We have this thing in America called the American Dream. It’s the hope, belief, or dream that anyone that lives here, no matter how poor, unintelligent or resource deprived can with a little ambition, make something out of themselves. Of course, that exists in a lot of places, but for some reason, Americans believe that we have the copywrite on it. What they don’t tell you about the American dream is that every one of them also comes with the equal and matching opposite American Nightmare. Every single one of these rises from the ashes to the top of the heap, also comes with an equal amount of torches and flamethrowers from trolls. It’s not a matter of if, but when it will happen. Some people figure out when their American Dream is fading and adapt and adjust or innovate. Others keep trying to do the same thing over and over and end up in a van down by river.

You wouldn’t believe it was true if you didn’t see every book, movie, TV show, or video game about these empires rising and falling all the time. We American’s allow people to have these stratospheric rises, so we can praise and adore them, just so we can be part of their inevitable downfall. It’s not something we do as a hobby or to pass the time. It’s deeply embedded in our DNA. We just can’t help ourselves. If a flamethrower appeared your porch, and there was a big pile of wood in our backyards, you know exactly what you would do. Flamethrowers are us, and the pile of wood is the American dreams.

I’ve never been famous for more than 15 minutes at a time. Besides that one 5-minute story the local news did on my family as a kid, I’ve never had a brush with fame. I was “WordPress” famous in the humor category for a couple of years though. For a short period of a couple of years ago, I was rolling in the likes. In one short period, I appeared on Freshly Pressed. Sometimes I would get upwards of the high 80’s in likes, and I would get dozens of comments on my posts. It was never viral like the lady that laughed herself silly with the Chewbacca mask (look it up, it was a thing in 2016), or the lady on the plane that said “I’m telling you right now, that guy back there is NOT real.” It never took over the world, but it did take over my world.

I enjoyed the dopamine hit of hitting publish and then walking away, and coming back an hour or two later with 20 to 30 likes and more coming in. I would get these comments telling me how funny I was and how they were bitter too. Many would return, like, comment and even share and nominate for those stupid blog awards. I had a fanbase, and I started getting a big head. I started to think I could monetize this thing, by of all ways, creating T-Shirts and other merch. There have been some worse decisions done in the history of the world, but they would be something like making ET for the Atari 2600. That ended not only Atari, but the whole video game industry for 3 or 4 years. My t-shirts didn’t end civilization, but I do know that even poor kids from Ethiopia wouldn’t wear them.

Just like any other American Dream story, my empire started crumbling. The popularity of blogs on WordPress started waning, I went back to school and couldn’t blog as much, and the low point of the Bitter Blog empire happened when I lost access to my blog. In the meantime, I did start a new blog (that is still around), but that was my version of New Coke, or Crystal Pepsi. I was another in a long line of bad ideas. It was like I was trying to make fetch a thing, and it never happened.

When I did get this blog back, I triumphantly (in my mind) returned back to this blog in hopes of praise and adoration like Rocky when had his comeback fight. Some people returned, but my comeback was more like a Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, or Amanda Bynes tried to comeback. It was a little too little and a little too late.

People like me and Britney need to realize that we have to innovate, adapt and change or we will die. We should learn lessons from people like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon. They realized that their “thing” was dying (Steve Jobs – computers, adapted with Ipod, Iphone and Ipad), (Elon Musk – adapted from Paypal to electric cars and flamethrowers, and boring companies, and going to Mars) and Hiccup (realized that people were dying from dragons, so he decided to work with them).

We all had our mighty moments, our moment on the top of the mountain. And we’ve all been taken down by trolls, innovation leaving us behind, or by a young kid with a sling and 5 smooth stones and good aim. We can grow, adapt, change, pivot, or we continue to be cocky and arrogant and think that people will like the thing we created or made forever and end up causing the downfall of the Phillistine army, or finding old T-Shirts at Goodwill.

You know me, I’m like Michael Scott. I understand nothing. I’m going to keep doing the same thing over and over again, and assume that other people will adapt and change, so I will make it back to the top. Thus, you will see the same thing you see every week…The Bitter, The Friday, and the Giftures…

The American Dream…

The reason why I haven’t achieved the American dream…

American’s only love one thing…

And that is…

They love nothing better than seeing famous people…

It isn’t just a hobby for us…

Back in the early days of this blog…

I was feeling pretty like I was pretty dang…

Because people kept telling me…

I got so full of myself…

But then I lost everything…

I tried a comeback…

David…

But don’t worry…

ARRRGGGHHHHH

Bitter The Mighty Has Fallen Ben

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