Nostalgia is a Weapon - I think Ben Hoerman is very talented and smart. I watched this with my kid and said about 2 mins in, "how long before someone comments to watch at 1.5 speed?" Not because there is anything wrong with the very deliberate pacing, but because I know these late millennial and gen Z fuckers too well. They don't have time for your detailed introspection. I hope they don't, but I know they will.
The biggest problem is closeness and comfortability in the path of least resistance, or in this case of the least amount of constant pain, harm, dread, for yourself, for others. A lot of people are aware that they're in a nostalgia prison, even if that's not how they define it. It's just the alternative seems unbearable when your brain is broken, you're depressed, hopeless, feeling helpless and/or alone in your cell. Some people feel there is no alternative to accepting a kind of general apathy that makes them feel things because they don't know of any other accessible options. Others revel in their chosen version of history and become CEOs of companies, head of the DoD or DOJ, lobbyists and enablers of ethnocentrists, all of whom who live under the protection of easily disprovable myths, trying to convince the world and themselves they're fighting for civil liberties by fighting for themselves and their untreated-trauma-informed version of "good". Fear of facing reality or trauma turns natural human reactions to lived experiences of the past upside down and centers the individual as the hero or villain of their own completely ungrounded story. I genuinely think varying degrees untreated/diagnosed mental illness and delusional thinking is an epidemic in 2026 and as we become more unstable as a civil society it will only get worse. Whether it's intentional or not, we can't even talk about it because those charged with informing us about such things are the same people who contribute to it, carefully creating a narrow perspective that centers fear and pain when it wants, or longing and envy if that's what's called for.
I am kind of envious of those who can look at the past or their "home" and long for it. That has never been an ongoing problem for me as an adult. My literal childhood home was "home" for me because I spent so much time there alone and I could count on it being generally same through time passing. That home in the country now finds itself in what is more like an upgraded suburb. A house sits where, up until about 10 years ago, we still used to have bonfires with my kid and family. The large pieces of land and farms all around us are getting divvied up to put more oversized, overpriced houses on them. That tactile nostalgia has been crushed in real time in front of my eyes over and over again. I live in the middle of the town that when I was a kid I spent a lot of time in walking around the streets of, going from house to mobile home to apartment without anyone bothering you or looking at you weird, including the cops, for the most part. The after school juvy office used to be in a windowed store front on the main street so you could go taunt your friends while they were doing their required time. This was alongside a bunch of little working class mom and pop stores now occupied and owned by a few rich right-wing twats and their tenants who will also eventually have to close. Most will at some point, because the couple of rich cunts that own them all greatly increase the rent every few years. They don't care that it's still very much a working class part of the county, where most of the poor people live, and can't afford to or want to buy their dumb antiques, shitty art or eat at the overpriced restaurants that treat their waitstaff like shit. If they had their way they'd move us to the next county over to live, but still have to come back to work in the "rich" county (you also have to pay higher income tax if you live in another city/county, but work in this city - we have one of the largest employers in the county here, which most people commute to). I hate living here because it is almost unrecognizable at this point, but since no one who lives here ever goes anywhere, they don't know any different. It's just been molded into a town that is not retaining much of the charm that came from the people who could once afford to own businesses and live here.
As far as the past goes, I regularly relitigated decisions I made or did not make from about 1995 up until I had my kid over the past 25 years. The problem was by tying my unease to a situation or friendship or relationship and my choices relating to them, I left out contemplating some of the most traumatic/formative years of my life, which mostly happened before that time and lead to me leaving everything behind at that point. I am trying to work through some of that shit now, and it's kind of mercifully difficult because there are things I know happened, remember everything up until those points or moment, sometimes after, or flashes during, but often not exactly that thing that created trauma hole. I am now having to decide whether to just let that shit go and hope the trauma related consequences eventually go with it, or ask for help from those I don't think would really want to talk to or help me at all, let alone about this stuff. Either option is turning out to be very trapping in itself.
There is nothing wrong with processing memories or feelings or regrets or longing or whateverthefuck, but as I have always told my kid, often, you CANNOT live there. Doing so is so very dangerous, you can get lost, and never find your way back or another way out. I know from experience, sometimes, no matter how empty and painful it feels not find "closure" or resolution, you have to just move on. You cannot fix and you will truly never understand things that the other people involved just don't give a shit about. If it means nothing to them, they likely don't even have a reliable memory of the thing or instance that means so much to you. You can only figure out how you can move forward without getting what you thought needed in order to leave it behind. That trail may linger behind you for good, but it'll fade, and you're not supposed to walk backwards or you'll miss what's in front of you, or you'll violently crash into things you would have otherwise avoided.
I just want clarity for the things that pain/fear won't let me remember because that's not nostalgia, that's a trauma hole. Or more accurately, an indistinct, yet razor wire-lined trauma cavern. Most people have both, or one because of the other. It's been so long since I watched this video at this point I'm not even sure I'm making sense anymore. Sometimes I just need to leave this shit alone because I feel like the more I edit the more it starts to skew toward other points that I was not trying to make. Perhaps it's because of my own internal prison. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What I hoped to convey before I babbled on, and never really got there, is in a round about way, Ben's work is best when viewed as a whole. Each video puts another more into focus, because these are foundational issues, they are all intertwined. Need more reflective people who aren't up their own assholes, with genuine artistic vision, who put the time in.
6/19/26
