X/Twitter rewards shallow engagement: notes on celebrity culture

I deleted X/Twitter. I was never really a fan of twitter per se. I was never actively engaged, I was more passive, only ever opening the app when someone sent me a link from it. As time passed, I was told multiple times that it’s a great source to use as film news. Everything announced would come through X first; film trailers, director news, casting updates. For a while that was true. Until something changed.

I would do the daily scroll for about ten minutes engaging with a new trailer or a director announcing his next film. Now, I can barely open the app without my feed becoming an endless stream of engagement bait, celebrity worship, ai slop and soft-core pornography. I would endlessly scroll just to get the news I once longed for, meanwhile I was consuming all the negative and shallow information that I couldn’t tell you why even exists. I don’t know whether it’s the people or the algorithm, maybe it’s genuinely both. Every incentive on the platform seems to reward what is the loudest, most provocative or objectifying content. It’s just not the place to be. I can see why incels love this forsaken app. It excuses every thought and bad behavior and gives them a place to explore that and be accepted.

When I joined the app, I was longing almost for a sense of community, which I’m sure people have found.

Instead of film discussions, people circulate the same 20 photos of an actor. No engagement about performance or charisma but rather analyzing every inch of someone’s body. Instead of “Chris Hemsworth’s new role is requiring hard work” it becomes “Chris Hemsworth gets ripped” followed by four images of his abs. Instead of exploring Anya Taylor-Joy’s work as an actor it becomes a conversation of whether we should worship her beauty or tear her apart.

All of the accounts I followed that seemingly stuck to the trend of film updates became an account to share celebrity gossip or “news”. Captions that once were “Horror is coming back this year stronger than ever with The Bone Temple, Obsession and Backrooms”, it became “Rachel Zegler stuns on the beach in Greece” followed by bikini pictures and several reposts. Or sometimes it’s just as simple as “Inde Navarette” followed by more images of her body.

Every time I scroll the app, I genuinely feel my skin crawl and a feeling of disgust rises in my stomach. I genuinely cannot believe why I keep engaging with such shallow content and why it’s so hard to look away. Subconsciously, these trends become a part of your thinking routine, you start focusing on aesthetics in others and in yourself. I would find myself often thinking “Why are we blasting this person everywhere, they’re not even all that”. I couldn't tell if it was my judgement changing or the constant exposure that was destroying the illusion that fame equals exceptionalism.

The app normalizes a level of objectification that would be considered bizarre elsewhere. Women become content. Every scroll is another body, another fantasy, another ranking of levels of attractiveness. It creates insecurities that otherwise wouldn’t exist while rewarding the people who perpetuate them.

Let’s also not forget the normalization of pornography and Onlyfans advertisements that happen on the app with every post; a comment.

I recently saw a tweet that said “Emma Stone grocery shops”

Are we genuinely surprised the girl has to eat? I think we often forget, these are real people with real lives who have a job in the public eye. We observe these people like they’re animals behind a cage at a zoo, excitingly feasting on every mundane action that is human nature to us just as much as it is to them.

The worst thing about X isn’t necessarily celebrity culture but rather the constant exposure of treating real people like images rather than real living individuals. There is nothing wrong with admiration, but what happens when admiration becomes consumption?