The World Isn’t Real

SECTION I: THE CULT OF THE HALF-JOKE

There’s a viral Facebook event from 2019 titled “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us.” It started as a shitpost, authored by a college student in California with a Naruto obsession and a sense of humor shaped by irony poisoning and energy drinks. The premise? Let’s all meet in the Nevada desert and rush the gates of a top-secret military base in search of aliens. The government might shoot us, but hey, lol.

It was funny—until it wasn’t. Until the RSVPs hit millions. Until hotels in Las Vegas booked up. Until real people spent real money to build infrastructure for a gathering that wasn’t meant to exist. Until sponsors and influencers and opportunists slithered in, seeing dollar signs in the dust.

The kid didn’t stop it. He didn’t apologize. He doubled down. He said, “Why not?” Because in a world where everything’s performance, intent doesn’t matter. Irony becomes reality. Jokes become culture. Memes become events.

It wasn’t activism. It wasn’t rebellion. It was inertia laced with sugar and gasoline. Performance art as mass hallucination. A generation so disillusioned with meaning that it turns every instinct into satire, until the only thing left standing is the joke itself—and the brands that sponsored it.

The question isn’t: “Was this satire or sincerity?”
The question is: “Who profited from pretending not to care?”

SECTION II: THE ORCHESTRA OF THE UNREAL

If the first section was a meme, this one is a megaphone. Specifically, a corporate-branded megaphone with teeth.

Because while the ironic wasteland of Area 51 became a punchline, the other side of the performance coin is deadly serious. I’m talking about the media industrial complex. The echo chambers dressed in neckties and lower-thirds. Fox News, OANN, Newsmax—all delivering not journalism but emotional heroin to the base. Not information, but affirmation. Fear and fury turned into sport.

But here’s the twist: the “opposition,” the so-called truth-tellers, the CNNs and MSNBCs and Vice-types—they’re just the inverse of the same game. They’re not fighting disinformation with clarity. They’re reacting to it like raccoons in a flood. They’re watching the house burn and screaming about the color of the flames.

Don’t believe me? Look at the coverage. When Trump farts in a Waffle House, they send three reporters and a breaking chyron. When white nationalists swarm a state legislature, it’s a 90-second segment squeezed between pharmaceutical ads.

Because they’ve learned that nuance doesn’t sell. Fear does. So instead of leading with thoughtful analysis or diverse perspectives, they follow the click trails laid out by propaganda. They react to lies instead of speaking truth. They mirror the monster and call it resistance.

And this is where it really sinks its teeth in: neither side wants to fix the fire. They want to televise it. Monetize it. Get a brand partnership out of it. They want your rage, your panic, your dopamine loop.

So you open your phone and see the same fifteen stories, regurgitated and pissed on by a thousand blue checks. Your screen becomes a funhouse mirror of outrage. Your algorithm learns what you fear, and it feeds you more of it. Every scroll is a confirmation of bias. Every click makes your box smaller.

It’s not news. It’s performance.
It’s not journalism. It’s theatre.
And the actors are so good, they don’t even know they’re acting anymore.

And the worst part?

You’re clapping.

SECTION III: THE HOLY PERFORMANCE OF SELF

You wake up and scroll. Someone’s kid is in the hospital. Scroll. Someone’s dog died. Scroll. A man you went to high school with is now an expert in geopolitics because he reposted a TikTok with a voiceover that said “Do your own research.” Scroll.

And then it hits you: nobody’s saying anything real.

They’re performing the idea of care. The idea of rage. The idea of community.

And it’s not because they’re sociopaths—it’s because we’ve all been trained to believe the highest form of moral currency is a well-timed, well-worded, aesthetically pleasing post. Grief with a filter. Righteousness with a Canva background. Trauma, but make it a carousel.

It’s not the thought that counts anymore. It’s the presentation.

Somewhere along the way, expression lost its soul and gained a brand deal. You don't share what hurts—you share what will resonate. You don’t speak to connect—you speak to perform. And the truly radical act of saying “I don’t know” or “I’m unsure” or “I’m still figuring it out” has been replaced by rigid ideological cosplay and aestheticized pain.

And here’s the quiet part: everyone knows it.

That’s why we roll our eyes at the people who post too much. That’s why we unfollow the ones who won’t shut up about their cause. Because even if they mean it, even if their rage is justified, we’ve been conditioned to distrust sincerity unless it’s repackaged with irony or clout.

You picked your lane. You picked your issue. You picked your identity. And now you get to defend it until you die—or get ratio’d.

That’s not discourse.
That’s not humanity.
That’s not truth.

That’s theater.

And in theater, there are no facts. Only scripts.

But I get it. I’m not above it. I’ve played the part. I’ve changed my wardrobe and my voice and my writing style just to be allowed in a room that I didn’t even want to be in. I’ve worn the mask of “ally” or “comedian” or “creative professional” depending on the flavor of the hour, hoping someone would mistake my costume for a calling.

Because the sin isn't just outside. It’s inside. I’ve been the algorithmic opportunist. I’ve watched where the wind blew and shaped myself to meet it. Not because I’m fake, but because I didn’t know there was another way.

But now I do.

You don’t have to perform care. You can just care.
You don’t have to posture intelligence. You can just learn.
You don’t have to pretend you're the solution. You can just show up anyway.

That’s the difference between being and acting. Between soul and script. Between real and rot.

And if you don’t choose one, the world will choose for you.

SECTION IV: OPPORTUNISM IN THE RUINS

We live in a scavenger's paradise. The world is on fire, and instead of reaching for buckets, we reach for ring lights.

Every catastrophe, every outrage, every movement becomes an opportunity. Not to change anything. Not to do the slow, ugly work of truth. But to participate. To belong. To monetize.

Take the 2019 “Storm Area 51” event. It started as a joke on Facebook by a college kid named Matty Roberts. A shitpost. A lark. “They can’t stop all of us.” Harmless until it wasn’t. Within weeks, over 2 million people RSVP’d. The U.S. Air Force issued a statement. Local governments panicked. Businesses emerged from the desert dust like opportunistic fungi, branding alien-themed festivals, slapping green faces on water bottles and keychains, building infrastructure for an invasion that would never come.

And it worked. Because humans crave spectacle. They crave the illusion of rebellion with none of the consequences. They want to feel radical without the risk of being exiled.

But when the dust settled, no one stormed the base. They just bought the t-shirt and went home.

You think this is different from what we do every day? Watch how quickly a movement becomes merch. How a tragedy becomes a trending audio. How your trauma becomes someone else’s TikTok therapy session so they can rack up a million likes talking about something you lived.

And the worst part? I’ve done it too.

Maybe not with aliens or filters or brand collabs—but with stories. With pain. With identity. I’ve mined my own trauma for resonance. I’ve packaged grief into something palatable. I’ve become the kind of man who can quote Marcus Aurelius while rage-scrolling Twitter. Because I knew how to look like someone worth listening to.

But all that performance does is pave the way for bad actors to take center stage while the real voices, the ones who speak not for clout but from necessity, get silenced. Because they’re “too much.” Because they’re “uncool.” Because they refuse to wrap their blood in branding.

And in their absence? The opportunists multiply.

You’ve seen it. You feel it. Every social cause with a logo. Every crisis with a PR strategy. Every account that posts the right words but couldn’t give a fuck when the cameras stop rolling.

They are not villains. They are the result of a system that rewards attention, not truth.

And here’s what should keep you up at night:

They’re winning.

SECTION V: THE MEDIA IS THE MIRROR IS THE MAW

The American media landscape is a snake eating itself in a mirror factory. What used to be a conduit for investigation has metastasized into a multi-tentacled echo chamber, slathered in corporate Vaseline and pointed directly at your lizard brain.

Let’s start with the “right.” That’s easy.

Fox News, OAN, Newsmax—networks that operate less like journalism and more like state-sanctioned improv troupes, whipping up red meat for an audience that doesn’t want facts. They want confirmation. They want comfort. They want their anger read back to them in HD by a guy with too-white teeth and an American flag tie.

These networks don't traffic in news. They traffic in permission. Permission to be afraid. Permission to hate. Permission to shut out nuance in favor of a story that makes them the hero and everyone else a godless Marxist pedophile groomer. (Their words, not mine.)

But the so-called opposition? The “left-wing media”? Let’s not get cute. MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times—they’re not the resistance. They’re capitalism in costume.

Sure, they cover more of the truth. They bring on experts. They attempt balance. But their incentives aren’t justice. Their incentives are engagement.

They are reaction machines. Not reporters—responders.

Fox says the ocean’s made of blood and soybeans? CNN runs a segment fact-checking the soybean blood ocean. MSNBC brings on a panel of coastal liberals to feel very, very sad about it. And nobody notices that we stopped talking about food insecurity, housing collapse, or the thousand other things that actually shape our lives.

What matters isn’t what’s true—what matters is what keeps you watching. And what keeps you watching is conflict. Not the kind that leads to change. The kind that raises your heart rate just enough to keep your thumb scrolling and your subscription active.

It's why the news cycle looks more like WWE Raw than Watergate.

And the opportunists? They thrive here too. Twitter (sorry, “X”) pundits who built careers off dunking on conspiracy theorists. TikTok therapists who repackage DSM criteria into Zodiac memes. YouTubers who pretend to be centristswhile spewing thinly veiled white nationalist rhetoric in longform video essays monetized by VPN sponsors.

They don't care about truth. They care about traction.

And here’s the goddamn kicker: we made them.

We gave them the stage. We handed them the mic. Because we confused visibility with validity. We confused volumewith value.

If someone posts about every issue, every day, with eloquence and rage and a $200 ring light, they must be an authority, right?

But ask them what they actually believe. Ask them what they'd die for. Ask them what they’ve done offline.

Silence.

Or worse—another affiliate link.

SECTION VI: THE PERFORMANCE OF BELIEF

I know this trick because I’ve pulled it myself.

When I was a kid, I didn’t know how to be cool, but I knew how to look like I might be. I bought the same jeans as the kids I envied. Wore the same shoes. Laughed too loud at jokes I didn’t think were funny just to prove I got them. I was rehearsing a life I wasn’t brave enough to live.

And that shit doesn’t stop when you grow up—it just mutates. The costume changes, the instinct doesn’t.

I’ve posted quotes I barely understood because I knew they’d make me look smart. Shared causes I hadn’t researched because silence felt like complicity, and I was too scared to admit I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. I’ve rage-posted when I wasn’t angry, virtue-signaled when I was too tired to actually act, and cried performative tears in essays that I knew would get clicks.

That’s the part nobody wants to talk about.

Because underneath all this culture war trench warfare, there’s a deeper betrayal at play: we’ve confused the expression of care with caring. We’ve made authenticity a brand. We curate outrage like it’s a Spotify playlist.

And worse: we believe ourselves while we’re doing it.

Pick your poison: trans rights, free speech, Gaza, school boards, book bans, economic reform. Any topic worth real attention is now just aesthetics. You don’t have to understand it. You just have to look like you care about it more convincingly than the next guy. Bonus points if you post daily.

And the people who actually understand these issues? Who’ve lived them? Studied them? Cried over them? They’re boring. They’re “too much.” They post too long. They don’t stay in their lane. They don’t hit the algorithm’s sweet spot. Mute.

This is how we’ve built a world where the loudest voices are rarely the most informed—but they are the most marketable.

We’ve made conviction indistinguishable from cosplay.

And we’ve trained ourselves to be suspicious of anyone who doesn’t join the performance.

Which is why I’m trying—against every instinct I’ve developed—to break my own cycle. To post less. To think longer. To say “I don’t know” and let that be the full sentence.

Because I’m no better than the shit I’m talking about. I’ve played the same games. But the difference now is I’m done pretending it’s not performance. And I’m done letting performance be enough.

Let’s talk next about what happens when you stop playing—how silence, confusion, and nuance become acts of rebellion.

CONCLUSION: THE STENCH OF THE STAGE

You want a fucking button? Here’s a button sewn from raw nerve and bone:

This world stinks of performance.

The Area 51 clown show, the cable news gladiator ring, the trending tweets and TikToks and ten-point Instagram carousels about justice—none of it smells like sincerity. It smells like Axe Body Spray dumped on a corpse. Like someone tried to Febreze their way out of moral rot.

We live in an age where you are what you pretend to be—not because it’s noble, but because it’s efficient. Because sincerity doesn’t scale. Because nuance doesn’t get clicks. Because if you pause long enough to think, the algorithm will bury your corpse in a digital ditch marked “low engagement.”

And when you finally stop performing? When you sit in silence? The world calls it suspicious. They wonder what side you’re on. They think you’ve gone soft. Or worse, irrelevant.

But I’m here to tell you: stepping off the stage isn’t weakness. It’s war.

It’s war against the version of yourself that cared more about being palatable than principled. It’s war against the echo chamber that claps no matter what you say, as long as you keep saying it loudly. It’s war against the vultures who feed on spectacle and spit out ideology.

This manifesto is not for the well-adjusted. It’s for the disillusioned. For the once-performers and former-belongers. For the fuckups who’ve worn every mask and finally clawed their face raw enough to feel something again.

You want to matter in this world? Then stop pretending.

Let your opinions come from your gut, not your brand kit.

Let your values be inconvenient. Let them be unpopular. Let them lose you friends.

Let them get you blackballed.

Because at least then they’ll be yours.

And when the last trending topic has burned out like a dying flare, when the megaphones fall silent and the spotlight flickers off, you’ll still be there—in the dark, yes, but whole. Unmarketable. Undeniable.

Unfuckingstoppable.