A Jawline Sharp Enough to Cut Glass

Have you been inundated with Matt Rife? 

I don't want to sound like a hater. I think humor is relative and subjective and he is funny and certainly has proven he is successful at it. I'm not here to criticize his actual craft.  I for one never understood when Dane Cook was hot and selling out Madison Square Garden with his schtick.  I don't personally get it, but I'm not the humor police and that's why there are so many options available, right?  Same with Matt Rife.  There is not one standard for being a good comic.  I just happen to not guffaw at his humor as much as just give it a small smirk.  It's interesting observation about being in gay shape? But he's literally already fit so...how much more fit does he perceive gay men to be? Does he go to the gym with like, Mr. World contenders?  In the world I live in he'd be considered very fit.  I'm not crying from the obscurity and absurd premise that gay men are in super shape. I tend to like something either much more absurd or a witty observation taken to its most extreme interpretation. (I literally have watched this one video like, a dozen times because it is such fast paced weird humor I don't even have time to process it before the next gag. I prefer humor where they just throw away the jokes rather than sit and wait for the applause.)  I understand why he's being blasted at me since I'm the right demographic for his act.  He has a charisma to him and a nice smile and I guess millennial women are in love with him and Stanley Tumblers in 2023. Those are the IT things. 

With all that said I don't think it's revolutionary to say I think Matt's success is likely expedited on his whole "aw shucks I used to be ugly now I'm hot" clips as well as his tiktoks about liking older women.  Somehow between that he has repeatedly been held up as some beacon for middle aged women who want to bang a hot dude and perceive that somehow?  This will be the guy.  And he doesn't seem overtly douchey and terrible.  He's aware of his beauty but he isn't entirely insufferable. After all don't we all claim to want a man who makes us laugh?  He's attractive, he's got nice bone structure, he's got a full head of hair...he's got many pluses on his side. Seems like he got some dental work after his Wild N Out days. Hey, why not?  I'd do the exact same thing if I were him. 

As a former hot girl I have zero chance with a man like him and I have no delusions about it. Can I be a little delusional? Absolutely. I think a certain amount of unbound unsubstantiated confidence is incredibly powerful and useful. I have already done that whole dating hot dudes thing and while occasionally fun is mostly over rated.  It's a lot of failure and sometimes misplaced jealousy.  Because when you're young and dumb and full of hormones sometimes you don't realize you're dating someone because in essence you want to BE them.  You envy what they have and the closest you've been able to manage is just general proximity to it. I want to BE hot, confident, powerful and successful but that's actually really hard so I'm settling for being in intimate contact with it and hoping it rubs off.  It happens a lot. We all start off feeling rather insecure in ourselves and what it even means to be an individual so it's nice to have someone you perceive as powerful to guide you on your way to becoming that.  Sounds totally normal to me as a not especially powerful girl trying to work my way up the proverbial ladder.  The reality is you still have to work on yourself and mature hopefully so you grow together.  You don't want to be an albatross weighing the more successful person down. In an ideal world you will grow alongside one another as a couple.  

Dating for me was like being at a car lot and having the ability to pay for a Honda or a BMW with the same amount of money.  Surely I've heard the BMW has more mechanical issues but...let a gal kick some tires and find out for herself how messed up the BMW is.  I can always come back for that Civic later okay? I had an abundance mindset. There would always be more so just keep going. That was all I perceived dating as during my college years.  I was fairly convinced it was a numbers game and eventually for every like, 12 idiot frat guys telling me quaint stories about that time they accidentally drank the wrong beer and ended up passed out cold from rufies I'd have to eventually run into a handsome guy with a soul.  Like, he had to be out there somewhere, right?  That is a totally true story from a Sigma Chi night.  I can't make this stuff up.  Also? Memory like a steel trap.  I don't try very hard it's just easily accessible and right on the surface if I want to recall it. The nature of my memory seems to be "weird" to my husband who insists normal people don't think this same way. I liken it to a big dusty box in the attic. Sometimes to find the thing you want you really have to dig, right?  It's smashed up against the side and under your 5th grade journal. For me it floats up to the surface and I just grab it.  If I want to remember the Alice in Wonderland dress Cathy wore in 2nd grade there's really no way you'll convince me not to. Its just in there, man. I don't remember frat guy because he was in any way exceptional. Beyond looking like Henry Cavill's unshaven less famous baby brother he was bland of personality, it's not that he himself was special. Trust me, he wasn't beyond his handsomeness. However he truly thought telling me, a girl, this tale wouldn't make me terrified of being drugged while standing in his frat house dwarfed by his like, 6'5" self towering over me, obviously much stronger and capable of overwhelming me makes me wonder about his intelligence. Having been that close in proximity to rape drugs does scare me so I did quickly leave that man's side. We remember scary things with greater vividness for the sake of self preservation.  Did I yell at him? Of course not. I politely smiled and laughed and snuck away hoping not to anger him.  The sassy jerk me wanted to tell him off but the actual living me wanted to stay alive and not knocked out cold, assaulted and thrown into a dumpster.  It's all fun and games until you feel the red hot fear of your mortality being taken away. 

Beautiful people don't value beauty in the same way you probably assume. I surely liked looking at a handsome face and all the firm muscled virility associated with it but honestly if your personality sucks it's never going to have legs beyond some placid small talk. Also trying to make myself like someone ugly out of some oddly placed guilt at being superficial didn't work either. Apparently you can't force yourself to like someone.  And beautiful people don't tend to try very hard so you have a bunch of lazy entitled jerks who know women want them and don't really put in effort to woo you.  I know that's a generalized statement but...just fair warning if you suddenly think dating hot younger dudes is any easier it's not.  Especially if you're like a divorced 45 year old woman trying to date a Gen Z?  Yeesh.  It's not liberated per say to take advantage of a younger man. If you turn the tables it's really gross when old dudes take a significantly younger girlfriend.  Don't be creepy.  The more I watch short form content the more it seems to just regurgitate unhealthy behavior reframed as "empowering."  No. If you want to be shitty to men, that's your choice okay? But being rude does not unshackle you from the patriarchy.  It just creates toxicity that you've convinced yourself is justified.  Also? You're just proving to perfectly nice guys that women are cold hearted monsters with unreasonable tendencies. Great job traumatizing a whole new generation of men toward Andrew Tate grifters.  If you anger someone they're not necessarily going to see your points.  There are so few emotions men feel at liberty to tap into that anger and petulant resentment are likely the only ones you'll receive if you don't speak to the issue in a way they can digest.  I've had guys hit on me, me reject them and for them to turn on a dime and insult me because they want the final word. They want to know they hurt you for having hurt them.  Is it childish?  Absolutely, but sometimes we lash out with a knee jerk reaction when our egos are bruised. 

I'm married and kind of uptight so I can't tell you about adventures being a cougar. It's just not in my wheel house. From all outside accounts it sounds pretty fun.  For all my big declarations and brash language I'm a softie and I believe in falling madly in love.  There's an emotional side and a physical.  It's not that difficult to find a body willing to sleep with you but it is hard to find someone who emotionally and mentally checks off all the boxes.  I want it all.  I don't want just one or just the other and when you joke about sleeping with 27 year olds it's something that errs more on physical exploitation rather than a full engagement of mind and body.  I forget why but we were taking about guys being obsessed with certain streamers and paying hot tub streamers to do jumping jacks or whatever and my husband thought it was so ridiculous people pay for that but I think they crave the emotional intimacy of that streamer saying their name or thanking them for the sub. Yes you can just type in words and get pornographic material but people still have emotional needs and seeing a video of stuff isn't going to fulfill that. They want the feeling of someone knowing who they are and caring that they exist.  They want to feel the potential of that cam girl loving them. They want the girlfriend experience without the rejection.  

Hot people hear about how hot they are constantly.  Unless they have literally fallen off the turnip truck, they know how hot they are.  If any man ever slides into my DMs it's always "hey beautiful" and "damn you're hot" but because it's always there it means nothing to me. I think some have been a tad more poetic rhapsodically comparing me to the stars in the sky but sadly they aren't aware of my great disdain for cheesy poetry.  You might as well be asking me about the weather.  I am numb to those things being valuable and meaningful compliments.  It's the same for most people. I appreciate your compliment I guess but I'd take it more seriously if it wasn't simply because you're gambling that maybe being nice to me will increase your chances at landing in my bed.

We want to be seen for more than the most obvious thing.  If I'm a world class tennis player and an overall champion at my sport but everyone says I'm too thick and muscular I want a man who makes me feel small and petite and feminine.  If I'm valedictorian of my class, type A overachiever I already know I'm smart. I want someone to see me for my other attributes like my humor or my musical talent.  And if you're hot you've already heard every single possible compliment about your face or your body so what you really want deep down is someone who likes your actual personality and sees beyond the surface level. I don't mean to be the female version of a pickup artist but we are drawn to people who see our shadow self.  Not the glossy obvious exterior but the version of ourselves we wish to be seen as.  

You would think with age it would be easier and we could just do away with all the game playing about superficiality but in fact I still hate mentioning anything about my current appearance.  I don't mind waxing nostalgic about my former beauty but something about the now is hard. Which is so ridiculous but it's true. I both want the ease that beauty gives me to move through life but not that kind of overt validation. I naively feel I should still be working toward an end goal rather than everything being handed to me.  I still struggle with it all the time. Literally, every day I fight with myself about if I'm being too much.  I thought that somehow with age I'd see through the BS eventually but in fact no. I am every bit as confounded by my pretty privilege as I am annoyed that I'm a beneficiary of it.  I can hate the patriarchal control over my mind and perception of me and my sexuality and yet also not want to stir the pot and thus comply to implicit ideas of conservative dress.  Because intellectually I know nothing about an errant inch of thigh is truly sexual but when men leer at you?  That fear is enough scare you out of being too beautiful and too shiny.  The poppy that gets her head chopped off.   I'd argue I'm a very well adjusted person overall but I'm not saying anything revolutionary when I admit I'm also traumatized by less than kind people in my past and it's hard to be trustful after you've been hurt. Even if you're mature enough to forgive the past you still have fear that it can happen again.  There is no guarantee in life that I will be protected.  There are people in my life who love me but as a whole? Society doesn't care about me and I know it.  I joked with Emily over dinner that if I end up dead there won't be some big protest over my missing body like there would be over like some young blonde cheerleader.  I'm not a person that the world cares about like they cared about Gabby Petito.  I'm like the thousands of indigenous girls gone missing no one bats an eye over.  How I managed to make that a joke I don't know. Now that I repeat myself it seems incredibly macabre.  I swear the delivery was funny at the time and we laughed about it because sometimes things are so weirdly bleak that your body has no idea what else to do but laugh. Life is so dumb we can either cry or laugh and sometimes it just feels good to laugh in the face of bad things.  

Unlike Matt Rife I was hideous for a while and eventually slowly glowed up. Don't try to make me feel good. I don't want false narratives about how I wasn't that bad. No, I am aware of what I looked like.  My own mother was less than impressed by my looks.  It's okay.  If you think Western Beauty standards are toxic you don't know how utterly nonsensical Eastern Beauty standards are and I comply with neither.  I never looked like a typical sorority girl nor did I smolder as a pop idol like Christina Aguilera in the Dirty music video all oddly greasy and in ass less chaps.  I was just a cute girl with long limbs and dark hair.  But guys actually like that?  The wide eyed cute ingenue type, I mean.  The Zoey Deschanel manic pixie dream girl.  It seems adorable but not intimidating or especially challenging.  Girl next door. 

Guys may covet a smoldering Kim Kardashian type but they also kind of talk her down and diminish her and call her names because they want to "put her in her place." They'd often see her as this powerful successful person and their insecurities about themselves will manifest as cruelty because if they can't be billionaire multi hyphenates too they will slowly chip at that woman's confidence so she doesn't feel she could do better than him. What we covet and what we actually end up with can vary significantly especially with men who feel an obligation to be the most successful and bring the most to the table. And it's not just men, the hatred toward femininity and the internalized misogyny led us all into really reductive ideas about what a good woman was.  I don't even like the Kardashians but I don't approve of not like other girls cattiness nor beta male behavior that wrecks someone's self worth and mental stability.  We should be allowed to express ourselves and not be thin sliced as whores.  

Younger guys can like older women.  That's totally valid.  I'm not judging anyone who is into it but Matt Rife dated Kate Beckinsale.  The Kate Beckinsale of such movies as Pearl Harbor and Serendipity.  When he says he likes an older woman what he means is a unicorn kind of stunning woman who still looks 25 who is also coincidentally hitting her sexual prime. The art you make doesn't always have to be a one for one representation of your actual life. You can over exaggerate things for the sake of creating a story your audience wants to hear. Is it relatable to date a former blockbuster movie star? No. So you glaze right over it.  We all want to be relatable. I liked Jim Gaffigan a few years back, but do I genuinely think he eats Hot Pockets? No. He had like one once before when he was a bachelor and he's a millionaire so he's never had to have one again.  He was talking about his wife's obsession with organic food in his book "Dad is Fat", so yeah I don't believe truly eating nonsense food is likely a normal element of his life but because it's relatable stick it in the routine. It's fun because we can all comprehend it.    

I don't claim to be some amazing artist. I am not. I make sort of cute hats and blankets and shawls. I make mediocre paintings. But I pick up and put down almost every creative thing. I dabble because I like it.  I'm not that good. I just like art for arts sake. Recently I was a subject for my cousin who has been taking photography up and got herself a DSLR. I have also often believed myself a photographer because how great do you feel taking a really stunning portrait?  But anyway, she is actually trying and asked for people to be her subjects and like anything I do, I have this overwhelming desire to commit.  I cannot reasonably half ass it, I must dive in because I want it to be as great as we can manage.  I prepare the outfit, I shop for accessories, I spend at least an hour on my makeup, I layer leggings and rain boots on underneath my gown because I'm a baby and I'm scared I'll be cold and nibbled up by bugs. I want to be a professional but I also don't want to be covered in ticks. I want to be prepared and ready to rock and confident enough to just dive in and do it with gusto.  Not nervous and scared of getting lyme disease. 

When you say all the details it's not glamorous at all.  It's cold. I'm shivering because naturally it's morning.  I'm wearing big rubber boots and trying not to trip as I run in a dress that keeps getting tangled because I'm not anywhere vaguely paved. It's a weird thing to do plus it's uncomfortable and chilly and I probably am going to have to deal with dirt all over my dress later if not little tears from the rough grass biting into the material.

However for the art? You endure some discomfort because you have to trust your partners vision.  In this case my cousin's vision that this is some heavenly field and I'm living some romantic vision of being a woodland nymph dancing to the sound of the wind speaking my name like an errant lover calling me home.  It's really an overgrown field at a weird industrial park intersection and trailer truck guys are staring at me being insane levels of faux elated about jumping around, spinning, running because it's not windy at all and I'm creating motion and dynamic movement in the picture.  Talk about pressure to perform.  But if you don't know you simply assume it's easy and glamorous and I just wake up like that, she took two snaps and we were done.  Um...no. No one wakes up like that. This is all so very much effort. Literally an hour spent in a cold field huffing and puffing while unclenching my jaw levels of effort.

I'm honestly not trying to neg myself; I'm just trying to give context.   

As a consummate performer? I know other performers. I know it's all work and effort and preparation for like 2 seconds of payoff. And the preparation, the practice and the work you've put in makes it seem effortless. The irony is the more effort you put in the more effortless it will appear so people can tend to assume it's natural and you were just inordinately blessed. They don't give you any props for the labor. 

It's a beautiful picture. Objectively my eyes like it. I'm glad I had a part in making something beautiful because...it speaks to my heart I guess.  I love creating something amazing via team work. It takes more than one of us right? It's a collaborative process. I'd never be able to do it on my own. She'd never be able to do it on her own. So it's a marriage of everything coming together just right.  That's what's so cool about artistic endeavors but I actually do not perceive that I myself am beautiful despite seeing a beautiful picture where I am ostensibly the subject matter. It's like drawing a bowl of fruit. I don't really have to see the apples as magnificent to appreciate the end result is still pleasing to my eyes.  Humble normal things can seem beautiful when framed and posed correctly. That's how I feel about myself.  I'm not exactly hideous but it's all subjective and because it's subjective there's no absolute truth.  If framed, styled, and color adjusted properly even a suburban 40 year old mother of two can be stunning because lots of things have innate grace and beauty. Also I'm in the art but I technically did not make it. I take direction well and I like being overly prepared but it's someone else's art.  If another photographer shot me I may have looked very different because they would see other elements and adjusted the exposure differently. They'd have different angles depending on how tall they are. They'd direct me differently and thus the tone may have been less ethereal and more broody and they'd ask me to rub dirt on my face and tease up my hair more. Art is weird like that but it's easier to make it when you have a willing partner in crime.  Its deeply difficult to make my children pose because they don't see why that's valuable.  I don't tend to post pictures of myself because ironically too much positive feedback about appearance makes me cringe a little.  I don't know how to combat this but I think it's some odd body response to tall poppy syndrome.  If you ignore me maybe I'll be forgotten and no one will try to manhandle, belittle, objectify or judge me. If I spotlight myself I then must endure both positive and negative reprocussions of this attention and sometimes I'm just too sensitive to take it all on.

You can be in the art and feel fully removed from it.  That's my point.  I've meandered around the point but that's my point.  Matt Rife's art is inexplicably woven in with him the person because he's delivering it. He is the face of it. He is the vessel for the comedy but he himself is a person and it can be an entirely different thing than what you see on stage.  The persona can be totally separate from the real person crafting the art.  Conversely what if you hate the art? Does that mean you hate the person? Does it go both ways? If I had ugly pictures would you not like me as much? If he was not as attractive would you even like his stand-up? 

In an attention economy being attractive is key.  From how I understand tiktok they also push attractive people at the forefront, which explains the popularity of many of those girls who seem to have the personality of dry white toast who dance oddly robotically.  We just like beauty.   Me too. I follow a few local photographers and honestly?  I just glaze over the posts of less than ideal families that don't fit the definition of conventional straight sized hetero normative beauty with beautiful full coiffed hair. I love beautiful full bouncy shiny heads of hair. I shouldn't!  I should look at the normal people as I would any attractive subject...but I don't because I am brainwashed.  I want to see beautiful things.  The world is dark and scary and I want to see something fluffy and entertaining with glorious Rapunzel like hair because it seems youthful and healthy. The algorithm understands human nature even better than we do sometimes so it forces the beauty in our eyes so we are temporarily sated.   I'm not dumb, I won't bother disagreeing that it works to keep people scrolling.  I too am beholden to the black mirror.  It's like being hungry and someone handing you a huge blob of cotton candy. It looks like it'll be amazing but for all the ostentatious size it's empty and fleeting.  You're still hungry because that treat wasn't substantial.  It's just a treat. It wasn't meant to be your whole meal but we've been convinced maybe it can be if we consume enough of it.  

I don't want to be a mindless consumer but neither do I want to be a foraging homesteader living off grid.  I'm kind of in that demographic because I am a middle aged, crafting, canning, anti-establishment leaning female presenting person but I need society.  I am a terrible gardener.  I love fashion and completely aesthetic minded heels that hurt my feet.  I am not made for digging in the dirt all day and boiling things for canning vegetables later.  I do not have the heart to raise chickens to turn around and butcher them.  It literally costs like a dollar for a can of tomatoes. You're telling me you want to devote time, energy, water, fertilizer, weeding supplies, insecticides and all the tools of jars, lids, rings, pectin...etc. to save a few measly jars of tomatoes?  Good for you.  It's very honorable work but it's 2023 and the energy input to output just doesn't make any sense.  You are literally just wasting carbon emissions buying all this extra stuff for the image of being wholesome.  You are forfeiting a certain level of freedom as well because you are perpetually tied to this land and watering and caring for your creatures. That kind of freedom can also feel rather limiting when you just want to take a week vacay and the cows still need to be taken to graze in the pasture and little Petunia needs to be taken to the vet. Surely the imagery of being self sufficient sounds great, that's the point of most imagery. It's creating a specific narrative so it seems great. No one wants to see pictures of dirt on my boots, calluses on my hands and weeds in my hair, okay?  We don't really want to see all the dirty behind the scenes like how awful a farm smells. We think we do. We perceive that we want to know all the nitty gritty, but no.  We want pretty people problems like on reality tv.  The idea that an aphid invasion or severe drought could bankrupt people and put them in poverty is not what we actually wish to see. We dream of some Utopian version of the world that doesn't exist. All the peaceful unconnected romanticism of the past minus all the hard work, labor and poverty.  

We want to see a hot guy that we perceive is nice tell B level jokes that are not overtly offensive so we can feel okay about continuing to support him.  Wow. I wrote that thinking about Dave Chappelle and surprisingly the bar has been put so low. Dave Chappelle was so popular when I was in college.  All the dude bros made reference to Chappelle Show.  I know because I would hang out with them and they all made the same references. And by references I mean they'd randomly yell a line from a skit like "Blouses!" and then all of their buddies would laugh as though Johnny came up with that joke and he's a MF-ing genius. I wandered somehow among groups of people and almost all the bro groups were like this. This was the epitome of millennial humor. From the engineering majors to the psych majors this was just apparently the normal way white cis hetero guys communicated to each other. We're edgy but like...not really that edgy because we didn't form a single unique thought on our own.  In the current times? Dave's humor is not the same as it was in 2004, okay?  Whatever else you want to say and whatever commentary you have of him as a person?  I am not here to bash or be judgmental because I'm not the ultimate arbiter of truth. Again, art is subjective and people are allowed to evolve and change over time.  But to me it has not been laugh out loud funny, it's been observational yes, but it's not the same kind of snappy absurdity that made him particularly beloved in the early aughts.  He is much more serious and dark and severe and it's lost that effervescence that it used to have.  The undercurrent of mirth where he is in on the joke and doesn't take it personally has left the building.  It's just so serious now that I don't understand it as comedy. I just perceive it as a grumpy old man trying to lecture me because like a war vet with PTSD he thinks I care about his trauma and life lessons.  I suppose that can be entertainment?  But when you call it comedy? I will feel let down because I had different expectation in place.  I know everyone's yelling about cancel culture but that's just a dog whistle. If it's not laugh out loud funny and you're mad people dare to push back the easiest way to shut down any argument is saying you're the victim of this nebulous cancel culture boogie man.  I simply chose not to patronize your work anymore.  In a capitalistic society our dollars and eyeballs are currency, right? Free market and all that.  If no one wants to listen anymore to you complain then really? Get better material. 

Do you remember in Friends when Monica was dating Fun Bobby and it turns out Fun Bobby is an alcoholic?  She dates this Sober Bobby and he's a whole other person now after this journey and he's not fun.  The person that she liked was fun and silly and the life of the party and now because of what he's been through he's just flat.  Understandably he should be sober and he should be focused on his well being over just being a clown for the gang to hang out with, but because he's so different they eventually break up.  We're all allowed to evolve, but sometimes in the process we stop being Fun Bobby and the world still wants us to be Fun Bobby anyway.  Dave is allowed to be Dave 2.0 if that's what he needs to be mentally secure after his big mental break down after like season 2 of his show, but like Monica we don't owe it to anyone to stay out of some weirdly misplaced obligation to nostalgia. That's not cancel culture, it's just moving on.  I don't want to beat a dead horse but Louis C.K got cancelled a few years back, remember? And he recently won a Grammy. Was it huge front page news? No. But he went back and kept working. He went back on tour, he pounded the pavement again. In entertainment you're only as cancelled as your next big project.  You can complain and paint yourself the victim or you can do the work and push forward.  It's hard for me to feel bad for literal multimillionaires who scream they're cancelled. No you're not. You have the means to keep going and creating and you have connections and friends who will assist you.  The problem is the richer you are the further and further out of touch you become to the people who originally adored you. 

I'm terrified of any vague form of popularity.  I also hate overt commercialization because it feeds unhealthy cycles of consumerism and wastefulness.  I don't want you to buy any of my merch. Save the Earth in small sustainable ways. You don't need another hoodie with some dumb saying no one else understands anyway. Also maybe with men they feel safer?  I am terrified of stalkers.  I just feel like anyone who has or will form a strong para-social relationship with me is likely a danger to my safety and if I depend on that para-social relationship to sustain my streaming or whatever I'm beholden to a large number of people whom I may ultimately resent.  Because who says you even like your fans?  I would hope I'd like them but given my overall track record of eventually being disappointed by most women and their internalized misogyny, victim complex and not like other girls posturing, I don't think it's going to go very well for me. I want so badly to be friends with women and the difficulty tends to  be if they always perceive everyone is out to take what they have as though life is a zero sum game.  And men? Geez there's not enough time to list my disappointments in the men left in my wake.  You can like my art and never know me.  That's the odd thing about the modern age.  Even if you don't think you're creating a product you end up being your own product.  I'm the CEO of Kelly DB, Inc. isn't that crazy? I am my brand.  My face is my brand.  Even if I wasn't any kind of creative, simply a cog in the wheel of late stage capitalism means having a LinkedIn account and makes me my own brand and aware that my whole image is part of how people will judge me.  

Para-social relationships are so weird in a modern age where we live online and spend hours consuming content from people whom we assume we love because they create content we like.  I like lots of content creators but I don't want to marry any of them. Most artistic types are kind of a mess. Dating them must be a nightmare of ego and trauma. I feel odd about twitch streamers with crazed fans who watch like 8 hour streams of them 4x a week.  That's more time than I spend with my own family if you add it all together.  They feel like these streamers are their lifeline.  They spend money on subscriptions and emojis and tips.  For the lady streamers people go as far as making deep fakes of them. That's terrifying. 

I'm not so prudish that a boob scares me but I feel like my body is my own and if you start playing Mr. Potato Head with me and slapping my face on a porn stars body that is disturbing because you've taken my autonomy away.  I didn't make any money from you objectifying me and I didn't consent to it's distribution so it's deeply violating. If you're in the drivers seat and you've made a decision to go into sex work, it's a whole other thing. Perhaps you didn't make the best decision, but you made it for yourself.  If I never actively made that decision and someone did it for me I'd be spitting nails. The anger would be palpable.  Being reduced down to a pile of meat you feel no qualms about using for your own disgusting fantasy is a weird part of fame I don’t think I would ever reconcile with and it's certainly not something most people think of. Taking away someone's choice is an odd side effect of this perception we are not real people who deserve any respect nor care and everyone but you is a NPC.  

If you're even less in touch than me, a NPC is a character in a video game that is not playable but there to add to the atmosphere that the online world is more complex and colorful.  I think philosophically speaking that is referred to as solipsism, but the hip kids use computer game terms so I figure I'd pretend to be relatable. 

Taken to its extreme solipsism is to believe the world exists merely because you exist and you have believed it into being.  Obviously any of these ideas will have variation in extremity but in essence it is "I think therefore I am." You obviously exist because you are aware and in your body doing the thinking whereas you feel nobody else is necessarily as real as you because you cannot know their experience.  They are thus less real.  Perhaps they aren't real at all beyond their relationship with you.  When you live in this "player one" mentality it's easy to see everyone else is just a vehicle for your own use/pleasure/manipulation/winning. It's an odd idea to me since I was raised by parents with a more collectivist rather than individualistic mindset but knowing people even have the capacity to be so single-minded gives me clarity to the "whys" that had always seemed irrational to me otherwise.  Why would you treat someone like that? Oh, because you don't perceive their feelings and experiences are as relevant and important as your own.  

How I went from discussing a handsome man to philosophical concepts is funny even to me and I'm the one doing it.  I try so hard to talk about interesting but light topics but then I dive right off the deep end. Are we even real? Existentialism! We believe in nothing, Lebowski! I'll stop before I start truly ruminating on the meaning of life and spiraling.  We don't need to be so cerebral about everything.  Enjoy Matt Rifes's face. I'm sure as an entertainer he's loving all the free promo that's going around.