Once upon a time, on a planet just like this one, there was a society spiraling out of control, sinking deeper and deeper into an abyss of sound bites and rootless inanity. It was a society saturated with factory-farmed content, tuned to the drone of the lowest common denominator. Sick and tired of the noise, its citizens began to close down their brains, shut off their imaginations, forget their dreams, and shy away from adventures. Most dangerously of all, they began to relinquish their sense of curiosity.

“Like the void of a black hole, the campfires started to flicker and fade.”

It wasn’t always this way. The people had started off with bright ideals and a strong connection to the land. They gathered around campfires, making heroes of those who could recount tales from afar, and lifting their audience’s imagination to places far beyond the daily realm.

But without warning, the emphasis shifted. Like the void of a black hole, the campfires started to flicker and fade. Information was no longer delivered across the glow of burning embers or through the lips of messengers. Rather, it took the form of news feeds, 8-second sound bytes, monologues pressed into pixels and 140 characters.

“Once they had been a race of great explorers and adventurers. Now they were too timid to even think of challenging the system.”

These new sources of  information caused the peoples’ minds to flitter feverishly and aimlessly­­­—without direction. Brain cells were scattered. The vibrant and colorful was replaced with the odorless, the valueless. Instead of stories, there was stuff. Everywhere. Stuff for this, stuff for that. Stuff to make you fitter, faster, funnier. Even stuff to help you gather more stuff. Brains became so overstuffed that citizens went into standby, a passive condition offering little resistance to the flood. They became complacent. Once they had been a race of great explorers and adventurers. Now they were too timid to even think of challenging the system. They drifted along with “the way we’ve always done it.”

However, every trend has a counter flow—a stream of resistance that eventually bubbles up and opposes it. Soon, even in this most regimented and hollow society, a counter community of individuals grew. They understood that any vision for the future lay in creating their own community. It was called MYOO.

“They sought to create a safe harbor for all storytellers to gather—a place to trade ideas and generate discussion. They fought to relight the fire.”

The new community’s power hinged on one ancient tool: storytelling. Their mission? Under the MYOO collective, they renounced the path of least resistance and rose up. Swapping stuff for substance, they aimed to reignite their people’s imagination, trading out the old for the new. They sought to create a safe harbor for all storytellers to gather—a place to trade ideas and generate discussion. They fought to relight the fire.

There, they pooled their collective energy, and gave voice to their visions, adventures, feelings, trends, hunches, humor, passions, frustrations, fantasies, and most importantly, their curiosities—with the ultimate hope of using their stories as the key ingredient to spark society into breaking the shackles of standby, and to flick the switch on! To learn, unlearn and relearn everything in the hope of igniting a smarter planet 2.0.  So that eventually, they could all live happily ever after.

–The end.–

Or rather, the beginning.

Welcome! Let the storytelling begin.

—David de Rothschild

Founder and Chief Curiosity Officer of MYOO