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Everything and Everyone is Insincere, No-One Believes in Anything
6 years ago · 0 · Explicit
202
So a thing happened. Mel Gibson was on the Graham Norton Show today promoting some crappy family film he's in and it was, as these things tend to be, a pretty innocent and harmless affair. I didn't even watch the show by the way, I just knew he was on it. Go on Twitter and I see #GrahamNorton is trending. Immediately I regret clicking on the link to see what was so funny or 'memeable' about the guests this week because literally every single tweet I read was a deeper, more gut wrenching and painful confirming of my very real fear that we as a society, as a people have completely lost our empathy.
Every tweet was this hyper passive-aggressive self-parody of millenial speak, where random, faceless people tweet things like 'Ewww Mel Gibson is on my screen. Please remove omg.' or 'If problematic was a person: Mel Gibson', 'Hang on, when did Mel Gibson become an acceptable chat show guest again? What on earth is @grahnort thinking?' etc. etc. You get the point.
I don't know why it was this in particular that brought me here but it really bummed me out seeing all of this negative shit. I know he did a bad thing but it just made me think of my own life or people I know who aren't too dissimilar to him. They've said and done bad, even terrible things, and these are people who I care about and love and respect. And it got me thinking, are all of these people commenting just living in a bubble? Like what kind of lives do they lead where no-one fucks up? Where people aren't messy or complicated or weird? Where they don't have problems? The internet just seems obsessed with looking at people as entirely good or entirely bad and that is wrong on so many levels.
It made me think about my dad. An alcoholic who has been violent and dangerous and said some horrific things. But that's a person who I love. That's a person who I would regard as good. Who does good things, who TRIES to be good. And isn't that more important? Why do we just decide that if someone screws up once, that's it for life?
And it made think that people just don't care anymore. No-one's interested in real people anymore, they just like the abstractions of people, the shadows. The celebrity personas etc. They're not interested in all of the flaws and cuts and messes that come along with you. They couldn't give less of a fuck. I'm not saying all of this in the defence of Gibson's or anyone else's behaviour, it's not to argue that those actions are ok or morally right in anyway. It's just an acknowledgement that those things DO happen, and most of the time when things like that happen its because someone is hurting in a really deep and terrible way. But no one cares about that. No-one thinks to ask what would bring a human being to do these things? No one cares.
And the outrage that they spit up is pure illusion. It completely lacks in conviction or sincerity. They're angry at these people who they don't know for actions they don't have context for...I just hate it so much.
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