What began as a debrief about the ongoing, deeply ridiculous moral panic surrounding a number of celebrities this summer morphed into an expansive discussion about the truth of “celebrity,” what it means to be famous, how we distinguish content from art, and why the context-collapse of algorithms is wreaking so much havoc on our brains.

Bonus Reading

“Why Is Everyone Mad at Blake Lively?” by Alex Abad-Santos for Vox

“Blake Lively on Fame, Family, Good Fortune—And Becoming a Glamorous Jewel Thief for Baz Luhrmann” by Andrew Sean Greer for Vogue

“Chappell Roan Confronts the Sickness of Modern Fandom,” by Kelsey McKinney for Defector (the comments on this one are just as interesting as the piece itself!)

“Chappell Roan Doesn’t Owe You Shit,” by Lauren Hough on Badreads

“Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art,” by Ted Chiang for The New Yorker

Time Stamps

2:00 — Deep dive of the source material: Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us

10:00 — Blake Lively enters the CoHo Cinematic Universe

21:20 — What is this online drama with the It Ends With Us film actually about? And what do celebrities owe us, if anything?

29:45 — The difference between celebrities and artists

32:10 — Let’s talk about that extremely terrible interview clip circulating all over the internet right now

37:00 — The medium is the message: how algorithms function as the internet’s dopamine receptor

44:00 — Is Blake Lively filling the Taylor Swift conversation vacuum?

48:20 — Chappell Roan doesn’t owe you shit

53:20 — Why the process of becoming famous necessitates the need to “sell out”

1:07:00 — What is the functional difference between content and art?

1:15:00 — Liberals have moral panics too

1:21:00 — How the moral high ground operates in the internet landscape

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Blake Lively is Content

Diabolical Lies