on public platforms

Jimmy Fallon must think about the fact that the world is ever more obsessed with clarity of truths and a minimal gap between reality and performance. And yet he sits there, drinking his fake coffee with his fake laugh on a strange stage, nodding along to some latest’s actors fake story for attention and sympathy. The masses believe when he’s been “charmed” and not like the actor’s agent hadn’t worked for this slot six months in advance, in conjunction with their debut movie being released to promote the actor and the movie simultaneously, and cast them onto the cultural zeitgeist.

Fifty years ago, that was how you launched a star. The entire carnival effect was based not on who and when they “chose” you from oblivion, but more so the mechanism with which they literally put you on. The deus ex machina of the entertainment industry would then put you with the right stylist, put you in the right movie or TV show, then promote you on the largest and most captivating stages. Late night television shows worked not because of the number of eyeballs watching, but more so because they had captured the hearts and minds of millions. People believed only the deserving made it onto those stages. People believed in the judgement of the Carnaval deciders, enjoyed almost being seduced by the stories as if some new Casanova was entering their hearts. Enter stage left: Jennifer Lawrence and her “falls” on the Oscar stage, Harry Styles making even the straightest-seeming men in Hollywood giggle with their toes in the air.

But what happens when people see the Wizard? What happens when the illusion is shattered by some sort of fourth wall called the internet. Shit gets messy at first — so many exposed truths and scandals that get sensationalized because the illusion doesn’t shatter gracefully, it shatters painfully and dramatically at first. Every action needs an equal reaction, and for all the decades of facade and lies, you need equal shocking DUIs, cheating, and other scandals to be revealed. And after a while, people start to tire of that truth, because you start to feel like it’s boring—it’s already known, it’s already been said before. “Tell me something I don’t know” starts being a common sentiment of the late 2000s.

And quietly at the same time, the machine is still working. They get more elegant in their deceptions, trying to show coming of age stories, and subtly pushing younger and younger stars so that we feel like we were a part of their “come up.” And maybe for a second, they felt like they got away with it. Hence the success of Jennifer Lawrence and Harry Styles.

Like any good story however, there’s always a dénouement. A moment when the characters realize what knowledge they haven’t shared with each other. In leadership, it’s widely known as the “common knowledge effect”—it’s the job of a benevolent leader who wants ultimate success and efficiency to make sure that no information is gate kept, or kept siloed by different departments or functions or areas of expertise. Put simply, leaders to need to make sure that their people talk to each other. In a power vacuum, where those in power either haven’t been acting benevolently or are simply not interested in the common success or efficiency, something else needs to create the common knowledge. Writers and storytellers usually introduce either some outside party, some random joining event, or even simply an artifact that aptly explains the missing information. Think of the “Burn Book” in Mean Girls. The best writers somehow combine all three for maximum initiation energy—a change agent, some random joining event, and an information artifact. Enter: COVID and TikTok proliferation.

It was the perfect storm for entertainment to be disrupted. Strangers could speak their passionate frustrations to other strangers, enlightening them. COVID put us all in not only a reflective mood with never before seen independence and time to not have numbing thoughts, suddenly being told what to think and what to do while on autopilot in office or at work wasn’t working. And at the same time, we realized the power of the collective and with a lack of human interaction, realized how much we needed each other. Like a toxic ex who misses you most when you ghost them, we suddenly wanted each other more than ever. And finally oh lord did we have an artifact. Arguably the biggest one ever seen to man. An unconceivable amount of content, gigabytes of information, hours of screen time to pour through the niche-st of subjects of your curiosity. Suddenly everyone felt like an expert on the strangest topics, from what the best sleeping positions are from your local sleep medicine expert to how to make greek whipped coffee from a 12 year old Greek girl.

And only because of all of that activation energy did people actually learn. They were —if temporarily perhaps—awakened. Major labels and entertainment execs had not yet figured out to gain from the system that is social media because it didn’t yet benefit them and they again figured they were getting away with the status quo. And more importantly, they didn’t yet believe it threatened them.

Unsurprisingly, in parallel, there were huge movements in other social issues like racism, sexism, and political change. People made silly dance videos yes, but in between those they were out on the streets protesting together like it was 1965 or 2016 again. [Maybe in another essay I’ll discuss how unsurprising it is that the US administration (pre-Trump mind you) wanted to ban TikTok once more information about Israel and Palestine mobilized college students to protest the genocide.]

So why did I call it a dénouement? A dénouement in French means an undoing, specially of a noeud or knot. It implies that something was tense, complicated, and broken. Kind of like when you have a knot in your back, and you can technically keep walking around but at a certain point the tension builds so much that it becomes unbearable and you simply cannot go on. The energy must dissipate somewhere. In many ways that’s what COVID was—so many broken systems, broken norms, broken cultures and broken entertainment systems. When you have a dénouement in a story, things suddenly become clear and different plot lines are brought together.

As XX said in Euphoria: “Is this fucking play about us?”

Things that look random or disparate suddenly gel together. Isn’t it crazy how all of a sudden all the nepotism was exposed? All of the producers behind Taylor Swift etc. come to light? And the ways in which they lied, manipulated, and deceived are illuminated.

Previously, the entertainment industry let us feel like the illusion was shattered because the “truth” coming to light wasn’t about the deus ex machina, it was about the individual actors about themselves. They leaned into that, further making the Lindsey Lohans and Britney Spears of the world the scapegoats. “Isn’t it crazy that she seemed so innocent but she’s actually a crazy whore? Wow you guys really supported the wrong role model.” And don’t get me wrong, like I said, it was dramatic and earth shattering for every good Christian Samaritan American. But it didn’t really let people see the deeper truths and threads that ran thicker than water.

It didn’t expose the power game.

So where am I going with this? Once the dénouement occurs, it’s metaphorically hard to rectangle the threads or put the cat back in the bag. And yet, I am noticing that people are. We are increasingly seeking mind-numbing content again. There’s obviously still a strong counter culture of folks who are talking about writing essays, going off Spotify, reading paperback classics again. But that’s not the majority, it’s counter culture for a reason. Most people want a pleasing “what’s in my bag” mind-numbing Youtube video to watch while they eat their slop bowl at their sad cubicle since we have also successfully been bamboozled into going back to work.

We all KNOW who the industry plants in the music industry are, and yet almost no one wants to listen to new artists or discover up and coming music anymore. They’ll wait for the latest sound byte to go viral on TikTok and won’t bother learning anything else about that artist. And the truly talented, the Doechii’s of the world, are forced to put out those sound bytes and go for numbers now that the deus ex machina HAS realized that the social media can not only hurt them if left unchecked like it was in COVID, but also can be used as a tool. Remember how I said they found a more elegant way of making us feel like the Carnaval effect wasn’t real? Well, now they literally make us feel like we “picked” new stars or artists by sourcing their latest signs from those same platforms. And the gag is that those platforms are no longer people-run or change agents. They’re all in the pockets of the machine, with partnerships deals to push the latest pick in the same way we pick the set list for Jimmy Fallon. Notice how we haven’t had influencers blow up organically in a few years? That’s not by accident when the entire discovery algorithm is rigged to push the same slop that will keep you just intrigued enough to not leave, but keeping the actual dangerous content you want or maybe even see just out of reach. Spotify knows exactly what kind of artists you’d like that you don’t yet know. Hinge knows your type. YouTube knows who you subscribe to and what video would unlock some new chapter in you. But they gate keep it all. They’re like our evil stepmother and we’re Cinderella.

So instead of waiting for some fairy godmother, it’s time we take our power back and recognize the game they’re playing.

Insert: “They can’t keep getting away with this meme”

In a future essay, I will explore what can actually be done to dissolve the power that is being so tightly by the machine and how to redistribute in a meaningful way that has more legs than the temporary change of TikTok/COVID in 2020.