Hello, my name is Bryan Aeast. I'm not sure where to begin, or even why I'm writing this down. Maybe it's cathartic, maybe it's a descent into madness made legible. All I know is, I can't escape him. I can't escape Spongebob Squarepants. It started innocently enough. I was a kid, maybe seven or eight, and I stumbled upon a clip of Spongebob on YouTube. Just a few seconds of that grating laugh, the squeaky shoes, the relentless optimism that seemed so alien. Before I could even process what I was seeing, my mother was there, a whirlwind of fury. "SPONGEBOB?! SPONGEBOB IS A VERY BAD SHOW!" she shrieked, snatching the laptop away. "We don't watch that here! It's… it's corrupting!" That was it. Spongebob was forbidden. Along with Family Guy, which, I guess, made sense. And The Simpsons. "Those yellow creatures are always bad," she’d say, conveniently ignoring the Minions that I was inexplicably allowed to watch. Ironically, one of my classmates declared he wanted to be friends with Bart Simpson, a statement I could only process as pure rebellion. The problem wasn't just the prohibition. It was the constant, pervasive presence of Spongebob in the world around me. My friends would talk about episodes, quoting lines I couldn't understand. "A lot of lines will go over his head" My Mother said. Later, the internet exploded with memes, many of which found their way onto soyjak.party, a website I actually found pretty insightful at the time. But even there, amidst the insightful commentary and surprisingly poignant political cartoons, were things like “Chudbob Soypants” and “Totr” – memes that only worked if you understood the source material. I felt like I was missing some fundamental key to the universe, trapped outside a joke I was desperate to understand. I tried to compensate, to blend in. I watched YouTube Poops, those bizarre, distorted parodies of Spongebob. I memorized catchphrases, hoping to parrot them effectively. But it was always clear I was faking it. The hollowness in my voice betrayed me. And then there was the trauma. I was eight. A group of gang rapists who had a penchant for elaborate schemes, cornered me one afternoon. They were wearing costumes. Not good costumes, mind you, but cheap, ill-fitting monstrosities. One was a lanky, misshapen Spongebob. Another was a grotesque Patrick Star, his pink fabric stretched tautly across his frame. There was even a Plankton, his single eye leering from a mask that seemed to suffocate him. I Got raped and hur
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