There's something to be said about the impact that popular media in general can have on you - it is the most commercial form of art, a dumping ground for original and not-so-original content, and if I'm being ungenerous, a cesspool that manages to overflow with toxicity while being simultaneously vacuous and shallow. Thankfully, I'm ridiculously bipolar when it comes to appreciation of anything, and I can at a later time this same day tell you that popular media exemplifies the beauty and glory of humanity, creativity, and culture, and is a wonderful way for ideas to be shared and exchanged across the globe. Social media is by far the most controversial subset of contemporary popular media, and Matt Spicer's Ingrid Goes West is a darkly hilarious commentary that encapsulates the problems which come with a digital age where everybody shares everything to maintain a facade of happiness when in reality nobody is because genuine human connection has been stripped down and replaced with Instagram likes and follows. Or something like that. I am not a huge social media user, and never really have been, so perhaps it would be a bit disingenuous to imply that I know exactly what it's like to obsess over seeming happy on Instragram, or Twitter, or whatever else everybody else uses. I don't intend to review Ingrid Goes West, because it's been done so many times over, and also because I don't have the technical proficiency or patience to do that. Instead, like a child assigned a book review in elementary school, I'd like to talk about how I felt immediately after watching Ingrid. It's the last of the three films I watched this weekend, with the former two being First They Killed My Father and Beasts Of No Nation; both are films with the sobering and intensely depressing subject of war and child soldiers, and both are brilliant in their own right (I cried for an hour straight watching First They Killed My Father), but surprisingly Ingrid is the film that made me feel genuinely sick in my stomach after the credits started rolling. Ingrid is relatable, first and foremost, with the main character Ingrid played to perfection by Aubrey Plaza in all her slightly psychotic and definitely mentally unstable glory. The movie is a lean 1 hour and 38 minutes long, and packed with excruciatingly cringe-inducing interactions between Ingrid and Taylor, her Instagram crush turned obsession turned friend turned... what exactly? It's not clear how Ingrid and Taylor resolve their issues with each other at the end of the film, because puzzlingly, after her filmed suicide note to the world goes viral on Instagram, it's implied that Ingrid finally unlocks the internet status that she's been coveting throughout the entire film, and if viewers have been paying attention, Taylor seems like the type of person who'd jump to capitalize on Ingrid's newfound fame. So where does this leave us? What exactly are we supposed to think of this ending? I've read quite a few reviews of Ingrid, and it seems that many have been disappointed or bemused by the ending. In my humble opinion, it would be cliched and hamfisted to make it a clear fable for the youngsters, where Ingrid learns her lesson and finally attempts to form genuine human connections after surviving her suicide attempt. It would be perhaps overly preachy and critical of social media to have Ingrid actually die as a result of her mistakes, and too optimistic if Ingrid won it all by getting the guy, gaining internet fame, capitalizing on her story and writing best-selling books about how to form real relationships with people. Ingrid isn't meant to be somebody we should learn from, I think, and honestly the ending that the director went with fits the overall message of the film, though it is a depressing message to think about. Instagram's reaction to Ingrid's heart-wrenching and genuine confession video in the film is exactly what I imagine would happen in real life; in fact, hasn't it already? We live in an age where emotions seem to be a commodity, and anybody can get their fix via their preferred social media platform, be it a heartfelt post on Instagram about loving yourself, a coming out video on Youtube, a relatable meme about depression on Reddit, or porn on 4chan. Ingrid's video is a hot topic trigger that touches on depression, loneliness, and other common ailments of the soul that I'm sure a lot of us can relate to. The popularity of social media platforms that are rooted in the sharing of one's life experiences and thoughts and feelings facilitates easy communication between individuals, but a common criticism is that this ironically deepens the trench between us in real life. Millennials and 'the younger generation' in general are the butt of every other overused joke on the internet about being glued to screens and ruining, I don't know, communication and love and the American dream. On a personal level, I'm as conflicted about social media as I am about capitalism. As an indignant and passionate defender of expression and technological advancements and change, I say social media is a godsend that has allowed us to keep in touch with friends and family all over the world in an insanely convenient way, as well as delivered us curated content that we love to look at. As an individual who is mildly lonely and mildly unhappy with life? Oh boy. On some level, I am Ingrid. There's a part of me that absolutely craves to be exactly like Taylor, to have a perfect life and a perfect feed and adoring followers, even if rationally I realize that we choose the best parts of ourselves to display on the internet, and that nobody realistically has a 'perfect life'. But by god, even though I limit myself to one social media platform (Facebook, if that matters) and only use it a few times a week, a chasm opens up in me when I see my 'friends' post gorgeous travel photos or their graduation certificates or cute pets. See, I'm not going to get hypocritical here - I want to be them, but I absolutely hate that I'm not; I look at my feed in envy, but if I really think about, I don't give any fucks about most of the people who post. And it is my firm belief that people really don't care about what other people do as much as they appear to. What does this have to do with Ingrid's ending? In light of the film, I choose to believe that the ending is a pessimistic one: after all, it seems that Ingrid doesn't really get to learn her lesson. The only time she is genuine and shares her intimate thoughts goes viral on the internet, because we are painfully self-hating and self-aware and self-unaware at the same time. I think there is a fundamental and universal truth that most social media users at one point have realized - life is, in fact, not as glamorous as we try to make it seem online - and it is this self-awareness that leads us to celebrate when what seems to be genuineness and relatability is displayed in all its bawl-and-snot inducing glory. At the same time, like what the film darkly suggests (I could be imagining all of this, of course), raw emotion is simply another way that can get you attention if you know how to utilize it. Who is this stranger behind the screen that I follow? Do I really know her? Do I really care about her? Or is she just another platform for emotional masturbation because she seems more relatable and real than the rest of us? At the very bottom of it, social media is still about self, and you naturally follow those you want to become, those you envy, those you admire, those you hate, those you think are like you. I don't completely cut myself off from the rest of the world, nor am I particularly misanthropic. I don't think the popularity of social media signals the degeneracy of my generation, nor do I mean to judge those who genuinely love using Instagram and Twitter and Snapchat. But I do recognize that the aforementioned apps would probably blast my mental health to smithereens, which is why I choose to avoid them; being an Ingrid doesn't seem fun at all, but then again, neither does being a Taylor. 🐝 - tl;dr I don't know anything about films and I was sad after watching Ingrid Goes West
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