Beyond Online Soap Operas
Reddit, AITA, and Others –
As if I needed another damn time sink, I’ve got hooked on the stories on social media. And no, I don’t want to be told how many of them are AI, and all the badstuff that implies.
Granted, some of these stories are just soap opera or Gossip Girls for Geeks. But as I’ve read or viewed them, I think many are actually online Aesop’s fables that show how people cope with impossible situations at various stages in their lives. They ask for advice. They document how to cope with dire circumstances, horrible people, and develop escape mechanisms.
Granted, some of them are clickbait, with writers demanding likes or code words before they post the next installment. Some are loaded with ads or warnings of viruses. Others go on for years, like “Say Yes to the Dress.” I admit to loving Randy, Lori, Monty, and the characters in England who are kind, funny, and helpful in the face of nervous brides, appalling families and voices that hit me like fingernails on old-style chalkboard.
Are these tales quality writing? Not really. You don’t get a sense of characters or environment. The metaphors are predictable: simple house good; high-tech mansion with marble and chandeliers, bad. Navy clothes, virtuous; designer handbags, VERY bad. Jobs range from service workers to free-lancers and work-from-homers to doctors, lawyers, and financial analysts, with attention paid to venture capitalists who are good if they’re techies, bad, if they’re anything else.
The stories show a lot of improbable uses of money and power: trust funds, lotteries, secret bequests that set up problem situations and provide wish fulfillment in the absence of wizards and fairy godmothers.
If you grew up on old-fashioned fairy stories or children’s books, think Cinderella, The Little Tailor, A Little Princess, maybe even Kim updated for today’s situations. The main thing, however, isn’t the protagonists, but the situations and opponents our heroes and heroines face.
Children: They face bullies of all ages, including grandparents with impossible standards, step parents who want them to disappear, and abusers. Rescuers include adoptive parents, sympathetic teachers, diner waitresses, nurses, or parents who’ve returned miraculously after a long absence. Probably, the most touching of these stories involve benevolent biker gangs who protect endangered children. In these stories, healthy children develop their benefactors’ formidable work ethics, fight for education or meaningful work, and thrive. Children with deadly illnesses are valued and celebrated before they pass. (I’m not crying, you’re crying.)
Abused Children and Dysfunctional Families: These stories are the worst for showing the breakdown of existing support systems. Neighbors, distant relatives, bikers, and other helpers who materialize out of left field help children as they mature cope with step siblings and the “golden children” who receive food, tech, clothes, and training for success that are denied the protagonist. There is a lot of sorrow, a lot of resentment, weaponized gratitude for scraps, and some brutal physical and psychological attacks.
For example, a girl sees her sister receive a free ride to a prestigious private college and works three jobs to put herself through. A boy is berated for liking cars, construction, and trucks and for going into the trades – usually leading to public shaming. Another girl becomes the unpaid baby-sitter for a golden mommy princess, while another young man in his late teens is quite literally boarded up into a house as the family abandons it in the wake of a hurricane, to be reunited with parents who expected him to die.
And they all survive unlike the child in the tale of the Little Match Girl, who froze in a blaze of light. After the first time my mother read this story to me, I absolutely lost it. She never read it again, and to be frank, I’ve never reread it. What all of these stories have in common is abuse and justifiable rage. The protagonists face a great deal of weaponized gratitude for a roof over one’s head and cold scraps, instead of a hot Thanksgiving feast. The kids tend not to be grateful. To be honest, I see no reason why they should be. And despite demands by the flying monkeys – relatives and neighbors who intrude themselves to tell the protagonists how they ought to feel, I don’t see why there needs to be.
If parents or grandparents a family establish a caste system among its siblings, should they be forgiven? It’s left up to the individual protagonists, once they grow up and sell their companies, move into their paid-with-cash homes, thrive at their good jobs, marry the loves of their lives, to decide. They’ve suffered enough, worked hard enough, and learned enough to make smart choices.
Relationships in general: If I hear one more explanation that Boyfriend and Girlfriend have a pretty good relationship BUT, I know the BUT is going to break them up. They are settling for far too little and not able to negotiate at all. One of the pair tends to have no relatives at all to defend them, while the other has a tribe. One of the pair is condemned – in a democracy-- for a lack of social standing, while the other lives in a Connecticut mansion that looks nothing like houses even in the fanciest part of the state. And then, you get the penthouses as opposed to the modest cottages.
At the same time, parents with the sense to leave abusive situations, stand up for their children, and protect them against bullies come in for love and praise – as well they should.
Warning: You’ll see it in all these stories. Watch the word choice. Any use of “overreacting,” “oversensitive,” “joking,” or “pranks,” or hints of mental instability are red flags. If you hear them, run.
Second Warning: Any time a character changes views, swallows a red pill, watches TED talks on the manosphere, decides to lay down the lay on roles, traditionally male or female, run faster. If the flying monkeys start in, go to warp drive.
Weddings: demands for engagement rings the size of the Rock of Gibraltar; sadistic in-laws, controlling parents, controlling future spouses who suddenly demand dowries, submission, a golden ticket to lounge and shop, plus micromanagement of wedding plans, homes, and future lives. Sisters-in-laws seem to excel at destroying couture or handmade gowns; bros-in-law get drunk; bad fiances cheat right before the wedding night; or ugly situations manifest before the weddings go on. Think of them as Victorian melodramas with premarital sex.
Toxic Materialism: Should or should not a kid finishing school pay rent and why? Is the rent designed to teach responsibility, help out in the case of real need, or is it spite work? The hero or heroine has to decide and be prepared to be kicked out with dufflebags, backpacks, or – worst case – black garbage bags. Equally horrific is what happens to successful grown children in the stories of dysfunctional families. They’re regarded as ATMs with legs and coerced into providing impossible sums of money for debts, loans, spa weekends, designer handbags, or luxury trips to which the person footing the bill is excluded. Usually, the bill-payer gets smart at the last moment and cancels the transactions, whereupon enjoyable fireworks ensue.
Weaponized Generosity: the protagonist has succeed in business, gotten a medical degree, or inherited a fortune. This is the signal for sicko parents to announce in public that single, child-free homeowners donate their hard-won real estate to the golden siblings who have children, divorces, no-good spouses, or all of the above and “need stability.” Refusal gets them slapped in public. Usually, at this point, the protagonists know enough to rely on sensible friends, lawyers, security systems, fine locksmiths, and documentation to retain what is theirs.
Trust Funds and Legacies: In general, money produces a lot of weird behavior. Dysfunctional families defraud, raid trusts or insurance policies, hide wills and absolutely ignore fiduciary duty. What happens? Mysterious letters and software turn up declaring the child defrauded in favor of bills, trips, or golden children to be the long-lost heirs. In the course of these misadventures, people learn to document, keep records, find specialists, and develop prudent means of protecting themselves. Is the law in these stories accurate? Probably not. Nevertheless, it’s good to keep your eye on your college 529 plan if your parents are acting weird. And if they tell you you don’t need to know, find a CPA, JD, CFA or some other purveyor of ethical alphabet soup.
Militaria: This mostly concerns women who enter the service. Families take badly to it and invent stories in which the young women fail (when they’ve simply disappeared on classified missions). The officers show up for family celebrations in uniform and get slapped for it. Or they are shoved aside and punched by SEALs on steroids. The Universal Code of Military Justice and accuracy in uniforms play no part in these stories, though it’s satisfying to see the girl who’s been punched lever herself off the floor and beat the shit out of the guy who hit her. I see dishonorable discharges in people’s futures – or preposterously early promotion to Admiral or General and acknowledgment of distinguished service. Wish-fulfillment is very sweet.
So, what’s the point? We’ve probably all been bullied, experienced favoritism, been treated unfairly, or had our best toys extorted from us. We’ve probably lost dreams we planned on and run into more than our share of dubious partners. In the light of all that, do these stories make sense? No more than fairy tales, and we keep reading them too. In fairy stories, the hero or heroine becomes a stand-in for the reader.. And in these stories, the stand-in wins.
Victory is sweet.