all this internet bullshit: casey neistat's journey through the 20th century

Everything vibrates in the trenches. After the eighth earth shaking explosion Casey's eardrums couldn't let the sound go. The echos spilled from his ear canals and flowed onto his shoulders where they met the vibrations of the air and Earth. Bombs both distant and close constantly rattled the trench Casey now called home. Puddles never quite settled as these miniature earthquakes created ceaseless waves in the vomit colored water.

But while the vibrations in the Earth rattled men's bodies, the vibrations in the air shook their souls.

Occasionally they ripped through the wind like a bullet through a target. Gun shots, grenades, artillery. These were not the sounds that caused most men's blood to curdle. Though they presented the possibility of maiming, they also carried the possibility of a quick death. That would be a blessing. To most men. In fact, to all men who faced the abject horror of trench warfare along the Western front of The Great War, save for one.

Casey Neistat.

The noises that provided a backdrop to that high-pitched note were normally delirious groans and painful grunts. Wet coughs and wretches. When he'd enlisted, eagerly, at age 17 Casey had imagined battling enemy soldiers, dragging his countrymen to safety, and eventual celebration as the Germans raised a white flag.

He didn't think it'd be easy. He'd also imagined gruff generals barking orders. Long treks with backpack straps cutting through his shoulders and blisters forming in his combat boots. But he'd never imagined the smell of men's flesh rotting while they still drew breath. The indignity of hiding his face under a sour, piss-soaked rag and praying the wind would keep the mustard gas away. He hadn't imagined, hadn't even been capable of imagining, that war was nothing more or less than a constant state of fear punctuated by brief, incoherent flashes of violence where the only survival strategies were hope and pray.

In other words, he could never have imagined war would be so much fun.

This experience unbound his conceptions of warfare and allowed his imagination to run wild. No longer was he limited to fantasies of impaling enemy soldiers on his bayonet, tearing them limb from limb with a well-placed grenade, or causing their skulls to explode with impeccable aim. He could now imagine infection brought on from living in his own feces, his feet rotting off his body, and the rapid spread of all too common diseases rendered deadly by the blood-freezing winter nights. His dreams, he realized, had been childish. Simple. This was real war. This was real experience.

He lived for this shit.

Casey knelt by a small fire for warmth, huddled with two men who's names he didn't know and didn't want to learn. Every man he'd met was dead or mutilated or worse. One of the soldiers forced his mouth open to choke down some dry crackers and revealed his black, blistered gums and decayed teeth.

“Neistat!” His Sergent called. Casey got to his feet and began to trudge in the direction of the voice. As he picked his way around puddles and the living corpses that littered the ground, Casey prayed the sergeant had received orders to attack. Last time they'd fought for three days to advance their line three feet. With no word on the greater arc of the war, Casey hoped to continue this dance in perpetuity. They would fight again to claim another foot. In a week they'd be pushed back to where they started. All the while he would get to dodge bullets and shrapnel as much as infection and disease. He smiled to himself when he arrived at the small officer's alcove. He loved everything about soldiering, but one thing made it all the sweeter.

Here in the trenches, in 1917, he couldn't be cancelled on Twitter.com

Circumstance forced Casey from the war before it concluded. His left leg had been torn off in an explosion. The fighting blinded him to the point he didn't even notice the detonation until he struggled to his feet and, when he attempted to take a step, promptly face planted into a pile of wet shit.

Had this changed his outlook on war? No. It was a useless appendage anyway.

Since his return to the states, Casey moved out of his parents house and relocated to New York City. Arriving in the middle of the Spanish Flu pandemic made the adjustment more difficult, but Casey enjoyed the challenge. His initial job search led him to the newly constructed Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, where he quickly found employment as a camera operator.

Living at the epicenter of a booming post-war economy had seemingly endless perks, chief among them his stable, well-paying job that helped him discover a passion for film-making. He reveled in the excess of New York parties that featured fast music and faster women. But the most exciting moment of any given evening came with particularly loud symbol clashes or the start of a fireworks display. The chaotic noise always took him back to his favorite memories. Ducking into a foul trench with a hundred terrified men as bombs tore apart the earth around them.

Soon he would get to return. Very soon.

The good times couldn't last forever. The soaring economy experienced a crash the likes of which no living human had ever seen. Casey, along with millions of other workers, lost his job. His apartment followed soon after. Desperate for work, he wandered the streets of New York for weeks, searching for employment. He found none. What he found was much better than a “job” or “food” or “stable shelter.”

What he found was a Hooverville.

More specifically, after striking out on his job search yet again, Casey took a walk through Central Park and discovered a homeless settlement in the empty reservoir. After all these years, he'd finally found a suitable replacement for the trenches. Though it lacked the stomach-squirming anxiety and constant rumblings of an active war zone, Casey was nonetheless taken in by the unnecessary indignity. He was home.

Squalor though was too comfortable. Casey grew discontent with the lack of food, clean water, and shelter from the bitter New York winter. He wanted more immediate threats to his life. He wanted to go back to France. He wanted to go back to war.

Casey attempted to re-enlist hours after news of Pearl Harbor reached NYC. Due to his advanced age and missing leg, he was denied entry. Casey attempted to use makeup stolen from his old place of employment to look younger. He used a fake ID and even attempted to hide his missing leg. But eventually, he was reduced to a new low. Begrudgingly, he begged for enough money to call his parents. Casey hardly spent any time in his upper middle class Connecticut home before moving to New York, and this was the first time he'd spoken to his father since. After a few minutes of arguing, his dad relinquished. He pulled a few strings and just like that, Casey was granted entry into the officer's academy.

For a time, he enjoyed wielding power over the volunteers and draftees. Calling them “maggots,” and “worms,” and forcing them to run through drills, but it didn't last. Despite his repeated requests, he was never moved to the front lines, and, at the conclusion of the war, was discharged.

Upon his second return from combat, Casey was met with greater support. Congress passed the G.I. bill, which made it possible for him to obtain medical care and a college education at no cost. Though he wanted to return to the film industry and make his own movies, he was unable to do so without serious connections. Though his joy at avoiding even the possibility of an anime-avatar calling him a dipshit online could not be overstated, he despised the idea of going through film school. But since equipment was prohibitively expensive and distribution was an impossibility without studio support, Casey took advantage of the government's rare generosity and enrolled in film school.

While at university he met his wife, Candice. Upon graduation, he got a job at a New York studio and quietly began to work towards his ultimate dream – directing his own film. In his spare time, he joined the civil rights protests of the 50s and 60s. Though he believed in the cause wholeheartedly, he lied to Candice every time he said that was his only reason for joining the marches and demonstrations. The real reason was, every now and then, when the cops showed up, he could go back. The indiscriminate gunfire. The clouds of chemicals blowing in the breeze. Even though the protests lacked the pleasures of those trenches Casey loved so much, they were still the closest he ever got to returning to The Great War.

Casey lived out his years attempting to recreate those few months he spent in France from 1917-1918. He climbed through the studio system and even got to direct a few rigidly-controlled films but was never granted the creative freedom he pined for. In 1985, even as he lay dying, he still cracked a smile. When Candice managed to ask, “what are you so happy about,” between body-shaking sobs, Casey answered, “at least I didn't have to deal with that internet bullshit.”

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