A Sidebar on Terminal Childhood
The Rooster has flown the coop.
I started today early and took my time on the way to work - after a solid 4½ hours of sleep. On the drive, I picked up a podcast that brought about thoughts that are going to be the least Druid topic covered in this journal.
As a teen, I was gripped with a media company called Rooster Teeth - I, though fourteen, identified with the personalities and quarrels of that group of 40-year-olds. Yesterday I learned that the company, once considered a mainstay in both internet culture and my personal vernacular, was being shuttered by its parent company.
The podcast I mentioned was from the once-founder of the company, Michael Burns. Hearing him concede that the end was inevitable left me with a mixed bag of emotions that writhed in my lap for my entire commute. I felt like I was in mourning for this, that a part of my childhood has died.
That’s when it hit me - I’m 26, driving to work, sipping chai that my wife made, listening to a morning show style podcast while split-mindedly pondering a perimeter fence for my land. The content I clung to like a cheap sedative over twelve years ago, it’s still nestled somewhere in the dense fabric of the internet a mere handful of swipes away. But when was the last time I was in the audience?
All of those morsels of parasociality all left in their own direction, familiar faces jumped ship, and more urban-type people within my generation but outside of my tastes replaced them. Shows evolved into something that never caught my attention, and the beloved nuance of friendship-like banter was supplanted by something more sterile.
Rooster Teeth closed in 2014 for me. My time in that ecosystem was up. The community picked up camp, loaded the wagon, and journeyed out to the horizon while I stayed behind to wonder why.
I now have better, more engaging things to pass up with time. I have something real. I can pretend to mourn what was never alive to begin with - or I can cherish what I experienced back then with warmth and fondness, knowing that something doesn’t have to still be around to be valued.
In short, my childhood didn’t die - it ended, and I feel like my life can continue a little more surely now that the credits have rolled.
