[AKN #103] Mental Health Hack: Hang Out With Real People
LAUGH: The Future Of Politics, LOVE: Emmanuel the Emu Is My Spirit Animal
Sup homies?
I’m looking into taking a little trip this summer to go back to New York for a few days and wow are plane ticket prices terrible!
Ugh. Like it’s so bad that I might even consider flying with Southwest…
LOL! Just kidding. I respect myself too much to do that.
People are going to get mad at that take, but I’m not going to apologize for loving myself.
You can keep flying Southwest if you want, but I’m not about to compete in hand-to-hand combat for a window seat with some family that looks straight out of the depths of the Ronald McDonald House.
God that airline sucks.
But one frustrating thing is how all the commercials for them are so fun loving and centered around what an awesome experience you are going to have as a customer.
Like this one.
What Southwest do these people fly on?
I would love for them to make a realistic Southwest Airlines commercial.
I could see it now.
SCENE 1: THE DAY BEFORE THE FLIGHT
It opens with a man’s alarm going off at 7a the day before his flight.
He logs in immediately to the Southwest interface, attests that he isn’t bringing explosives on the plane, and boom he gets sent his boarding pass.
“Congratulations! You are B10” flashes on the screen.
You can see the disappointment on the man’s face. B10? He literally signed in the first second that tickets were available.
He is a bit miffed, but he tells himself it isn’t all that bad. I mean he took advantage of the Southwest “just a hop, skip, and a jump away” promotion where he scored tickets to New York for $150!
SCENE 2: BOARDING THE PLANE
We rejoin our hero standing in line waiting to board the plane.
He calculates that as long as he can get on in position B10 then he will get a window seat.
All he needs to do is defend his space.
So when preboarding comes on, we watch him play prevent defense.
Families with children under 2 boarding? He’s making them show ID.
Disabled? He wants to see a doctors note.
Active military? He’s asking where they are currently deployed.
He puts on a morally bankrupt performance which would make Tucker Carlson blush.
“Southwest brings out the best in you” flashes across the screen.
SCENE 3: ON THE PLANE
The man is on the plane when he makes the realization that an elderly woman holding the number B9 is about to take the last window seat.
Using quick thinking and his shear athleticism, the man Dick Fosbury flops over the seat and lands cleanly in the final window seat.
Victory.
Unfortunately, we lost the elderly woman in the chaos.
She caught a swift elbow to the temple during his Fosbury flop and fell to the floor.
She actually would have been OK, but she couldn’t get up in time to avoid being crushed by Boarding Group C1-30. Like Mufasa, she never stood a chance against the stampede of wild animals.
There is a minor delay as the Southwest flight attendant collects the woman’s pile of bones and skin off the floor and feeds it to the creatures in Boarding Group C31-60.
Rather than being thrown off the plane, the man is given an extra bag of pretzels as tribute for taking out B9.
In the lawless wasteland that is Southwest, B10 becomes a legend.
As a sign of respect, the other bloodthirsty Southwest passengers allow B10 to sit alone until his middle seat is the last seat available on the plane.
To the victor goes the spoils.
But then right before the stewardess shuts the door, a final passenger clears standby.
A rotund, purple being of indeterminate species gets on, waddles down the aisle, and plops down right next to B10.
That’s right. Grimace is his seat mate for the next 5 and a half hours.
After an excruciating flight — which featured Grimace chewing pretzels with his mouth agape whilst sporadically forcing unwanted conversation with him the entire flight — by the Mercy of God, the plane lands.
SCENE 4: GETTING OFF THE PLANE
As he exits the plane, he is relieved to at least finally be in New York…until he realizes he is actually in Tallahassee.
You see, he didn’t read the fine print of the “hop, skip, and a jump” promotion.
Ends up the hop puts him in Tallahassee, the skip puts him in the foreign country of West Virginia, and the jump puts him in Newark and tells him he’s in New York.
Now if you thought that Southwest was bad, just wait until you see Southwest at a regional airport!
You know the ones.
The airport is so small that they don’t have gates, they just have glass doors which empty out directly on to the tarmac. But they still do the whole charade of a real airport. They’re like “Now Boarding Group 1….Ok now Boarding Group 2….” and then 5 minutes later you’re all just standing in a single file line outside on the asphalt like we’re in 2nd grade lining up to go to recess.
These airports are all in the heart of God country too. They have a sign which says like “Welcome to our small regional airport, you’re in God’s hands now.” Like really? Cause actually aerodynamics is pretty well understood at this point. I'd be pretty stoked if I was in Bernoulli’s hands instead…
And can these airports make it anymore clear that you are not a priority?
“Oh, one of the three pilots on the JFK flight decided they wanted to take a nap during the flight so we’re going to need to take your pilot.”
“Sorry. We also need your bags to even out a weight issue on the plane going to Atlanta.”
“Oh, also we need the food. We don’t really…but fuck you.”
And they are so unreliable. Seriously, now a days, booking a flight out of a regional airport is like putting all your money on black on the roulette table with your travel plans.
Sitting at the flight information board thinking “Ok, baby lets see if I'm going to Vegas!” But the House always wins and now you’re delayed, sitting at your gate, and receiving absolutely zero updates.
Sorry, you chose to fly to Sacramento, big guy.
Fly into SFO like an adult next time, ass hat.
So that’s the predicament where we find the protagonist of our commercial.
He has two flight segments left to go through regional airports and he has to fight for his seat every time.
The man is disheartened. Broken. He cries to the gate agent. He shouts into his ergonomic neck pillow. He considers ending it all.
But through the darkness he makes a realization.
Yes, he is going to spend the next 24 hours finishing the next two legs of this flight, but at least he downloaded the newest season of Alone on his iPad.
The next day will surely be full of misery, but the single season of Alone they show on Netflix will be his North Star. His higher purpose.
Because yes, things might be rough, but God dammit that show is so cool and the contestants are so very impressive.
SCENE 5: DESTINATION
He finally reaches his destination with only a touch of PTSD.
We join him in the living room of the friend he was visiting who lives in Jersey City, but tells everyone he lives in New York City.
The friend says “how was the flight?”
The man stares ahead into the distance.
He’s taken back to that feeling. The oppressive, crushing weight of his experience.
He’s replaying the trauma. Oh the pain. It all rushes in.
His body would shut down if it were to fully relive the experience, but thankfully he is able to press forward due to his brain’s evolutionary adaptation to dissociate from the pain.
His body compartmentalizes the trauma by numbing and neutralizing the part of his brain that can feel anything.
The pain disappears, but so does his ability to feel joy as well as his will to live.
His body is destined to remain locked in a state of sympathetic nervous system activation until he can one day process it in the presence of an empathetic witness.
He has normalized the agonizing Southwest induced pain.
Through his pursed, helpless lips he says “the flight was alright.”
Then the commercial ends with that familiar voiceover: “Wanna get away?”
Yes. Yes, I very much do want to get away from you.
On to the newsletter!
LIVE: Mental Health Hack: Hang Out With Real People
The pandemic really fucked with my mental health.
When we were in lockdown, there were some days I was just sad and couldn’t even articulate why.
But now looking back it is obvious: I missed being around people.
Instead of hanging out with people in person, I took all that free time and shifted it towards trolling social media or attending Zoom happy hours.
This digital immersion lead to a profound sense of emptiness.
Which retrospectively makes sense!
First off, as I have covered before, humans now only make up 38.5% of internet traffic. So you are spending most of your day talking to two bluetooth enabled toasters yet expect to feel good after that.
Secondly, if you spend any amount of time online, you see how the discourse with the actual humans turns towards doom, gloom, and the worst parts of human nature. This is obviously not great for your mental health.
Recently, I’ve become more and more aware that I want to decrease my exposure to the online parts and ramp up my exposure to the offline parts.
I want to talk to people 1:1.
I want to drink a beer with a group of people.
I want to eat chicken wings by hand with a group even though I know no one is going to grab napkins before we dive in and get our fingers covered in BBQ sauce.
All of that is vastly superior to the fake online world.
As part of this realization, I’ve recently committed to being more intentional about building in person events for my friend group or — to use GenZ parlance ✨ my community ✨ — and the results have been dope.
Probably the most surprising part of it so far has been that it took little to no “strategic” thought.
I simply started a group text with a bunch of people who live around me with the mission statement of “hanging out more in person.”
Within a month it has spawned several hangouts — even hangouts that I haven’t been a part of — where we got dinner, met up for beers, and even splashed around in a hot tub.
It definitely made me realize that we so often think things take much more effort than they actually do.
I’m super down to keep doing this and plan on continuing to grow it.
To stay true to that intention of growing the size of the group, at the most recent event, I brought name tags.
Because that’s the kind of culture I want to start.
One where there are so many new people that name tags help facilitate more connections by eliminating the awkward barrier to starting a conversation with a friend’s friend.
Overall, I’ve been super stoked on seeing people in person and highly recommend it to everyone out there.
Give it a go. It’s much easier than you think.
LAUGH: The Future Of Politics
This is how you capture GenZ’s attention.
LOVE: Emmanuel the Emu Is My Spirit Animal
You really just have to watch it to understand.
CLOSING TIME
You don’t have to go home, but you can subscribe here:
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are strictly my own. Who else’s would they be?
Come by sometime,
K.Rapp