Sometimes I think about how many Americans have died from this virus. Sometimes I think about how this vaccine rollout has been corrupted and mishandled so much that it feels like an anecdote you'd hear from a Soviet defector in the 80s. Sometimes I think about how the most venal and craven GOP senators and representatives spent years leveraging lies and wackadoo conspiracy theories in service to their naked power grab and now those crazy conspiracists are holding actual elected office as well as the future of representative democracy in their nutty, nutty hands.
And then that all starts to feel too overwhelming and so instead I focus on something I can handle: how I got blocked on Twitter by noted fashion bloggers, Tom & Lorenzo. Please note, this is an extremely stupid thing to worry about.
Way back in 2004, I came home from drinks with work folks and my husband told me about this really cool show he watched where a guy made a dress from cornhusks. It was this famous dress, by Austin Scarlett, from the 1st season of Project Runway:
We were hooked and became big Project Runway fans. This was back in the days when blogs were everywhere. I miss those days. Everyone was doing recaps and reviews and Television Without Pity was around. If you liked a TV show, you could find ample places to talk about it with other people, get insight, get questions answered etc.
At that time,
Maureen Ryan, who is great, was doing TV critique for
The Chicago Tribune and covered
Project Runway. In one article, she mentioned the invaluable insight of a blog called
Project Rungay.
I hopped over to their site and have been hanging out there since. In the ensuing years, the blog migrated from Project Rungay to Tom & Lorenzo, and the scope expanded well beyond Project Runway. I have been a fan for all those years. I think they're smart and funny, and have great insight into fashion and television and pop culture at large. I love it when they're recapping a show I watch.
And then, last spring or early summer, I responded to them on Twitter while I was in line at Home Depot. The exchange we had was fairly anodyne, I thought. They said something about not going to restaurants. I replied something about how it was OK if you stayed masked up. They said "lol no." I was frustrated by that response (actually, I was frustrated by Covid 19 and having a husband who had to go to work at restaurants) and so complained about the glibness of that response on my own Twitter, without tagging or referencing them. And then it was my turn to check out.
One day, a couple of days later, someone linked to one of their tweets, and I clicked on it, and saw this:
Lookit. I know that neither Tom nor Lorenzo have the foggiest who I am. I know that this isn't personal. These guys, and I cannot stress this enough, have no idea who I am. I further understand, elementally, being annoyed by someone on the internet. But I am Gen X enough to have really enjoyed being their cool, in-the-know fan. The one to say: "Oh! Tom and Lorenzo? I've been reading them since the Project Rungay days." Someone who always knew they were good - and not some johnny-come-lately poser who only found them during the Mad Men costume posts (those are great, by the way. If you do a Mad Men rewatch, I'd suggest visiting those posts).
Instead, I'm just the the dumb fan they found too tiresome to deal with.
I have a sensitive internet ego. I really couldn't handle that many people being to talk directly at me with their opinions. I get how overwhelming and annoying that must be. I understand it all. Still, my dumb feelings are hurt.
Which makes me feel even MORE like a dumb, tiresome fan.
It's such a stupid thing to waste any mental headspace on. But, and this is important, it's a helluva lot easier to focus on than the larger state of the world. Maybe it's like picking at a hangnail to distract myself from a cancer diagnosis, or the increasingly loud rumbles of fascistic white nationalism.
Regardless, I would have enjoyed their tweets about Bridgerton.
