These Boundaryless, Inappropriate Apps
Give us the strength to get through this wild, recent content.
Hi friends!
How’s everyone doing? The summer heat has finally arrived in Los Angeles and though I will never give up hope that the vibes can be saved, this was not the week when we turned the corner.
The discourse around Jonah Hill’s text messages alone had me reaching for an eject button that simply does not exist. And while I take some responsibility for my boundaryless, inappropriate friendship with the internet, I do feel I was manipulated by the delicious proposition of reading a celebrity’s texts. And those texts had a lot of … subtexts… an older and more powerful man playing the victim, therapy jargon used and abused, attempts to control a woman’s private and public life, and the lack of accountability that wealthy, powerful men are famous for.
This whole thing is a janky sequel to the documentary Jonah Hill made about his therapist, which I watched and medium enjoyed, especially the part where he puts on a hairpiece for continuity and then reveals that they’re actually in a green screen replica of the therapist’s office on a soundstage. I just know those two are together right now “processing” the “trauma” of this very public shaming. Maybe next they’ll do a podcast.
I’m setting some boundaries of my own right now, attempting to pry myself free from the claws of these extremely addictive apps. It’s wild how the concept of “content” didn’t even exist until these attention economy barons had platforms to fill. What will I do with all these years of trends and scandals and gossip within me. It’s not natural to retain so much nonsense and I certainly can’t participate in another social media platform, not willingly. I tried to avoid TikTok, and we all know how that ended — whoopsie daisies.
“Millennials” used to be young, but in a dark turn of events we’re now the first generation to come of middle age on the internet, and I worry what this level of onlineness will do to our cognitive function as we... age. Are we all going to grow old together hopping from app to app until eternity? It doesn’t seem very chill that I can’t remember new people’s names but that a couple dozen Vine videos will loop through my mind’s eye on demand.
And whoever created this filter, one of the vilest in recent memory, is not doing their part to save the vibes. The last thing we needed right now was a cursed look into the future of our faces. I can’t unsee myself in wisened hag form and I remain haunted by her eye bags. She will not win.
Elon Musk has no boundaries, getting his Twitter fingers going to propose literal dick measuring contests. Because the masses hate Elon so much, Zuck has achieved a level of popularity that could have prevented Facebook from existing if only it happened in his teenage years. On that timeline, the world has known peace.
I would like the record to show that I am no longer interested in watching those two do their best homage to Street Fighter. We have had a vibe shift and my brain is now just a deranged word cloud, and so, I must set a boundary and distance myself from the entire Musk/Zuckerberg narrative before it increases my risk of dementia. I have enough cultural detritus occupying my mind and I need that space for Sonja and Luann.
I have spent some time in therapy and can tell you for certain that boundaries are not a list of criteria you send to control someone else’s instagram pics, they are rules you establish for your own behavior and needs so that you can be mentally well of your own accord. The patterns that shape our behavior are not always pleasant to excavate, but what’s the other option —spending years navel-gazing with a professional, gaining nothing but the language of self empowerment and the validation to weaponize it?
Boundaries — when not being misused by an entitled celebrity man child who has now learned an important lesson on putting bad behavior in writing — are life-changing. Relationships just work better when we know what the boundaries are and social media has none, it’s a 24/7 shitshow fueled by algorithms serving us more of what has already “engaged” us.
If we want to have a healthier relationship with all of this, it’s on us to draw our own line in the digital sand. A journey, a process, and an uphill battle for sure, but with better boundaries, maybe we can all make it to 2025 without going completely insane. Here’s hoping!
Less Lessons More Blessin’s™️
Liz