An Ohio man has taken his opposition to the president to new levels by purposefully sequestering himself from learning about any developments that occur while President Donald Trump occupies the White House.
Erik Hagerman, who three years ago left his job as senior director of global digital commerce at Nike, made the decision to insulate himself from the news in an effort to avoid legitimizing the Trump presidency, according to the New York Times. The 53-year-old Hagerman has deliberately shunned social media, avoided contact with friends and family unable to abstain from discussing current events, and segregated himself to a remote pig farm in southeastern Ohio, all in an effort to render himself as ignorant as possible to the ongoings of American society and government under Trump.
Donald Trump’s victory shook him. Badly. And so Mr. Hagerman developed his own eccentric experiment, one that was part silent protest, part coping mechanism, part extreme self-care plan.
He swore that he would avoid learning about anything that happened to America after Nov. 8, 2016.
"It was draconian and complete," he said. "It’s not like I wanted to just steer away from Trump or shift the conversation. It was like I was a vampire and any photon of Trump would turn me to dust."
It was just going to be for a few days. But he is now more than a year into knowing almost nothing about American politics. He has managed to become shockingly uninformed during one of the most eventful chapters in modern American history. He is as ignorant as a contemporary citizen could ever hope to be.
Hagerman has gone to great lengths to preserve his ignorance. He wears noise-canceling headphones while at coffee shops in an effort to prevent any unintended information from leaking into his Trump-free bubble. Hagerman does indulge himself by watching every single Cleveland Cavaliers game, although, only on mute.