The arc of the Friends’ lives changed, but the times never did. Characters got better jobs, got married, upgraded the apartment and left for better housing, and the laugh track stayed the same—was that meliorism? I wondered. No presidents got impeached, Twin Towers did not fall. New Yorkers walked around the city, unheeding of bomb plots, or terror, or war. If the show had managed to trundle on long enough for the markets to crash, would Chandler have lost his job? Perhaps Ross might have left his lectureship and museum in the wake of the budget cuts to education. But would I have wanted to watch that? What else did anyone with comfortable enough means ever really do, except look at the news and accept the circumstances of the world so long as they did not interfere with the general course of what it took to live a life?
The way apps moved had a lightness, an aerodynamics to them: they hovered, hung, bobbed in and out of view. I experienced a fog. I experienced slips in time. I looked down at my phone: on-screen it was always now; I looked back up, now was an hour later.
you’ve got so much more of an advantage than I ever did. I think it might be because of how freely available the image of a glamorous lifestyle is on your phones now. I catch a glimpse of Priscilla’s phone now and again over her shoulder, and you all seem to be very adept at making your lives look far more interesting than they have any right to be. The truth is, most days are inexhaustibly dull and full of striving. I did my share of boring, low-wage administrative jobs and living in bedsits, or on friends’ floors as well. I’m sure your peers do, too, they just don’t post about it. And then, because of a few get-rich-quick success stories, and the lack of representation around how much work it usually does take to attain any kind of achievement, a sort of entitlement gets bred.
izzy806
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
yousharknotpass
romaincrisis