David McElroy

Be a clone and kiss conviction good night
Cloneliness is next to godliness, right?
— Steve Taylor, “I Want to be a Clone”

I was furious when I saw the woman smoking. I had stopped for gasoline Sunday night and the only employee on duty was stocking some merchandise outside — maybe 10 or 12 feet from where I was pumping gas. And she was smoking.

The odds of a spark igniting fumes from that distance are tiny. It was highly unlikely anything bad was going to happen. But it made me feel unsafe. Isn’t this against the law? Doesn’t she have better sense?

The world would be a better place if every one of you thought exactly as I do. Acted as I do. I’m sure of that. We wouldn’t have to argue about risks. You would all agree with me.

You would agree with me that it makes sense to be vaccinated. You would believe the right things about politics and religion and culture. You would make the right decisions for your own life. I would never have to silently judge you — because you would agree with me.

Whether you realize it or not — and whether you would admit it or not — you are unconsciously programmed the same way. You think everybody else ought to be like you.

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It was just an odd computer glitch. Something with a reasonable explanation. It has to be. But I’ve sat here for the last hour or so looking at a photo I didn’t intend to find tonight. And it pushed some unexpected emotional buttons.

I wanted to find a photo on my MacBook from about 20 years ago, so I typed in a file-name search. Instead of things related to what I was looking for, the system turned up five photos that were completely unrelated to that. At the top of the list was a photo from seven years ago. I didn’t open it.

Then I worded the search an entirely different way. It gave me a handful of files again. At the top was the same photo which had been at the top of the search before. I felt mesmerized by the weirdness of what I was seeing, so I opened the file, even though I knew what it would be.

There were two faces. One was my face. The other face was that of a beautiful woman who I used to know.

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I’ve spent the last six week trying to work out a partnership with someone for my new YouTube video venture.

Someone with a lot of experience with profitable YouTube channels noticed the idea I was launching with DavidMcElroy.TV, so he approached me about joining forces. He and his partners have a lot of experience with marketing and growing YouTube channels, so it seemed like an exciting possibility.

But not everything is as great as it seems. Here’s a brief report about how things went.

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