On another evening of getting dinner in Philadelphia Chinatown, bustling through the evening crowds waiting for Boba Tea and their tables along the 10th street corridor, I ran into Dan Horan of the realfallrisk project. This is day 71 of his set up, he’s barely had a day to clean up his apartment. His videos on social media have been going viral for allowing individuals to leave voicemails on an automated line. The footage gets put in a short film style video, and uploaded online. A few of the viral videos have most notably been in Philadelphia. They display intense unexpected emotions and moments told by some Philadelphians, ranging from young teenagers to the elderly, reminding us we all have a voice and that we must let the emotion within us out instead of keeping it bottled up. With the project, Horan has been able to hit mainly east coast cities such as Atlanta, Baltimore, Charlotte, DC and Philadelphia, over 5,000 people have picked up the phone and these videos have been viewed over 95 million times on social media.
In one of the more viral voice message videos, a young teenager gets on a call and leaves a voicemail to his deceased mother, and mentions to her on the voicemail how his little brother also just passed away, and how he was on the to visit his grave. The 30 second call was powerful because it exemplified the emotion and difficulty that even a young adolescent can articulate to the world. As you view the riskfall page, there are hundreds more videos that talk about hardships and grief.
It’s a testament to how much we hold as humans, what we experience daily, and the fact that many people do not have the opportunity to express what’s going on in their lives. In a very short amount of time the video went viral on social media, people across the U.S. showing love to the young teenager in the comments and hoping that he can get the right guidance. Many individuals in the comments offered to be his mentor, and even put the teenager in a position with future employment. This is just an example of the impact that Dan Horan has had with this idea.
“I started this because I wanted to bring us all together as a team, and hear each other, and hear what else we’re all thinking. I’ve learned a lot about people.. We’re all so nice but we’re all conditioned to be so protective over our emotions and actions..” said Dan Horan, Creator of the realfallrisk project.
Dan really focused on the project after he sat outside Temple University’s campus student center, and asked students what their dream was and what achievements they wanted from schooling, most of their answers scared him, “They had no idea what dream they were chasing, spending 100k plus to sit in classes, and have no idea what they’re chasing,” said Dan.
Perhaps one of the more interesting sides of this is Dan’s political motivation and beliefs that fuel him to carry this out. He believes heavily in preserving positive places, as he believes they are going extinct under current government rule. He believes that we as humans need direction, and need to know what we’re going to do and why we’re doing the things we’re doing. “If you don’t have one of those two things, the equation never works out..”
He attributes a lot of these gaps and easy fixes to our Politicians to do better. There is constant struggle and inaccessibility, in the issues talked about by individuals in his project that can be fixed and addressed by our political leaders. “They take months if not years to change something in a world where people, a few words where people think and view someone or something in seconds, millions of people. We hear viral tweets, we see viral videos, one opinion can divide us all or bring us altogether. We’re living in the age of how we see a majority of how people feel but are affected by the minority that controls us.. The government is disconnected from the people, ultimately leading us to be disconnected from the people.. ” Said Horan.
He believes recently, we’re being conditioned the wrong way especially as it comes to social media and media in general, and hopes we can change this quickly. Which he aims to do with the Fallrisk project. Dan knows it’s going to be a constant uphill battle, but knows we as the people can get there.
He continued to cite how right now is a tense time for so many of us, and everyone’s holding onto the little they have to keep going, the least we can do is have the opportunity to be vulnerable and let others know it’s okay to do so as well, which is what he ultimately achieves to do with his project.
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