College student receives life advice from estranged childhood friend

University of Tulsa junior Jimmy Ballon has reportedly been receiving “priceless life advice” from estranged childhood friend Billy Fahler. Fahler originally messaged Ballon under an unknown number, with every text beginning with the words, “Old Friend,” followed by cryptic advice. After some investigating, Ballon realized the identity of the number to be Billy Fahler, a boy he had not seen since middle school, nor heard of since a horse-tranquilizer incident in a mutual acquaintances’ basement.
The texts, usually sent by Fahler between the hours of 1 a.m. and 3 a.m., were routinely left unread by Ballon until the late afternoon, when he had time after lunch and “the patience to deal with this kind of shit.”
On Aug. 25, after Ballon confirmed to Fahler a third time that he would be continuing his college education and had in fact already registered for courses, Fahler sent a message reading, “Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught ;).” He did not credit the quote to Oscar Wilde, though the addition of the winking emoticon can be said to make the message wholly original.
Many of Fahler’s messages subscribe to this heavily anti-school sentiment, despite his own frequent references to the sixth and seventh grades as “those golden years.” This nostalgia does also run somewhat contradictory to his twice-sent message (once with an indecent typo) that “The best is yet to come,” received by Ballon not long before the revelation that Fahler was now living out of a Day’s Inn.
“The university was not made for us big thinkers, old friend,” Fahler once said. “Now I have the time to read Socrates, Plato, Kant. All the great Greek philosophers.” Fahler’s personal library, as reported in the police raid of his hotel room, contained only Sparknotes annotations.
Other noteworthy messages received by Ballon from Fahler read, “Buy land, because God isn’t making any more of it,” “On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero,” and once even a literal grocery list of foods that could be homegrown if one found themselves banned from their local supermarket.
The most recent message of Fahler’s that Ballon is aware of reads, “There are no bad people, you know? Just good people stuck in bad situations.” Whether or not this is actually the last message Fahler sent to Ballon is unknown at this time, as Ballon’s phone was soon after confiscated by the police as evidence in an ongoing investigation. Ballon was reportedly made especially willing to cooperate with the police after Fahler’s admittance to him that he was “ready to open up to [Ballon] like never before.” This message came after just two weeks and fourteen private messages. Ballon’s only reported response to any one of these messages was, “Who is this?”