A long form piece on cleverly named 25/7 had this choice quote from Andrew Alvarado, one of three co-founders, all of whom are immigrants and maybe 2 of the 3 were undocumented:
“Due to the internet and social media culture and everything these kids grew up in, they don’t go outside, they don’t interact, they don’t want to talk to people,” Alvarado says. “They’re scared to hop on a call, they have all this social anxiety. And so, you know, the only way to get through to these types of people is to be relatable. And the only way to be relatable is to know what’s actually going on in their lives.”
https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-talent-factory-ursus-magana-creator-economy/
I’m struck by the what’s actually going on in their lives as this simple truth seems elusive. I read “Kef 6” by Henry Dumas this afternoon that attested:
Ego told Id to do it,
but Id didn’t hear him
because he was doing it.
Kef: Second Series in Knees of a Natural Man, Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1989, page 107.
This follows the experience, testimony and advice from a father who said that he spends some time playing video games with his teenage sons because it’s what they want to do. Nearly two decades into parenting, he’s figured out that heeding the whims and the preferences of his children will help him out in his fathering.
And around that time, closer to home, I met a mom at the skate park who had learned to skate just in the past year beacuse she was feeling an urgency to relate to her last child and youngest child who is eight years old. She had not felt such a rift with her older children but when she noticed this, she opted to learn to skate. In her early 40s.
All this as my Ego and Id wrangle with my perceptions and realities of how much I know what is actually going on in other’s lives versus just deluding myself that I know what’s up.
washing dishes: a father’s glimpses 