Guy tired of cosplaying as a functioning adult

OGALLALA, Neb. – After another long week of grinding his 9-5 job and surviving off a diet of coffee, energy drinks, and gas station sushi, a local man has said he’s fed up with it all and just wants to go back to a time when he was happy.

“I can’t believe I wanted to be an adult so much as a kid; this sucks,” said Adam Filmore, 48. “I just want to go back to 1999 when my biggest worry was whether or not I was going to beat Goldeneye on 007 mode faster than my friends.”

Filmore is an account executive at iHeartMedia, but says his true passion is playing music and wanted to be a musician when he was younger.

“I went to college for music theory, I had a band named The Gonad Gang in high school, and I used to just sit by the campfire during the summer stringing my guitar,” said Filmore. “I had dreams of playing in front of sold-out crowds in giant arenas. Unfortunately, chasing your dreams doesn’t always pay the $100,000 of student loan debt you acquire for a pointless piece of paper or provide enough scratch to keep the landlord off your back.”

The Gonad Gang continued to play music and perform gigs at dive bars around the city while the bandmembers were in college, but it soon became unsustainable.

“We used to rock out until the sun came up, man,” said Filmore. “But then Gerry got married and had kids, Billy got transferred to a new office in L.A., and I just found myself absolutely wiped at the end of the day. These days, I’m lucky if I stay awake past 9 p.m.”

Filmore also said he feels like one of those people at conventions who dress up like their favorite anime or video game character, except he’s the opposite—rather than a fun or heroic character, he’s the most mundane of humans; he’s the dreary old guy in a teen comedy movie who lost their passion in life and whose sole purpose on this planet is to make the main character’s life miserable.

“I banged on my bedroom wall last night because the neighbor’s kid was playing music too loud,” said Filmore. “Do you see the hypocrisy in this situation? I’ve literally become my worst nightmare.”

We asked Filmore if he has any plans to try and turn his situation around, but said he was “wading water in the turbulent waters of life” and couldn’t see a way out that didn’t involve a severe shift in his luck.

“I’ve been paying my student loans on time for nearly 20 years and owe almost $30,000 more than when I started,” said Filmore. “There’s basically zero vertical growth opportunities in my company, I’ve tried and failed at just about every side-hustle known to man, and I can’t save enough money to move to another town where I can get paid more. My best option is to hope Reba McEntire’s tour bus breaks down on the side of the road and I just so happen to be in the right place at the right time and can swoon her into allowing me to join her.”

Reba McEntire has been Filmore’s celebrity crush since he was a child.

“I’m just tired of being an adult,” said Filmore. “Zero out of ten. One Star. I do not recommend this to anyone.”

While there are certainly many people who can relate to Filmore’s struggles, his former bandmates don’t seem to be holding out any pity for him.

“Look, I know a lot of people are in a bad place right now and my heart aches for everyone who’s struggling, but Adam isn’t one of those people,” said Billy McDonald, The Gonad Gang’s guitarist. “Did he get duped into thinking he needed to go to college when he should’ve taken a year or two after high school to figure out what he wanted to do? Yes. But the man also tried to be like Van Wilder and stayed in school for seven years drinking and partying too much. However, unlike Van Wilder, he didn’t have a rich father footing the bill at the end of the day.”

McDonald continued, saying that Filmore has been living in his parent’s apartment building, paying lower-than-average rent prices and refused new job opportunities that would’ve paid significantly more money.

“The guy is stuck in the past,” said McDonald, on a phone call from his private yacht while on vacation in the Mediterranean. “He calls me once or twice a year asking if I want to get the band back together; he’s delusional. Our name was The Gonad Gang, and we were a really shitty band. Sure, it was fun at the time, but Gerry and I have grown up. Being in a band was never our goal, it was never our passion.”

“I went back home a few years ago after my mom passed away,” said Gerry King, The Gonad Gang’s lead singer. “Adam was still driving the same 2004 Subaru Outback and AC/DC band t-shirt he got when we saw them live in 2015. I know growing up sucks. Change sucks. Adult problems suck. But we all have them. The difference is, Adam does his best to ignore them or gives up the moment things get hard, whereas the rest of us try to deal with our problems. You know, like how grown ass people should.”

By the end of our conversations with the members of The Gonad Gang, it was evident the band will never get back together. However, Filmore does have a newfound optimism as he has recently invested his entire savings, as well as a hefty loan from the bank, on what he’s determined will be his surefire ticket out of his problems: NFTs.

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