An apology for having friends

A rant about reading the comments + Bravo news

Heathers, 1988.

When did people online become such hating ass bitches?

Listen, we all have a little bit of H8R in us. I came of age in the era of online “snark,” followed by the era of quote tweeting people to hell on Twitter for follows and retweets. So, I get it. But I still find the phenomenon of being a cunt online to someone you purport like… weird? People who follow Real Housewives and quote them incessantly only to comment the rudest things on their Instagram, for instance. Or people who tag a celebrity in their rude comments then get shocked that the celebrity has found them and responded. Or a fan of my podcast recently griping that I shouted out a friend who performed at the Tony Awards this Sunday. Chile.

A recent Tell the Bees post pinpointed where this type of behavior is coming from: “antisocial people get online and scream about how they don’t owe anyone anything, and then wonder why they don’t have friends or a community. These are not people who are fun or engaging.” Frankly, we’ve under siege from people who do not have friends, do not have social lives, and resent anyone else for possessing one.

Listen, I possess a modicum of self-awareness. I can be aware when I’m annoying! Sometimes, I’ve found myself bragging about things or name dropping something in order to make myself seem cooler to people I’ve interviewed on Keep It. I can psychoanalyze that this happens because I am a writer with many ambitions that do not involve recapping popular culture every week (as I’ve done for nine years!). I’ve been the self-conscious person at parties or other industry events, utterly embarrassed to described to someone I’ve just met as “a podcaster” and before my book was released and became a best-seller, giving me a talking point I was not only more proud of, but one that might make people more interested in engaging with me (people having a “successful podcast” stopped being interesting around 2020, sorry!).

My fight or flight response to that embarrassment or feeling of inadequacy was always to name someone that a guest and I have in common. It was my way to justify why I was in the room. Justify why my opinions matter. They tell you don’t read the comments, which I do far less than I used to in the early days when my co-host would literally send me screenshots of rude things people said on Reddit. But to this day, I still smart from a Reddit comment in 2018 that wondered, “why does this grifter have a podcast on Crooked Media” from some asshole who hadn’t bothered to Google the fact that I had a ten-year career in media as my credentials. In my most embarrassing moment of doing this (in person, even worse), I met Seth Meyers and rattled off names of people I knew who worked on his show. Instead of just saying… hello, how are you, my name is!

Getting back to the Tonys comment, however. There’s also something else at play here. We except everyone we follow to be “relatable” now. My friends and I sent memes back and forth, simply writing “you,” or “us,” as commentary. We relate to memes even when they’re not even particularly relatable, they’re just funny. I said this in a previous post about relatability in consuming content now: “If I praise a show you don’t like, it calls into question what you think about yourself and that, sadly, makes people angry and uncomfortable.”

For most humans, it’s perfectly natural to big up your friends for their accomplishments. There’s always a common refrain online that you should support your friends as much as you support celebrities online. That you should share the content of your actual friends instead of celebs you’ve never met. Whenever I shout out a friend who’s in a Broadway show or a television show or a film, it’s usually because they aren’t the star of the show. They’re probably not going to be mentioned in reviews either. So if I, their friend, can shout them out on a podcast that nearly a million people listen to, that’s not only cool to me, but it’s also… being a good friend.

When I see a response like “we get it, Ira has a friend in every show,” it just makes me think… do you think I’m just name dropping when I mention a friend who I thought killed it at the Tonys? Or is it a foreign concept to you because you don’t actually have any friends and when I mention that I know someone who appeared at the Tonys, I’ve stopped being relatable to you?

To be honest, I’ve never wanted to be… relatable as an artist. And as a Black gay man who wants as many people to read his work as possible, I know that mere relatability isn’t even statistically possible! Relating to an artist too much will have you in the comments of the New Yorker’s Instagram page arguing that writing critically about Taylor Swift buying her masters back (after making a shit ton of money selling re-recordings because she didn’t have said masters) is wrong and that you should just “celebrate her wins.” Relatability makes people demented and those people usually have bad taste!

Celine Nguyen recently quoted Daisy Alito in a post on taste and the culture we consume: “There’s something you get at about why we pay attention to certain things and collect them…that is different than a cynical and algorithmic view of taste…Our desire and attention falls to certain things because of the way that we feel about the person, place or thing that introduces them to us. In that way, taste is a lot more similar to love than it is to education.” Taste should be about falling in love with a subject rather than feeling represented by it — the trap of most popular culture and arguments against criticism. I don’t see myself in everything I love, but I love it because of how it makes me feel.

---

Bravo Rot

Paige DeSorbo is leaving Summer House. Maybe this is a longer post for another time, but… I think she broke Bravo? Hear me out on this. It’s been breaking for quite a bit. Housewives have always been urged to share their personal lives on the show (well, unless you’re Kyle Richards) and get called out for hiding the truth from producers. Paige built a successful brand and rehabilitated Craig Hanover (and Hannah Berner, tbh), all the while telling girls to leave their awful boyfriends, all the while accusing Lindsay Hubbard of making up the fact that Craig was booted from Amanda and Kyle’s wedding! And she got away with it. And now, at the height of her fame, she’s walking away from Bravo. All this from someone who for the majority of their time on Summer House, did not engage much. It’s become the new go-to for people to use Bravo as a stepping stone for their brands. Some, more successful than others. Brynn Whitfield is leaving Real Housewives of New York after contorting herself on camera into so many different lies and schemes will trying to create a brand for herself. It failed miserably. But also, the new RHONY seems beholden to women who won’t share anything about their lives. That’s not fun to watch! There’s a reason Vanderpump Rules crashed and burned once the cast stopped being aspiring celebrities and actually became celebs. Just like Bethenny Frankel before her, young women joining Bravo now are going to attempt the Paige route. And Bravo will suffer for it.

Monique Samuels is returning to Real Housewives of Potomac. Wild. I love it. I hope she stays on Gizelle’s neck all season (I love Gizelle, but she needs a formidable opponent and I don’t think it’s Stacey…).

Rachel Zoe is returning to Bravo, this time for Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. She’s an OG reality TV star. And she came back as she’s in the midst of a bitter divorce. This is how you do it on Bravo!

Also, Drew Sidora was at the end of the couch on Real Housewives of Atlanta’s reunion. When she’s literally everyone’s storyline this season. I’m marching down to Bravo Studios if she’s axed next season, because I only care about her and Angela Oakley rn. In other news, Brit Eady skipped the reunion and also she’s suing Bravo. Yeah, they fucked up not firing her after she made her gun comments. Maybe they deserve it for screwing over Kenya Moore!

As Larsa said in this week’s (excellent) premiere of Real Housewives of Miami: