being a hater and the overexposure paradigm

- This video is brought to you by Squarespace,  an all-in-one platform for building a brand and  

growing your business online. Hello, my angry  birds. My name is Mina Le. I talk about fashion,  

film, and culture here on this channel. And today,  specifically, we're going to be talking about  

being a hater, the death of criticism, and also  the phenomenon of the people's princess and the  

way that criticism affects female celebrities,  specifically. Okay, so, you know how I usually  

like to start these videos talking about something  that, like, jogged my brain recently in relation  

to the general theme of the video? Well, okay,  so a couple of things. The other day I went to  

lunch with my friends Jack and Jordan, and Jack  was telling me the latest literary goss. So,  

I feel like this is a little niche, but trust me.  Stay with me. It's interesting. So, apparently,  

last month... I dunno why I said apparently as  if I'm, like, calling him a liar or something. I  

looked it up. It's real. This happened last month.  This writer Ann Manov, wrote a scathing review on  

"Bookforum" of this essay collection written by  Lauren Oyler called "No Judgment." Here's a quote  

to give you a sense of it: "'No judgment' was  originally to be called 'Who Cares,' and perhaps  

that title should've been retained. Who cares  really about any of this?" Manov's review went  

pretty viral, in part because it was so scathing  but also because, to give a bit of context,  

Oyler herself rose to prominence in the literary  world a couple years ago for writing a similarly  

negative review of "Trick Mirror," an essay  collection by another literary it girl,  

Jia Tolentino. Eleanor Stern explains exactly why  Oyler's review made such a splash at the time.

- One reason that Lauren Oyler's negative review  of Jia Tolentino's essay collection went, like,  

so viral and got her so much fame  is basically just because nobody was  

writing negative reviews at the time. Like,  especially of popular books, there was just,  

I think, a general sense that it was  sort of in poor taste or in bad form,  

and there was also, I think, a feeling  of scarcity in the world of, like,  

literary criticism. Book advances were shrinking.  You know, there were no more, like, full-time  

professional book critics at publications. There  was just a sense of, like, "why attack each other?  

Why pay people to write negative reviews?"  even if the book is honestly kind of bad.

- I haven't read "Trick Mirror" in full, and  I also haven't read "No Judgment," so I plead  

the Fifth when it comes to taking sides. I have  no side, but I think, regardless of everyone's  

actual writing, I respect both Manov and Oyler  as people who are brave enough, let's say,  

to publish something negative. I think some of  their criticisms did come across as a little too  

harsh. Specifically, like, the "who cares" bit  I read, I felt like that was a little below the  

belt, but I do think that negative reviews, in  general, are important. And lately, I've just  

noticed there's so much fear in the criticism  space, and it's really sad, and it's, like,  

a disservice to the art ecosystem. And you know,  I don't really know how Lauren felt about reading  

this review about her book. I'm sure she didn't  like the review . Whether or not she liked it,  

she allowed herself to become a target of, like,  equally negative reviews because... It's kind of  

like that saying: "Oh, if you can't take it,  then don't dish it." I was gonna say, "If you  

smelled it, dealt it ." That's definitely not  the saying. I think it's "if you can't take it,  

don't dish it" or "don't dish what you can't"...  Or whatever. Because she's someone who is, like,  

unapologetic about the kind of reviews that she  writes. I feel like it's an open invitation for  

people to be the same with her, whether or not  she likes it. I commend her for opening that  

space of criticism. Another thing that happened  or, I guess, another example that got me thinking  

a lot... I love Letterboxd. It's this online  platform where you can log and review movies.  

I use it a lot for logging in movies that I  want to watch in the future on my watch list,  

so if someone gives me a good recommendation,  I'll add it to the list, which, you know,  

is something that I refer to whenever I'm  looking for a new movie. And hopefully,  

I'll get through them all one day, but there's,  like, hundreds of movies on that list, so the  

future will see. But it is a social media platform  in the sense that you can also follow other people  

on that platform, and you can even follow  Emmy Award-winning actress Ayo Edebiri. Yes,  

Ayo does have an account, but I noticed that  she actually stopped logging in movies about a  

month ago, and I don't know if it's just she just  stopped for the month or if she's stopping fully,  

but I wouldn't really be surprised if she stopped  fully, because I also noticed, not to sound like  

a stalker... But in the last couple of months,  her reviews have skewed fairly positive, whereas,  

in the past, she was a little bit more critical  about some of the movies that she didn't like,  

and I don't blame her. I think being in her  position in Hollywood right now means she can't  

risk offending anyone, because she might have to  work with them in the future. I was wondering,  

like, how much of this decision to kind of edit  her Letterboxd in this way was because she's  

afraid of, you know, making enemies, as I said,  or because she just like, you know, feels like  

she doesn't wanna share negativity anymore, which  is totally fine, too. I mean, she's not a critic,  

so she can use her Letterboxd in any way that she  wants. I'm not saying she has a responsibility to  

say something bad about anyone. I think it speaks  volumes that the only controversy Ayo has been  

involved in so far in her career is when her  negative comments about Jennifer Lopez's music  

career from a 2020 podcast interview resurfaced  ahead of her and J.Lo's dual episode on SNL.

- [Ayo] Today, I was actually thinking about  one of my favorite scams of all time because  

J.Lo is hosting, or is performing  at, the Super Bowl halftime show.

- Yes, she is, which is a scam in itself.

- [Ayo] And her whole career is one long scam.

- [Laci] Oh, the longest con. J.Lo can't sing,  

and did ya know that J.Lo  doesn't know that she can't sing?

- [Ayo] She thinks she's on multiple tracks, but  it's not her. I think she, like... Or she thinks  

that she's still good even though, like,  she's not singing for most of these songs.

- And I assume that it was just a very  awkward thing to deal with that situation,  

and Ayo calling J.Lo's career scam was not,  like, the most PR-friendly choice of words,  

but it does make me wonder, like, where we  draw the line between hate and criticism.

- Review was mean and petty and despicable.

- This was all in the line of duty.

- You called me a hippo.

- I think this PR-friendliness,  though, has permeated throughout the  

entire industry in general, and audiences  are also becoming more aware of it. With  

the "Bridgerton" season-three press  tour, for instance, I've seen, like,  

so many people talk about how great PR chemistry  co-stars Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton have,  

which is to say people are enjoying their  banter, they're enjoying the little flirtations,  

but they're also, like, fully clocking the  agenda behind it. In a way, like, I'm really  

happy about that because I think it means that  we're able to sort of see Hollywood less as sheep,  

but I also think that there are definitely,  like, people who are nostalgic for early  

2000s celebrity culture because stars from that  era come across as, like, way more authentic.

- [Paparazzo] Were you out  with Paris tonight, Lindsay?

- [Lindsay] Paris is a .

- We have a lot to discuss for this video. Let's  just dive in. Excuse the backdrop. I'm filming  

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- I never said that.

- We got you saying it-

- Yeah, ya did.

- a second ago.

- Well, Paris is my friend.

- Ever since there's been art, there's been  critics, and ever since there's been critics,  

there's been artists hating on said  critics. It's a beautiful cycle.

- You take this malicious  cowardly shittily written review,  

and you shove that right  the up your wrinkly tight .

- After all, the 18th-century poet Alexander  Pope once said, "Those monsters, critics!"  

This sentiment has followed to the modern day.  "The Ringer" published an article in 2019 called  

"The Great Celebrity War on Criticism," which  documented some recent artist pushback. In the  

article, they mentioned Lizzo's now-deleted tweet  "people who review albums and don't make music  

themselves should be unemployed" in response  to a "Pitchfork" album review. She then, like,  

later walked it back. Also, another tweet that  was included in the article, Ariana Grande's  

deleted tweet, "One day, everybody that works  at all them blogs will realize how unfulfilled  

they are and purposeless what they're doing is.  I can't wait for them to feel lit inside ." Now,  

getting a shady tweet, not the worst thing  that can happen to you. Getting professionally  

blacklisted, that is a real fear, and it happens;  for example, in the late 2000s, former "New York  

Times" fashion critic Cathy Horyn was banned from  Giorgio Armani, Carolina Herrera, Helmut Lang,  

and the Dolce & Gabbana fashion shows because her  criticism was found slanderous. And Robin Givhan,  

the "Washington Post's" fashion critic, lost her  front-row seat at CHANEL after criticizing Karl  

Lagerfeld in 2012. There's many reasons why  criticism gets a bad reputation. A lot of it  

is wrapped up in artist ego, but let's pause,  right, and take a stance with the artists for  

a second. Maybe criticism has actually just gotten  worse and therefore is deserving of less respect.  

Has anyone ever thought about that ? One reason  I say that is because there's a lot of art being  

made, more than ever before, thanks to social  media allowing people to self-publish. There's  

just not enough time to give thoughtful reviews  on literally everything. In an article for "The  

American Scholar," author Phillipa K. Chong  suggests that fewer than 5% of new books get  

any kind of coverage in larger media outlets. A  lot of critics have also sold out, not necessarily  

even selling out to the movie or book they're  reviewing but selling out to the publication that  

they're writing for, and what I mean by that...  Like, selling out might not be the best term.  

I dunno. I love reading reviews, okay? And I've  noticed that a lot of mainstream coverage of TV,  

books, and movies is arranged in the form of  recommendation listicles and plot recaps, and  

even if there is a coherent review, the headline  makes, like, some sweeping statement, like  

"blah-blah-blah is a must-see" or "blah-blah-blah  is a major miss." Christian Lorentzen wrote for  

"Harper's" that the reason we get these kinds of  general clickbait headlines is because writers  

need to attract traffic to the review or to the  website. He writes, "A conscientious reviewer  

admitting either to ambivalence or judgments in  conflict with one another won't travel as quickly  

on social media as an unqualified rave." And as  books editor Arianna Rebolini succinctly put it,  

"are you going to put your time into something  that's not going to share well?" I relate to this  

heavily, by the way. When I publish videos , I  have to make kind of clickbait-adjacent headlines  

or thumbnails because I need people to watch my  videos to click on the videos. So, for instance,  

one of my older videos I titled "Netflix's  Persuasion was a flop." Transparently, okay?  

I found the movie to have a lot of flaws, and I  stand by that. I'm not gonna walk back on that,  

but I do think that the word flop and other,  like, general black-and-white terminology never  

really do a piece of work justice. There's just so  much that goes into a book or a movie, and none of  

that can be summed up in just one word. Ya know,  maybe one of the reasons why critics and myself  

are so desperate to drive traffic to our work is  because of how oversaturated the online review  

industry has become. The internet has basically  made everyone into a reviewer, and again,  

look , I realize how hypocritical I sound because  I've definitely benefited from that. Like, I did  

get a degree in film studies, and I can admit  that my reviews tend to be more fun and casual  

than actually academic, but the fact is that there  are a lot of takes online and we have to lean on,  

like, more-sensationalized headlines to stand out.  And I also notice that around the time I started  

making videos, like, in 2020-2021, there's been  just a general rise in the commentary genre on  

Utah. "On Utah "? On YouTube and TikTok overall.  Don't get me wrong. People have always liked to  

discourse online, okay? In my early internet days,  I would spend a lot of hours every day reading and  

writing metacommentary on Tumblr. I'm proud of  that. Whatever . But I think the pivot to using  

TikTok and YouTube as these new commentary  engines has a lot to do with, one, people's  

increasing comfort in filming video, aided by how  easy it is to edit videos within the TikTok app,  

especially if you don't have clumsy thumbs like  myself, and, two, a lot of social media sites,  

like Facebook, Instagram, and now Substack,  are also trying to pivot to video as well,  

which is making writing a less available medium  to relay your thoughts and then, of course, also,  

reason three: once something is perceived as a  profitable trend, other people want in. If you  

notice there are creators getting hundreds of  thousands of views on a genre of video content,  

you might wanna try that out, too. I'm not saying  this is entirely bad, by the way, but it has made  

the market more oversaturated, which has led to,  I think, a devaluation of professional critics,  

in general, because, like, the sentiment is  "why listen to this person when everyone can  

have an opinion on the internet now?" There  are also websites that specifically encourage  

amateur criticism, for example, Letterboxd,  which I mentioned earlier, and Goodreads,  

which is a book-review site. Both these sites use  a five-star rating system, and okay, personally,  

I don't use the rating feature, which I know  is annoying because I've gotten comments every  

so often about why never rate anything. Hear  me out. I just don't like the subjectivity of  

the star system. Like, a movie that I rated five  stars three years ago wouldn't necessarily rate  

five stars if I watched it again today. And so it  feels weird to me that, if someone's just, like,  

looking at my profile, they can see all the movies  that I've rated five stars but they wouldn't have  

any context on how old I was when I saw the movie,  whether or not someone was kicking my seat in the  

movie theater when I saw it, whether or not I read  reviews beforehand which affected my expectations.  

Sidebar, when I watched "Challengers"; I watched  it opening weekend; I didn't even know it was  

opening weekend. Like, I just picked a random  movie because I hadn't seen a movie in a while,  

and I didn't know anything about it, except from,  like, the trailer that I saw literally months ago.  

I didn't see a recent trailer or anything, and  I loved the movie and I think it's because I  

literally had no expectations. I mean, I also  think that, like, Luca Guadagnino slays, and  

the script was, like, really good and everything,  but I just think that it definitely helped that I  

didn't have other people telling me this movie  was gonna be amazing before I went to go see  

it. I also think that there are some movies that  really resonate with me solely because of my life  

circumstances at the time I watch them. So, for  example, "Aftersun" is one of my favorite movies,  

but I'm very aware that I watched it on the  airplane coming back home after visiting my dad.  

Yeah, I was crying on that airplane all by myself.  It was so tragic. If you haven't seen the movie,  

just know that it's a father-daughter movie  featuring an airport scene. On the flip side,  

you know, I did really enjoy "Past Lives,"  but I've never experienced the sort of, like,  

what-if romantic circumstance that they explore  in the movie. And so I didn't feel as moved as  

my friends who have been in those circumstances.  All this is to say my circumstances don't alter  

whether or not the movie is good but it  alters, like, how emotionally connected I  

am and therefore affects my experience watching  it and therefore my rating, but if you're just  

someone scrolling my page, you wouldn't have  that context. And then I dunno, it makes me  

feel weird that someone would choose whether or  not to watch a movie based on, like, the stars I  

gave it and them not knowing the context, I dunno,  I just don't like that responsibility. In short,  

I don't think a star system can capture all  the nuances of engaging with art. Anyways,  

that was just an aside, but I was reading Jacob  Silverman's 2012 essay "Against Enthusiasm" the  

other day, which is about how social media has  killed literary criticism, and I thought it was  

really interesting. I highly recommend reading  it. One of the points he made is that sites  

like Twitter put you more intimately in contact  with the author, which affects how comfortable  

you feel talking about their work. Silverman  chose author Emma Straub as just an example:  

"Let's say you're assigned a review of Straub's  book, 'Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures.' What if  

you don't like it? Would you be willing to  critique Straub's novel after watching her  

life scroll out on social media over the last  year; indeed, after likely being the recipient  

or admirer of some small word or act of kindness  on Straub's part?" And I think this is so true. I  

think I'm more hesitant to criticize a friend's  work publicly, because I don't want whatever I  

have to say to affect their success, especially  because most of my friends are at the starting  

points of their careers so they don't have  the kind of staying power that a big director,  

like Quentin Tarantino, would have in the face  of negative reviews. And I imagine that people  

who are parasocial towards artists might  feel a similar pressure to be constantly  

uplifting to not mess with that person's bag.  As Chromat-founder Becca McCharen-Tran explains,  

how it works in the fashion industry, "When we  were trying to sell our collection to buyers  

like Nordstrom or whoever, they actually really  did care about reviews." So, over fashion month,  

there are a handful of people on Twitter and  TikTok who complain about how front rows are  

filled with influencers now and, meanwhile,  actual journalists are shoved to the back rows,  

where they can barely see the collection, and I  understand this is really annoying, especially  

because, if you're a journalist, you're actually,  like... You actually need to cover the collection,  

so it is very annoying if you can't fully see it.  But the reason this is happening is because the  

majority of influencers are invited to positively  market the brand. Brands know that any influencer  

they invite is going to gas them up to the moon  and back to their millions of followers, whereas,  

with a journalist, it's more up in the air the  kind of coverage that the brand would get. So,  

you know, given that information, like, who are  you going to prioritize? Silverman also notes  

that social media's liking and favoring system  itself is pretty anti-criticism. He writes, "The  

problem with liking is that it's a critical dead  end, a conversation nonstarter. For every "+1,"  

"this," or "<3" we offer next to someone's fawning  tweet, a feeling is expressed without saying much  

at all." Ultimately, these platforms have led to  a culture of enthusiasm and unconditional support,  

which is, again, why author Lauren Oyler's  critique of "Trick Mirror" went so viral in 2020.

- Um, look.

- Yes?

- Didn't you bring your glasses?

- Criticism also gets a bad reputation, I  think, because a lotta people don't actually  

read professional criticism from professional  critics. Their exposure to criticism is via,  

like, TikTok commentary, and unfortunately,  a lot of TikTok commentary is just not good,  

no shade. And it's just, like, representative  of a larger trend of low media literacy,  

and I know that media literacy is, like, a buzz  term these days, but in case you need a refresher,  

according to dictionary.com, it means "the ability  or skills to critically analyze for accuracy,  

credibility, or evidence of bias the content  created and consumed in various media." But  

unfortunately, like, media literacy is a problem.  2019 Pew research survey results revealed that  

digital media literacy skills are lacking across  all generations across the board, even among Gen  

Z who grew up with technology, Maxine Bisera  reflects on why that is. She writes, for McGill  

University's student paper, "The Bull & Bear,"  "How have we gotten so bad at critically thinking?  

I suspect that it's a function of the sheer amount  of information available these days. There is  

so much content that I really only have time to  skim over the basic premise of a video/article /  

Instagram infographic before I must keep scrolling  and maximize my media consumption. I'm forced to  

sort things into a binary just to quickly make  sense of it. All actions are either good or bad.  

All opinions are either right or wrong." These  social media platforms discourage nuance, and if  

you don't like someone's content, you unfollow or  you block them. Associate professor of information  

studies Alexis Hiniker says, "All of those things  cut off relationships instead of helping people  

repair them or find common ground." Over the past  year, I've noticed a lot of poor media literacy  

when it comes to movie reviews in particular; for  example, there was a lot of online discourse about  

"Dune: Part Two" when it first came out. Some  people were criticizing that the movie was pushing  

a white savior complex, for instance. If you're  unfamiliar with Dune, it's this sci-fi multi-book  

series, but the two movies that were directed  by Denis Villeneuve focus on the first book,  

"Dune," which tells the story of Paul Atreides,  who, after a series of unfortunate events, which  

is, like, an understatement , flees his home and  seeks refuge among these Indigenous nomadic people  

called the Fremen. The Fremen perceive Paul as  this messiah figure who will lead the revolution.  

In the second movie, we see Paul internally  struggle with that responsibility, being tortured  

by visions of mass death if he rises to his fate.  But then he eventually embraces his messiah role,  

which, honestly, made me wanna smack him over the  head when I was watching. It's fine. So, yeah,  

despite Timothee Chalamet's charm and good looks,  we're not supposed to root for Paul. The writer  

of the books, Frank Herbert, has talked about  how Dune is actually a cautionary tale about  

charismatic leaders. In 1979, he said, "The bottom  line of the Dune trilogy is beware of heroes. Much  

better to rely on your own judgment and your  own mistakes." Now, I haven't read the books.  

That's my disclaimer, but for the most part, the  interpretation of Paul as a white savior falls  

pretty flat to me. Maybe somebody out there has a  more compelling argument, but from what I've seen,  

people who have this take are looking at the  movie very superficially. They see Paul as this,  

like, naturally talented chosen one and are  understandably uncomfortable seeing these  

Indigenous Fremen people worship him, but I feel  like that's where the analysis stops. To be fair,  

though, this interpretation has been a problem  since the beginning, and it's actually why Herbert  

ended up writing the sequel, "Dune Messiah," to  emphasize even more that Paul is not a good guy.  

There's even a comparison to Hitler to further  drive home that point. Villeneuve also took  

some creative liberties to make it clear in  his movies as well. So, for instance, Chani,  

who is Fremen and Paul's love interest, is much  more doting towards Paul in the original books,  

but in this new movie, she becomes sick of his  shit, leaves him, and there's an implication that  

she'll come back one day to challenge Paul as a  resistance leader. She is the character that we're  

supposed to be empathizing with. Dune has a lot of  shooters though. It's, like, been a series that's  

been around for decades. And so anytime someone  shared this white savior take, I noticed a ton  

of people jumping on them, but instead of, like,  engaging with these opposing takes, the original  

posters mostly fled the scene, and I can't really  blame them, because the way that online discourse  

functions is just not conducive to understanding,  like, anything; like, for instance, I saw so many  

people stitching this poor girl's video, all of  'em saying virtually the same thing, which I'm  

sure felt like dogpiling in her notifications.  In real life, if you're in a debate, only one  

person at a time would challenge your opinion, but  online, you get jumped by tons of people yelling  

the same thing at you. And so I can understand  wanting to just ignore all of that, which is  

a shame because it doesn't further any kind of  understanding. With that said, in general, I'm  

less interested in people taking the wrong message  away from movies. I believe there are very few  

wrong messages, actually, which is why I'd still  be open to hearing a Dune-white savior take as  

long as it makes sense. It was French philosopher  Roland Barthes who wrote about the death of the  

author, which argues that the meaning of a text is  determined by the reader's interpretation, not the  

author's intention, and it's this idea that, once  you share your work, it no longer only belongs to  

you. And I agree with this theory, so even though  I love reading what writers have to say about  

their work, I also love when, like, directors,  like David Lynch, refuse to ever explain anything.

- Believe it or not, "Eraserhead"  is my most spiritual film.

- Why? Well, elaborate on that-

- No, I won't.

- for a moment.

- And I also love saying that J. K. Rowling  was incorrect about everything when it comes  

to Harry Potter. Like, just because she wrote it  doesn't mean she actually knows better than me,  

and specifically, I remember there was, like,  stuff coming out... I don't know if this is  

just a joke, but I took it seriously, but people  were saying, like, on "Pottermore," apparently,  

she said that wizards can piss themselves  and clean it up with a spell or something,  

like, they didn't need to use bathrooms,  which... Like, put the pen down, please.

- I was into ghosts, but  they're so mainstream now.

- A popular anti-criticism argument I see a  lot is the let-people-enjoy-things argument,  

which is basically the idea that, if you have  nothing nice to say, don't say it. Most people  

who say this, I notice, are fans of popular media,  like Star Wars or Taylor Swift. I mean it makes  

sense why everyone would have a take on Star Wars  because popular media is hegemonic. It's literally  

everywhere. And so it's an easy target for  discourse. It's a much easier target for discourse  

than, say, like, I dunno... "Madame Butterfly"?  I feel like even "Madame Butterfly" is, like,  

pop culture at this point, but you know, as  English professor Joe Darowski says, "Pop culture  

is such a force in American culture that it would  be strange not to talk about it. The sheer number  

of people watching Marvel movies is impressive.  Such movies start to become deeply personal for  

fans through repeated viewing, cosplay, and  so on. Trying to understand why those movies  

are resonating to that degree with audiences is  worthwhile." Highbrow culture, like opera and fine  

art, are less available to the general public,  especially with, like, how Broadway gatekeeps all  

its theater recordings, which drives me crazy, but  apparently, there is a library somewhere, like, in  

the Upper West / Upper East Side that has tapes of  Broadway shows that you can watch in the library.  

I haven't gone all the way up there, because  it's pretty far from where I live. Anyway, I'm  

the problem, I guess. Libraries are a resource.  Please, use them . But you know, on the other  

hand, way more people are able to engage with  pop culture, and that's why pop culture is such  

a good medium for understanding shifting cultural  values and also why a lot of critics love to dig  

their hands into it; for example, "Sex and the  City" was such a revolutionary show in the late  

'90s and early 2000s and still is because it dared  to show women in their 30s having sex and openly  

talking about it. Just for reference to how PG  most shows were prior, six years earlier, in 1992,  

"Seinfeld" aired an episode about self-pleasuring  without ever mentioning the word masturbation.

- My mother caught me.

- Caught ya? Doing what?

- You know, I was alone.

- [Mina] In comparison, vibrators were basically a  

fifth character in the "Sex  and the City" friend group.

- It's a neck-massager.

- No, it's a vibrator.

- And this, like, not only destigmatized the  discussion of female sexuality culturally. It also  

normalized more risque depictions on TV. Also, pop  culture can be good sometimes . While considered  

highbrow now, William Shakespeare actually wrote  plays the common man could enjoy because, in the  

16th century, theaters were relatively affordable.  For just one penny, you could come see a play,  

though you'd have to stand. Something my acting  teacher once told me is that a play is a medium  

of words and film is a medium of images. So, all  the grammatical marks written into the script and  

your vocal ability to project, these are much more  important factors when you're doing a stage play,  

and that's by design because plays were written  so that, even if an audience member is standing  

behind a pillar or has a terrible seat  because that's all they could afford,  

they could still understand the story just from  hearing the words. Theater used to actually be  

a much more democratizing art form. At the same  time, in defense of fans, I'm very aware that a  

lot of the media people hate on is media enjoyed  by mostly teenage girls. In 1992, Lisa A. Lewis  

observed that "fandom is overwhelmingly associated  with adolescent childhood, that is, with a state  

of arrested development or youth-oriented  nostalgia, not mature adulthood; furthermore,  

the fan impulse is presented as feminine." At  the height of the Twilight phenomenon in 2009,  

comedian Skyler Stone created a really weird  unfunny stunt in which he tricked Twilight  

fans into thinking that they were going to see  an early screening of "New Moon," but instead  

of showing them the film, he just, like,  yelled at them about how stupid they were.

- You are not gonna see  "Twilight: New Moon" tonight.

- [Audience Member] Oh no!

- This is a vampire intervention, since you  clearly have no clue what the a vampire is.

- Of course, this phenomenon long preceded  Twilight, long preceded the 1990s. I was  

reading this article about how, in the 1910s,  teenage girls were already being criticized in  

newspapers and magazines for being too invested  in movies and shamelessly wanting to become movie  

stars themselves; for example, in 1914, a movie  patron by the name of Elmer Johnson wrote that  

"the maiden just turned 17, who will sob right out  loud in the show when the heroic actor displayed  

on screen saves the girl from the villain," was  the worst type of picture show pest. This kind  

of framing was also encouraged by the media so,  like, fan publications, such as "Motion Picture  

Magazine" and "Photoplay," prompted spectators  to take notes on theatergoing audiences that  

they would then publish. By 1915, "Photoplay" even  rewarded the best overheard anecdote reported by  

a moviegoing reader with a $5 cash prize. As Diana  Anselmo-Sequeira writes, "Such an editorial choice  

ultimately bolstered the visibility of girls  as preeminent film consumers but simultaneously  

encoded young female spectatorship in unruly  foolishness." And look, the reality was that  

all Americans loved film, regardless of class,  gender, or age. Girl fans were just given more  

opportunities to showcase that affection and given  more visibility because of aforementioned reasons,  

and at the same time, all these men in science,  like Thomas Smith Clouston, Sigmund Freud,  

and G. Stanley Hall, were warning audiences about  teenage-girl-related issues, like hysteria and  

supernatural possessions . And this all culminated  into a culture that was more willing to believe  

that girl fans were a problem. And not that I  think teenage girls even need a logical reason  

to like anything, I do wanna point out that many  girls were drawn to movie stardom because it  

was one of the only vehicles that allowed women  professional success and financial independence;  

for example, in 1916, actress Mary Miles Minter  was introduced as the fairy of filmdom, a star  

who, at 14, was drawing a salary more than that  of a United States senator. And that same year,  

actress Marguerite Clark confessed that, after the  untimely death of her parents, acting allowed her  

to be self-sufficient. She also advised her girl  fans, "Money means so much to a girl. Money, for  

a woman, means 1,000 luxuries that're more vital  to our comfort and enjoyment of life than love."

- It's one career all females have in common,  whether we like it or not, being a woman.

- Speaking of women, though, we've entered this  weird territory now where people, women, women,  

themselves can become oversaturated as if they  were a piece of media. Brendon Holder wrote a  

really great Substack essay earlier this year  called "The People's Princess & The Trap of  

Overexposure." And if you haven't heard the  term people's princess getting Tossed around,  

it's usually used to describe rising stars so  like Ayo Edebiri, Renee Rapp, and Ice Spice, and  

the term was originally used to describe Diana,  Princess of Wales, who was well-liked for her  

authenticity and humbleness, despite being literal  royalty. As Holder writes, "To put it plainly,  

what separates the people's princess from other  it girls is in her name. She's of the people.  

We uplift her because she's one of us. Her rapid  rise is as unlikely as what we could have dared  

to imagine for ourselves, and because we think  so little of ourselves, we view her existence,  

her success, not only as an achievement on behalf  of us but also in spite of us. We claim her,  

hoping her shine will rub off on us: our  upbringing, our perceived limitations." But  

ultimately, the fate of the people's princess is  to one day become overexposed and unrecognizable  

from her once-relatable upbringing, sort of  like Anne Hathaway or Millie Bobby Brown.

- She had a good run in 2023; what I  fear, that 2024 is the year that the  

girls turn their back on Renee Rapp.  I fear she's going to go the way of  

Jennifer Lawrence. I've seen it happen  so many times. Ya love the sass until  

it just gets to be a little bit too  much. And then ya decide to take it.

- Friend of the channel Rayne Fisher-Quann dubbed  the public fallout of these female celebrities as  

"getting woman'd." In an essay for "i-D" in 2022,  she explains the process further: "It starts with  

adoration. She lands starring roles. She writes  hit songs. She goes viral. She's new and young  

and profitable. Then the idolatry begins. Maybe  magazines start selling copies by calling her the  

voice of a generation or the next Marilyn or  Eartha, even though she's barely college-age.  

Maybe they'll label her a feminist icon because  she went to a women's march. Maybe she gets too  

many fans too fast. Either way, she's well on her  way to overexposure. The jokes that people found  

charming six months ago are starting to get old,  and you're being force-fed her face through every  

algorithmic channel your phone can handle. And  wasn't she always kind of annoying anyway? " Look,  

it's very easy for the tide to turn against  someone. I see it time and time again.  

All it takes is, really, one small group of  people to become annoyed before it snowballs  

into a massive smear campaign. P. M. Forni,  a founder of the Civility Initiative at Johns  

Hopkins University, which focuses  on manners and social behavior,  

notes the psychology behind dogpiling: "The  sensation of belonging to a group of like-minded  

people activates the pleasure centers of the  brain, so at a certain point, something like  

what has happened to Miss Hathaway acquired  momentum, and people were willing and eager to  

be part of that momentum." And Jack Goncalo, an  associate professor of organizational behavior,  

adds that a lot of Anne's haters probably didn't  even harbor negative feelings about her but we're  

just following a mob mentality. Psychologists call  this informational social influence. He explains,  

"If the majority has done my thinking for  me, I can move on to something else. People  

don't wanna think." So, to continue using Anne  Hathaway as an example because we're ready here,  

in the early 2010s, it was really popular to be a  Hathaway hater. They were even dubbed Hathahaters,  

which, you know, gives extreme jobless  behavior, in my opinion. Ann Friedman wrote,  

for "The Cut," about what most people's problem  with Anne was at the time: "We simply don't find  

successful perfect women all that likable." This  was an especially of-the-moment thought because,  

at the same time, we were seeing the rise  of imperfect stars, like Jennifer Lawrence,  

and while I think that nobody is perfect and  perceiving someone as perfect is a projection,  

Jennifer Lawrence definitely leaned into this,  like, klutzy, unfiltered part of her personality,  

which, you know, maybe made Anne's poise and grace  more noticeable in comparison, because we love  

to compare women. As Friedman writes of Lawrence,  "She's self-effacing and funny. She seems like an  

excellent party companion, taking just about every  opportunity to mention how many shots she's had:  

before appearing on "Jimmy Kimmel," before  the red carpet, after winning the Oscar for  

Best Actress." And then I came to the Oscars.  I'm sorry. I did a shot before I... Sorry.

- But not even Jennifer Lawrence could keep  the haters away for too long. In the span of  

a few years, she went from being framed as this  authentic, unapologetic cool girl to being framed  

as a pick-me. Ellen Durney writes for "Buzzfeed  News," "When Jennifer fell for a second time,  

at the 2014 Oscars, public opinion quickly  shifted. While her previous mishaps,  

including her first fall, had endeared her to the  public, this incident had the opposite effect. She  

was accused of being calculated, playing up to the  cameras, engineering a viral moment for publicity.  

Critics began questioning whether she was actually  performing a shtick. People online expressed their  

fatigue with her antics." It's honestly just  the Catch-22 of being a woman in the spotlight,  

and Lawrence actually predicted her own downfall  before all this even unfolded. They've removed  

all the "Chelsea Lately" clips from YouTube, which  goes back to my most recent video about how things  

on the internet are just disappearing. Friedman  reported that, in 2012, Lawrence came onto the  

show and talked about seeing her face on magazine  cover in the grocery store. She said, "I was like,  

'I'm going to be that person that everybody hates  because it's like, "Here I am," all the time.'"  

Brendon Holder looks at Zendaya and Taylor  Swift as two opposite sides of the exposure  

spectrum with Zendaya arguably paving the way  for a more sustainable it girl career. You see,  

Zendaya's a pretty private person for the most  part. She, like, only uses social media to promote  

her fashion partnerships or her acting projects.  Holder writes, "Zendaya only walks the red carpet  

when she's up for an award or presenting one. And  then she's gone. It's this in-and-out presence  

that keeps her valuable and scarce to an industry  and fan base that would willingly take more than  

she has to offer." On the "Challengers" press  tour, she mentioned, in an interview, how she  

wouldn't go out with her castmates or even go to  the grocery store, because of her fame. She said,  

"When we were shooting, and I remember you guys  slash everybody was going out and having things,  

I was like, 'I'm not gonna join you, because  I think it might make our night not so fun.'"

- I woulda just been like-

- Maybe you would've felt a different thing.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, no.

- Yeah.

- It's clear she genuinely doesn't want constant  attention, but what ends up happening is that  

she becomes this mysterious enigmatic person that,  while popular, remains underexposed and therefore,  

ironically, more relevant when she does decide  to step into the public sphere. In comparison,  

Taylor Swift has been consistently in the  public eye since she started touring again,  

March 2023. There's been multiple albums, a global  tour, a concert film, award-show appearances,  

a private jet emissions controversy, a variety  of paparazzi ones, and highly reported romantic  

relationships. And while she's probably way richer  because of all this press, I've been seeing more  

and more videos and articles coming out from  people who are getting tired of Taylor and  

starting to turn on her. Overexposure wouldn't be  a problem if women were viewed as something other  

than as consumable objects. I think it's sadly  ironic that Anne Hathaway and Jennifer Lawrence  

have gotten a positive resurgence in the  media lately, mostly because they're, like,  

hot moms now and thus consumable in that regard.  Also, they're, like, spotlight adjacent, sort  

of like Zendaya, in the sense that they're very  choosy about how much they give to the public now,  

which only makes us want more. By the way, this  is not to say that women are above criticism.  

It's like that one tweet: "I do not support all  women. Some of you bitches are very dumb." And  

I know that some of you people are, like,  in the middle of typing comments right now,  

being like, "There's a lot of reasons to dislike  Taylor Swift," like, "Blah-blah-blah-blah." Yes,  

I think there are many valid reasons to dislike  any artist, any celebrity, and I do find it  

critically annoying when someone blames a critic  and calls them, like, misogynist just because  

they didn't like a Taylor Swift album. So that's  not what I'm trying to say at all, okay? Like,  

lemme make that clear. As a last point, I want  to include what Eleanor Stern has said about the  

taking down of women writers in the literary  space that I think is really interesting.

- On the other hand, it kind of disturbs me that  so much of the, like, popular literary criticism  

ecosystem right now is basically people  becoming literary it girls by writing viral  

reviews taking down other literary it girls.  It's basically the literary version of, like,  

Anne Hathaway or Jennifer Lawrence becoming  too popular and then being demoted to being  

unpopular again in this endless cycle,  except, because these people are critics,  

they themselves are becoming famous and  replacing the people they're criticizing.

- And yes, so even though I believe  that negative and positive reviews  

fund a healthy art ecosystem, I also think  it's worth unpacking why women tend to get  

the most backlash and whether or not  all of it is deserved or if there're  

some women in the mix who get the short  end of the stick for just being women.  

Thank you all so much for listening. We've  reached the end of the video. Yeah, I'm also,  

like, super amped-up on coffee right now,  so I feel like I need to keep talking,  

but I really don't need to keep talking.  That's all I have to say. Maybe it's your  

turn to start talking. If you have any opinions  on criticism, on women, on female celebrities,  

on just the idea of, like, having to play nice  in this industry, I would love to hear it;  

otherwise, I hope you have a lovely rest of your  day. And I'll talk to you guys later. Okay, bye.