Conversation

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.
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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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