Before we begin, you should know that everything written in this column is based on actual and sometimes unbelievable events. Bias that represents my opinions, personal life experience, and experience, none of which reflects the views of other employees at The Beat or my boss.
The purpose of this new column is to create a place for me to talk about stories, business trends, and history without too much scrutiny. Talking about the harsh realities of our time as we enter a strange age of disinformation. Why it’s easy on comics sites – it’s punk, it’s underground, and it’s niche – and, story is where changing minds often begins.
earlier, Facebook itself just ended third-party fact-checking Trying to emulate Twitter (currently called X) and making light of political fact-checking. Google search’s first page results are becoming increasingly unreliable, and the worst are chat GPT gen-AI summaries, which often make up information all the time. So the weird way forward is to build a trusting relationship. You know I’m a journalist, but also a human being, full of biases and stories and flaws that resonate with me but don’t necessarily push some “agenda” even though, at its core, the “influence media” of the 21st century “We” I created, and so did I of course. At least, until I was inevitably destroyed by the skeleton hiding in the closet, just like everyone else mr beast Types of Influencers.
As Bob Dylan once sang in his Scottish/Irish folk-themed national anthem that reflected the civil rights movement, These times they are changing. It’s strange, to me, how obvious it is that we’re in trouble right now. I think the bigger problem is the disconnect between numbers and self-fulfilling reality. How everything changed in an instant, and my foolish bet on this form of media. Newsletter. Direct sources of information in blogs will make a comeback when everything in our country takes a turn for the worse…and I’m sure it will happen soon.
When I was in high school, I had a friend who had an upright personality, was neat and tidy, had no bad habits, and was a typical example of self-control. Until, one fateful night, a few friends and I dragged him to a Capitol Funk concert at the Starland Ballroom in New Jersey.
The place was a sensory overload: neon lights pulsed like a fever dream, bass reverberated in our bones, and a distinct mist of “good vibes” hung in the air. My friend, the naive little lamb that he was, chose to sit at the back of the concert hall. While listening to the song’s meandering guitar solo maggot brain Jimmy Hendrix’s psychedelic visions put the air to rancidity and he stayed out of it, ironically it’s game over my friend. He began to climax unexpectedly and secretly in the second-hand smoke vapor that gathered in the back of the venue’s hall, that twisting, soul-rending guitar solo now seeping into him like smoke from a cosmic fire. This sound will open up your brain and allow the cosmic maggots to crawl inside.
He couldn’t stand when the song ended. His body was soaked with sweat and other fluids as he muttered incoherently in reverse-spoken voices. We had to drag him out early and put him in the back seat of the car. It was then that he gave up on his “deep” knowledge. Through a haze of fear and existential dread, he kept repeating: “God doesn’t exist, we’ll all die.”
He spoke as if he had unlocked some hidden secret of the universe. For him, it was a seminal epiphany that there is no point in suffering for what we believe in, striving for greatness, or trying to transcend ourselves. “Then why bother?” he asked. “Why try to be special? Just do what makes you happy and the universe will follow.
The nineteen-year-old me, ever the arrogant smartass, couldn’t resist the comeback. “Congratulations,” I said with all the wisdom I had. idea I have. “You just discovered the teachings of the Buddha. He knew this thousands of years ago!
Of course, the irony was not lost on me later – I was desperate to appear enlightened, while he had suddenly lost his mind and stumbled upon something primal and universal. Not a proselytizing based on faith or lack thereof (I’m not a staunch atheist because of the toxic Richard Dawkins extremists who made my life in academia hell, I’m more of an agnostic theist ), but intention: the pursuit of happiness and the belief that universality will follow.
The famous writer Mark Twain once said: “There is no such thing as an original idea.” The older I get, the more I see the universal truth in everything. Originality is not about inventing entirely new concepts. Just look at every new iPhone, Diet Coke Zero, or relaunched superhero comic. Originality consists in creating our unique stamp on something familiar. This applies not just to storytelling, but to the broader human experience, including our thinking about today’s so-called “unprecedented times.”
I think what’s going on in the world is a fundamental misunderstanding of history. I believe the quality of our storytelling has been greatly affected and is only going to get worse because we stop talking about the things that matter and start obsessing over things that distract us from the issues of the day.
Substitute the word billionaire for the word emperor, and how many allegories can we make about the fall of the Roman Empire or the end of the Chinese dynasties. Although the specifics vary, these patterns are eerily familiar to our long history. This is the cycle of human nature. Currently, the stakes feel even higher due to our interdependent globalized, connected world.
Consider the current craze for artificial intelligence affecting nearly every industry. It’s been hailed as a transformative force, echoing the heady dot-com era, when new websites promised worldly disruption to the way we do business in the Internet age, but then delivered… well, what Neither. Most of them, anyway. After exhausting most of their venture capital and failing to produce anything of note, many companies went bankrupt and were relegated to the throes of history. This echoes what I’m seeing in many AI companies today (it just takes longer because some of these 10 core companies have invested significant additional capital).
What are the global military tensions like? The conflict believes this could escalate into World War III. However, these wars mirror the many proxy wars of the Cold War era. Fighting in North Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Congo and Cuba. These conflicts shaped the second half of the 20th century, fueled by fears that it could at any moment trigger an unprecedented attack with nuclear weapons capable of destroying the world five times and plunging it into a massive nuclear winter colder than Earth. game over.
These fears of escalating global war leading to our own extinction are simply a return to an old script. These problems were not original problems, they just resurfaced, like polio, due to our sudden fear of vaccination, due to the colossal errors of our own behavior and indifference. More importantly, distrust those in power. Themes present in the classic graphic novel Watchmen Alan Moore I think it resonates with us even today.
History not only repeats itself, but also evolves, adapting familiar challenges to new circumstances. Like storytelling, the recurrence of these events does not diminish their importance. These conflicts are serious. A new face to the same problem…
What matters then is how we deal with it in today’s world.
That’s the connection between history, storytelling and the creative process, and that’s what I do as a journalist and storyteller. In fact, the cornerstones of human experience and creativity have always remained the same: the individual’s perspective, voice, and vision. People of this era will turn them into something meaningful. Something magical. Through the interweaving of these ideas, a call to action and change is inspired.
Originality does not lie in new ideas, but in the personal imprint and impact we leave behind. Yes, stories reuse familiar themes—love, conflict, triumph, loss—because these values reflect the common roots of the human experience. But what’s remarkable about them is the way they’re assembled, and the unique fingerprints of the storytellers who dared to reinvent them. After all, no two snowflakes are alike. The same goes for stories.
The Hero’s Journey, for those of you who are unfamiliar, although I doubt you as a comic book reader have never heard of it, is written by Joseph Campbell It’s a way of calling out mythical patterns, just as it’s a way of figuring out patterns in the human psyche. Thus, while the structural pattern of the monomyth has been used and abused in Hollywood epics and comics, it has always served as a framework, not a limitation. This structure—departure, launch, and return—is intended to serve as a canvas, and what brings it to life is the unique perspective of the storyteller. It’s about the cultural context they draw from. They have a personal truth embedded within them.
The same goes for our historical comparisons. All we encounter at this moment is simply the repetition of old patterns reasserting themselves. After all, these “unprecedented times” are not unprecedented. They are just another iteration of this cycle, shaped by the decisions and imprints of those who lived before us. And being unable to find new and better ways…
So the question is what ideas can allow us to change our identity as a society? How do we remind ourselves of the traces we leave behind? Better yet, how will we use the lessons of history to break cycles, transcend patterns, and build something better?
This is the mission of this event monomyth Pillar: Explore these universal patterns and truths in storytelling, history, and human nature itself through the lens of analyzing the structure of Campbell’s monomyth in novels and comics. I want to shed light on the patterns I see in my daily life. Hope to share with you a better understanding of the cyclical nature of our future challenges and triumphs, to show how we can draw inspiration from our past to prepare for our recurring future.
So whether you’re writing a novel, leading a movement, or simply exploring your own personal life journey, I need to highlight the echoes of the past and why your voice matters. Even though every story has been told… it wasn’t told your way. So let’s explore what this means.
If such a dramatic change is to occur, the cycle must break its pattern. Heck, if Spider-Man and Jordan could be happily married again last year, and Batman could exist without all his money now – gosh, anything is possible!
Look, I’m not necessarily the one responsible for how to do this. I’m just here to tell what this loop is so maybe you can find a better way. This is a monomyth. An exploration of the strange cyclical patterns that recur in our human experience.
Next week, I’m going to do something really silly and talk very publicly about myself and my background and defend why I’m “a real journalist” against my many naysayers, but also provide some background information on how Background on my experience before doing some business and story analysis that you might read here.
