Why Your Achievements Are Ugly As Poop?

I recently listened to Kendrick Lamar’s Mr Morale & the Big Steppers, and this album was quite interesting. In this album, Kendrick questioned his role in America through many things. He went through the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 presidential election, Cancel Culture, and a billion other topics I cannot remember. But the worst of all was Kendrick’s saviour complex. It was this psychological need to save people. In the context of Kendrick Lamar, he has this mentality to protect the African American community from police brutality and gun violence, especially in Compton. That city plagued him more than his 13 Grammy awards, his numerous hits, his 4 classics (GKMC, TPAB, Untitled Unmastered, DAMN), and his epic rhymes (“I beat yo’ …”). The album forced me to rethink who Kendrick was. It made me believe that the album was for him to heal himself with music. He chose himself over becoming the next Nelson Mandela to lead a happy life with his family. He wanted to ensure his fans that these achievements did not make Kendrick Lamar a saviour.

I brought this album out to bring a point about something, and it’s something that plagued me both on the Internet and within my own experience. This mentality that having such prestigious and well-regarded achievements would define what a person was. This mentality among people would be considered Neo-Social Darwinism, the survival of the ones working the hardest to get the most achievements out of their buck. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I have a celebrity to tell you.

James Charles was, at one point, one of the trendiest YouTubers within the makeup and beauty category, who tended to range from 5 to 10 million views on every single video. He was a massive channel with 20 million subscribers to date and was an outstanding makeup artist. His videos were excellent, based on a mansion with a couple of employees, collaborating with mainstream artists from Kylie Jenner to Charli D’Amelio, and covering trendy things like Halloween. I brought him up because he has this one horrible flaw. He kept on dating young straight boys throughout his career, to whom he would text sexually explicit messages to them. These texts would be horrendous to these young boys whose families don’t tolerate this. The first reported incident happened in May 2019, when Charles dated Instagram model Gage Gomez. Gomez was 20 years old then. He claimed that Charles pressured the straight man into sexual situations. Although this incident was resolved days later, it got worse in early 2021, with numerous incidents of grooming. Charles even admitted that he liked dating young straight men due to their presumed “attractiveness.” It was so bad that Tati included this behaviour in her drama with Charles. Charles didn’t care about the person’s behaviour because he was straight. He thought that dating people was straightforward from his status alone. He allegedly groomed a 16-year-old boy and a 15-year-old boy a year later.

In April, Charles apologised to these two people. It was so bad that Morphe, Charles’ long prominent sponsor, cut ties with him and YouTube kicked him out of the Instant Influencer show for ZHC. YouTube demonetised him, and Charles didn’t upload for 3 months. Because of all that, Charles can only upload videos, expecting a range from a couple hundred thousand views to more than 3 million views. Those incidents and how he dealt with them were pretty terrible, and they destroyed Charles’ channel. James Charles was entitled entirely to his rapid success on YouTube as the makeup mogul. Because he was the biggest makeup star on the Internet, he could do whatever he wanted without penalty.

In my opinion, Charles wanted to do whatever he could to keep his title as the king of YouTube beauty. He was incredibly entitled to do so. Charles could’ve played smart, not apologised, and made many changes in his behaviour and content to make it a lot better. But he didn’t, and that killed off Charles’ self-esteem. Therefore, James Charles and his success would be ugly as poop. I hope you can see the adverse effects of not taking responsibility for these achievements.

James Charles was an example of a person who didn’t take fame seriously and made it fall with him. And that’s the problem. We don’t know who a person is until it is too late. His achievements were, in the end, ugly as poop.

The problem of being defined by achievements was that it brought a tremendous sense of responsibility to a person. If a person cannot fulfil what they accomplished to achieve achievement, that is a failure. That mentality disrupted people from trying new things due to fear of failure. It could actually bring a sense of perfectionism. So, a person defined by the quality of the achievements has such a heavy ball of stone onto that person’s head to carry it to the top for eventual happiness.

As I learned more and more about celebrities and people around me, the more I thought about something. This something contradicts something similar to having success via hard work and luck. You must work hard to get good luck, and success relies on hard work and good luck. Similarly, you must have an excellent character to have a value of achievements. The value of achievements required good consistency. But nowadays, that concept may not be the case. Some people believed that James Charles was still a good person despite dating these young underage men. You can have a bad character but with outstanding achievement. Despite that, I still felt that you should have good character. Despite all the worst things, having a good personality can justify your tiny achievements or achieving nothing. Having good character can prove that you can do anything. Having good feelings can help you achieve good luck and hard work. Despite that, having good character was too general and too confusing. Let’s define it.

A character is “the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual.” (Oxford Dictionary) What do “the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual” mean? Some of you may already know this in the back of your mind. But you may already forget this in the back of your mind. So, you should better overanalyse things. The mental is the state of mind, and the moral is the principle of justice. Judgement can determine the view of right and wrong behaviour and the goodness or badness of human character. So, a character is a trait unique with its distinctive mind and standing between good and evil and right and wrong. I hope that makes sense to you.

Although having good character may be a good thing, it does not contribute to further happiness. However, as I learned more about my unclear surroundings, I became more comfortable and happy just living the moment, which was another point to discuss.

Living the moment is the state of enjoying the process behind doing things, and it can even be straightforward. Apparently, it is also being mindful of the environment. Therefore, it can contribute to better health, improved relationships, greater self-control, etc. Although I have some achievements under my belt, like my Science Olympiad achievements and my YouTube channel, I still placed those behind my feeling when writing this article. Best of all, it replaces our need for accomplishments in the process.

Living the moment is quite a difficult concept for both you and me, and so has good character. Although I can take it very seriously and embrace it throughout my entire life, you may not. Although you may take it just as seriously as me, you are also the audience. You may have discovered me through my achievements in my work. You may have found me through my YouTube channel, my job position at some company not announced yet, or wherever. It’s hard to articulate, primarily if you only associate a person for their achievements. You may feel quite angry if a person you love so much does not deliver the product or something you demanded. I can see that, but I don’t have many plans as of now.

Thank you for reading this interesting article. It’s my first research-based article where I look into sources for inspiration on this article. I don’t know how it fits into my personal blog, but I’m going to try what works for you and me. It’s my first article where I don’t express much of my own story, and I’m not sure why. I’m not sure for you while reading this too. All that made it quite an interesting article to write, and I’m going to see you in the following article.