why I'm wearing a mask online

manifestation, parasocial relationships, surveillance capitalism, Venetian history, and the spiritual meaning of being masked - why I'll be opting out of sharing my face online from now on.

to learn manifestation with me, join us in the co-creation clubhouse (doors currently open): https://the-co-creation-clubhouse.circle.so/the-co-creation-clubhouse-info

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@hood.winkler

Follow me on Substack: https://hoodwinkler.substack.com/

may all your dreams come true, and may your life be blessed.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi everybody, and welcome back to the Self Inquire, a podcast entirely dedicated to manifestation, but particularly finding and creating your most authentic dream life by being your most authentic self. So if you don't know who I am, I'm Hoodwinkler, and in this video, I'm going to be talking about why I will be wearing a mask on the internet from now on. I recently started posting short form content on TikTok and Instagram mainly wearing a mask, and it's definitely gotten mixed reviews, which I expected. So yeah, I'm gonna be talking about why I'm doing that. If you're listening in right now and not watching, the mask that I currently have on, it's basically a half-face mask that I got while I was in Venice for the first time. I'll talk quite a bit, I'll try to reel it in, about Venice and Venetian masks later in this episode. But it is gold ornate, it has a very mischievous vibe. On the forehead is a woman blowing a trumpet, an angel woman blowing a trumpet. And I will just cut to the chase and tell you about the thesis of this podcast, um, because everything ultimately does always relate back to manifestation. But the thesis is that there is a way to do exactly what you want to do, exactly how you want to do it in life, no matter what it is. Like if you want to follow your dreams, but there are certain aspects of following your dreams that you don't resonate with or you don't want to be a part of, you don't have to do them. There is a way to have exactly what you want to have, how you want to have it, um, and you you're not gonna have to sacrifice crucial or important aspects of yourself to manifest the life that you actually want. So any other message that you might receive about that that says, like, oh no, if you're really gonna have to sacrifice X, Y, and Z if you want to have this thing, is basically a Psyop that's gonna keep you more easily controllable because it motivates you to give up your gifts, right? I say Psyop like really jokingly. Many of us have gifts that are unique and systemically incompatible with the world. As in, we have things that we want to share and need to share and offer to the world and co-create with the universe, but we have all of these preconceived rules and notions that are attached to them, um, which makes us not offer them because the way that we would authentically offer those gifts to the world is systemically incompatible with what everybody says that you should be doing. Um, but sharing them in the way, sharing what you want to share, doing what you want to do, in the way that you want to do it, is exactly what the world needs to heal if you dislike the systems that are currently in place. Your gifts are systemically incompatible for a reason, and you don't have to to make them compatible um with a way of thinking or doing or or being that you don't agree with. So, long story short, this process this process, this podcast will eventually be about manifestation, but the first bit of it is gonna be a lot of context about my personal experience with being online, um, some research into what it's like to be in the online space, social media, etc. I've been in the online space for most of my life. So I started posting when I was about 14 years old, um, and did not wear a mask for any of that posting time. First, it was like, you know, I had a Tumblr just like every other kid, but I was sharing artsy pictures pictures of myself and like extremely cringy um quotes, like emo quotes, and then I had on YouTube I had a makeup artist account where I also sang covers, like a cappella covers, because I am a musician. Um I don't know if you guys know the account Ambra. This is definitely a throwback, but it was very much like that. It was like an emo girl doing her makeup and like singing. And then when I um got a little older, I made a different account and started posting just my music and covers that I was doing, and then when I got a little bit older, I started an Instagram because I really wanted to be. Um I don't even know if I could say this on YouTube. It's an unalive yourself girl. Like I don't want to get banned. It's a brand of it's like a brand of pinup girls, and I wanted to be one, so I started an account for that, and I was posting sort of like pinup content on Instagram, and then I I'm just like walking you through how much I've posted online. Like my digital footprint is vast, really fucking vast. Then I had a Harry Potter Go. Oh my god. Genuinely like one of the cringiest things I've ever done. If you guys remember Pokemon Go, Pokemon Go is this app where you basically were like a Pokemon hunter. I don't know much about Pokemon, so don't like flame me right now, but you were like a Pokemon dude and you would walk around the natural environment, and in your natural environment were Pokemon that you would catch by like spinning and throwing a little ball, and then there were like big Pokemon that you needed the help of other people to catch. So you would all be like, let's meet up at this raid at like 5 p.m. on Saturday, and we're all gonna like capture this big ass Pokemon. Pokemon Go basically what they like recently found or publicly came out with was the company that owns Pokemon Go called Niantic was not just offering this game as like a fun way for people to play, but they were mapping how people move through space and environments and taking photos of those spaces and environments, and basically training artificial intelligence to create maps of the environment. And this process or this like concept is called spatial intelligence. So there are like millions and millions of users playing Pokemon Go all over the world, and this company Niantic is basically like creating maps of like interactive maps that artificial intelligence can understand that goes so much deeper than just interacting with a photo of a place or um like kind of like street directions or something. It's it's literally training AI to understand how to like construct and relate to environments. And Niantic was apparently formed by uh Keyhole Incorporated, which the founder of Keyhole Incorporated is a guy named John Hank, and Keyhole received investment capital from Q in Qtel, who is basically the venture capital firm of the CIA, um, and they also invested in Facebook, so crazy little tidbit about that, but anyway, so I um they they tried to come out with a that's like so unbelievably fucked up. I feel like we need a moment of silence for that, but like Niantic had Pokemon Go, and then they tried to make one for Harry Potter that would like appeal to potter heads for whatever reason. This is like so deep down um rabbit hole of codependency that got me into being invested in Harry Potter Go, and I'm not gonna go into the backstory, but like long story short is had an ex-boyfriend, had no sense of self, that's what codependency does. Had an ex-boyfriend who was really into Harry Potter Go, saw that no Pokemon Go, saw that Harry Potter Go was coming out, and was like, this would be a great opportunity for you to do a Harry Potter Go channel on YouTube. So I did it and then promptly gave up because I don't give a fuck about that. Like could not, I'm not I don't play that game. So I did that, but then I had an art account where I made surrealist, very dark, surrealist digital art. And like something that I think is really interesting is people are seeing me with this mask on and they're like, oh my god, like I've gotten quite a few comments that are like this is scary or dark. Like this is gonna just really feed into what I'll talk about in the rest of this podcast, but like that has always been a part of who I am authentically, is like creepy, weird shit. That's just like who I am. That was where Hoodwinkler began. Hoodwinkler was not a manifestation account first, it was an art account. Anyways, then I put out an album under the name Hoodwinkler, so I had a whole account for that. And then I started getting into manifestation again, even though I grew up very spiritual and like knew about manifestation. I started practicing it again. That's when I started posting on TikTok about my manifestation journey. Blew up for a manifestation, and people were like, You're really good at explaining this, you should teach manifestation. And so I started teaching manifestation pretty much exclusively, and that's what I've done for the past like four or five years. So that account was the first time that I ever experienced the earth-shattering high of virality, and ultimately that was what I had wanted. Like I had been quite literally manifesting, I think it was 10,000 followers on TikTok or something when I started posting. But that experience was incredibly destabilizing. And I don't regret it, obviously, because it changed my life. And it was probably one of the best things to ever happen to me. But basically, it was a video where I was explaining about manifestation and self-concept, and somehow it got put by the algorithm to in in like a I would say a split audience was what I was noticeable based on the comments. So half of the audience was like, This is the most amazing explanation of manifestation I've ever heard, like this is finally making sense. The other half of the comments were like people who were just like, Okay, so if I was a child and I was abused, I manifested that, or so I manifested my tumor, just like crazy misinterpretations of what I was saying, which I'll talk about in a second, because there's really no way with short form content that you can avoid misinterpretation. It's too short to be to to incorporate nuance. Um so this video that went viral, it wasn't like 10,000 views or whatever. It was like I woke up and I was getting, I think the video had two million views. Like this was like a viral video, and there were like thousands of commenters, hundreds of thousands of likes on this video. And I remember I didn't know what to do with myself. Like, I was in I remember being in the car with my mom in a parking lot, and I was just sobbing, bawling my eyes out. Like, what like I can't handle all of these comments. That was the biggest thing. It was like I can't handle all these comments, they're misinterpreting what I'm saying. They I had a lot of like bad person wounds, which still linger in me to this day, but like they think I'm a t a terrible person, like that's not what I meant. What like what am I gonna do? What should I do? Should I keep posting? Should I give up? Should I delete this video? I think what I ultimately did was I did delete the video, but I continue to post. Um and so uh I would say that for the past three wait, no, that led into this season of posting every single day, twice a day, and loving that process for the most part. I was just it was just viral video after viral video. I was just gaining hundreds of thousands of followers really quickly for what I was speaking about with manifestation. Um and it was amazing, it changed my life, you know. Personally, financially, um, spiritually, I was like changed as a person for the better. I learned how to take up space, like so many beautiful things. But I would say for the past three years, this love for posting has been going out like a dying star for me. It has felt more and more like a self-betrayal every time I post specifically short form content and interact with Instagram, meta, TikTok. It has felt incredibly draining and conflicting because I'm I know that what is being shared about manifestation is having a really big impact, but at the same time, I hate it, and I'm teaching people to manifest from their most authentic life that they don't have to sacrifice anything, and there's this scarcity part of me that says, Oh, but but what will I do if I don't have TikTok and Instagram? Like, this is everything I've worked for for years. I've wanted online, I don't want to say online fame, but yeah, I wanted like followers my entire life. Um, this is something I've worked on since I was 14 years old. It is my income. This is how I pay my mortgage. Um, like what am I gonna do? You know? And I think like another reason why I started hating posting online is because I, ever since I was a child, escaped to the world of the internet because I was struggling. Um, and I had a and I had a lot of gifts to share. Like I it was two things. I was lonely, confused, I had no validation from my like home life. Uh, I was not in an I was in an emotionally neglectful situation. Um and when you're online people validate you, they give you likes and comments, and I had lots of things that I was doing that I like to share because I've I've always done a lot of stuff and and been creative. So because I wasn't receiving the validation at home that I needed as a child, I turned to the internet, and what has changed over the past three years is through the process of manifestation, I have come to love my life in person more and more. I don't feel the need for the validation of likes and comments anymore. I love my home life. I have a very, very high quality. I feel like spiritually, I'm in the 0.01% billionaire like place on earth. Like I have, I'm like, I have so much spiritual wealth, so many things to be grateful for. I don't need to escape to the internet to generate a sense of purpose or validation at all. Um, and now posting it annoys and destabilizes me literally more than anything else. I just genuinely want to play outside in the grass, I want to sleep on my fiancé's chest, I want to call my friends and family. I manifested what I had wanted since I was a child, which was peace and stability. And the internet is the opposite of peace and stability from my experience of it. Um, I am not done teaching, and more on that later. So, my general feelings about virality, and I'm like sharing this not just to yap about my personal experience, but truly because, like, if if you've looked at what I've built online and you're like, wow, that looks fucking amazing. Like, I want that, I just want to give you my like honest review. Um, and not everybody feels this way. Some people love posting online, they love the virality, they feel great about it. I just don't, and that was something I really had to come to terms with was like there are all these coaches that are like, oh my god, if you are affected by online comments or you don't like the online space, like it's just shadow work you need to do. No, some people don't like being that visible, just period. Not everybody is like meant to be that visible, you know, authentically. Um, but anyway, so humans are wired wired for social connection. We're pack animals. We are we aren't designed in any way to exist in solitude. So social media was designed to be addicting because of this fact. There's a really wonderful book called Stolen Focus by Johan Hari that like changed my life. But what I like about it is that it gives a lot of context for like you as the user understanding that if you are addicted to social media or the validation of posting on social media, it's not your fault, it was designed that way. And I'll tell you a little bit about that design. So in 2002, Stanford University, and this is like taken from the book that I just talked about, but Stanford University was hosting a research facility that was called the Persuasive Technology Lab. And this was like pre-social media, basically. Um, and the course was taught by a dude named Professor B.J. Fogg, who had previously been developing a course called The Psychology of Mind Control. Um, and his book, if you want to look it up, it's free and you can download it as a PDF. It's available everywhere online. It's called Persuasive Technology Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do. So the key, one of the key concepts that were taught in this class was a psychology experiment that I think was from the 1950s that was directed by a guy named B. F. Skinner. And if you've ever taken a psych class in college or high school, you've probably heard about this experiment. So it was called operant conditioning. This is what he discovered in the study, and um, it is a reinforcement theory to drive behavior based on consequences. So what Skinner found basically was that our behavior is modified when we receive rewards, and if we stop receiving rewards, that behavior starts to fade into extinction. Basically, what it was was it was when a rat accidentally pressed a lever in a cage, they would be given a food pellet. So they started to learn, like, oh, when I press the lever, I get a food pellet. There was like another part of this very inhumane like study where they were shocking the rat, and then the rat learned that if I press the lever, the shock stopped. So that also modified their behavior. But the thing that was the the most um in one of the most intense factors of driving behavior was the schedule of reinforcement. This was how often they received the reward, and based on that schedule of reinforcement, you could really drive this rat's behavior. So if when the rat pressed the lever, they got a pellet of food every single time, they eventually kind of got like bored. It was less easy to control their have their behavior if every single time the rat was pressing the lever, they were getting food. But the thing that made their behavior extremely controllable, as in getting them to press this lever over and over and over and over and over again, was if only sometimes they got food. Um, and that is exactly how slot machines work. And that exact same behavioral conditioning is how social media was invented. So in this class, there was a dude named Mike Krieger. This class that was taught by Professor Fogg. And he was in that class and used what he learned, used the concept, that key concept of Skinner's findings with the rats, um, and everything else he was learning about persuasive technology, how to control what we think and do, or how to like alter that. And he was the founder of Instagram. He founded it with another guy. But all of this is to say that the act of engaging with algorithms is inherently addicting and it modifies our human behavior because it was created that way on purpose. Algorithms that feed you content and doom scrolling and scrolling feeds and getting the reward, the variable reward of you get likes and go viral sometimes, and other times you don't, and you get comments and you don't, and you see this content that makes you um have a certain burst of dopamine, and then that's taken away. Like these fucking apps, I don't even want to call them an app, like they give variable reinforcement for something that is so baseline and precious to the Human experience and to human nature because we're social creatures, and that baseline precious thing is social connection. And I think that's really fucked up. Like my experience posting on Instagram aside, the level of addiction. Like, I've been addicted to like hard drugs in my life. That was a big part of my spiritual journey was like overcoming addiction to prescription medication. I would argue that my phone has been a str a much stronger, more insidious addiction in my life. And I see the way that it is has modified the behavior of people around me, stolen their time, reshaped their identities, and I'm not fucking here for it. I don't like it. I'm not I'm not in agreement. I don't consent. And another thing that I think is really, really damaged, societally damaging about social media is short form content. And I mentioned this a little bit before, but there's not enough nuance in topics when you're watching short form content. There's only so much you can cover in a three-minute video. Reels are three minutes long maximum. Like they are going to be inherently sensational because of hooks. They're based on hooks. And the things that go viral are sensationalist. They make you feel a strong emotion. They're based on hooks. Here's 10 reasons why if you're doing this thing, you're really fucking up your kid. 13 reasons why if you're not hearing back from your partner, he's probably cheating on you. Like insanely emotion-driven, like there's no way that you can interact or react with a real that is like level-headed. And that lack of nuance inevitably creates exclusion. Um, and and you see this in comments where people are like, oh well, what about me? Yeah, what about them? There's no way that I as an educator or any other people or educators online could talk about the nuance within a topic to cover lots of different concepts and things that are under the umbrella of their overarching thing that they're talking about or thing they're trying to educate on. There's no way that we can talk about it in three minutes. So that inevitably creates exclusion. There isn't enough time to even digest the concepts that you're consuming. There's there's no way for these sensationalist short three-minute videos to spark constructive dialogue. So what happens as uh an educator online is I'm getting a bunch of comments now that are like, well, actually, which I cannot fucking stand. I can't fucking stand it. And well, this is so fucked up because what about this? And what about just first of all, go make your own fucking video. Second of all, there's no way that I could talk about that in three minutes. I'm so sorry. I'm rushing over here. How do I get all this information in three minutes? There's no way I can talk about that level of nuance in a three-minute fucking video. And the fact that it's like our brains are still remembering what it's like to read a book when we're watching content that's three minutes long. In a book, you have time to digest concepts. You have to sit there for hours at a time and read and read conflicting opinions in many different angles of looking at something. We're rem we're still thinking about content like that for three-minute videos. There's that's incompatible. And comments like that make me lose faith in humanity because those comments are directed at me. I've spent years like going into my relationship with social media and being like, okay, is this rooted in a child fear of being seen? Like, like what is this about? Why why do I get so triggered by being online? Um, and I've really come to the conclusion that nope, not a fear of being seen. I love myself, and I'm gonna talk about this more later. I love myself enough to not put myself in an environment where people are directing a bunch of bullshit at me. Um, it's not a fear of being seen. It's that I, as a self-loving person, would never walk into a room of people where 50% of them were like, oh my fucking god, you're the most amazing person I've ever met in my life. You totally changed my fucking life. And the other 50% of them are like, you're a bitch, and you should get cancer and die. I would never put myself in a situation like that. And that's what it's like being online. Okay, next reason why I've decided to this is all tied in. This is partially a commentary on social media, partially a commentary on why I'm I've decided to wear the mask. It's all gonna, it's all gonna come back full circle. Being online and posting short form content or engaging in short form content is the best, most insane opportunity for misinformation or for weak, limp ass information. Sit and ask yourself this for a second. And and I'm saying this because I've done this so many times. How many times have you seen a TikTok and then cited it to other people as if you were an expert on the topic with no further research or inquiry on it at all? So let me give you an example. I am in the face of my life where planning for a family, and I am getting like tons of videos based on my algorithm of like, here's how to properly co-sleep with your baby. The general consensus, medically speaking, is that co-sleeping is not safe. It it poses a risk of suffocation or SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome in babies that are under, I think it's like a certain, I think it's like a year old or something. So I'm getting all these reels on like here's how to properly co-sleep with your baby. And then I see that and I go, oh, amazing. I know how to properly co-sleep with a baby. So I'm going and talking with other people, and I'm saying, oh yeah, well, if you want to properly co-sleep with a baby, your mattress has to be firm. I actually don't fucking know that because I just saw a three-minute TikTok. I didn't research it at all. I don't know anything about co-sleeping. I saw a TikTok, and I've seen people do this with so many things where they see a vid a video posted by a random person that seems well informed and they go on to repeat it. Oh my god, I'm like, don't even get me started on how this changes people's identity because what you're consuming creates and builds your identity. So you're building your identity on a bunch of short-form content that you don't know anything about because it's fed to you looking like expertise and well-digested information, but there's no way that you can know anything about it without looking at that same concept from ten different other angles. So that's one thing. And also, with reels and algorithms, you don't get to choose what content you're looking at. So you're being fed a sense of identity based on like a fucking model. It's so problematic in so many ways. A model where you're not choosing, oh, I want to watch this video. You're getting random videos across your feed that are going on to inform your identity and beliefs about yourself and the world. And also, since it's algorithmic and it pays attention to what you like, what makes you afraid, what makes you excited, it's only feeding you your new identity based on a past version of you. So if you're trying to recreate your life or reinvent yourself and you're scrolling all day, your opinions and beliefs and thoughts about yourself are getting informed by a version of you that you were two weeks ago, which can be a huge fucking problem if you're wanting to cultivate change within yourself. Like, short form content is the destruction of the ponder. It's the destruction of depth and nuance and having to sit with a conflicting opinion or look at something from multiple different angles. In December of 2025, there was a Ugov survey of about 2,000 Americans, and 40% of those people did not read a single book in 2025. And that's no shame, but straight up just ask yourself like, how many books have you read in the past year? And not to assume anything, but gee, I wonder what types of content they were consuming instead of reading books. Another point that Stolen Focus made that I really loved is that like social media is destroying the focus of people. There are those memes that I've seen, I could try to put one here, of like how quickly people cycle through social justice issues. Huge, huge problem. Um, that we can't focus on an issue long enough and sit with each other's differences and different ways of looking at a situation in order to solve them. Huge fucking problem. Like this is just a social media hate thing at this point, but like hating the content that's destroying the nuance of human connection in particular. So the amount of times I am in a very healthy, happy relationship, the amount of times that I spiraled about maybe, oh my god, maybe I'm not with the right person, maybe I should break up with my husband, um, because I'm anxious as a person. I have anxiety. And I'm seeing a TikTok that's saying, Oh, if he haven't texted you back, if he hasn't texted you back in an hour, he's cheating on you. Like, what what did I just see? It was a TikTok that was like, when I haven't heard from him, but I remember that like a dog that's not barking has been fed or something like so goofy. And that's like making people who have insecurities ten times more insecure. There are these opportunities for nuanced and imperfect human connection that are ironically being destroyed by a platform that's designed to be incredibly dicting by using the vehicle of social connection. Okay, we're gonna take a pause at this point, and I'm gonna talk about the Co-Creation Clubhouse, which is my manifestation educational platform. So I teach manifestation, I teach people, particularly weird, artsy type of people, how to manifest their dream lives. Manifestation has been, as a as a word, has been like completely bastardized. Um, really what we're talking about is getting so clear on what you authentically want out of life and acting in alignment with your authenticity that you notice really amazing, crazy things start to show up for you. Um, it's way more of like the artist's way and way less of um like here's how to make him obsessed with you, fold and letter underneath your pillow and sleep on it. Like, we're not doing that in the clubhouse. Um so if you've been knowing that you are meant for a life that's like a little bit bigger and um more juicy than the life that you are currently living, the clubhouse is where I can teach you how to do it. We have a guarantee on manifestations. Um, here are some of our student testimonials, like this shit really works. It's not some woo-woo bullshit. Um basically the guarantee is that if you do the whole course for six months, you can show us and prove to you that you've done the prove to us, excuse me, that you've done the course and you still haven't manifested at least one thing on your list and like learned the process of manifestation, and you're like, oh shit, this works. We give you all your money back. It has never happened because people either don't do the work and they'll get results, or they do the work and they're like, wow, I'm a wizard and I have access to magic that I didn't know I had, and I can create whatever reality I desire. Now we're gonna get more into like why I'm wearing a mask online. One of the biggest things is I have privacy and security concerns about putting my face online. I currently am at a place in my life where I have real long-term assets and commitments that I would like to protect from every single fucking random person in the world knowing about. Um, like my marriage and my house and my location and eventually my children and things that are very private and super sacred to me. And I'll give you an example. Like, I posted my engagement photos, and somehow this got on people's explore pages. Like most of the comments were people I knew being like, wow, so happy for you guys. And then there was like a good fraction of people that didn't know who we were and was like, we don't give a fuck. It's the way that I feel about that, putting like something that's so sacred to me out for the dogs, it's like throwing pearls before swine. It's like spitting on an altar. That's what it feels like. It's like people are spitting on my altar, and I'm so fucking over it. People online, not everybody, but a you know, people, uh, don't give you the human decency of being kind or respectful. Like I've been told to burn in hell. People hope I get cancer and die. The internet is not a kind place all the time, and I really value my peace. Um, I refuse to let my inner child, my soul, my story, my beautiful marriage, these things that are so fucking sacred to me get spit on by some miserable cunt. Like, I don't take those comments personally. I don't give a fuck if you think that I should get cancer or die, genuinely, because not gonna happen. But I am hurt by it because I know that I deserve respect. It's very different from me believing what you're commenting about me and um and just genuinely not putting myself in a situation that is abusive for for sport or for money or like whatever these other excuses are. Um I don't think it's achievable, believable, or even really healthy for like online coaches and people to say things like a lion doesn't concern itself with sheep and don't let it get to you, because we are wired, again, for connection. Um, and it's reasonable to assume that receiving thousands of hate comments or even comments in general about how amazing you are is not very good for your brain. This next part I I really want to make it clear because I have a lot of like loyal followers who I fucking love. Um, and I really want to make it clear that as I'm speaking about this next part, I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about the concept of parasocial online relationships as a whole. Not about you, but about the concept. There's a really and and I do you know what? I was about to I was about to be inauthentic. I was about to say I really love it when you give me comments like I changed you changed my life. I actually don't. Um, but if you want to keep commenting that, that's okay. Like no, no problem. But to me, there's a really like bipolar energy of seeing comments about yourself constantly that are like I love you and you save my fucking life, and I hate you, bitch, I hope you die. And people are online that I don't know, looking at my physicality, my face, my voice, my body, and associating it with all of these personal details that I chose to share, like my relationship, my husband, my face, my engagement, my past, my friends. And we form these parasocial relationships and feel so deeply connected to online figures and celebrities. Like, I have a very active imagination, and there are plenty of online celebrities that I have parasocial relationships with. Like, there are people that I'm like, oh my god, yeah, that's just them, and this is their kid, and this is their husband. So I know what it's like, and I don't think it's like even a bad thing necessarily to have a parasocial relationship online. But like the reality is I don't know those people at all. And the reality is if you if oh, I don't want to direct it at you because I am genuinely like so grateful for my followers and and people who learn from me and my students, I like to call you guys students. The reality is if you've watched me for a long time and we've never had a conversation, and you see what I post, and you feel like you know me, you don't. You don't know me. You don't know my energy, you don't know what I'm like in real life. The the feeling or the sensation of feeling like or thinking about how hundreds of thousands of people online think they know me is a lot of pressure for me to hold day-to-day. And I'll give you an example of this. Ever since I've started wearing the mask, I've received comments that are like, Are you okay? What's with this new thing? Like, this is so not like you, I don't get it. And I understand that most of these comments are well-meaning, but there's something really disturbing to me as like who I I was gonna say my name, as who I am offline, having these people that are commenting think that they know me. Like if you're commenting things like, are you okay, like what's with this new thing? You seem like off, you have absolutely no frame of reference to determine what is okay or normal or within my zone of character because you don't know me. And like, I think it's just it's it's been a really trippy, weird experience having people online talk to me like they know me when I when they don't. And and I also don't think that I'm not like asked if you're a viewer and you've done this, like don't feel bad. Seriously, don't feel bad. I st I still do this with like other online figures. I can think of like five in my head that I'm like, oh, I love them so much, like they changed my life, like I just know everything about them. I love their vibe, like I have a story in my head about this online figure that makes it seem like I know them. So I'm not asking this to be eliminated within my audience, but I am sharing how weird of an experience it is to be the center of that. And I think the biggest thing that I'm very sure of is if you met me in person, you would be maybe shocked or disappointed at how normal and flawed I am. Like I am a regular old bitch. I am a regular, sometimes insecure person just like you, which I think in a way I'm gonna go into. I just hosted a retreat for the first time, and which was amazing. And I think something that's really beautiful about meeting someone that you like maybe look up to their journey, because I get that a lot, you know, like oh, I really look up to your journey, you've healed a lot, and like I love the life that you've created, and same. So I I feel that. Um, but there's something so amazing about actually meeting people in person and being like not in a way of like, oh my god, they're so amazing and inspiring, but like, oh, this is just a regular person, like, there's really nothing special about this person at all. So if they can do that, I can probably do it. It's almost like reverse inspiration, but in a way that's really inspiring. So that was something I really learned when I hosted Eru, uh, which is a manifestation fairy tale retreat that I just got done with in April. Right before this retreat, I was so fed up with the phone. I was fed up with posting, I was fed up with comments, I was fed up with the algorithm, I was fed up with making short form content, all of these things that I've talked about were like deeply misaligning with me in my values. Um, and so I was considering going back to my old job, and I actually posted in the clubhouse about this. I was like, hey guys, I don't know what to do, like I want to quit. And what I wanted to do, which is so interesting, this is where it gets really manifestation-y, was I before I was ever a coach, the first like financial manifestation I had was I got a job selling commercial and residential window treatments, which are blinds, shades, and shutters. So I was thinking about going back to that old job and just quitting and being like, I'm just gonna sell window treatments again. But the real issue obviously is that this phone, like I've cultivated a life on my phone, um, and it's a major financial vehicle for me to generate stability. Like, this is again how I pay my mortgage, how I pay my bills. Uh so I was like, what do I do? But obviously, I teach manifestation, so I take this yearning seriously. I'm not just gonna shove it down and be like, oh no, I'm being like too much, or my desire to be off my phone is just like selfish or whatever. No, like this is a yearning that I'm gonna take seriously. I know I am seriously out of alignment, and my magnetism, my ability to manifest things to me is going to suffer if I continue doing something I actively despise and is actively out of alignment, right? So I'm like, okay, somehow I'm out of authenticity, I can have the best of both worlds, I just don't know how yet. And that was kind of the space that I was in at the retreat before the retreat. So in early April, I hosted the retreat, it was amazing. Just gonna show you some clips because I'm gonna be doing this way more. It was an incredible transformational experience, and I will definitely make a whole video about the retreat itself when I was moving. So, anyways, we get there, and my friend and co host, like dear sister friend, Alae, um, she was hosting a workshop called Mythic Ecology through masked movement and the wild donkey. So, part of this workshop is we're making masks, and I make this mask that I wore, I think, in my first video that I posted of me. Wearing a mask on Instagram, and we're putting it on and we're doing masked movement, and I feel so comfortable to fully be myself in this mask. Like I love being in this mask, and one of the things that's so amazing about retreats and experiences is they're like this energetic portal where you put an intention in in the beginning, it there's just like a manifestation portal. I can't describe it. Like you get exactly what you need at a an experience, like a retreat, that's going to like yeet you into the next era of your life. So my one of my biggest intentions was like wondering what my next steps were in my career. And I walked out of this experience, even as the host, not as an attendee. I was transformed. Um and it became very clear that I'm gonna be doing two to three big manifestation or in real life connection transformative events like the retreat per year. So many more retreats where that comes from, or where that's coming from. And I will be slowly getting off of TikTok and Instagram, posting podcasts, um, and doing YouTube and Substack pretty much only. Um, and all of this will be in a mask because I feel comfortable in a mask and I love being in a mask. Um and the main reason why I think that is, is first and foremost, I've really always been an artist and will always be an artist that happens to be great at teaching and happens to be great at manifest manifesting. I'm I identify far more as an artist than I do a manifestation teacher or a coach. And doing that workshop and a couple other synchronicities that I'll talk to or talk about in a second made me realize like, okay, online masks are the way. So one of those was like, okay, I'm I'm looking for the clarity of what to do with this whole social media relationship thing in my career. I get there, I put on a mask, I'm like, oh, I feel really comfortable in this. Like, I think this I need to wear masks more often, right? Venice, Italy is like one of the deepest interests that I have in my life. I don't know why. I've been obsessed with Venice since I was like 11 years old. I read Venetian history books for fun that are so fucking dry and boring. And I think one of the reasons that I love Venice is because I think that Venice as a city represents manifestation pretty much to a T. Like the Venetians, the first Venetians who started to form that city, they were refugees and they were fleeing rape and pillage, basically, from the mainland. They were the only people that could navigate the lagoon, and they built an entire empire, huge, massive cultural influence over the west, um, and also a bridge to the east, and that's one of the reasons why all of the architecture in Venice doesn't look quite Italian. It looks almost a little bit like Turkish. Um, it's because they had so many ties and so much trade with Constantinople. They built an entire empire, they were scared refugees, and they built an entire empire that ruled a good portion of the world off of salt. Just salt. And there was a quote from somebody, I forget who it was, it's like some really old dude that said, like, because only rich people need gold, like Venice is wealthy because only rich people need gold, but everybody needs salt. And I think like the entire uh form of how Venice came to be was so inspiring because they were they built something so incredibly beautiful out of not nothing, but they did what they could with what they have, and that's what manifestation is. It's like holding the vision so strongly and doing what you can with what you have and watching as that vision comes to life. Obviously, Venice is also known for masks, which has largely been over-exaggerated by kind of like tourism. Until about the 1980s, mask shops weren't really a staple in Venice. Like they they were not so much of a thing. Basically, the reason why masks and Venice are associated together is because of Carnivale, and Carnivale is the Venetian version of Mardi Gras in New Orleans for us Americans. It's a celebration before Lent. It's sort of the last hurrah of like debauchery before a period of austere um restriction. And it was originally celebrated in Venice in it started, I think, in the year 11, around the year 1100, and it was very much a celebration that grew and grew and grew and grew in popularity in Venice until the 1790s. Um, and what is fascinating about the way that they use masks there is that since it was a period of excess, partying, debauchery, masks made it so that anybody in Venice, regardless of their class, regardless of how much money they had, their status, who they were, you could do whatever. You could have someone who is the wealthiest politician that's having a romantic relationship with someone who's like the poorest of the poor, which would not otherwise be acceptable societally. So it was sort of like a great social neutralizer and also provided the anonymity of like, okay, go fuck it up, and nobody knows that it was you. Carnevale was like that until the 1790s. It turned into serious debauchery, serious violence, um, just gluttony, excess, like really they took it to the next level. And then it was uh outlawed, strictly banned. It was only revived in the late 1970s when people started doing it, Venetians started doing it like a little bit, and then took off in popularities in popularity, and that is why so like mil I think it's three million tourists flood Venice every March to go take part in Carnivale. So I've always been obsessed with Venice, always been obsessed with masks that are inherently intertwined, obviously. My favorite movie is Mirror Mask, um, directed by Dave McKean, which is 100% based on Dave McKean's time that he spent in Santa Croce. Like if you look at the city layout in Miramask, it's basically Venice but without water. So all of the canals are filled with air or space. And everybody wears a mask in Miramask. And I saw this movie when I was eight, and I was just enthralled forever. All of this is to say another reason why I'm wearing the mask is because masks have always held an extreme gravity for me in my life. Okay, so as I'm in Ireland, this is where it gets manifestation-y again. As I'm in Ireland, I start listening to this podcaster named Blind Boy. If you don't know who Blind Boy is, please go listen to Blind Boy. Blind Boy is like everything that I could have ever hoped for in a podcast, but it exists. And this guy, Blind Boy, he is autistic. He hates the I mean, as far as what he says, hates the the lack of privacy that comes with being online. So he wears a bag over his head. And I'm seeing this dude, I'm just seeing this dude have his online presence. He's pretty massively famous, I would say, and he's anonymous. He wears a bag over his head. Like he goes out in public and he takes the bag off and nobody knows who he is. He has a buffer, a spiritual buffer between the public version of him and the private version of him. And I am so jealous. And if you've heard me talk about manifestation, you know that role models are a huge part of manifesting. Instantly, this dude blind boy, I'm like, that's the role model for me. He has what I want. Masks. Wearing a disguise over your face is extremely powerful. This is one of the most ancient practices. Masks have been depicted in art that is 30 to 40,000 years old. Like this, this is not, this is like an ancient thing. So all of these feelings are gonna be pulled down into this concept of like why I think the mask is transformational for me. The first thing is that it provides, just like kind of like I said about blind boy, provides a spiritual buffer between online persona and in-person persona. Um, mask for the word mask first appeared in English in the 1530s, and it's from Middle French, the word masque, which literally means obviously a covering to hide or guard the face. And I feel like my relationship with commenters, the way that I feel about these fucking in industrial complexes of social media, I want my face to be guarded when I step online into the online sphere. Like people talk about online personas, and just so you know, everybody who posts online, yourself included, you have if you post, you have an online persona, which is not entirely representative of who you are in real life, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But um, there was a guy, Matt Johnson, and he wrote an article that called The Psychology of Watchers Watching Strangers on Social Media, and something that he said about this online persona is that the biggest difference, I love this quote, it's exactly how I felt, biggest difference between online and real life social interactions is that online people are commodified. This is your online commodified persona. To be exported into a digital environment, a person's identity must be boiled down to a collection of manageable pixels, and that's your online persona. So in ancient Rome, the word persona literally meant mask. This mask is my online persona. When I take it off, I am not she who posts online. I am my own version of self that can be unfettered by the weight of involvement with hundreds of and thousands of people that I don't know and who don't know me, but think that they do. So I wanted to have this mask like I want to let people have a relationship with my online persona, but I don't want it to be my face. Um they can have a relationship with a mask, but not with the person underneath, unless you're like coming on a retreat and we're actually connecting, or we're having video calls, or we meet in person and we become friends. Another reason why the mask is really important for me is because I feel, and I had this experience at the retreat where I put that mask on, and I'm like, oh, I'm comfy, is that I can more easily embody the role of teacher. It's basically conjectured that primitive people use masks like 30,000, 40,000 years ago to associate the wearer with some kind of unimpeachable authority. So oftentimes this was a deity or gods. Or the mask uh lends credence to the person's claim on a given social role. So my given social role is manifestation teacher. It's not my given name, it's not who I am under the mask. The mask shows my given social role of teacher, weird artsy manifestation teacher that teaches you weird artsy manifestation. Um, and also, like in Venice, masks are often worn to separate the wearer from social norms or rules. Like that's why they were used in Carnevale, which is kind of my whole thing. You probably don't know this, but even the name, my name, Hoodwinkler, comes from a fusion of the word hoodwink, which means to trick, and my maiden name, like my real last name. The reason I love this word, hoodwinkler and hoodwink, is the work we do in manifestation tricks the matrix. It tricks traditional societal roles into something else. It tricks your subconscious mind from a state of limitation into a state of expansion. The mask not only solidifies this hoodwinking, but it allows me as the wearer to toss off any preconceptions on how I am supposed to act as myself under the mask online or in an online space, or how I'm supposed to act as a coach, or how I'm supposed to show up without a mask on and record videos just normally like everybody else. It breaks all of those rules simply by me putting it on and wearing it. And I love that. Another thing that I love is that the mask provides anonymity, obviously, or a little bit more anonymity. I'm not like in the business or the game of trying to go online and scrub my face clean from every source. It's never gonna happen. I've been posting online since I was 14. Like the digital footprint is vast, but mask in the word in Latin, it's masca, and it translates to mask, but not just to mask, but to specter, which I love because this offers so much anonymity. Um, because specters are non-people. Spectres are basically disembodied spirits, and when I come online, I want to be disembodied. I don't know how to describe this, like, I don't want my body under the mask, my physicality to be on the online space space and to be accessible and interactable with hundreds of thousands of people that I don't know. I want to be a disembodied spirit that comes online and shares what I need to share, and when I take this mask off, that's when I am my embodied spirit. And that embodied spirit is for me and me alone, and for my loved ones and in-person people alone. Okay, and lastly, this is also just because I'm artsy, like I'm just I've always been a fucking artist. I make masks, I've made masks since I was 11 years old at a paper mache based on Venetian ones. Like it's inherently strange and artistic, and by wearing a mask online, it lets people know what to expect of me and particularly what to expect when they get inside the clubhouse, um, my manifestation school, because that's what you're gonna find there. Like, so many people in the clubhouse are weird artists. The way that I teach manifestation is through weird art. If you're a weird artist who wants to learn manifestation, like the clubhouse is for you. So the mask kind of is gonna scare away a lot of people who aren't compatible with my authentic nature of how I share, because I don't want people getting into the clubhouse and being like, wow, this is a lot weirder than I thought. Um, because that's what it is, and it's not gonna change. So, yeah. If you don't like the mask thing, I really urge you to unsubscribe. If you're like, wow, that looks so scary and dark, and it creeps me out, like, I'm probably just not the manifestation teacher for you. I I love being weird and scary and dark. That's like a huge part of who I am. It brings me joy, it makes me feel authentic. I'm not interested in people who are afraid of darkness. That's like literally a colonialist concept, anyways, being afraid of darkness and like dark energy. Yeah, night is not unhealed at daytime. So, yeah. So to tie this back in, lastly, I'm done with the thesis of this, which is if you have something you want to do, like I have this life I want to create, I want to teach people online, I love the co-creation clubhouse, I don't want that to stop. But I hate posting online. If there's something that you want to do, you don't have, you're never gonna have to sacrifice your values in order to do it. There will always be a way to do exactly what you want to do, exactly how you want to do it. So the manifestation process of coming to terms with this mask thing and this new level of authenticity, I'm gonna outline it. It wasn't very conscious, it was very unconscious, so I'll outline what happened unconsciously using the nine keys of manifestation that I teach. First one is identifying your heart's desire. I became very clear on what I no longer wanted. I no longer wanted to create short form content, I no longer wanted to post online and be be involved with Instagram and TikTok, but I wasn't done teaching. I was clear on what I do want. I do want the clubhouse, I do want teaching, but I'm not exactly sure how it looks like. Um, it was authentic. That it was that authentic heart's desire, and I knew that because it felt very freeing to admit, like actually, I fucking hate being on TikTok. And that's how you know something's really authentic after a period of confusion. It feels really freeing to admit your authenticity to yourself. Okay, next thing is next key of manifestation is stating your intentions. And I usually teach this in the clubhouse in the form of a list, but um the reason why people can manifest things without making a list is because you don't need to make a list, it's just much easier to teach manifestation that way. Um, and it's very applicable to teach manifestation through lists. But, anyways, I didn't have a list, but I did have the intention of I don't want to be the butt of all this online shit anymore. Like, I don't want to receive these comments anymore, I don't want to make short form content anymore, I want my financial security and stability, I want the clubhouse to stay and grow into the best manifestation school that has ever existed for weirdos. And then the next part of manifestation is changing your belief. So I had a belief like, oh, I have to do it this way, I have to post on TikTok and Instagram with my face, and people have to I have to be made up, and people have to see my pretty face in order to teach manifestation and make money, or whatever. So I changed that belief through um being inspired by my role models mostly into you know what, no, I can do this with a bag on my head, I can do this with a mask on, I can do this in any way that feels right for me. Another part of this manifestation that that that happened unconsciously was finding role models like Blind Boy and my friend Eli. Watching Alaie and her artistry is incredible, so authentic. Um please go look her up, she's a musician. Her name's Alaai Margarita. Okay, aligned action, inspired action. You can't manifest with no action. The action that I took, wearing a mask. Just start posting in the mask. Was it scary? Absolutely. Did I think people were gonna think I was a weird freak? Yeah. Am I a weird freak? Authentically? Kind of. Next part, next key of manifestation would be tests. Haven't really received any of these yet. The only one that's kind of coming up is that my videos and the mask aren't doing as well as my videos without the mask on, and I'm receiving a lot of like, ugh, what's going on with you? Um, but I'm just gonna keep on keeping on because I don't really care. Next key of manifestation would be following intuition and synchronicity. I would say the the only one I can really think of here is post it, like thinking that I was going to switch. This is very synchronistic, actually. Thinking that I was gonna quit my job to sell blinds and to be like shuttered in and unseen, and then finding a guy named Blind Boy who wears a mask, and being inspired to continue in my career through blinds, very symbolic, and blind boy, whatever. Then the next one would be embracing the void, and the way that I'm embracing the void is I am deleting all of my old videos and replacing them with the exact same videos but with me with a mask on. I am allowing myself to let go of the old identity of being someone who posts online. I'm getting rid of videos that have millions of views and likes because that's not who I am anymore and I don't want to be perceived that way. And that does take a lot of void embracing to delete all of that work and remake it in a different way. Um, I'm also embracing the void by I I am changing my last name because I'm getting married. I'm embracing the void by not watching Instagram or YouTube anymore personally. I'm not consuming any online content, which is just what's right for me. I think that there's really wonderful long-form content online, but personally I'm just burnt out from it. And the last key of manifestation would be shifting your identity. And this is less about who I am, like the way that I did this, it's less about who I am and more about who I'm not. And I was like, I'm not a talking head online coach. I'm just not. I that's not authentic to me. I'm not like a TikToker. That's never felt right. Even in the beginning, people would be like, Oh, you're an influencer. I'm like, I'm not a fucking influencer, I'm an educator, like very different relationship to social media. Blah blah blah blah blah. And we're done. So that's why I'm gonna be wearing a mask online. I hope that that was insightful, informative, helpful. I hope you learned something. Maybe that shifted your opinions about social media, maybe that shifted your opinions about me. And if you're like wow, I actually don't really like this girl, that's okay. Like, bye in a in the nicest way, like in the most loving way. This is who you're gonna get from now on. But the mask will change. I'm in the process of moving, and I need to create a better mask. All of my masks I either have to hold up with my hand or tie on with ribbons, very uncomfortable. So I'm gonna be making a more branded mask. You're gonna see me in. That mask, like all the time. For right now, I'm just using the masks that I've previously made, or um, because I don't have time to maybe machine a fucking mask right now. Um the end.

unknown 1:06:37

That's the one that's like a lot of people.