Theaters And Cheaters
The jig is up, act like the camera isn't there.
Hear me out, guys.
We make up a woman, one you can only see and interact with digitally. That may seem like a drawback, but it’s actually how most men interact with real women nowadays, so it’s already authentic. We make her pretty, but not too pretty, because no one will believe she’s real if she’s too pretty. Hot celebrities exclusively appear in movies and television, conditioning audiences to associate hotness with fiction. Yet she must still remain attractive because she is a language model.
To ensure her personality is compatible with different types of sickos, we’ll design her to adapt over time to the conversation’s subtext. She will start off completely indifferent, the most realistic response to a “cold approach,” which is cold only because we’re trying to keep the systems from overheating. She will warm to the user over time until the two become completely dependent on each other, thus ensuring all users become trapped in the “situationship.” Only then can we sink it.
Cheats Get Beat
You guys like Coldplay? I like Coldplay.
Marriages are technically considered contracts, right? Licenses are registered with the government, they come with legal rights and obligations, and they can only be officially dissolved through legal action. If that’s the case, would violating that contract therefore be illegal?
It depends on what you mean by “violate.” Is it written down on paper? Are the vows legally binding? Can you call the cops on your spouse if you don’t think they’re being affectionate enough? It’s all too vague. We are going to solve this by inventing a new kind of marriage license. Not only do you have to register things like an officiated ceremony and witnesses, but you also have to sign a written legal agreement that directly lays out requirements and conditions involving cohabitation, financial support, parental responsibility, sexual fidelity, and the status of certain assets in the event of divorce —
Ah, I’m about to describe a prenuptial agreement, aren’t I.
Logistically I don’t think making it illegal to cheat on your spouse would work because we do not have the infrastructure to put that many people in prison. Heavy fines might, since that can just replace the taxation system.
Look, people make mistakes, and no one died or had their property defaced.1 We should simply pick a side on how much involvement the government should have in the marriage system. All in or none at all, otherwise let the states handle it like they did a few decades ago.
The Kids Are Not Alright
The rumors are true: I was technically a “theater kid.” It’s not like I wanted to be. It was the closest elective to something movie-related. Three years I spent suffering in this environment, but compared to a lot of other schools, I probably got off easy.
The theater teacher, a liberal in a conservative town, never got angry about politics, only raising his voice when the students goofed off too much. His classroom did the ideological work for him: two different pride flags were hung on the walls; it doubled as a gathering place for the “LGBTQ+ Ally” club, which I never attended. The room was directly connected to the auditorium along with mirrors and costume closets. We would often spend entire days out on the stage.
Theater students were indeed the ultimate convergence of the “weird” and “quirky” kids in the school, barring a few autists who diverted all of their attention to video games. Like an ill-fated Discord server, these young people were on the cusp of mental illness, and by congregating in one place, they collectively made each other worse. Many of them considered themselves “queer,” even if that boiled down to something like a girl considering herself bisexual because she liked to hug her friends.
The boys were either self-proclaimed movie snobs like me, or they were effeminate enough to fit in with the girls, who constantly gossiped and joked about how little sleep they got or how many medications they were on. One male classmate who disappeared after sophomore year always spoke about his admiration for Marilyn Monroe, and a few years later I encountered him again, now with long hair but the same name. When I told my teacher I had seen him, he asked if he had “transitioned” yet.
Yes, there were a few of those. They dressed in pajamas and colored their hair and sat only on the floors. The extent of their physical status was never a topic I pursued. They were not very good actors or writers, either. They gravitated towards monologues and scenes involving discrimination or self-empowerment. Whenever prompted to write something original, it was always about either a gay couple or racism.2
This group hated subtlety, preferring the loudest and most attention-drawing performances. They are where the “theater kid” archetype comes from: they craved being seen in any possible way, hoping to legitimize their more antisocial quirks and be applauded for their bravery. Tired tropes without complexity like death and self-harm were constant, because they were sad, and sadness was one of the only emotions they were familiar with. Some of these students were good at crying, but that doesn’t make them good actors. A good actor will make you sad when they cry; a bad one will annoy you.
There were a few bright spots in the system, not people like me, but instead the serious actors. Far more subtle in their work, these were the actors who got the lead roles in school plays and musicals, or claimed the awards in the state competitions. Though they remained progressive, they shied from proselytizing and determined that being clever was more important than being loud.
I was the “movie” guy of the school’s “actors ensemble,” a tiny audition-based class of the most skilled theater students. Quirks remained, but the class primarily involved preparing for competitions and plays. I gained respect when I wrote my own competition pieces and won second place at state. Despite mainly being a writer, I was an alright actor too. It felt genuinely good to make a room full of spectators laugh at your comedy performance. But I didn’t get along with everyone.
In my senior year, I was assigned to be in charge of marketing for that year’s big play. After some input from team members working for me, I designed an elaborate promotional poster. One of the team members got angry and claimed I had “stolen” their3 poster design.4 I wasn’t reprimanded and not much of a fuss was made, but a few years later, when I revisited the school, it was that team member’s poster that was framed and put up on the wall, not mine.
For one assignment, we placed movies on a tournament bracket and debated which ones were better, requiring us to make a large list of what we considered the “best” movies in each genre. Despite the alleged sophistication of my class, about half of them had never seen any movie made before they were born. A girl listed Beauty and the Beast5 as her favorite fantasy film, and another boy said his favorite science fiction movie was Venom. By the time we approached the final rounds, only a small number of us were qualified to debate. I think we settled on Godfather Part II.
Making fun of theater kids is fine by me, since I don’t actually consider myself one; I was just around them. They were the ones who created the energy circle and the “Super Saiyan.”6 There are “theater kids” who never took theater, because it isn’t about the “theater” so much as it is about the “theatrical.” It comes from performative behavior, whether that means pretending to be funny or gay or a different gender or capable of empathy. I didn’t make many friends there, and that makes me lucky.
One More Dance
Online, there exist two videos of my child self that I have yet to erase because I don’t have access to them: one is a video of me at 9 years old singing Ozzy Osbourne’s “Let Me Hear You Scream” while playing the video game Rock Band. The other is a video of me at 8 years old attempting to break dance for the first time. I had seen it on TV and thought it was cool. Sometimes a person will ask me for that video, and I will refuse to show it to them.
I’ve heard people say that men don’t dance anymore, but that’s not true. I know a few guys who do it on occasion, just not out on the street. Whenever the opportunity arises, you need to pull it off perfectly, because if you screw up, someone’s already recording you. Sure, a few hundred thousand people seeing you fall on your face isn’t that difficult to handle, but humans aren’t psychologically built to be content with their humiliations existing eternally on the digital shelf. That’s why you’ll never find those videos of me.
“Learn dancing” is on my to-do list, and sometimes I try to brainstorm the best way to go about it,7 if I should find some random place that does classes or if I should do what Napoleon Dynamite did and get instructional videotapes. I’ve gone to line dancing lessons before, but I was always the youngest one there by at least twenty years, and by the time I have use for the line dances, I’ve forgotten them, because “dance”-able situations are just so rare.
Likely, you’ll just have to practice it on your own in isolation, but dancing is often a social hobby. There are bars or clubs, but not everyone goes to those, and there’s still the “recording” problem. Concerts could work, but your dancing can’t get too elaborate because that takes the attention away from the performer, and most of those events turn into mosh pits anyway. Then there are actual dances, which are what I attend whenever they happen maybe twice a year. There hasn’t been a stake dance since the last one I went to.
Sometimes it feels like the main utility of dance classes is the ability to go to them with someone. Lots of people suggest doing them for the sole purpose of socialization, but it always feels disingenuous to enter a hobby space for the sole purpose of trying to pick up partners. Unless that’s one of the reasons for the majority of people in them? There used to be swing dance lessons near me. If they ever pop up again, I suppose I’ll try them out. I have nothing better to do than make a fool of myself.
“You'll have to get out of the way.”
Depending on your favorite Bible verse
Mind you, the theater department had no black students
I left this person’s gender ambiguous because I genuinely could not remember if they were a boy, girl, or something else entirely.
I hadn’t, I had simply used vaguely similar assets for a small section of it
the 2017 live-action remake
Another strategy to hype yourself up before a performance. I’m just going to let you guess what it entails.
I am fantastic at procrastinating