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[Alexandr Korol]

while others love art — is that something cultish? No. But people reacted like it was something crazy. And it was like that even in school. Everyone would listen to happy pop music like whatever’s on the radio, and I was different. They’d grab one of my earbuds, and I’d be listening to Yann Tiersen, and they’d look at me like I was insane. And then they’d start throwing around labels — some would say it nicely, call me a romantic; others, meaner ones, would call me a freak or worse. Just because you’re not part of the social herd, that makes you “bad” in their eyes — that’s how the social system works. And that system was everywhere — it was in school too. There were always those copy-paste types, and there are even more of them now. Now everyone’s like that. It’s always the same unified herd, and their rule is this: “If you’re not with us, you’re against us, and we’re against you.” That’s how the social world works — aggressive, deeply negative. Because that’s the only way they know how to protect themselves — by attacking. They destroy your world through negativity in order to pull you into theirs. Not by persuasion, not by saying, “Hey, your world’s okay, but mine’s even better” — no. They go straight for name-calling, they humiliate you, they make you feel ashamed in front of everyone else in their herd, so the rest of the herd joins in, pointing fingers at you. It’s like a demon tempting you, putting you at a crossroads: either become one of them, just another jackal, or be an outcast and get pecked at and called weird. And I would always choose to remain the “weird” one. Even now, if people are rolling their eyes and calling me strange — I don’t care. In my world, everything is the other way around, seriously. In the world of the social herd, it’s simple: if I write books about how I see the world differently from them, then I must be weird. But if they’re out there doing God knows what — picking strange mushrooms, jumping around half-naked filming themselves — they think they’re the normal ones. But to me, that’s the abnormal. Sorry, it’s just... different. I believe it’s not for you or me to judge — only God can do that. You have your truth, I have mine. So yes, even back then, when I couldn’t hold back my emotions and would open up to some of my socially-materialistic friends about what was happening in my life — like messengers, or what I was writing in my book — their reaction was always the same: laughter. “Oh, Alex needs saving,” they’d joke. “That’s it, he’s lost it.” Meanwhile, the guy saying that? He’s living a completely immoral lifestyle, deep in vices every day. And that’s considered normal? Because everyone does that? Am I getting that right?