Oh God Why Is Bruce Willis Trending On Twitter
What now. Honestly…what now.
These days, it’s nothing fun. Everyone’s either dead or republican. Celebrities trending was supposed to be a good thing, do you hear me? It was supposed to mean they just released a secret new album, maybe they eloped in Barcelona, shit maybe they just rescued a dog. Celebrities trending wasn’t supposed to fall on a spectrum of annoying-to-devastating and I’m exhausted with these people and their inability not to trend. No word of a lie when I saw that Bruce Willis was trending I thought to myself that he’d either be dead, running for office, or I’m deleting my account.
Bruce Willis is alive, and apparently he thought it was cool to walk unmasked into a pharmacy in a place that’s so full of Covid you need a reservation to get it or the wait’s gonna be like two hours. That’s why the internet, myself included, feels the need to talk about him right now.
Obviously wear a fucking mask, Bruce Willis. Let’s forget that you’re a grown adult living in a wellness war zone, doesn’t mask wearing appeal to you? I would have thought celebrities would be the first to jump on the mask wagon to avoid paparazzi detection and whatnot. Is this not exactly their shit? In fact, sometimes just for fun because what else do I have right now, I pretend that when you see one of those people walking through the airport in an inflatable dinosaur costume it’s Harry Styles.
To walk into a public place without a mask right now, in addition to being insulting to your neighbors and health care professionals, is just dumbfuckery, plain and simple, and honestly I’m glad he got photographed. Because this time an unmasked celebrity followed up failure with acknowledgement of idiocy, rather than by revealing to all of us that he’s a closeted brainwashed lunatic who thinks all this shit is a hoax and probably keeps a prayer candle to Mitch McConnell lit at all times. (Explain that man’s success to me otherwise—EXPLAIN.)
I’m exhausted by a lot of things, but right now I choose to bitch about this. The world has trained me to approach trending topics with the caution I’d typically save for a Jack-In-The-Box on its last notes. Everything is wrong, the floor is lava, and I’m so sick of finding out that I have to hate a new celebrity every day. Obviously, there are many people far more annoying and dangerous than celebrities, but those people don’t have hashtags, k? I’m just as mad an unmasked John Q. Vacuum Salesman as I am at this guy, it’s just that I didn’t spend the 90s enjoying his work.
In regards to Bruce Willis, I think we’re ok. Was his action stupid? Yes. Insulting? You betcha. But I guarantee a family photo of him, masked to the gills, will emerge within the next month to feed the lettuce-throwing masses. What’s less easy to repair is my nervous system. The part of me that has been trained, by time and Twitter, to expect the worst at all times, because sometimes it’s coming, and sometimes we win elections. You just never know, Fate likes to keep it interesting.
Still, I’d like to extend a word of caution to celebrities. We’re reaching a tipping point of give-a-shit, and I don’t know how many you guys have left in the drawer. There are only so many times we can see you in the news for weird but uncool reasons before we stop checking. Without the red carpets and interviews and whatever else famous people get driven to in Escalades, all we’re left with is your behavior in real life. If the last year of human existence is any indication, you’re not always awesome at that. So please, for the sake of my sanity and that of an internet who can’t leave the house and is therefore watching…be smart, be safe, behave. It’s trendy.
_______________
Shani Silver is a writer and podcaster based in Brooklyn who writes on Medium, frequently.
