Joan Summers

so oh i'm gonna say two words everybody brace for impact please everybody brace for impact because we know what's coming heated rivalry now listen here's the thing here's the thing following up on luscious massacre i love i support the fact that a show about gay guys having sex was the biggest pop culture happening of our year good work team good work canada keep it up

That said, what has happened around Eden Rifle is unlike anything I've professionally witnessed in my 10 years as a working journalist.

But I think it really like cracked open what is really happening on the internet in this particular moment, which is that the boundaries between the things that we consume ourselves and the way that we exist online have completely eroded.

Where it's like the let people enjoy things crowd and that whole conversation.

has like sort of crystallized around also the parasociality that we feel with other people online, especially famous people.

You know, the inability to distinguish fact from fiction, like the fact that something happens on a TV show does not mean it's real.

And the fact that people say things about a TV show does not mean that we're actually being mean to fictional characters because that's impossible, right?

Like we're engaging with art.

And then especially this fact that like, you know, we have a show that is the single most popular thing about this current year.

right like a media like it is the only thing that we've had like legitimately approach a water cooler event the way that we used to talk about various other shows and like the golden age of Hollywood like it's a water cooler event you could go to anywhere I would like be in line at a gas station and like the two men in front of me that are just like regular degular people would be like talking about heated rivalry which is like not a thing that I've experienced since probably Game of Thrones ended oh yeah

also the way that that has translated to so much real life homophobia and abuse online directed at it's like queer actors which I also found interesting right like the fact that there could be people watching this show and loving it for what it is who then would like spout homophobia online and so yeah it just for all of the good it brought like at what cost you know that's something I would like to put a pin in for next season

The first horsemen of the woke apocalypse arrived when Bad Bunny stepped out on the Super Bowl stage to perform his halftime show and really like both set the bar so high for like what we can do artistically, what we can do like collectively when artists come together and like both embrace their own culture and also try to create something that feels both deeply meaningful, deeply personal, but also inspiring.

universal to, like, all of our experiences right now, to, like, have basically everyone watch that from all different walks of life, all different cultures, and be like, wait, I recognize that.

It feels familiar.

These scenes feel like things from my own life, even if I didn't grow up in Puerto Rico.

So, one, that is great.

But then also...

the way in which people who were criticizing it for hateful, bigoted, racist reasons, seeing them, you know, actually suffer legitimate consequences, like people who felt brave enough to get in front of a camera and spout xenophobia, spout racism, especially famous people, you know, like seeing... Jill Zarin, yeah.

I think that that was a really big tipping point for me where I was seeing like, oh, so for like two years, we've just like endured these people like feeling bold enough to like take the mask off.

And like, obviously, since the first election of that guy, like we've seen this already, but like especially it's ramped up where they're like,