Lately, because to me a novelty is
something that circles the world four times by the time I notice it and is
already retro, I’ve been getting myself familiarized with the occurrence of ‘honesty
porn’ – where hot white people generate content inviting strangers into their
private lives. And I mean extremely
private. I first noticed that when Drej’s (at the time) mostly
pictures-of-her-cool-dog and bits of her upcoming literature’s analytics
exploded when she posted a shocking ‘my dog just died I am heartbroken’ post. There
will never be more views on that blog ever again. Fuck the content she actually
worked hard for. No. Hard work is for nerds, but a dead dog can happen to
anybody. It's relatable, see?
Of course everyone knows tragedy is a turn-on
for random strangers, and it has to be sexy, it can’t be something like ‘my
grandmother is dying of cancer’. No, it has to be ‘my supermodel girlfriend is
dying of cancer and I am photographing her and posting it on the internet every
day to make her feel loved..’
This type of clickbait has seeped into all
aspects of my every-morning-flipped-though-pages. Those really cool hot white
people will let you click on their blogs or Instagrams and see things more
intimate than you can ever imagine: them having breakfast with no make-up on,
them reading (a posh magazine) while waiting for the cab, them crying (had a
fight with my beau!), their money problems (daddy won’t pay for everything
anymore), their body issues (my flawless ass has a bruise from the fitness machine..
See? Look closer.), their professional struggle (YouTube just totally demonetised
my apply-make-up videos!), even things like endorsing sub-famous humanitarian
projects or having a sit-down with the less fortunate.
Every single one of these posts is designed and
engineered towards an image that is – clickbait.
Absolutely nothing unique or even interesting about any of these posts, but
they are ‘intimate’ with an illusion of genuine and done by beautiful rich
people, and so you can’t look away. Hey, y’all, here’s me shaving my armpits. Hey
y’all, look at this crazy cute hamster my baby just gifted me! Hey y’all, look
at my besties and me all sweaty after our daily work-out… aren’t we terrible??
I have to give this shit a closer look – it’s
mesmerizing. Like looking at a car wreck, you can’t look away. Mundane is the
new hot. It’s perhaps just as well Feud
came out when it did, saying how crappy it was for Joan Crawford and the likes
of her, who spent so long projecting a desired façade of an imaginary individual,
she literally had no idea who she was underneath. Not her audience. SHE had no
idea. How crazy is that? Marcus Aurelius was on to something.
Flawed sells magazines, because flawed can be
perfected upon if you work just hard enough, but bullshit flawed – that shit
will get you on the cover.
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