Painstaking Facade, Downtrodden Man

     James Cage White has lived a strange life. Born in Chongqing, China, he has spent his entire life outcast and aimless. In early 2012, James began uploading his life to the video sharing platform Vine, before moving to Twitter and Twitch. He devotes his accounts to every minutia of his life, from his meals, to his personal failures, to his family struggles. Through a combination of apparent incompetence and laziness, James has failed at every endeavor he has attempted, save one. He is perpetually jobless, and every job he does manage to get, he is fired from in a matter of weeks. He got a cat, only for it to run away after two days. He spent eight years bemoaning his inability to get a girlfriend, and when he finally acquired a wife for a substantial dowry, he spent two years being bullied by her and her father-in-law, before she finally divorced him and took their son.

    James' life is an absurd tragedy. The only part of his life that is successful is in broadcasting every other failure. This is where the genius of James Cage White is found. He has amassed and maintained a substantial following for over a decade, and been able to monetize this sustainably, due to his bizarre reflection of every event. He has assumed the mantle of a jester, highlighting every failure and filtering every aspect of his life through a provocatively infantile lens. James is ecstatic at the slightest windfall, and crushed by minor setbacks, while denying himself any agency in both scenarios. James attributes every event in his life to Fate. This includes the birth of his son, his divorce, his unemployment, natural disasters, and even his online purchases.  "It is Fate," he laments over and over again. But within an hour of any high or low, James immediately is tangled again in the mundane, streaming or posting whatever snack he ate, his chores for the day, and whichever new hobby he picks up.

    There is a great deal of debate whether his life as he presents it is real, or if it is a character. His critics claim that no one can really be so stupid and emotionally immature all the time, and maintain such a character for over a decade. His supporters have more faith, in an unfortunately twisted way. They believe he really is a simpleton, and continue to enable him in spite of that. If it really is a performance, it's a good one.

There is beauty in the life of James Cage White, real or fake. "I’m not a good father . I can’t find job . It’s so hard," he writes immediately following a joke, and alongside a grinning selfie. In the midst of failure and defeat, he latches onto the little things, remaining overall unbothered as his life decays with every year. Maybe it's satire. Maybe it's stupidity. Maybe it's the enduring human spirit. Maybe it's Fate...