rise of what she calls “solitude influencers” and what their popularity reveals about contemporary society. These influencers present carefully curated lives of performative isolation: beautiful apartments, immaculate routines, quiet mornings, tasteful meals, dim lighting, tasteful melancholy, and endless scenes of one person existing in exquisitely controlled seclusion.

    The performance contains all the machinery of attention addiction without the inconvenience of actual friendship. There are no difficult conversations, no emotional demands, no conflicting schedules, no awkward silences, no disappointments, and no compromise. The viewer receives the emotional atmosphere of companionship without having to endure another person’s needs or complexity. It is intimacy stripped of reciprocity.

    Naturally, narcissism plays some role in this ecosystem. But narcissism alone does not explain the appeal. Control may be the deeper force at work. Real life is chaotic, humiliating, exhausting, and unpredictable. The solitude influencer offers the fantasy of total environmental management. Everything is calm. Everything is clean. Everything is curated. Nothing intrudes.

    For burned-out viewers, the effect can become psychologically narcotic, almost ASMR-like in its soothing predictability. After spending the day navigating economic stress, social tension, workplace absurdity, family obligations, and digital overload, people retreat into videos of someone silently pouring a glass of chablis while a Haydn sonata drifts through a minimalist apartment that appears untouched by conflict, debt, sickness, or despair.

    As I read Hill’s essay, I kept thinking about the word infantilization.

    The solitude influencer increasingly functions like a pacifier for emotionally exhausted adults. Millions of viewers recalibrate their nervous systems through these carefully controlled simulations of peace and containment. Some no longer wish to engage fully with the real world. Others feel incapable of doing so. Still others may have quietly surrendered altogether.

    And this is where the phenomenon begins to feel genuinely troubling.

    I suspect there is something psychologically regressive about spending one’s days and nights watching solitary performers enact sanitized domestic rituals for passive spectators. At some point, watching people “play house” begins replacing the harder work of building a life oneself. The performance of adulthood slowly replaces adulthood itself.

    Because you can only simulate intimacy, routine, domesticity, and emotional safety for so long before you begin forgetting what genuine growth requires: risk, struggle, awkwardness, responsibility, sacrifice, and contact with real people whose existence cannot be muted, paused, skipped, unsubscribed from, or optimized into aesthetic tranquility.

    The solitude influencer offers peace without vulnerability, companionship without obligation, and emotional atmosphere without genuine human entanglement.

    And that may be precisely why so many people find it irresistible.

  • Why Online Education Deserves Defending

    Why Online Education Deserves Defending

    Since the COVID lockdown, most of my teaching has migrated online. Even now, roughly three-fourths of my courses remain in the digital realm, where students encounter me less as a flesh-and-blood professor pacing beneath fluorescent lights and more as a disembodied presence living inside Canvas announcements, discussion boards, and video lectures recorded in my home office.

    To my surprise, retention rates remain strong. That fact alone suggests online learning serves a real need for many students whose lives resemble logistical hostage situations involving jobs, childcare, commutes, aging parents, unstable work schedules, and economic exhaustion. For these students, online education is not a luxury. It is the only doorway left open.

    Still, online learning clearly is not for everyone.

    Today’s Los Angeles Times article, “‘I felt like I wasn’t learning’: Community college students struggle with online education” by Adam Echelman, highlights several genuine problems now reshaping higher education.

    First, nearly 40 percent of community college classes are online, leaving many campuses eerily underpopulated. I see this myself every time I walk across campus beneath giant stretches of empty concrete where student traffic once resembled an airport terminal. Some days the college feels less like a thriving institution of learning and more like the abandoned set of a post-apocalyptic indie film where only the squirrels still believe enrollment is healthy.

    Second, online education is highly vulnerable to AI-assisted academic dishonesty. Entire assignments can now be outsourced to machines with frightening ease. Students who once copied homework from friends can now summon instant essays, summaries, reflections, and discussion-board responses generated in seconds by software that never sleeps and never complains about deadlines. Academic rigor has unquestionably been destabilized.

    Third, many students experience profound disorientation in online courses. They sit alone at glowing screens trying to decode unfamiliar interfaces, navigate modules, interpret assignment instructions, and manage deadlines without the immediate human structure of a physical classroom. Some students thrive in this environment. Others feel psychologically untethered, as though they have been dropped into an educational escape room with no map and unreliable Wi-Fi.

    All of these criticisms contain truth.

    But I still feel compelled to defend online education because face-to-face instruction creates its own formidable barriers that critics often romanticize away.

    Many students simply do not possess the time, transportation, money, childcare, emotional bandwidth, or scheduling flexibility necessary to attend traditional classes several times a week. Others suffer from social anxiety so severe that walking into a crowded classroom feels less like entering a learning environment and more like arriving for public execution. Some students experience the same confusion staring at a printed syllabus that others experience navigating Canvas. Confusion is not unique to online learning; it is part of learning itself.

    And AI has disrupted all education, not merely online education.

    The fantasy that we can restore some pristine pre-pandemic classroom paradise by dragging everyone back into physical seats ignores reality entirely. Face-to-face classes are also saturated with AI. Students use it in dorm rooms, libraries, cafeterias, parking lots, and sometimes while sitting directly in front of us pretending to take notes. The disruption is universal.

    We are living through a historical transition in which educators are desperately trying to preserve critical thinking, reading, writing, and job preparation while technological conditions mutate faster than institutional bureaucracy can respond. No one possesses perfect answers. Anyone claiming otherwise is selling nostalgia disguised as certainty.

    But I remain optimistic.

    Online teaching continues improving. Faculty are becoming more sophisticated in course design, communication, engagement strategies, video instruction, accessibility, and platform navigation. We are learning how to create clearer modules, more interactive coursework, better communication systems, and stronger student support structures. In many cases, students now receive the best aspects of both worlds: the flexibility of online access combined with increasingly refined teaching methods.

    And flexibility matters enormously.

    For many community college students, education is squeezed into the margins of adult survival. They complete assignments after ten-hour shifts, during lunch breaks, inside parked cars, while supervising children, or late at night after the household finally quiets down. Critics who romanticize the traditional campus experience often imagine eighteen-year-olds strolling across ivy-covered quads discussing philosophy beneath oak trees. Community college reality is far less cinematic. It involves exhaustion, economic pressure, and scheduling warfare.

    All of higher education is undergoing massive disruption simultaneously:

    • AI is transforming intellectual labor.
    • Student attention spans are changing.
    • Economic pressures are intensifying.
    • Online teaching technologies are improving.
    • Work and family demands are growing more brutal.

    Under these conditions, demanding a wholesale return to “the old ways” feels less like wisdom and more like denial.

    The old world is not coming back.

    That does not mean standards should collapse or that online learning is automatically superior. It means education must evolve alongside the lives students actually live rather than the lives institutions nostalgically wish they still lived.

    Online education will continue improving because necessity drives innovation with ruthless efficiency. Likewise, our understanding of how to create meaningful, rigorous, and humane education in the AI Age will continue evolving. We are not witnessing the death of learning. We are witnessing the painful reconstruction of it.

    The task now is not retreat. It is adaptation.

    It is time to move forward rather than cling romantically to a vanished academic world that technology, economics, and history have already left behind.