When everything fell apart, people thought they were watching a brand collapse.
A product fail.
A public stunt gone wrong.
They pointed fingers.
Wrote articles.
Created memes.
But they weren’t just reacting to me.
They were reacting to something deeper—
something they saw in me that they didn’t want to see in themselves.
Because I wasn’t just a headline.
I was a mirror.
And mirrors are uncomfortable.
People Project Onto What They Don’t Understand
I became a symbol.
For arrogance.
For carelessness.
For deception.
For everything people hate about modern failure.
And that’s fine.
I gave them enough to work with.
I made mistakes.
I carried ego.
I hurt people.
I fell short.
But what happened next wasn’t just about what I did.
It was about what I reflected back.
The part of the public that wants to believe in success stories—
but loves tearing them down even more.
The Problem With Branding Pain
People assumed everything I said after the collapse was strategy.
That every apology was branding.
That every confession was curated.
But I’m not a company.
I’m a man.
A flawed one.
One who sometimes said the right thing too late, or said nothing at all because I was still trying to understand what happened myself.
The truth is, I didn’t have a media team.
I had a nervous system stuck in survival mode.
I had shame.
I had grief.
I had fear.
And I was still showing up.
I Don’t Want to Be a Brand Anymore
Brands are polished.
They’re careful.
They speak only when they have the perfect answer.
I’m not interested in that.
I’d rather be raw.
Awkward.
Honest.
Messy.
Contradictory.
Because that’s what real people are.
And I’ve spent too long hiding behind scripts trying to manage perception instead of just telling the truth.
If You Saw Yourself in My Failure, Good
Maybe you saw a part of yourself in what I lost.
Maybe that’s why you laughed.
Maybe that’s why it stung so much to watch.
But that’s the point of a mirror.
It’s not there to make you feel safe.
It’s there to show you something real.
I didn’t survive so I could be rebranded.
I survived so I could stop pretending I was ever a product in the first place.
Final Thought
I’m not here to be sold.
Or salvaged.
Or sanitized.
I’m here to reflect.
And maybe, in doing that, give someone else permission to stop performing too.
You thought I was a brand.
But I was a mirror.
And mirrors only hurt
if you’re afraid to look.