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Open couple (One Ugly)

For this meme, I have outsourced the critique to my colleague and dear friend, Jack Dailey Barnes. Here’s his take:

As the proverb goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Rob Anderson, your 38-year-old coworker’s favorite gay TikTok comedian, said the quiet part out loud in an Instagram story that was posted to Twitter in which he detailed his hierarchy of “good sex”. His ranking, which was coupled with a treatise on the value of solo intimacy (something that most people don’t need to be reminded of), is questionable at best. The part that sticks is his identification of two distinct camps in the gay poly-sphere: Open Couple (One Ugly) vs Open Couple (Both Hot). Like Freud, Jung, or Goffman before him, Rob identified a fundamental truth in the dichotomy of hotness that often exists between two boyfriends that want to fuck you. It’s the kind of sobering observation that could only be made by someone who posts Instagram Reels about why gay guys can’t drive.

What does it mean to be the (One Ugly)? The asterisk? The caveat? Can the (One Uglies) of the world find pride in their ability to bag a hottie, or shame in their status as the less desired? Many were forced to hold up a mirror to their own relationships so that they may reckon with the reality of being the less fuckable one. The (One Ugly) identity calls into question the very nature of bringing in a third: Is it a way to stretch the boundaries of intimacy or is it merely to appease the (One Hot)? The metric of ugliness varies from person to person, and a higher level of hotness in one partner does not negate the hotness in the other. I most disagree with Rob on the notion that fucking a (One Ugly) couple is inherently less sexually satisfying than a (Both Hot). Ugly guys know how to suck and fuck too, they may even have to do it better! Anyone who has spent a second on Feeld is already aware that most couples are not bringing the same amount of hotness to the table. This truth has long been acknowledged in heterosexual couples through the “We Saw You From Across the Bar” phenomenon. With (One Ugly), we finally acknowledge that homosexuals are not immune to the same framework.

OC(OU), first met with outrage, quickly became praised for its anthropological merits. People began forming their own rankings as they incorporated relevant parties that were not included in the first list (Closed Couple (One Cheating), for instance). A tweet that seemed doomed to succumb to the chokehold of Discourse instead allowed for a moment of jokey introspection. This moment was brief, of course, as OC(OU) quickly fell down the path of picture prompt. The gay Twitter cliche of pasting the Phrase Du Jour above whatever pop culture image one had last saved in their phone stripped the meme of all nuance. Shiv and Tom, Bert and Ernie, or worst of all, a photo of the poster and their actual boyfriend - it became trite before sundown. Yet, I have faith that the ethos behind OC(OU) will not fall through the cracks. Never again will we be picked up by a couple at the Gay Bar without thinking of Rob’s rainbow-colored power ranking and sitting with the knowledge that we’ve just gotten into an Uber with a (One Ugly).

Rich Men of North Richmond

This is the summer we all have to argue about country music because the culture war has gotten stupider and stupider. For some reason we’ve all decided that the future of the United States lives and dies by the Billboard charts. I understand the point of each individual argument but when I remember how much we’ve talked about country music this summer I start to lose my mind. I don’t understand why we have to fight about Last Night and Rich Men of North Richmond and Try That In a Small Town and The Fast Car cover. It feels like a lot of liberal finger wagging about the state of country music, which was not something I thought we cared about.

Obviously, I know that there is a rich and storied history in regards to country music, but I’m tired of being sent into a moral panic every time something that doesn’t “align with our values” becomes the number one song in the country based on radio play and units sold. I, and many other Americans spend $10 a month on Spotify so we don’t have to be subjected to the taste of the rest of the country. Sure, all of this is bad for culture and points to our deeply sick society but also we can’t keep doing this over Billboard chart data which is easily manipulated and doesn’t really make as much sense as we want it to in the age of streaming. This is not as real as we think it is and will not matter in a week. The only country music discourse I'm interested in now is: Are Kyle Richards and Morgan Wade dating yet?  

Selena Gomez

If there is no culture we will create it. This meme is proof of that. There was nothing else really going on on Monday so we decided to have some fun. We were given this photo of Selena Gomez and we all decided to have some fun with it. It’s proof that we don’t need much to go on in order to have fun. On the internet, we can make our own fun. All we need is a photo of a beloved celebrity that’s a little too self serious or even silly. We needed this. We needed the spontaneity. We needed a moment free of discourse. A moment to be wrapped in a blanket and look out at the sprawling vistas just out of frame. 

Skylar Gisondo

This photo is life changing to me. I can’t believe he just posted it on instagram. I can’t believe it’s not part of some larger editorial spread, trying to paint him as some boy next door. I was struck by this photo. I finally see what the rest of you saw in him. Sure I liked him in Licorice Pizza, the Righteous Gemstones, and as little Shawn in Psych but I never Got It. I never felt the joy that everyone else felt when they saw him. Now I do. Now I get it. Many others felt what I felt when we saw this. His power was revealed to us. He looked like so many archetypes all at once. All of them comforting and familiar. To me, he was most reminiscent of an illustration of Jesus or one of the disciples from a Catechism text book. The dog in his hands, a lamb from the flock. Skylar Gisondo is my shepherd. I shall not want. 

Girl Who Is Going To Be Ok

It seems like everyone is making fun of something but in a way that doesn’t really make fun of anything. There’s a sense of ironic detachment but from what? We’re all laughing but nothing’s funny. It’s ok to actually want and be excited about things but we need to admit that. Irony poisoning is a problem not when we become too detached but when we force that detachment when it isn’t really there. Maybe we don’t need the meme, we just need to say what we’re gonna say. 

The Last Voyage of The Demeter

Movies are back. Every single time a movie this stupid gets made, I’m happy. Culturally we need to be able to produce things that are dumb, in the hopes that one day we might accidentally make something good. If there is still a place in this world for a movie about Dracula on a boat there is still a place for so many things to be created. Our imagination is not limited. 

Emmy Rossum from Shameless

I’m sure this very funny for all of you but it’s not personally my thing. 

TikTok

She’s So Brave

The original version of this video is the TikTok version of printing money. A song about how brave a dog is? Guaranteed viral hit on your hands. It exists in both versions that are easily predictable. Teenage girls in their 20s complaining about sending an email from their work from home jobs and people talking about their own pets. It’s a mid August low effort hit. Our brains are fried from too much sun and air conditioner poisoning. This is the best we can do for now. The system still works to some degree. 

Bama Rush

Did  we do it? Is it just OOTDs this year? Have we saved ourselves from discourse and spreadsheets? I know on twitter they are just discovering sororities are real but I spent too long in the discourse trenches these past two years to even consider those people relevant. The middle two weeks in august are just going to be sorority adjacent content and we will all just have to deal with it. We will all learn to survive it and eventually we might learn to have fun again. 

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