yodie land: complicity with anonymous spaces

there is this guy who has been popping off on youtube lately, damianluck925 aka fulcrum. he’s gained something like half a million subs in a month. i think some popular “content creators” who trawl the depths of the site looking for obscure, weird, funny stuff for “reaction videos” raised his profile lately. this is because on the surface, his videos are great fodder for that sort of thing. his whole thing is going out and smoking outrageous amounts of weed and “getting way too faded” in what’s commonly referred to as “public” but what he refers to as “yodie land”: fast food restaurants, big box chain stores, hardware stores, malls, convenience stores. antics ensue.

but there is something else besides “man gets intoxicated and humiliates himself in public” that makes his videos oddly compelling. fulcrum has admittedly fried his brain with excessive drug usage to some extent, however unlike many he actually seems to have attained a kind of “great value”-brand all-american enlightenment.

he is a wandering mystic, a prophet for a lost, alienated generation, a vibe evangelist tearing his way through liminal spaces. “you were put here on this earth because you have a purpose and a mission” he never forgets to preach in every video. his oft-repeated positive motivational messages are platitudinous but somehow work because his presence is absolutely mesmerizing. it can only be described as the very embodiment of good vibes. his positivity is infectious, restorative and uplifting to fellow chillers, members of the global brotherhood he calls the “the yodie gang”, while highly noxious and immediately provoking an immune system reaction in his sworn haters: the fun police, the karens, the autists.

fulcrum is always “somewhere out in yodie land” – wendy’s bathroom, gas station 7-11, walmart, target, best buy, lowe’s, the mall, home depot, bed bath and beyond, burger king, popeyes, the public library, community college, barnes and noble, ikea – liminal, astral america. these are public spaces but they are not the commons. they have been poisoned by bad vibes – dissociation, alienation, cops, karens, autists.

fulcrum shows us it does not need to be this way – yodie land is ours, it has always been ours, someone just needed to remind us. chant: obliviated obliviated obliviated obliviated obliviated. he is always getting too lit or way too faded, but there is never any need to be concerned because he is always in yodie land. in the early days, he was a lone wanderer, preaching his message to the empty aisles and the merchandise on the shelves, but even then unknowing members of the yodie gang like a chill home depot employee would step up to defend him from the karens. now, however, the yodie gang is growing stronger – the message is getting to them and they are waking up all around in yodie land – customers and employees at those same stores now declare allegiance to him with a “shall we?”.

“i’m faded than a ho, need i say more?”