4 Cool Things Ruined By the People Who Love Them

There are some things–movies, cities, music, etc–that are pretty cool. They’re enjoyable, interesting, and have a little something in them for everyone. Sadly, though, some of these cool things get co-opted by a rabid, irrational, grating group of fans that squeeze every last drop of enjoyment out of them for the rest of us. Do you like thirty-minute tirades about cultural fads or events that you only somewhat care about? Well, then you’ll love these things! Enjoy…but I mean really enjoy this article, man, you know?

1. The French New Wave– Ohhhh myyyyy godddd you guys, the French New Wave. Look at these films. Look at how moody and surreal and sad and colorless they are. What’s that? Of course I don’t speak French, all the better! With the subtitles on, I can take stills from the movie where a man is sitting alone, smoking at a cafe, and the caption just reads “Life is meaningless.” I’ll be Tumblr famous in mere hours! You just wouldn’t get these films, man. You just…you can’t! It’s about life, and cheating on your lover, and laying across an unmade bed like a broken ragdoll and blowing smoke rings around your ex husband’s sister’s live-in boyfriend’s naked body after a sweaty roll in the hay. And Anna Karina, don’t even get me started on Anna Karina! I could look at pictures of her looking sad for the rest of my life! Look at how well-applied her eyeliner is and how many cigarettes she can smoke while looking out the window–that’s talent you just can’t teach! Man, you’ll just never understand the French New Wave. I guess you should just keep watching Tyler Perry movies and eating Kentucky Fried Chicken like the rest of America. Neanderthals.

2. Harry Potter– Did you hear JK Rowling just announced an obscure, irrelevant-to-the-overall-story fact about one of the books to appease the hoardes of rabid fans clamoring at her front door with pitchforks? Did you hear it?! Well I’m going to talk about it non stop for the next two weeks, until the new trailer for the last movie comes out and I can watch it on loop in my room with the curtains shut as I touch myself to fanfic about Ron and Malfoy falling in love. I know these are children’s books, but what does that even mean?! There is a child inside all of us, and these books speak to that child in Parseltongue! How could you possibly expect me to survive my soul-crushing, dead-end job or the classrooms full of barbaric students who don’t even know which House they’d be sorted into without my fantasy world to escape to at night?! You like Harry Potter? You LIKE Harry Potter?! No, you do not like it when the face of God is turning towards you and smiling as he tenderly hands you a wand. You love it. You love it so much you spend hours making GIFs and writing poetry and crying in your bedroom and secretly dressing up like Hermione and memorizing fake spells to APPRECIATE IT. You’re such a Muggle, God, I cannot even believe how much of a fucking Muggle you are.

3. New York– Woke up this morning, took a drag off my Parliament, and looked out the grimy window of my 100-square-foot apartment. Saw a homeless man peeing on a schoolchild. Cool, I thought, looking further down the alley with a strangely complacent ennui, cool.

I briefly thought of scolding him, of tampering with the situation to slow it down to my pace, but then I thought—I can’t. I wouldn’t even if I could. This is My City’s pace, this is Her life, I’m just standing by it, watching it, taking it in. I’m just smoking my cigarette, letting Her pass over me like the sooty clouds left behind after the M13 bus. I would never want to change Her, no matter how hard it was when She left me without cab fare, stumbling and vomiting across the Brooklyn Bridge on the one night I made the foolish mistake of leaving my borough. My City will do that to you, and if you aren’t strong enough to handle Her, She’ll chew you up and spit you right out. You just wouldn’t get it–the bodegas, the thin pizzas, the food trucks, the heinous street fashion, the cool underground things you will never be a part of–it’s beyond your borders, man. You could never handle a city as glamorous/ trashy/ beautiful/ expensive/ original/ terrifying/ glittery/ urine-soaked/ brutal/ sexy/ dead behind the eyes as She is. Get out.

4. Fashion– I don’t just love fashion, I live fashion–and any other hyperbolic cliche about how important it is to me you can imagine. That dress you’re wearing–where did you get it? Oh. Okay. Yeah, I guess that store is okay. But, you know, it’s kind of cheap. But, like, not cheap in the good way. Not, like, 2 dollars at a consignment shop from the bottom of a cardboard box that someone was about to throw out. It’s, like, Forever 21 cheap. Is that a floral jumper? I think I just choked on my own vomit. Ugh, it’s like these homeless people have never heard of the Sartorialist–if they’re going to go for the destroyed denim look, they could at least pair it with a structured jacket. And smelling like garbage is so Italy circa 1974, and we’re trying to do a Prague circa 2002 thing right now. I just–I just don’t know if one can ever have enough oversized tee shirts with Kate Moss naked on the front of them, you know? But I guess that’s more of an existential question. I heard that bitch Carol got the internship at Proenza Schouler. What a whore. First of all, that whale of a size-6 wouldn’t know Free People from Anthropologie, and second of all–I totally deserved that position. Why would I want that job? What do you mean it’s just getting peed on by my superiors as I make no money slaving away at a heartless industry that promotes unhealthy body images and is more cattily competitive than Rock of Love Bus? Of course that’s what it is! How else do you stay thin unless you’re constantly worried about what people whom you can’t stand think about you? Idiot.