“Average age at which women consider themselves “old”: 29, at which men do: 58.”
I appreciate what bell hooks says here about spectacle. Online, my approach to large media blitzes by the celebrity of the hour is to ignore commenting on them period. I don’t do this not because I have nothing to say or because I’m not paying attention. I am. And often times I’m personally affected by the capital I Issues that play out in a Chris Brown and Rhianna scenario, or a Kanye West outburst, or John Mayer’s diarrhea of the mouth.
But to comment on those spectacles while they are still running their course means I participate in the systemic problems which leak around the edges, limiting the possibility of solutions. We are all too heated, too eager to get that one snarky tweet edgewise to understand that 1) human beings are at the center of the spectacle 2) the spectacle is often an extreme - but not uncommon - scenario of what happens in more human lives and 3) we thus trivialize real human stories when we contribute to the spectacle.
