At the end of last year, I mentioned how exhausting it is being alive in the twenty-first century. Specifically, I wrote, “the rest of the world seems to have nothing but nonstop bullshit to say, and I have little interest in adding to that growing cacophony of voices offering unsolicited opinions on every little thing under the sun. Enough already, right? Oof.”
“Oof” indeed. I am not alone in this feeling of being utterly worn out by all the noise. A friend of mine recently mentioned how he’s just so tired of the way we live our lives online now—constantly scrolling, engaging in idiotic debates, always ramping up our anxiety levels. Then we just keep scrolling, chasing that dopamine hit, and the cycle repeats, ad nauseam.
After he posted about this online (oof!), I couldn’t stop thinking about how bad all of this is for us. It’s just not healthy. We’ve been hearing about how overstimulated our brains are for decades, of course. Back in 1983, in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, Debbie Harry’s Nikki Brand tells us, “Well, I think we live in overstimulated times.” She was right, but just think of how much worse it’s gotten. From television to video games, we’ve now taken it all online, and added soul-destroying content like the idiocy that is TikTok and dumbass “influencer” videos. We spend hours and hours every day just surfing and scrolling like the zombies in Return of the Living Dead jonesing for braaaaaains.
What to do about it, then? Well, short of unplugging and going totally off the grid, not much. Sure, we can ease off on our usage, cut down our screen time, read more books, talk to our friends and family offline, walk out in the sunshine and leave our phones at home…but then there’s always a moment late at night when you swipe up on the damned device and start looking online for hot pictures of Debbie Harry. I mean, Jesus H. Christ, Debbie is so damn addictive!
It’s hard to keep your mind—and your hands—off Debbie. James Woods gets it! Plus he was lucky enough to make a movie with her where he was allowed to have his hands all over Debbie.
Really, we don’t talk nearly enough about how Debbie Harry absolutely radiates sex from every inch of her body and soul in Videodrome (1983). As sadomasochistic radio host Nicki Brand, the Blondie chanteuse seems to live in a constant state of sexual arousal—and so do we, whenever we watch Harry in this movie (or anything else she’s done, for that matter).
So long as Debbie Harry is out there being all smoking hot in cyberspace, weaning off the internet won’t be easy. Dammit, Debbie!
The Starfire Lounge 