Offerings #10: Summer blockbusters... & AI

New York City is hot, hot, hot and I’ve found reprieve watching my guys in their summer blockbusters in the cool air conditioning of the Alamo Drafthouse. So far that’s included Jonathan Bailey in Jurassic World Rebirth, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and a delightful Jack O’Connell in 28 Years Later, and Nicholas Hoult in Superman. 

As the heat threatens my sanity and affinity for the outdoors, AI continues to threaten the very journalism that allows us to fall in and out of love with famous men. There’s this super cool, new awesome thing that newsrooms are preparing for, “Google Zero” which is the very probable reality that as AI is further integrated into search, publications will get zero traffic from Google search, an existential threat to the current business model. 

Per New York Mag, newsrooms are preparing for this by figuring out how to attract enough loyal readers that check their sites daily … and the old classic, pivoting to video. Vulture dove into how the New York Times is leveraging video to achieve “digital ubiquity” with the hope that it will draw in paying subscribers. 

In the context of the AI-induced traffic decline, the Vulture piece suggests celebrity as a potential balm. Nicholas Quah writes, “if AI slop threatens to render most text-based journalism suspect, what better check is there than orienting the business around a sense of humanity … or celebrity?” 

Similarly, in a long argument against newsrooms adapting an “AI-first” strategy, Jason Koebler writes, “the only thing that media companies can do in order to survive is lean into their humanity” and to create content that humans want to read, watch, and listen to.

I’m curious if Quah’s logic re: celebrity can be applied to culture at large, because what are celebrities if not humans? Obviously, that thesis is complicated by stars like Natasha Lyonne throwing their weight behind generative AI and the ease of creating deepfakes, but it’s something to consider! 

Onto the “fun stuff.”

THE ELEPHANT ON THE SPEEDWAY: An excellent piece in Vulture analyzes Brad Pitt’s recent press tour on the heels of his divorce from Angelina Jolie due to his alleged abuse of her and their children. Angelica Jade Bastién writes, “the cumulative effect of F1 and its press tour have been a carefully tuned charm offensive meant to obscure, if not outright bury, the alleged violent particulars of his behavior toward ex-wife Angelina Jolie. Pitt has been so successful at this rehabilitation that most of the public don’t even understand what he’s trying to rehabilitate himself for.” She points to how the new-fangled press tour where no one asks hard-hitting questions props Pitt up and notes that he tellingly works with the same crisis-management publicist as Johnny Depp. 

RELATEDLY: In an op-ed in The New York Times, using the example of Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, Kat Tenebarge interrogates the “misogyny slop ecosystem” that infects the internet in defense of men accused of sexual violence or harrassment. She defines it as the endless videos churned out attacking famous women that are rewarded with views and ad money on YouTube. Tenebarge connects the content of these videos to DARVO, a playbook of abusers that stands for “deny, attack, reverse victim and offender” and exposes how now with the misogyny slop ecosystem masses can participate in DARVO and further traumatize victims. 

HOPECORE: On a much more positive note, the new Superman starring David Cornswet went viral for giving viewers hope! To quote one poster, “I asked Superman and he said kindness is the new punk rock.” 

TOO MUCH: I finished Too Much and trust that I am everything about it. So far my favorite piece of analysis is from Alison Willmore about how the show subverts and potentially ends the trope of the funny fat girl. And why that’s especially resonate in Ozempic times. Willmore articulates SO much about fat girl humor, writing that fatness served to degender women in comedies of the early 2000s.

INDULGENCES: MY ALTAR BOYS

Former Skins cast members, anyone Irish, British actors whose breakout role was “playing gay,” rappers from Kentucky, and men in Ocean’s Eleven (and their codependent best friends) are all fair game.

EBON MOSS-BACHRACH called out the clip-economy by walking into a Fantastic Four press room saying, “What’s up influencers.” 

LENA DUNHAM found ROLE MODEL through her burner TikTok account. She told Variety, “He had this humor and essence that really felt like rom-com gold. He’s giving early Brad Pitt, like when you saw him in Thelma & Louise.”

JACK HARLOW is still chipping away at his film studies. Since the last issue of Altar Boys he’s tackled Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Perfect Blue — “First anime movie. Not sure I got another one in me” —  and La Notte, to name a few!

LOGAN LERMAN is doing press for Oh, Hi! so we’re getting tidbits like, he doesn’t know what a “Tumblr king” is and that courted his fiancé by sending her photos of papayas and pretending to watch Sex and the City. And whatever this is.

JOE ALWYN “looks forlorn while wearing a praying mantis bowling shirt.” OK. 

Make Altar Boys fun again! When the boys aren’t doing anything I have to write about AI and misogyny. Step up.