I think about the nature of love often. I used to write about it far more than I do now, something that I wish to remedy, because when I don’t, I find it difficult to recognize, even when it’s standing right in front of me. This could be a testament to how writing alters the way I perceive emotion, but I think it’s more of a reminder of the beauty, the love that I have in my life, and the inevitable crash I have when I feel like that gifted love is being taken away from me, withdrawn, perhaps just changing.

“I just can’t afford it, to waste my time inside a place you’re not. Don’t make me waste my love. It’s everything I’ve got.”

Those two lines used to sum up the feeling for me. I can’t remember what it was like to not be in love. I have memories of being single. I can recall lapses in judgment and mistakes, but that general feeling of existence is an echo to me now. This love of mine is who I am, and for some, that new normal can lead one to take that love for granted, as contradictory as that might sound. The blatancy of newfound love makes it impossible to ignore, but when it becomes just another aspect of your life, it’s terribly easy to forget who you are before you met the person who changed your life forever.

At the same time, when their presence isn’t felt, literally or figuratively, you wonder what the point even is. I can’t afford to waste my time without her, because trying to imagine myself without her is like cutting my soul in half, gouging me out with crude tools and a masochistic temperament.

If that sounds horrible, that’s because it can be. Being in love doesn’t mean you go the rest of your life with rose tinted glasses surgically attached to your face. When you love someone, and they love you back, you start to share each other’s emotions. Your joy, your pain, your sadness, your indifference; all of it becomes contagious. You don’t usually have a say in this. You spend enough time with someone so closely, you begin to mold into each other, as if translucent versions of you are pasted over each other’s skin. And so when the old version of her comes out, the version you aren’t used to seeing anymore, the version before the confessionals and the intimate nights, it scares you. Rather, it scares me.

“Will someone find out what the word is that makes the world go round? ‘Cause I thought it was ‘love’.”

My fear is consuming. I’ve felt terror before. Unease, panic, unrest, these aren’t unique. I’ve come to realize that the longer I remain with her, the more fearful I become. Perhaps I’m afraid she’ll grow bored of me, like she’ll eventually go off to greener pastures, off to meet someone more interesting, someone she can feel the joy of getting to know again. Perhaps I’m afraid that she’ll see me differently one day. Not terrible, not great, just different than the man she fell in love with. Perhaps I’m afraid she’ll cheat on me, as I have been by another heart. And yet, I know deep down, I’m afraid of what the human spirit is capable of, because I have been that dishonest hookup, projecting who I used to be onto who she is now, unfairly so. Perhaps, more truthfully, I’m afraid I’ll fuck it all up myself, and all those fears would be for naught.

“But some say that it has to be ‘choice’. I read it in some book, or an old packet of smokes.”

Horseness is The Whatness, a song inspired by the philosophical phrase from James Joyce’s Ulysses, planted this mental seed of mine. It explores the nature of a thing, the essence of it, the mechanics of how it exists in a world full of insurmountable qualities of life. The horse, in this scenario, doesn’t cease to exist just because its tail is cut off, or it loses an eye. Its horseness remains intact, despite the change, because the definition of a thing is dictated by its complex nature, not by an outside force’s ability to change it in some way, as irreversible as it may be. There’s a beauty to this idea, a beauty that I think applies to love itself.

I’ve been crashing. I’m in the middle of moving, I’m waiting to hear back from a job I really want, I miss my mom more than she will ever believe because of my own fuckups, I miss my dad despite him being everything wrong with this country, I miss my old dog’s scruffy grey hairs, I miss who I was before I went to college, before my aunt died, and I lash out.

I was faced with a defining moment. My love confronted me with who I’ve been as of late. A man I don't like, a man I don’t want to be, the kind of man who hides behind his pain and uses it as an excuse, a crutch, a reason to be miserable, and I’ve hurt her. For the first time in my life, I felt the weight of that contagiousness. So wrapped up, selfishly, in my own baggage, I nearly forgot she was more than my love or my girlfriend, but my partner. Self-pity has a habit of clouding everything within two feet in front of you, as if you weren’t planning your entire life with this person just a month before.

Those lines about wasting love, I resonated with them because I felt as though my love alone was at the risk of being wasted. I felt that because I was miserable about life’s relentless embarrassments and tragedies, that I was deserving of more than I’ve already been given, but as I write this, Fontaines D.C. blaring in my ears, I realize that I’ve actually wasted hers. I’m not the protagonist of my own story, at least not in the conventional way. She is. Her love doesn’t cease to exist because I give her a reason to leave, but it does give her a reason to choose. I’ve chosen her. I would be so lucky to be chosen by her. I suppose I forgot that somewhere along the way.

Someone asked me a while ago what I’ve learned from being in a long term relationship. I have plenty of answers, plenty of essays that will never be written, or see the light of day, but if I had to pick one thing, perhaps something someone out there needs to hear, it’s this: Love can only be taken for granted for so long before it erodes. Remember the moment she chose to take a chance on you, because she didn’t have to change your life.

“You choose or you exist.”

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The other night I rewatched the first X-Men movie that came out in 2000. I grew up watching those films, and so my nostalgia skews my opinion of them somewhat, but when I finished watching it, what struck me the most was how tangible everything was. Storm, a woman who can control the weather, Cyclops, a man who can shoot a concussive blast from his eyes, Wolverine, a guy who has metal knives that come out of his hands, Professor X, a telepathic old man; all of these characters, on paper, feel impossible to depict in live action because of how ridiculous their superpowers are, and yet, I bought into every minute of it, early 2000s camp and all.

It’s easy to say the practical effects of the time helped bring those characters to life, but it’s more than that. The story of the first film is simple: A morally ambiguous character (Magneto) is tired of being marginalized by society because of his mutant abilities, and wants to turn everyone into a mutant so that the world can finally understand what it’s like to be one of them. The plot is rooted in generations of hate and bigotry. I mean, the movie literally begins in a concentration camp, showing Magneto being forcefully taken from his mother. The movie bends over backwards to show you that despite these characters being fantastical and fictional, their plights are very much rooted in real issues. Magneto serves as a Malcolm X type of figure, while Professor X serves as MLK. The parallels may be a little on the nose, but it’s effective nonetheless.

X-Men is by no means some underrated masterpiece. In almost every way, its sequel, X2, is better, but that palpability is what I miss in superhero movies nowadays. I miss when stories were more contained, not in their crazy plots, but in their characters and motivations. That’s why I loved the latest Spider-Man movie so much. It’s still part of the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the themes, writing, cinematography, music, characters; all of it felt like a response to our desire for real filmmaking again. After Avengers: Endgame, Marvel fans have been vocal about their gripes over the “Marvel machine.” This perpetually moving grinder that often turns a director’s original vision into a muddy CGI mess of grey and brown with only hints of nuance or real character work. There are outliers, of course, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Shang-Chi, Thunderbolts, but what once felt like a meaningful build-up to a 10-year cinematic event has now become unrecognizable.

When Marvel laid off roughly 1,000 corporate employees, many of them being visual effects artists, to “streamline production,” everyone’s first thought was AI. It makes sense. If a corporation has an opportunity to cut costs and corners, they’ll take it, even at the expense of the people who built the company and made it what it is today. Couple that with Joe and Anthony Russo’s pro-AI stance in the filmmaking process (the directors of Avengers: Doomsday), it’s easy to assume that they used AI for the latest Avengers film, I certainly thought so. Admittedly, I held that opinion until I did research and found that there is no evidence of generative-AI use in Doomsday, but I suppose I can also say that if it is revealed later that they did, in fact, use generative-AI to help make the film, I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest, and that thought alone makes me sad.

The filmmakers aside, my main concern is the story. “Show don’t tell” is a universal writing rule. It applies to literature, to films, to any storytelling medium. It’s what differentiates bad from okay, okay from good, and good from great. Dr. Doom, the latest big bad universe ending Marvel villain, is a character that has had absolutely no previous buildup from any of the post-Endgame films. He appeared, for a second, in the after credits scene of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, but that was hardly a contribution to anything other than a lazy attempt to connect a new Marvel movie to Doomsday. Dr. Doom is a character steeped in rich history, and his connection to The Fantastic Four is usually personal, having known Reed Richards and Sue Storm for years. We have not seen, however, that history whatsoever thus far. He simply didn’t exist in First Steps, not even a mention of his name. And yet, in the latest Doomsday trailer, Sue and Reed speak of him as if they were best friends. They tell the audience who Doom used to be. They tell the audience that we should be afraid of him, that he’s unbelievably powerful. The heroes sit and listen with grim looks on their faces. This Doom guy must be pretty scary, right?

Except, he isn’t. Thanos didn’t have a lot of screen time before Infinity War, but his small contributions and appearances solidified his overwhelming power over the stories of the previous films. He was always there, looming over our heroes in some way. Doom just… appeared. And as much as they tell me he’s big and scary, I feel nothing but apathy when I see him standing in front of a blue screen that has more in common visually to dirt than a real film. The movie will probably have flashbacks to Doom’s story, but to introduce a new Avengers level threat in the first Avengers movie in eight years is such a strange choice, let alone a movie that has over 30 characters in it, half of them having been poorly conceived even in their own films.

Then, on the business side of things, there’s Infinity Vision, Disney’s response to Dune: Part Three taking up all the IMAX screens on its release day. Disney has been claiming that Infinity Vision is the definitive way to watch Doomsday. They say that it’s bigger, louder, more epic, and that the movie was made for that format. Except, there’s one huge caveat: Infinity Vision isn’t a real format. It’s a poorly fabricated attempt to make people spend more money on a ticket for a format that Disney themselves made up. It’s not an IMAX replacement, it’s a branding tactic, and worse yet, not only do they want you to spend more on a fake format, they want you to go back to the theater to rewatch a new cut of Endgame, titled Avengers: Endgame Encore, which apparently has newly added footage to connect directly into Doomsday. I'm sorry… can we just take a minute to soak that all in? Eight years after its initial release, a Marvel movie that originally had absolutely no connection to the upcoming Avengers film has now been tweaked so they can try to justify spending money on another ticket for a film that has roughly seven minutes of new footage, including a revised ending sequence designed to bridge the narrative directly into Doomsday. Is that not insane? In those eight years, there hasn’t been a single Marvel project that connects to Doomsday in any significant way, so Disney took that opportunity to milk even more out of you. That’s not how you tell a great story. That’s how you scam your fans.

And I haven’t even mentioned the fact that the entirety of the movie was filmed without a finished script. I know some of you are going to say that this isn’t new, that movies like Infinity War were also filmed without a complete script, but do you really think that should be the norm? Sebastian Stan recently said, “Honestly, I have no idea because we didn’t have a script. We were just shooting scattered scenes.” The reason why Marvel films gained this reputation for being “fake cinema” was because at a certain point, Disney/Marvel producers and executives got way too comfortable making films this way. It’s why, after a certain point, the quality of these projects steadily declined, eventually reaching a point where higher-ups cared more about their actors not spoiling big cameos or crazy set pieces over telling a fully fleshed out story. Tom Holland has even said that after filming The Odyssey with Christopher Nolan, he came back to the Spider-Man set and “put his foot down” over how they were going to make the movie, saying that in the past, producers insisted they build the story around set pieces rather than build the set pieces around the story. Incredibly experienced and revered actor, Ian Mckellen, said that he had no earthly idea what he was filming in Doomsday because he spent the vast majority of the shoot in front of blue and green screens without, again, a real script. These kinds of comments don’t garner much confidence in the quality of this upcoming movie, and it’s baffling to me that after a second, albeit much better trailer than the first one, people’s fears and skepticism over Doomsday have seemingly disappeared. Am I going crazy? Doesn’t anyone else feel like they’re being duped?

So, why am I taking this so personally? Well, other than the fact that I don’t like to be treated like a mindless consumer, they brought the X-Men back for this mess.

I’m not going to lie to you, when I saw this teaser of Cyclops months ago, I started to believe this movie might actually be good. The frame is ripped straight from the comics, and seeing my childhood brought back into a modern MCU film was exciting. But as more came out about the movie, and once I saw the official trailer, I became disillusioned with it once again. My reaction to seeing the X-Men was exactly what Disney wanted. They want us to pay to watch a trip down memory lane, to get a slice of the meal we ate over a decade ago, but that practice has run dry for me. The X-Men have always served a different purpose compared to The Avengers. Truly great X-Men stories always have something to say about society, whether it be discrimination, homophobia, racism, immigration, all of the things our current political leaders weaponize to create fear and distrust amongst ourselves. X-Men: The Last Stand, although generally being pretty terrible, opens with one of the most harrowing scenes I ever saw as a kid. A child mutilating himself, cutting off his wings with dull tools in the bathroom because of the fear that his father will cast him aside for his mutation, regardless of how beautiful it actually was. Those kinds of stories just haven’t been told in the modern MCU, and the inclusion of the X-Men in Doomsday will most certainly be nothing more than fan service and setup for the new X-Men cast (which I actually am excited to see when the time comes).

“Charles Xavier entrusted me with his dream, and it does not ask you to love or embrace my kind as your own, but merely to accept that this is a shared world with a common future, and that my kind, like yours, have the right to live in it. I am trying to be better. Please… do not make me let you down.”

Magneto

You think we’re going to get this level of writing in Doomsday? I seriously doubt it. Other than their previous Marvel films, the only other projects the Russo Brothers have done have ranged from mediocre to absolutely horrible. Cherry, The Gray Man, The Electric State, all movies that don’t give me faith in this new project.

Despite my rant, I would love to be wrong. I don’t want this movie to fail critically, because if it does, people will once again lose trust in the MCU, trust that has finally been regained over the years. I want these movies to be great because I love these characters just as much as those who actually are excited for this movie. I want a 3-hour movie with 30+ characters and an underdeveloped villain to be as great as Infinity War and Endgame, but I just don’t see that happening. Spider-Man reminded me of what the MCU is capable of in the right hands, and what these movies can look like when real, practical sets and thoughtful storytelling take precedence, but I fear that Doomsday looks no different to me than some of the worst MCU projects I’ve seen, like the last Ant-Man movie.

I know, regardless of how this movie turns out, I’ll still feel a twinge of excitement when I see Cyclops again, or Toby Maguire’s Spider-Man, even if it makes no sense at all. I know that by purchasing a ticket, I’m directly contributing to the machine that churns out these kinds of vapid experiences, but at the end of the day, I love superheroes. I hope that when you see me writing about this movie in December, I have nothing but good things to say, just don’t hold your breath.

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It isn’t difficult for me to like a Spider-Man movie. He’s been my favorite superhero since I was a literal baby. Even the movies that people generally consider terrible, like The Amazing Spider-Man 2, have moments that I always go back to. I can’t help it. When I was a kid, I was drawn to his suit, his athleticism, his nerdy charm, but when I grew older, I became drawn to his relatability, or more specifically, his constant struggle to support himself while being a good person. He makes the latter look so easy, but I suppose that’s why I love him now: he’s neglects himself for the sake of others.

If you don’t already know, which is probably impossible considering the movie has already made over a billion dollars in record time, Brand New Day is about Peter Parker choosing to isolate himself from a world who forgot who he was. His best friend, his girlfriend, his peers; the memory of him is completely gone, and instead of telling them who he is like he promised he would before their memories were wiped, he chooses to keep his identity a secret, in classic superhero fashion, to protect them. Years have passed since the events of the last film, and though he has become an infinitely better Spider-Man, his life begins to crumble and change as Peter Parker.

Immediately, the film’s premise is a stark contrast from what we’ve seen Tom Holland’s version of Spider-Man be. A complaint many people had over the years was that he wasn’t lonely enough, tested enough, or shown to overcome overwhelmingly impossible odds (up until his previous film, No Way Home). Brand New Day not only addresses those complaints, but sincerely and amazingly depicts what I believe to be not just the best Spider-Man movie of all time, but one of the best superhero movies I’ve ever seen.

But this isn’t supposed to be a review. You’re probably well aware of the near universal acclaim director Dustin Daniel Cretton has received for his iteration. What I really want to talk about is what the film represents, or rather, the kind of idol Peter Parker, and in turn, Tom Holland has become for children and adults. In an age where vitriol, misogyny, bigotry, and ignorance plague the digital landscape, Spider-Man remains a beacon of hope for people who strive to be better, even when the world feels unfair and downright cruel.

Male Loneliness

I recently came under fire from a lot of men for a post of mine where I said, “The male loneliness epidemic is entirely self-inflicted. When men rule the world, the plight of the man lies solely on the perpetrator.” Yes, I still believe this to be true, and the film does a wonderful job portraying male loneliness in a way that doesn’t absolve Peter of his own responsibility. The world has forgotten who he is because of his own mistakes and his own choice to wipe everyone’s memory; a decision he made without asking his then girlfriend, MJ (something this film addresses in a particularly heartbreaking scene). The film shows the repercussions of that decision while simultaneously exploring his persistent goodness despite being so alone. And when he lashes out on others, his remorse, and more importantly, his change in character speak volumes. It might sound like a strange comparison, but I can’t help but think about Mr. Darcy. Initially, he seems like a prick, because he is. He speaks badly of Elizabeth and is quite standoffish, and yet people, particularly women, adore him. Why?

Accountability and change.

Peter isn’t like Darcy in the way that he begins the film unlikeable, but as his body changes (a clear metaphor for his depression and rage), he hurts people that he wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the amnesia spell he helped subject onto the world. By the end of the film, Peter doesn’t just acknowledge his shortcomings, he addresses them through conversation and genuine introspection, leaving us with a character arc that’s as satisfying as Toby Maguire’s in Spider-Man 2, which ironically has Peter suffering through a similar yet completely different problem: giving up the mantle of Spider-Man to focus on Peter Parker.

Consent

If there’s one thing I never expected to see in a Spider-Man film, it’s the depiction of consent. The main villain of the film, Jean Grey, has the power to take over people’s bodies and minds, speaking through them to get to Peter. There’s a moment in the film where Jean takes over MJ. She tells Peter that she remembers him, that she figured it out, and kisses him. Peter, thinking it’s the real MJ, leans in, tears of joy that get me choked up just thinking about it, knowing how quickly that joy will be stripped away. When Jean reveals what’s she’s really done, Peter recoils. The real MJ has no memory of this, and after another scene where she really does figure it out, she explains to Peter that she wishes he would have talked to her about his decision to erase her memory, because despite his heart being in the right place, it really wasn’t his decision to make. Shortly after that, Peter tells her that he kissed her when Jean took over her body, that he was sorry, and that he thought she should know.

There’s an important conversation to be had here about autonomy over one’s body, and the importance of consent in a relationship. Peter didn’t have to tell MJ that he kissed her, but he did because it was the right thing to do. To see something like this portrayed in a superhero movie millions of kids will grow up watching is so refreshing. His relationship with MJ is complicated, but what isn’t complicated is consent. Peter learns to communicate more throughout the film, and it’s that respect for MJ and the other people in his life that perfectly demonstrates his integrity, something more men need to see in media.

Tom Holland

Let me begin by saying I think celebrity worship is weird. As I’ve grown older, I’ve become more mistrusting and disillusioned with what celebrities say they believe in. Time and time again I’ve been proven wrong about someone who I thought was virtuous. Of course, celebrities are human beings too, and to be human is to be made up of contradictions and hypocrisies, but I’m of the opinion that if one has the gift of a huge platform, those same natural hypocrisies need to be addressed when exposed, otherwise the fans that admire them will continue to defend them till their dying breath.

With that being said, I believe Tom Holland is someone people can look up to.

Media trained to the gills and undoubtedly imperfect, Tom Holland is truly no different than any other person you might pass on the street, but he is Spider-Man. He, like Peter, has a responsibility to be the kind of man kids and young adults should strive to be. Call me foolish, call me parasocial, but I can’t help but feel like he’s just a decent person. When I see him talk about his troubled relationship with alcohol and his journey to sobriety, when I see him talk about his wife, when I see him interact with his co-stars and his fans, I always feel like, despite him sometimes being clearly exhausted from press tours and promotion, he is constantly putting his best foot forward. It’s possible he’s such a wonderful Spider-Man because he shares many qualities with Peter Parker, and it’s also possible that he’s a total asshole who is just really good at his job, but either way, how he portrays himself to the public eye (and what he chooses to keep private) is just as important as those conversations about consent, or that message of hope and community Brand New Day wants you to go home thinking about.

Hope

I’m going through a particularly rough period of my life right now. I’m already prone to hopelessness, regardless of whether or not that feeling is misplaced, but it’s cultural moments like this that bring me back from my darkest moments.

Peter is beaten down in almost every way in this film. He is faced with so much sadness, so much trauma, and so much grief, most people wouldn’t blame him if he decided to give it all up, or to give in to his indignation, but he doesn’t. He persists, he pushes forward, and he accepts MJ’s rejection of his love with a broken heart and a face of yearning that stuck with me more than any other image in the film.

“You mean everything to me. And I’ve been trying to live my life without you but I… I can’t. I love you.”

“I’m sorry but… I don’t love you. I don’t even know you.”

This scene is so brutal, but it’s Peter’s acceptance that makes it all the more beautiful. The film doesn’t end with her running to him with open arms. She is a different person now, someone who has a new boyfriend, a new life, and yet, someone who is still willing to be Peter’s friend. It’s that silver lining that keeps him going, keeps him pushing through the worst of times. I’ve already seen so many men completely misunderstand the meaning of this film and the purpose of MJ’s rejection. They see her as a vessel for Peter’s happiness, as if her only purpose in life should be to forgive, forget, and love him regardless of her memory loss. They want her autonomy to be stripped away to satisfy a tired film trope that gets rid of any complexity from her character, and it’s men like that who could never be someone like Peter.

But that’s exactly why movies like this are so important. It’s a demonstration of who people, particularly young boys, can be. My dad used to tell me that he would carry me with one hand up to the ceiling while I pretended to crawl around like Spider-Man. I can’t remember that, but I can picture it so clearly. My mom used to say that she loved Spider-Man because he was the only superhero she saw that was completely broke. The wonderful thing about this movie is that it didn’t make me feel like a kid again, it made me think about the future. Mine, and the kids who got to see a film that will define the next ten years of their lives like Toby’s movies did for me.

If you haven’t seen Brand New Day yet, please do. You don’t have to be a superhero fan to love this film. You don’t have to know everything that’s happened in the MCU so far. All you need to know is what it feels like to feel invisible, or lost, or beat down, or so tired you might just collapse, just to be saved by an unlikely someone who cares more for you than you do yourself.

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We all know that awkward feeling of watching a movie with your family when a sex scenes comes on, especially when you’re a kid. I remember those moments growing up, wanting desperately to be anywhere else. It’s all very silly, and I think there’s an inherent humor to sex, the very act of it. Unlike violence, sex remains a taboo for most Americans, and to my surprise, nearly half of my generation (Z) feel sex scenes are unnecessary in film and TV. I say “surprise” because other forms of media consumption, like literature, have a lot of sex appeal. There doesn’t seem to be as much push-back against smut, though I suppose reading and watching are two different things.

An unnecessary sex scene is incredibly obvious when you see it. It usually feels unwarranted, unearned, there for shock value. There are plenty of examples of this. I find that if I feel uncomfortable for all the wrong reasons, the sex isn’t working, the latest Wuthering Heights adaptation comes to mind. But I think that when a sex scene isn’t working, the negative reactions to it bleed into other scenes with perhaps different intentions. It’s easy to see sex portrayed in media and to agree with the blanket statement that such scenes are always useless, but I disagree.

I think, more often than not, sex scenes are necessary. There’s a line in Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation, Queer, where the protagonist says, “I want to talk to you without speaking.” The line is stunning, but I think it also speaks to the idea of sex as a whole. Sex scenes have the difficult task of portraying character intention and frame of mind without leaning on dialogue. The popular argument is that sex scenes serve no purpose, but isn’t the very act of sex profoundly purposeful in and of itself? It can be a declaration of love, the depiction of a mistake, a reenactment of guilt, a portrayal of loneliness, or simply lust; all valid character motivations that should be depicted if done, again, with intention.

I believe this aversion to on-screen sex is connected to my generation’s growing abstinence. The number of young adults who have not had sex has literally doubled since 2010. COVID, financial instability, not wanting to bring kids into this world; real reasons for not wanting to get freaky, but I fear the lack of sex has led to a misunderstanding of its portrayal.

I’m not here to tell you that your discomfort with watching sex scenes stems from you not getting laid. That too would be a blanket statement, but there is a growing fundamental misunderstanding of what purpose these scenes serve. Normal People has a sex scene in practically every episode of the series. Saying it out loud certainly makes it sound over the top, and I’ve heard people question why there needs to be one in every episode, but when you actually watch the show, when you know the characters and grow an attachment to them, you feel more inclined to see every facet of their lives, romance and all. And when you see a character like Marianne having sex with someone she doesn’t love, or someone who mistreats her, it hurts because you want her to be happy. So much emotion is told without saying a single word. It’s the “show don’t tell” rule epitomized.

When Oppenheimer came out, it was met with overwhelming acclaim. It felt as though everyone agreed it was Christopher Nolan’s best film to date, but there was one thing people said they truly disliked: the sex scenes between Cillian Murphy and Florence Pugh. I heard so much about it that I expected to be insulted when I finally saw the film, and to my surprise, I couldn’t understand why the scenes were criticized as much as they were. Nolan’s depiction of women is one thing, and certainly worth its own article, especially with the added context of his latest film, The Odyssey, but in Oppenheimer, it made complete sense to me. The sex was far from glamorous. It was unromantic, awkward, and in one particular scene, disturbing, but that’s what you were supposed to feel. Oppenheimer’s infidelity is difficult to watch, and Jean’s depression makes it all the more tragic. And yet, people hated it as if Nolan’s intention wasn’t to make you hate it. Before he built the atomic bomb, before he quite literally had the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on his hands, Jean’s death was, in a way, the first that he was responsible for.

Despite everything I’ve just said, I do think it’s important to remember the purpose film and entertainment serves in our lives. They can be mirrors to who we are, and they can be forms of escapism, but even at their most imaginative and fantastical, great art should reflect and depict real human experiences. You may watch a sex scene and immediately feel as though you didn’t need to see it, and you may be right, but sex is just a part of life. It’s a part of what makes us human, it’s why humanity exists to begin with. This demonization of sex is far more harmful than the acceptance of violence portrayed in entertainment. Watching two naked bodies touch each other doesn’t strike me as any less necessary than watching someone get shot in the face, and yet, the latter is okay. And so when there is backlash against scenes like that of Oppenheimer, I grow confused. A film made by adults, for adults, depicting the psychological toll that building a world-ending weapon had on a man who changed history forever, and you draw the line at nudity?

When I think about examples of misplaced or truly unnecessary sex scenes, I think about films like Blue is the Warmest Color. The film has a lot of incredible qualities, mostly in the performances, but the sex in the film crossed that line between depiction and fetishization that is made even more upsetting when you learn the behind-the-scenes turmoil the two leads had to endure. It ruins the entire viewing experience, knowing that these overly drawn out sex scenes came from the mind of a man who used the facade of an LGBTQ+ story to poorly veil his own desire to force two women to do things they didn’t want to do. The gratuity of it shatters what could have been a classic.

I mentioned the latest Wuthering Heights adaptation earlier, a movie I wrote about here. I, as you might imagine, thoroughly disliked my experience watching it. Having read the source material, I felt as though the film either undermined the original novel’s themes and messages, or completely ignored them. The film added sex scenes that just weren’t there before, and worse yet, they truly added nothing to the characters or the plot because the depiction of those same characters was just as vapid and shallow as the adaptation itself. I mentioned before that when you truly love a character, you want to explore every part of their life. Wuthering Heights had the opposite effect, and though the film had the intention of portraying a dirty, grimy, wet world, the sex felt like nothing but noise; distractions from the film’s other lacking qualities.

I realize now that I’ve just taken another opportunity to shit on that movie. I can’t help myself.

Film, first and foremost, is a visual medium. Director Denis Villeneuve (Dune, Prisoners, Arrival) has said on a few occasions that he hates dialogue because he always wants to focus on the purity of visual stimulation to tell a great story. This “show don’t tell” rule, despite being made up of nothing but the written word, applies to literature too. If one has the opportunity to convey something through action rather than dialogue or explanation, why not take it? Sex scenes are so often misunderstood because the act of sex has been associated with something to be ashamed of.

Great films are contemplations of the human condition, and there’s nothing more human than sex, because sex requires a level of intimacy that becomes an unspoken confession of one’s imperfections, and an acceptance that feels so innocent despite the sex being so dirty. When film can capture that feeling, there’s nothing quite like it.

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The black girlfriend is funny, smart, attractive, thoughtful, and supportive. The whole package, the ideal person to spend the rest of your life with, right?

Except, that’s where you’d be wrong.

The black girlfriend exists for one purpose: to be a stepping stone, to be an obstacle, to be a narrative prop for the protagonist to find himself, which just so happens to be in the white woman he truly wanted the entire time.

Back in 2019, British journalist and author Yomi Adegoke described the “disposable black girlfriend” trope as a form of tokenism, which, for those of you who don’t know, is the practice of making a superficial effort to include marginalized people in, usually, a largely white cast. It doesn’t take an expert to identify the cursory nature of these kinds of characters. Sure, throw us a bone, but don’t make it too complex. The average viewer simply can’t conceive of a three-dimensional black character, let alone a woman (I hope you read that in a sarcastic tone).

Amber from Invincible, Nicole from The Summer I Turned Pretty, Charlie and Kristen from Friends, Marina from Bridgerton, Julianna from XO, Kitty, the list goes on and on and on and on. Now look, I’m not saying these shows are racist, or that the creators behind them are racists, but what I am saying is that the contribution to these kinds of tropes may come from an unconscious place.

I think it’s imperative to acknowledge that everyone on this planet possesses unconscious biases. The differentiating factor that separates blatant racism from implicit bias is animosity, and the differentiating factor between racism and hatred is violence. The disposable black girlfriend trope isn’t violent, at least not obviously so, but it does something perhaps much more guileful: it perpetuates the idea that black women are nothing more than vessels, sexual ones, for the main character to use and discard whenever the plot reminds him of whiter pastures.

This depiction of black women goes all the way back to the slavery-era “Jezebel” stereotype. For those of you who don’t know, the Jezebel is the racist caricature that depicts black women as hyper-sexual and aggressive, two characteristics that have plagued media since. The stereotype was originally made to justify the sexual violence and exploitation of slaves by falsely claiming they possessed some irresistible, unquenchable appetite for sex, therefore deeming the perpetrator’s actions as anything but rape.

The portrayal of this archetype in pop culture used to be a lot more obvious. Reality TV, music videos, movies, they all do it to varying degrees of prejudice, but this marriage between subtle racism and entertainment is one I don’t see divorcing any time soon, if ever, and so its effects are felt elsewhere. The ripples touch the way we see the world individually, the way we make friends, the way we see relationships, the way we determine who is and isn’t worth sticking our necks out for. It’s all shaped by what we consume and who we spend our time with. The latter is far more transformative, but the former shouldn’t be overlooked just because it’s fiction. There’s a large group of people who are trying to convince me that Lupita Nyong'o isn’t beautiful enough to play a fictional character. Why? Oh, well, she’s black. Helen of Troy is worth going to war for, but only if she’s white.

This kind of thinking is hard to shake, or rather, come to terms with. I grew up surrounded by mostly white and asian kids, and so when I went off to college, to a historically black university that resided all the way across the country from where I lived, I somehow managed to mostly date people who weren’t black. I didn’t think much of it at the time, even when my friends would make jokes about it, but I suppose that’s how I saw it: a joke. I didn’t take it seriously, my internalized prejudice for an entire part of my heritage that was neglected for the better part of eighteen years. It wasn’t until I came back home did I realize who I was over there, the kinds of choices I made that I wouldn’t make today. It really fucked with me, to say the least.

I love the part of myself I once couldn’t fully embrace, but not everyone is willing to make that acknowledgment. Doing so admits fault somehow, as if being fallible is the great sin that separates the good people from the bad.

The black girlfriend is good enough for anyone she deems worth spending her time with. The black girlfriend has been judged with every kind of squinted eye, and I can promise you she isn’t seeking validation from the likes of me or you. The only thing she’s seeking is the peace of knowing she’s not under the intense scrutiny of the world. That’s impossible, of course. Such scrutiny will always be there, and it’s usually far worse than you can imagine. The black girlfriend isn’t disposable, and despite knowing where we are in the world right now, it still feels faintly strange to say it out loud.

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The current internet landscape is a strange place. “Strange” might be a bit of an understatement. If you asked me what my honest thoughts were on what these platforms feel like today, I’d say something along the lines of, “Pure, unadulterated hell” without an ounce of humor to be found. It’s a catch-22. An impossible, no-win situation where we live in an age that requires some level of digital presence to secure a job and make a living, but doing so requires us to pay a toll. That price can be literal, but it can also be something much more taxing. Our mental health, our happiness, the inevitability of comparison, and the internal conflict of deleting Instagram for the fifteenth time, just to come crawling back.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Dead Internet Theory, it’s basically the speculation that much of today’s internet, specifically social media platforms, are dominated by non-human entities, like AI, for the sole purpose of pushing corporate agendas. This theory originated a few years ago as a response to the perceived homogenization of the digital world, but now that AI has changed the way we operate online, the evidence to support it has become impossible to ignore. The propagation of bots, algorithmic content being shoved down our throats, AI-generated slop, and the prioritization of engagement metrics and virality over real user interaction; all of it builds an internet landscape that has left me second guessing whether or not I’m talking to an asshole or a faceless bot.

If 2021 was the birth of this theory, even being covered by The Atlantic in an article titled, Maybe You Missed It, but the Internet ‘Died’ Five Years Ago, it has only been bolstered over the last three years. There’s a well-documented, observable phenomenon that the US government, along with allied corporations, intentionally curate content for users to manipulate an entire population. Censoring, algorithmic handling, AI prioritization, and corporate scrutiny; these are just a few of the documented government practices that steer us towards specific idealogical goals, and it has never been more obvious.

It may still be called a theory, but I think it would be foolish to deny its presence any longer. It’s in every post, every comment section, every random DM, every email, and every empty profile picture you see commenting rage bait or OnlyFans promotion. I’ve found that the worst of it is on Instagram specifically, though I’m sure if I used Facebook, my answer would change.

These are the kinds of comments I see on a daily basis. Keep in mind that, unless it’s brand related, these comments never have anything to do with the actual posts, and they’re often the first ones to appear. And if it is from a brand, the comments are flooded with endless praise and excitement by accounts that usually have no more than 3 followers. One might say that I could simply not open the comment sections of posts anymore, save myself the frustration, but that’s only a band-aid to a gash. These kinds of comments are a symptom of a larger issue: the proliferation of inorganic engagement. The images above are examples of the extremes. They are bots, clear as day, but what people don’t think about as much as they should is that brands and corporations do the same thing, just under different, more disguised circumstances to give you the illusion of authenticity. Film production companies pushing suspiciously positive reviews for mediocre movies, music publishers boosting streams to artists who have hardly sold 15K copies of their latest albums, or comments from “people” actively supporting government approved laws and federal construction of things that benefit absolutely nobody. All of it, to a startling degree, is phony.

Though I’ve used Instagram as the worst example of this pervasive issue, it has spread to practically every other social media platform, Substack included. When I joined this platform, there was a novelty to it. I found, almost immediately, a community of people who were kind, thoughtful, and had a mutual desire to put out work that was authentic. I still feel this way, don’t get me wrong, but Substack’s growth and inevitable breakthrough into the mainstream social media conversation has dragged with it the same problems that plague other platforms.

Ever since I crossed that 5K subscriber mark, I’ve received countless spam messages from accounts that have more in common with fleas than they do real people, and I’m reminded of the density of these kinds of bots on other platforms that pollute what once was a space for others to share their thoughts and art. This kind of engagement has been around for years, but it’s gotten worse, and couple that with AI systems being able to interact with both real people and other AI systems, and we have an entirely different internet landscape that becomes a constant question of what’s real or not. The thought of sharing space with artificial systems talking to each other is, and there’s no other way to describe it, dystopian, and it strips away any unconventionality from apps like this one. It’s death by numbers, and as long as corporations rule the world, it’ll only get worse.

I grew up in what I would call the middle-child internet generation. I had access, since I was a kid, to the internet almost in its entirety. If it weren’t for parent supervision or the fact that my first two phones were bricks, I could have turned out to be a completely different person, and yet, I can’t help but feel like even if I had complete access to whatever I wanted, I still wouldn’t be as totally fucked as Gen Alpha, or occasionally naive as Millennials, or as stubborn as Gen X. My generation is hyper aware of the goings-on of the digital world in a way that has us yearning for a simpler time. This doesn’t just apply to Gen Z, of course, but it’s Gen Z that is fighting back against AI and the future that is being laid out before us the most. Our craving for authenticity is singlehandedly reviving the film industry in a way that puts real creative visions out into the world over corporate slop and endless remakes. It’s my generation that engages with literature in a way that I once thought was a thing of the past, thanks, in large part, to the right kind of social media influence. And yet, it’s my generation that gets sucked up into the endless whirlwind of pessimism and defeat.

I don’t mean for this to sound so dour, but it’s where we’re at right now. Lately, I’ve been thinking about fictional worlds like Frank Herbert’s Dune, and his commentary on the digital age. In that world, AI and advanced computers were permanently abolished in response to safety concerns on the part of humanity. They chose to regress, and yet they advanced in other ways. Progressions of the mind were put at the forefront, and though I certainly wouldn’t want to live in the Dune universe, I can only hope that the real world heeds those warnings from the great writers of our time, because when technological advancement outruns humanity’s ability to contain it, it’s the writers and artists who are left with the profound responsibility of pointing us in the right direction.

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Have you ever thought about who consumes porn? I mean really consumes it, the kinds of people who can’t go a single day without it. I’m sure you have an image of that person in your head. A redditor, a discord moderator, someone who hasn’t seen natural light in two weeks. There’s no doubt these caricatures hold some amount of truth, but the reality is that it’s the normal-looking guy you see at your local café, the librarian who helped you find a copy of Pride & Prejudice the other day, or someone like Billie Eilish, whose spoken about how her porn addiction as a kid “destroyed” her brain.

42% of women and 80% of men have watched porn in the last year. Let me rephrase: 1 in 3 Americans actually seek out porn. That’s kind of a lot of people.

I don’t know if it’s because the internet has now devolved into a hellish landscape of loud, incorrect statements and petty arguments, but I’ve been seeing an exponential rise in derogatory comments and opinions about other people’s physical features, specifically (unsurprisingly) women. I’ve seen it the most in the gaming industry. Lots of fragile men who can’t help but cry over the fact that their female protagonists don’t have dump truck asses and huge racks. And even more disturbing, a desire to play games where the sexualized characters hardly look a day over 15 years old. What led me to write this piece, however, wasn’t the discourse around the new Stellar Blade game, but the conversation around Milly Alcock’s beauty.

This isn’t anything new. Milly Alcock is yet another woman who has the impossible job of pleasing millions of people, especially comic book fans, for her portrayal as Supergirl, but the meanness, the confidence in which men speak about her really struck me. Beauty standards change all the time, but why is the standard in this strange, almost perverse place now? My theory: porn.

There’s more to the story, of course. Political leaders, social issues, the economy, general quality of life; these are all things that have a measurable impact on one’s outlook on the arts and beauty, but those statistics I gave you earlier are actually higher than they used to be. Porn consumption hasn’t declined, it’s increased, and that “male loneliness epidemic?” Well, it’s all over porn websites.

So, I did myself the disservice of going to Pornhub and reading the comment sections of the most popular genres of porn: lesbian, MILF, and hentai, to try to see if there’s something that binds all these men together other than the very act of watching porn.

It’s important to note that in order to leave comments on Pornhub, you have to create an account. I bring this up because, before reading these comments, I truly had no idea why anyone in their right mind would do such a thing. I always figured people just went to one of the many porn websites, got their nut, and left. But there’s a select group of people who took the time to create an account and actually talk.

Let me try to put this in perspective. I clicked on 15 videos on the website under those 3 main genres. Out of those 15 videos with pretty active comment sections, can you guess how many of them had at least 1 man writing about their suicidal thoughts and depression?

All of them.

Obviously this isn’t some massive survey done by Stanford University or something, but I think that connective tissue tying the most unhinged adult content together is the self-hatred of knowing that you’re doing something that will only bring you temporary joy. And when that joy dissipates, you’re left only with your right hand and a mess.

The male loneliness epidemic is self-inflicted. When men rule the world, the plight of man lies solely on the perpetrator. Women have always been the victims of intense scrutiny and sexual violence, and it’s porn that creates incels. It’s porn that ruins what beauty means in the eyes of the child who just discovered an entire world on his laptop. Porn, specifically adult content created by men, doesn’t teach consent, aftercare, communication, or respect. It’s only about intense physical pleasure, about taking something from someone to appease one’s own desires. Studies show that women who consume porn tend to lean towards the emotion of sex. They seek a pale imitation of real connection. Men seek instant gratification, and it’s only after they got what they wanted do they regretfully think about what they truly want from life.

And this brings me to another topic that perhaps still confuses me: flattery. For every suicidal comment I found, there were always a few more trying, and failing, to sincerely compliment the performer. It’s almost comical how contradictory it all is. “Bitch” and “pretty” in the same sentence on a porn website where he claims to not have been watching with the intention of masturbating (sure, pal). Another man complimenting the performer’s blue eyes while also openly admitting that everyone there, including himself, came to jerk off. It truly would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that this kind of language escapes Pornhub and spreads to every other social media platform, affecting how people see Milly Alcock, or Zendaya, or the women that came before them, and the ones that will come after. It indoctrinates young men into believing she isn’t worth a damn unless she’s willing to put out, a truth that is only amplified in celebrity culture, but is the quiet norm for the average person.

When I finally clicked off the website and had a minute to gather my thoughts, I was met with overwhelming sadness. I thought about my own relationship with porn growing up. I discovered it when I was a child, not really knowing what I was looking at or why the boys at school always talked about it. I thought about how different I could have turned out to be if it weren’t for those in my life who swayed me towards the right direction. That’s what haunted me the most from all this. I am who I am because of the circumstances of my life. They are who they are because of their own circumstances, left unchecked. And so the question becomes, is it too late for them to change?

Forgive me for not diving into OnlyFans. That requires a level of dedication that I simply don’t have, and quite frankly, this made me sad enough.

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I have aspirations, as everyone does. I dream of lucrative book deals, interviews, ideas of success that have been ruminating in my brain since I was in high school, but nowadays it isn’t enough to be a writer, one has to be, unfortunately, a brand. Does this apply to everyone? No, of course not, but I’m not one to take chances, even if I believe my writing alone is good enough to deserve those book deals I think about so often.

So, where do I go from here? Nearly 9K subscribers, I decided that I needed to stop procrastinating on the next necessary step in becoming the writer I want to be, the kind of writer who others can relate to, the kind of writer that people can comfortably reach out to for advice, the kind of writer who opens himself to criticism, to compliments, to everything in-between. So, I ask again, where do I go from here? Well… YouTube. I know what you’re thinking, “Did this guy really write an entire article just to promote his new YouTube channel?” Yes, yes I did, and though I remain slightly embarrassed about the whole thing, embarrassment is a feeling that I haven’t explored enough.

Since I started writing on Substack, I’ve thought about what kind of channel this would be. Culture, entertainment, books, movies, writing, all of the above? I wanted to do all of it, but I didn’t want to half-ass any of them. And so I waited, I planned, I wrote, I grew, and now that I have a decent enough following here, I feel confident enough to expand. Having watched book influencer channels since I was a teenager, there was always one channel that always stood out to me, and that was Jack Edwards.

Will I be copying his swag? No, well, maybe a little, but the beauty of a channel that focuses on books, genre, and writing is that everyone’s perspective, everyone’s opinions on famous and overlooked works are different, and I believe I have something to offer that others don’t. I’m starting to feel like this is a glorified cover letter, so let me pivot to what my channel will ultimately be about.

Books!

Yes, I know, who could have guessed? Although I write about more than just books here, I decided to really focus on the one thing for my channel, a niche. When 2026 began, I started reading books that I wouldn’t have normally picked out for myself. The Will of the Many, Babel, Piranesi, these were all books that fell into genres that I hadn’t properly explored, and what I found was that I actually really adored them. Not only that, I found that I actually have something to say about them. Will I be contributing anything new and profound to the endless void of the internet? Probably not, but I as an aspiring author in the middle of his speculative/sci-fi debut novel and an avid reader, I want to at least document my writing journey, and if I have my own corner of the internet to do that, I’ll be a happy man.

So, with all that being said, watch my first YouTube video, which is out now! I’ve linked it below. Subscribe if you like it, don’t if you don’t. Regardless, my posting schedule here will remain the same.

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I’m not awake, and yet my eyes flutter open. An ordinary white ceiling greets me along with an ocean blue ceiling fan, a faint ticking noise coming from the blades as it spins in place. I’m lying on the floor. The soft breeze of the fan circulates air across my body, every part of me consuming the cool air like a drug. I don’t want to stand up, but I know that I must. I hear the voice of a woman. As she speaks to me from this unknown location, I’m overwhelmed by fear. Her fear. Is she afraid of me? Am I so revolting to look at? I lift my head and I see your figure, fully clothed, arms crossed, legs crossed, as if taking the form of a human chastity belt. You ask me why I’m on the floor, staring at nothing so contemplatively. I don’t have an answer, so I ask you why you aren’t.

You smile and I realize that you aren’t afraid, but rather, conflicted. I guess I understand, I say indifferently. We’re not meant to be so low to the ground. You tell me I make it look easy and I tell you it is easy, but only with you. I stand up, my imperfections clear as day. This is me; jaded, exposed, bare, put out on display for an audience of one. It’s no four course meal, but it’s authentic nonetheless, and I find pride in my authenticity, in my love for you. You look at me up and down, then back down. I know what you’re looking at and there is a brief moment of embarrassment, of shyness that has become a reflex despite my proclivity for conviction. It washes over my face in red and I contemplate hiding, sinking back into my shell, but you uncross your arms and uncross your legs. I see it as a possibility, an attempt at opening up to me in the way I have to you, so I stand my ground. You move closer, you hold me close and hold me tightly, and I do the same.

Everything falls from your body like leaves from a tree. Weightless, floating to the ground with ease. Eventually, you are as bare as me, as true, as honest as one can hope to be. I kiss your cheek, your neck, your shoulder… and it all seems to fade. My vision, my consciousness, it feels as though I’ve been stirred, or rudely awakened from a memory that isn’t a memory, but a fantasy. As I approach darkness, I’m angered by this cruel trick, whatever it is that brought me to you and took me away just as easily, without remorse, without a second thought.

A dream I’ve had a million times.

Then I’m brought to the pinnacle of happiness, the apogee of love. Domesticity and bliss, a pair inseparable by every meaning of the word. A pair is not a pair without its other half. It’s missing something, lacking in purpose, begging for substance, desperate for nuance, demanding of attention, though it isn’t an attention that requires too much energy to give, too much of oneself. It’s easy, really. One of the easiest things one can do, but it’s also the most difficult. Oh, what a horrible, pretentious, egregious little contradiction, but difficulty isn’t a word with just a negative connotation. Difficulty describes improvement, and with it comes a change in one’s choices and disposition, changes that define the joys of domestic bliss.

I saw our home. It wasn’t too large in size, but it was our world. It was a world of tall bookshelves filled to the brim with protruding spines and creased pages. It was a world of open windows and warm summer air dancing on our exposed skin. It was a world of swim shorts, bikinis, singing birds, swaying trees, roaring vespas, quiet lovers, and you. I wasn’t aware of my own existence. I looked upon you as if no one else was occupying the earth. Your presence consumed me, it consumed every part of me, my fundamental being, my ideals, my thoughts, my soul. You didn’t steal my heart, I gave it to you willingly. All you needed to do was be alive, to breathe, to see, to feel, to touch, to have a perspective that was entirely your own. It is then I convince myself that I will never leave you. I’m so certain, so sure of this. I’ve never been more sure of anything. I won’t leave you, even if your love turns to hatred and the vibrant blues turn into muddled grays. I feel this in my bones, in the soul I put so much pressure on, because leaving you would feel like setting the world ablaze. It would feel like watching the water evaporate and the birds turn to falling balls of light. I’m not capable of such destruction. How could I be with a love like mine?

And yet, the heartbreak invites itself to the gatherings, to the parties, to the social events. My father told me years ago that I would meet someone and feel such profound joy, and that the joy would be surpassed by an even greater pain. He told me that my heart would be broken one day. He told me that it is an unforgettable feeling, one of abandonment, betrayal, anger, confusion, regret; all the things no self-respecting person wants to feel. I did my best to absorb these words, but he was a man prone to inaccuracies and projection. He was telling me about his mistakes, his heartbreak, his regrets. They had nothing to do with me, they would not come true, I would not fulfill a prophecy he forced onto me, I was so sure.

As I grew up without him, I found out more about him. I discovered the violence in which he treated my mother. I discovered that he was a man who could become obsessed with the mundane and the useless. He was gullible, presumptuous, misguided, and had many regrets, most of which were entirely his fault. He was not the man I painted him to be as a child. He was wrong about a lot of things, but heartbreak wasn’t one of them. I suppose it’s a universal language, something that’s nearly impossible to feign, something that no one wants to lie about because the very subject of it digs out far too many memories with a rusty shovel and a splintered handle. He warned me years ago and I, for the first time in my life, didn’t heed his warning. I was so sure. That’s my pervasive flaw: my confidence in losing battles.

I fell in love because that was the only thing that made sense to me. I fell in love because it felt right. I fell in love because it was the next great step in my life, the next chapter, the rising action, the catalyst for my future loss. Before you, I was unsure of my love’s honesty, if it was an obligation more so than a true feeling. My heart ached and I was reminded of my father, and then my heart ached again. Not for him, but for the parallel version of me where I am without you, without my love.

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Everyone is a storyteller. An artist, a writer, a retelling of a folk tale around the campfire; we all have the capacity to tell stories. We do it every day. Our inner voice is its own storyteller, recounting our most embarrassing moments, imagining oneself as the hero of some great tragedy, or even just slightly skewing what really happened. They’re all recounts of reality, losing its objectivity along the way.

I’ve become fascinated with this idea of “the past being a story we tell ourselves.” It’s one of the few existential statements of life that I completely understand, despite it being so broad on its own. I recently had an argument with someone. It was one of those situations where I was so utterly shocked that they couldn’t see things the way I saw them. It was so obvious to me. A clear right and a clear wrong. I grew angry and frustrated and exhausted. Now that there’s a certain degree of separation between me and that day, I realized how the two of us were living in two different states of mind, states of mind that have been molded by upbringing and circumstance our entire lives, all culminating in a single story.

Our story shared the same characters, the same setting, but the themes, the intentions were different, and that’s where the anger sprouted from. We remembered things differently, had vastly different expectations of the same thing, and when the anger subsided, I found it to be so interesting. How could two people see things so differently when placed under the same conditions?

I see this as a micro-example of the stories we tell ourselves. Both true, both false, the differentiating factor being how one reacts to these contradictions. This is where I tend to fail spectacularly. I lead by emotion, wear my heart on my sleeve. I take things personally.

We’re all storytellers, yes, but not everyone can tell a story. As I write my debut novel, I realize, like many other habits and disciplines, storytelling is a muscle. It requires a certain level of knowledge of the human condition, an acknowledgment of human capability, or rather, insistence that we make messes of each other’s lives because of our innermost tales. I suppose this makes all of us delusional in some way. We paint ourselves in a better light, intentionally or not, even when we recall our worst moments. We want to be the hero, or the sympathetic villain, as long as we’re the ones telling it.

For a creative person, there’s a little bit of them in their work. Like art’s inherently political nature, our creations are projections of who we are, who we want to be, and where we fit in. The truth exists, as do lies; two irrefutable facts of life. But the nature of a story is that it’s different for everyone. We all learn contrasting lessons from tales retold thousands of times. The intention of the creator is forfeit when the work becomes public domain. The creative process of the work remains, but the work itself belongs to them, creating their own stories now. This is why, regardless of how much time it saves, regardless of the updated workflows and insistence that I use AI to write my book, or for artists to digitally paint their murals, doing so erases who we are. How can the human experience be portrayed honestly if the creator is willing to use AI arbitrarily? How can a creator feel satisfied with a depiction of life being reduced to lines of code designed to take away their agency? AI in the workplace, for spreadsheets and mathematics, that’s an entirely different argument. All I know is what I feel when I see AI-generated books being published, or AI-generated artwork, and the feeling is immediate apathy. I’m not interested in consuming a pale imitation of the real thing, but I digress.

A subjective memory is at the mercy of time. When you lose someone, every day becomes a race against time to never forget the features of their face, or the texture of their hands. The stories become more slanted, drenched in nostalgia. Even their anger becomes something else entirely, more sweet somehow, like you could never be on the receiving end of a well-deserved lecture, or that their kindness wouldn’t allow them to feel judgment. The story becomes about perfection; a person incapable of the feelings you’ve been tormented by since you were born, about life’s discriminatory misfortune, and how you aren’t allowed to feel unadulterated happiness for more than a single moment at a time.

There’s integrity in acknowledging our own narratives. Most people don’t because doing so is like admitting to a fault somehow. We prefer to live in our own bubbles, to retell the same stories because the comfort of familiarity is stronger than the possibility of profound change. There’s nothing innately wrong with that. It’s just human. And so I ask myself the question that feels more and more pertinent every day: What does it mean to be human?

I believe humanity’s defining quality, other than a soul, is our yearning for a good story. It’s our search for something to bring our lives meaning, and stories are gateways to purpose. They teach us empathy, love, hate, indifference, all of the qualities any real person has, the qualities that pour themselves into great stories. It’s cyclical in nature, and that’s what’s so beautiful about who we are, because there’s grace in our infuriatingly stubborn nature.

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There are very few artists I still listen to every day from when I was in middle school. Very few artists who have grasped my attention with every new project, every new song, every new performance. Very few artists who have pulled me back even when they’ve released something I wouldn’t consider their best work, except for Twenty One Pilots.

I’ve mentioned them on my Substack before, but I’ve held off on writing a full piece about them. Honestly, it was embarrassment. Everyone who is close to me knows how much I love these two guys, and so if you’re reading this, most of what I’m about to say is going to be redundant. But for everyone else, allow me to nerd out for a minute.

I feel like there are three camps people fall into when it comes to ToP. There are the people who haven’t listened to them since Heathens or Stressed Out, the new group of people who rediscovered them from Arcane’s The Line or the puffer fish video playing Drag Path, and the people like me, who have listened to every project since 2013, always trying to convince others that they sound so much better now than they used to (despite loving how they used to sound). Seriously, at this point, I’m practically a disciple.

But why? What is it about them that has me in a chokehold?

“ToP, to me, has always created a feeling of inclusion and kindness that I don’t often see with other artists. This isn’t a knock at anyone else in particular, but an observation of how people respond to largely unproblematic, wholly inclusive people or groups.”

I wrote that back in August of 2025. I was talking about the redefinition of punk rock at the time, about how punk rock inherently goes against the grain, and that we live in a time where being kind is considered a rarity, considered punk. The ToP fandom is one that I’m not ashamed of being apart of. I don’t cosplay, I don’t have a ToP tattoo (yet), and I don’t know every little detail about Josh and Tyler’s lives, but I certainly know more than any other artist I’ve ever listened to. That isn’t to say the fandom is perfect. Like any other, they can be absolutely insane and just straight-up weird, but that’s few and far between. I say all this because what I said last year is true. The duo has cultivated such a loyal fanbase, one where everyone, new fans and old, are immediately included.

And to the topic of great debate for the better part of 10 years. Are they actually good?

Obviously there’s an element of subjectivity when it comes to art. You either like something or you don’t. Explanations, lyrical breakdowns, production, all of it can be picked apart and looked at carefully to determine whether or not a song is objectively good, but none of that matters if the person listening just doesn’t connect with it, and that’s okay.

I say all this because the duo’s projects prior to their 2018 album, Trench, are divisive. Tyler’s vocals are too whiny, the production too all over the place, the lyrics too ridiculous, and all of this is true. When I hear songs like Lane Boy or Ode to Sleep, and can’t help but laugh. I can’t say, with a straight face, that those are fantastic albums. There are some great songs in there, of course, but the level of, and I hate to say this word, “cringe,” is hard to ignore. Those projects are more like relics of the past. “You had to be there” type of albums, and that’s okay. I was there, and my middle school sensibilities absolutely loved them.

It wasn’t until freshman year of high school did I start feeling embarrassed to tell people I liked ToP. At this point, people had grown tired of Stressed Out, Ride, and especially Heathens. Billions of streams and a Grammy later, they became a joke, a band that people secretly listened to, garnering the “my favorite underground 40 million monthly listeners band” title.

Obviously, they aren’t underground by any means. To this day, they garner billions of streams and they literally just won best rock/alternative artist at the AMAs, but I think it’s interesting that because of what they became associated with over ten years ago, people are still surprised to hear that they’re around, creating songs that sound so different than what they used to put out.

And this is when my self-proclaimed “disciple” title comes into play. When I say they sound incredible, I mean it. Since 2018 there was a maturity Josh and Tyler underwent that directly translated into their music. They still sounded like ToP, with their rap verses and weird song structure, but it was more refined, more restrained. And that restraint paid off. It was at this point I realized ToP was willing to experiment with new sounds without sacrificing what put them on the map. They leaned into punk rock, they leaned into brit-pop, they leaned into the auto-tune and gameboy synths and the funky basslines, making sure there wasn’t a sound they wouldn’t explore, and expanding on the ones that suited them best.

So, what about politics?

It wouldn’t be an article of mine if I didn’t mention politics. If you didn’t already know, ToP began telling a fictional story in their music starting with Blurryface in 2015. I wouldn’t go as far as to call them concept albums (except for Scaled and Icy and to a certain extent, Trench, which really committed to the lore), but in each album, there were at least a few songs that continued the story the band decided to tell.

Spanning over ten years, the lore is deep enough to write a book, so I won’t get into the actual plot, but what the story warns us about is the very real threat of authoritarianism, religious fanaticism, and mass propaganda. Tyler and Josh don’t often directly speak on political affairs on Instagram or X, but everything that needs to be said is in their music. Their art is political, and I love that they don’t shy away from speaking on, for example, how Christianity has been weaponized by Republicans, ultimately making them feel ashamed for calling themselves Christians.

I always appreciate politically vocal celebrities and artists because they are choosing to contribute something of value into the world. Art is inherently political, but ToP has consistently reminded me that they really want me to know it.

I can go on and on about why ToP is my favorite band, but the simple truth is that I just love their music. That’s it. They’ve released three albums that I revisit every day. The kinds of albums where if I hear one song, I feel compelled to listen to the entire project all over again. Trench, Clancy, and their most recent album, Breach. All great in their own ways, all distinct from each other, and all just so addicting to listen to.

For anyone reading this who wants to listen to them but doesn’t know where to start, I recommend going backwards. Start with the more refined, mature stuff and go back to the immature, amateurish music that skated by through sheer will and energy. I think doing so will give you a greater appreciation for where they came from, because regardless of what you have to say about their old music, you can’t say they didn’t have heart. That’s what I love most about them, actually. They so clearly love what they do. They appreciate their fans more than most artists let themselves show, they let us in on their jokes, even putting inside jokes in the music itself, but most importantly, they got me through some of the worst moments of my life.

I’m happy to see people finally appreciating them. Better late than never, I suppose. All it took was a few more incredible albums and the Democratic Party using Drag Path in a TikTok video for people to realize how amazing they are. Love them or hate them, they’ll be remembered as one of the greats, not just for what they’ve contributed to the music industry, but for their devotion to being wonderful artists and entertainers.

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Curry Barker, the guy who I knew from his Youtube sketch comedy, wrote and directed a modern classic that had a budget of less than a million dollars. So far, it’s made over 100x the budget, and after seeing it, I completely understand why.

I’m talking about Obsession, the new indie darling and horror masterpiece that I had little to no interest in watching prior to its release. Am I being hyperbolic? Maybe a little. What stuck out to me the most, other than the incredible performances (especially from Inde Navarrette), was the writing. My god, the writing. It’s sharp, it’s occasionally funny, it’s tragic, but more than anything, it garnered a vocal group of people who completely missed the point. If Fight Club and Marty Supreme are proof of anything, it’s that intelligent writing will always go over the most confidently stupid people’s heads every time.

If you haven’t seen Obsession yet, spoilers ahead.

The movie is about a young man named Bear who has a huge crush on one of his friends, Nikki. Bear plans on telling her how he feels, but gets too nervous and chickens out last minute. Instead, he takes out a wish granter that he bought from a local gift shop called The One Wish Willow. Thinking that nothing will happen, he wishes that Nikki would love him more than anything else in the world. To his surprise, it works.

Nikki becomes obsessed with him, but something’s not right. Sometimes, for just a split second, the real Nikki emerges in a panicked state, as if waking up from a deep trance, usually screaming and crying. It becomes clear that Nikki’s consciousness is awake, fighting for control over her body again. She’s now become a bird trapped in a small cage, forced to watch this entity, whatever it is, use her body to satisfy Bear’s desire for love. So, to put it plainly, their entire relationship is non-consensual, something that becomes painfully clear when they become intimate. And while on the surface, Nikki looks like the villain here, doing insane things like cooking felines and eventually murdering people, it’s Bear who reveals himself to be the real villain.

At first, you can give him the benefit of the doubt. He didn’t know the wish would work, after all. No real person would. I’ve wished for so many things, and I’m willing to bet you have too. But Bear’s turn from cute “nice guy” to straight-up rapist comes during a scene where he truly realizes what he’s done to Nikki. Lying in bed asleep, the real Nikki comes out again, using her still body in the only way she’s allowed to now, to speak to Bear. She asks him to kill her. She just wants the suffering to end. And you know what he says?

“What’s so bad about loving me?”

The words themselves are awful on their own, but it’s really the tone of his voice. He sees himself as the victim. He sees himself as a nice guy who just wanted to be loved, someone who was actually deserving of her love, and he’s angry that she didn’t want to.

Except, that’s the real tragedy about the whole situation. If he’d just told her how he felt, she would have reciprocated. Nikki truly did have feelings for him, but he ruined everything with that one wish, the wish that he tried to build his life around the entire movie rather than end. He would rather lie and gaslight everyone around him rather than undo his mistake, subsequently keeping Nikki trapped in whatever hell she was in even longer.

So, what’s there not to get? Nikki is a victim, Bear is a horrible person. End of story, right?

Well… no. Enter the, “I can fix her” comments.

Men have a knack for watching movies criticizing the patriarchy or toxic masculinity with their eyes and ears closed. They’ll look you dead in the eyes and tell you Nikki was fucking crazy, or that if “she isn’t like that, I don’t want her.” And look, I get it, people can be facetious and make light of seriously dark subject matter all they want, but the problem with the internet is that when the line between jokes and misunderstanding becomes blurred, people tend to lean into the ladder without realizing they’re perpetrating the very thing the film was criticizing.

The image above makes me so fucking sad. Nikki, now that her entire existence relies on Bear’s love and attention, stood in one spot for an entire day waiting for him to get back home from work, peeing, defecating, and vomiting on herself, all with a smile. Her eyes, thanks to Navarrette’s incredible performance, are quite literally begging for relief, but the rest of her face betrays her. And yet, men will watch this and think to themselves, “Yeah, women are crazy.”

Are you kidding me?? Men would rather defend a rapist than acknowledge when they’re wrong. Look at our president, for christ’s sake.

Bear, on the surface, is the nice guy I’m sure you have in your life. He’s in touch with his feelings, he’s sensitive, he’s thoughtful, he’s all the things a good boyfriend or partner should be, and yet, when it really comes down to it, he’s a coward. The film’s plot may be insane and diabolical, but its relatability is palpable, and it’s amazing that something like this is getting the recognition it deserves.

If you haven’t seen Obsession and you have the stomach for horror, go watch it. Support a true indie film, support a rising Mexican actress, support a film about the abuse so many women have to go through, or at the very least, watch a horror film that will be talked about for years to come, just to say that you were there when it happened. That alone is a pretty cool feeling.

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There was an interview with Christopher Nolan recently where he compared superheroes to Greek Mythology in that they fill a crucial gap in modern day culture.

“The thing about Homer, it is the Marvel of its day. It is very directly this desire for us to feel or believe gods could walk amongst us, and I think the modern day comic book is kind of our expression of that.”

- Christopher Nolan

I’ve always adored heroes like Spider-Man because of his relatability. He can climb walls, swing from skyscrapers and rooftops, do impossible things, but at his core, he’s an awkward broke kid just trying his best. That’s what makes these characters so remarkable; the creative freedom to be as ridiculous and nonsensical as possible, but always grounding them in profoundly human, sometimes even mundane issues. My favorite aspects of these characters come from the quiet moments. Waiting for the laundry to finish, washing the dishes, going out on a date, playing pool with your crush.

Daredevil, the blind lawyer who can fight. The latest season of the show came out, and by the end of it, I realized that he really is my favorite comic book character of all time. His powers aren’t particularly flashy. Blind, can “see” through what they call a “sonar sense,” and an expert martial artist; if it weren’t for his blindness, his existence wouldn’t be entirely out of the realm of possibility.

Unlike Peter Parker, I can’t really relate to Matt Murdock. I’m not a lawyer, I’m not incredibly charming, I’m not a devout Catholic, and I don’t have the kind of discipline he has, though I wish I did. Murdock is the definition of a responsible adult man, at least, on paper he is. His vigilante life, his alter ego, stops him from being completely normal, as is tradition amongst superheroes and villains alike. So what is it about the character that resonates with me so much? What is it about him that pulls me in every single time he’s on screen? Why is it that when he speaks on religion, I often grow emotional despite being an atheist? Why is it that when he’s lawyering, I’m so utterly captivated despite not even liking legal dramas?

It’s his humanity. Daredevil can flip around and take out a room full of bad guys in a few seconds, sure, but it’s when the mask is off that I am captured in his mythology so completely. In the original Daredevil Netflix series, our first look into who Matt is as a person is in a confession box, telling his priest about his father, shedding a tear because the memory of him still hurts. The impact of that scene wasn’t clear to me when I was a kid. Daredevil, a superhero, crying in a box hoping to be relieved of his sins.

And his faith in both the justice system and the Catholic Church resonates with me, or rather, his constant struggle with maintaining that faith. Matt is a man full of incongruities and inconsistencies. An esteemed lawyer by day, following the rules of the law to a tee, a vigilante by night, breaking more than a handful of laws just to send criminals to a system that he can participate in the next morning. He’s there in case the legal system fails, which it does quite often. Beating criminals to a pulp clashes with his religion too. He sees villains do horrible things to good people. Best friends, girlfriends, and complete strangers. Matt is frequently pushed to the brink of denouncing the church, and it’s during those moments that I’m the most fascinated by his character.

“God’s plan is like a beautiful tapestry. And the tragedy of being human is that we only get to see it from the back. With all the ragged threads and the muddy colors. And we only get a hint at the true beauty that would be revealed if we could see the whole pattern on the other side… as God does.”

- Matt Murdock

I may not believe in a god, but I believe in the outlook he chooses to have, because I can see his struggle to hold on to his ideals, to his faith, to his trust in the systems this country was built on despite the many imperfections and prejudices those same systems perpetrate. And when all these systems fail at once, when corrupt politicians, bought out judges, and police brutality run rampant, Matt’s anger bursts through, as does the tremendous weight of that rage.

The latest season of Daredevil: Born Again has a striking resemblance to what’s going on in the U.S. right now. A government sanctioned militarily armed “task force” sent out to kidnap innocent people, often people of color. A power-hungry man who claims to love New York while making a profit off the backs of the poor under his position of power. Even down to the protests depicted in the show, the faces of the suppressed projected onto the city’s buildings, not unlike the projected faces of ex-Amazon employees during the Met Gala protest.

It isn’t new or novel to say that I love Daredevil so much because he feels real, but it’s true. He does heroic things, impossible things, but he never feels like an unreachable being. He’s always just a man, full of fallibility and guilt, of longing and love. Assiduous by nature, tirelessly good, politically active, even when what he wants is guaranteed to be taken away.

I’ve said all this, and I’ve only just started reading the original 1964 comic online. It’s a testament to the character’s nuance that I could have so much to say about him despite having just picked at the surface of what the character has to offer.

This isn’t the typical article I write here, but I honestly just felt so compelled to talk about this character. For any of you who haven’t watched she show, do yourself a favor and start with the original Netflix series, and move on to the latest Born Again series (it’s a continuation, there were just some character copyright issues for a few years). There’s so much depth to be found. Once you start, and once you get invested, you’ll understand why the show has the reputation that it does.

And I’ll be expecting a “thank you.”

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There’s a misconception about love and loving; that the happiest couples are the ones who agree on everything, smile at everyone, and have absolutely no tension. I’m no relationship expert, but it doesn’t take a genius to recognize when two people are pretending to be happy, going through the motions of a romance they’ve seen in the movies, hoping it lasts forever because the slightest sign of strain would simply be too much to bear.

We had a joint birthday party last month. I’m two days older than her, though I often feel years younger. A friend of ours asked us two questions: “What have you learned during your time together?” and… I can’t remember the second one. I was quite drunk.

I didn’t have the chance to answer her because the earnestness of it required real cogitation. I didn’t want to just give her the skeleton of an answer. I wanted to really think about what I’ve learned during this year of confusion, longing, warmth, coldness, and, of course, love.

I’d like to say that I learned love isn’t just a single thing, but a culmination of contradictions and messy agendas that are constantly changing, but I feel as though I’ve known this for a long time now. Perhaps I’d only just come to terms with love’s capriciousness during this past year, but that’s beside the point. After much reflection and deliberation amongst the counsel members of my erratic brain, I concluded that, among many other things, I learned that love requires a great deal of work, specifically work on oneself. I’ve heard this before, maybe even said this before, and if I have, it was out of necessity, not true belief.

This “work” I’m referring to isn’t a nine to five. It isn’t physical labor or data analysis. It’s the courage discern infirmities within oneself and to change. You can’t be in a long-term relationship and remain the same person you were when you met. It’s impossible. Sometimes that change scares the other person, and they move on, but other times you grow together, change together, enter a new chapter that may be frightening and exhilarating at the same time; one of the many wonderful paradoxes of a true love.

“It was exciting to see her grow and both of us grow and change together. But that's also the hard part: growing without growing apart or changing without it scaring the other person.”

- Spike Jonze, Her

I’ve met people who have described their partners as “perfect.” This is what you’re supposed to feel, yes, but seeing them as perfect and thinking your relationship is perfect are two completely different things. I’ve met other people who have said the latter, and it often doesn’t take more than a few months for them to split up, because when the cracks start to show, they fold under the pressure of reality. That isn’t love. We’ve conditioned ourselves into seeing love as a numbers game, a pros and cons list, a vehicle for instant gratification rather than earned joy because to earn something is to actually work for it.

What tests people, I think, more than the transgressions or the mistakes, is knowing when you should cut your losses and run. For some, one argument is enough to end it. Is that love? I don’t know, I suppose it’s not for me to say, though my heart tells me it’s not. For others, it’s years of torment, sometimes even abuse, and yet they stay. Is that also love? God, I hope not.

I’ve learned that she doesn’t like seafood very much, that she likes to wear darker colors, that she often sees the best in people, perhaps one day at her own detriment, that she loses track of time easily, that she would prefer to go out than stay in, that she loves animals, that she usually puts others first, that she never thinks of herself as the most beautiful one in any room despite clearly being so; the list goes on and on. I’ve learned a great many things about her, and I suspect that I’ll learn a great deal more, because curiosity is its own kind of work, and you can’t love someone without knowing who they are, inside and out.

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“Shit Show at the Fuck Factory.” The title of episode two, season one of Succession, a show about a family of entitled billionaires with daddy issues and far too much power.

The 2026 Met Gala, sponsored by billionaire Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez, proving that despite having all the money in the world, they can’t buy style. But that’s beside the point.

Fashion’s biggest night, attended by A-listers, C-listers, and more tech bros than you would have assumed, The Met Gala was always a show for the elite, but this year, considering everything that’s been happening in the world right now, it left people feeling… displeased, to say the least.

Gathered around the Meatpacking District in New York, hundreds of workers, protesters, and advocates attended the Ball Without Billionaires, an event organized by the Service Employees International Union and the Amazon Labor Union. Every day working people from Whole Foods, Amazon, Starbucks, and Uber attended as models, walking up and down the runway with signs that read, “Labor is Art.”

I think it’s important to remember that the Bezoses’ didn’t just sponsor the event, they served as its honorary chairs alongside Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, and Venus Williams, and I can’t help but feel like they’ve successfully squeezed themselves into yet another facet of our lives. The Met Gala has always felt like a tone deaf display of wealth and over-abundance, with every new year feeling closer and closer to The Hunger Games, but just like the president’s boldness, the event has officially lost any semblance of what it used to be, what it was supposed to be: a display of art, hence, “Fashion is Art.”

It hasn’t been fashion in a very long time, but instead, expensive costumes made of diamonds and gold, draped over people who have taken the opportunity to remind the working class that they’ll never reach their heights of fame and wealth, and there’s no greater admission of this fact than a man like Jeff Bezos to fund its existence.

Fame and wealth aren’t inherently wrong, of course. Hardworking people fulfill their dreams every day, but what strikes me are those who have silently confessed their lack of morality by attending this year’s event, knowing that such a man has given them yet another platform to say and do absolutely nothing.

As of early 2026, CEOs at the largest US companies make over 280 times more than their average employees, with pay gaps continuing to widen. Let me put this another way. The CEO salary has grown 20 times faster than worker wages over the last few years. CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg, Adam Mosseri, Sergey Brin, and Stewart Butterfield, all of whom attended the Met Gala this year. You may be asking yourself, what on earth do these men know about fashion? That’s a great question, thanks for asking! The answer is, of course, nothing.

Now let me list some celebrities who decided to skip the event because of he-who-will-not-be-named:

Bella Hadid, Taraji P. Henson (who also said, “I am so confused by some ppl that are going. I am just like WTF ARE WE DOING!?!?!?”), Mark Ruffalo (he’s always on the right side of history), Olivia Rodrigo, and most wonderfully, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who basically said he has more important things to do, like actually taking care of the working class people of his state.

There are plenty of celebrities who attended that I like, plenty of people who have spoken out on the injustices of the world, whether it be Trump or men like Bezos, but their attendance proves nothing but their own hypocrisy, and perhaps even their desperation to stay relevant.

And yet, despite this, there will be hoards of supporters who will say anything to defend their favorite celebrities, regardless of who that person associates themselves with. Alysa Liu, for example, having just exploded in popularity, attended, posting about it on her Instagram. One person in her comments said, “I’m actually surprised she’s going.” Another responded, “same. as soon as the fame bug bites…” Which was then promptly met with, “mind you shes a 2x olympic gold medalist… what have you done lately”. It’s all so fucking dystopian.

The reason why billionaires and the rich get away with things like this is because there are millions of people who have been trained to defend their abusers no matter what. It doesn’t matter that Alysa Liu has now associated herself with a man who has funded ICE, she’s more talented than me or you or anyone else who questions her. In other words, she’s exempt from any sort of moral responsibility.

You may think I’m being harsh, but the list of people who decided not to go prove to me that there are plenty of other celebrities with just as much power and relevance that still have a backbone. If they could do the right thing, so could Sabrina Carpenter, or Hudson Williams. Liking someone doesn’t mean you relieve them of accountability. People tend to forget that when they’re licking the shit off their favorite singer’s boot.

We live in a time where we simply can’t afford complacency anymore. Within your means, I implore you to take the steps necessary to distance yourself from these kinds of people, regardless of how wide your stride. I’m fortunate enough to have my own little corner of the Internet to talk to you, to spread the word, to offer my perspective, whether or not you agree with it, but discourse is just as important as action, for it inevitably leads to consequences.

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Almost ten years ago, a Danish politician by the name of Ida Auken wrote an essay in the World Economic Forum about what the world could look like in 2030. Hypothetical at the time, her predictions have been revealing themselves to be true more and more as each day passes on. It’s a world where we own nothing, where products are services, goods are shared, and the idea of “personal property” becomes something of the past.

Auken begins by describing an almost utopic world. Clean and sustainable energy, cheap and easy public transportation that eliminates the need for cars, items being designed for durability, that kind of thing.

She also describes AI as a tool to lighten her workload, as a piece of technology that has simply made her life better, giving her the time to eat well, sleep well, and spend time with the people she cares about. And yet, there’s a striking irony in her writing. She describes this world as something to revere, as something to want, as a “good life,” but as the essay continues, the cracks begin to show. Her lack of privacy, the government’s constant surveillance, the lack of ownership over literally anything; she characterizes it as a mild annoyance, and hopes that while her thoughts and dreams are being recorded, they won’t be used against her in the future.

"Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better.”

It’s the perspective of the average person, too tired to do something about the lack of freedoms they have, or sometimes too brainwashed to care.

We’re four years away from 2030, and yet, we’re already there. Technofeudalism is a theory by economist Yanis Varoufakis that describes a society where capitalism has evolved into a system where tech giants own digital platforms and extract “rent” from people and businesses who rely on them. A good example being Disney, taking your personal data and selling it, or Amazon, who shares your data with third parties.

All of this brings me to cyberpunk, which at one point was a subgenre of science fiction that was built on the juxtaposition of a society functioning on advanced technology but low quality of life. I say “at some point” because it’s no longer science fiction. Visually, cyberpunk remains fiction, sure, but functionally, a handful of companies rule the world, constantly feeding us ads, upping prices on subscriptions, creating new tiers designed to keep the average person paying higher prices for a worse product, and most importantly, most of us have AI right at our fingertips.

There’s so much amazing technology that we have today that people only dreamed of twenty years ago, and yet it doesn’t feel like we’re living in a technological utopia. My generation can’t afford to live comfortably. We won’t be able to buy a home until we’re well past our forties, the average American can’t afford health insurance, billionaires get tax cuts while everyone else does their part to keep them at the top, and we’re in a strange, uncertain period where AI is taking jobs away from people, while simultaneously being told that, in time, everything will work out.

Just the other day Playstation users found that Sony has implemented a “30-day license check” on all digital games purchased after March of 2026. In other words, if you aren’t connected to the Internet, you’re locked out of the games you bought with your own money. You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy.

Streaming services like Netflix once stood out because they were an alternative to Cable TV. For those who didn’t want to sit through commercial breaks every thirty minutes, paying for Netflix seemed like a no-brainer. Now, just like with every other streaming service, there are multiple tiers, the cheapest ones bombarding you with so many ads you’ll probably end up upgrading anyway, waiting for the inevitable price increase. You’ll pay more for something you had fifteen years ago, and you’ll be happy.

Disney announced a new way to watch movies called Infinity Vision along with a re-release of Avengers: Endgame, which will be shown in the new format. Though, “new” is generous, considering it’s really no different than the existing IMAX screens and is an obvious attempt to charge more for a movie that came out seven years ago. It’s existing technology with a different name, and people will fall for it. You’ll pay more for a diminished communal experience you had when you were in high school, and you’ll be happy.

There are countless, endless examples of these corporations taking advantage of every opportunity they have to make more money. This, of course, isn’t a surprise. It’s how businesses succeed. I suppose, in a vacuum, it makes complete sense, but with every new day, there’s a new story coming out about changing company policies, increased prices, diminishing returns, all of the things no one wants to face because facing them means reckoning with the cyberpunk world we’re living in now.

Other than the overbearing corporate entities and mass produced technologies, real life, thankfully, doesn’t look like Blade Runner yet. We’re at a point right now where billionaires and corporations are testing what they can get away with. People talk about the rise of class consciousness, especially after Luigi Mangione was accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, but the masses aren’t at a point yet where violence becomes the “only” answer. And don’t get me wrong, to do what Mangione allegedly did is never something I can, in good conscience, condone, but Mangione gained so much support for a reason. It would be naive of someone to not understand why he allegedly did what he did, and why when unfortunate and even tragic things happen to the obscenely rich, sympathy runs dry.

“Empathy, he once decided, must be limited to herbivores or anyhow omnivores who could depart from a meat diet. Because, ultimately, the empathic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated.”

- Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Despite all of this talk of lording corporations, job insecurity, and violence, one thing remains true in my mind: human creation will overcome these tribulations, because it has to.

Without human-made art and literature, society crumbles. We rely on human creation to provide an escape from the harsh realities of the world, to put up a mirror when we need it, to teach us lessons about the past and our possible future. Art will always be inherently human because the best art can only come from the human experience. Knowing this, it is the art that may have once been under-appreciated and overlooked that will be granted a second life. We crave connection, now more than ever, and so when I see that an activity like reading has had a resurgence, especially among young people, it tells me that as our government leaders and conglomerates try to strip us of our agency, we continue to live through our own humanity.

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“Once you know that Euphoria creator Sam Levinson writes alone, without a writer’s room, sometimes method-dressing as his own characters, it’s difficult to watch his X-rated show in the same way again.”

That quote is from The Telegraph’s recent review of the show’s latest season. The title of the article immediately caught my eye, “Euphoria has descended into one man’s creepy, sex-obsessed fantasy.” It didn’t intrigue me because it was something I didn’t already know. It intrigued me because I didn’t realize so many people actually used to think Euphoria was some sort of auteur cinematic experience that was deserving of respect and adoration.

I remember watching the first episode of season 1 so vividly. Back in 2019, my mom and I decided to give the show a shot. We’d heard lots of great things, and though we were expecting it to be dark, it was so much worse than we had anticipated. Distasteful sex, annoying dialogue (personal preference, perhaps), and the hotel scene with Jules… I can’t believe I watched that with my mother. The episode ended and the two of us sat there, genuinely too stunned to speak. It wasn’t like we hadn’t seen similar things depicted in movies and television before, but it was how the camera followed the characters in this strange, perverse kind of way. A show where almost every main character is a woman depicting a child, a show that, on the surface, aimed to address topics that are deserving of discourse: sexual abuse, drug use, exploitation; and yet, in the end, amounted to nothing but a well-made weak thematic sputter with glimmers of greatness and a perverted playground for deprived, angry men.

I eventually watched both seasons of the show when I went to college. Every weekend my friends and I would get together and watch the latest episode, and honestly, it was a lot of fun. The show was still complete crap, but season 2 felt a lot less serious than the first, like the show’s creator, Sam Levinson, knew that he made something profoundly stupid, and decided to just lean into it. Those underlying issues, however, were still there, and perhaps worse than ever. Levinson’s main problem? Writing women, or rather, his inability to hide his hatred for women.

Hyper-sexuality through the male gaze has always and will always be gross to me. To put women in ultra-specific, sexualized boxes every chance he gets is disturbing on its own, but to do so to characters who are supposed to be minors is an entirely new problem altogether. But hey, season 3 is out and these characters aren’t kids anymore. Surely the show’s adult themes and disturbing depictions will feel at least a little more fitting, right?

Well, then I saw the screenshot of Sydney Sweeney’s character, Cassie, sitting on a couch, legs wide open, wearing nothing but underwear and a see-through top, sucking on a pacifier. Did I see that right? Ahh… yes. A pacifier. That’s when I knew Levinson couldn’t even be bothered to thinly hide his fetishes and kinks anymore. It’s the final season, after all, go all out.

Despite my better judgment, I watched the episode anyway. I suppose I wanted to have a real reason to hate the show. I couldn’t just write about it without having seen something from the latest season. So, as I sat there watching Zendaya swallow lubed-up bags of cocaine, a woman shitting herself and having a dog lick it off her ass, Sydney Sweeney dressing up as a dog for OnlyFans, and Jacob Elordi holding her by the leash as she barks for him, I understood why people finally saw the show for what it always was.

A sick male fantasy, a vehicle for Levinson’s own traumas and desires, but now the pretty colors are gone (an aesthetic Levinson stole from artist Petra Collins, by the way), and the music is notably worse, with Labrinth leaving the show because of some behind-the-scenes beef he has with, surprise surprise, Sam Levinson.

The show’s whole identity was based on the aesthetic, the vibe, the cinematography, the color palette, the measurable aspects that make film and television so entertaining to watch. Art theft aside, Euphoria was a lot of things, but ugly wasn’t one of them. But now that identity is gone, and what’s left is the repulsiveness of Levinson’s writing and direction, no longer hiding behind the shadow of its visuals.

Nearly every female character in season 3 is rooted in exploitative sex work that serves as torture porn for the characters. Rue goes from drug mule to strip club manager. Cassie does OnlyFans to, as the show paints in a humiliating and degrading light, pay for her wedding florals which cost $50K. Jules is an art school dropout who takes on a sugar daddy to financially support her painting. Oh, and Rosalia is in the show too! She’s a stripper, obviously.

This latest season, to me, serves as an interesting case study into how we as people can be so easily distracted. If pretty colors and good music are dangled in our faces, we jump to it like a cat to a red laser, enjoying the shallowness of the vibes Levinson cultivated so carefully.

For anyone defending the show or enjoying it despite its many controversies, good for you. Seriously, I mean it. I wish I could be so ignorant to its aggressive exploitation of women. But I want you to think of this face when you see Sydney Sweeney cosplaying as a baby. I want you to remember all of the horrible things this man puts his female characters through, and I want you to ask yourself, “Is this necessary? Did I need to see that? Why is Nate Jacobs the most normal character in the show now?”

That last question got me fucked up.

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I’m an incredibly judgmental person. I certainly have no right to, but I do it anyway. I can’t help it.

In my defense, it’s so hard not to, especially nowadays. Obviously the title of this thing is hyperbolic. My range of emotions towards most people range from indifference to, “Oh, I like this person!” The latter, however, has become increasingly rare. My theory, at first, was that I was just tired of social interaction in any capacity, and though this is still kind of true, my latest theory rings much more true to me now.

Idiocracy . a society or group that is controlled by or consists of people with low intelligence.

In politics, idiocracy is sometimes referred to as kakistocracy, which is a government run by complete morons. My government today isn’t run by morons. In fact, through gritted teeth, it’s run by people who are far too good at what they do, because what they do is control a society full of the real morons. I can hate my government while also acknowledging that they run the country because of the people I am referring to in this title. The people I’ve lost respect for, the people who manage to fuck up my whole mood just by the utterance of their name.

The problem isn’t necessarily that I’ve lost respect for people who voted for this current administration or people who didn’t vote at all, although I definitely did. The problem is that it’s only just hit me now that the people that I know, the twenty-something year olds trying to squeeze our way into the job market, trying to find apartments to live in with a minimum of three roommates, the people I went to middle school with, to high school with; these are the people I could once look at without a shred of repugnance lingering in the back of my throat. It’s the people I could once call friends who have shown who they really are. It’s the people who are all smiles in-person, but quietly vote against your rights and the rights of your family. The people whose privileges spill out of their mouths when they speak as if word vomit were just their default setting. No, I don’t want to hear about how much you’ve traveled this year, where you’re traveling next, and why I should travel more.

But that’s not the real issue here. It’s not the mildly annoying people who now piss me off to no end, but the fragile, deflated state of the world that adds to my anger in the things that shouldn’t be more than a small blip in my mind. I am a more bitter person now, and knowing that those feelings reside in me upsets me even more. It’s this never-ending cycle, the knowledge that I’m not above pettiness or loathing, wishing that I were capable of being “the bigger man,” and every time I think I’m overcoming it, every time I feel a bit more happiness than usual, we bomb some more kids, make an entirely AI-generated TV show about the American Revolution (ironic), and tap through another white person’s Instagram story about how blessed their life is as they hold their sixth margarita, trying (and failing) to pass as if it were their first one.

The other day, at my local café, I found out that one of the regulars there, a man who I have spoken to on many occasions, a man who is well-liked, a man who is even a bit of a local celebrity (I use that word very loosely) for his unique vintage car, is a Nazi. That’s not an exaggeration, Nazi salute and all. I look at him now in a completely new light. His slicked back hair, his tight, tucked in white shirts, his buckled dress pants and black dress shoes, his WWII era car. It’s all so obvious now, his obsession with that 1940s, his adoration for a time that should be remembered for the atrocities that were committed and how goodness prevailed. He’s a man who has become far too comfortable living in his hatred for others who don’t deserve it, a man who is also far too good at pretending to like everyone while being the most malicious one in any room. And so I wonder, why do I pretend to like people who have far more in common with a Nazi than they do a normal person? To spare their feelings? To avoid an awkward interaction? Why should I care anymore? What kind of fraud does that make me?

I’m turning 24-years-old in just a couple of weeks, and I want to be done with pretending to like bad people for the sake of maintaining societally “correct” practices or politeness. I know people who can’t even accept the fact that people have preferred pronouns. I know people who view the homeless as wastes of oxygen. I know people who have said slurs and people who have decided to stay silent altogether, people who “don't do politics.” It’s unavoidable when you live in a small town like mine. But I’m not tied down by the kind of social anxiety I once had in high school. I no longer feel like I don’t have a decision in who I do or don’t talk to. Because, again, why the hell should I?

I look forward to the day when I can unlearn this burden of disdain. I don’t know when that will happen. It feels like it’ll never come, but I can say, with certitude, that my pessimism doesn’t overcome the little voice in my head that tells me everything will be okay. I have to believe that, for my own sake.

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It’s like finding out you have a terminal illness, the way that sentence hits you. It usually means you’re getting dumped. I’ve been on the receiving end of such a sentence, and I’ve dished it out. Either way, it’s never good.

Junior year of college (my worst year), I couldn’t hold down a relationship to save my life. Obviously, the common denominator was me, but then I met someone, someone who completely disarmed me. I’ll call her Janet for the sake of this piece, and considering her Instagram profile picture floats around my stories occasionally, I’ll save her the embarrassment of reading her real name here.

During a year of exhaustion and waning confidence in my love for Howard University, I met Janet when I felt like I needed to. She had so much energy, a kind face, an absolutely insane sense of humor that never rubbed me the wrong way, and the kind of disposition that just attracts everyone without feeling artificial. She had a proclivity for contumacious behavior, but the kind that felt like I was living in some sort of college rom-com and not the beginning of a crime thriller. I’d never dated someone like her before, and I suppose I was pretty excited to open myself up to a lifestyle that I had avoided my entire life. House parties, concerts, spur of the moment late night drives, 2am talks about our traumas and our kinks; I was starting to find a reason to stay in DC despite so desperately wanting to leave just months before meeting her.

We dated for a few months before making things official, and as a matter of fact, she asked me to be her boyfriend. I liked her very much, but there was a moment of hesitation before I said yes. The last serious relationship I was in, I couldn’t commit, but I decided to take a chance. I told myself that this one would stick, that whatever self-destructive tendencies I had would be quelled. Easier said than done, of course, but I suppose I didn’t even have the chance to ruin our relationship.

As the school year picked up, I found myself having less and less time to go out to late night parties, and honestly, that drinking phase I had was starting to seriously wear off too. When I think about it now, I suppose she saw me as someone who could match her endless energy and her lifestyle. Maybe I’m at fault for leading her to believe that I could, but it certainly wasn’t intentional, and actually, no! It wasn’t my fault. Fuck you!

Anyway, Janet would ask me if I wanted to go out with her on a Tuesday night, a Wednesday night, a Thursday night, and I’d often say the same thing as if I’d rehearsed it: I have too much homework. I’m too busy. I’m too tired. I’m sorry. Be safe, have fun!

Then, I got the text, “We need to talk.” It was a Saturday afternoon. We had plans to meet, go thrifting, walk around, do something fun. I got out of the shower and opened up my phone, reading the text, rereading it, realizing that we were, in fact, not going out that day. I called her and she answered almost immediately. She seemed anxious, but I didn’t get the sense that she was wanting to end things. I asked her how the party was the night before, and that’s when the call went cold.

“I have to tell you something.”

Another sentence that can only really mean one thing. I knew, before she could explicitly say it, what happened. Then, she said it. She had sex with a guy at the party. Drunk, not thinking straight, a mistake, I’m sorry, it’ll never happen again, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.

I don’t really know what came over me in that moment. It was like a glitch or a computer virus spread across my entire body. What was once anxiety over her sudden distance on the phone became complete and utter indifference. I felt… nothing. I felt empty, hollow, completely unsurprised. I listened to her profuse apologies, her excuses, her tears. I listened to it all without a single interruption, and when she was done, when she asked me to forgive her, when the only thing I could hear on the other side of the line were her sniffles, I told her I wanted nothing to do with her and promptly hung up.

I blocked her on everything, eyes glassy and not even a hint of sorrow. There was nothing keeping me on the East Coast anymore. For once, I wasn’t the one to fuck it all up. I took solace in that.

And so, years later, you might be wondering why I’m talking about this now. It doesn’t really matter anymore, right? I’ve moved on, I have a different life, I literally live across the country. Except, it does matter. It matters more than I originally thought.

I decided to unblock her on Instagram over a year ago. I don’t know why I did it, but I suppose I wanted to tell myself that I could be a functioning human being despite having been wronged in such a way, that I could rise above whatever robotic state I found myself in when we came to an end. My heart sank when I saw her face on one of my stories for the first time in years, and that’s when it seemed to finally hit me. She hurt me, and that invisible scar opened up, reminding me that she didn’t just make a mistake, she told me, without speaking, that I wasn’t good enough. I sat in that feeling for a good long while.

I was never in love with her. I suppose if things worked out differently, I could have been, but regardless of how terrible things get, I try to remind myself that everything turns out the way they’re supposed to, whether or not life decides to spare my feelings or my sanity. That scar opened up and cut through my other relationships. I pushed people away before they could hurt me. I chose isolation over comfort and uncomfortable truths. I became someone who I didn’t like.

It’s important to recognize when I’m deflecting blame and when I’m drawing accurate conclusions. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, and unfortunately it can feel impossible to differentiate the two.

When I think about us now, it’s like peering into a stranger’s life. We were never going to work. It just wasn’t that kind of relationship, and I think I knew that even then. My insouciance was a defense mechanism, but it was also a display of the shallowness of that relationship, and how despite the water only coming up to my ankles, its impact on me still pains me like a great wave against bare skin. It’s so frustrating. I still have dreams about getting cheated on sometimes. It doesn’t matter how improbable, how ridiculous, how fantastical these dreams are, I wake up and feel… well, I don’t really know how to describe what I feel. It isn’t bad, it isn’t good, it isn’t even apathetic. It’s a feeling that exists in its own plane of existence, in a backroom somewhere in the depths of my mind. It’s amazing, really, how capable someone you don’t even like can change you forever.

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Hobby: an activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure

Doomscrolling isn’t a hobby, though I’m starting to feel like my generation views certain recreational activities as a sibling to laying on your side, phone just inches away from you face, frying your brain with TikTok sounds and AI slop.

Over the last year or so, I’ve noticed a lot of content creators documenting their hobbies, showing others what they do during their free time. On the surface, this is totally fine and has actually exposed me to certain pastimes that I decided to adopt. Once my algorithm started picking up on the kind of content I liked the most, I started getting a lot more videos about people’s hobbies, but there was a trend, one that started to get really irritating: chronicling one’s hobbies with the intention of self-improvement.

I know I sound crazy. How could I grow upset with someone who’s promoting personal development? What kind of asshole does that make me? I’m not ruling out that I’m just a miserable prick, but I also think that this current era of LinkedIn Speak and constant networking has ruined both our social lives and what used to be moments alone where we could rot and be as useless as we wanted. Hobbies can be productive, yes, but they shouldn’t have to be, and we’re being led to believe that if we aren’t constantly doing something useful, if we aren’t always trying to get ahead somehow, we’re lazy.

Standards, over time, change. When I was growing up, playing video games was seen as a colossal waste of time. I was allowed only one hour of video game time every other day, but binging The Office for the fifth time was totally okay. Rules and moderation are necessary, of course, and being an adult now, I know I’d put in place similar rules for the kids I never want to have, but how people view gaming is completely different than even just five years ago. Now, more than ever, people put it alongside films and television as forms of art, though it only took some good video game adaptations to finally do so for general audiences.

Let’s take reading as an example. So many people view reading as a chore. Those people simply haven’t found a book that they’ve truly fallen in love with, but even creators whose content is all about literature frame their hobby as a means for self-improvement. Reading is inherently beneficial, but it doesn’t need a million creators telling you that in order to exercise your brain and improve your critical thinking, you must read The Castle by Kafka while having a freshly brewed cup of coffee and a healthy breakfast with an abundance of berries to go with it. It doesn’t encourage non-readers to pick up a book. It’s just required reading with extra steps, and on top of that, it’s a performance, perhaps even more so than the guys you see at local coffee shops with their tiny folded books. Reading, as a hobby, should be just as relaxing as watching a good film. It isn’t forced aestheticism or shallow annotations. Doing so paints the act of reading as some intellectually stimulating activity that only thinkers can participate in. It’s unintentionally exclusionary, and it’s also why so many people still see avid readers as pretentious. Though, admittedly, perhaps my most pompous take is that reading ONLY smut is genuinely terrible for your brain. It’s the text equivalent of watching only reality TV, but alas, that doesn’t help my case.

The hobbies themselves aren’t the problem, it’s the infrastructure people have built around the very act of having a good time. You should be allowed to play a video game at the end of a long day without being seen as a couch potato. You should be able to read a book without the expectation that you’re doing so to elevate your mind. You should be able to sketch simply because you love drawing, not because you want to be an artist. You should be able to do the things you love without someone in your ear telling you that you should monetize that hobby in some way, or that you should take a class, or that you should put on your LinkedIn profile, “I am incredibly passionate about the art of cinematic storytelling. Films aren’t just entertainment, they are a masterclass of visual communication, emotional intelligence, and cross-functional collaboration.” You told your co-worker that you like movies, by the way.

I don’t need to tell you that moderation is key, but I also urge you to take that time for yourself to do nothing, to rot, to enjoy something without an ulterior motive just because society tells you to remain vigilant and useful at all times. It’s exhausting being “on” all the time, so don’t feel bad about yourself for taking that much needed break. We all need it.

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