PEOPLE
Hoge Loves Levar
Headed for space? You’d better bring Geordi!

By Hogefather, aka Jesse J Rogers
Ever since my big breakout article Is Hoge Coin Legit? You just can’t shut me up about Hoge. Firstly, I love the people in this community. I love the concept of the project and the spirit of the movement. And yes, I also love the fact that I finally have a platform with tens of thousands of people listening to me, allowing me to finally nudge the world ever so slightly away from its madness and towards the direction that makes sense.
And let me tell you one thing that makes a whole lot of sense to me — LeVar Burton as the successor to the late and great Alex Trebeck as host of Jeopardy. There simply are no other applicants that I can even contemplate. It has to be LeVar.
The reason I decided to write this is that I recently joked that I spread the word about Hoge so aggressively because I want to be the poorest of my friends. That way, one of them has to pick up the tab on the private jet. Realizing that I’m only half-joking and that it really does delight me to see my friends prosper, someone asked me in the Facebook group “why are you so kind?”
The question kind of makes sense, because let’s face it, the crypto-space, and especially the rug-pull-lotto corner of it that Hoge emerged from, is not exactly known for kindness.
My answer was that I grew up watching Mr. Rogers and the OG Hoge himself, LeVar Burton. Don’t get me wrong, he’s probably never heard of Hoge Finance. But HOGE has evolved to stand for “Help Organize Greatness Everywhere”, and that’s what LeVar was all about from the start.
The impact LeVar had on my generation is profound. I still have those words “take a look, it’s in a book, a Reading Rainbow” run through my mind when I see his face. The limitless possibilities of reading opened the world to so many young people (including me), and it was LeVar’s enthusiasm for learning and exploring that made it work.
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” — African Proverb
But most of all, I know him from Star Trek. I haven’t seen it in a long while because life has gotten so busy. But as a kid, I watched every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation so many times that Gene Roddenberry’s world still seems more real to me than this one. One of the joys I look forward to when I become a dad (one more month!) is introducing my daughter to the series when she’s old enough.
Okay, I hear what you’re thinking. Let’s back up. I’m not saying that LeVar should get the job just because I’m feeling nostalgic and he starred in a TV show I happened to like as a kid. No, what LeVar Burton brings to the table goes a whole lot deeper than that. But let’s start with that.
Some of my favorite characters were Data (an android) and LeVar Burton’s character Geordi La Forge because they were always the ones coming up with solutions. But if we’re being honest, the character that most closely represents the reality of my life and struggles is Lieutenant Reginald Barclay.

Barclay was a mediocre subordinate of La Forge introduced in the episode “Hollow Pursuits”. He suffered from a severe holodeck addiction that disempowered his real-world relationships, effectiveness, and self-esteem. “Lieutenant Broccoli” was the unflattering nickname for Barclay because of his tendency to “veg out”. With tragic similarly, I spent almost 20 years in a computer gaming addiction that left me only halfway paying attention to anything I needed to do in the real world.
I imagine a generation of young people who have fallen into the grip of digital addiction in one form or another can probably relate.
La Forge would get frustrated with Barclay, but saw his potential and didn’t give up on him. Without going too deep into the details of the episode, since La Forge was able to help Barclay address his problems, Barclay was able to figure out the solution to a problem that no one else saw. It saved the ship and crew from destruction.
There’s an African proverb that says “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” That’s at the core of Star Trek’s message to us. It’s what the world needs. It’s what HOGE has as a guiding vision. We need to go far, friends. All the way to the moon. And I don’t know anyone who has better embodied and captured the essence of that principle in the public arena than LeVar Burton has for his whole career.
He’s also great at interviews, by the way, and you should definitely watch him with one of the best interviewers of our time, Tim Bilyeu.