Roetter
By Eamon Baird
TROY — When Troy resident Eric Roetter suffered a brain tumor in 2010, it changed his perspective. Since then, he has spread positivity on social media platforms.
For the second year, Roetter is nominated for a Cheer Choice Award, a national award, which celebrate influencers who spread a positive message. The preliminary round has been running since Nov. 15 and through Nov. 29. There are five rounds of voting ending on Dec. 30.
“What I started doing was I would post this positive motivational stuff every day. I take pictures, everywhere I go, I just kind of like get in some places when I travel for work, or travel for fun, or whatever it is, and I put it to like a positive message every day,” Roetter said.
Roetter’s Instagram @jeeps_tacos_positivy is nominated in the Creator’s Motivational and Inspirational category at this year’s awards.
“Positivity is the thing that lasts, and I believe mental health is a big thing. It’s like a whole chain reaction to things when we think about your day. My goal is always to try to start off on the positive side and hope that it ends that way,” Roetter said.
Although Roetter did not quite make it to the finals last year, he happened to be in Las Vegas during the event and met many positive influencers there, people that he now considers friends.
Roetter’s wife Kathi, a two-time cancer survivor, whom he credits for going down the path of positive thinking.
“Both of us have been through some crazy stuff in our lives that I don’t even know how to describe it. She’s the one who started the whole positivity thing, and I just came along, but I’ve been consistent,” Roetter said.
Roetter, a veteran, has also used his platform to recognize the veteran community.
“I become more aware of being a veteran and understanding the mental health and I’m friends with veterans, some of my military friends that I was stationed with, and I still keep in touch with a guy that I was in basic training with,” he said.
While Roetter tries to spread positive vibes on his account, he is troubled about the negativity that surrounds social media. He said since starting his social media account, he has increasingly believed in karma.
“If you always put out negative vibes, you’re going to get negative back into whether you think it or not. Because you can’t ever see. You can’t ever see the silver lining, so to speak. I could see it like you get on Facebook or anything at any point in time, you can see a person who constantly complains about everything,”
Roetter would like to make it further than he did last year; however, his main goal is to spread positive awareness with the assistance of the award’s sponsor.
“I’ve become a lot more connected now with they have an organization called Spread the Cheer USA, a nonprofit organization funded to support families. It’s just like any other organization in the world that they’ll support families in need,” Roetter said.
Anyone interested in voting can go to www.cheerchoiceawards.com. There, voters can vote once per day for free or buy as many votes as they want through donations, with 100% of the proceeds of the votes going to Spread the Cheer USA.
The 2024 Cheer Choice Awards Weekend runs Friday, Apr. 12, through Sunday, April 14, at the Palms Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.
