Hello Downriver,
I once knew a boy who loved to laugh, make plans and had thoughts of grand travels and a good life.
The few times we got together — his family lived in Ohio where my family would visit at least once a year — we talked about someday driving a Corvette across country to see Haley Mills.
Yep, we were both smitten by the young star of “Pollyanna,” “The Castaways” and literally dozens of other motion pictures.
For the two of us, she was the embodiment of the perfect girl: upbeat, courageous, beautiful; the Hollywood pin-up for pre-pubescent adolescent boys.
We would laugh about such a trip late at night, and then share dreams about where life might take us.
As the years wore on and we grew older and had families of our own, when we got together we still laughed at that shared dream.
But over time, something else started to intrude on those dreams, those hopes; a darker — much darker — view of a future that I simply couldn’t reconcile with the boy I used to know.
Married with a beautiful wife and great kids, a part of him started to withdraw, becoming alone in the midst of a crowd.
For years, their home had become the wondrous, welcoming gathering place for our extended families from literally across the country, who assembled — with tents, trailers and campers — at an annual “cousin’s reunion” in the rural backroads of mid-Ohio.
There was an in-ground pool, a nightly bonfire, intense poker games and a white elephant auction to pay for food and games — at which I was the top-hatted auctioneer.
He and his wife were the most gracious hosts you could want, opening their home and their hearts to us.
For his immediate family of kids and nieces and nephews, he was the greatest.
Today, many speak of his kindness, remembering his graciousness, laughter and, yes, offer of comfort in times of need.
But as the years wore on, that creeping darkness enveloped a part of him just a little more each year, like storm clouds sliding across the farmland in summer.
As the rest of us swam and laughed and participated in games at the reunion, he would sometimes withdraw into his den, playing music alone on his electronic keyboard.
But eventually he started tapping other keys — on his computer — and moved ever so slowly into the nascent internet world of what we would now call doom scrolling.
Within a few years, he was posting and sharing links of things that I would never have thought to consider, and certainly never expected from him.
He would send me those posts and links, not with a request to respond but, I think, to merely have me recognize his revised view of the world.
A suspicious, apprehensive, skeptical, distrustful and isolating world.
Within a very short time, the annual reunion evaporated, as he and his wife started drifting apart; their home was no longer welcoming, but rather had become an empty reminder of what used to be.
Over the past decades, I had lost touch with him altogether — as had some of his own family.
And last week, his son texted that he had died.
Alone.
Over the years, I had considered driving down to see him, to put logs on a bonfire and reminisce about what was and ask him about what is.
I thought about it so often that I kicked myself for just not jumping in my car and driving south.
I could’ve done it, I should’ve done it.
I don’t know why I never did, but in retrospect, I think it was fear; fear that I wouldn’t know what to say or how to say it.
Should I attack his extreme views by offering logical arguments in opposition?
Should I listen to him simply repeat the fear and fright he was reading online, and hope that he’d exhaust himself?
Should I just change the subject and hope to paper over the change in him?
But in the end, I was a coward; I never took any step whatsoever, and listened instead to what others said about his slip into what I thought was madness.
Still, I wondered if I could have simply talked him off the ledge — although I’m aware of the hubris to think I could’ve done something; to think I alone could have changed things.
For it wasn’t up to me.
All I could do was watch from a distance as things deteriorated — and wonder how it happened.
Which brought me to a study by psychologist Leon Festinger.
In this study, he described a phenomenon of “cognitive dissonance” in which there is a disconnect between one’s feelings, beliefs and convictions and their observable actions.
This dissonance he said, is distressing and, in order to relieve the anxiety, the person does the opposite of what you might expect: he becomes MORE invested in the cult or belief system, one that goes against who they are individually.
As such, Festinger said, the person becomes more “dug-in” and will cling to thoughts and beliefs that contradict available evidence.
In other words, he said, they are no longer able to find a middle ground or compromise.
Of course, I have no first-hand experience with his spiral into this world of suspicion, paranoia and distrust of authority — my exposure was always a digital message, image, slogan, referral; it was his family who told me of the depth of his deterioration.
All I had were his periodic emails that either forwarded extremist and, quite frankly, terrifying views of the world, or were ramblings that bordered on the incoherent.
But that was enough to tell a tale of someone who had gotten lost in the evolving digital world, had gone down the rabbit hole of misinformation and fake news — taking legitimate facts and twisting them in order to fit a preconceived narrative and thereby reinforcing beliefs.
Creating an unbreakable downward cycle.
This kind of constant exposure to fake news and militant interactions “can increase feelings of anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem,” Festinger wrote.
And this, experts say today, can not only impact a person’s understanding of world events, but can lead to dangerous actions.
Taken to an extreme, this can even “encourage risky behaviors, including self-harm.”
According to those same experts, “excessive internet use can lead to social isolation and may be linked to anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues.”
I don’t know how far down this path he went in his life; I only knew of his digital expressions of anxiety, worry, anger and fear; things that led to an alienation of family and as time wore on, a complete change in him physically.
Gone, obviously, was the boy I remember, but so too was the man I thought I knew.
Today, we hear of stories of how the internet has affected a generation of boys; about young men (specifically) who sit in the dark and share games, but also share dark thoughts about the world outside.
Too many of us make fun of them — the gamer sitting in his mother’s basement — but there’s nothing funny about the descent of a good man into a hell he couldn’t escape.
A man who used to be a boy wanting to jump into Corvette and go see Haley Mills.
To read my essays — long and short — check out Substack.com and look for me at “Farrandipity.” It’s free. Craig Farrand can be reached at craig.substack@gmail.com.
