Dear David, 

During this past winter break, I found myself really depressed, oscillating between playing hours of Fortnite matches in bed and going to the mall, all while listening to the dulcet tones of soft rock. What’s the point of Reading Week when I have no legacy or future? I didn’t even do any reading!

Adult Contemporary Enjoyer

Beloved Grobanhead,

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Not to diagnose you right out of the gate, but I think you’re overthinking this one. I am an authority on self-induced hysteria, and you are displaying some extremely familiar symptoms!  

I can’t necessarily wax poetic on what you’ll be remembered for, as these are circumstances out of your control that are wholly reliant on a perception that I cannot garner from a singular line of inquiry. Yet, while you’re here, I’ll indulge you and speak for myself, drawing from my oodles of experience (from life!) in my monthly quest to soothe the souls of the Readership. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

Before we go any further, what’s the deal with the adult top 40 fixation? Yeah, it’s trendy and in-vogue to have a little neurodivergent hyperfixation, but this is where I draw the line, and I spent the latter half of Reading Week making my mom watch Pride & Prejudice (2005) and Sense & Sensibility (1995). I know what a fixated interest is when I see one. 

I am genuinely curious as to what demon possessed you into enjoying acoustic guitar songs for SPCA guilt-trip-donation fodder during a weekday Judge Judy commercial break. That shit was definitely concocted in a laboratory to boil your brain down into gruel and sell you on the idea of humanizing department stores. 

Value judgements aside, I didn’t really do anything this week either! I’m not going to sit here, call you a useless schlub, and tell you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but don’t rest just yet. Your spiralling could be warranted by the following factors.

Severe Lack of Fortnite Dubs

I’m no expert on this matter, but I’ve won enough games with bot lobbies to know what an impoverished record would do to another human being. I definitely have my self-worth tied to my performance in video games, and the returns have always been diminished, since it is so widely known that I am very bad at gaming. 

Fortnite rewards flukes, yes, but it also penalizes you for minute mistakes, and when I am scalped by a video game, I slip into this state of passive acceptance of “yes, I do suck, and I deserve to be punished like the miserable worm-creature I am.”

Fortnite is torture with skins and cool guns. I love shooting guys as my favourite video game character of all time, Solid Snake, solely by the metric of not having a legitimate Metal Gear game in almost ten years. It’s everything I love about video games, and being reminded of my most primal impulse to consume only fuels this contradictory misery. It’s beautiful.

The only other way a person can feel anything but apathy during any playthrough of Fortnite is through purchasing something for its item shop. It should also be noted that I am not to be trusted with microtransactions: my illustrious history of Impulse Purchases began as soon as I got my first job, spending a cumulative $200 on a mobile anime girl rhythm game that will not be named at this juncture. 

Daily Reminder of The Great Microwaving 

The doom that looms over our impending mass scorching can be extremely debilitating. As the weather gets balmier earlier and earlier into the year, it’s hard to wake up feeling Not Haunted by this fact, especially because I’m walking to work in a t-shirt outside in February. Pack it up, Stephen King! Maybe the horrors were here the entire time! 

The farcical spectacle of climate change’s reversal is more present than ever in our daily life, yet in light of no fundamental changes to Western methods of consumption, we are basically tote-bagging ourselves to death. At least I can carry around a snarky saying on my person and signal to strangers that yes, I indeed listen to Aphex Twin and am forklift certified.

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It’s my belief that if you purchase this totally real product from me, you will do your part to curtail climate change’s slow chug toward oblivion. Proceeds from my Ethically Sourced Terrycloth Vessel will fund an initiative to film me washing crude oil off of baby animals using 100% Organic Freshwater while Fiona Apple sings a cover of “You Raise Me Up.” 

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The crux of it is this: I probably won’t be remembered for anything cool, worthwhile, or funny. If the humble advice columnist and their musings are lost to history’s Benjaminian storm, you too will be lost to time. So just play some Fortnite! Everything will work out at the end of the day, so vibe out in the meantime, listen to some Sarah McLachlan, and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. 

Dear David is a monthly advice column that posits itself as the alpha and omega of knowledge; the absolute last bastion, where all questions go to die, but not if David has anything to say about it. Arthur Journalist David King is the expert, the vanguardist pillar of this endeavour, and your question will be answered, but at a cost.

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