There is a particular frustration in seeing strangers and old collaborators sketch out a version of you that has nothing to do with the actual person. It feels like someone photocopied your name and glued it onto a character they needed for their own script. I have spent years building fictional personas for film and comedy, so I know exactly how easy it is to bend a person into a storyline when the truth does not serve the plot. I also know what it looks like when someone turns a human being into a narrative device.
Because of that, the irony hits harder when someone decides to turn me into a character for their own purposes. They pull from gossip, projection, insecurity, and resentment, then commit to this fictional version as if it is fact.
What makes this even stranger is that some of these people have never actually known me. We have never shared a room or a real conversation. Yet they speak with the confidence of someone delivering sworn testimony. The real story begins with that contradiction.
When A Stranger Decides They Know Your Life
A guy named Ryan entered the picture in April of 2021. He commented on a random video of mine saying he co-hosted a fantasy sports podcast with Rob, which surprised me because I had no idea Rob was doing a podcast with anyone. I assumed Rob had stepped away from creating altogether, but instead he had quietly shifted his energy into something new with someone I had never heard of. That was my first encounter with Ryan. He reached out completely unprompted, sounding polite and casual, and his message was:
April 12, 2021 at 9:36 pm
“Hey my names Ryan I do sports podcasts with Rob M. sometimes and use this channel for it. Hilarious video dude, he’s mentioned you a few times when we’re on the phone 👍🏻”
There was no tension between us. His tone showed no discomfort. He treated me like a normal person. I responded the same way:
Upside Down Creative Media
April 13, 2021
“Cool man. I’ll check it out. Rob and I started this channel together and he’s on pretty much every video. Tell him to call or text me next time you hear from him because I haven’t been able to reach him.”
After that, he replied once more:
Fantasy R&R
April 13, 2021 at 3:18 am
“Will do. He’s been super busy with work lately but I’ll let him know as soon as I connect with him.”
That was the entire exchange. No accusations. No boundaries crossed. No issues raised. Then three years passed in complete silence.
Disclaimer: Because my website auto-pulls comment feeds from my YouTube uploads, his comments still appear here even after he deleted his account.
So when he resurfaced, it felt like walking into a room where someone had been arguing with a cardboard cutout of me for years.
Reading The Rants Of A Man Who Never Knew Me
In 2024, Ryan resurfaced again, this time in the comments section of my YouTube. What showed up was a stream of accusations and personal attacks, none of which came from anything real between us because we never had any real interactions. Every claim he made came from a fictional version of me that he pieced together from hearsay and whatever resentment he absorbed from Rob.
What made it even stranger was the pacing. These weren’t casual comments. They came in rapid succession, minutes apart, each one edited, revised, and re-posted like he was obsessively fine-tuning an argument he had already convinced himself was true.
Here are the exact comments he posted:
ClipsYouCantShowYourMother
February 22, 2024 at 7:16 pm
“I stopped calling him and booted him off my podcast for erratic behavior. You are desperate for fame without working for it. You think you can move to Nashville without experience and people will think you are a genius.”
ClipsYouCantShowYourMother
March 13, 2024 at 12:39 am
“You are pathetic and manipulative. I know all about you creeping on girls and blaming him. He said he trolled you while filming Falling Together and walked out because he could not stand you anymore.”
ClipsYouCantShowYourMother
March 13, 2024 at 12:52 am
“You are a creepy weirdo. You stalked my page for years. You use rob because you have no talent. No crafted reply will change that.”
ClipsYouCantShowYourMother
March 13, 2024 at 12:54 am
“You stalked my page for years. You had access to Rob’s social media and started creeping on girls then blamed it on him. That is why he cut you off. You use rob for film content because you have no talent or ambition. You are broke, lonely, angry, sociopathic and older than me. It is time to grow up.”
ClipsYouCantShowYourMother
March 13, 2024 at 12:56 am
“LOL yeah sure, you can read my edits since YouTube is afraid of me hurting yours and robs feelings with the truth in response. It is an amazing coincidence that while not interacting with you, or him for years, I moved to one of the most expensive cities in the US and have a wife and career, but the drama just HAPPENS to follow when you two came out of the woodwork. You are just like Rob. Look in the mirror and start blaming yourself instead of everyone else.”
Every one of these claims falls apart the moment you line them up next to reality.
The Fictional Allegations Versus The Actual Events
Ryan claimed I was creeping on women from accounts connected to our work. Here is what actually happened.
During the production of Falling Together, a satirical project, we created a character named Dr. Breh. I wrote all the songs, produced the beats, and built the social media account. Rob simply performed the character on camera and recorded lyrics in my studio. That was our division of roles. There was an account created with the “image” of Dr. Breh, but I created it, with Rob’s permission and he had access to it. That account was dormant and had 10 posts at the most to support the story that Falling Together was real, before it was deleted.
This track, “Wear My Mask For You,” was recorded in 2020 and became the final Dr. Breh release before the character was retired. I produced the beat, wrote the lyrics, and shaped the tone of the persona. It marked the last creative moment Rob and I shared within the Dr. Breh universe before everything began to fade out.
This clip introduced the first on-screen collaboration between Dr. Breh and “Deez Nugs,” a fictional Jacksonville rapper portrayed by one of Rob’s friends. It expanded the satirical universe of Falling Together, giving Dr. Breh his first in-world partnership inside the joke.
This track was the follow-up in the Dr. Breh storyline and the official team-up with “Deez Nugs,” a fictional Jacksonville rapper played by one of Rob’s friends. It was part of the same satirical world we were building, where every song pushed the joke further while keeping the characters grounded in a kind of exaggerated local-rap parody.
What Actually Happened
The reality is far simpler than the version Ryan repeated and far less dramatic than whatever Rob implied behind the scenes. The so-called “incident” had nothing to do with the Dr. Breh account, nothing to do with impersonation, and nothing beyond a single impulsive moment during a difficult stretch in my life.
What actually happened is straightforward: one day, while using the main UDCM Instagram account, I sent a fire emoji to a woman who regularly posted sexualized, OnlyFans-style content. Maybe I was feeling nostalgic about photography and thinking about shooting again. Maybe it was just a lapse in judgment. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t a conversation, it wasn’t a pattern, and it wasn’t done from any account tied to Rob. I handled all the posting and activity for UDCM. He was the on-camera face, but I was the one behind the controls.
The woman’s reaction makes the entire thing even more inconsequential. In the screenshot, she hearted every interaction up until the final flame. No discomfort. No complaint. No conversation afterward. Nothing. It was so insignificant that I forgot about it entirely until years later when people tried to turn it into a story.
To this day, I still do not know how she originally entered Rob’s orbit or what the actual connection was. When Rob and I briefly reconnected in 2024, right before he disappeared again, he vaguely referenced the situation. Even then, the details were unclear. He never confronted me directly, never asked me a question, and never explained why it mattered. I had to piece the story together myself, and even now I still cannot believe that our entire creative partnership, almost a decade of work, unraveled over a single flame emoji. In a strange way, it feels like the perfect and tragic bookend to a project built on satire and absurdity. Falling Together ends with a meltdown. UDCM ends with a misunderstanding.
If someone assumed the message came from Rob, it would only be because he was the visible face of UDCM. I was the one running the account, doing all the posting, editing, producing, and interaction. That mismatch may explain the confusion, but it does not change the facts.
What makes Ryan’s accusation even stranger is that no one ever addressed it with me. Rob did not. That Only Fans girl did not. Not one person ever confronted me. And I never blamed Rob. I never hid from anything. If anyone had simply said, “What was this,” and explained the connection or situation, then I would have apologized immediately and moved on.
Instead, silence allowed a harmless and forgettable moment to be reshaped into a rumor. That rumor traveled, grew, and became something else. People used it as a shortcut to explain resentment they had never expressed out loud. Ryan inherited the rumor third-hand, treated it as truth, and built a fictional narrative around it. It appears Rob accepted that same fiction as a quiet exit rather than having even one honest conversation with me.
The Real UDCM Story And What It Took To Build It
Ryan claimed I used Rob because I lacked talent and ambition. That accusation ignores how UDCM actually started and how it evolved over time. The channel did not begin as a duo. It began as a small collective I founded in 2013 while raising kids and working full time for a billion dollar e-commerce company. I pictured it as a hub for local creators, a place where people could experiment without waiting for permission. At the beginning, we had several people involved. We met, we wrote, we filmed, and we tried things that were rough, unpolished, and often chaotic, but the process was exciting.
When The Collective Became A Duo
Over time, something shifted that Ryan would have no way of seeing from the outside. One by one, people drifted away. They did not vanish because they stopped caring about creating. Several of them quietly told me that Rob had a habit of pushing others aside. Whether it was intentional or not, his energy took over the room. Slowly, the group dynamic narrowed until only he and I remained. Unless it was one of Rob’s approved friends, it was rare (until the later years) that we would allow people in our circle.
And there is an important detail here that Ryan will never understand. I allowed that shift to happen because, in some ways, it worked. Rob and I had genuine chemistry on and off camera. We could improvise together without overthinking. Most of what we created was improvisational in nature. When you are balancing fatherhood, a full-time job, and a creative project you squeeze into the margins of your life, you naturally gravitate toward what runs with the least friction. A smaller group meant fewer scheduling fights, less waiting on people who were not as committed, and more time actually making things. Letting the collective shrink down to the two of us was not about needing Rob. It was about keeping UDCM moving with as little resistance as possible. The partnership was efficient, productive, and, for a while, it kept the engine running.
But none of that changes the core truth. UDCM was something I created from the ground up.
I paid for all the equipment, cameras, microphones, lights, stabilizers, lenses, editing computers, software, and storage. I wrote 90% of the scripts. I edited every single frame. I managed the social media and built every iteration of the website. Paid for web hosting. I paid for festival submissions. I covered gas, props, food, and every other expense that kept the work moving. I carried the financial weight because no one else could or would. UDCM survived because I refused to let it fall apart, even during periods when life made continuing feel almost impossible.
The results spoke for themselves. People noticed. Festivals noticed. Our collaborations earned awards locally year after year, and the growth came from work I kept driving forward.
But the most important part comes after that chapter. When Rob drifted out of my life, the work did not stop. It evolved. It sharpened. It grew in ways it never could have when I was carrying someone who had already checked out. The strange irony is that some of the strongest validation of my creativity came after he disappeared and after I finally stopped waiting for him to come back around.
In 2021, during one of the livestream experiments I was doing alone, something surreal happened. The guys from the This Is Important podcast mentioned my work on air. They talked about the stream. They laughed about it. They recognized what I was doing. They even tossed around the idea of hiring me. For someone like me, who grew up on their style of comedy and admired the level of craft behind shows like Workaholics, hearing them acknowledge my work at all felt unreal. That moment mattered because it confirmed what I had always known deep down. I could stand on my own without Rob next to me. I was never the sidekick. I was never the one riding coattails. I was the engine.
Because in 2024, long after Rob had left and long after the partnership faded without explanation, my work reached a new peak. I won Best Film, Best Director, and more at LOL JAX with a project Rob had zero involvement in. It was my vision, my work, my editing, my direction, my time, and my money. That is not someone who lacks ambition. That is not someone who uses others. That is someone who builds, rebuilds, and keeps building even when life throws everything it can at him.
Rob joined early, but UDCM grew because I kept feeding it.
He helped shape some chapters, but I funded and carried the book.
He walked away, but the work continued without him.
I did not use him. If anything, he benefited from a platform I created with blood, sweat, and financial sacrifice during his time with me and long after he left. I sacrificed so much time with my kids, who he also made an impression on, but then just abandoned. All for nothing.
Falling Together Was Satire, Not Evidence Of Dysfunction
Another major flaw in Ryan’s interpretation is the way he clung to Falling Together as if it were a documentary capturing my real emotional life in free fall. That project was never intended to be taken literally. He was not watching reality. He was watching a piece of satire designed to blur the line between performance and truth.
From the beginning, Falling Together was built from the same DNA as projects like I’m Still Here, where the performance itself is the point. Every argument was heightened. Every moment of tension was staged. Every apparent unraveling was part of the script. Dr. Breh was not a real persona melting down in real time. He was a caricature, a parody of the “digital meltdown frontman.” The music projected desperation by design, not because I was secretly broadcasting a breakdown. The chaos on screen was not evidence of dysfunction. It was choreography.
How The Audience Filled In Their Own Story
We built a world where the viewer was supposed to question everything. The humor lived in the confusion. Because the project existed mostly in fragments – scattered clips, half-edited reels, experimental footage, and a playlist that never fully resolved into a clean final cut – people started filling in the gaps with their own narratives. Some recognized the satire immediately and saw the intent behind the performances. Others, including Ryan, used it as confirmation for a character they had already invented in their heads.
Some people recognized the satire immediately. Some people saw the intention behind the performances. And some people, like Ryan, saw something that confirmed the character they had already invented in their heads.
How Creatives Responded To Falling Together
Despite the confusion in some corners, Falling Together still reached people who understood exactly what we were doing. It caught the attention of Kyle Newacheck, the creator and director of Workaholics and recent director of Happy Gilmore 2, someone who came out of the same comedy lineage the project was built on. Kyle did not watch it and see a meltdown. He saw the craft, the structure, and the joke.
Over the years, he did more than passively consume the work. He and his producer Thomas Kellogg interviewed me and Rob on their podcast back in 2017. The following year, in 2018, he asked me to produce a couple of web series episodes for his production company. He later mentioned my livestream work again on his new podcast “This Is Important” in 2021. Those online interactions eventually led to him inviting me out for coffee in Atlanta in 2023. At each stage, he treated the material as what it was meant to be – a creative experiment, not a cry for help. He got it.
I want to be clear about what I’m about to share. I am not fully comfortable sharing messages from anyone who has a public career. Private conversations deserve respect, and I do not treat them as currency. At the same time, leaving those exchanges out would make this story feel incomplete and easier for others to misinterpret. I am not sharing them to impress anyone or to suggest a closeness that is not there.
I am including them because they reflect something real that happened during that period and because they show that the work we created carried genuine merit. If people are going to dismiss me as someone who exaggerates his accomplishments, then it feels necessary to show the pieces that confirm the reality. The recognition was real. The encouragement was real. The creative momentum was real. And honoring that truth matters to the full picture of what UDCM was and why it meant so much to me. Receipts don’t lie.
That recognition did not stop with Kyle. After hearing that I had met with him, Adam Devine, who I had originally met in 2015, also showed support. He reached out again and offered to put me on the guest list the next time I made it to a show, which ultimately I did fly to Houston, TX to see their live show and got to hang with them backstage. Each of those moments reinforced the same point: people who actually work in this space, who understand satire and performance, saw the intention clearly.
And then, we have to go back in time to the era of Falling Together in 2019… in a way only the internet can produce, the work drifted into Fred Durst’s orbit. Not by strategy, not by design, but probably because we had spent so many sketches joking about how Rob channeled his inner “Frederick Durst.” Somehow those breadcrumbs made their way to him, and he responded exactly how you would expect someone who understands absurdity to respond.
On one post, he commented,
“I see two stars shining so bright ⭐️.”
On another,
“⚡️⚡️.”
And again,
“⚡️⚡️.”
Like Kyle, Mr. Frederick Durst did not see dysfunction or chaos. He saw humor and performance. He saw two people playing characters inside a world that did not take itself too seriously. That is how actual creatives with experience, careers, and a genuine understanding of satire responded to our little social experiment… Falling Together. They got the joke. They recognized the improvisational rhythm. They understood the meta commentary.
The only people who misread it were the ones who needed it to be real so they could prop up a story they were already committed to. Ryan watched a satire and convinced himself he had found evidence. He watched characters and treated them like case studies. He watched a joke and insisted it was the truth.
Falling Together was never about dysfunction. It was about creativity. In a strange way, it exposed its audience by how they reacted to it. The people who failed that test were the ones who took it literally.
A History Of People Inventing Me
Ryan was not the first person to invent a version of me that never existed. It started years earlier with an old friend, turned stranger, Jaybier. He was my first creative partner when I moved to Jacksonville in 2008. Back then, I was helping him in my free time. I helped edit his projects, “acted” in his web series, and poured my time and energy into something he believed in.
Eventually I formed Tom Foolery Flix, hoping it would become a real comedy duo between us and something that would get me out of the miserable, minimum wage retail Hell I was working in. But cooperation never came. Every idea I pitched was criticized, rewritten, or pushed toward someone else’s comfort zone. My ideas were repeatedly gutted by people who wanted to be “the real filmmakers” in the room. Creativity turned into red tape, and the work stalled because it was never allowed to be my voice.
The Festival – A Meta Script About Control
The final breaking point came when I wrote The Festival, a meta script about two filmmakers who do not realize they are already inside the movie they are creating. It was strange, self-aware, and legitimately original. Instead of supporting that idea, a so-called “real filmmaker” rewrote it into yet another Jay and Silent Bob knockoff. Everything that made the script mine disappeared. Production stalled, even though I had worked hard to pull the project together. At the same time, Jay started slipping unwanted “social commentary” about my family into conversations, which only deepened the fracture.
I am choosing to share the entire script below, because it was a great idea for it’s time, but because of the constant friction with those people, it will never see the light of day:
THE FESTIVAL
Upside Down Creative Media
Jacksonville, FL
www.upsidedowncreativemedia.com
mmalone@upsidedowncreativemedia.com
CHARACTERS
DARNELL
Stable job, unstable judgment. Wants to direct films but sees the world in tunnel vision, convinced every half idea is a masterpiece. Endlessly charming and endlessly oblivious. Heavy southern accent. Messes up everyone’s name every time and never notices. Carries himself like life is one long audition no one else knows about.
JAKE
Quit his job hoping it would fix his life. It did not. Thirty two, exhausted and depressed, wants to be an actor but never follows through beyond talking about it. Lives in a looping monologue between “now or never” and “maybe later.” Shows flashes of talent when he forgets to overthink.
KAYLA
The audience’s brain. Observant, grounded, ignored. The only one who seems to notice reality, danger, or structure. Breaks the fourth wall whenever she hits her limit. She holds the answers the whole movie but is treated like background noise or a supporting app. Her patience is its own tragicomedy arc.
GRAHAM
Mysterious, emotionless, narratively irrelevant. Appears whenever the plot forgets what it is doing, as if the story engine accidentally spawned an NPC. Speaks in deadpan wisdom when needed, otherwise drifts through scenes like a glitch.
INTRODUCTION
INT. OFFICE – DAY
Black screen. Repeated hollow thuds. Plastic on wood. The sound escalates like someone losing a very one-sided fight with technology.
Fade in. Fluorescent lights hum overhead. A bland, corporate office. Beige walls. Grey dividers. Dead plants. Everyone else is quietly typing, pretending to care.
JAKE sits at his desk, eyes glassy, jaw clenched. He slams his keyboard into his desk like he is trying to kill a small animal that wronged him. Keys rattle loose.
JAKE
I quit!
EXT. DOWNTOWN / INT. JAKE’S CAR – DAY
Jake now sits in his parked car at the edge of a busy downtown street. Traffic moves in a smooth, indifferent flow around him. He does not move. He barely blinks. The world goes on. He doesn’t.
He slowly leans forward like a puppet whose strings are cut and rests his forehead on the steering wheel. The HORN BLARES. He leaves it there. People glance over and then look away, choosing not to engage with this breakdown.
INT. JAKE’S HOUSE – DAY
Overhead shot of a cheap pan on a stained stove. Eggs sizzle into black. The yolks have given up. Grease pops with no urgency.
Jake stands in front of the stove, still in his office clothes, tie loosened, dead-eyed. He flips the burnt eggs anyway, like this is a normal meal and not a small cry for help.
He sits at a cluttered table, eats the burnt eggs in slow, mechanical bites. No flavor, no emotion. A fish tank gurgles in the background, the fish pacing the glass like it wants out more than he does.
Jake reaches for a wrinkled newspaper. Circles random job ads with a pen: “Warehouse,” “Night Shift,” “Entry Level Something.” He hesitates on “Actor Wanted” but keeps moving.
INT. DARNELL’S BAR – DAY
A narrow neighborhood bar that has seen better nights. Dim light, faded neon, a TV quietly playing something no one is watching.
DARNELL moves behind the bar like it is a packed Friday night, even though it is barely afternoon and almost empty. He polishes glasses that are already clean, lines up bottles with obsessive precision, and flashes a smile at chairs as if they tipped him.
KAYLA appears at the bar, standing directly in front of him. She watches him for a beat, head tilted, waiting to be seen.
Darnell looks right through her. From his point of view, we only see the top of her head, as if she exists below his mental horizon line.
GRAHAM steps into frame, gently nudging Kayla aside without a word. Darnell instantly hands him a drink he has poured for no one. Graham takes it and walks away, emotionless. Kayla is left where she started, unanswered and invisible.
ACT I – SO IT BEGINS
CROSSCUT – BAR / JAKE’S HOUSE – DAY
Behind the bar, Darnell leans on the counter, phone to his ear, spinning a bar towel like a baton. At home, Jake slumps on his couch, staring at his ringing phone like it is another bill.
JAKE
I am not coming in. My son is in the hospital with a fever.
DARNELL
Jeff, when did you get a son. And what is a fever.
JAKE
My name is not Jeff. Are you hir—
DARNELL
Anyway. Madame DJFunkygirl Madrid’s festival is in six weeks. All the big directors. We need ideas.
JAKE
Okay but my name is Ja—
DARNELL
Great. I am picking you up after I meet with Kara.
JAKE
Kayla. Her name is—
A sharp, abrupt silence. Dial tone. Darnell has already hung up.
Jake stares at the phone, genuinely unsure what just happened. Before he can process it, the DOORBELL RINGS. It feels impossibly fast.
He opens the door. Darnell stands there, buzzing with energy, as if time bends around his decisions.
DARNELL
Let’s go, Jeff.
Jake looks defeated and resigned all at once. He grabs his keys, takes a breath that does nothing, and follows.
ACT II – IT’S ALL ABOUT THAT CHASE
EXT. PARK – DAY
A small, oddly quiet park. A couple of old benches, a lonely trash can, a swing set that squeaks in the distance. The kind of public space that feels like it forgot people exist.
Kayla sits on a bench, scrolling her phone or doodling in a notebook, the only person present who seems awake to reality.
Darnell and Jake walk up the path toward her. Darnell is all arms and confidence. Jake is just trying to keep up emotionally and physically.
DARNELL
Karen! It is so good to see you.
KAYLA
It is Kayla. You saw me today.
DARNELL
Exactly. Three years ago. Time flies.
Darnell and Jake immediately spiral into festival talk, overlapping each other. Their conversation gets faster and more pointless, turning into a wall of words that mean nothing.
From Kayla’s perspective, their voices slowly fade into muffled noise, like distant traffic. Her focus shifts past them.
She sees Darnell’s car in the background. A FIGURE tries the door, fails, then clumsily breaks in. Glass spills, the alarm chirps once and dies. The figure climbs in and starts hot-wiring.
KAYLA
Darnell. Your car.
Nothing. Their conversation continues about tone, genre, and “vibes.”
KAYLA
Your car is literally being stolen.
The words “being stolen” finally sync up with some part of their brains. They slowly turn like they are watching a nature documentary.
KAYLA
We need my car. Now.
A spark of urgency. They all bolt. Jake sprints to the passenger side of Kayla’s car and dives in with more commitment than anything he has done this week.
Kayla runs toward the driver side. Darnell, unwilling to be dramatic unless he is the star, chooses to slide over the hood. It is far less graceful than he pictures it.
He clips Kayla, knocks her off balance, and snatches the keys from her hand mid spin.
DARNELL
Backseat, Kevin. You drive too pretty.
INT. KAYLA’S CAR – MOVING – DAY
The car barrels down city streets. OTHER CARS honk, swerve, slam brakes. This is a legitimate car chase. The world around them is chaos.
Inside the car, Darnell and Jake talk like they are sitting in a coffee shop with good air conditioning. They barely register the danger.
DARNELL
So Jason, romantic comedy. Something emotional. Notebook vibes.
JAKE
It is not Jason. And yeah, romance is cheaper than action.
Kayla stares directly toward the imaginary audience, eyes wide. She glances between them, then back at us.
KAYLA
We are literally in an action scene. Maybe use it as practice or fictional insp—
DARNELL
Kelly, stop interrupting Greg and me.
Up ahead, the stolen car slows and drifts to the shoulder. Smoke curls from the hood. Whoever is inside has clearly given up.
Darnell pulls in behind, stops way too close, throws the car in park, and hops out like this is a casual customer service moment.
He strides to the driver window and knocks like a door-to-door salesman.
DARNELL
Why you stealing my car.
The window rolls down. The thief is GRAHAM, of course.
GRAHAM
Oh this is yours. I thought it was abandoned. Smelled like a guy who still collects Funko Pops.
Graham casually hands the keys back like he borrowed sugar from a neighbor. No apology. No panic. He climbs out and walks away down the road.
Each time we cut back to Jake and Darnell watching him walk, he is somehow much farther than physics should allow, like reality is buffering his existence.
Darnell slides into the driver’s seat of his car and twists the key. The engine coughs once, twice, then dies. The gas light glows bright and judgmental.
He gets out and trudges back to Kayla’s car like this is the most unfair plot twist of his life.
DARNELL
Kristin, can I bum a ride.
He climbs in. Kayla, already annoyed, starts the car and pulls forward. The car makes it about five feet before it sputters and cuts off. Her gas light blinks too.
MONTAGE – VARIOUS LOCATIONS
The trio now trudges down various landscapes, a GAS CAN swinging at Darnell’s side. This should not take this long, but it does.
They walk along a highway shoulder, cars whipping past as Darnell talks about “cinematic angles.”
They cross in front of an elementary school where kids stare at them like a strange field trip group.
They cut through a deep forest trail, city people in the wrong establishing shot.
They appear on the Main Street Bridge, wind whipping, Darnell trying to pitch a bridge scene to Jake like he invented symbolism.
They finally drift past The Landing. In every location, Kayla’s face gradually transitions from patient to numb to “I am spiritually done.”
ACT III – THE WALKING DEAD AND DUMB
EXT. SUN RAY CINEMA – NIGHT
Neon glows against the night sky. The SUN RAY marquee flickers with the name of some art film no one will admit they did not understand.
Darnell, Jake, and Kayla stand across the street, framed under a tired streetlight. Traffic occasionally glides by, splashing them with headlights and indie-film energy.
DARNELL
Forget romance. Comedy. Or trendy. Like a guy addicted to VR. Jared, thoughts.
JAKE
Sure. My name is Jared. I also have four STDs and sleep with my ottoman.
DARNELL
Damn, Jake. An ottoman.
A beat. Jake and Kayla both freeze. Darnell said “Jake” on purpose, and did not even notice he did it.
KAYLA
You mean to say you do pay attention.
DARNELL
Anyway. The festival.
Kayla’s POV. The words fade into a low mumble again, like they are underwater. Their gestures slow. Her focus shifts behind them.
A shambling FIGURE in torn clothes staggers toward the group. Grey skin, slack jaw, slow, hungry steps. A full textbook zombie.
KAYLA
Guys. A zombie. Right here. This is the plot happening.
Darnell reaches over without looking and covers her mouth like she is a noisy TV he can mute.
DARNELL
Why must you interrupt everything.
The zombie lunges toward him, arms out. At that exact moment, Jake and Darnell casually step out of frame, still mid conversation about story structure and festival strategy.
A GUNSHOT cracks the night. The zombie drops with a clean headshot, falling almost politely onto the sidewalk.
We reveal GRAHAM standing behind the zombie, arm extended, gun still smoking. He blows on the barrel like he watched too many movies alone.
DARNELL
Hey look. It is a zombie.
ACT IV – SOAP OPERA
EXT. SIDEWALK – NIGHT
The three of them walk away from the theater, bathed in distant neon and the low hum of the city. For no reason at all, a dramatically lush orchestral score swells under the moment like a soap opera finale.
Darnell slows and stops center frame, turning his face to an invisible camera as if he just remembered he has an inner life.
DARNELL
I cannot do this anymore, Jennifer.
JAKE
Who is Jennifer.
DARNELL
You. Obviously.
Kayla looks straight out at us, the unseen audience, eyes pleading for someone out here to explain why she is trapped with these men.
Thunder rumbles from a clear sky. A theatrical gust of wind blows Darnell’s shirt open just enough to give him a dramatic hero outline. None of it makes sense. All of it is committed.
KAYLA
Here we go.
Darnell straightens, fully entering his soap opera era.
DARNELL
I carry the burden of success alone. The festival. The critics. The dreams. My stepdad. All of it. Alone.
JAKE
What is happening.
DARNELL
You never believed in me, Jonathan.
JAKE
It is Jake.
Kayla physically wedges herself between them, refusing to let the melodrama breathe unchecked.
KAYLA
You ignored a car chase. A zombie. Actual danger. And now you are acting like you just got rejected from daytime television.
DARNELL
Kristen, you wound me.
KAYLA
It is Kayla.
DARNELL
That is what I said.
A slow, exaggerated clap breaks the moment. They all turn. GRAHAM stands under an imaginary spotlight, illuminated like a stage actor monologuing to the back row.
GRAHAM
You fools. You fight while destiny walks away. The festival waits. Time is cruel. I am bored.
JAKE
Since when do you talk like that.
GRAHAM
Since the plot needed me to.
Graham produces a single rose from nowhere and flicks it toward Jake. Jake reacts like someone just handed him the lead role he always wanted.
For the first time, conviction flickers in Jake’s eyes.
JAKE
He is right. We waste time. We should write. Film. Create something.
Kayla’s shoulders drop. Not with inspiration. With exhaustion.
KAYLA
I have said this all day.
DARNELL
Did you though.
Kayla lets out a groan that could register on a seismograph.
GRAHAM
Come. I will take you to the place where all great filmmakers find destiny.
JAKE
Where.
Graham raises a hand and points down the street at a glowing gas station.
GRAHAM
The gas station.
DARNELL
Of course. That is where Tarantino wrote Pulp Fiction.
KAYLA
He absolutely did not.
They follow him anyway, because at this point, reality is clearly not driving.
INT. GAS STATION – NIGHT
Fluorescent lights buzz overhead. Rows of snacks, energy drinks, and questionable hot food spin lazily on warmers. It smells like sugar, grease, and bad decisions.
Graham walks them down an aisle like he is leading a tour of a sacred archive.
GRAHAM
Here. Inspiration. Creativity. Destiny.
He gestures to a wall of off-brand chips and beef jerky.
DARNELL
Shattered Dreams. My favorite flavor.
Jake drifts toward a rack of cheap stationery near the counter. His hand lands on a thin, spiral-bound notebook with a flimsy cover.
JAKE
Look. A notebook.
KAYLA
Like the one I used. With actual ideas. That you both ignored.
Darnell grabs another notebook and lifts it high like a sacred script, pages fluttering.
DARNELL
This is destiny.
Kayla closes her eyes and exhales the longest, most tired breath of her life.
KAYLA
If you finish this festival project because of a gas station notebook, I am walking into traffic.
JAKE
So what genre are we thinking.
Kayla does not answer. She just walks out of frame.
Graham unwraps a taquito he did not pay for and takes a slow, satisfied bite.
GRAHAM
Destiny.
Smash cut to black.
END SCENE – REST OR RANT
INT. DINER – NIGHT
A worn, late-night diner. Fluorescent strips buzz overhead. Red vinyl booths with cracked seams. Coffee cups sit half full, lipstick-stained, abandoned by other restless people.
Darnell, Jake, and Kayla slump in one booth together, each at a different stage of emotional hangover. A waitress in the background tops off someone else’s coffee, unbothered by their existence.
DARNELL
So many distractions.
JAKE
I am beat.
DARNELL
We cannot let Lewis win this festival. We need to—
Kayla snaps. She SLAPS Darnell across the face mid sentence. The sound echoes more than it should.
KAYLA
You two would not recognize a good idea if it slapped you harder than I just did.
She flings her notebook across the table. It smacks Jake in the face, bounces, and lands open in his lap. Kayla slides out of the booth and walks away with the calm of someone who finally chose herself.
DARNELL
Who was that.
Jake rubs his cheek, then looks down at the open notebook. Inside are stick figure drawings and rough diagrams of everything that has happened: car chase, zombie, gas station, them in the diner right now.
As we move through the pages of her notebook, the credits begin to roll over her tiny, desperate storyboards, revealing that she had a better movie the whole time.
What Really Ended Things With Jay
Ultimately, the breakup with Jay was not purely creative. The last phase of that relationship turned personal and ugly. He began trolling my family and coworkers on Facebook, threatening my job, and trying to drag my name through the mud. At that point, I told him I was done. His response was, “You jump ship when things get hard. I know you. You’ll be back.” He was wrong. I never went back.
Instead of taking responsibility for his behavior, he retaliated by making Everybody Gets Got, a short film based on a false accusation that I tried to hit on his girlfriend while he was drunk and vomiting. Reality was the opposite. She repeatedly flirted with me. I avoided her and shut it down. During the same period, I was the one stepping away from my one-year-old daughter to take care of him when he was falling apart. None of that made it into his version.
Rather than acknowledge any of this, he twisted the story on screen and cast me as the villain. It was his way of saving face – easier to invent a character called “me” than to confront his own choices. Jay was the first person to turn me into a character. Ryan was just a sequel.
The Collapse Of Friendship And The Loss Of Rob
Although Ryan is loud and aggressive in his own limited way, the real wound in all of this has never been him. His comments are easy to dismiss once you line them up against the facts. The deeper cut came from the collapse of my friendship with Rob. For almost eight years, we built Upside Down Creative Media together. We did not just occasionally upload videos. We lived inside that work. We built characters, produced sketches, shot fake documentaries, and recorded music. Long before livestream comedy and podcasting became default online formats, we were experimenting with both. In 2016, we were already running improv livestreams, launching early podcasts, weaving fictional storylines into social media, and pushing every format we could access. That shared curiosity sat at the center of the friendship.
When Rob left my life without a real conversation, it did not feel like a simple creative breakup. It landed in the same place where grief lives. It felt like a death.
How Past Trauma Shaped My Reaction To Rob
That reaction did not come out of nowhere. At 18, I lost two of my closest childhood friends in back-to-back years. Sean died of a brain tumor. Chris died of an overdose. These were the kids who had shaped my early life, the people you subconsciously assume will always be around. Losing them rewired my sense of permanence. It taught me way too early that sometimes people vanish with no explanation and no closure.
During our earlier filming days, we lost Kurt Hudson, who appeared with us in one of our earliest sketches, “Fuck You Siri,” and who I was personally close to. A former employer of mine had reached out wondering why he had not delivered a project. When I could not get in touch, I checked Facebook and found out he had died. It was another sudden absence, another person gone before there was a chance for a real final conversation.
So when Rob quietly stepped away, refused to ask questions, refused to talk about the so-called “emoji incident,” and refused to have even one honest conversation about what he was feeling, it triggered all of that old grief at once. It felt like losing someone with no warning, again. Different circumstances, same emotional pattern. Someone is part of your daily life, deeply woven into your world, and then they vanish. The silence leaves its own scar.
What I Eventually Learned About Rob
The pain sharpened even more when I began to understand what had been happening behind my back. While I was defending him, building projects around him, editing everything, carrying UDCM financially, and pushing our ideas forward, he had been talking negatively about me for years. He created distance without explaining why. He let resentment harden rather than have a direct conversation. He allowed a fictional version of me to replace the real one – the exact narrative Ryan later picked up and used as ammunition.
Once that reality finally clicked, something inside me shut off. It was not rage or a meltdown. It was clarity. I blocked him and told him I did not want further contact. The choice was not about punishing him. It was about accepting that the friendship I thought I was trying to save had actually ended long before I noticed. I had been grieving a connection that was already gone.
The Real Non-Fantasy Me
The fantasy version of me that exists in Ryan’s imagination has nothing to do with the person who actually gets up and lives this life every day. In reality, I am not mysterious, dramatic, or whatever character he tried to assign to me. I am a father first. Every decision I make – every job change, every late-night edit, every new project – ultimately ties back to my kids. They are at the center. They have seen me rebuild careers, restart creative paths, take losses, and get back up again. The only reason I keep going when life feels heavier than it should is because they are watching.
Life As A Father And Professional
Professionally, I have spent more than two decades building a real career in digital marketing and content strategy. These are not fantasy credits or imagined titles. They are real roles with real clients, concrete deliverables, and measurable results. Across industries like retail, healthcare, education, and broadcast media, I earned each position by showing up consistently. That work eventually allowed me to build a six-figure remote career that gives my kids stability. None of it came from waiting to be discovered. It came from work.
Creatively, I built Upside Down Creative Media from nothing more than a camera, a vision, and whatever hours I could squeeze out around parenting and full-time employment. I paid for the gear. I wrote the scripts. I edited the content. I produced films that went on to win awards, including Best Film and Best Director at the LOL JAX Film Festival. Some of the work reached people I grew up admiring. I built one of the best podcast/livestream studios in Jacksonville and produced some of the best comedy podcasts in Jacksonville, long after Rob left my life. Those moments were not accidents. They were the outcome of years of focused effort.
None of this makes me flawless. I have made mistakes. I have reacted emotionally, misread situations, carried stress badly, and said things I regret. When I have needed to own my behavior, I have. When apologies were necessary, I gave them. If anyone had told me about the stories being spread instead of letting them calcify into resentment, I would have apologized to Rob years ago.
What I Refuse To Carry Anymore
What I will not carry are the fictional versions of me that other people invented to avoid looking at themselves. I am not the villain in Ryan’s imagination. I am not the caricature he tried to stick me with. I am a father, a creator, and a builder who has put in the work – in my career, in my art, and in my own growth.
There are three versions of me that matter. The version my kids know. The version my work proves. And the version I rebuilt from the ground up after every setback.
Clarity is part of that rebuilt version. I genuinely forgive Rob. There is no active bitterness left. Forgiveness, however, does not reopen the door. It does not erase the years of silence or the comments he made behind my back. It does not revive trust. It simply means I am done carrying the hurt. Rob will not be part of my life again. That is not anger. That is a boundary and a form of peace.
As for this Ryan character, he is lucky I stayed quiet as long as I did. His accusations were libelous. His comments were defamatory. Instead of going after him legally or matching his hostility, I put my energy into my kids, my work, and my stability. At the time, life demanded more from me than trading punches online with someone driven by resentment. I am speaking now because the truth matters and because no one else gets to define who I am.
