Big Tech Wants You in Therapy For Life, "F*gs for Hamas" Attack PRIDE Parades, "Groomer" Issue in the NBA Draft, Zach Bryan's New Album Draws Polarizing Reactions (The Five for 07/05/24)
Plus, Mark Wahlberg joins with Downton Abbey album for a cool new thriller, why MTV News shutting down harms society.
Hey, welcome to The Five, a publication about the stories that matter.
Let’s get into Culture & Commentary.
[one]
Gig therapy app Better Help is running an ad shaming people who aren’t currently in therapy as “undatable.”
The ad, currently running on Instagram, went viral after being posted to Reddit.
Woman 1: Love this place, it’s so cute
Woman 2: Ooh, who’s this?
Woman 1: Jacob
Woman 2: Jacob from your date last night? From law school? With the cute Corgi?Woman 1: Yes.
Woman 2: So why are we ignoring Jacob’s texts?
Woman 1: He says he ‘doesn’t do therapy.’”
Woman 2: Hard pass! Red flag!
The ad is part of a culture being pushed by Silocone Valley, not by metal health professsionals, that everyone needs to be in therapy, pretty much all the time.
Nearly 20 years ago, I remember a friend-of-a-friend, a therapist in Naperville, IL (which has a very high median income) telling me that he refused to see patients with no diagnosis to work on…but some therapists wouldn’t abide by that professional ethic.
When therapy was a private practice issue, it was not cool that therapists would take people’s money when they couldn’t help…but now that big tech is involved, it’s becoming an epidemic.
From an article in Evie Magazine, No Not Everyone Needs Therapy:
Every YouTube video I watch harasses me to start my healing journey now. Every podcast I listen to pressures me to open up. I couldn’t even read about the situation in Gaza without BetterHelp telling me they’ve teamed up with the Israeli government to offer 6 months free therapy to those affected by the war!
They’re everywhere. BetterHelp wants me to try weekly video calls and texts with a therapist any time. Talkspace is desperate to give me mental health care from the comfort of my own device. There’s even been a rise in AI therapy bots recently like Wysa and Woebot, promising me a happiness buddy and a mental health ally. It’s an industry worth billions.
I have many problems with these therapy platforms. There’s a lot I could get into, like the use of Silicon Valley tactics or the selling of private data. But my major concern at the moment is that these companies promote and profit from what I see as an unhealthy therapy culture. By which I mean a culture that pathologizes normal distress and presents therapy as the solution to all problems. It’s this very modern vision of mental health that implies that you can achieve a perfect psychological state, that every emotion is diagnosable and solvable with some product or service. And it’s something I see as just another source of pressure on Gen Z. There’s pressure from the beauty industry to have the perfect face. Pressure from social media to have a perfect life. And now pressure from the mental health industry to have a sort of perfect soul.
The ethical lines being crossed here are absolutely disgusting…rather than targeting people who actually need the service, Better Help is pushing to maximize investor ROI by publicly shaming single people into paying up for therapy on an ongoing basis, lest they be unattractive and single forever.
It’s equally disgusting that Meta (parent company of Instagram) is happy to take the advertising money for this. But big tech tends to have the back of big tech.
The only loser is…the consumer, who may not just be out their hard earned money, but may also experience a decline in decision making skills…if they have to run every minor decision by a paid professional.
[two]
Sports stories change too fast for coverage in this publication, and The Five is typically written 2-3 days before publication.
But the story of a top basketball prospect who dropped to the 2nd round of the NBA draft…because of his relationship with his girlfriend and estrangement from his family of origin, has cultural implications that go far beyond basketball.
On Thursday, the Utah Jazz selected Filipowski in the second round, a move that confused experts as the Duke star was projected to be drafted in the first round. NBA analysts reported that teams were reluctant to pick the 6'11" big man due to off-the-court concerns.
According to ESPN's Jonathan Givony, Filipowski's relationship with his longtime girlfriend Caitlin Hutchison raised flags due to their age difference and the athlete separating himself from his family. Filipowski is 20 years old, while Hutchison is reportedly 26.
"NBA teams are talking about the fact that they had question marks about his girlfriend being so much older than him, why was he estranged from his family because of this whole situation," Givony said on an episode of NBA Today. "He apparently doesn't talk to his parents or his brother and It's a very, very odd situation. I personally don't understand why it would cause him to drop like this into the second round."
Shortly after Givony's report, people claiming to be Filipowski's brother and mother added more fuel to the fire by stating Hutchison had been grooming the basketball player and forced him to cut his family off in 2022. Both alleged family members claimed the issue has been ongoing and no one spoke on it for nearly two years.
Filipowski falling to the second round to the Jazz, a team that plays in a state considered the center of cultural influence for Mormonism, has people wondering what's really going on. It also doesn't help that the couple's first picture together was taken during his senior prom in 2022, where Hutchison would have been 24 years old and Filipowski only 19.
Observations:
A). Any relationship between a barely-legal-adult and an older adult who once had power over the younger one…is probably not OK. Legal. Arguably gross. Not OK.
No one cares about the age difference…the issue here is a relationship that started between an adult babysitter and a jr. high kid.
B). Perhaps we should put maximum age limits on prom attendance. What is a COLLEGE GRAD doing in a high school gym with a date?
C). For every NBA team to skip this guy in the first round…they had SERIOUS issues with Filipowski’s girlfriend/family situation.
D). A warning for parents…shut this crap down before you lose your kid. I’m sure his parents and siblings are brokenhearted, but why did they allow him to date mid-twenties adult while in high school?
[three]
Now that PRIDE month is over, the biggest story of June was not anti-vs-pro-gay segments of society clashing, but the LGBT community tearing in half over the Irael/Hamas war.
In St. Louis, the PRIDE parade was sponsored by Boeing, who has a defense contract with Israel. LGBT people blocked the parade, and shut it down for more than a half hour.
In New York City, fights broke out over a similar issues:
And in San Francisco…more of the same, according to the San Francisco Chronicle:
More than 1,000 LGBTQ people and their allies boycotted the SF Pride Parade with an alternative march Sunday afternoon supporting Palestinians and protesting politicians and organizations they accuse of complicity with Israel during its war with Hamas.
Organizers of the “No Pride in Genocide” march, whose sponsors included the Brass Liberation Orchestra and Jewish Voice for Peace, accused Pride Parade organizers of accepting sponsorship from companies, including Amazon, that are “actively involved in the genocide of the people of Gaza,” according to a release ahead of the march.
They also decried the tactic of “pinkwashing,” accusing Israel and its allies of uniting with the LGBTQ community to demonize Palestinians “to deflect from the violence, and in this case ongoing genocide, Israel commits against them.”
I certainly don’t want to portray supporting Hamas (not just Palestinian people, but the militant terrorists, as evidenced by the “F*gs for Hamas” posters above) as something everyone in the LGBT community stands for….it’s safe to assume the vast majority to not.
But for the ones that do…it’s odd that they’re attacking people in their own community interrupting their own festivals…which, at the end of the day, supports this:
[four]
Comedian and commentator Bridget Phetasy has penned an absolutely brilliant, and devasting, essay on being the adult child of divorce…which shows how the attitudes of Boomers in the 80’s are still affecting the world today.
From The Spectator:
Over time, amid continuing dysfunction at home, my grades took a nosedive. I got lost in addiction. So did my husband. We are both lucky we made it out of the chaos alive and not imprisoned, although it took decades. We met in recovery, in our forties. I’m brushing over a lot of misery to get to the point, although I won’t brush over the fact that there was a lot of real, capital-T trauma. But I’m an adult who has come to terms with things that happened in my youth that were out of my control, and I have a good relationship with my parents in spite of all the water under the bridge. Something something something, they did the best they could. I know people who had it much worse. My dad provided for us and didn’t flake on the finances.
But still, when I recall this history, a rage boils up to the surface. Grief for lost potential and what could have been. Anger at how my parents became so obsessed with their new significant others that we became side notes.
And that rage is triggered constantly in adulthood. It’s triggered when they try to be parents now, after they abandoned their duty when it mattered. It’s triggered when they try to give us advice about raising our kid, as if I would take any parenting advice from them, ever. Before I had a kid, I asked people who came from similar backgrounds how they managed to raise great, well-adjusted kids. They always said the same thing: “I just did the opposite of what my parents did.”
The rage is triggered again when my husband and I try to manage for our daughter to see four sets of grandparents who all want a piece of her. Some of them haven’t spoken since they split up and refuse to be in the same room together. I’m not sure what that means for future holidays or recitals or softball games, but I get furious at the idea that I’m still taking care of these boomers emotionally, over thirty years later, and that they still haven’t figured out how to put aside their differences and grievances — which their children have been asked to do for decades — for us.
There are certainly times when divorce is necessary…but in the 80’s, Boomers believed the pop psychologists who told them what kids really needed was happy parents, regardless of the situation.
Decades later, all those flippant divorces are still having a negative impact, both on families and society.
[five]
As always, let’s head into the weekend with a pop culture roundup:
The first images of Denzel Washington and Pedro Pascal (The Last of Us, Game of Thrones) have been released, for the hype train to start for the very odd Gladiator 2 sequel. In theaters this November. I’m still weirded out by the name…
MTV News has been shut down, and more than 460,000 articles have been lost forever. This is a loss for society, as the news outlet provided some vital journalism in the 90’s and early aughts during the early days of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, that now no longer exist online, anywhere. On behalf of younger Gen X and elder Millennials…a moment of silence for Kurt Loader, Gideon Yago and the whole MTV News crew from that era.
To paraphrase my friend and fellow writer Dan Buffa (check him out), “it’s been too long since Mark Wahlberg (Ted, Aurthur the King) played a villain.” The blue collar Boston boy does make a compelling heel turn here as a bad guy, opposite a U.S. Marshall played by Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey, The Gentleman). There’s a third big name in this movie, but I’ve heard from so many people about what a tool is, I won’t link to him.
Catch it 10/17….a trailer this early means the studio is betting big on it.
This trailer transforms quickly. For the first 15 seconds, you think you’re watching the preview for a terrible comedy about psychedelic use…but instead, you find that Maddie Zegler (West Side Story, The Book of Henry) was able to make a connection with her future 39-year-old self, Aubrey Plaza (Parks & Rec, White Lotus), for what appears to be a very sweet coming-of-age film, that probably packs an emotional whollop.
Releasing 09/13…aka this one is aiming for awards season.
Espionage, mystery, scandal and…facewash? This “fictional story based on real events” apparently rips off…a real life Hollywood beauty shop owner who tried to have a rival murdered and went to prison.
The real woman who attempted murder is Big Mad that she’s not getting paid. I mean, on the one hand, yeah. They ripped her off. But on the other…should we incentivize attempted murder with royalties from movies?
In a bizarre twist, the real life events also involved two real people who were portrayed in The Bling Ring, about a group of teenagers in LA who would break into the homes of celebs and rob them.
I can’t think of an Elizabeth Banks (The Hunger Games, The Next Three Days) movie I thought was bad…so although this isn’t up my alley, genre wise, it looks well done enough to pique my interest. Catch it 08/16.
[new music]
Killer Mike makes yet another entry into the evidence book that he may be the best rapper alive at the moment. Looks like the Atlanta native is gearing up for the follow up to Michael, his 2023 Grammy winner.
Zach Bryan’s latest released on the 4th of July, featuring Bruce Springsteen, John Mayer and John Moreland. Some outlets, including Rolling Stone and Variety, are saying the new album is among the country star’s best work…while other outlets are criticizing Bryan for not editing down his song lists and ignoring pop sensibilities.
I haven’t listened enough to form an opinion…but, good or bad, everyone seems to have a reaction to this one.
Until the next one,
-sth