If Liquid Death Is Water, What’s In The Wi‑Fi?

The blue glow trains more than our thumbs—it trains our nervous systems. Starting with the myth that we’re the customer, I explore how platforms convert our time and emotions into inventory, then use shock value and death-heavy aesthetics to keep us hooked. It’s not about fearmongering; it’s about noticing how language and imagery prime the nervous system and, over time, normalize agitation, comparison, and numbness.

You’ll learn a simple four-question filter to evaluate ads, games, and trends: creation or destruction, connection or humiliation, empowering or degrading, and whether you’d accept that language for someone you love. Media literacy isn’t a buzzword here; it’s a daily practice of choosing inputs that align with the life you want to feel.

If you’re ready to see your feed with new eyes and take back your inner algorithm, press play. Share this with a friend, subscribe for more grounded media literacy, and leave a review with one change you’re making to your digital diet today.

Transcript

Welcome And Dedication

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Advertising has done more to cause the social unrest of the twentieth century than any other single factor. And today we're going to continue our scrolling the blue is killing the real you. And we're going to talk about some very important media literacy and consciousness analysis today. Because it's time we understand that we're not the customers. We are the product. And I welcome you back to Free to Just Be, the podcast where I share my own daily dance of transformation, my lived, extremely honest journey of my own awakening. And I share it to help everybody in Humanityville recognize the energetic shift happening on our planet and to help us all reconnect with our own inner truths. And I hope that through my stories and reflections, that we can open our minds and soften our hearts and eventually gather all of us back together again, and not just online, but eventually in real-life communities where movement, compassion, and presence bring us back home, not only to ourselves and to God, but ultimately to each other. So welcome, welcome on this Wednesday, January 21st, 2026. And I want to dedicate this to my dad, who uh passed way back in 1974, right before my 14th birthday, and today he would have been 102 years old. So, dad, thank you for bringing me um to the planet, and uh I dedicate the show to you, Alvin Whitman, Mary Nelson. Yep, that'd be my dad. So today um it's uh 4:52 a.m. and it's a work day, so I'm gonna get right to our meet today. And uh we I have not forgotten my series about scrolling the blue is killing the real you because we need to really bring our attention, our conscious awareness to what is actually happening here. Um, some of the quotes that I veered to as I was doing some homework about this aspect of the internet. You know, advertising, they say, brings in the customer, but then it's your job to keep them from buying from you. So as we approach this material, I want you to understand what in fact is happening when you open your laptop or your phone or your tablet and begin to scroll. You think that you're in control, you think that you get online and um you are just gonna check your Instagram status, for example, or see if anybody read your post on Facebook, and then oftentimes you end up spending money. Now that wasn't your intention, but you know, you saw something that really piqued your interest, and you've you've seen it many times, and and finally you're like, you know what, I gotta try that. I've got to try that. And what you just experienced going in to just maybe post your little quote of encouragement on Facebook is the harvesting of you. Yes, yes, that's right. Mari Smith said uh the best Facebook ads look and feel as relevant and timely in your newsfeed as the post you see from your friends. It's manipulation, folks. You know, you know, I mean, they tell us follow the trend, the trend is your friend. Follow the trend and dress with extraordinary attitude. Because, see, if you're not following the trend, therefore, you don't have extraordinary attitude. Your skin is 90% of your selfie. Oh my goodness, then we better get those masks that make our face look like glass. And I'm just here to tell you it it doesn't do a dang thing on your skin. Just saying. Good advertising is actually a dialogue with the people watching it. But the thing is, you don't realize you're in a conversation, you don't understand that they are grooming you, right? Now, just to take my point home here, I want for you to understand some of the things that we're actually seeing. I let let's start from the ground up. Let's start with the products that our children use, play with. Just let's let's just go through some of these lists, okay? How about products like garbage pal kids? Now that's what we want our kids to think, that we are garbage, right? How about monster high? How about tox waste candy? These don't just sell items. What they're doing is setting up identity scripts. Ugly is funny, gross is cool, violence is play, and chaos is normal. Think about that. Our kids don't have filters, and they absorb everything as their own identity before logic. Then there's shock language, right? They're using specific banter to suck you in. We have to begin opening our ears and our eyes and consciously become aware of exactly what it is that is occurring when we get online. Let's continue the list just for a moment. So let's just continue down this list for a minute so that we can actually understand. These are our kids. What about zombie babies? Oh, death imagery, imagery normalized for infants and toddlers, zombie babies, right? Monster high. That's an identity tied to death, monsters, and literally dismemberment themes. This is this is what we want to feed our kids, right? How about Fuggler? Funny, ugly monsters, intentionally disturbing faces, teeth, and deformity, as humor. How about mad balls, grotesque, violent character caricatures marketed as comedy, funny? Oh, don't be scared of that. They're grooming you to go into the tunnels and be dismembered yourself. That may be a little graphic, but you get my drift. How about exploding kittens? How about Doomlings? Which, you know, opens up party games about the apocalypse extinction and mutation themes. It's it's just incredible. This is just our kids. How about the ones that came out this year? Five nights at Freddy's. That's all about fear conditioning and causing death anxiety. How about Happy Wheels, which is all about graphic injuries and again dismemberment? How about the goat simulator? Chaos, destruction, and nihilistic humor. Roblox, oh Buddy. Have you ever watched Roblox? Most games involve violence, humiliation, and social ranking. Poopsie slime surprise, bathroom humor, and bodily waste normalization. What about all the even the emojis with piles of poop? I mean, why do we want to think about stuff like this? And why do we want our children around stuff like that? How about flushing frenzy? Dr. Dreadful, which is nothing but horror and gross food play. These products rely on shock value, grotesque exaggeration, humiliation as humor. They desensitize our kids to violence and decay and tie their identities to ugly, gross, dead, or broken. These are all things that we want our kids to think about, isn't it? Let's move up the scale here. We're done with our kids for a minute, and let's let's think of some of the other products. What about products we use around our household? Draeno, Raid, Roundup, Poison, which is a Dior, perfume line, poison, along with black skull or skull candy. How about the snacks we give our kids? Toxic waste, warheads, sour patch kids, which uses a violent and abusive narrative. How about zombie skittles? Or how about monster cereals like Count Chocula? Let's move up to adults. How about oh, some of my favorite are in the quote unquote energy realm. Now look look at the absolute it's it's it actually cancels each other out. It makes no sense. Liquid death. Liquid death is canned water marketed with skulls, and it's the advertising says murder your thirst. Doesn't that sound like you the energy you want? Along with monster energy or rock star energy. You know, drink this and you're gonna be a rock star. How about bang energy? When of course, you know, the word bang is is talking about sex, right? So you want bang energy? Well, drink me. Red Bull, which uses violent imagery, right? How about Death Wish Coffee or killer coffee, venom energy, poison coffee? Then we go into the alcohols. How about mad dog 2020? Which literally causes people to just act like mad dogs and lose their 2020 vision, by the way. Remember those days? Those that are in my age group, mad dog 2020, oh you know, that is every teenager's dream of puking in the toilet, isn't it? And today now we have four loco, which will get you so drunk after the first can, because it's like eight or nine percent alcohol, and it's all by design, and this is what we're scrolling. So this is a legitimate question I'm posing. Do we understand that these trends are intentional marketed marketing? And it's they're all rooted in shock value, edgy identity signaling, desensitization to death language, turning danger into humor or even status, and rebellion imagery, it's everywhere. And then if you look at it from the psychological and neurological standpoint, I mean, we are in a war and they are harvesting us, we are their product, because words like this prime the nervous system, and repeated exposure does what? It normalizes concepts. Why do you think violence is so easy to evoke? And why is it becoming so much more prevalent? Because we have been victims of branding, branding which shapes emotional associations, especially subconsciously. We think that we're scrolling and we don't recognize that each little pixel is subconsciously doing something to our brain, it's shifting us. And we are wrong not to notice this pattern. We need to simply slow down enough to recognize what we are feeding ourselves. Because you see, feeding ourselves isn't just the food we eat, it's what we allow in our eyes and our ears, and oh my god, what we're allowing our children to ingest when they they don't even have the wherewithal to know what's right or wrong yet. And we wonder why our kids are having meltdowns, full of anxiety, don't want to come out from under their desk. We need to understand as well, everything is a balance. Now, not everyone who drinks a uh energy drink called liquid death is quote unquote harming themselves. And not every brand that I'm bringing up, you know, I'm not saying that they're evil. It's not about fear or uh moral superiority. What I'm talking about, Humanityville, that we need to wake up, come out of the dream of uh the dreamscape that this blue globe brings on. And and you know, the biggest justification is oh, you know, uh we make ourselves feel better by saying, oh, you know, um, go to Google, you know, Google knows everything. Well, that is a true statement. It is harvesting information about us every single time we scroll. Every like, every comment, every um site that we reject, they are compiling a composite picture of you, me, and your children. And then they mark it to us, right? It's all about discernment. We need to resurrect discernment because we are absolutely in a season where they are simplifying the inputs, they are lowing um, we don't even know that noise is entering our nervous system, right? We need to become more intentional folks about what we ingest, not only physically, but symbolically as well. So the branding language aspects that I'm talking about matters to all of us. And that is why it's so worthy of a real investigation. So instead of, you know, saying, is this bad, the better question we need to ask ourselves now is do these ads, does this scrolling align with the frequency that we're trying to live in right now? If you feel yourself becoming more anxious, more uptight, um, feeling more lack, uh, finding yourself comparing yourself more and more, the answer to that question, does it align with what we're trying to live in now may be a simple no. So we need to really look at the products, the advertising, all of it, because it matters. What are the common traits one more time so that today on your break, when you're scrolling, because see now I opened up that garbage can, I talked about garbage pail kids, but now hopefully every time you scroll, you're gonna see all of it coming right at you. It's gonna be a kick in the stomach as you actually begin to dissect what it is that's happening because they are targeting especially our children. And the common points are shock value, humiliation is a big marketing, you know. I want you to think about. Beauty products. How if you don't have this foundation, if you are, you know what, I'm gonna save the beauty aspects. We're gonna we're gonna attack just the beauty part. Because it is turning generations into very vain, um, self-absorbed people. But the main thing that they have in common, shock value, humiliation is humor, uh uh what else, grotesque exaggerations, desensitization, get familiar with that word because they are stripping it away. I uh uh those of you that remember when The Walking Dead first came out, do you remember that? I remember the first time we saw it, it was it was it was kind of shocking, and it was when they literally showed somebody getting beaten to death with a bat. No holes barred. They we watched in real time, and I watched too, and I was sickened. That was the last Walking Dead that I watched. Thirty years ago, that wouldn't have even been allowed on TV, and now we are watching in real time reels of people being assassinated in real life, and people are watching it over and over and over and over again. That is the epitome of desensitization, and we wonder why we are watching humanity turn to violence so rapidly. The Kotman traits are also tied to ugliness and grossiness, and that we're bad, that we're broken. Because you see, they're setting the stage. We have a problem. Oh, but see, we have products to fix your problems. They set the stage, create the problem, and then feed us the products that fix the problems. Now, we have to remember that there is a balance in this conversation. I am not saying that kids who play with these toys are damaged. I'm not saying that parents are doing necessarily something wrong or that all of these products must be forbidden. Now, part of me believes that every one of those is true. But what we need to keep in mind is that the emotional tones and symbolic language of play is literally shaping their nervous systems, their self-concepts, and their humor baselines. Listen to the conversations your kids have with each other. See if you can pick up what I'm talking about. So, ultimately, there's a difference between occasional exposure and primary identity forming entertainment. If you are allowing the tablet to babysit your kids, you are no longer protecting their divinity. And why? Because we're allowing our divinity to be raped on the daily. So when evaluating toys or games, or what your children are watching, you need to ask yourself these four questions. Does this product or what they're watching celebrate creation or destruction? Number two, does humor come from connection or humiliation? Number three, does identity feel empowering or degrading in these ads? And four, the biggest one. Would I want this language to describe my children? If there it's a no to any of those questions, then you're allowed to choose differently. That's why we have screening available for our children. But dare I say, if it's happening to our children three thousandfold, do you think we're immune? We are allowing massive quantities of toxic inputs into our nervous system on the daily, and they are really winning at rebuilding our psyches. So, in closing, I want us to think about the advertising speaking to us every day. Um my newest podcast listens is uh a guy. I don't even know what his name is. I don't think he's ever even actually said his name, which is it it's par for the course. But he has a podcast that is very intriguing to me right now. It's called The Functional Mel Melicon, I can't say it, Meliconic. And uh I want to give a plug to him. He did and does uh an excellent job, a very um uh he yeah, he's definitely a melancholy. It's very, very obvious. And um it may be difficult to listen sometimes because he he speaks in the same speed. But what he brings out about the media and about the internet especially and what it's doing to us may be worthy of a listen. It may be a very good piggyback on what we are speaking about, scrolling the blue, killing the real you. So, in closing, I want I want you to remember, um, and here's one of the czars of death, the biggest czar of death, um, who pushes genocide every way he can, who is buying up land and poisoning our food, and is in the king chair when it comes to death, right? And that would be Bill Gates. And this is what Bill Gates said. If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business. That's the business model. And they are bringing us to the harvest table. They are marketing to get not just our money, they are marketing to get our nervous systems, our mind, our choices, and our children. Maybe it's time to turn your overthinking instead of products and likes and comments, maybe to the harvesting of our soul that's happening as we scroll the blue and allow them to kill the real you. So when our culture repeatedly brands death, folks, and poison and filth and chaos is fun, we shouldn't be surprised when people feel numb, anxious, disconnected, or empty. Because this is not accidental, folks. We are not the shoppers. Wear a harvest. I don't mean to be a doomsdayer today, but I'm here maybe to shock you into becoming a little more conscious of what you're doing with the blue glow. So today I hope that I opened Pandora's box so much so that if you're listening today and you've made it to the end of this podcast, that when you get online today, everything changes. Because now you're gonna see it everywhere. That's waking up, waking up. And on that note, I have to go get myself ready to head out the door. I love you, humanity, and as always, I leave you my most sincere prayer and wish for you today that you have the greatest health and the most vibrant energy, and of course, peace.