Yesterday afternoon I received an email from a reader who figured out my email from my Substack which is a thing I guess I’m open to now…
Dear Ms Oxford,
Firstly, I want to thank you for your stories. Sometimes I laugh, and sometimes I cry, and sometimes snot comes out of my nose…
Sooooo, about the Emmys. I watched. It was good. The people up there seemed sincere and genuinely joyful when they won. Clearly one of the biggest nights in their lives for many of them… you can tell.
Sooooo, can you please explain why everyone commenting on their dresses and outfits are total assholes? I don’t get it. I genuinely don’t understand why everyone is so mean and shitty.
Sincerely,
Willamina
Dear Willamina,
I have been on the internet since it was invented, and your question is a good one, because yesterday most of us were reading the Emmys comments the way some people read true crime.
Julia Garner and Florence Pugh presented together. Julia Garner has three Emmys. Three. She was inside the building that exists to give out Emmys, at the ceremony for the Emmys, holding the envelope, and a woman commented “Who are these people?” Willamina, she filed a complaint that two movie stars exist.
A woman in a gorgeous deconstructed tuxedo, a piece of clothing that took a team of humans months to build, got “Do these people have mirrors 😂😂😂” from someone typing on a toilet.
And Selena Gomez, who has been on our screens since she was a child, wore gold and smiled, and 8,033 people liked the comment “Something is different...”
Not a critique. Not even a sentence. An ellipsis with a knife in it.
These comments did not write themselves. Real people, people with jobs and lower back pain and a favorite mug, sat down and did this to strangers in gowns. So behind this paywall I am going to hold every one of them up to the light. The snarks. The face police. The man begging an actress to understand her own show. The “Who?” people, my god, the “Who?” people. I read thousands of them and there are two kinds of humans down there, some of them genuinely cruel, and every single one of them after the same thing. It will be hilarious to you. And hopefully to the woman it’s directed at. But probably not. Jesus Christ.
Rachel Sennott, who made Shiva Baby and Bottoms, and Odessa A’zion, who was just at the Oscars with Marty Supreme, presented together. They star in I Love L.A., a show about vapid Los Angeles people, and the bit was the show. Two vapid girls at a podium, in character, on purpose. There is a difference between a mean joke and cruelty. “My vape and a pack of cigarettes giving a speech” is a joke. Willamina, I laughed. “The two youngest siblings giving a speech at the funeral” is the same thing.
Snark is a 2010 sport, but at least it’s a sport.
And the joke expires.
Tomorrow those women wake up and they are no longer a vape and a pack of cigarettes.
