To teenagers (and to 15-year-old me),

I can’t promise you it’s gonna be okay.

For the longest time, when I watch a YouTuber or someone who is in their 20s or 30s or maybe even older, they always say that their teenage years were difficult. Sure, some of them enjoyed their time in secondary school cause they were kids and reckless and lot of their actions didn’t have dire consequences. But a lot of them also struggled for a lot of different reasons.

Realistically, from a surface level, secondary school can’t be that bad, right? Especially compared later years. You still have university or college, graduation, job-seeking, relationships and so on to look forward to. When you’re a teenager, technically you barely have any responsibilities (generally speaking from my own experience), so why does everything hurt?

Well, as a 21-year-old, here’s what I know now and what I wish I knew back then. Take it with a grain of salt. Again, I am literally 21.

First of all, you’re not different from other people. You’re not “mature for your age” for being able to feel intense emotions in such a tragically poetic way. You simply don’t know how to process your emotions, that’s why everything feels amplified. You’re still trying to figure out what to call them, to understand what they mean and how to handle them.

You’ll know yourself better one day. That includes the emotions that you will experience as you continue to be confronted by them. Your own identity and labels that you feel comfortable with. Your personality types and how they affect what you do. Your “language” and how you communicate with other people. Even the troubles and problems you actually have that you never really thought about before so you can proceed to heal. And you will learn new healthier ways to cope with your problems.

And from a more external standpoint, depending on your current situation; you’ll get out of your house and have a bit of freedom. You’ll get out of your bubble and meet new people who will help you grow. You’ll have easier access to professional help, maybe even get a diagnosis that will help the things you’re going through make much more sense.

That journey has its ups and downs, and it will never end. But know that in a few years’ time, you’ll know yourself more than you do today. You’ll understand why you were struggling then and hopefully give yourself grace for not knowing any better.

Right now, you’re likely to have things that are still unnamed, unlabelled, unexplored about you. In fact, knowing what they are won’t take away the pain you’re currently going through. But, not having that thick layer of frustrating confusion feels pretty good.

I can’t promise you things will get better.

But I promise you will be okay.

 Let’s talk about mortality. But not in a morbid way. I know. Unheard of, especially from me. Especially in August.

Basically I went down a spiral where I keep thinking about mortality, humanity, the meaning of life and all that good stuffs recently. So here’s a brief summary of what my brain has been up to. Okay, before I go ahead of myself, I just wanna say that obviously everything I just stated can be answered from an Islamic perspective. I’m not denying that or anything. I’m simply going on a “poetic” rant.

Coincidentally, I’ve been seeing or reading a lot of stuffs that centre around the subject of life and death and what they mean. In addition to, you know, real life experience… (In case you’re new here, hi, I don’t know how to deal with grief). Anyways, we have a lot to unpack today so let’s start with mortality.

Just this afternoon I came across this beautiful post about how scientifically, we are never truly gone because “no energy is created in the universe, and none is destroyed… According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly.” Hey I may not know much about physics or photons and thermodynamic, but it feels comforting to know that. It’s nice to know that “physically”, they’re here, and not just spiritually.

When a person dies, people say “they’ll always be in your memories.” But what if you were too young to remember? What if you were too young to understand what loss means and you forgot to remember? Even if you do remember them, memories get distorted every time you think about them. Does this mean that the more you miss them, the more you lose them? Well, does it even matter? Maybe the same rules apply here. Your loved ones are still with you, but in a more “distorted to the point of chaos” kind of way. Maybe.

Or maybe they are alive through you. Here, have another post that you’ll have to read. “I am a mosaic of everyone I’ve ever loved, even for a heartbeat.” I will never forget the time my grandmother said I slouch against the wall the same way my dad used to do. Or when my maths teacher (who was classmates with my dad in school) walked next to my seat, stopped, looked at my notes to then point at it and say, “you have the same handwriting as your dad.” My handwriting’s changed so much, but it makes me warm to know that I got his traits without even knowing about them.

I’m gonna move on from that before I get sad.

There’s a fanfic that I read a few months ago where some of the characters are immortal. And I’ve always found the concept interesting especially when the immortals love the mortals. I wonder if they have seen enough deaths that it doesn’t hurt as much anymore. Or maybe the pain never truly goes away so they have to carry it with them through eternity. There’s too much grief to mourn over in a single lifetime after all.

If I was immortal, would I put myself through that pain for the sake of loving someone? Well, here’s what Passerine!Philza said; “Over the years I’ve also learned of the things they do for each other. Their lives will always be one year, one week, one day short, but it doesn’t seem to matter much to them. They live anyway. They love anyway. Forgive an old god for wanting a piece of that for himself.”

Humans know the price of loving someone. They know they will have to deal with the heartbreak, with the loss, with the grief of having to leave loved ones behind, or having loved ones leave this world before they do. But they love anyway. They find all that pain is worth those moments of warmth even if they last one year, one day, one second too short. I guess my answer is yes. Precisely because death is inevitable, we should make the most out of the life we get to live.

Personally, I don’t care much about making a big impact on the world. I just want to know that my life did not go to waste by being able to love the people that I care about, and being loved by them. I want to leave my imprints on them. I like love that is soft and quiet but constant and there. And I want to be that for my loved ones, screw the rest of the world.

Well I guess that’s a good enough segue to a Night in The Woods quote that I’ve been obsessed with. (The clip is from Ranboo’s stream where I heard the line from and thank you Google Photos for storing that clip cause I accidentally deleted it from my gallery)

“I believe in a universe that doesn’t care and people who do.”

You don’t understand the visceral wave of emotions that hit me during this scene. And it continues to pain me every time I repeat it in my head. Think about it this way; the universe is so vast and so old. If you’ve never seen one of those size comparison or big bang theory videos and gotten an existential dread, have you even been on the internet? Those videos put so many things into perspective and they make me feel so incredibly small and insignificant. It’s a good thought process when I want to remind myself that my problems and worries don’t last forever, or even a single lifetime. But yeah, for the most part, it feels like nothing truly matters. The universe doesn’t care.

Well, since that is the case, then why should it matter that the universe doesn’t give a shit about me? If nothing matters, then it also doesn’t matter what I choose to give a shit about in life. The things I value, the meanings I engrave into seemingly meaningless things, the people I love. When I die, and a hundred years down the line, nobody knows about me, why would I care? I’ll be dead anyway. I care now and isn’t that enough? To quote Angus some more, “the stars can stay up there and not give a shit about us but this whale is pretty cool.”

Speaking of constellations, have you just sat there and thought about how much of a storyteller humankind is? Like we draw lines out of shining dots in the sky and we write epics about them. Look at Orion for example. And then, speaking of Greek mythology, my favourite story is about how red roses start to exist and become the symbol of love. Long story short, Aphrodite pricked her foot on a white rose while she mourned over the death of her lover, Adonis. Her blood seeped through the petals, thus creating red roses. Basically, red roses came from Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty’s blood.

What I’m trying to say is, in a seemingly meaningless life, we write our own meanings into people and things that we care about before we eventually die. And I think that’s beautiful.

Is that enough existential dread for you? Okay, I’ll stop now. I hope you enjoyed your journey down this rabbit hole with me.

- Nik.

Oh look, it’s been five months since my last update... Sorry folks, the semester has been insane and I spent every day of my mid-sem break catching up with studies and assignments. Fun. And sorry again cause I’m just rambling in this one. To be fair, all of my posts have been my incoherent thoughts but this one more than the others, I guess. (There’s gonna be a lot of names but you don’t need to know any of them)

As you could probably tell from the title of this post or if you’ve seen any of my tweets for the past few months you’d know I’ve been watching a lot of livestreams on Twitch. I blame Wilbur Soot for everything. It started with his collab with James Marriott, then his videos, then his Among Us videos, then Corpse Husband playing Among Us, and then I went full circle to watching Dream SMP. All in all, it took about 9 months for me to get here. But we can go back even further to 2011 when it all went downhill for me since I got unlimited access to the internet.

Long story short, 2011 - 13/14, I spent a lot of time talking to random strangers on the internet (for the love of God, please monitor what your children are doing on their phone); 2013/14 – present, I watch a lot of YouTube, gone through multiple phases, watched a decent number of creators over the years but I feel like I’ve slowed down a bit lately. Only because I started really watching livestreams. It started with just Corpse, which was sustainable cause he doesn’t stream as much. But then I started getting into the Dream SMP. I’ve heard about them since like June last year but I only started watching their content late December or early January. If you don’t know Dream SMP is a Minecraft server with about 30 different creators/streamers that became popular when they started doing roleplay in the server… But we’re not diving into that now. There’s too much lore.

Anyway out of those 30 something creators, I mainly watch 7 of them. And the one I’m watching the most right now is Ranboo, who streams every. single. day. And if I’m being honest, that’s when I hit rock bottom. Jokes aside, he’s awesome.

Now, the reason why I told you about my brief history on the internet is because I kind of realized why things progressed the way it did – I just want someone to talk to me. Well, maybe that’s not entirely accurate. I guess I simply enjoy listening to people talk. Also, YouTube videos and livestreams hit different because they address you as an audience, unlike TV shows and movies. I can still binge those by the way but it takes so much mental energy for me to start watching a new series (even though I’ve been thinking about it for so long). But with YouTube or Twitch, whoever I’m currently watching is usually introduced by whoever I was already watching previously. Like the James Marriott – Wilbur Soot – Corpse Husband – Dream SMP chain I told you about.

And my goodness, I thought my attention span is already decent cause I can binge YouTube videos or a series (whenever I get into it) with little to no problem. Even then, I didn’t know I can sit through hours upon hours watching livestreams. I thought it would be a lot more tiring than it is. Once, I watched maybe 4 or 5 livestreams back-to-back for about 12 hours. The longest single stream I ever watched was Ranboo’s UK subathon which was about 15 hours long and I only slept for 3 hours in the middle of it.

My sleep schedule is absolutely bonkers as you can probably tell. For the past two weeks, I go to bed at around 3 a.m., get about 2-3 hours of decent sleep before I proceed to be in and out of sleep until at least 10 a.m. with a livestream (usually Ranboo’s) playing on my phone. Yeah, it’s really bad. I promise I’ll sort myself out soon. I just have to get used to watching VODs (basically replays). For some reason, watching a 3-hour VOD takes a lot more energy than a 5-hour livestream.

You can probably guess what my attention is like in class… Well, the lack thereof. I’ve been in so many classes where I also had a livestream playing in the background. Heck, I’ve taken a couple of tests while watching a livestream. I’m sorry, online classes are just unbearable lately.

Back to my actual point, I like livestreams cause I like listening to people talk. My favourite kind of streams is chill ones where from time to time a friend would hop on the call and they just talk about whatever they want while chat is just “third-wheeling”. One that I cherish a lot is Quackity’s stream where he started with talking to chat, then BadBoyHalo joined, and then Wilbur and we ended up watching plane videos and Wilbur talked about his favourite planes. At one point he apologized for rambling but Quackity said, “I don’t mind it at all, I’m enjoying this.” (That meant a lot to me as someone who has a tendency to ramble but is always insecure about it. Case in point, this post). Just now, Bad was streaming and Wilbur, Quackity and George were on the call and at one point, Quackity and Wilbur talked about music and how Lovejoy (a band Wilbur is in, they make banger music) produce their songs while Bad and George were memeing around on the Minecraft server. Another thing that stands out in my memory is whenever Ranboo would stream with sleep-deprived Tubbo on the call, and Tubbo would say some of the most out-of-pocket things and you can see Ranboo’s reaction from his Minecraft character alone (Ranboo is a faceless streamer so he doesn’t usually have his facecam on).

I don’t care much about video games and it still baffles me how I end up being neck-deep into watching gamers but really the entertainment value isn’t in the game they play. It’s in their personality, the safe space they created for the audience, and the friendships that we get to witness. A lot of the streamers that I watch became friends during quarantine, and I actually got to see some people’s first interactions with each other. And now they’re best friends, your honour. That feels really really nice to watch while being stuck at home, unable to see my friends.

Now you might ask, why can’t I be in a long call with my friends every other day? Well first off, there’s only a couple friends who I can talk to on the phone for a few hours. But even then, we don’t get to do it often because time is a bitch and even worse than that, I’m not good at phone conversations. Or conversations in general actually. I don’t know if it’s my introversion or whatever, but I get tired very easily from phone calls so it’s not even a weekly thing. That being said though, I appreciate the ones that I get to have every once in a while.

This one is a bit more specific but I also like hearing background noises especially with streamers who don’t use facecam. Dream usually plays with a fidget spinner, Corpse with his butterfly knife, them and Ranboo sometimes slam their desks, the sound of keyboard when they’re typing – I like them a lot. It reminds me that that’s a person behind the other screen. It makes them feel real so it makes me feel real and human in that very moment. It’s also such an interesting thing when I pick up on the subtle quirks in the way they speak. This is about the only time I enjoy having learnt phonetics. I know this won’t make sense to anyone else but me cause I don’t think you watch these streamers but I like how Dream says “talk”, how Ranboo says “beginning”, and how Phil says “book”. Humans and languages are amazing. Suddenly, majoring in English doesn’t feel like a waste.

TL;DR I like watching livestreams because I enjoy their friendships and it reminds me of my friends who I really really miss being around. Maybe I’ll see them on graduation day if we’re lucky :’)

Aight, buckle up folks cause this one is going to be a doozy. I’ve had these thoughts marinating in my brain for more than a month but I decided to wait until the end of the semester to start writing again. It’s been a while.

For context, I have been actively lurking on the Internet since I was 10 or 11. A decade of growing up witnessing things that happen online. It started with only listening to songs or watching music videos then late 2013 I started really watching YouTube. Compared to everything else, at the moment I spent most of my hours on YouTube and starting the last couple of years I have really expanded the types of content and the number of content creators that I watch. And if you know anything about YouTube and YouTubers, it’s been a shit show. But that’s only one platform.

Another one that I wanna touch on is Twitter. I made my first account probably around 2012 and from there most of my tweets were just some cringe-infested “I’m 14 and this is deep” type of thing then around 2015 it kind of escalated into “emo teenager who really hated herself and people around her cause she was convinced everyone hated her”. Oop. Anyway, I stopped using Twitter for so long until mid-last year I made a new account to post, again, cringey tweets with double the simping and less anger issues. But Twitter, just like YouTube and any other social media platform, is a double edge sword. Sometimes, I wanna throw my phone at the wall. Sometimes, I scroll through it for hours reading some insightful thread.

So, what’s the point of this post? I just want to rant about a few things I’ve been seeing and hopefully get some of your opinions on them. I guess I’ll separate each point so it won’t be too messy.

1. Celebrities, content creators, streamers, influencers and etc. are not our friend.

Here, I have to credit a video by Ludwig called “I Am Not Your Friend”. He’s a YouTuber/Twitch streamer and in the video he talks about parasocial relationship. It’s basically a one-sided relationship where the audience feels like the celebrities or influencers are their friends when the influencers only see them as, well, an audience. Ludwig explains that it’s more likely to be stronger between streamers and their audience because the interaction is instant. The audience says something in the chat, the streamer (I’m gonna use this term for this part) sees it and responds to it. It feels almost personal. But it’s not. Because the streamer can also see hundreds if not thousands of other names and messages. It’s hard for them to feel connected personally to a member of the audience than it is for the audience to feel connected to the streamer.

Now, what happens when the audience feels closer to the streamers than they actually are? They think they’re friends. And start making jokes friends would say to each other. Or apply their emotions to the streamers’ emotions. Or think they can speak on the streamers’ behalf. I’ve been watching a lot of streams lately and I’ve heard them asking the chat to be mindful of what they are saying, to not assume things about them and their friends, and generally to not cross boundaries that you won’t cross with people you barely know. It is possible for streamers to notice and pay attention to you, it is possible to be friends with them, but I don’t think that would be the case for everyone. There’s just too many people watching, and only one person showing their face (or not, we respect people’s privacy here) on the stream. It’s a parasocial relationship. Those streamers and content creators are not our personal friends. So act like it.

2. Influencers are still people.

I started thinking about this when I watched a video by Alex on Khloe Kardashian. It’s the whole ordeal about her facetuning her picture to the point that she doesn’t look like herself. Alex was basically pointing out that, regardless of how we feel about the Kardashians (cause they’re not exactly the nicest people), Khloe is still a human being and she would have her own insecurities just like the rest of us. There’s a chance that she felt like she needed to facetune her picture to that extent because of what people have been saying about the way she looks. She may be rich, but she is still a person. And so is every other famous person out there.

Okay, I get that some celebrities and influencers or rich people in general can be really tone deaf especially at a time of crisis like this. We’ve all seen that horrible rendition of Imagine. We’ve all came across those articles of celebrities feeling trapped in their giant mansion. And we rolled our eyes at them. Which kind of confuses me just a little bit. Again, I understand that some of them are very tone deaf, but it kinda makes me think that sometimes we forget rich people have problems too. Not the same problems as us peasants for sure, but health especially (mental and physical) doesn’t really care how much money you have. Yes, money can help with that A LOT but, I don’t know, it must kinda sucked a little bit that people won’t treat you like you’re a person when you have a certain amount of money. I’m just kinda conflicted about it. What do you think?

3. Influencers make mistakes.

These influencers (using this as a general term now) are humans, and humans make mistakes. I’ve heard this from multiple YouTubers and I remember D’Angelo Wallace saying this but I don’t know which video… (And yes, this “essay” is written using YouTubers as references, deal with it.) What they all said was not to “worship” influences. “Stan culture” can be very toxic. And what I mean by “stan” here is being a die-hard fan that you think the influencer you like is perfect and can do no wrong. Turning a blind eye to an influencer’s mistake would benefit nobody but the influencer. Even then, that means that they can never grow from their mistake.

Of course, “mistake” here can mean many different things but let me give you an extreme (but unoriginal) example. TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual assault.

If a victim suddenly comes forward and accuses an influencer of being a predator, that victim deserves a safe place to tell their story and the influencer should also have the right to defend themselves. If the whole Internet only sides with the influencer because the public thinks they can do no wrong, and completely harasses the victim, how do you think the victim and other victims of abuse will feel? In a lot of cases, there is a power imbalance from the get-go. Remember, we don’t know these influencers personally, and we sure as hell don’t know the truth. In this particular case of sexual assault, I’ve seen some people say the victim should just report it to the police and handle it privately. I don’t personally agree with that. I agree with reporting it to the police so that a proper investigation can take place and the victim can get justice (but, it’s not my place to decide if a victim is comfortable with or trust the authorities to do that). I don’t agree that it needs to be handled privately in cases where the influencer has clearly abused their platform and manipulated their massive audience. If the influencer is a threat to the public, then I sure as hell want the public to know about it. None of this “jangan bukak aib orang” bullshit. It’s a fucking crime, not gossip.

So, the conclusion to this part is don’t worship influencers and believe they will never make a single mistake. Don’t let them get away with crimes. Hold people accountable. Which brings me to the next point.

4. Cancel culture.

The term “cancelled” is so overused that it loses its meaning. For the record, I believe in holding people, especially people with a lot of power and influence, accountable for their mistakes. Again, “mistakes” can be so many different things but for this part I want to focus on actual oopsies, unintentional mistakes that people can learn and grow from, not repetitive intentional criminal or harmful actions.

There’s a comment under a video by Laurel Lakoundji on the problem with commentary YouTube that I think is really eye-opening. I’ll attach a screenshot here but in case you can’t read it, find the comment by Reilly Sidle. I don’t think you have to scroll that far to find it under the video.

For context, it’s a whole situation where a drama YouTuber, Angelika Oales is being called out/accused of microaggression, transphobia and ableism. I’m not gonna get into the details cause it’s a whole shit show and more importantly because I am not the ones affected by her comments and therefore have little to no say in the matter.

What I do wanna focus on is the comment. Reilly points out that influencers are always quick to defend themselves by saying “I’m not racist”, “I’m not transphobic, “I’m not ableist” etc. But saying that kind of makes them seem like they’re denying having said anything that is hurtful and by effect would invalidate the feelings of the people they have hurt. They think it’s an attack on their character. They say they didn’t intend those words to hurt others. It’s not (for example) racist by intention, but it is racist by effect. The thing is, we grow up in an environment that provides us with subtle cues and biases. And those things can very well come from a place of ignorance. But as we get older, we learn things for ourselves and even more importantly unlearn our biases and reduce our ignorance. In that process, it is highly likely that we say something ignorant, offensive, racist, sexist etc. because we didn’t know it is wrong or why it is wrong. It’s important to acknowledge that even without intention due to our ignorance, our words or actions can hurt people. It is first and foremost important to apologize to the people we hurt and learn why those things are harmful.

This of course needs a two-way communication. The one who hurt others needs to accept those criticisms and admit their mistakes. Those who were hurt need to provide valid criticisms and help the other party to understand where they were wrong. I believe some people don’t agree with the latter, with the argument that they don’t owe the one who hurt them any explanation, that the ignorant one should do more research by themselves and so on. To a certain degree, I get it. Again, not my place to tell people what they should do or feel if the situation does not concern me. It is only my opinion that an open healthy communication would be very helpful cause people sometimes make honest mistakes. I would like to believe that people can learn from their mistakes and become better.

5. People are different.

This one doesn’t pertain to influencer-audience but more about the general population of the Internet. Listen, the Internet is a space where people from all over the world can interact. It’s a big world out there and people are bound to differ in personal tastes, opinions, beliefs, religions etc. and also in circumstances, health, wealth etc. It’s not that fucking difficult to understand that. If someone does not agree with you on something that literally does not hurt anyone (like personal taste for music, movies, and so on), just don’t argue with them. You don’t have to tell them that you hate it. You can just kindly fuck off. I am so tired of seeing people commenting/replying “ew I don’t like this person because (insert personal reason that has absolutely nothing to do with the actual content/person)”. If you hate it so much, just scroll past it, mute the name, or even block it. You literally do not have to see it.

This is quite specific but I hate it when people apply their personal opinion onto someone else’s situation, particularly when it comes to relationship and marriage. I am tired of people arguing about it as if it’s their relationship. Whatever applies to you, applies to you. If a couple does things differently and they are both adults who are happy with it, let them be. You don’t have to waste your time typing a paragraph of why a couple should break up because they don’t do things the way you would. They didn’t ask for unsolicited advice. Each to their own, dude. It’s that simple.

Okay, one last thing. If you don’t understand someone’s circumstances or why they are upset, it is not your place to tell them what they should feel. People process things differently and deal with problems in their own way. Just because it doesn’t affect you, it doesn’t mean everyone else feels the same way. Not one person is a spokesperson for a whole group. You don’t get to push your own voice down somebody else’s throat. That’s disrespectful.

6. Conclusion

The Internet is a crazy place and can get very overwhelming sometimes because of the aforementioned reasons. Please take occasional breaks from it and cut off the things that can be harmful to you mentally or emotionally.

That’s it. Congratulations if you’ve made it this far. This is actually longer than the essay I wrote in my exam yesterday lol. Byeeee.