You ever get the idea to write, you open your notes app or grab your pen and paper, look at the space, and forget the words you intended to fill it with?
If I started hearing the dial-up tone then it would be pretty fitting
Do kids nowadays know about dial-up? I called a 4-6yr old girl "dudette" and she looked at me with such confusion and like I insulted her. It didn't occur to me that my 70-90s vernacular (which was implanted in me by all the 90s/2000s TV I consumed as a child in the 2000s and continue to consume) has been aged out. Do people still call eachother "dude" or is that as well an artifact of an older present that is no longer?
I've been playing a lot of Cyberpunk 2077 lately. It's by far the most immersive game I've played in a long time, and one of the big themes is "Legacy". It's not hidden, the game practically beats you over the head with Jackie and V talking about how they want to be remembered, and it's gotten me thinking of my own legacy.
Solid Snake once said "Life isn't just about passing on your genes. We can leave behind much more than just DNA. Through speech, music, literature, and movies... what we've seen, heard, felt... anger, joy, and sorrow... these are the things I will pass on." I haven't done anything to be remembered. I'm almost a quarter of the way through my life, and I have nothing to pass myself on with. I don't want kids, so that feels out of the question. But I haven't written books or songs with quotes to sit in your brain, directed movies made with such passion that they will live on decades after me, I haven't touched the lives of the masses so that each remembers a different version of myself that will each carry their own meaning and feelings to those peoples.
It's had me in a bit of a funk for a few days, just ruminating on what I'll be when I die.
(And Trigger Warning here, I'm sorry but that's the flow. Just stick with me)
Yesterday on my home from work, I thought about how I'd kill myself. (This isn't a cry for help, I've had thoughts for years at this point, I'm not going to, but the thought remains yk?) I thought of making a "goodbye video" like you'd find on the old internet or as a log or note you'd find in a game.
Start it like "If you're seeing this, I'm probably dead" or something cheesy like that, and then ramble on about how "this isn't anyone's fault" and "this was a long time coming". Then, my legacy would be that shitty suicide video. Maybe some edgy 14yr old running a meme account will find it and make an edit of it, maybe I'd spit some fire and it could be a minorly successful TikTok audio.
Would that be selfish? Like, killing myself would be kinda selfish, but is it more so to broadcast my suicide? Even if not showing it, I'm still declaring to the world that "I have died". Would people call it attention seeking? How long would it be before a vocal minority finds the video, call it fake and AI generated, and then run around replying to comments saying "Ugh, he didn't AKTUALLY kill himself. It's clearly AI generated, look at his [Face/Hands/Background] it's sooooo obvious".
I can feel the passage of time flowing through me. It took a few years, but I'm feeling it. Maybe it's just a feeling you get in your mid-twenties.
More to come in time, you can kill the man but you can't kill his ideas. Snake might have said that, too.
jacobvanloon
origamiaround
tangentwithtanner