NOTE: This is part 2 of my life story, you can find PART 1 HERE if you haven't read it yet.
After going through all those years of being bullied, I went into my adult life with intense Agoraphobia. I spent a few years (1999-2004 my early 20s) working part-time jobs and sitting online and chatting with people when at home. I found a community of Anime Music Video (AMV) fans, and started making my own videos under the studio "Otaku Vengeance". I released a video in April of 2000 that went Viral before the days of social media and youtube. It was called "Pokemon Bitches", and it was being talked about on every forum on the internet back in those days. I met people IRL (like customers at work, etc.) who talked about the video to me, without knowing I made it. After a horrible childhood, my adult life was actually starting off good. I was editing videos that everyone seemed to like, sitting on forums and chatting with people, I had friends and was part of a big online community. My AMV website was getting tons of traffic and I was seeing positive comments constantly...it was great for a few years...
However, in early 2003, I lost my AMV website address (www.otakuvengeance.com) because I had prepaid for 3 years, and forgot to renew it. When I woke up that day and realized it expired, I immediately tried to renew it, but it was GONE within just a few hours of expiring. GoDaddy sold my domain address to some company called "The Tidewater Group" and they wanted $10,000 for it when I reached out to them about it...so I lost my website and everything I built over 3 years. I made a new domain address (".org" instead of ".com") but I never got that old traffic back because all of my videos had the old website address in the intro, and it was the ".com" address on all the forums talking about it as well. I got super depressed and felt like everything was extremely unfair...THEN I got scammed out of $3000 (years worth of savings) later that year trying to get into an internship program for movies. The company was called "The Career Connection" aka "The Film Connection" (run by James "jimi" Petulla)...I should have known it was a scam, but I was already depressed about losing my website, and I felt this sudden "what have I been doing with my time?" kind of feeling and I desperately wanted to be a video editor/movie director...so I jumped into the program and paid $3000 and yeah, got scammed...(HERE IS THE FULL STORY)
In 2004, I was in a depression after losing the website and most of my savings, among other things like constant rejection from women. Having gone bald at 16 destroyed my self esteem and it didn't help that a girl I was practically in love with in high school called me "the ugliest boy in school" on multiple occasions. I tried a lot after I became an adult, but I was rejected every single time...I was lonely, so I vented a lot on the forum that I used. I had been there for a few years and felt comfortable talking about my depression...but just like in school, there were bullies online too, and after everything I went through growing up, I was sensitive to it and couldn't handle it. When I would make a post about how I was feeling, this for some reason, set some people off. After enduring a lot of personal attacks and stalking of my posts for a few months, I was feeling anxious every time I logged into the forum. I asked for some help from the admins (they were my friends), but they refused to help out (basically said "Just ignore it"), so I made a post explaining why I was leaving the forum, and I never looked back. I would spend the next 15 years in isolation. No social life (aside from 1 or 2 friends), or social media. I did try dating a few more times, but I was still constantly rejected. I had big dreams of making money on youtube, and I tried lots of different types of channels, but I never found any success. I was also bullied by Nintendo for many years about the "Pokemon Bitches" video. They had it removed from multiple locations on the internet and I was unable to upload it to my AMV youtube channel, so that prevented subs and growth. AMVs in general have been a pain in the ass to deal with because Japanese companies are huge bullies...it sucks to have entire youtube channels removed just because I found a hobby I enjoy (and the only thing in life that I excelled at). As for work, well, because of the anxiety I felt whenever I was out of the house, I wanted to avoid feeling it as much as possible, so I worked as few days a week as I could (I did a lot of 10-12 hours shifts so that I could work less days). When I was home I had video games, movies/TV, my hobby (video editing), "420", and pr*n...and I was content with that life, but I was always stressed about money...that is until I got rich.
At the end of 2015, my mother and I received an inheritance of 1.5 million. It was in a healthy portfolio earning $60k-$100k a year from interest. We both decided to take a little out for ourselves and leave the rest in so we could live off that interest. Up to this point in our lives, we lived off $35k a year (I cleared about $15k a year, she was close to $20k after taxes), and we managed just fine...so that interest was more than enough to live off of while letting the portfolio grow. I spent the next 3 years in pure bliss, I felt like everything I had been through was worth it if this is the payoff for enduring it all. I didn't leave the house more than 10 times over those 3 years. The house was paid off so there was no rent or mortgage, and I had no debt or responsibility whatsoever. I was able to live off $5-6k a year...it was an amazing dream life. I got into a video game called Trove and put 6000+ hours into it over those 3 years. I had no stress, no anxiety, no depression, no people to deal with. I slept great and felt great every second that I was awake.
However, in November of 2018, I wanted to get some money out of the portfolio...I didn't deal with any of that portfolio stuff, and whenever I asked about it, my mom always said it was doing good. Suddenly she is making excuses why I can't take the money out and actually told me to get a job. After 4 days of arguing, I went through her room and found the most recent paperwork for the portfolio and I nearly passed out. It showed that almost all the money was gone. It didn't take me long to figure out what happened. After some spying/following my mom, it turns out she was going to the casino...she gambled away over a million dollars in 3 years. After a lifetime of being poor, she just threw it away like it was nothing. To make matters worse, I had a longtime friend moving in with her daughter (my goddaughter) in a few weeks, and I thought I was gonna be able to give this kid an amazing life, and suddenly that dream was gone. I was plunged back into hell, but it was 10x worse.
To get rich and escape a lifetime of depression and stressing about money and bills, only to find yourself back in poverty, but with a kid and all the added stress from that. I BROKE. I fell into the longest depression I have ever experienced in November 2018. 14 months later, in early 2020, I was working a mind numbing job, CONSTANTLY thinking about that money every day, and being bullied by my boss...I was feeling stress and anxiety all day and night without being able to relax for weeks on end. Eventually it started to mess up my sleep, and I experienced insomnia for the first time ever. After a few weeks of no sleep, I started having extremely bad panic attacks...this put me over the edge. At this point in my life I'm 39, and I have survived endless depression, anxiety, loneliness, rejection and heartache...but insomnia (and the panic attacks), well, it was all too much. After about 6 weeks of little to no sleep and multiple attacks a day, I was on the verge of "you know what". It was the lowest I have ever been. I had a 6 year old who needed me and I was just this pathetic broken suffering idiot and I didn't see any hope, and I came so close to "doing that"...THEN, the Pandemic happened. I was able to get away from work and away from people while getting paid really well by the government. I was sleeping good again, and I managed to silence the ruminating thoughts about that money I lost, for the most part.
That weekly unemployment spared me for about 18 months, then I had to get a job again. I worked a few months just fine, enduring the constant anxiety, but eventually the panic attacks returned...and so did the insomnia. I got fired from my job after about a week without any sleep because I did something I normally would never do. This customer placed a $30 order with grubhub, and the tip on the receipt said "$1.00", so I circled it and wrote "lol". The customer (a 40 year old woman) called the store and cursed out a bunch of teenage girls and got them upset, and I was fired over it...Even when I try to endure, I can not handle living without sleep. I can't think right, and I do stupid stuff. Yeah the woman was a Karen, but I still wouldn't have done that normally. Luckily I had money saved up during the pandemic, so I wasn't in a rush to find another job. A few months went by, and we decided to move out of the city. By selling the house and renting a place, I had a new cushion of cash and I could sit back without having to work for a few years. After moving into the new place in early 2022, I put $5000 aside because I wanted to build myself a mini movie theater with a giant TV, recliner chairs and a sound system...I finished the room in November, but the centerpiece of my room (and most expensive part, a Samsung TV that I bought) was damaged, and the Technician messed up the first repair. Over the next year, I would have to deal with a bunch of headaches trying to get the TV fixed, all while trying to figure out a side hustle to earn some money so that I don't have to go back to that hourly grind that I hate so much. Eventually, I came up with a T-shirt design idea, using art that my goddaughter made. I created some shirts and put up a website. I thought they were very wholesome and a great idea...
Fast forward to early this year (2024):
T-shirt sales were failing miserably, and so was my youtube dream. I'm fighting depression and anger while raising a kid (she is 9 at this point) and forcing myself to endure social situations in order to find her friends...all the while constantly thinking about my money that was draining away. I went from spending about $10k-$12k a year in 2019-2021, to $20k in 2023 and looking to hit almost $30k spent in 2024. Everything is so stupidly expensive now. I needed something to give me a break with the T-shirts...suddenly I had a video that I was pretty sure would go viral. I mentioned my TV being a headache to get fixed, well this Samsung Care Technician was at my house for a 3rd time, so I set up a camera, and I caught him damaging my TV to void the warranty. I made a 20 minute video (titled "Ultimate Betrayal of Customer Trust") where I narrate and use pictures from google to describe the year long ordeal I went through with this technician. I also made a cheesy commercial for my T-shirt store and put it at the end of the video. I released it on youtube in early January, but didn't get any views in the first week. I went to reddit ( r/crazyf***ingvideos ) and made a post (with a short clip of what happened, not the full youtube video), and it blew up. After a few hours of responding to comments, I was hooked and loving it. I went so many years without any socializing and always feared being the center of attention, now suddenly I had tons of attention directed at me, and it wasn't so bad...There were some negative comments, but it was 90% positive so I managed to ignore the insults and focused on any questions people had about the situation.
The next day I am woken up by a phone call. It is a guy named Nick Webert who introduces himself as the Director of Product Training and Head of the Service Department at Samsung. He has called to discuss the video, but I needed to wake up, so tell him I will call him back in 20 minutes. I get up and log on to see 1.5 million views, 15k upvotes and 500+ comments after only 20 hours of being online...but before I can even enjoy the moment for 1 second, I see big red letters "Sorry, this post was removed by Reddit", and the first comment saying "Why was it removed?" was about 15 minutes old. So Samsung had it taken down and called me 10 minutes after the reddit post was removed, like something out of a Jason Bourne movie. Even though I was angry, I called this Samsung bigshot back, and well, long phone call short: He offered me a $2000 washing machine as a "gift", and after I agreed to the gift, he then asked me to take the youtube video down. They had no trouble getting reddit to remove the post, but they couldn't get youtube to take it down, so they thought bribing me would work...but it was too late, the video was already out there. I told him I would "think about" taking the video off youtube...but I knew I wasn't going to take it down. Later that day I received a message from a youtuber named Louis Rossman, who wanted to make a video about it. I gave him permission to use the video, and I was relieved that the story was now getting out there. Over the next few months, people reposted the video on reddit many times, but those kept getting taken down. The videos on TikTok and Instagram were not being removed though. I spent the next 3-4 weeks dealing with thousands of comments...
Eventually, after answering the same questions 100s of times, and hearing all the stories people had about other similar warranty repair issues. I turned my focus to the negative comments, but instead of responding to them individually, I took screencaps and made a video response. It is not what you might think though, I didn't respond to insults like "You are Fat"...I responded to accusations of being a Karen, for turning down a new TV after the second "repair" (there were hundreds of comments about it), by explaining in better detail why I made that decision. There were a few other issues I addressed in the follow-up response video, and while editing it, I had an advertisement idea that I thought work well. Since the first video had the shirt ad at the end and no one saw it, I decided to use the shirts as a kind of response to the comments in the video...so after I answer a comment I would say "Here is a shirt for you" and the shirt would say something like 'Donut Bee Toxic' or whatever. I released the video and it got no views. I tried posting it on reddit, but those posts also got very few views. I already marketed the original video to my favorite youtubers (Asmon, Moist and a few others), but none of them picked up the story, so at this point I accepted that it was over. The video was out there, my response video addressed the issues people had, and I was satisfied that I told a full complete story. However, a month later, my youtube video would get blocked for copyright...this made zero sense because the video was dead. No one was looking it up or covering it, and on top of that, there were plenty of other copies floating around social media. I thought the full story was gone and after having Nintendo bully me all those years, to now have Samsung continuing to come at me, I wasn't gonna let that clip float around the cloud as only Shorts and Tiktok videos. I wanted all the details out there, so I made a rushed angry re-edit of the story...
This time I censored the Samsung Care Technician's face, and I put the shirt ad in the video a few times. I made a special shirt for the occasion. I thought it was a good "fuck you" to Samsung...and because people like to be angry about things, I thought shirts would fly off the shelf. In the original video, I put the ad at the very end of the 20 minute story and no one saw it. I tried paid advertising and lost money on that. I felt invisible, no one was finding my store and no shirts were selling. I liked how I used the shirt ad in my response video, so I tried that again with the re-edit. I released the video on youtube and got no views. I put it on reddit ( *** ), and it got 11 million views in 1 day. I didn't expect the new edit to go super viral, maybe a little bit again, but I had no idea it was going to get those numbers...and I certainly didn't expect anyone to react to it at this point, because the original video had already been out there for many months and I figured all the reactors probably saw it and passed on it...I watched those views explode when I released the video and a couple of shirts sold in the first few hours. When the comments rolled in, there were a ton of people angry about the ad. I ignored them (for the most part) and focused on answering questions. I got up the next morning and saw the video had been taken down by the mods of that subreddit, and sales had stopped after only a handful of shirts sold...I was devastated, once again.
Apparently the ad was breaking the rules about "self promotion". I don't know how I missed that rule before posting, maybe I just assumed it meant something else. My other video from a few months ago, was never removed for the shirt ads, so that is another reason why I didn't even consider it a problem with the re-edited story. I really had no idea the shirt ad would be an issue and cause it to be blocked. I regret it and I never would have put it in the video if I knew that would happen. At the same time though, if I didn't put the ad in, and got 11+ million views, I would have felt intense regret for a missed opportunity, so really, either decision would have caused me regret. On top of that, the ad itself getting such negative backlash might have been what made it viral in the first place. After it was removed by the mods, 2 things kept bothering me. 1st: I couldn't understand how 11 million views only equated to 10 shirts being sold. I always heard that 1%-2% of people will buy something after seeing an advertisement. That would have been 100k+ shirts sold, and I would have been set for the next 20 years, but I only got 0.0001% of that. I mean, I would have been plenty happy if only 1k sold...but 10? I felt so sick, like it was all for nothing...2nd: While I do get that it is a rule, how is it the mods of that subreddit couldn't see the post view count and go "Oh well, we can let this one slide"...isn't the point of running a subreddit to get views? Whatever, at this point in life I was feeling like I couldn't do anything right, and every decision I seem to make blows up in my face...As I was getting the kid ready for school that morning, I looked at my youtube feed, and I couldn't believe what I saw...One of my favorite youtubers, Asmongold, actually made a video about it. I went ape guano...I texted the link to some online friends (as well as some family members) in all caps "ASMON MADE A VIDEO ABOUT IT!"...I did my morning routine, took the kid to school and got settled in with some weed, food and drink. (Since I am about to dive into this video, if you want to see it, just search "Asmongold Samsung" on youtube)...
I was in one of the best moods of recent memory, even though I just had my huge viral moment squashed, Asmongold made a video about it, and it felt like a win after all. Little did I know, I was about to experience a full mental breakdown. The video started great, when Asmon called the guy a "little rat", I had the biggest grin on my face, but I quickly realized this might not be what I always dreamed of after all. There is a point early on in the video where I say "I am slightly disabled" while explaining why I didn't want to deal with the TV on my own (I wanted it set up on delivery), and I see a bunch of comments in the video chat saying "slightly disabled = FAT" and "Just say fat and weak", when in reality, the disability I was referring to, is all mental, not physical, and it is far from "slightly". I was only 3 minutes in (out of 17), and I was already starting to worry. As the video went on, some comments were supportive, some were insulting, so it was an up and down ride while watching it...then I got to the end and I watched in horror as one of my favorite youtubers destroyed me. You would think I scammed his dad out of his life savings by the verbal assault he unleashed on me. Asmon doubled down on the toxic hate I have been getting since day one of this situation. He says the T-shirt ad was opportunistic (yes I did take advantage of 'having people's attention', of course I did, isn't that the point of all of this?), and cringe (ok yeah, it is, whatever)...Then he says "I'm doing him a favor", ugh, why does that infuriate me so much? The worst part was the line: "People f***ing hate people who act like this, talk like this, think like this...they f***ing hate you, so stop acting like this, or at least hide it". Seriously though the video is the real me, I do act like that and talk like that and think like that. His insult about hiding it hits hard because I HAVE been hiding it my whole adult life. I have always known people hated me, that is the cause of my phobia, I fear interacting with people because they always seem to hate me eventually, or at least MOST seem to. I never understood why, and it has caused me a lot of confusion in life (much like Asmon's attack, which didn't make any sense), but I did see it and was aware of it...Listening to him tear me apart was bad enough, but seeing the chat go along with it and agree, while also saying nasty things, was a lot to take in. It was like I was back in high school, and a bully got on stage during an assembly and had the whole auditorium laughing at me and insulting me.
As the "life lesson" came to an end, I remembered all the friends and family I messaged with a link (though in hindsight, most of them probably didn't get that far in the video)...I wished I had waited till I watched it first, but how was I supposed to know? I thought he was gonna be supportive of what happened, but his focus wasn't on the story of the Technician cutting my TV, his focus was on me. Asmon tries to paint a picture where I got all this hate because of the cringe video and T-shirt ad, but the first video I released, also got tons of nasty comments and hate, and that one was not cringe, nor was there an ad in your face during the video. It ain't right trying to make it like it was my fault for all that hate I received. That Technician deserved it, why didn't he get any? I already had a hard time letting people into my house before this guy did that to me. He tricked me and almost cost me thousands, right in my own house, under the guise that he was there to fix my TV. I trusted him and was left feeling stupid...Am I crazy for feeling like the world is backwards? After finishing the video, I sat in disbelief for a while, with tons of thoughts just racing through my head. I remembered all the hateful comments over the past few months, and now they suddenly felt like they had weight to them. I imagined all those people feeling justified in being negative toward me after seeing Asmon have their back. Then I imagined the Samsung Technician feeling justified in what he did as if I somehow deserved it. It was like a bomb went off in my brain. I went into a state of shock and only just recently am I starting to snap out of it...and that brings us to the deep depression I mentioned at the beginning of this post...
Being in a depression for 6 years straight after losing that money, it took me into a numb like state. My emotions were flatlined and my anger was like a frozen lake instead of burning rage. The anger was there, it was intense, but it was cold, not hot. I was on the edge of a mental cliff, and Asmon just happened to shove me off it. Sure, he didn't know the cliff was there, but it was still unnecessary to shove me in the first place...and it triggered me in a bad way. It brought out so much stuff I had repressed. The anger from everything over the years. the regret for being the way I am, the endless bad memories I have...it was all hitting me at once and it overwhelmed me. It has been almost 6 months now that I have been living with this thick noisy cloud in my head and over my eyes. When I was in my 20s and 30s and was dealing with depression, I had hope for the future and I endured. Now that I am 43, and all I have seen over the years is the same thing over and over, it is getting harder to feel hope. I have this horrible weight on my shoulders, like impending doom level anxiety with constant negative thoughts ringing around my head...months of ruminating like that is torture. Good thing I didn't have to work while going through all this, even being in a despair like state, I was still able to sleep, and thankfully I was kept busy all summer with my goddaughter and her friends. Their parents all worked, so I had 3 to 5 kids to deal with almost every day. When we weren't hanging at the house playing video games (I must have played 100+ rounds of Dress to Impress this summer), we did the beach, or amusement rides, or water park (we all had season passes) among other things. The kids had a great time all summer, and I also appeared to be as well, but I was in darkness. Here I am at the beautiful Jersey shore, sunny clean beach and all the free time in the world, and I am having racing thoughts and horrible anxiety pretty much the whole time. It is amazing how you can be in such a state of mind, but no one around you has a clue (thankfully, because I wouldn't want them to)...
Now, with the summer over and the kids back in school, I have finally had time to take everything in without having to immediately do something else. The distractions were nice for a while, but I didn't realize how much I needed the break. I am slowly accepting the new reality of my life, and my new outlook. Basically, I don't want to dream anymore, because every dream that has come true, has turned out to be a nightmare. I no longer care about or want success on youtube...hell, I can't even think about editing a video without anxiety kicking in (unless I was getting paid for it, like, had a job as an editor...ugh, there I go dreaming again). I would go back to making AMVs, but that has been a losing battle for many many years, and I have already had multiple videos erased from the cloud as it is. As for a social life, no. I have accepted that the world is broken and I will never fit into its insanity. When it comes to money and surviving, well, everything I do and have done for the past 6 years, is for the kid. I will just have to find a job that pays decent enough and work as much as I can. The problem is that I am terrified of experiencing insomnia again. I can endure emptiness, depression, anxiety and all the anger that goes along with it...as long as I can sleep. I fear that insomnia so much that I am putting off getting a job until my savings are so low I don't have a choice...that is the only thing that is going to get me motivated to go out there to start looking. With the holidays coming up, I don't see my bank balance making it far into 2025, so I expect to be working again early in the new year.
Lastly...My biggest regret is that Asmon reacted to the wrong video. I really wish he would have reacted to the original full story and not the rushed censored cringe retelling. I made the full story video (Ultimate Betrayal) with him and other reactor style channels in mind, thinking they would appreciate all the details about the situation...The rushed angry re-edit was never supposed to be reacted to by anyone. I was just mad when I edited it and didn't think the other video would be restored (it eventually was, and I unlisted the re-edit)...so yeah, I put the shirt ad in the video because I thought people would be just as angry at Samsung as I was and want to buy a shirt that parodied the "Samsung Care" logo. Apparently, I don't understand the world because I didn't sell many shirts, and on top of that, I became the target of a hate campaign...fun times.
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