This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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I’m a social media influencer fighting for the same clicks as everyone else. But every post I put on social media is for people who aren’t even on it. Four of them, to be exact. My kids.
In our house, homework, backyard football, theater rehearsal, and bargaining over bedtime are what trend. The kids’ only “follower” is our French bulldog. They’re too young to be on social media. Thank God! But someday they’ll type my name into the internet and see the evidence I left behind. When that day comes, I hope they find something useful.
That awareness shapes every post I send into the world. I’m not running a social media account so much as I’m managing a legacy. Every father desires to leave something behind, and while I got photo albums, my kids are getting a searchable record.
My content celebrates faith, family, and freedom — otherwise known as the “culture war.” And I’ve quickly learned how seriously people take the “war” part. Since I defend conservative ideas, some might say I cover “politics.” And social media is important because I started this platform to defend those values in public.
But here’s the distinction. The dominant — viral — style of political social media is humiliation, sarcasm, character assassination, and outrage. The algorithm rewards these behaviors because they produce engagement. But I’m no servant to the algorithm.
I try not to play in the mud. That doesn’t mean avoiding conflict. I embrace it! But it does mean avoiding the kind of cruelty that has become the dominant style online. The internet doesn’t lack for volunteers looking to destroy others. I attack ideas, not people. I make arguments instead of insults. I try to be respectful even while being direct.
Sadly, this is rare in political discourse. Some believe if you’re not disgracing opponents, you’re not fighting hard enough. Character assassination has become a business model. But I reject that. Fighting hard doesn’t require fighting dirty. If your ideas require humiliating your adversary, you need better ideas.
Cruelty travels faster than civility online, and thoughtful disagreement rarely goes viral. If you want attention, the easiest way to get it is to shame someone in public. But I refuse to trade my soul for clicks. And in political debates, the hostility can get ugly. I’ll spare you the vile threats in my DMs.
But the question I try to ask myself before posting isn’t whether something will win the internet for a day. It’s something simpler. Would I be proud of this if my kids read it someday? Will my content help my daughters manage a breakup? Will it help my sons stick up for the kid getting bullied at school? Will it motivate them to grow their own families and build meaningful lives that honor God and America? Kids learn how to behave by watching their parents. More is caught than taught.
When I started my platform, I imagined a father deployed to a war zone writing letters home, the uncertainty of his return inescapable in his mind. What would he choose to leave behind? He wouldn’t spend his time penning cheap insults about people. He wouldn’t waste words chasing anger. He would try to leave something that lasts — something his children could return to years later and still recognize as true.
He would write about character: courage, faith, responsibility, and the kind of life that puts one on the path to Heaven. So that’s my model. In a strange way, every post feels like a small entry in that kind of journal. I don’t expect my children to read every word. But they could. And they might. Before I hit “send,” I try to run a few questions through my mind:
Is this truthful, fair, decent, civil, and researched?
Does it challenge ideas rather than dehumanize individuals?
Does it reflect the values I promote?
Could I defend this if my kids asked me about it at the dinner table?
The internet encourages a different set of instincts. Volume, not virtue, is rewarded. Cruelty gets mistaken for strength, anger gets mistaken for courage, and sarcasm gets mistaken for intelligence. These are illusions.
Insulting digital strangers isn’t courageous; it’s cowardly. And I’m not raising cowards. It requires no discipline to mock someone online. It takes far more discipline to argue honestly with someone you strongly disagree with. Every parent knows the discipline of restraint. Sometimes the strongest response is the one you choose not to give.
The internet also creates another distortion. It convinces people that their audience is the internet itself: followers, impressions, trending topics. This is the scoreboard. But the real audience for most of us isn’t the crowd inside a screen. It’s the one under our roof. Our kids. Our families. The people who know us in real life.
The internet has a way of flipping those priorities upside down. People build massive public reputations while quietly damaging their private ones. They seek validation from strangers while neglecting the respect of the people closest to them. The algorithm rewards visibility, not character. But influence that costs you your character isn’t influence worth having.
Someday, when my kids are old enough to read everything I’ve written, they’ll see the arguments I picked, the people I challenged, and the language I used to do it. I hope when that day comes, they don’t just see what their dad believed; I hope they see how he behaved.
I hope they learn that you can fight hard for what you believe without becoming someone you’re not proud of, and challenge people without hating them. You can lift up your values without tearing others down, and you can disagree with people while still recognizing their humanity. Those lessons matter far more than political points.
For now, though, I’ll focus on the influence that matters. There are only four followers I care about pressing “like” when I get home at the end of the day. And I’d rather be front-door famous than viral.
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Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and Podcast, We The People with Gates Garcia. Follow him on X and Instagram @GatesGarciaFL.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
