“You’re not a brand, you’re a person…” I whisper to myself.

A recitation proved useless, despite its truth.   

Sat atop my navy covered mattress, shirtless, hunched over where the mounds of my vertebrae are visible. Staring blankly at the post button after months of waiting to capture that “perfect” series of photos. Finally I’ve done it, but I can’t bring myself to post it as I’m overly attentive to critique, the unproductive kind. The kind that I’ve carefully implanted in the minds of an otherwise indifferent audience. 

Suppose I can’t bring myself to understand that no one actually cares. Suppose my fear of judgment has clouded my own. And suppose social media has detached me from people more than quarantine has.

I click back. Save draft.

“Man, what the hell. I thought I was over this.” With a defeated motion I lay to my side from my curled position, now forming a “me” shaped crater in the bed and staring at myself in the mirror. 

For the past month I’ve happily indulged in sharing who I am with the world and not adhering to my comedy niche, or brand, or content schedule or feeling like I owe anything to anyone. For once, I allowed myself to just be me. Posting video game clips, my favorite poems, scenes of my favorite TV shows. Anything that wasn’t some stupid skit or joke or whatever. 

I lost about 543 followers in the past three weeks of being “off-brand.” It’s okay I guess; it shouldn’t hurt as much as I allow it to. 

A young woman had reached out last night as I’d been going to bed. Tapping at my screen I look at the message requests and see hers, it reads: “Hii I just wanna say I really love ur content!! :)))” 

I responded, “Thank you, you’re very kind.” A part of me doubts she was telling the truth because it’d been about a month of no funnies… but I appreciated that little spark of validation.

Perhaps, people like her are the ones that matter. I checked my followers list and she showed up, not leaving after I have been showing up as myself lately.

“What the hell…” Mustering the courage, I am prepared to lose more followers. “I don’t owe these people anything. I am me, that’s my brand.” 

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Post.

“Potential” is a concept

treated as intrinsic yet

we seldom ponder if the

people seeking comfort be

interested in their own

improvement that you have shown

you’ve restated and consoled

now it’s just becoming old

you’re constantly repeating

your efforts became fleeting

so don’t waste your time thinking

of a horse that’s not drinking

I awoke from the top bunk. Always the first of many, as if my body were hardwired to function at 6 am, eternally. Both a burden and a blessing, I always awoke to a dimly lit world. A world that, if only for a moment, belonged to me. 

The cold metal ladder awaits my descent, only after removing the plush blue blanket from my then small frame. Motioning carefully and quietly, so as not to wake my older brother sleeping beneath me, I propel downward (real spy-like) onto the beige carpeted floor of our tiny, hardly one bedroom, bedroom. Now, what compels a 7-year old cauliflower-looking rascal to wake up at 6am? Well, Popeye the Sailor Man, of course.

Exiting the bedroom I step onto the square shaped kitchen tiles, wearing my white, soon to be dirty, socks. What lies before me is a tiny beige hallway leading up to a wide kitchen that connects to the living room further back. As previously mentioned, the world is dark and quiet, but I could navigate my home without a light source. To anyone else this would be the stuff of nightmares, seeing a little boy with moppish curly hair cruising about in the dark like it’s no one’s business. Luckily, I hardly made any noise. 

With the strength of Hercules, I grab myself a heavy wooden chair to reach the red box of Froot Loops from atop the fridge. The bag inside crinkled and crackled as I tilted it. Falling rainbow rings clattered about and dispersed into an orange bowl, forming a mighty hill of sugar. Now opening the fridge door with a light tug, I reach for the gallon of milk with the blue cow on it to pour into my bowl. Alas, they’ve submerged, I tapped around on the cereal with my silver spoon to ensure each ring was covered. Now that my breakfast of champions was complete it was time for the entertainment.

A digital ‘6:04 am’ is highlighted on the cable box in lime green. I grab the plastic silver optimum remote from the brown leather couch in the living room, turning the TV on and lowering the volume completely to keep up with the ninja act. Now, the cable box is turned on with a little white light. I sit criss-cross (applesauce) onto the large brown patterned rug below me.

The Boomerang channel, that was my destination. There I can watch Popeye on 1-2 bars of volume in the relatively silent bliss of morning. Raising the silver spoon from my pool of sugar, I take my first bite of cereal and crunch on artificially flavored goodness. Ever since then, I’ve been waking up early naturally, but it’s funny to think it began as a result of cartoon airtimes.

Online social media discourse over this term has exploded in recent years and I see it all the time regarding entertainment media that possess an inkling of diversity. Once defined as being aware and informed of social issues and mostly associated with black social activism (BLM), “woke” has become synonymous with “bad” where diversity and inclusivity is involved. Specifically in entertainment media, the mere inclusion of a single POC or LGBTQ+ lead or secondary character (or virtually anything outside of the status quo) is considered “woke”, why is that? Different demographics exist in the world and if including different groups of people in entertainment media is so heavily considered “pandering” then why isn’t the default considered pandering? “Woke” has also often been associated with terms like “forced diversity” which seek to interrogate writers in order to justify why the inclusion of people of different race, sexuality, and gender is in “their” entertainment media. Arguments that are anti-”woke” often stem from wanting to distance social issues from entertainment or wanting to coddle oneself from the reality that the world and its people are not homogeneous. 

It seems unnecessary to cite a credential but as an advertising student who has created content for actual clients, most everything in media has a target audience in mind and most every piece of media, no matter how small, is “pandering” to someone.

Another example of THAT definition of “woke” being pushed around in media is with Republican Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, allowing parents to ban books in schools and seeking to remove an AP African American Studies course at a Florida public high school. The Stop W.O.K.E. Act is a direct attack on historical truths and is a blatant form of censorship in the interest that students be less “brainwashed”. It seems once again, “woke” is just another word for “different” and “different” isn’t “good”.