Well look who it is
When I went to go write this I thought it had been like six months since my last missive but it was really only May 27th that I last decided to inflict your inboxes with something like this, which isn’t bad. (The reality is always somehow never as bad as the anxiety fantasy John.)
Those of you who follow me on Instagram (thank you) and look at my stories (thank you) might have noticed that on Monday I got a LOT of comments on a video from people whose entire mindsets seemed to have been shaped by misogyny, homophobia and transphobia.
People just could not deal with a man wearing lipstick PINK lipstick and felt the need to say something about it instead of just going about their day of, I don’t know making their children’s lives miserable or crying while masturbating or whatever the hell these loser people do all day when they’re not needlessly commenting on things on the internet that have no bearing on their lives but rustle their jimmies nonetheless.
Some of the comments were pretty bad! I won’t repeat them but I’m pretty sure if you’ve been on the internet for more than five minutes you’ve seen something similar.
The thing is though, if I had to be honest, I kind of loved it.
For some reason this kind of stuff does not bother me in the slightest. It’s perhaps the Scorpio in me but my overwhelming reaction is pity. Like how silently sad and chronically painful must it be to live in a mind like that? Meanwhile, someone asked me about the “horrendous” carbon footprint of a fucking pineapple in one of my videos and it sent me into an emotional spiral that I am still working my way out of. (My current sanity-maintaining hypothesis is that it was a joke…)
So I screenshotted the comment section and posted it to my stories and away we went. I could have ignored it, but I honestly couldn’t afford not to capitalize on the outrage. Our current internet is fueled by quick ever-escalating hits of arousal, and nothing is more arousing that disgust, anger, humour, righteous indignation, and coming to other people’s defense. Pretty soon the comment section was flooded with friends (and total strangers) saying really nice things about me! Meanwhile the views on the video skyrocketed (275k+) and since Monday I picked up about 500 new followers: my follower count increased by over 10% in half a week.
This is what I’m talking about when I say I kinda loved it.
A lot of the really bad comments got taken down (I reported a few) and by Tuesday the video was plastered with people calling themselves “JdB stans” and other supportive comments about my lipstick (Chanel), and t-shirt (Gildan, Legos, and hot glue). I also got a bunch of DMs from queer people thanking me. This is the one that struck me the most:
I hope you take a little bit of pride seeing the gender line loosen around expression in the younger gen knowing how much work you’ve put into clearing space by just being you. I can’t imagine the weight of being in the public eye while being tru to yourself.
Not to be too grandiose but this concept of clearing space is really important to me. I look the way I look partly because I really don’t know how to look any other way, but also because it’s fun for me to stick my neck out. By any reasonable account I won the DNA/Zip Code lottery so if me looking like a huge genderfuck faggot on the internet (and on the street) makes it easier for someone else, then there is almost a moral imperative to push as far as I can. And to the people who commented that I only look like this for the attention…yes, but also I pretty much look exactly the same way in real life as I do in these videos—I pretty much just roll up to the studio in my street clothes lmfao.
Which brings me to possibly one of the best pieces of writing I’ve read in a really long time: this Defector piece by Kelsey McKinney about Sydney Sweeney. I have been in the bag for her since her eerily innocent performance in season 2 or whatever of Handmaid’s Tale. She is by all accounts one of the hottest (in all dimensions) actresses in Hollywood right now but even she is crushing under the weight of our economic framework wherein the top 1% are swindling the rest of us out of 99% of the surplus value of our labor. This means that unlike already-absurdly wealthy stars like Maya Hawke and Dakota Johnson (who I both adore) she can’t afford not to be online and posting ads multiple times per week.
Every so often you see some story about some celebrity “quitting” social media as if it is some moral choice when really they’re doing it because they can. Syndey Sweeney HAS to post sponcon on her insta because she does not have generational wealth to fall back on, nor does she get paid the same as the studio executives whose entire livelihoods depend on her labor. She can’t “quit” Instagram because it’s how she makes her money and who knows how long her current run will last. She’s a freelancer—just like me and I’m sure like many of you reading this. We have to say yes to everything because you never know if tomorrow will bring an awesome opportunity or crickets from your current clients. And regrettably, social media following is inextricably linked to opportunities for people whose professional profiles rely on visibility.
So I’m lucky that I happen to “kind of love it” when I get a lot of negative attention from people on the internet showing themselves to be miserable small souls, because can’t afford not to.
I just updated the fuck out of my website, so if you want to check out all my recent writing, and recent media, the pages are screamingly up to date. Also go watch all my youtube videos and leave a nice comment.
Thanks for reading! Please forward this to someone you like.
Love,
-JdB
