DSB Moderator
A lot of things sucked, I'll sum it up as politics and life. Also I had a pathological aversion to Generation Z stuff so I kept away from it most of the time. One positive though is I finally got more of a handle on a family member's health situation, so instead of dividing my attention toward damage control around that I was able to direct more toward stuff I like to do like writing.
This left a vulnerability where the right kind of Zoomer content would be able to worm its way into my cold dead heart. It won't be hard to figure out which show, but a new Mexican show did it, where that and a combination of my willingness to hop onto another culture/language TV for its differentness let it slip through.
That content ended up being the show's Glee-like part which brought back memories of choir in high school. Despite my classmates being absolute shitheads whether it was sexual harassment, throwing pencils at my head or what got to me the most: trying to hold me accountable for *not singing* Erin you fucking asshole. I still have long held beloved memories from that time. Literally any mention of high school these days will make me spit on the floor and say "it fucking sucked, shut the fuck up about it" yet those memories persist. I didn't do any cool Glee stuff like randomly harmonize with my friends or record songs together, but I associate those with it anyway.
Denial
With that, I followed some of the actors on things like Tiktok. One of them was doing amazing art like painting, sketches and music casually for fun and often, like it was a fuck-off thing to do. In my mind thats been in a funk for a while, that showed the satisfaction of creativity was well within reach and a rewarding end in itself.
Soon after with a little digging I find out this person has thousands of fake followers or bought real followers, especially obvious on Twitter but more than likely extends to Instagram, Tiktok etc. Soon reaching the reveal that all of the actors on this show have a flourishing ecosystem of followers that follow each other and comment/like all of each other's stuff, which as I came to learn is a social media "pod".
I also figured out a huge weakness it exploited in me, by having extremely young actors, is the idea that a doe-eyed young person is pure and certainly won't have the experience to be cunning and deceptive. But he or she doesn't have to be, if someone else is helping or doing it behind the scenes for them.
Anger
Holy shit, I thought. This is fake as fuck. I thought my like of this person was sincere and that this thing despite my knowing beforehand was parasocial, had enough of a genuine element to be worth my attention WTF. I drank the Kool-Aid of youthful exuberance that this show and its world had briefly given me, and - as the saying goes - it left me with the familiar poisoned cynicism I had before! I'm gullible and dumb. I should wipe my hands clean of this.
Bargaining
But, there had to be some realness in the art, or the music that came out of the show. Some injection of humanity. The Official Soundtrack genuinely enhanced my personal time, even when I listened to it in full and uninterrupted for the fifth time that day. Listening to an actor?s Spotify playlist legitimately exposed me to music I might not have otherwise and my enjoyment of those songs came to be on its own. The show clarified to me the literary concept of Inside Baseball. I genuinely learned more about Latin American music and culture. The TikToks did really help as a starting point to ignite a creative spark. The Glee aspect let me re-engage my past with more than just pure bile.
At minimum the self-esteem rewards I reaped from it are uniquely mine and can never be taken away. A mainline of cope deep into my veins, I know.
Acceptance
Now I appreciate that while there is an element of the real person and their real thoughts in it, I have to mind that there is at bare minimum a gatekeeping mechanism, like a social media manager, that gives it the OK, or if need be retroactively cuts it - like when the person I speak of did a drunken 4am Twitter thread, complete with voice recording, where she incoherently ranted about a club kicking her out - that swiftly disappeared. The Spanish-language social media sphere is like a self-driven perpetual motion machine, and I need not feel bad if I try to engage it and the machine chugs right past me without a second thought. This is a distance that I can and should respect, and I should match that distance with my own and keep that in mind when consuming products. The meaning I derive from the experience is my own and worthwhile to me, and that should be enough.
Side note: a few years ago someone at Univision, the biggest provider of Spanish language content in the US, publicly dunked on Latin influencer culture for being deceptive, so I?m definitely not alone in this. This is my most direct experience with influencer stuff though so I'm sure there are elements widely shared with US influencers etc.
2nd side note: this was my first deep dive into Latin American culture and music and I did get a lot out of the experience regardless.
Liberal Arts Major
For a long time I've wanted to actually sit and write like I used to. My mental blocks were just so fucking ingrained by the shit I've had to deal with over the past eight years from trauma to grief to endless setbacks specifically that it felt like an insurmountable wall. I just wasn't able to break fully through and get to where I wanted to be. I did a lot of dumb shit especially over the past three years trying to find my "muse" so to speak but nothing worked and I only served to drive myself further into the muck. However, in the last four months I've managed to find stuff that is slowly but surely breaking down that wall and making me feel like I used to feel ten years ago creatively. It's... freeing.
The depression in general isn't ever going to go away and in fact over the past two weeks it's almost become crippling again but I've had enough spots of light it makes it not as strangulating as it has been in recent years. I'm used to the ever tightening noose that is a slow and steady process, I can cope with it. It's the... well it's hard to really put into words when it's something I don't really talk about even in person but it's the sudden free-falling that I don't have any defense mechanisms for.
Yikes. Did not intend to word vomit introspectively when I started typing this. But introspective aside this was enlightening to read.
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"I'm gonna make like a tree and fuck you!" - Deadite Cheryl Williams Ash vs Evil Dead
PSN (Vita/PS4): Neroveras | Pokemon/Switch FC: SW-2558-9322-5899 | BattleTag: Indignation#1506
DSB Moderator
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PadxJ_MNYpgo86b1MbUv-TFJmS0JPMBTvIx5lCoA3Nc/edit?usp=sharing
What made the dominos fall was, in trying to pick a good moment to post it on her feed, and seeing the fake engagement - the realization those TikToks were more than likely approved, curated and possibly even made whole-cloth by the media company behind her and, regardless of whether she came up with it herself, it was a collaborative effort. It should be obvious but I had blinders on after watching her performance which I still think was great.
It's unlikely I'll do it now, but if I ever do it'll be with the added understanding that I'm tossing a fishing line into a sea of fish that don't care. Even if the actor does respond with a glowing thank you I can't even be sure how real that is.
Edit: Translated version added for posterity
Liberal Arts Major
One of the casualties of the modern age of technological advertising is that you never really know where reality stops and "augmented reality" begins unless you're paying so much attention that everything becomes a job or a chore to process.
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"I'm gonna make like a tree and fuck you!" - Deadite Cheryl Williams Ash vs Evil Dead
PSN (Vita/PS4): Neroveras | Pokemon/Switch FC: SW-2558-9322-5899 | BattleTag: Indignation#1506
DSB Moderator
Comparatively, fellow cast member Alejandro is a bit older and has amassed a 5000 (as far as I've figured out so far) follower pod to her 500 (again, as far as I know), so my questions kicked in much faster for him. Then as soon as I noticed his pod was also in her threads replying to everything (and vice-versa), it all came together.
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Advanced
This has been an enlightening read for myself. I mostly don't fall into a funk at times, but I have been hit with some bad funks over the past couple of years. Inspirational sources being not as inspirational as they sounded, but I learned to accept it faster than i realized and wish to strive to do something much better than them. I just wish I would stop stalling and get into it more. The COVID situation has actually been making me more gung-ho lately and wishing for better.
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"Hey! I'm a nerd!" - Fenneko, Aggretsuko
Liberal Arts Major
Ironically, "linguistics related things" like my unfinished dissertation are the cause of my depression.
Thank you for sharing, you guys. I hope it helped you getting some of your feelings out there on (digital) paper.
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~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu