Somebody set up a phone.
Before one tear came out, a decision was made about framing.
The angle is slightly above. Always. Because slightly above is the flattering one and everybody knows it. Chin down, eyes up, arm extended, phone held a little high.
That is not a person falling apart. That is a person who has watched other people fall apart on camera and learned the shot.
Go find out what actually happened
That's the whole thing right there.
It's never a death. It's a job that didn't call back. It's a guy she saw for five weeks. It's a friend who left her on read and now we are exploring what that brought up.
There is a woman crying in a Kia right now because somebody at work was short with her in a meeting.
And it's delivered at the same volume, with the same lighting, in the same genre, as an actual catastrophe. There's no scale anymore. Everything is the worst thing that has ever happened to anyone, because being fine is not content.
They're not sad. They're auditioning.
They want to be a main character.
They have watched two thousand hours of people being interesting on a screen and concluded that the way you become interesting is to have something happen to you and then be filmed reacting to it.
So the crying isn't the event. The crying is a performance of an event. It's a person doing the face they've seen work on other people.
And they need you to watch, because if nobody watches, they're just a person sitting in a car in a parking lot, which is what they actually are.
Then comes the second post
This is the tell. This is the one that gives the entire thing away.
Next day, there's a follow-up. "I am so overwhelmed by the response to my last video. I never expected this. Thank you all so much."
There it is.
That was the goal. That was always the goal. The crying was the setup and the gratitude post is the payoff, and now they get to be a person receiving an outpouring, which is a higher rank than a person having a bad week.
And nobody actually going through something has the energy to post twice. Nobody in a real crisis is running a content calendar. If you had the bandwidth for a follow-up, you were fine, and everybody watching knows you were fine.
Struggling is a credential now
That's what changed.
Having a hard time used to be something you got through. Now it's a personality, and it comes with its own vocabulary. Journey. Healing. Holding space. My truth. Doing the work.
You are not doing the work. You are in a car.
And once it's a credential, people go shopping for one. That's why the crises keep getting smaller. When suffering buys status and the supply of real suffering is limited, the definition expands until a curt email qualifies.
Here's what actually gets me
None of it is for the thing that happened.
Every piece of it, the angle, the light, the caption, the hour of day, the follow-up, exists for one purpose, which is to be looked at by strangers and told that you matter.
That's the whole engine. A grown adult who cannot feel like a person unless a number goes up, converting the worst four minutes of their week into content, because the number is the only thing that has ever made them feel real.
And it doesn't work. That's the genuinely bleak part. It has never worked once. The thousand comments come in, the feeling holds for about nine minutes, and then they need another one.
Which means something else is going to have to happen to them.
How to respond to one
- Do not comment. Not one word. Not a heart. The entire thing runs on the comment and you are the one being asked for it.
- Send a text instead. To the actual person. Off the platform. Now it costs you something, which is the whole difference.
- Ask about it in person. "How's that going." Some people will tell you and mean it. Some will be visibly irritated that you moved it offline, and you have your answer.
- Post your own. Badly lit, one take, no caption, from below. Watch the number. Then think about what the number is actually measuring.
- Cry with no phone in the room. Once. On purpose. Find out whether it counted.
Frequently asked questions
Why do people do this?
So that strangers will tell them they matter.
Does it work?
For about nine minutes.
What if something real happened to them?
Then they wouldn't have had time to find the light.
Isn't it good that people are open now?
That isn't openness. Openness is telling one person the truth.
Aren't you being cynical?
Yes.
Is this post doing the same thing?
Probably.
A note on safety
None of this is advice, and if somebody in your life is genuinely in trouble, call them instead of reading a blog about it. We sell merch. We are not qualified to tell you how to feel about your week, your coworker, or the man you saw five times. Do what you want. You were going to.
