The Proper Attitude Towards Fame

If watching a lot of SunnyV2 videos has taught me anything, it’s that sudden fame usually is followed by a sudden downfall. If you’re lucky, you simply wither away due to irrelevance, but in other cases; the downfall may be due to controversy. From a lot of the fallen creators, I deduct that there are a few points that usually lead to the beginning of the end, namely:

1. Narcissism; and the main character syndrome

2. Lust; the use of fame as a tool and lure to take advantage of women (also men and minors in some cases, e.g., James Charles 2021, EDP445 2022, etc.)

3. Corporatization; sinking in sponsorships and thus altering their style to fit company expectations to the point where personal authenticity and relatability (something they were originally liked for) completely disappear.

4. Drama; engaging in conflicts with other prominent creators.

Being a cleanup hobbyist first and a content creator second, I’m not really bothered by sub par performance online. I don’t mind climbing steadily or even stagnating in online engagement for some periods of time. My measure for improvement is from the numbers of KG of plastics I add to my cleanup record and the number of pullups I can do in a day, both numbers that are uninfluenced by outside factors. 

I post on social media to entertain my future self with the memories of days past; which looking back to my old videos from highschool days makes me appreciate my journey and all the new things I have now that I could’ve only wished for back then, while also reminiscing the things from the past that I no longer have, with an aura of historic romanticism.

Another reason I post is to reach people who are like minded, which lets be honest, is a rarity to find in Indonesia. Therefore, the number of followers should not be the measure of success here, since most people out there aren’t the type of people that I’d want to be around in real life. 

Anecdotally, I always find that bilingual Indonesian-English speakers tend to be of higher level education. Some also just happen to be privileged, nevertheless are generally more open-minded due to their media access being international. My sense is that English speakers in an eastern conservative country tend to have a broad and rich spectrum of ideological tolerance, due to their native majority being anti-west, all while being able to understand first hand the vibe of the west itself through social media. It's a lot more likely to find people who think globally by engaging in English.

In an ideal world, the only things I’d have are a solosan logbook filled with all of my mission logs, my house fully geared and ready to go for a cleanup mission 24/7, and I can interact and gather with people of my frequency at will. These are the things I aim to achieve. 

Therefore in my case, the proper attitude towards fame is to just pretend nothing has changed, because as a matter of fact, nothing, absolutely nothing has changed. The only change that matters is the number of KG I picked up. 

Marhara's Waste Sorting Glossary

1. Places and Structures

1. LTCR - Legal Trash Collection Route - Government Regulated Municipal Waste Management Stream

2. Sorting Station - a place where trash of all kinds gets separated into different categories

3. Intercept barrier - a barrier installed at fixed points to trap trash moving with flowing water

4. Bin - a legal trash collection point along the LTCR

5. Illegal Dumpsite (IDS) - an illegitimate bin, serves like a bin but disconnected to the LTCR

6. Illegal Incineration Site (ILINS) - an illegitimate and unregulated trash burning site

2. Actions

1. Sorting - the act of separating trash into different categories

2. Sorting Phases - The sequential ladder of sorting trash into categories, sub categories, and sub-sub categories

3. Purification - the process of drying, cleaning, and removing organic bycatch from a batch of collected trash

3. Data Descriptions

1. Sorting resolution - an ordinal measure to describe how strictly selected the members within a group have been selected. The higher the resolution, the smaller the variance between the members of the group. 

1. (e.g., low resolution: 

1. recyclable, 

2. non-recyclable, 

3. Bycatch,

2. high resolution: 

1. PET, 

2. HDPE

3. PP, 

4. Multilayer, 

5. Opaque Flexibles, 

6. Transparent Flexibles,

7. Non-identifiable Rigids,

8. PS

9. Organic Bycatch

10. Soil, dirt/mud Bycatch

11. Water weight

2. Shrinkage % - the percentage of weight margin (pre-purification - post-purification) relative to the pre-purification weight. 

4. Items

1. Bycatch - a measurement describing the amount of materials that aren’t intended to be cleaned up but got caught alongside the trash during the process of cleaning up, different cleanup methods and tools will result in varying levels of bycatch.

2. Organic Bycatch - materials that originate from a biological source that can decompose naturally.

3. Oil based trash- trash made out of fossil fuels, anything plastic. 

4. Non-oil based trash - trash made out of anything other than plastics.(e.g., glass, metals)

5. Thermoplastics - a type of plastic that can be melted at a certain temp and reshaped and maintain structural and chemical integrity,

6. Thermoset Plastics - a type of plastic that cannot be melted, if heated will not enter a melting stage and go straight to burning stage. 

7. PET - Polyethylene Terephthalate (code 1) - a type of thermoplastic commonly used for drinking bottles and is recyclable

8. HDPE - High Density Polyethylene (Code 2) - a type of thermoplastic commonly used for bottle caps and opaque milk jugs.

9. PP - Polypropylene (code 5) - a type of thermoplastic commonly used for plastic cups and food containers.

10. Rigids - plastics that have a rigid form.

11. Flexibles - plastics that have a flexible form. 

12. Multilayers - inseparable composite materials, such as plastics layered with aluminium and cannot be isolated from each other. 

Essay: Sorting and Cleanup are two seperate fields of discipline

Roaming out in the open area collecting scattered debree is significantly different from sitting down in front of a huge pile of debree trying to sort it into different categories. This should come as no surprise; however it has been the case that since I was in Junior highschool cleaning up, people have always pushed me into recycling. Teachers, students, onlookers alike, seem to have the general laymen perception that recycling is something that we must also do, other than cleanup. Maybe, its the same way your grandma expects you to be able to fix the wifi because you major in multimedia design. "Oh, computer electronic stuff right its all the same." similarly, "Oh, trash stuff right it's all the same." 

As a sanitizer, your main schtick is cleaning up pollutants from the open environment. This field of expertise involves the ability to 

1. scan and map areas for plastic hotspots, 

2. conduct retrieval operations to imprison/isolate the pollutant, 

3. and ensure safe transport to downstream management systems. 

Doing these three alone could take up all your energy, you won't have time or the attention capability to cleanup while trying to group the retrieved pollutants into separate categories, at least not with high resolution. As a sanitizer in the field, the closest your brain will ever come to computing sorting is managing bycatch. 

Bycatch is a term to describe non-targetted materials that are retrieved alongside the target pollutant unintentionally. This may include soil, water, or organic materials. All of which are bycatch that compromise the purity of the data. Minimizing this may require a small amount of field trash handling activity.

By trash handling activity, I mean to describe putting your hands on the collected trash, in contrast to the sanitizer's default collecting activity which is purely extractive.

Once collected and ensured to have minimum bycatch, the pollutant shall be handed over to the sorting station to be grouped into their respective categories for research, recovery, and proper disposal purposes.

This is where the sorting people come in play, whose focus includes:

1. grouping the retrieved waste into their respective categories, the big 3 include recyclable, non-recyclable, and organic bycatch. This first layer is distinct because each of those categories will go down entirely different routes. Notice that there is no hazardous because hazardous waste go to the same destination general non-recyclables do, thus is included into that category. 

2. Sorting to the required resolution, based on the necessity of the operation. Resolutions of sorting: based on where its gonna go, based on its economic grade, based on its material composition (optional). Going for a higher resolution is usually the purpose of research, going for the lowest resolution is usually for the purpose of fast disposal routing. 

3. Managing storage space and ensuring the sanitation of the work environment. Ensuring no rat or insect infestation.