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Comedian gets serious on why Millenials say life hasn't felt like 'reality' since 2020

He also shares tips on how to return to reality.

via MikeMancusi/TikTok (used with permission) and Liza Summer/Pexels

Mike Mancusi shares why life doesn't feel real anymore.

Comedian Mike Mancusi struck a chord on TikTok and Instagram with a post explaining why many people, especially Millenials, think life hasn’t felt like “reality” since the beginning of the pandemic four years ago.

"The cause of this phenomenon is the fact that we're not living life in reality anymore," Mancusi claims. "2020 smashed our existences into our phones and into the digital world and we are no longer existing in our physical space.”

He adds that our lives now feel more like a "video game" and that we're exposed to all of the "awful things that everybody across the entire world deals with all the time” instead of being concerned with things in our “circle of influence.”

“We are still organic beings and our brains have been completely connected to this artificial device. ... We'll eventually be cyborgs,” the comedian said.

Life hasn't felt like reality since 2020 

@mikemancusi

Life hasnt felt like reality since 2020 #existentialcrisis #existentialism #existential #2020 #technology #millennials #millennial

​He adds that even when we break out of our digital routines and go on vacation, our phones are still top-of-mind. We fear we’re missing out on something on social media and feel pressured to take photos and share the trip online.

"We are no longer actually living life in our physical space, we are living it through the phone. This is why life does not feel like reality,” Mancusi said. “Life just seems to disappear when you are trapped in a routine ... a routine of our brains being completely connected to whatever is happening within this device."

Mancusi’s bottom line is simple: You're addicted to the phone. Return to your physical spaces.

Upworthy spoke with Mancusi and he shared his thoughts on how people can break the cycle of smartphone addiction and return to reality. He believes that we are all suffering from some form of smartphone addiction.

"[Smartphones are] an addiction that has caused a lot of change in your brain chemistry. The process of adjusting your behaviors can be long and challenging. If you've been scrolling your phone endlessly for 4 years, the process of getting back to the real world is not going to happen in 3 days," he told Upworthy.

He believes that smartphone addiction is incredibly challenging because, much like food addiction, it's impossible to go "cold turkey."

"People need to re-adjust their relationship with their phones and incorporate strict limitations," he told Upworthy. "For example, I won't scroll between the hours of 9 and 12 a.m. Any time I go out to dinner with my wife, I won't bring my phone. When I take the dog to the park, I won't bring my phone. I'm blocking Instagram access while I'm at work."

In the end, Mancusi believes that we need to retrain our brains to find joy in our physical lives, which have been diminished by the quick and easy dopamine hits we get from our smartphones.

"Your brain has been wired only to get joy from an unhealthy thing," he told Upworthy. "It has been intentionally altered by tech executives. Re-training your brain to enjoy your physical space is a process that will take time, but for those who invest in it, it will pay off in the long term when you align your happiness with healthier, tangible things. Find the things that you love to do in life and re-train yourself to love them again."





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Heroes

Boy reveals how Joe Biden helped him overcome his stutter in inspiring 90 second speech

Throughout the 2020 election season, you've probably heard just about every insult and insinuation thrown Joe Biden's way when it comes to the former vice president's speaking style. Everything from implications that he's "lost a step" to open and unfounded claims that he is suffering from dementia. The truth is, Joe Biden has always struggled with public speaking and for very good reason: He was born was a severe stutter that he spent years working on.

Putting politics aside, it's an amazing trajectory that someone who struggled to form basic words and sentences as a child is now giving a 20-minute acceptance speech as the presidential nominee for a major political party. And all while, countless armchair quarterbacks analyze every imperfect syllable or offbeat cadence as evidence of "decline."

But then there are others who have experienced firsthand what Biden went through as a child and likely still navigates on a daily basis. This was perfectly illustrated during Thursday night's Democratic National Convention when 13-year-old Brayden Harrington explained in an incredibly moving video how a personal meeting with Biden helped him to overcome his own struggles with his stutter.

Honestly, if you haven't seen this, it was easily the most powerful moment during the convention and it had nothing to do with the coronavirus, taxes, immigration or anything remotely political. It was the measurement of a man and his profound impact on a young stranger.

"We stutter," Harrington says simply near the top of the 1 minute and 40-second video, creating an instant and powerful bit of connective tissue between himself and Biden. "It's really amazing to hear that someone became vice president," Harrington says.

The video itself is instructional for anyone unfamiliar with just how tricky a stutter can be, obviously for the person speaking, but also for their audience. As Harrington works through his short speech, he is incredibly articulate and measured, then suddenly hanging on a seemingly simple "s" for moments that can feel like an eternity.

It's not simply the act of physically articulating but simultaneously grappling with the anxiety and stress of knowing you are being watched, analyzed and judged. And yet, Harrington powers through it with a clear sense of bravery most of us could only imagine demonstrating.


Boy says Biden helped him with stutterwww.youtube.com


Harrington goes on to explain how Biden gave him a personal tip for how he learned to work through his stutter. "He told me about a book of poems by Yeats that he would read out loud to practice," Harrington said, recounting how they met during a CNN town hall back in February while Biden was still competing in the Democratic primary.

During their one-on-one meeting, Biden went into further detail about his strategies for coping with his stutter, even showing him the speech he gave at the CNN town hall, which included special markings throughout the speech where Biden anticipated needing to pause or stop in order to mitigate likely challenging passages. "It has nothing to do with your intelligence quotient. It has nothing to do with your intellectual makeup," Biden told him.

"I'm just trying to be a kid," Brayden says near the end of the video. "And in a short amount of time, Joe Biden made me feel more confident about something that's bothered me my whole life. Joe Biden cared. Imagine what he could do for all of us."

Needless to say, it's impossible to not instantly compare the anecdote to President Trump, who infamously mocked a disabled man while campaigning for president in 2016. Does anyone honestly expect to see a video like this during the Republican convention next week?

Is there anyone in this world with a story of how Trump personally helped them that doesn't involved a business deal or a beauty pageant? It's a stark contrast that tells us everything about today's political debate, even if the video itself was on the surface about everything but politics.

But more than that, it's a simple story about bravery and how one person used their position of immense power and privilege to connect with a child in a way that has clearly changed this young man's life in a very meaningful, and positive, way. When we talk about "public service" there might not be a better example than this during the entire 2020 election.

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Democracy

Michael Jordan donated $2.5 million to fight Black voter suppression

Editor's note: We are re-sharing some of the best moments and most important stories of 2020. Although it was a difficult year for nearly all of us, there were also shining moments of light and signs of hope. This was one of them.

Throughout his basketball career Michael Jordan has been criticized for not letting his voice be heard when it came to political change. That does not appear to be the case anymore. In the month of June alone, Michael Jordan and the Jordan Brand have donated $100 million dollars to organizations committed to race equality. A portion of the funds will be allocated to organizations helping to protect black voting rights.

In the latest announcement, Jordan himself and his Jordan Brand are investing $2.5 in organizations to help combat Black voter suppression. In a statement from the Jordan Brand, it was announced: $1 million dollars is being donated to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. and $1 million to the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted People and Families Movement. The Black Voters Matter organization will receive $500,000 in the statement which was first reported by CNN.


In his own statement, Jordan says, "I'm all in with Jordan Brand, the Jordan family and our partners, who share a commitment to address the historical inequality that continues to plague Black communities in the U.S. There is a long history of oppression against Black Americans that holds us back from full participation in American society. We understand that one of the main ways we can change systemic racism is at the polls. We know it will take time for us to create the change we want to see, but we are working quickly to take action for the Black community's voice to be heard,"

Examples of voter suppression range from uneven voting resource allocations to denying the right to vote for felons who have served their sentence. According to NBC News, the lawmakers who denied ex-felons voting rights said that it was up to them to decide when their sentence was complete. Third-party groups that register people to vote can also be charged with criminal penalties if the forms arrive with a mistake or are incomplete.

Back in June, Jordan made it clear he was personally moved by the protests around the country sparked by the killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis.


However, it wasn't always like that. During his playing career, Jordan once infamously joked that "Republicans by shoes too," when asked why he didn't leverage his global celebrity for cultural and political causes. Back in 2000, Jordan did endorse Bill Bradley's run for president but that was largely seen as stemming from Jordan's professional ties to Bradley, a former NBA star. Jordan also largely stayed silent during the late 1990's when Nike came under fire for its labor practices and questions over alleged sweatshop labor.

In 2015, Jordan was called out in an ESPN article for his lack of philanthropy. The truth is Michael Jordan has given to over 20 charities including the Jackie Robinson Foundation, the Special Olympics and the United Negro College Fund.

On the court, Michael Jordan led by example. He has said that he never asked anything of a teammate that he wouldn't do himself. Let's hope that the ones who can afford to help are inspired by the likes of Jordan, LeBron James, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to name a few. Whether it is donating money or volunteering, let's all be a little more like Mike.

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Culture

Norway has an incredible new game show where the most polite person wins

In a similar vein to CNN's Crossfire, or when your grandfather opens up about his views on "the Northern problem," contentious political debate is coming to Norway. The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation's new show, Einig?Einig?(Agreed?) takes the bitter, aggressive, spiteful intensity we know to be public political debates out of contention and replaces them with a system that rewards positivity and politeness. The goal of the show isn't to find where the political opponents contend with one another, but instead it aims to bring them together over opinions on which they can both agree.

Einig(?) aims to take the competition out of politics and replace it with camaraderie. Imagine if instead of Trump and Clinton lambasting each other for their checkered personal histories, they instead spent their time on television coming together to agree that Katz's Deli truly makes the best pastrami in Manhattan.

The rules of the game are simple: don't interrupt or attack your opponent, but instead try listening to their arguments and understanding where they're coming from. The show is not live, and the guests are informed that the flashy argumentation and ad hominem attacks that make political debates such a viral, engrossing spectacle will be edited out in favor of civil, laid-back conversations about the issues. Gro Engen, the editor of Einig, describes the show as trying to "re-create that type of atmosphere" where the cameras are off and the guests are just speaking their minds to each other, perhaps over a cup of coffee, or what I can only assume is the Norwegian equivalent: snow-juice.

There's no moderator for Einig, in an effort to open up discussion by placing the responsibility on the contestants to foster multidimensional conversations on a diverse array of topics, ranging from abortion to tax legislation. The thesis of the show is simple: if there's no parental guidance, eventually the kids will discover that manners are the only way to get anything done. Tired of the political debate format that only perpetuates the "us vs. them" mentality that makes political discussion such a cage match, Einig recognizes that political issues stem from dilemmas that societies are placed in charge of solving, and by letting moral opponents form a framework of discussion around each dilemma at hand, the discussion can focus on intellectual compromises rather than emotional attacks.

The show was first released before their elections in September of 2019, before a Norwegian election that ended up surprising the pollsters as the smaller parties in Norway's multi-party system made large gains on the majority-holding Labour Party. Perhaps this proves exactly what Einig was setting out to do: voters are not divided along clear party lines. Instead, they (ideally) hold complex political opinions that vary from issue to issue, and platforms like Einig can help political candidates better express how they've drawn the conclusions they form their opinions around.

It would be interesting to imagine Joe Biden and Donald Trump in an unmoderated forum like Einig for their debates this fall. So much of American politics is boiled down to the highlights and soundbites of each debate, but if our candidates were able to casually sit down and sparse things out over a cup of coffee in a polite setting, maybe our political system would stop rewarding the loudest and brashest among us, and instead elevate complex thinkers and well-reasoned intellectuals to public office. Or maybe the U.S should let itself be annexed by Norway. Really, anything seems possible these days.

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