Backp☮rch Tapes TV

I have noticed something about people.

The more we learn to reason, the harder it becomes to believe.

If a story doesn't fit neatly inside the little box we've built in our heads, we dismiss it. We call it progress. We call it common sense. We say, "There's no proof." Then we move on, convinced we've become smarter than the people who came before us.

But maybe we've only become less curious.

The old stories always carried something deeper than the story itself. Native Americans spoke of the Little People, tiny helpers living among the rocks, caves, and forests. Whether they were flesh and blood or simply a way of teaching respect didn't seem to matter. They represented something worth honoring.

Maybe that's why those stories survived.

Last night, right around midnight, I was sitting outside enjoying the coolest part of another 107 degree day when something nearby slammed with a loud crack. It startled me enough to jump.

The dog next door must have been asleep because he fired off three quick barks.

"Wah... wa... wac..."

Except that's not what I heard.

What I heard was...

"What the f..."

WTF... I froze.

I know it was a bark. I know it came from the mutt lying next door. But I swear that dog spoke English. Had the person who slammed whatever they slammed heard it, they probably would have thought a neighbor yelled it.

Then...
Silence.
No more barking.

Maybe he got startled so badly he forgot he was supposed to bark.
Maybe he was dreaming he was human.
That thought sent my imagination wandering.

What if dogs become people in their dreams, and we become dogs in ours? It would explain why we're always running in dreams without remembering what we're chasing. Dogs do that all the time.

The witching hour has a funny way of making impossible thoughts seem perfectly reasonable to me.

Soon I pictured that dog standing upright on two legs, staring into the darkness with his paws hanging naturally at his sides like he paid taxes and complained about the weather too.

That's when my eyes drifted toward my two garden gnomes.
One holds a sign that says "Go Away."
The other says "Leave."

Now my brain was really off and running.

I started thinking about Death Valley and the stories Paul Watkins and Brooks Poston told after hiking out to remote caves where they believed little people lived. Native American traditions tell similar stories, small beings living in caves and among the rocks, tending things at night and keeping mostly to themselves.

I've walked out there myself.
Today the area is closed for environmental reasons, and maybe that's exactly why.

Or maybe...

My imagination likes to think the little people finally got some privacy.
Can you imagine if someone announced there really were little people living in a desert cave?

Influencers would be lined up before sunrise.
Somebody would fly a drone through their neighborhood.
Someone else would try to catch one for a YouTube channel.
And before long, someone would accidentally step on one.

That's usually what happens to the little guy.
Maybe that's the point of the old stories.
Not that little people exist.

That little people matter.

Somewhere along the way we've convinced ourselves that if we didn't personally see something, hear it, or measure it, then it probably isn't worth believing. Yet every one of us believes in things we can't hold in our hands, love, hope, luck, kindness, tomorrow.

Maybe belief isn't always about proving something.
Maybe it's about what believing changes inside of us.

I never found the little people in the desert.
Maybe they heard us coming and hid.

Maybe they looked at us the same way we look at strangers wandering through our neighborhoods.

I don't know.

What I do know is that I heard a dog say, "What the f..." last night.
And for one wonderful moment, the world became much more interesting.
Maybe that's what stories are supposed to do.
They remind us that life isn't nearly as small as our reasoning makes it.

Because if you look closely enough, we're all the little people.

Just trying to build our tiny homes, tend our tiny gardens, and make our small corner of the world a little better before someone bigger comes along without looking where they're stepping.

So if you happen to hear a dog talking one night...

Listen.

He might not be barking at all.

He might just be asking the same question the rest of the little people have been asking for a very long time.

"What the f...?"

10 hours ago | [YT] | 67

Backp☮rch Tapes TV

I think I beat YouTube.

Not by going viral. Not by getting rich. I actually reached the end of the algorithm.

There it was... a black screen telling me my feed had expired. Apparently I had scrolled so much that YouTube looked at me and said, "That's it. We've got nothing left. You have officially scrolled the internet."

Imagine being so bored you finish YouTube.

I almost wanted a trophy.

Or maybe a support group.

It did make me wonder though. These tech companies are always telling us they know us better than we know ourselves. If that's true, why do they keep trying to feed me doom and gloom? After a while I couldn't tell if the algorithm thought I was interested in the end of the world or if it was trying to personally arrange it for me.

Maybe it doesn't know me at all.

Maybe it just knows what keeps most people watching.

That little black screen got me thinking about another word that has quietly taken over our lives.

Subscribe.

Funny word, isn't it?

Years ago subscribing meant getting something extra. A magazine showed up in your mailbox. A newspaper landed on your porch. You paid because someone was giving you something you didn't already have.

Now subscriptions have evolved.

Some of them feel less like an invitation and more like ransom.

I read they're putting subscriptions on refrigerators. Imagine buying an expensive appliance only to discover your ice maker has commitment issues.

"Your complimentary ice has ended. Please upgrade to Ice Premium."

That's not innovation.

That's negotiating with your own freezer.

Somewhere along the way subscriptions stopped being about convenience and started becoming tiny little toll booths scattered throughout life.

Movies.
Music.
Software.
Cloud storage.
Doorbells.
Ink.
Cars.

Next thing you know your toaster wants $8.99 a month to brown both sides evenly.

If they could figure out how to charge us monthly for oxygen, somebody in a boardroom would probably call it "Air Plus."

The strange part is we keep saying yes because each subscription seems harmless by itself. It's only when you look at the whole picture that you realize your wallet has become a collection of monthly permission slips.

Your attention has become the product.
Your time has become the currency.
Your habits have become someone's quarterly earnings report.

Not every subscription is bad, though.

Some are built because people genuinely love what they create. They aren't trying to hold your ice cubes hostage. They're simply sharing something they're passionate about and hoping enough people enjoy it to keep the lights on.

There's a difference between supporting someone's work and renting permission to use something you already own.

Maybe that's the curtain we should peek behind before clicking "Subscribe."

So the next time someone asks you to subscribe, don't automatically say yes or no.

Just ask one simple question.
Who benefits most from this relationship?
Sometimes the answer is you.
Sometimes it's them.
Sometimes it's both.

And sometimes... it's just your refrigerator's CEO.

Now, after everything I just said about subscriptions...

This is my YouTube channel.

Please Subscribe.

I promise I won't turn off your ice maker if you don't. But I will check back in about five minutes to see if my ego got any notifications. If it didn't, I'll probably blame the algorithm instead of myself anyway.

That seems to be what it's subscribed to.

1 day ago | [YT] | 120

Backp☮rch Tapes TV

So who watched the new Disney+ Hulu series "My Grandfather Is Charles Manson" with Sophia (Arguelles) Maddox?

What did you think?

I always enjoy hearing other people's opinions because no two people ever watch the same documentary. We all bring our own experiences into it. There really isn't a wrong opinion. Sometimes a terrible review makes me want to watch something even more. Curiosity works in mysterious ways.

Now, I'm not a documentary critic.

I'm just a writer pretending to be an author on YouTube.

In my last video I even told the story of walking into Superior Court in Los Angeles beside two qualified attorneys and, for a few moments, pretending I belonged there with them. I acted like I belonged until eventually... I did.

Sometimes pretending is just believing in yourself before anyone else does.

So let me pretend I'm a movie critic for a minute.

Before I get to the documentary, let me tell you about another guy who understands pretending. His name is Bruce, although everyone knows him as Stoner. That's his head poking out behind Sophia Maddox, Michael Brunner and Chris in this picture.

Years ago Stoner started talking like he was a music promoter. Truth was, he wasn't... yet.

He kept saying it anyway.
Before long he actually became one.

The universe has a funny way of responding to confidence. If you keep showing up as the person you want to become, eventually other people start believing it too.

The first Manson Family Jams I attended, Stoner somehow had GG's brother Merle Allin from the Murder Junkies there. I couldn't believe he pulled it off.

Another year he brought Cherie Currie of The Runaways, and hearing her perform "Cherry Bomb" was something I never expected to see at a small gathering built around an unusual shared interest.

What began as a few friends drinking beer and listening to music quietly grew into a yearly event that lasted nine years.

It all started because one guy believed in an idea before anyone else did.

That's pretending at its best.

Now back to the documentary.

The filming happened the very same day as one of Stoner's events.

Sophia, Michael Brunner and others were there. If you're carrying the last name Manson or are connected to it in some way you're naturally going to attract attention at an event like that. Whether that's fair or not is another discussion entirely.

Watching the documentary and then seeing photos from that same day left me thinking.

Earlier in the documentary there are difficult conversations, tears, frustration and the emotional weight of learning something that could change how you see your own family. Later, at the event, there are smiles, photos and autographs.

None of us really knows what someone is feeling behind a smile.
Maybe that's simply life.
We all do it.

How many times have you smiled for a picture while carrying something nobody around you knew about?

That thought stayed with me more than anything else in the documentary.
It also made me think about pretending.
There are two very different kinds.

One kind is healthy.

It's the kid who pretends to be an astronaut, a musician, a writer or an athlete long before becoming one. It's believing in yourself before the evidence exists. That's imagination mixed with hope.

The other kind begins when pretending is no longer about convincing yourself...

But about convincing everyone else.

That's a much thinner line.

One builds confidence.

The other risks becoming performance.

That's why this documentary made me think less about Charles Manson and more about human nature.

Every one of us is pretending something.
Some are pretending they're stronger than they feel.
Some are pretending they're fine.
Some are pretending they know exactly where they're going.

And sometimes that pretending is exactly what carries them there.

Other times it becomes a performance that's impossible to keep up.
Maybe that's why the documentary left me thinking instead of judging.

Not because it answered every question about Sophia...

But, because it reminded me how close all of us live to that invisible line between believing in ourselves and trying too hard to make everyone else believe us.

When was the last time you pretended?

Maybe the answer says more about where you're headed than where you've been.

3 days ago | [YT] | 112

Backp☮rch Tapes TV

Sometimes I wonder what was going through that boy's mind as he sat in that school chair.

Maybe nothing.
Maybe everything.

Kids back then practiced hiding under school desks because someone told them it might save them from a bomb. Summers brought fears of polio. Swimming pools closed. Parents whispered. Newspapers shouted. To a child, imagination always fills in the parts adults leave out.

Funny thing is...kids have never really changed.
Neither have adults.

Society spends every day telling us what deserves our attention. When to wake up. When to eat. What success looks like. Who the experts are. Who has the answers. Somewhere along the way we begin believing we're thinking entirely for ourselves, when most of the time we're simply reacting to whatever emotion someone else managed to stir first.

Fear has always been one of society's favorite teachers.
As children we pretend monsters live under the bed.

As adults we give those monsters paperwork, badges, titles, television interviews, social media accounts, and official looking documents. They feel more believable now, but they're still built inside our imagination before they ever become reality.

That doesn't mean experts aren't valuable. It just means every expert was once someone who had absolutely no idea what they were doing.

Think about that.

Every teacher was once pretending to be one on their first day.
Every police officer wore the badge before they knew what tomorrow would bring.
Every doctor treated a first patient.
Every parent held a child wondering, "Am I doing this right?"

Nobody arrives fully prepared.
They become prepared by pretending long enough to gain experience.

I'm doing it right now.

I'm pretending these thoughts matter enough to write down.
Pretending I'll somehow connect with someone I'll probably never meet.
Pretending I know where this paragraph is going before I finish typing it.

Truth is...most of my life has been learning while I was already doing the job.
That's usually called making mistakes.

Society has taught us mistakes are something to erase.
Life teaches something different.
Mistakes are where understanding begins.

If you already knew everything, there wouldn't be anything left to learn.

Sometimes I hear people worrying about the future. AI. Technology. The next big thing that's supposed to change the world forever.

Maybe it will.
Maybe it won't.

Machines don't scare me nearly as much as people pretending they understand everything. Human beings have always been capable of building wonderful things...and frightening things. That hasn't changed in thousands of years.

The picture reminded me that maybe fear never really grows up.
It just changes clothes.

So if something has you emotionally tied in knots today, ask yourself one question.
Is it something that's actually happening...

...or something your imagination has already finished writing?

There's a difference.
The boy in that chair couldn't control world events.

Neither can you.

But he could decide whether fear was going to occupy every seat in the classroom.

And so can you.

Maybe we're all just pretending a little more than we'd like to admit.
If that's true, then pretend something useful.
Pretend you're capable until experience proves you are.
Pretend tomorrow might surprise you.
Pretend hope deserves equal time with fear.

Because if we're all making it up as we go anyway.

You might as well give your imagination something worth believing in.

4 days ago | [YT] | 132

Backp☮rch Tapes TV

Before this picture was ever taken, that finger was just a finger.
Now it looks like it is waiting for something.

Maybe a butterfly.

One day I got to wondering where all the butterflies had gone. I live practically in the desert. My planters are full of fake butterflies because apparently plastic ones don't mind the heat. I realized I couldn't remember the last time I had seen a real one the little yellow and gold flashes that seem to float more than fly.

Funny how one simple thought can change everything.

That day I went to Walmart. Now, people say Walmart brings out the worst in humanity. I don't know. For me it seems to be where the universe shops.

The first butterfly I found wasn't flying at all. It was a giant purple one on a lady's shirt standing in front of the cheese. I actually had to wait for that butterfly to move so I could grab my cheddar. That's a sentence I never expected to write.

Then I headed toward the bird seed aisle my neighborhood birds don't have jobs, hands or wallets, so I shop for them. Right before I got there was an entire display of summer decorations.

Butterflies.
Everywhere.

The kind of moment that makes you stop pushing the cart for a second and wonder if life is laughing with you.
What began as, "I never see butterflies anymore," suddenly became, "Why are they everywhere?"

The funny thing is... they probably always were.

Months have passed since that day, and I see real butterflies almost every day now. Sometimes one will drift right through my line of sight as if it is checking attendance.

"Yep... he's still looking."
It always makes me smile.
Did I magically create butterflies?

Probably not.

Did I create someone who notices them?

Absolutely.

That's the real magic.

Most of us spend our days looking for everything that's missing. We tell ourselves we're not smart enough, not lucky enough, not attractive enough, not worthy enough. We rehearse those thoughts so often they become invisible.

If your mind can convince you to believe those lies...
Why couldn't it convince you of better ones?

Tell yourself you're capable.
Tell yourself you're enough.
Tell yourself life still has surprises waiting around the next corner.

Your brain is listening either way.

Remember playing Slug Bug as a kid? The minute somebody yelled, "Slug Bug!" suddenly every Volkswagen on Earth seemed to appear. They weren't hiding before. You just taught your brain what to look for.

Life works like that more often than we notice.

Butterflies.
Volkswagens.
Smiles.
Hope.

Whatever you point your attention toward has a funny habit of pointing itself back at you.

Maybe that's your superpower.
Not flying.
Not reading minds.

Just choosing what your mind is going to notice tomorrow.

So tonight, think about something beautiful. Really think about it. Give it a place to land.

Then tomorrow...

Put your finger out.

You never know what might decide you're worth landing on.

1 week ago | [YT] | 126

Backp☮rch Tapes TV

The picture today is Charles Manson staring at nothing.
At least that's what it looks like to me.

Maybe that's why I found myself outside tonight doing exactly the same thing. I wasn't staring at him. I was staring at the moon, trying to think about absolutely nothing.

It didn't work.
Nothing is funny that way.

The harder you try to think about nothing, the more everything shows up. Memories. Questions. Ideas. Things you haven't thought about in forty years suddenly wander into your head like they were just waiting for an invitation.

Maybe that's why kids are so creative.

Nobody tells a child they're wasting time staring at clouds, lying in the grass, or watching the moon. Somewhere along the way we become "grown-ups," and that's when the rules quietly arrive. Be productive. Stay busy. Keep moving. Thinking about nothing suddenly becomes doing nothing.

They're not the same thing.

Doing nothing might actually be where life happens.

The best stories usually don't arrive during a meeting. Great paintings aren't painted while someone is checking their notifications every thirty seconds. Songs don't come from being overwhelmed. They come from quiet little spaces where nothing seems to be happening.

Nothing is where imagination stretches its legs.

As I stared at the moon tonight, I somehow ended up thinking about dancing.
People used to dance more.

My church thought dancing was a shortcut to hell, but my mom disagreed. When she remarried she invited everyone from church and made sure there would be dancing. It was part of the invitation.

"If you're worried about going to hell," she seemed to be saying, "you might want to stay home."

She shocked me.

I had never seen my mom dance before. Suddenly she looked like she belonged on American Bandstand. Turns out the biggest rebel I ever knew wasn't Charles Manson.

It was my mother.

I'm not much of a dancer myself, although Manson loved to dance. Funny the things you remember when you're trying not to think.

Then the moon started looking like a bowling ball.
Not a perfect one. A cracked one.

Maybe that's because people don't bowl much anymore either. My Aunt Donna had her own bowling ball and shoes. Lots of people did. These days I don't know anyone with bowling shoes in their closet. Maybe that's because bowling alleys rented the ugliest shoes ever made. I always figured they made them look like clown shoes so nobody would steal them.

If that's true...

It worked.

The moon kept changing.
It became less of a bowling ball and more of a cup.
A cracked cup.

Maybe the crack isn't damage at all. Maybe it's where the dreams spill out.

I've always believed strange things. I like candles even when it's a hundred degrees outside. Years ago a Native American man told me maybe I had a grandmother somewhere hidden in my blood calling me toward fire.

Maybe he was right.
Maybe he wasn't.
Either way I still light candles.

I also think my hair works like an antenna.
Laugh if you want.

When I get quiet enough, ideas seem less like they come from inside me and more like they're floating around waiting for someone to tune in. Maybe that's why thinking about nothing brings so much.

Silence has a frequency.
What worries me isn't that people are different.
It's that we've forgotten how to be still together.

People used to sit on porches with nothing to do. They'd talk. They'd laugh. They'd watch the world become evening. Nobody was trying to monetize the sunset back then.

Now we're surrounded by people but somehow spend more time consuming each other than knowing each other.
Somewhere along the way, being human got replaced by being busy.
Maybe that's why so many people feel empty.

They've been too full.
Too full of noise.
Too full of schedules.
Too full to notice the moon.

Tonight I looked up trying to think of nothing.

Instead I found dancing, bowling, my mother, old churches, cracked bowling balls, candles, hope, and a sky full of questions.

That's the trick.
Nothing isn't empty.
Nothing is where everything has room to arrive.

So maybe tomorrow night, step outside for five minutes.
Don't take a picture.
Don't play a video.
Don't scroll.

Just look up.

You might think you're doing nothing.
You might actually be finding yourself.
Life has fewer rules than we've been led to believe.
We've just been following them anyway.

1 week ago | [YT] | 137

Backp☮rch Tapes TV

Yes, we're doing alright over here, but thank you for your concern.

People have told me for over a year now that YouTube is for videos, not words. They're probably right. I'm not here to argue that. It is a great place for videos.

I just found out it's also a pretty good place to sit in the dark and write words on it too.

When I first started posting these little midnight pieces, people wanted to know what the point was. Some genuinely asked. Others already knew the answer they wanted me to give. I never explained it. I just kept writing.

Why?

Because everywhere I go, people seem to be looking for something to believe in. If a few paragraphs can make someone think differently or smile for thirty seconds, then I guess that's my part in the world.

Today's picture is Charlie smiling for the camera. He could almost pass for Jesus in this one. Then again, if you'd been up for three days on enough drugs, you probably thought he was Jesus anyway. At least the version of Jesus us redneck hillbilly white kids from Ohio always saw hanging on church walls.

Funny how a picture can convince people of almost anything.

Back when I started writing on here, there was always somebody in the comments asking why I never talked about the victims. They usually thought they were being clever.

As if I'd forgotten them.
Truth is, I probably think about victims more than they realize.
Not just those victims.
All victims.

Years ago I worked at Roberts Funeral Home in Wellsville, Ohio. I was sixteen when I quit, right after my father's funeral was held there. I couldn't walk those halls anymore without feeling my own mortality following behind me.

The funeral home is still there today.
Every now and then I still visit its website.
Not because I enjoy reading obituaries.
Because that's where the people from my hometown eventually end up.

Wellsville became known for opioids and fentanyl long before most places admitted they had the same problem. Every week I recognize another name. A classmate. A neighbor. Yesterday it was a family friend. Last week it was someone I grew up with.

That website is full of victims.
It's respectful. It's compassionate. Wonderful people run it.

But when I leave it, I've never once felt happier.

That's probably why I don't spend my nights writing about misery.
People already carry enough of it.

The world has enough reminders that life hurts.
I'd rather try remind someone that it still smiles once in a while too.

Look into anyone's eyes long enough and you'll find a victim of something. A broken heart. A bad decision. A childhood. An addiction. Regret. Loss. Fear. Loneliness.

We're all innocent of something.
We're all guilty of something.
And somewhere along the way, we're all victims of something.

That's why cameras everywhere are dangerous.

A camera catches a single moment and lets strangers build an entire life around it. One photograph can make someone the hero, the villain, the saint, or the suspect. Sometimes it gets it right.

Sometimes it creates a victim.

The funny thing is, the people asking me to write about victims never realized they were already reading about them.

I wasn't avoiding victims.
I was writing to them.
Maybe even for them.

Maybe for the guy who left all those comments before he disappeared into life's next chapter. I don't know what became of him. For all I know, he became another victim of something himself. That's what life eventually does to every one of us in one way or another.

So yes, I run wild sometimes.
Mostly in my mind.

I run toward things worth smiling about because there are already enough places keeping score of life's tragedies.

I know one website where every new post begins with someone who lost.
I don't want this to feel like that.

But, this post is about victims after all.
Not just Sharon Tate.
Not just the LaBianca's.
Not just the people whose names became part of history.

It's about the ones reading this.
The ones carrying something nobody else can see.

The ones who got knocked down by life but still found enough strength to keep scrolling.

That's who I hope reads these posts.
Manson just happens to be standing in the picture spot.
The story has always been about victims.

So, if by chance you happened to forgot about your own troubles for a couple of minutes, while reading words on a platform everyone says should only have videos...

Then maybe I've been doing it wrong exactly the right way.

1 week ago | [YT] | 154

Backp☮rch Tapes TV

The comment section wasn't invented for people with something nice to say. It was invented for the rest of us... the ones who occasionally wake up, stub a toe, spill the coffee, and decide a stranger on the internet should hear all about it.

That's not entirely true, of course.

But some days it sure feels like it.

The funny thing about comments is they rarely tell you much about the post. They tell you a surprising amount about the person writing them. Happiness has a certain vocabulary. So does frustration. So does loneliness. You can almost hear someone's day between the words they choose.

Sarcasm is easy enough to miss online. Meanness usually isn't. It has a way of introducing itself before you even finish the sentence.

Oddly enough, it doesn't hurt my feelings.

It makes me curious.

Because if a video or picture truly offended someone as much as they claim, the easiest solution would be to close it and move on. Instead, they stay. They type. They edit. They hit send. Then they come back to see who noticed.

That's not about the picture anymore.

That's about needing an audience.

We used to have soapboxes in the town square. Now we have comment sections. Maybe they should have named them Soapbox, or Your Two Cents, because "comments" sounds far too polite for what sometimes happens there.

None of this is personal to me.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

I have one too.

The difference is I've learned something about opinions: every one of them tells a story about the person holding it. If someone believes everything is terrible, eventually everything they describe becomes terrible. The weather is awful. The neighbors are awful. The government is awful. The restaurant is awful. By lunchtime, existence itself has apparently become one giant customer service complaint.

I know people like that.

I usually just let them talk.

When they're finished, they feel lighter.

The weight didn't disappear.

They simply handed it to someone else.

That's what negative comments often are: a relay race. Someone carrying a miserable baton hoping you'll grab it and run the next lap.

The temptation is immediate. Your pulse jumps. Your fingers hover over the keyboard. You begin composing the greatest response in internet history.

Congratulations...

You're in the race.

Or...

You can stay in the stands and watch everyone sprint toward the finish line that nobody actually wants to win.

The beautiful part is this: every comment is correct... for the person writing it. It may not be true. It may not be fair. It may not even make sense.

But it reveals where that person happens to be standing when they wrote it.

That's worth remembering.

And here's the part that might surprise you.

I don't actually want the negative comments to disappear.

Imagine a world where every comment simply read, "Great post!" "Amazing!" "Love it!"

How long before we'd stop believing any of them?

Disagreement keeps conversations alive. Honest opinions have value, even when I don't share them. The people who create something also create a place for everyone else to react to it. Without creators, there isn't even a comment section to complain in.

So here's my contribution.

If today has been rough... if traffic was terrible, your boss annoyed you, the dog ignored you, and life generally feels determined to test your patience...

I've thoughtfully provided a comment section just below.

You're welcome.

Just remember...

The words you leave behind may end up describing you far better than they ever describe the picture you're commenting on.

And if you happen to leave a kind one... Well...

That probably says something about you, too.

Smile.

It confuses everybody.

1 week ago (edited) | [YT] | 138

Backp☮rch Tapes TV

When was the last time you really smiled?

Not the polite smile. Not the one you put on because someone was looking. I mean the kind that sneaks up on you before you even realize it's there.

Looking at this picture of Charlie Manson, I notice the smile before I notice anything else. That's interesting because a smile costs absolutely nothing, yet it can tell you almost everything. Poker players call them "tells." Little things people give away without meaning to. I think smiles have tells too.

Can you see it?

Maybe you can. Maybe you can't. That's the funny thing about photographs. They don't have a dozen meanings. We add those.

I spend a lot of time watching people. Not judging them...just watching. You start to notice patterns. Some people smile because they're happy. Some smile because they're nervous. Some smile because they want you to feel comfortable. Others smile because they know something you don't. The smile is the same. The reason behind it almost never is.

So how do you smile?

Not how your lips move and teeth show. How does it happen?

Can you make yourself smile without anyone helping you?

That question means more than it sounds like.

When I'm walking through the grocery store, I smile at strangers all the time. Men. Women. Doesn't matter. It isn't flirting. It isn't trying to make friends. It's simply saying, "We're sharing this aisle together, and today isn't going to be complicated."

Almost every single person smiles back.

For a second, two complete strangers agree on something without saying a word.

That's a "Superpower" if you ask me.

Looking at this photograph, I can't know what made Manson smile. Nobody can. Maybe someone said something funny. Maybe he was amused by a thought only he understood. Maybe it meant nothing at all.

But the mystery isn't really his smile.

It's yours.

Can you create one from nothing?

Some people can. Some people can't. Life has a way of taking that ability away from people without them even noticing. That's why I think the people who can smile have a responsibility to share it.

Think about this it's powerful... You never know who's borrowing theirs from you.

The only interaction you may ever have with someone is a smile in passing. They won't know your name. You won't know theirs. Yet years later they may remember that, on a day when life felt especially heavy, one stranger looked at them like the world wasn't such a bad place after all.

Imagine changing someone's day without spending a penny.

That's what a smile can do.

Maybe that's its greatest tell.

Not that someone is happy...

But that they're giving someone else permission to be.

1 week ago | [YT] | 137

Backp☮rch Tapes TV

Before the internet, people carried stories the way the wind carries seeds. Somebody would hear something, tell somebody else, and by the time it reached our little town it had already grown a few extra branches. Looking back now, it almost feels like rumors traveled faster without Wi-Fi because they had imagination helping them along.

This picture is just Charles Manson standing beside a ruler. That's all the camera captured. But photographs have a funny habit of hiding more than they show. If you let your mind's eye drift over them like a second layer of film, they become little time machines. Suddenly you're not measuring a man anymore, you're measuring an era.

It starts with a simple question.

Does size matter?

That sounds like one of those questions trying to lure your mind into the gutter, but today it's headed somewhere else entirely.

The ruler says Manson was about five foot four. If you go by the part in his hair, maybe one side of him even reaches five foot four and a half. Yet somewhere along the line the rumor became five foot two, and that missing two inches bothered him enough that he'd correct people whenever he could.

Honestly... I get it.

If somebody introduced me as five foot ten instead of six feet, I'd probably clear my throat too. Funny how two inches can seem so small until they're yours.

Then again, two inches is a lot depending on what you're measuring.

Two inches from a crocodile's teeth.

Two inches from a bullet.

Or a two inch stack of hundred-dollar bills.

Now that's a measurement I'd happily accept.

So maybe the story here was never about height at all. It was about rumors. Two inches became a mile because that's what stories like to do.

That thought sent me straight back to being a kid.

Do you remember Mikey from the Life cereal commercials?

"Hey Mikey! He likes it!"

My name being Michael was close enough that every kid around me decided I was Mikey and I'd eat pretty much anything. Somewhere in my head I must have remembered the commercial wrong. Maybe it was my own little Mandela Effect because I could've sworn the joke was that Mikey hated everything until he liked the cereal.

Then came the Pop Rocks story.

An uncle at a family reunion announced, with complete confidence, that Mikey had eaten Pop Rocks, washed them down with Coca-Cola, and his stomach exploded.

Case closed.

No fact checking.

No Google.

Just one adult saying it with enough confidence that every kid believed him.

I remember looking at the unopened packets thinking everyone else had suddenly become scared of them. My first instinct wasn't to avoid them, it was to take them home and try and find some coca cola.

My uncle was basically TikTok before TikTok existed.

Years later, the actor who played Mikey had to tell everyone he was still alive because the rumor had become bigger than the truth.

That tells me something.

Social media didn't invent misinformation.

Parents were our search engines.

Uncles were influencers.

The neighborhood was the algorithm.

Even my mom got in on it.

One day I accidentally swallowed my gum.

"Michael Allen," she said, "that'll stay inside you for seven years."

I believed that one too.

Funny how the people trying to protect us also gave us some of our greatest myths.

So I come back to this picture.

A ruler.

Five foot four.

Two missing inches.

A rumor.

That's all.

Or maybe it isn't.

Because if you lay your mind's eye over the photograph like tracing paper, you don't just see a mugshot. You see cereal commercials, family reunions, old wives' tales, parents trying to scare kids straight, and a world where stories traveled mouth to mouth instead of phone to phone.

Then the time machine brings you right back to today...

and you realize almost nothing has changed.

The apps changed.

The speed changed.

But people?

We're still measuring each other.

We're still adding a few inches.

We're still subtracting a little truth.

A photograph has only one purpose, to preserve a moment. Everything else is something we bring to it. That's why the best time machine isn't built out of DeLorean's or flux capacitors. It's built out of memory. You always come back to today expecting a different world, only to find the same people telling the same stories now with just different props.

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 138