Content Consumed: “Bros”, Kim K., true crime, and Hot Girl Books

Oh, hello! Happy Tuesday. Having a good one? Those damn planets are finally out of retrograde, and I can feel it. Liberation. Viva.

In today’s edition of Content Consumed:
🧠 Inside Selena Gomez’s ~sexier~ mental wellness site
🎥 Why Billy’s Bros biffed it
🩸 Kim K’s true crime podcast
📚 What’s a “Hot Girl Book”?

I explored Selena Gomez’s mental health company

Welcome to Wondermind, Selena Gomez’s mental wellness site. It just launched today after being announced in late 2021 and receiving funding from Serena Williams’ venture capital firm last August. So what makes it different than other digital mental health platforms?

Her co-founder calls it “a sexier, more entertaining competitor to Psychology Today, WebMD, etc. for the millions of people searching about mental health daily.”

Immediate red flag for me: “entertaining”. Should a website calling itself “The World’s First Mental Wellness Ecosystem” be focused on… entertainment?

So, I quit reading that Forbes article and clicked over to Wondermind myself.

I signed up for their newsletter via email and immediately ran into a UX error that exited me out of the page and brought me to a blank tab. Okay, whatever, I typed in wondermind.com and restarted my journey.

Time to “FILTER BY FEELS”.

The seven feelings in the filter: Happy, Sad, Angry, Anxious, Stuck, Envious, and Lonely.

The articles attached to each filter are divided by “Pro Tip” or “Explainer”. “Pro Tips” includes articles like “Here’s How to Actually Sit With Your Sadness” and “11 Organization Tips That People With ADHD Swear By”. “Explainers” includes articles like “How to Break Out of the Social Media Comparison Trap” and “Can We Talk About Intrusive Thoughts?” Every once in a while, you’ll come across an “Essay” by someone like Peloton’s Cody Rigsby or poet Rupi Kaur.

I do think there’s potential here.

This does seem appealing for a younger audience, like female fans of Selena Gomez looking for online support for mental health issues and daily life chatter. As long as Wondermind does it right: focusing just as much on expertise and facts as much as entertainment.

Billy Eichner’s “Bros” is just badly marketed

He may blame the straight people. He may even blame the gays. But in reality, it’s a hodgepodge of bad marketing that blew down the turnout for Billy Eichner’s queer rom-com Bros.

Is it because the main poster looks like a parody of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. cover?

Maybe because the social media promos are just bafflingly confusing, like this one : “Men dating men are different, but in a hotter way.” What does that meeeeeaaaaaan?

Maybe it’s because Billy Eichner, the lead actor and the film’s most visible producer, is being a wee bit aggressive about it all. Can you bully someone into seeing a film? Is it homophobic to not see Bros just because it looks kind of mid? I love gay movies! This one movie just doesn’t appeal to me (is it because of the millennialification of every joke in the trailer? Short answer: yes) and that’s okay because not all movies are supposed to be seen by every person!

Anyways, from Billy:

Straight people, especially in certain parts of the country, just didn’t show up for Bros. And that’s disappointing but it is what it is. Everyone who ISN’T a homophobic weirdo should go see BROS tonight! You will have a blast!

Kim K’s true crime podcast

Kim Kardashian has partnered exclusively with Spotify to bring you, Americans, a new true crime podcast. Yeah, on the same day she faces a $1.6 million fine from the SEC for a bullshit crypto ad on Instagram. But never mind that!

As you press play on the podcast, you’re faced with Kim’s morose stare on its cover. Dark makeup only for crime podcasts, naturally. The podcast is interspersed with the voice of her co-host, veteran true-crime producer Lori Rothschild Ansaldi, and interviews with subject Kevin Keith. Kim believes Keith is innocent and ought to be released from jail after 28 years behind bars.

It’s very strange to hear Kim Kardashian narrating a podcast and interviewing Keith. “I’ve met some of your friends, and you’ve met some of my sisters,” she notes about five minutes into the podcast.

Sorry, that’s where I stopped. I made it a whole five minutes though, so that counts for something. If you want to listen to Kim Kardashian’s The System: The Case of Kevin Keith, you’re welcome to. But this will be the last I speak on it!

What’s a “Hot Girl Book”?

New buzzphrase of the week: Hot Girl Book. A new, hard-to-define genre is emerging before our eyes and on our Instagram feeds.

Hot Girl Books include Sally Rooney romances, Ottessa Moshfegh novels of female alienation, and women giving into more violent and frequently carnal desires a lá Boy Parts and The Pink Hotel. They’re sexy little books that fit in your tote bag, perfect to page through on the commute or in a grassy park. They’re honest and invasive and gross and captivating.

How to spot a Hot Girl Book, according to Bustle:

• The characters are hot—and emotionally fragile
• There’s a lot of sex that isn’t always actually sexy
• There’s a thinly veiled veneer of autofiction
• The author has a cult of personality (blame #BookTok)

And that’s it from ya girl today!

Confession time: I’m trying to reach 200 followers on the Content Consumed Medium and 200 followers on the Content Consumed Instagram by the end of October (which just so happens to line up with my birthday). Help me get there!

Thank you, thank you. Love you all.

Cheers,
Casey