Content Consumed: Deshaun Watson and “Chicken Shop Date”
How’s everyone doing? Powering through Thursday, ready for the weekend? I feel ya. In today’s Content Consumed, we’re chatting about:
🥴 The NFL’s messy, messy drama
👽 Why I’m against PacSun’s AI influencer
🍗 Is “Chicken Shop Date” problematic?
🔫 Inside the HBO Max purge
Deshaun Watson, Hard Knocks, and NFL messiness
It’s almost football season, which brings out the best and the worst of America.
The worst: Deshaun Watson. Are you f*cking kidding me? An 11-game ban and a $5 million fine for assaulting more than two dozen women. How easy for him. The settlement includes compliance with a professional evaluation and treatment plan, which will surely be bullshit. The Browns GM also said the team put together a plan as soon as they traded for Watson about how he would get future massages for any injuries. You know, just so they can vet the massage therapists he might sexually assault.
The sort-of best: Hard Knocks. I’m not as interested in the Lions as I was in 2020’s subject, the Chargers (sco Ducks, #BoltTFUp, go Herbo, etc.), and I didn’t watch much of last year’s season. But I get sucked in so easily. We watched the first episode of this season last night and Jamaal Williams’ teary team speech had me all choked up too.
The real best: A fall afternoon. Misty in the morning, clear skies and a breezy chill rustling up fallen leaves in the afternoon. A cider in one hand. The couch is just way too cozy. A couple of candles lit, perhaps smelling of pumpkin and tobacco and musk. RedZone on the TV for eight hours straight. Life is good.
AI influencer Lil Miquela is the new face of PacSun
There are thousands, millions of young women selling their souls on Instagram to perhaps one day become a brand ambassador for their favorite label. But it appears controversial AI model Lil Miquela is the best bet for PacSun.
Is it because she’s perpetually 19? Because her body size will never change, because she’ll never have an acne breakout on the day of a photoshoot? Welcome to a new, more advanced tier of the metaverse I guess—featuring even more powerfully unrealistic beauty standards!
Is “Chicken Shop Date” problematic?
“Chicken Shop Date” is a YouTube show hosted by U.K. journalist and comedienne Amelia Dimoldenberg. In the show, she takes celebrities—athletes, actors, musicians, etc.—on a date to a fried chicken restaurant. She’s awkwardly hilarious and likable, with a deadpan sense of humor and satirical questions with real heart behind them.
The controversy: is she a white woman taking away opportunities for Black people while taking advantage of the space they’ve created? She’s a middle-class white female host using UK chicken shops, something that is typically rooted in working class and Black culture, to host a web series she created.
Now, as the show secures bigger names and becomes the go-to interview for celebrity press runs in the UK (the Keke Palmer date was so good), some believe it should be other Black presenters getting these opportunities due to Amelia’s race (white) and her choice of venue (a UK chicken shop).
Read Refinery 29’s analysis here.
Inside the HBO Max purge
Streaming services are scrambling and it’s fascinating. This week, we’re dialed into HBO Max’s big dramas. Pending its merger with Discovery+ (a partnership under Warner Brothers that I’m still confused/captivated by), HBO Max will remove 36 titles from its library, including 20 of its originals. No big titles, I promise. Here’s the list.
Further being purged: employees and excess budget. 14% of the HBO Max staff got laid off on Monday via video chat as major restructuring shapes the future of the streaming platform.
I wonder if this new move will work better than Netflix Games.
That’s all, y’all. Thanks for reading! Be sure to subscribe to this Medium column to see Content Consumed in your feed every weekday.
Te amo,
Casey
P.S. Interested in more long-form pieces?
Read my Original Sins: A Memoir book review and “I Finally Read A Colleen Hoover Book”.
