Everything Is Television

If it makes you feel any better about your school experience, even before the pandemic, my highschool put me in a Spanish class ran by a teacher who didn't even speak Spanish.

he went from making fun of deviantart posts to making incredibly deep philisophical videos that make you lay down in bed and jjust think 'damn'

“a friend group you can rarely, if ever, participate in” so basically 90% of friend groups I was in as a child 😅

As an autistic person, I deeply relate to the message of this video. To me, socializing is nothing more than a necessity, a script that i've slowly learned and developped over the years that I repeat to people over and over and over again like a robot, and this, just to blend in. Everyday you need to analyze other people, what they say, what they do, what they want from you. Everyday is a confusing mess of attempting to translate people who have an entirely differently wired brain. And you pretend to be wired like them, because you were taught that this is the "correct way" of existing. So many times I've been told that the way I fundamentally function is "wrong". To survive the abuse, the bullying, the glares, the abandonement, you pretend. You smother your brain's attempt to stay healthy physically and mentally. And so you dissociate through a majority of your life, and just like that, you've forgotten about 80% of your whole life, because you're just a robot everyday. Until you break down. I've been pretending to be someone else almost my entire life, and I've just started to realize just how much of my life I've been wasting by wearing a mask around the wrong people. It's no surprise really that I've developped a deep fear of people early in life. And it's no surprise I've been strictly having friendships online during my teenage years. Today, thankfully, I'm slowly learning how to take the mask off. It's a slow process, painfull at times, but I'm finally feeling like myself for the first time in a very very long time. I've learned to enjoy my own company, and that it's okay to be alone to a certain degree. And most importantly, I'm slowly learning how to enjoy other people's company with no mask on. It's terrifying, but oh so liberating. I think I might be able to turn off the television soon at this rate. Thank you for this wonderful video, amazing message and editing as always!

I feel you bro. The internet didn't used to be television, but it is television now. I don't know how old you are but I am guessing about ten years younger than me; I grew up alongside the internet and saw it grow from the early days. It's just so much of a different thing now. I don't just mean this in that jaded boomer kind of way, but it just used to be so much more personal and intimate. There was the potential for interaction. Now... It's just like TV. The stuff you read, the people you watch and listen to online are just like the TV celebrities of that era. They're strangers who you watch through this one way screen. The interaction is harder and harder to find.

"I try to interact but nothing feels real" duuuuude. That's the perfect way to put it into words. I feel this all the time

Honestly, this video was surprisingly so relatable it's scary. At first, I thought it was about television Like you, I also struggle and still struggle to socialize with others. Throughout high school, I only really had one friend and we haven't spoken in nearly four years despite knowing each other since the sixth grade. In the nearly three years since I started college, I haven't made any friends. I don't go out much. I don't use social media because I despise its very existence. I briefly worked as a cashier at a Wendy's and I absolutely hated it. I hated being forced to socialize with the customers, complete strangers who could care less about me or my life and I couldn't care less myself. To me, they were the enemy.

When I was in college I put Monumentality on the TV at my house and 10 drunk people sat in silence absorbing that video. I doubt any of them would've sought out videos like yours on their own but when it was presented to them they were hooked. Your videos became a topic of conversation and a few of the people in that group became good friends of mine that I keep in touch with regularly. You struggle to make friends and form tight bonds but your content has probably helped a lot of people become friends.

It's simply insane how much Solar Sands's content has evolved over the years.

Only Solar Sands would make a 40 minute video telling me to "touch grass". But in all seriousness, this video speaks to me in the same way I suspect Warhol's quote speaks to Solar Sands. I spent most of my life as a self-isolated introvert with few friends and willing to sleepwalk through my life just hoping loneliness would hurt a little less. It took me a very long time to learn to reconnect with people, and I'm still learning. Luckily, I graduated a year before the pandemic, I can't imagine the toll it took on introverted students. As a student, especially, I found it much easier to decouple from people, since you're typically still a dependent and don't have to interact with people to live. But last month I did something I never thought I would do: I got married. I'm not going to pretend that I have answers, or that anyone reading this cares for my insight, or even that it might apply to anyone but myself, but if I could write a letter to me of 10 years ago, I would say that circling the drain, not caring where the current took me, I was missing out on something. In the 8 years I've known my wife, the one thing she reminds me to do better than anyone is to swim, to reject the complacency of my anxieties and my comfortable routines; to do more. My life is much better for my trying to associate with the world and the people in it, even though in the end trying is all we can do.

I think that there are a lot of ideas in this video that wouldn't survive a dialogue with an experienced friend.

It's incredible how quickly I went from viewing the pandemic as a dream vacation where I could game forever, to contemplating suicide because of how empty I felt without other people.

I've got to say, though the internet isn't wholly a positive development, I consider your voice to be one of the more honest, clear, and needed opinions. It is rare to have a YouTuber or really anyone who combines the depth and sincerity you do in your commentary, and it is appreciated. dw i don't think we are friends

This video expresses sentiments I have been developing in recent months. I'm glad other people out here on this internet hellscape share similar feelings. Thank you for making this Solar Sands, it may be an important wake up call to many different people.

I watch this, the video ends, an ad plays, I close the YouTube app and open discord. I tap random channels without reading anything. I close the discord app and open instagram. I scroll aimlessly without watching anything. It’s the most miserable cycle, like a corpse trapped in a cave or something. It’s just trapped there, not decaying

As someone who is an introvert who also has the continuous struggle of making friends and soon will be off to college, I thank you for this. It is crazy how I came to this channel initially as some middle schooler who liked to doodle characters and listen to art critics around DeviantArt to someone who questions reality, my future, and philosophy in general. It's crazy how I-- or we've-- grown.

a few years ago, i went over a year feeling like nothing was real. i came to learn it was called depersonalization/derealization and it was brought on immediately after a traumatic sexual assault experience i had while i was with a former friend. it felt like i was watching my life through a tv screen, or that i was in a dream. it felt like everything i saw was a two dimensional image and i wasn’t in a physical 3d world. everything felt so muted and lifeless that i often had thoughts of suicide, thinking that that would make me “wake up”. fortunately i never went through with it or self harmed, but it was an extremely difficult year to get through because no one would take me seriously. eventually that feeling went away and now i rarely have it, but since then i’ve secluded myself to my room for many years. part due to my self image issues, part due to not wanting to be hurt again the way my former friend hurt me, and part because i’ve always had a small social battery. i always thought i was “happy” living in my room through a phone screen but really i was just comfortable. i was comfortable that i didn’t have to put in effort and that i felt like i couldn’t be hurt again; when in reality i was hurting myself. the only thing that made me realize how awful this lifestyle was was when i became diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder. my condition was so bad that i was hospitalized because the doctors thought it was “a miracle” that i hadn’t gone into a coma and died already. at that moment i realized that if i had died, the only memories i would’ve had of my life were the blurry nothing-days that bled into each other. that the last memory my parents and family would have had of me were of me rotting away in my bed and phone. to not make this post drag on even longer, i decided then that i’m not wasting my one chance to experience life like that. i’m taking my health seriously, i’m losing weight, i’m getting back into old hobbies, i’m limiting my screen time drastically, and i’m working towards a career/future i want for myself. it’ll take a long time before these changes become habit but i’m determined to see everything through, even after getting covid a few weeks ago. it’s hard to socialize. it’s hard to connect with people, even scary sometimes because you never know what their intentions might be. but every decision you make in life will be hard and will have consequences. socializing is hard, getting your health right is hard, but wasting your life away behind a screen is hard too. it might not take effort, but knowing your life will be filled with meaningless static and no real connections or moments is a very hard realization to live with. so choose your hard. choose which hard you want to go through. choose which hard you can live with. choose which hard will be worth it. choose which hard will make you happier in the long run. sorry for the long post but this video hit something deep. it perfectly described my situation, but also made me see things from a different perspective, different ideas, and even new artists i’ve never heard of. thank you so much for making this video, Solar. not only is the editing and quality absolutely amazing and engaging, but the message and perspective you offer really resonates with many people. i hope everyone that comes across this video, or comes across my comment and has similar experiences, will benefit in some way from it.

"Substitute the guaranteed meaningless suffering for the potentially meaningful suffering" I needed that

"watching TV instead of living life" or feeling that the real world is fake is something I've dealt with throughout my life. Turns out that's a symptom of trauma and it's called depersonalization 😅

This is a beautiful video. I have many words about this and how much i feel this. But i feel like that doesn't matter. About a hundred other people have already said that, regardless they truly understand or not. But i do. No one will even read this. I'm going to leave it unsaid because only I can understand how this video spoke to me. Truly. Thank you.