A few nights ago, I was winding down by doing what I usually did. I opened YouTube and scrolled through the many subscribed accounts to find a tone setter. Somewhere in the mix was a new video by Brad Taste in Music. I was compelled for a few reasons, but most notably because he didn’t post much anymore. Despite once being among the most prolific music reviewers on the site, he had been stepping back (I presume) to attend rehab and address his personal issues. Part of me had assumed he was one of those modern creators, not dissimilar from the Nebula crowd, who was starting to do work exclusively behind a paywall. In an age where a handful of accounts stop by only to post their return address, that was what I had assumed Brad was going to do.
Another detail that caught me off guard was the title. I interpreted the initials “S.I.” to stand for suicidal ideation, which convinced me that something was up. For as much as Brad was not my personal friend, nor would I call myself a regular watcher (who has time for 12-hour live streams?), I wanted to see what his big takeaway would be. Was the “S.I.” in question an ongoing circumstance, or was this his light at the end of the tunnel?
I don’t wish to delve into the entire video or any of his personal affairs. All that I’ll describe is that it left me perplexed. Here was a man in distress, presumably relapsing, and lacking personal focus. Before I ever put on a critical lens, I found myself sympathetic to this man who had created an online career and was struggling with an Act II. Even if I never could be accused of having a “successful” internet presence, I recognize the addictive nature of being validated for following your dreams. It must be great to talk with people about music all day and get paid insane amounts of money.
Nothing will ever blow my mind more than watching those punishment streams where donors pay to watch him listen to the same miserable song over and over. I once saw CDTV Productions listen to Lil Xan for almost eight hours, and, while I was in and out, I could see that he made in that time more than I ever did in a conventional work shift. It had to be at least four digits, and all from people who wanted to see him cringe to “Diamonds.” I have to imagine that Brad has done similar numbers, possibly higher.
It makes me understand the paradox he’s in. Beyond anything he said in the video, the threat of losing that revenue is horrifying. Every creative’s dream is to have a job that caters to their sensibilities. For whatever shortcomings I think Brad has, he still provides an entertainment value that is a specific niche. He may be well-educated, but his impact is ultimately visceral, living in the moment, and reliant on minute-to-minute stimulation. He got lucky. Not Anthony Fantano lucky, but still enough that he could’ve theoretically ridden that train for years like a post-modernist radio DJ.
The one revelation that overshadowed my recognition of the other conflicts in the video was a line he said towards the end. I got the sense that his passion for music was gone, or specifically, the criticism side of things.
For the average person, this matter would be disposable. However, Brad is stuck in a paradox where he’s known for listening to music for hours on end, reacting to the good and bad in equal measure. When you’re in that zone, it’s easy to recognize the high. Maybe some days are better than others, but it’s still better than desk jobs or labor (in theory). But, when you lose that drive for your art, what good is there to do anything?
With thousands telling Brad to get off the internet, it’s hard to know how much is malicious and what is concerning. I went through Reddit threads trying to understand the larger story. From what I’ve gathered, the original person who told him to hang it up was identified as bipolar and noticed his behavior. Others have labeled him as having undiagnosed borderline personality disorder and have read into the emotional nature of the video. Was he being manipulative? That’s speculative. Irresponsible? Undoubtedly.
Still, the overbearing need to share every detail as a concept resonated with me. To start shifting into something personal, the situation Brad is in reminds me of where I was in 2020. For transparency, my struggles were never as consequential as Brad’s. Whatever I said didn’t stand to cause potential lawsuits, and included Reddit threads having collaborators threatening to share private details. There was much less for me to lose, and yet the direction was painfully recognizable.
In short, 2020 was the pandemic. With endless months of free time, I spent every day writing for five to six hours. I’d publish the essays online and do what I could to boost my independent writing career. This was most evident on Twitter, where I intentionally took the advice I had read to network and put myself out there. Until I joined Bluesky, it was the single greatest period of growth in my follower count. Something was thrilling about seeing those numbers skyrocket. Not to the extent that I had even thousands, but enough where I was talking to people and finding this great escape from the real-life doldrums. When I was on Twitter, I felt free.
The issue with shackling so much of my effort to Twitter was that it soon became my only drive for doing anything. I needed to know what everyone was up to, and after a few months, I became emotionally invested in other people’s accomplishments. In theory, this isn’t a bad thing, but when the pandemic removed other modes of coping, it caused me to place way too much of my sanity in the hands of other people. When somebody had a bad day, I had a bad day. Part of it resorted to people-pleasing behaviors that I have been trying to curb for years now. Given that a lot of people I was interacting with were low-key depressed, I had this dichotomy of trying to cheer them up while feeling devastated.
By November, the floodgates were opened, and my efforts to be “professional” with a real schedule were starting to wear on me. This was still before news of vaccinations was known. I personally believed that it would take five years for COVID-19 to subside. There was something interminable about November 2020, and I hated the holidays in part because everybody was not feeling it. Thanksgiving was only tolerable because I spent the majority of the day hanging out in my room reading Twitter, feeding off the rare moments of merriment.
The breaking point for my “professional” career happened the following month when a personal friend contracted the virus. Believing that everything was over (it wasn’t), I lacked the motivation to write for the first time since February. By January, I was so out of step that efforts to produce any daily output were starting to fade. I had burned out. There was no way that I could write a movie review because, seriously, who cared what I had to say about Pieces of a Woman? Sitting at that keyboard, I was horrified by my inability to write five paragraphs saying, “I like it!” over the course of two hours.
That thought is horrifying and symbolized the moment I feared my writing career was over. The craft that I had been practicing since I was five no longer served its purpose. This led to an existential crisis, of which I won’t get into save to admit that the next three months were a very dark period that made me recontextualize a lot. I had to give up writing for The Oscar Buzz, my most successful writing project to date, because I couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to celebrate film from 2020. I’d also argue that my work has become more divisive because I’m more interested in art that personally speaks to me over easy quips.
Which is all to say that the lack of output mixed with an existential crisis didn’t work well with Twitter. Because I felt like nobody was listening, a lot of my posts from that time had a vindictive quality that was combative. I never attacked people directly, but I was more condescending than I normally was. For as much as I was trying to promote a more optimistic worldview, it eventually cratered under my cries for help as I spoke a bit too candidly about hurting myself and struggling to find any happiness. There was a sense that if I kept yelling, someone would finally come and save me. Again, I might’ve been too codependent on certain people for my fleeting happiness, but it was only made worse when those cries weren’t met, or underperformed my expectations. In short, the internet wasn’t solving my problems.
So when I watch Brad discuss his emotional issues, I wince from recognition. In the years since, I’ve struggled with the paradox of needing the internet to promote my writing career, but also that it serves as a place of great dissociation. At one point, I was convinced that everyone on Twitter was fake and just code on a screen. It’s a major reason that the recent bot problem upsets me so greatly because it accidentally proves my point. The need to have constant validation clearly came from someplace deep down that wasn’t being serviced.
I could imagine that adding commerce to the equation only makes the ability to step away more difficult. I won’t pretend to know how much Brad was making at the time, but if your mind fixates on the gambler’s high, the idea of a livestream going longer and pushing the margin for donations higher is tempting. There is that concern that this may be the last time you ever have this success, even if you have a whole schedule planned for the next month. Again, my writing career never got “there,” but the idea was to come out of the pandemic with the dream job I had been chasing for decades.
Ultimately, I have found comfort in stepping away from the internet for long periods of time and appreciating the world around me. It’s caused social media to serve its use as a secondary feature and not the main course. For as much as I want to believe that I could get that validating job, I realize that my approach and passion no longer fit that box.
I’m a writer. That much will never be taken away from me.
To be clear, I recognize that the larger situation involving Brad is thorny and there’s a good chance that he possesses some blame. The more that I’ve considered the larger details, the more I accept that it was irresponsible of him to make the video.
However, I will always feel conflicted for a few reasons. People on Reddit were suggesting that they supported his potential recovery. There was hope that he’d get there. However, he’s not quite there. As someone who had a bad case of sporadic depression between 2021 and 2023, I recognize that there’s no clean way to address the circumstance. I don’t know Brad. I do, however, recognize his addiction to the distraction. I recognize the need to yell out to the old reliables and pray that somebody has an answer that you haven’t found. Maybe it’s all just secretly confirmation bias, but it’s because it’s cheap and easy. The drive to share everything is less to be malicious and more to have someone hear the thoughts in your head so that they’re more than delusions. You pray that relief will come if there’s documentation and a witness to fall back on. Again, my situation was a lot less dire than Brad’s. I had less to lose by oversharing.
The uncanny detail is that as Brad’s conflict is ongoing, I am reminded of another video I watched this month. Ben Brainard is a comedian whom I respect and have even met. I have nothing but good things to say about him. During this video, he shared why he had been silent online over the past few months. He mentioned that he had burnout from lonely nights of touring as a stand-up and how it was impacting his work. There was a bitterness that could be seen in the small details, and it was causing his passion to wane.
If left to his own devices, Brainard suggested that he wanted nothing more than to stay isolated and not talk to others. However, he had friends reach out and encourage him to take part in everyday activities. He admits how much it helped him get through the tough times and start to see the hope for creativity again. This was at most a teaser, but his nature suggests that he has taken the time to think about what he wanted out of his career and is going to be retooling it for the better.
In Brad’s defense, he admitted to reaching out and attempting to get out of the dark headspace. However, the duality of these two stories is fascinating because they do speak to their respective careers. Brainard’s outlook is likely more positive because he has options that require him to collaborate and step away from the computer. Brad, meanwhile, is stuck in a paradox that I’m unsure he’ll really solve without giving a large portion of his identity up. It may explain why he’s more at a loss when addressing the public.
According to a post-script video from Brad, he is taking a year off from the internet. While many are speculating that it won’t stick, I’m optimistic that he finds an answer. When you remove the easy fix, you’ll be forced to consider a more difficult but ultimately useful recovery. When you’re not out there solely to please others, the urge to overshare and have strangers soothe your every idea starts to dissipate. I recognize that this means that Brad’s career may be over. But if it’s truly over, I hope he comes out of this decade a happier person. Even if he’s in a menial job, I want to believe this cycle will improve in time.
I think that I think this way because “S.I.” in a lot of ways reminded me of my journey on a granular scale. There was a need to break free of the expectations and start to find something more authentic within myself. There is a need to remove certain transparency to protect my well-being. The internet definitely makes it worse, though I’ve found that stepping away means it has less time to be stuck in your mind. I still hope he finds creative fulfillment, but it may take a while. I hope so, anyway.
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