Just heard the phrase “trauma porn” on a tv show. Tv discourse is less than a year behind Twitter at this point.
Show is Shrill, about an overweight magazine writer dealing with online trolls, among other things. Decent. Depictions of Very Online culture are slowly improving.
Conversation
Kinda interesting that Very Online world is now default source of Other for TV. 10y ago, bloggers were the bad guys. Now Starting a Blog is how the principled journalist breaks from evil boss, only to get job back. Very Online = underworld you descend to in search of redemption.
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This show is part of a hilarious genre of romantic shows about old media. Ugly Betty, Just Shoot Me. Also Emily in Paris. Often female leads.
They’re as far from real old media as real opioid-crisis Trump towns are from Hallmark channel show towns.
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In Emily in Paris, Emily is a sort of bridge between bitchy old traditional French fashion marketer and Instagram influencer. Show frames her as underworld creature deserving of elevation to real world. She’s not like *other* Instagram influencers who are of course all grifters.
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In Contagion, there is a crazy blogger with conspiracy theories set up as the underworld Other to the good CDC people. In Covid we’ve actually seen the real story — Very Online is the source of both the best and worst thinking, while CDC is the somewhat corrupt mediocre.
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But so far I haven’t seen a single TV show where the Very Online world is anything but a dark corrupting underworld, where descending explorers from the Good world must be careful and find ways to stay grounded in “reality” which is the standard of goodness, even if flawed.
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off the top of my head Sarah Steele's character is the most well-adjusted Online person I've come across on television
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These descriptions sound like “one of the good ones” with the default still being “bad”


