James R.'s motivational videos

James Rxxd was a Coral Reef student that Jared came to know about in his sophomore year.

Though Jared shared a class with him, the two never once interacted. Jared can't remember if they had even officially met, and they definitely didn't have any friends in common. By the time they both graduated in 2009, there was still zero connection between them. (Josh, too, never met or knew James.)

All of this made it that much more surprising when, several years after high school and college ended, James sent Jared a friend request on Facebook. This was at a point when barely anyone used Facebook anymore at all, and there was seemingly nothing prompting the request. While Jared was used to requests from former classmates, the sheer amount of time that had passed, combined with their lack of any interaction a decade ago, made the request especially unusual.

Jared left the request pending but went over to James's profile to browse. There, he found something fascinating: James had uploaded about a dozen “motivational” videos for his followers.

Each one took on a similar format: directly to camera, he'd open with a bright and cheerful “Good morning everybody!” — often behind the wheel of the car on his morning drive to work. He'd laugh and joke a bit before getting into the topic of the day, which was a hodgepodge of generic motivational, inspirational guidance, an upbeat rant about his work and life, and an invitation to join him on his self-improvement journey.

James seemed to be trying to channel popular “#hustle” “grindset” productivity gurus like Tony Robbins or Les Brown, even mentioning them by name. He delivered his messages with urgency, almost frustrated with the fact that his followers weren't rising up en masse to revolutionize their lives.

Jared was intrigued at the sheer randomness of it all. First, the advice was entirely unprompted. James seemingly had years of relative quiet on his Facebook timeline before suddenly dropping the series of self-help, productivity “truth bombs” with no warning. He'd say good morning to his followers and immediately launch into very specific self-improvement tactics such as, “find people who are doing what you want to be doing and network with them” or “wake up and immediately write down your dreams to see how your subconscious changes over time.”

At no point did James explain why he was doing any of it. There was never a, “Good morning, friends! Some of you have been asking me how I've managed to network lately, so here are my thoughts.” Or, “I've been thinking about how motivational my dreams have been lately. Here's what I mean.” It was just, “Good morning! I'm so happy to be alive. Also, there will be people out there who are just followers and life is too short to work until you die.” And then a frantic call to action.

As unpolished as James was, Jared actually didn't find the advice to be all bad. A lot of it made sense: carve out time to do things you're passionate about, rather than just working all day and waiting for change; focus on the little things in life and don't let an unexpected challenge such as a car repossession ruin your whole life; and stick to your goals even when it doesn't work out immediately, for example.

Unfortunately, the guru influence was evident as James employed many heavy-handed cliches. “Wake up!” “I'm trying to build something, join me” “stay motivated,” “let's take the leap this year,” and “when your back is against the wall, you'll discover you have greatness deep inside you” — all phrases sprinkled in otherwise unrelated rants and addressed to nobody in particular.

Like many young men in their twenties, James had fallen into the trap of acting like a master teacher of productivity scripture, forgetting that he was, by his own admission, still a student. It seemed to Jared that James had only recently discovered #Productivity and was keen on sharing it as much as possible. Much of the advice was extremely obvious, though to James, it was like he was realizing it for the very first time.

By far, James's favorite instruction was to find people who are doing what you want to be doing and seek their guidance so you can do the same. This was the thread that first intrigued Jared. James had several videos that seemed to come to the same conclusion: if you're unhappy with your life of working a job just to pay the bills, think about what you want to be doing, find people who are doing it already, make them your mentors, and soon enough, they will show you how to get where they are and how to make a substantial amount of money doing that thing.

Like so much of James's advice, it was something that was perhaps not wrong in theory, but oversimplified to the point of not even being worth the video.

The videos had very few likes or comments. They may have not actually been delivered to anybody's feeds, or like most other people their age, James's followers were no longer on Facebook.

The icing on the cake was that, in several of his videos, James was wearing the baseball cap of a prominent MLM at the time. (Amazingly, he never mentioned the MLM in any of his videos... which could've been a brilliant marketing strategy.)

Perhaps the reason James had sent Jared the friend request was to try and recruit him into the MLM the whole time, knowing Jared wouldn't be able to resist watching and writing about his videos.

***

When Jared and Josh were a few years removed from high school, they improvised their own kind of therapy by writing theater scripts about the problems they themselves had. It was clear to Jared that posting the series of motivational videos was James's own form of self-therapy. He was the person who needed to take his advice. He was the person who was stuck in the dead-end job and needed to find a way out.

Almost a decade after the videos were posted, Jared went back to check in on James. He did still use Facebook from time to time, and the videos were still there, completely forgotten, still with very few views. Sadly, James's life had not seemed to change at all in the intervening years. But he did get jacked from the gym, so that was something.  ❒

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