The trailer for Hulu’s next dark comedy “Not Okay” dropped Monday, and it made me want to delete my social media immediately.
“Not Okay” tells the story of Danni Sanders, played by Zoey Deutch, who fakes a trip to Paris on Instagram in the hopes of boosting her social media following and, by extension, her friends and romantic prospects, according to the trailer. Her life seemingly feels empty because of her lack of friends, followers and lovers, a feeling I’m sure a lot of young people understand.
Things goes awry when a terror attack strikes Paris, and Sanders has to perpetuate her lie as a hero, the trailer continues. Of course, the lie falls apart and the character has to face the wrath of nameless, faceless strangers on the Internet. (RELATED: Terrorist Organization Bans Major Social Media Platform, Limiting Connection With Outside World)
The plot seemingly tells the story of a young Millennial/Gen Zer who tries to be taken seriously in her career but gives up and ends up lying about who she is because she doesn’t want to be overlooked anymore, one of my friends pointed out to me as we watched the trailer. “She lies instead of choosing to cultivate any real talent, or anything of note,” my friend said, noting the similarity between the plot and how many people today invent identities to make themselves special instead of putting in the work to create something meaningful.
Doesn’t that just sum up the world we’re choosing to live in? Right now, we live in a society where narcissists are normalized on our phone screens and the worst, most useless people are given a platform for doing nothing of note. Welcome to the era of social media, where we hand our children devices that have helped cultivate a psychological contagion surrounding suicide, according to contemporary research.
— Sigma Bale (@SigmaMemes_69) July 17, 2022
Instead of being comfortable in one’s own company, young people are basing their level of self-esteem on a metric that would disappear if the power goes out. That’s the story told in “Not Okay.”
Social media is not okay, especially TikTok. If I didn’t have to have Instagram and Twitter for work, I’d have deleted them a very long time ago. I think everyone should, but watch the trailer for “Not Okay” first: