{"id":35482,"date":"2022-01-09T23:25:53","date_gmt":"2022-01-10T05:25:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=35482"},"modified":"2022-01-09T23:25:53","modified_gmt":"2022-01-10T05:25:53","slug":"audio-i-need-to-reject-a-popular-but-emotionally-dangerous-path","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=35482","title":{"rendered":"AUDIO: I need to reject a popular but emotionally dangerous path"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve allowed myself to be seduced by the desire to be popular.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve fallen into a trap which makes me crave the attention which would tell me that people like me. That some of them love me and adore me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been struggling for months to figure out why a little voice inside me kept saying that I\u2019d gone completely off course with my media efforts. Over the last few weeks, I\u2019ve had some insights that shook me up. It\u2019s complicated and I don\u2019t know that I can really explain it well enough. It\u2019s the interplay of a lot of things.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s about the narcissistic father I grew up with. It\u2019s about the mother who abandoned me and left me scared about whether I\u2019m really worthy of love. It\u2019s also about changes in technology and society. It\u2019s about how all of that intersected with a media culture that values nothing other than popularity. Those are the things that allowed me to pursue the new cultural equivalent of love \u2014 which is a shallow counterfeit of the real thing.<\/p>\n

I lost sight of the intellectual and psychological and creative values which are important to me. I didn\u2019t realize that while it was happening, of course. But I let myself be seduced into trying to fight a dysfunctional culture by becoming part of the monster I wanted to kill. That can\u2019t work. And it\u2019s been destroying me.<\/p>\n

Tap or click below if you\u2019d like to hear more of my struggle to explain how I allowed myself to get so badly off course. I have to warn you, though, that it\u2019s long \u2014 and it\u2019s not entertaining. Most of you shouldn\u2019t waste your time with it. Honest.<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Journal-experiment-5.m4a<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve allowed myself to be seduced by the desire to be popular. I\u2019ve fallen into a trap which makes me crave the attention which would tell me that people like me. That some of them love me and adore me. I\u2019ve been struggling for months to figure out why a little voice inside me kept Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-9ei","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35484,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35482\/revisions\/35484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}