I Felt Like a Major Failure in 2022; How I’m Changing That in 2023
For the first time ever, I’m trying to be slightly optimistic.
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Per usual, I’m about a decade late to every party. A YouTube addict, I’ve recently discovered “family channels.” Money and clout-starved parents who film, broadcast, and monetize every moment of their families’ lives. Exploiting their children without their consent or acknowledgment of child labor laws.
What in the Honey Nut Cheerios is this nonsense?
You should know I’ve seen it all — dead bodies sprawled out on linoleum floors and in bathtubs. John Holmes films and crack-cocaine overdoses — and this is all before the age of ten. As an adult, I’ve watched Pasolini’s Salo and possibly every banned-in-the-USA horror and torture film ever made, yet these vlogs are a whole new dimension of terror. I was desensitized before I witnessed parents whoring out their children on the internet. And then I imagine how those children are altered because of their lack of agency and privacy.
The Ace Family, 8 Passengers/Moms of Truth, The Labrant Family, and every other looney tune parent that has publicly lost the plot chills me to the bone.
If I was a child who was forced to perform in front of a camera for millions (including the internet’s fair share of creeps), I would probably murder my parents seppuku-style.
This is all a roundabout way of saying that although my childhood didn’t exist and I was an adult straight out of the womb, at least my life was private. At least my pain was shuttered behind closed doors. At least I lived my formative years without the internet, for which I’m grateful.
Though, I was the first of my peers to embrace the online space. I had AOL discs and dial-up internet. I launched an online clothing resale business in 1998 when eBay was still slinging Beanie Babies. I had a Geocities account, and started publishing an online diary in 2002. I launched an online literary magazine in 2002 when people laughed in my face because print was prestige. No one would ever deign to publish their best work on the internet. Quelle horreur! And I was one of the few in book publishing who brokered deals with Disney, MySpace, Gather.com, etc., in 2006 because I…
