Beach Sloth

Zachary German Documentary

                Remember Zachary German? Yeah he wrote ‘Eat When You Feel Sad’. He lives offline now. That means no Twitter, Tumblr, Blogspot, or even the barest of connection to the online world Facebook. At this point in time how can one live offline? Offline is a scary place. One is judged not based on carefully thought out wit but on the amount of work/product/service one produces. Boy does the IRL scare the bejesus out of me. 

                Zachary German broke the online chains that bound him. Yet he is returning to the online life in a way. Adam Humphrey and Erik Stinson document the life of a man who at age 21 published the life-affirming book ‘Eat When You Feel Sad’. The attention overwhelmed young Zachary German. Slowly he came to the realization to say ‘fuck it’. ‘Fuck it’ is the hardest phrase in the English language. We are programmed to care, to want to please. Rather than pleasing others Zachary decided to ‘give up’ his online life. Taking his scant possessions he wandered the world looking for meaning in what surrounds us every day, what we take for granted. 

                We begin with seeing Zachary big into his ‘cool bro on the internet’ phase. He plays Guided by Voices because he’s cool and gives no fucks. This song foreshadows Zachary caring less and less about his online persona. Slowly he begins to disappear from the internet, removing himself from Forumspring and Twitter. People begin to speculate what he is doing with his life without the internet. Everyone questions his motives. Online everyone needs a motive, a reason for being. Offline you are because you are. Nobody requests a reason. 

                Before Zachary leaves the internet he alienates people. He’s a nihilist. He believes in nothing. Yet he is cool as fuck. Who else is as cool as Zachary German? As his (now-deleted) twitter handle once proudly proclaimed ‘Apathyiscool’. Later he created another twitter handle ‘Jeepshit’ before deleting that one too. Now Zachary is with friends off the internet. 

                What will this documentary show? For one it may answer what Zachary’s been doing for the past two years? Perhaps Zachary has found enlightenment offline though I doubt it. Most enlightenment tends to come from Facebook status updates. Even the Facebook fan page is homage to Zachary’s nihilistic tendencies (killcops2 from his ancient Forumspring account). In the about section we see Zachary’s hope in humanity embodied in ‘Kill Cops, Kill Your Fucking Self’. That’s about as optimistic as Zachary will allow.

                ‘TBA’ is the announced date. Already it has thousands of fans. Become a fan. Become a friend virtually. Hug Zachary if you can. I probably won’t as I’ll probably never met the nihilistic bro. But that’s unimportant. See the documentary. Follow Adam Humphrey on Twitter, on Tumblr, as his online presence has been given over to this documentary about a man with no online presence. Be amazed. Realize what it is that makes Zachary cool and let me know. I’m still confused about the whole thing.