Snoop Dogg, Eminem, and the Intergenerational Cofandom of Fortnite

While we were with kids and cousins at Fun City, a huge trampoline park/arcade/ball pit/ninja warrior situation nearby in Syracuse over the break, I had an idea for an academic paper. The idea is how the integration of nostalgic hip hop artists like Snoop Dogg and Eminem into Fortnite creates a powerful combination of nostalgia and discovery that is intergenerational and therefore exceedingly appealing and effective both in the programming for the video game and for the subsequent marketing and brand extensions of the game and the celebrities.

I’m Gen X and we are a lot of things as a generation, but one thing that sets us apart from our parents (Boomers) is that we are gamers. We grew up with Super Mario Bros, and while personally wouldn’t call myself a die hard gamer, I did spend copious hours endeavoring to save the Princess. Now, with our kids, we get to play these awesome video games that are immersive, challenging and really fun. Plus the graphics (outside of Minecraft; I can’t support the intentional return to pixels and don’t get me started on the systemic safety issues of Roblox) are phenomenal compared to what we had. We would have killed for a game like Fortnite back in the day. I was excited about Nintendo’s Duck Hunt and that my mom let us have the console with the gun. And you don’t want to know what we did to our Sims in Sim City.

On top of all of that, we are rediscovering the music we grew up with through our kids’ eyes. We get to participate in the the fandom with them - Mommy knows all the words to Lose Yourself, sometimes she even lets a preteen listen to the explicit versions. This invites conversations where we work together to understand what swears are, what they mean, and when grown ups (not kids) decide (swearing is a choice) to use them. We also talk about where Snoop Dogg and Eminem grew up and what their songs are about. Explaining the genesis of 90s hip hop as an art form and the racial, socioeconomic and gender implications surrounding its ascension is something I’ll never get tired of attempting to do justice. The kids love the raps; Snoop in his melodic, mellow, smooth style, Eminem in his amped up, angry, words-coming-faster-than-you-can-even-think style. There’s a reason they made a mini-gun with Eminem’s super fast rap from his song Rap God as part of the weapon. The rap plays on hyperspeed when you shoot the gun. The first time I saw it, I laughed out loud. It was a sweet trick, a quip almost, in the game, it was for those of us who knew, AND it was for the kids who just liked a gun that did that.

In revisiting the careers of Snoop and Eminem, we’ve come across the good and the bad and I realized along with the nostalgia comes a little cultural amnesia. They’re different people now - older men who are now looking back on their lives and putting forward much more namaste personas than those from before. It’s hard to reconcile at times. I’ve explained what a gang is, what causes people to join them, what South Central LA is like, what happened in the 90s that caused a lot of the events they rap about (systemic racial inequities, police brutality, socioeconomic disparity and more). In watching video retrospectives on their lives and careers I’m reminded of the deep misogyny and sexism that permeates their earlier music. Snoop has no apologies for referring to women as bitches and hos. And while these words have been somewhat reclaimed by women, I wanted our kids to know these are humans behind the music. Humans who make good and bad choices. Explaining that gangsta rap comes from real life experiences regarding a man who they now watch as a sweet, sensitive and funny coach on The Voice or the ever-endearing mascot of the 2024 Olympics, is a huge contradiction. One born of a genius marketing team, who have extended Snoop’s brand as far as it will go into big box retailers, TV ads, and of course, Fortnite (where he lives on as a skin in the game even after the event featuring him ended).

Eminem is a deeply complex, conflicted and flawed human. Explaining his treatment of women, queer people and other ideas we don’t agree with in our family was eye opening. We watched a video that showed some of his earlier, more violent songs, and my son said, “Wow, I idolized this dude. And now, well, I don’t.” He was shook up about it and while I didn’t mean to go that deep into the catalog (I forgot just how bad it could get, with his suicide attempt just before getting famous, the song about how he wanted to kill his girlfriend, and of course all of the gay stuff) I was glad to reset expectations for my son on what someone like Eminem offered. I like to tell myself it’s not just the feminist in me, it’s that he has more power than he realizes if he knows the artist not just the art. We can make informed decisions if we’re going to appreciate the art or not, but we have to know (and remind ourselves) who the person was who made it. There’s enough Andrew Tates out there waiting to snare young men into that macho, woman-hating world, that I know I need to prepare him to on how to think critically in his own defense.

And now Eminem is 52, looking back on his life, the Slim Shady character and we’re all there with him doing it again. He’s got a new album out, a new hit song (Houdini! Ever appropriate!) and you’ve got to give it to the Gen Xers for staying so gosh darn relevant. Hard to believe we’re still asking that age old question “Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?” now coupled with “Guess who’s back, back again…”

Fortnite is filled with holographic characters, yours being one of them. The game is set in a dystopian land where it’s Hunger Games type rules and everyone runs around grabbing loot (guns, bandages, food, etc), trying to eliminate the other players and be the last one standing. The graphics are bright, luscious, glorious even, you can get lost in them. More than that, they are fun. The bus that drops you into the world is hilarious and everyone thanks the bus driver. The skins are elaborate and don’t recognize gender. I’ve seen many a boy with an avatar that looks vaguely like a girl and I think to myself, this might just be how we reach some kind of equity. When it’s not that they know the difference (they do), it’s that they don’t care. They think the ones that lean feminine are just as bad ass, sometimes more. The boys don’t say, “Oh, I don’t want the girl one” because there is no girl one. The designers of the game have a sense of humor and include references to pop culture and memes - Skibbidi Toilet is particularly popular with the almost-middle school set and it’s featured on a backpack. Peter Griffin from Family Guy is a skin in the game. The songs they add are fun and random throwbacks - one emote, or quick dance the player can add to their repetoire of actions - is set to Bye, Bye, Bye by N’SYNC and it’s a HUGE favorite. All the young boys know the choreo now. Mommy knows the Bye Bye Bye dance!

This cofandom across generations is exciting. It makes you feel like this is a good use of the technology. The guns less so - they are there and they are part of the game. The real names are used - rifle, pistol, shotgun - and my least favorite part is that the kids say things like “I shotgunned him in the head!” Yes, that part sucks. But I talk to my kids. They do the drills at school, we talk about what it means and what it is for. They talk about the guns in the game, we use it as a way to talk about what guns mean in our world, our society. I like to encourage their media literacy and digital literacy by watching with them, playing the game with them, and making sure we know why things are the way they are (it’s the feminist in me - question everything).

Us Gen Xers may be the last generation that remembers a world without electronics, but now we’re the ones regulating them. My wife and I say how long and put limits on electronics time. We make sure our kids know they can do other things like reading, writing in their journal, playing the clarinet, building with Legos, and so on. We talk about regulation and moderation - how much is too much, how to know when it is and how to train your brain to take breaks (even when you don’t want to). But when it comes to Fortnite, I’m into it. I’m into it because it’s our music that’s becoming their music, our game references becoming their game lore. (Lore! I love that word and it’s triumphant comeback). As a communications researcher, if game studies is the future of communications studies (Chess & Consalvo, 2022), well, I’m here for that too.

The Longevity of Peloton.

Post pandemic Peloton is still a thing. I’m not over it. We may not be making banana bread or writing our novels but some of us are still using our Peloton for the simple power of positive thinking. For those of us who were doubly privileged enough to stay home and reevalutate our lives during lockdown and do so with a Peloton bike and app in our midst, it was a winning combination.

I’ll speak from my own experience: Peloton changed my life. I don’t think I’ve ever said that about an app or an exercise program, but I know I’m not alone. Yes, Peloton has lost a bit of its shine now that the pandemic zeitgeist that saw everyone and their mom ordering one is over. Long over. The company has weathered intense customer service, production and delivery issues. It changed CEOs. It went from lavish NYC company parties to gathering its instructor in-studio. But the story of Peloton and what it means to avid users like me transcends all of the glitz, glamour, and momentary popularity. You see, Peloton retains and fosters the development of two things most businesses lack these days: human connectiion and an inherent belief in yourself that you can do it.

What “it” is varies. Many Peloton fans use the bike/app for fitness, to lose weight, to get healthy, whatever all of those things mean to you. That’s how my wife and I started. In February 2020, we presciently ordered a Peloton and as parents of two small kids, we fell in love with the convienience of being able to bust out a quick and effective work out from our multiuse home office room. When lockdown happened, we used the Peloton to maintain our sanity and believe we could navigate those three months at home where we, like all parents, were forced to find ways to work from home, keep making money, provide some modicum of thoughtful childcare, administer and monitor online school (I’ll never forget how counterintuitive online kindergarten felt), and somehow make it all fun. A fun game we were all playing filled with chalk art on the sidewalks, big gardens in our backyard, making surfboards and wings and all the things we could imagine but not actually do out of cardboard and tape and glitter. All the family walks we took, tracing every street in our neighborhood, memorizing every fountain, flower and fence, grateful for neightbors who had benches for reseting and those who kept up the books in their little libraries.

When we started to lose both of our businesses, I cried on the Peloton. I rode the bike knowing we were going to lay off our whole team. I rode the bike when everything felt completely unfair. I rode the bike when all of our clients had to leave, one by one, in a slow but fast procession because they were all restaurants, wineries, and food businsses who were shut down and losing money just as fast as we were. I rode the bike in the morning, all those mornings where I woke up feeling like I was getting punched in the face, over and over. I rode the bike because beyond my wife and my family it was the most stable thing there at the time. The instructors were still there. They believed I could do it. I understood it was their job to say that but it never felt fake or disingenous, certainly not then and even now. I still didn’t know what “it” was. But the Peloton never let me down, and unlike work, it didn’t let me go.

During a socially-distanced trip to the beach that summer a friend told me how he used the Peloton app and did the runs out on the road with the class playing in his airpods. This was an idea that would further change my life. I had been running off and on most of my adult life; a stint in high school cross country made me understand how good (and bad) long distance running can feel. I took it up again in earnest during this time, telling myself I was running away from the death. The news was filled with death and body counts. Those early months of the pandemic, it’s hard to remember how filled with death they were, the cognitive dissonance we have to have to get through it. But I remmber the feeling of running, where I could be free for a 30 minute class with just Robin Arzón in my ears telling me I can do it. Yes you can. Just when you think you can’t. You have friends who secretly or not-so-secretly have their instructor - their favorite, the one they’ve developed a parasocial relationship with where they just get you, even though they don’t know you. We’re still part of a more subtle Peloton club. We don’t advertise anymore. But when we get in conversation and it slips out that someone does Peloton, the list of our instructors, favorite rides/runs, all come spilling out quickly. We follow them through their own marriages, babies and milestones. And yes, we’re part of some weird cult. But is it a cult? We’re part of a group who shares an interest in working out, but also for some of us, we share an interest in becoming better humans. That’s what Peloton has ulitmately given me - enough belief in myself that I know how to make myself a better human.

The runs got longer. I would stack running classes one after the other, I tried the marathon training, and I made my own ever-evolving running playlist. As I got stronger, I’d start most runs with a 30 minute class as my warm up (Warm up?! The workout has become the work out!) and then use my playlist from there. The playlist reflected my own musical tastes which I was rediscovering. I was less afraid to choose cheesy pop or Britney Spears because I heard it on Peloton playlists. I felt less alone in my love of 90s music because in targeting Gen X through Gen Z, there were a plethora of classes with all of this loaded and ready for us on the app. I bought into the in-group mentality and motivation and distanced myself from the business parts as they sold me merch, optimized the heck out of their app, and added and deleted new features. Some of it was great and some of it was gross but that’s life on a real ife + digital platform, right?

The drinking started to get in the way of my running. I’d worked in food and beverage for 20 years and enjoyed the best alcohol has to offer. But my relaitonship with it had become more and more complicated. During those summer months of 2020 it become like a job. I was scared, everything waas changing, our businesses were failing and we were trying to keep two small kids, and ourselves, alive. Drinking at five o’clock, or earlier some days if I’m honest, was a way out of that for a few hours. It tamped down the choking anxiety, where I felt like my heart had grabbed a hold of my throat. It made us fun parents. That’s what what we thought. That’s why we did it. Until I realized I could run longer, faster, harder without it. I thought maybe I’d try. I had quit drinking twice when we were pregnant with both kids so it was not out of the realm for me. I didn’t have a problem, this wasn’t rock bottom. We have so many misconceptions about our individual relatinoships to alcohol. But I had seen the devstation alcohol had wraught on people close to me and I didn’t want that. I knew in my heart that someday I would quit, and the pandemic brought that day much closer.

By Christmas 2020 I’d had my last drink. A nice glass of red that I knew was the last one. At least for a while I told myself. With a brain that knew no in-between, no off switch, and that struggles with moderation (and would later be diagnosed with ADHD) I had an inkling that once I turned it off I might not be turning it back on. That was four years ago and it’s still off. To celebrate New Year’s Eve, my wife and I each did a Peloton ride just before midnight to usher in 2021. Yes, it’s corny! But it’s one of those Peloton traditions that offers you an alternative and a community. We were still digital only back then, so you’d log on and ride with thousands of people from around the world, with an instructor live teaching the ride. It was an incredible feeling, giving virtual high fives to people you didn’t know but could still connect with in that undefined, overwhelming, lonely time.

Over the last few years since, as the world plodded slowly into whatever it is we’re in now, our post-pandemic reality or whatever, I’ve maintained my Peloton routine through the ups and owns of life, vacations and sickness, cross country moves and more. I’ve run four half marathons, I’ve been in the best shape of my life. But that matters a lot less to me than Peloton inspiring me to believe I could go back to graduate school at age 44 and get my master’s degree. Inspiring me to believe I could change careers and the course of my life, and that of my family. To beleive we didn’t have to do anything just because we’d done it that way before. That we could let go of the past and try something new. Robin Arzón is my instructor for when I want to light the fire of self-belief, self-compassion and just generally bad assery. She is always there for me, she is always present, she is always ready to conquer the next challenge. So then so am I. Andy Speer is my instructor for when I want to run and chill and feel good and smile and listen to stories about a Honda Prelude in Connecticut growing up, which mirrors a lot of my childhood and teen years. I could go on. I, like many, have an instructor for how I feel or want to feel each day. For the vibe I’m trying to catch, or just to get through the workout because I know, after so many years, that if I get the Peloton workout done I will always feel better. I’m not done yet.

Electronics-Free Weekend Mornings

It’s harder than I thought. It sounds so simple. Our family would go electronics-free on weekend mornings from the time we wake up (which can be anytime depending on socccer games) until lunchtime (approximately 12pm). If we wake up around 8am, it’s four whole hours. We’ve been doing this about a month and it’s been four long hours. It’s harder than I thought for all of us, but it’s also way more beneficial than I could have ever predicted.

Why? You may ask. Why subject yourselves to this, especially on the weekend when everyone is supposed to be relaxing? Yes. Agreed. It felt foolish and stupid the first couple of times. But we had sat down as a family at our dining room table and we’d told the kids, 5 and 9 years old, that we would all be embarking on this offline adventure together. No electronics for those weekend morning hours for all of us - Mommy and Momma included. No tablets, no phones, no TV, no Xbox. It was almost scary. We realized quickly the grown ups had to participate or it wouldn’t work. It would seem wholly unfair if we were sitting there on our phones scrolling social media while the kids tried to figure out what to do. I also had to acknowledge what a privileged thing this is to do and a lot of this is afforded by our economic position, our flexible work and weekend schedules. This is not possible for all families and that’s okay. We’re all different and trying to get through this parenting thing; maybe enjoy it and learn from it in our own ways. Electronics allow other things to happen - chores, work, and possibly even a parental break. All of which are always needed. The laundry never ends.

We learnd a quick and painful lesson wek one of the endeavor - the kids had to figure out what to do. They didn’t totally know how to think of different activities to try on their own. They gave up quickly. They complained there was nothing to do. It would have been so easy to lapse back into tablet time or video games (which my wife and I as Gen Xers enjoy playing too). The comfort, reliability and ease of the electronic world has lulled us into an inability to try different things, see if we want to do them, and if we don’t, move on to something else. It was time for our kids to learn how to move through them, and concurrently, how to to be bored. We’d read all the articles about how being bored and associated idea are good for them, but one thing the articles don’t address is how to handle the endless whining that comes with kid boredom. Especially kids who are endlessly stimulated and are very much not used to being bored. Who truly don’t know what to do with themselves. We learned we'd be doing this together, at least to start. You don’t fast forward to a Gen X summer riding bikes in the neighborhood and drinking from a friend’s hose like all the TikToks say. Is that perceived shared history even real? Some of the hyped freedom nostalgia is true for our childhoods yet some is idealistic at best. Yes, I rode my bike, but in a defined neighborhood radius - if I strayed too far I got in trouble. I drank from garden hoses and ate sandwiches at friends’ houses. I made forts, built sandcastles, and read a lot on my own. My wife found her way through an independent and at times, lonely, childhood as the third child in a busy household. TV was unrestricted and we both probably saw too much too early with those Saturday afternoon movies. We weren’t supervised as much, we were attended to when we needed it, but when we fell off our bike we got up, rubbed some spit on it and kept riding.

All this to say, some of the Gen X lore is true to me and some isn’t. What I know for sure is my kids’ generation is quite different. Their school is not our school. Our kindergartner navigates a Chromebook with ease. She loves school, loves her group of girl friends, and can write, read, and spell pretty well. Our third grader is navigating the social emotional minefield of the playground and lunchroom amongst prepubescent boys (and sometimes girls, though they play a supporting role in the drama of his life right now). Every kid is different. For him, school is boring and hard, filled with unsure social moments, with PE and recess his only relief. Their school is accelerated well past what we were learning at that age. They use computers and screens and do the new math and the old math and still have time play educational games. They get on the bus at 8:30am and come home at 3:30pm exhausted. They could be two baby bosses dragging briefcases behind them most days; looking like they went to work and need to decompress at the end of a long day.

On weekdays after school we allow electronics time and are pretty free with it. All parents have their own ways of handling this after school, after work time. Maybe you have on hour of electronics time, and I support that. Maybe you have none. Major props. For us, we work from home which means we can be there when the kids get off the bus everyday. That feels awesome, like a real parenting win. It also means we have to keep working as the work day doesn’t end at 3:30pm. Whether two moms, two dads, or a hetero couple, it’s hard not to see how the system is set up for parents to fail given this schedule. So the kids have choices - they can go on electronics, they can go outside, they can play in their rooms. Some days they play with the neighborhood kids before electronic time. We keep this time flexible and open, mostly to allow them to come down from their days, get some snacks, and feel a bit more like themselves again. We all mask in professional settings and it’s during this time that I can see our kids gradually let theirs fall away.

I’d like to tell you it’s only an hour or two. I’d like to tell you they’re busy learning an instrument or something like that. They’re not. They’re relaxing. And many times, our strategy of electronic freedom during the week leads to wonderful results where our son will go outside and play soccer, on his own, his choice. Sometimes he does it with his tablet still on. Sometimes not. But it’s not some forbidden fruit he’s begging for. Other times he plays with the 12 year old boy who lives two houses down, no electronics, as soccer with an older boy is quite serious. Our daughter will eventually tire of her favorite shows (Big City Greens, Pinky Malinky, she’s really into satire if you know those shows) and say, “Mommy, I don’t know what to do.” At this moment my wife or I will set up a craft, a game, a puzzle, a building set, and either automously or with one of us she’ll do something offline. Both kids do chores throughout the day and earn quarters. They know how to do the dishes and the laundry (not well, but we’re working on it). They understand the family is a group effort, and we all contribute. Progress not perfection. Balance.

Which brings me back to the weekend. It started to feel like too much when our son was getting up at 7am on Saturdays and hitting the YouTube, Xbox, or both simultaneously. We instituted a not-before-8:30am rule to mitigate this but it felt weak. Then we thought what about lunchtime? Could we make it? What else are we really doing during that time? Part of this was inspired by our daughter who increasingly requested “something else” to do. She needs to do something with her hands so we’ve moved through sewing, crocheting, even the diamond thing where you push those tiny little crystals into a pattern (I love and hate that activity). She’s the kid who wants to build a robot, make origami, and “draw something” all within an hour. We knew if we were going to go electronics free we’d have to be prepared and ready to involve ourselves fully with her. And with him. But isn’t that the point? Have we as parents lost our will to facilitate creative and learning opportunities for our kids? Is it that hard to pull out a board game and play it? Sometimes, yes.

The electronics black hole vortex doesn’t just pull our kids. It pulls us too. I love to read and given a choice that’s what I’d be doing anytime, anywhere. But I too have those moments where all I want to do is lay on the couch and zone out to TikTok videos for a half an hour (ok fine an hour). It’s so easy. It’s like eating cake, but like three slices instead of one. And the kids then need to be on their electronics too for it to work. For me not to be bothered. Is that really the goal? We took seven years and a whole lot of money to bring these kids into the world to let Netflix and Fortnite be their companions. No. We wanted to make sure there was more. And we weren’t going to get through the impeding summer without learning a few independence skills.

We took the plunge and moved the 8:30am weekend rule to lunchtime. We had the discussion and the grown ups committed too. Our son fought us all the way. Lots of upset and tears. “Why?” he’d ask, over and over. He felt like he did something wrong and we reassured him he did not and that this was good for all of us. We knew based on the sheer level of protest that we were making the right call. Our daughter loved it. She wanted all of our attention anyway and she got it. We made crafts, worked on her crochet, planted a garden. Mhy wife put up a swing on a tree in our backyard and it’s her favorite place. Sometimes I pull up an Adriondack chair and just sit with her while she’s swinging, a calming co-regulation. We started doing all those things you remember from your childhood. Before electronics.

The weeks went by and every weekend our son would protest and our daughter would get to work on whatever we set out together. He’d play lots of soccer in the backyard and eventually he started reading a Dog Man book. He’d read them before but hadn’t shown much interest. That weekend he didn’t have much else to do so he read some more. And more. And for the first time he genuinely got into a book on his own. He read 100 pages of Dog Man that weekend and he was so proud. We felt like we’d crossed over into something else. We weren’t sure what it was but it was working.

Now, mind you, they get electronics after lunch on the weekends. The 3-4 hours isn’t that long of a time and some weekends there are early soccer games and by the time it’s done they’re into electronics. Some weekends soccer is at 12pm, followed by lunch, followed by a birthday party, followed by the neighborhood friend wants to play. On those days, electronics happen much later. And as we tell the kids (and ourselves), “electronics are not our first priority.” And I can truly say they are not. I don’t goad myself into some false belief that we’re doing it right or better. I don’t even know what that means. After Covid obliterated my views of screentime when we were required to supervise online kindergarten (which was the saddest as kindergarten was never meant to be online), while working from home and trying to maintain some semblance of present parenting, I don’t subscribe to whatever those rules are or were anymore. Parents have been on our own and we make our own community with other parents and we figure it out. The only time those rules come into play is when some expert swoops in to tell us we’re doing it wrong but without any real advice or steps to implement in real life. Do less online. Sure. But how? I’m tired of policing. I don’t want to be known to my kids as the person who told you when you could have electronics or not. I want to make space for the play, the fun.

About four weeks into this weekend exercise something happened. Multiple things happened. Our kids decided to go outside together first thing on Saturday morning. On their own. No complaints, no whining. My wife and I slept in a bit. We all started reading in the morning. I’ve seen my wife read one book in about 20 years together and now she’s really enjoying Lessons in Chemistry. I’m tearing through my summer pile of books accumulated on my bedside and couldn’t be happior to prioritize one of my favorite hobbies over social media updates. Our daughter has gradually started drawing and making things on her own (again, a process and not immediate or perfect). She has an art cart in the dining room and now is using it to make sweet gifts for us or draw things from her imagination (like Mommy does; I’ve been painting more). Who knows if it will last. They asked to have a sleepover together which they haven’t done in a while. This is one of the real immediate and lasting benefits of no electronics - the kids’ connection with each other is stronger. They talk, they play, they laugh, they argue together. They share more space - literally and figuratively - together when they’re not on electronics. Our daughter watches TV in the living room and our son plays video games in a garage converted into a game room. They couldn’t be farther from each other. Now, she’s jumping on his bed while he kicks the soccer ball and they’re chatting away. I hold on to these moments as they are both getting older. Solidifying their relationship before the impending tidal wave of hormones and puberty and change feels like an important gift we can give them. If they can keep the mutual respect and work on the understanding, I’m not saying it will be better or worse but I feel it has to help in some way.

I only cheat when I forget and I have to take a photo of them doin’g something sweet or smart or sporty. I post photos on Instagram without thinking. My son calls me out, “Mommy you cheat all the time!” No, I don’t I start to say but then I know he’s right. I recommit myself and tell him I’ll only use the phone for music and I’ll announce what I am doing so everyone (including me) knows I’m not cheating. This sounds ridiculous. I know. This is what it takes for me, for us in this world where we are about to hand over so much of what we do to the next AI innovation. When I mow the lawn, weed the garden, or write, anything that requires a human effort I feel I am staving that off just a little bit longer. When I hear the soccer ball hitting the net, and my daughter is next to me watering the plants, I feel there’s hope yet.