Matt Bernstein

Maddox IV.

It was like Roman numerals.

Which like Roman is queer culture.

Like moon phases.

It was just a lot of like the hipster, the like 2010s hipster stuff.

So when I made Instagram in 2012, that's when I like set up my account, I just called it Mad X IV because I was 14 years old.

I was born in 98.

I don't know if that's true because I think a lot of people my age, as in most generations at this point, feel like really overwhelmed and exhausted.

I don't think I'm like particularly good or special in that way.

I'm just obsessed with it.

I also like I wasn't doing political discourse when I was 14.

Like that's not what my Instagram was.

It was like artsy pictures of the beach, you know, with like with like the Instagram Nashville filter on it.

But at this point, I am 27, and for basically my whole adult life, I have been just kind of obsessed with politics.

And a lot of people ask, not to pat myself on the back or anything, because it's just an interest that comes naturally to me, but they'll be like,

How do you like keep doing it every day?

How do you read the news all the time?

How do you like stay on it without feeling exhausted?

And it's just because like even when everything is terrible, like I'm still I don't know the news and like the world and the way that people treat each other.

It just feels like a big like puzzle that I'm always interested in, like seeing how everything fits together.