Why Are We All Detectives?

Put down the magnifying glass and step away from the internet.

Hi friends!

How we all doing on cultivating our spring vibes? I’m writing to you from the patio of my neighborhood Coffee Bean that used to be gross until someone drove right through it (the locally unhinged) and forced a renovation. Now it’s my new office because any chance to leave the house and spend more time yapping I will take.

No one likes reality, and over the past few weeks, the internet has turned avoiding it by hyperfocusing on Kate Middleton into an art form. Call it a mass reaction to overconsumption of the endless horrors of it all or what happens when ennui meets the right mix of content and intrigue, but everyone, their mother, and their mother’s mother collected their own dossier of crackpot screenshots and paparazzi pics.

And after all that tireless work by the world’s foremost detective agency, the trench-coated hive mind at large, the case was actually quite simple — Kate had abdominal surgery, cancer was discovered, and she’s been trying to recover privately.

Since her surgery in December, the bored people’s princess™️ has been scheduled to resurrect and return to public life around Easter. But this level of madness required a triage, and she was forced to come forth and share the news today.

Mysteries are fun and we live to solve, it’s only human, but Kate Middleton’s whereabouts weren’t even a mystery. The royal reps were cagey and posted damage control very poorly, but the timeline for her return to public life never changed. It wasn’t really about that though, Kate unwittingly became an avatar of our demented relationship to the truth and the “search” for her, a balm to a culture desperate to find some.

The gathering and deciphering of these gumshoe clues vacillated between urgency (decoding the fullness of Kate’s face from various angles) and avoidance (of doing anything else, like answering emails). The mass catharsis of piecing together nonsense gave everyone a sense of control in our wildly chaotic, information-driven world where veracity is harder and harder to come by.

It shall go on the record that I was right about this. So, as I said last week, I hope Kate gets well soon. And, as we learned today, her abdominal illness is indeed as serious as her need to hire a new social media manager.

detective girl aesthetic.

Collectively losing our minds trying to piece it all together is classic Unhingement and it goes way back. Can you believe it has been a decade since Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared without a trace? Happy anniversary to us all! The traditional 10-year gift is tin or aluminum which is perfect since we are already wearing our foil hats, culturally, and deeply entrenched in creating and consuming conspiracy theories and all of the faux-revelatory nonsense that comes along with them.

Though parts of MH370 have washed ashore since, we still don’t really know what happened and it takes me right back to a time when I had the energy to care. I was about ready to quit my job, take off to the South China Sea, hire a boat, and find that errant aircraft myself. I still might, just starting to consider my summer travel plans, and now I wouldn’t even have to quit my job, could just work from boat.

The real mystery I think we should be directing our energy towards is how airlines are still flying these Boeing planes that keep falling apart midair and killing people. I know this case doesn’t involve a princess, but it does have a dead whistleblower who was actively testifying in a lawsuit against the company and the catchy but (until now) little-known slogan, “if it’s Boeing, I’m not going.” Why were so many of us out of the loop on that one? I just did my detective work (googled it), and Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was a Boeing. Mystery solved?

Boeing has repeatedly said they’ll do something about their nasty track record of prioritizing profit over safety and then they … simply have not. Families of crash victims have been in court for years and the lawyer who represents them describes it as “the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history." Cool cool.

Going places is one of the best things we have. We need it so badly. But getting places is the worst and that trend began before we had the anxiety of a window seat becoming an al fresco experience.

Take a glance at the state of affairs and it’s not difficult to see why everyone is now a truther. We live in a world where corporations are literally risking our lives and empowering their CFOs to lie about it. We take in too much information and have no trust in good sense. Every motherfucker thinks they’re an expert after seeing three TikToks on the same topic and must share their take.

Not sharing an opinion (especially when it comes to politics) now opens you up to people ascribing one for you. Failing to post has become fodder for the truth detectives as much as saying the “wrong” thing, so, yeah, that’s where we’re at.

We all want to “do our own research” because we feel like we can but who’s checking the facts? And what even is “the truth” when everything is this sideways? You tell me, because at this point, I feel like anyone who thinks they know the totality of a “real” reality gets a full scholarship to clown college.

That said, I know we could all use a vacation, a few solid days to relax and unplug. The pro bono investigation we actually need is someone who’s good with numbers running the risk assessment to let us know if the inevitable aircraft shortage that will come from Boeing going bankrupt when they’re forced to unjank their planes outweighs the risk of flying with a few screws loose.

And after the vibes of the past few weeks, it is also very clear that everyone on the internet could use a hobby. So, let’s all spend some time this weekend workshopping — I think painting with watercolors sounds very relaxing and nice.

Until next time!

Less Lessons More Blessin’s™️

Liz