Let’s watch the Emmys together! I’ll start a chat tomorrow night in the Substack app. The Golden Globes chat had over 2,000 replies — !!! — and was the most fun I’ve had online all year.
Following the Golden Globes whisper almost heard ‘round the world, and speculation of a Selena-Kylie-Timmy feud, Selena Gomez announced she was taking a break from social media. (It is her third favorite thing to do, after complaining about her music career and having bad taste in boyfriends.) “I'm off social for a while. I'm focusing on what really matters,” Gomez posted on Instagram Wednesday. She ran the caption with a photo of her boyfriend, the music producer Benny Blanco, and two unidentified children. The break lasted approximately eighteen hours. She crossed her own picket line to post promo for her cooking show, Selena + Chef.
Forgive me for being glib: celebrities really do be just like us.
Announcing a life change and not sticking to it? Absolutely. Going back on your word? One hundred percent. Saying one thing but doing another? That’s everyone. That’s all of us! That’s life! Most people wait until March to break their new years’ resolutions. Selena Gomez is a trendsetter.
Gomez will take (and break) a social media hiatus for anything. There is no issue too big or small for her. She will take a social media break because she’s “too old” to (in her words, not be) feuding with Hailey Bieber. She will take a social media break because she “[does not] support any of what’s going on.” (And because she “could give two fucks about ‘sides’” regarding racial justice and police violence — I think a social media break followed that one, too.) She will announce her departure from social media over of a breakup (Justin Bieber), because people don’t like her new boyfriend (Benny Blanco), because she got annoyed that “I will never be a meme again” became an instant meme.
I have never announced a social media break because (a) who is checking for me like that and (b) please, I am permanently online, way too online, brain worms online, like I may not see the pearly gates-online. I do not live under the jurisdiction of some pesky screen time push alert. (And c, seriously, we all dip our toes in and out of the cesspool of overshares and FOMO daily.) I wonder how it works. Sometimes I close Twitter and re-open Twitter, almost like I’m expecting to open a different Twitter. Does she put one phone down and pick up another? Does she just … forget? I’ve seen it theorized that she thinks taking a break from social media just means closing the app.1 I think it’s deeper and maybe sillier than that, like she really thinks the surveillance state of Pop Craves and Pop Bases won’t clock every comment she leaves, or every update she shares. How many times does her screen go dark with one of those “you’ve exceeded your time on this app today” and how many times does she click “ignore” or “not now” or “who cares,” or whatever that button is.
On the one hand, Gomez’s obsession with declaring a social media break she doesn’t take only proves how online she really is, and how little power her publicists have over her day to day behavior. I’m sort of reveling in this unpolishedness. She is unpredictable and unhinged and I will be a Selenator until I take my last breath on this earth. There is just no one else like her.
I love Selena Gomez’s social media breaks. I love how local they are, the way one of the most followed people in the world uses Instagram like any regular girl I went to high school with.
Julia Mother Roberts
Martin Luther King Jr. paid the bill for this woman’s hospital birth. She’s “DNA cousins” with Gloria Steinem. All these bitches really are her sons! Julia Roberts this month’s covered British Vogue, and it’s a overdose of glamour. My eyes are drowning in the glamour.
What a moment, what a mood! These are the kind of images to luxuriate in: The big, long hair. The big, wide smile. The big, bold colors. (Julia Roberts is big. It’s the pictures that got small!) She seems glamourly at self-assured in these photos, delighted to lounge and laze. We’ve stumbled upon her, Julia Mother Roberts, and everything about her is just as divine and Movie Star2 as ever.
If you grew up in the ‘90s you were mothered by Julia Roberts and Whitney Houston and Princess Di. (When I was very, very young I somehow thought Julia Roberts and Whitney Houston were the same person — how could not one but two perfect smiles exist.) Leave The World Behind is fine. This shoot is everything.
The Return of Mall Culture
Remember when Rihanna says Diplo makes reggae you’d hear in an airport? Yasiin Bey (fka Mos Def) says Drake makes pop music you’d hear in a mall.
“Drake is pop to me,” Bey told Recho Omondi on The Cutting Room Floor podcast. “In the sense like if I was in Target in Houston, and I heard a Drake song …” He doesn’t finish the sentence. But does he need to! Drake is a loser but we knew that already. (My favorite part of this, fwiw, is the way he says, with a sigh, “It’s likable.”)
At dinner the other night I had a passing thought that mall culture is on its way back. Drake belongs to malls, and to people one drink away from needing to be sent home from the bar, and to boys who have no idea they’re getting lit up in a group chat. It’s the same way Bruno Mars belongs to weddings and Drunk Elephant3 belongs to people who think they know about skincare and Nathan Fielder belongs to boyfriends. That’s just nature.
Dropping Links
I have found a new home for Hannah Bronfman and Brendan Fallis … (Curbed)
Sephora is for the tween girls. (The Cut)
Vulture thories on the Ending of The Curse (Vulture)
I’m so basic but I look forward to this list every year: 52 Places to Go in 2024 (NYT)
Allie Jones on John Mulaney and Olivia Munn’s “red carpet debut” (Gossip Time)
Max Read asks “Is there a Godzilla of 9/11?” (Read Max)
Serious business: Substack has not been proactive enough about de-platforming/banning Nazi accounts, and their “content moderation” principles are disturbingly lax. I signed a group letter in December asking Substack leadership about this, and their response was not encouraging.
I’m researching other options for where this newsletter could live, and the logistics of moving everything over to a new home. If you have a preference, platform recommendation, connect — let me know! I’m a team of one so this won’t happen overnight, but I want to make the transition as smooth as possible. Thank you for your support as I figure this out.
That’s all this week! Thank you for reading. See you tomorrow night in the Hung Up chat for the Emmys 🏆
A friend used to run social for a movie star (a real movie star, not a person in a Netflix movie) and said she’d post photos and captions, but every comment (with all their double spacing and too-many commas) was left by the star herself.
Last week when I saw a diamond stud in Charles Melton’s ear I said [redacted]. On Instagram, I cleaned that comment up a little bit: I went to the movie star star and everyone knew him there!
Why would I trust skincare that looks like a pack of Crayola Silly Scents? And quickly…
Selena is a middle school girl who gets to watch r rated movies that you have to call your mom to get permission to watch and pathologically lies about boys. I’m obsessed! I will never not be in her (admittedly defenseless) corner! Lest we forget this is the woman who gave us who says!!!!
Thank you for your transparency about figuring out how/where to migrate Hung Up. I write a teeny-tiny Substack and am doing similar legwork. Since you're MY Mother Julia Roberts in all ways (how is SHE not a Leo, truly), I'll be closely watching your move.