From No Community To Digital Warfighters Our Identity Evolut

Things kind of go the way they go. I come up here and I talk and I don't always have exactly what I'm going to do. Give me a little volume. I don't exactly have what I'm going to do ahead of time. But I pay attention to the audience. And I see what the audience is talking about. And I see the themes that are kind of being weaved throughout everybody's little presentation. And there are some very interesting themes that are happening right now with these presentations. And it's not just happening here. It's happening around our community. But before we start talking about that, let me show you something real quick. This photograph up here. This was 2010. This was when I met Carl. We had this little thing we tried to do called the Warfighter Symposium. Didn't go so well because I'm a horrible planner. But we did have this symposium. This is a photo. What are some of the things you're missing? I'm missing in this photograph. One, the shades. Why? Because that was a time when I didn't realize that if I did this, I'd get less headaches. This was pre-beard warfighter community, people. It's like a relic. There's been a lot that's changed. Now we have a community that we can bitch about. That's not a bad thing. It means we have a community. Because 10 years ago, we didn't have one. We're the first warfighter community of all generations to be based and have the opportunity to have a digital space. And that's how we found each other. We are the digital war fighters of the world. The first ones. It didn't happen before. People talk about changes and they say, oh, the World War II guys, World War I guys, Korea guys, Vietnam guys, all that stuff. They didn't have what we have. So we had to figure out how to use what we had. The country didn't relate to us when we deployed and came back because they were too busy trying to make up for what they did to the Vietnam guys. They didn't even pay attention to us. They thought, hey, thank you for your service. Hey, I checked the block. I'm good. I support the troops. Didn't you see my bumper sticker? And that's how they played it. Meanwhile, we were sitting out going, I don't really relate to that era, but I don't know where to find my guys. What do I do? There's this little thing called social media. Social media gets a bad rap for a lot of things, justifiably so. But one thing it did for us, while we were going through those agoraphobic moments and we didn't want to leave the house, it gave us the opportunity to go, anybody out there? Can we talk? It gave us the opportunity to watch a meme fly before our face that maybe inspired us. Help us remember about another time. Let us know we were not alone. Right now, people do talk bad about the VA, but you know the highest number of suicides are those that did not report into the VA. So things have changed. Before, it was all the guys on the dope. That's changed or is changing. The first time I made a post about cannabis, crickets, crickets. No, and I was getting high with half of you in the room last night, so. Something's changed. There's just been things that have changed, and what's changed the most is we've realized we're different, and we've carved out our own identity. We didn't look like we do now. Just nine years ago, ten years ago. The t-shirt companies, look around you, everybody's wearing warfighter t-shirts. First time. Didn't happen in Vietnam, didn't happen in World War II. The Vietnam guys would come home, they'd wear their fatigues. That's how they identified themselves. And how did they portray us? Crazy vet. Crazy vet. That's the thing that was plugged into everybody's mind right after Vietnam, a little bit before Vietnam. Well, how do we get over that identity crisis? Oh, when I'm over there, I'm getting shot at and blown up. You love me. I come home. You treat me like I'm a homeless person. You don't want to see me as you walk down the street. You're afraid of me. PTSD phobia was a real thing. The Department of Labor statistic was 46%, nearly half, of all human resources managers in the country. When that photograph was taken, nearly half. said it was difficult to hire a veteran because of PTSD. They didn't even know what PTSD was.