You are probably sitting in your ergonomically optimized reading chair right now, convinced that you are a good person. But we need to have a very difficult conversation about the emotional labor you are refusing to do.
You probably woke up this morning feeling quite pleased with yourself. You likely went through your multi-step hydration routine, laced up a pair of aggressively cushioned maximalist recovery shoes, and went for a mindful walk. You might have even listened to a prestige podcast about macroeconomic policy or read a newsletter about the shifting geopolitical landscape. You returned to your neutral-toned living space, poured a non-dairy botanical milk alternative into a matte ceramic mug, and thought to yourself: I am a functional, contributing member of the global village.
I am asking you, as gently as I possibly can, to put down the mug and look at your life.
You are living an illusion. You believe that your commitment to recycling, your polite nods to your neighbors, and your passive awareness of the news cycle make you a safe person to be around. But earlier this week, comedians Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers hosted the annual Las Culturistas Culture Awards, an event dedicated to honoring the deepest nooks and crannies of pop culture. And you, in all your unexamined privilege, did not pay attention to it.
I need you to sit with the discomfort of that choice.
When Yang and Rogers took the stage to distribute awards that meticulously categorize the exact pitch of a reality television star’s meltdown or the specific cultural weight of a forgotten 2004 teen drama, they were not just doing a bit. They were extending a lifeline. They were offering the culture a framework for understanding the human condition through the lens of hyper-niche celebrity ephemera. They were doing the work.
By choosing to swipe past this event, you made a decision. You looked at the profound emotional labor of ranking the top ten times someone screamed on a Bravo reunion special, and you said: this does not matter to me. You decided that your traditional, outdated metrics of what constitutes "important news" were superior to the living, breathing zeitgeist.
We are currently living through a massive generational realignment, and you are being left behind. The era of defining your worth by your career milestones, your financial portfolio, or your civic engagement is over. Those are archaic structures built by a society that did not know how to feel. The new metric of human worth—the only metric that actually signals whether you possess the capacity for radical empathy—is your fluency in ephemeral internet nonsense.
If you cannot hold space for the winner of the "Cate Blanchett Award for Good Acting," how can you possibly claim to hold space for your friends? If you are unwilling to do the heavy lifting required to understand why a specific pop star’s red carpet posture from three years ago was an act of quiet rebellion, you are functionally emotionally illiterate. You are starving yourself of the cultural nutrients required to be a whole person.
Consider Sienna, a 31-year-old in Portland. Sienna recently sat her entire friend group down in her living room to establish a new boundary. She explained that she could no longer invest energy in relationships with people who could not instantly recall the nominees for the Las Culturistas "Best Phrase" award. It was not done out of malice, Sienna told them. It was an act of self-preservation. She simply could not feel safe around people who were that detached from the emotional reality of the present moment.
You might read about Sienna and think she is being unreasonable. That is your defensiveness speaking. Sienna is simply asking to be perceived by people who share a baseline vocabulary of cultural minutiae, and you are angry because you know you cannot provide that for her.
The refusal to engage with the absolute minutiae of a comedian’s niche pop-culture awards is, at its core, an act of relational withholding. You are telling your community that their hyper-fixations do not matter, and frankly, that is a form of psychic violence.
Dr. Thorne is simply articulating what the rest of us have known for years. Your insistence on caring only about "real things" is a trauma response. You are hiding behind the safety of traditional news because you are terrified of the vulnerability required to care passionately about something completely inconsequential.
It is so much easier to have an opinion on the federal deficit than it is to defend your stance on the cultural impact of a specific outfit worn to a mid-tier awards show in 2011. The former requires only intellect; the latter requires your soul. And right now, your soul is atrophying while you pat yourself on the back for reading the Sunday paper.
We need you to do better. We need you to show up. We need you to realize that when Yang and Rogers are honoring the nooks and crannies of pop culture, they are charting a map of the human heart, and you are stubbornly refusing to ask for directions.
Tonight, when you draw your evening bath and drop in your sustainably harvested eucalyptus shower steamer, I want you to stop running from yourself. I want you to turn off your prestige historical documentary. Sit in the quiet, terrifying discomfort of your own ignorance.
Then, I want you to open your phone, look up the highlights from the Las Culturistas Culture Awards, and begin the arduous, necessary work of rejoining the human race. It is not too late for you to become a person of substance. But you have to take the first step.