🍒CHERRYPICKING #002
Lady Gaga wants you to put your paws up through the pain, and Jenny Nicholson just wants to see the show she paid $6000 for.
The theme of this week's articles reminds us of the importance of letting go, whether it's outdated beliefs or failed experiences. This is an especially challenging change to make for those of us with vested interests or who have already internalized these beliefs. Lady Gaga's Chromatica Ball film, the rise of young musical talent, the curated lives of influencers, and the collapse of a high-budget hotel experience all offer lessons in acceptance, resilience, and the courage to move forward even when it seems we’ve already sunken so much into an outdated idea.
Too often though, we find many unwilling to make this shift. We find changing our own thoughts on something to be a rather painful experience, resulting in defensiveness or disengagement.
No one likes finding out that they were wrong.
I hope we all can, in time, find ways to reexamine our own beliefs. I know the phrase “question everything” is often used as a dog whistle for some rather harmful rhetoric, but it is my hope that we are able to check our own egos whenever necessary, leave them at the door, and engage thoughtfully and compassionately with any and all matters of import.
And now, 2,000 words on the Chromatica Ball and a 4hr Youtube video. High-low here guys, I told you this was Low Hanging Fruit.
Stay tuned for more insights and reflections in next week's issue of CHERRYPICKING! 🍒
⚔️ Chromatica Ball Film
They say Lady Gaga uttered the phrase “put your paws up” 45 times during her new Chromatica Ball film on HBO’s streamer, MAX. My heart goes out to anyone’s liver who was using this concert film as a drinking game.
The film, which documents her LA Dodgers Stadium show from September 2022 is yet another big screen-ificiation of our pop girlie’s tours like Beyoncé’s Renaissance or Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.
I first saw this tour myself just a month prior in August of 2022 at Boston’s Fenway Park. It was not lost on me that I was seeing one of the gayest and most inclusive acts in a place which had historically barred me (at least energetically) from entry. For just two hours I felt what every straight man must feel at a Red Sox game with a $14 Bud Light in hand. I felt, for once, like I had every right to exist and be in this space, like it too could belong to me. And I only needed to have a famously five foot two platinum blonde mega-pop star perform her tiny Italian heart out for me to feel that. No wonder she’s doing ads for Nurtec now, where Gaga goes… we follow.
As I watch this new film I am immediately brought back to that newly re-calibrated post-Covid world. A world of, “how are we supposed to act in public now?” and, “what does it mean to exist around others again?" I am also brought back to the depths of lockdowns, to what felt like risking my life to buy Chromatica Oreos at the store, and to listening to Stupid Love ad nauseam, just to, for a moment, feel like I was on a dance floor with queer people again—although at the time, I was dancing alone in my childhood bedroom, crippled with anxiety for a world I felt was destined to destruct.
That’s bound to cause a migraine or two.
That is the world in which Chromatica vibrates for me, and for many who initially engaged with this music during spring of 2020. The album, which most closely follows the storyline of Mother Monster dealing with her chronic pain and the intense public scrutiny that follows musicians of her caliber, is portrayed in affecting dramaturgical fashion in a four-act concert more akin to a stage show than your traditional musical performance.
From a theatrical reading, the opener, Gaga in a brutalist metallic sarcophagus singing her arguably greatest hits like Bad Romance, Just Dance, and Poker Face, foretells what her future of performances may look like— and how confining this fate is for her. As her body continues to deteriorate she will continue to be brought out and made to sing the classics, her ravenous fans and stans requiring more and more, as she is trapped in the constant spectacle of it all. This is the future of fame. How can one person ever hope to find sustainability in this environment?
The show continues with several more powerful allusions. Gaga in a bloody costume reminiscent of her 2010 meat dress performs on an elevated operating table. She consciously recontextualizes this image—a critique at the time of LGBTQIA+ people in the military and how they are just flesh to this country, interweaving it beautifully into how she herself has been used time and time again as a sort of effigetic sacrifice.
The show continues these allegories throughout, playing with a motif of superstardom and pain, of crippling isolation and god-like idolatry. All the while, on dazzling display is her tenacious performance ability, as she spins and belts and plays a piano shaped like a massive tree-brain creature. It is a Gaga show after all.
What Gaga has perhaps always been most interested in is the condition and affliction of fame itself. From her earliest work she has been investigating this topic like it's the January 6th insurrection. In several of the interviews for this film, Gaga appears to note this chapter in her life as both “a conclusion and a new beginning.” Of ending one story, perhaps that of her relationship with fame, pain, drugs, and the mass criticism lauded at her from the early 2010s, and beginning a new story, one where she is the artist the muse, and provocateur once more in the peak of her powers.
Oh…and she’s got a new album on the way. But knowing what we know now, how can one ethically consume this art? Is our own insatiable need for constant output from artists confining them to life on replay?
💿 Cruinniú na nÓg 2024 -The Spark
I came of age in an online where children releasing their own music was considered especially cringe, a phrase we weren’t using much at the time—opting instead for several more cutting remarks I won’t repeat for fear of being canceled. Because, nothing proved our own musical superiority more than dunking on literal children.
One need only look into the virality of Rebecca Black or any of the other Ark Music Factory kids to see the way child internet musicians were received by the general public at the time. Needless to say, it was less than favorable.
In the years since, perhaps the internet has become a kinder place, or perhaps it has simply become a bit more common for young people to upload their content online.
A popular refrain is that “everyone is trying to become a TikTokker nowadays,” and though this dream of superstardom exists in every generation (Hannah Montana, I’m looking at you) it seems to me that you can’t scroll at all these days without running into a child’s video auditioning to become the next… I’d say Justin Beiber but that’s a bit dated, so let’s go with Tate McRae instead. So when I saw the video for The Spark, I figured this was more or less the same thing— carefully constructed outrage-bait smartly packaged in a pop tune that will mostly garner ridicule, but could also launch the next superstar act to participate in the toddler to trainwreck pipeline. Needless to say, I was shocked upon my first listen.
In the long lineage of Sofia Grace, Willow Smith, and Matty B. Raps, the children of Rhyme Island have created a certifiable banger. This song would fit in neatly to any SG Lewis set, and I am half expecting a Charli XCX feature around the 2 minute mark. This song is quite comfortably my song of the summer, and that’s gotta stand for something.
👨❤️💋👨 Whenever I see this Gay influencer’s content I want to die
The Other Two did it first.
When famed gay brother, Cary Dubek, and his boyfriend visit a mutual friend’s home they realize the couple has become what we all fear most of all: relationship influencers. The couple parade about their home showing off their treasured memories like matching pajama sets, getting all covered in paint, and many other clichéd Instagram-worthy moments. Cary is disgusted by what he sees, feeling he has stumbled upon a dark underbelly of our community, meanwhile, his partner sees it as something to aspire towards. It is ultimately the undoing of their relationship.
Though the patina of this kind of content has changed over the years, its tone and tenor has remained largely the same. The content now, which seems hyper-personalized to my own online behaviors, highlights an aspirational lifestyle of two modelesque influencers living their dream lives together in their LA homes that belong in an AD tour. The more things change, the more they stay the same. And yet, with something as simple as an aesthetic refresh and a change of online platform, I am left feeling intense FOMO, forgetting that this is indeed an ad I am watching.
It may go without saying, and yet it begs reiterating,: lifestyle influencers at the end of the day are designed to make you feel bad about what you lack—in order to sell you something. The elusive aspirational life, as it is largely understood, consists of cinematic and romantic moments straight out of an episode of Heartstopper, near-constant trips to islands you’ve never heard of, designer clothing that creates an effortless wardrobe, and a partner who seemingly has no idea of the camera pointed at him.
Your life may not look like this, and it won’t, not until you buy this lip-plumping serum from the TikTok shop using our affiliate link.
We tend to recognize this for what it is years after the fact, and we are able to view the trends that these couples peddled as outdated or overly promotional. Yet while we are in the midst of it, scrolling aimlessly for hours, it is hard to remember that these are carefully constructed video assets to further a brand image, rather than authentic glimpses into someone’s real life.
Real relationships don’t consist of perfect framing, trending songs, and affiliate links. Sometimes they consist of fighting, sometimes they are sexless, and sometimes they are just plain boring. But that wouldn't make a very good video now would it?
How can we deprogram our brains to parse out this content? How can I consume cumulative hours of programming specifically created to make me feel less-than, and still feel good about myself? How can I learn not to want to die whenever I see these perfect people living the life I feel I was promised?
I think the first step is in understanding the systems in place that continue to make us feel these ways. We must understand the ways in which our own attention is being sold for profit-share, and we must also get really really upset about the ways in which we are being robbed of actual fulfillment.
If we can only ever reasonably be expected to interact with things like designing our homes, having a healthy and loving relationship, and anything else these lifestyle posts curate through the screens of our phones, then perhaps it is time to take a look around and ask why does it need to be this way?
Perhaps it is time to aspire to a different, and more attainable, lifestyle.
🚀 Jenny Nicholson and the Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel
There are a few things I identify as squarely Gregg-bait. In other words, if you were to put this under a cardboard box held up with a stick, I would surely be caught—no questions asked. Miss Piggy as a gay Barista in Brooklyn, emotionally unavailable mustached men with bad tattoos, and four-hour video essays on extremely niche internet subjects, these are the things that will one day be my downfall.
Jenny Nicholson is, for those in the know (a phrase here used to mean, siloed into an extremely hyper-specific side of the internet), something of a prophet within this genre. She has unearthed topics ranging from high-budget Easter pageants, to petty craft YouTube channel drama, to 2011’s supernatural drama Beastly. Remember Beastly? There’s an alternate universe where Beastly had the same cultural hold that the Twilight series had, and that might be the timeline I’m trying to get on.
In a world of allegedly shrinking attention spans, with short-form content being king, Nicholson released one her longest and possibly most viral video yet on the spectacular failure of the Disney Star Wars hotel— known by influencers and paid media-spokespeople as Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser.
The video follows Nicholson as she recounts her own troubled experience with the immersive hotel experience. The “experience,” as it were, was a nearly $6,000 money sink dressed up as a LARP (live-action-roleplay) campaign, in which Nicholson and many other disgruntled guests witnessed a lackluster and game-breaking slog of an undertaking. The highlight of this luxury two-night stay was perhaps one 5-minute stunt performance, or a live music performance from a dinner-theater singer, what very little she could see from behind the pole that is.
A fan of Star Wars herself, Nicholson painstakingly “other sides” the entire venture, paying credence to naysayers and espousing her own credentials throughout the video. She is careful to debunk every claim the mega-fans of Star Wars have thrown at her in the lead-up to this video’s drop. She never aims her ire at the employees (in Disney lore known as castmembers) or even the confrontational keyboard warriors themselves. Instead, her problem lies with the alleged money hungry anti-consumer practices of Disney as a corporation.
The fact of the matter is, there’s a reason that this hotel is permanently closed. Nicholson makes a number of salient points throughout the 4-hour epic, perhaps most interestingly the notion of sunken cost fallacy, which prevails within the diehard fanboys of this particular drawn-out IP.
Nicholson is no stranger to backlash for her videos. Frequently the comment section is an exercise in futility and a test of one’s own willingness to be exposed to droves of vitriolic mansplainers. Par for the course, no doubt, for any internet commentator who specializes in IP like My Little Pony, the MCU, and perhaps most damning of all, Star Wars. Par for the course, no doubt, for any woman on the internet. Par for the course for any woman. God, these rewrites are really getting to me.
But why are there so many staunch defenders of this lackluster experience? Why are so many so willing to go to bat for a mega-corporation like Disney? Six thousand dollars is nothing to Disney, but to the same people who are trying to attack Nicholson in the comments section of her video, $6,000 is a very big deal.
Disney is particularly adept at creating this culture. Disney adults are willing to shill for the mouse, say things that fundamentally go against their own best intentions, fight tooth and nail for this monopolistic superpower, and support and even participate in anti-consumer practices all because of what Disney has come to represent.
For the influencers who are placed on priority PR lists, this allows them to create aspirational content and yield higher returns on their own day-in-the-life videos or theme park vlogs. For the fans of Star Wars, this allows them to maintain some sort of hold over an intellectual property which was clearly important to them sometimes from a very formative age. And for men who hate women, this allows them an outlet for some of that pent-up aggression. It is hard to know exactly where the majority of this response comes from. But one thing is for certain, the sunken cost fallacy is at the root of it all.
The sunken cost fallacy suggests that the more you put into something the harder it is to leave it, or in this case to speak out against it. When people craft their entire identities around Disney or Star Wars, when they plan a luxurious $6,000 trip, when they spend hours of their lives defending the actions of a deeply problematic hydra of a corporation, they may find it entirely impossible to shake free of this sunken cost.
To this too, Nicholson offers a surprisingly succinct solution—especially when looking at the utterly mammoth-sized run time for her video. She suggests that no matter how far we have fallen into a sunken cost fallacy, it is never too late to defect.
Thanks for reading this issue of CHERRYPICKING! I can’t wait to continue this journey with all of you and share even more of my favorite things. 🍒
Check out this personal essay on feeling stresed out about the state of the world HERE.
And if you want to catch up on all things CHERRYPICKING check out last week’s issue: CHERRYPICKING #001 | From Cheetah Girls to Sentient Babies.
think u can stop what we do????(