Hey, Celebrities - Shut Up!

I wish celebrities would learn the art of the French exit. But they can’t, which is why Eva Longoria has announced she no longer lives in America. “I get to escape and go somewhere,” she explained. “Most Americans aren’t so lucky – they’re going to be stuck in this dystopian country.” What’s brought this on, apart from the obvious? “Whether it’s the homelessness or the taxes … it just feels like this chapter in my life is done now.” Great to learn that Eva dislikes both homelessness and taxes. America’s loss of this major political thinker is some other country’s gain – and this highly called-for intervention reminds us why celebrities should speak their brains even more often. If only into a pillow, or an abyss.

As always in these moments of the silly voters making a silly mistake, many stars have pledged to follow her. We’ll see. Either way, celebrities seem totally unaware that these high-handed statements of first-class migration are not the admonishment to the lesser orders that they are meant to be, and may even encourage them.

But then, stars have always been totally unaware of how very little they bring to this particular party. The last few days of the Harris campaign were an increasingly excruciating riot of celebrity bandwagonning. Did the Kamala campaign ask man-born-in-Pennsylvania Richard Gere to make his video for her – or did the actor freelance one out of fear of not having “used his platform”? It was certainly Richard’s most critically misunderstood electoral outing since his address to the Palestinians before their 2005 elections. “Hi, I’m Richard Gere,” that one began, “and I’m speaking for the entire world …”

If anything good were to come out of the wreckage of the Harris campaign, let it be the final death of the idea that showbiz endorsements can help swing elections. They can’t. Not one bit. (...)

Meanwhile, it is easier to leave Twitter than America, as I think Marcus Aurelius once remarked. In the week the Guardian exited X – though not in the French style – you couldn’t move for people informing you they were herding with almost impossible dignity over to Bluesky.

And it does feel slightly hilarious that huge numbers of people who have spent the past decade-plus shrieking about the evils of social media – usually on social media – have been “liberated” from one platform, only to promptly rush and enslave themselves to another. Really? You can see it all stretching ahead of you – fun period, emergence of Blueskyocracy, the first Bluesky cancellation of someone, the exponentially intensifying purity spiral, followed by legacy titles or legacy humans announcing an exit from that one too. It’s all such a predictable timesuck. Bluesky might be the new email.

by Marina Hyde, The Guardian | Read more:

Image: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

[ed. Then there's this, about a Scientific American editor resigning because she'd voiced her true feelings when she wasn't clocked in at work (and then, denying those feelings). Which proved nothing and only provided gleeful fodder for the stupid hoards who rejoice in claiming another scalp.]