Content Consumed: Dr. Oz, worker productivity, and Purple Hearts

Goooooood morning, world! Happy Tuesday.

In today’s edition of Content Consumed:
🥒 Dr. Oz and crudités
⏱ The “worker productivity score” is coming for you
🧨 Purple Hearts, the military propaganda rom-com
💫 Harper’s Bazaar 2022 Icons drops
🎞 CW thinks 58-year-olds watch Riverdale

Dr. Oz and the $20 crudité

This column is about the content I’m consuming. Movies, TV shows, music, sports, news articles, think pieces, and more. And boy oh boy have I consumed this clip posted by Dr. Mehmet Oz’s campaign team about grocery store inflation. (You know, since he’s apparently still running for U.S. Senate.)

In a painfully-misguided attempt to be relatable to his voter base, Dr. Oz shops for crudité for himself and his wife. It appears that Dr. Oz thinks crudité consists of raw asparagus, a bulk bag of carrots, one head of broccoli, pre-made guac, and store-brand salsa — and tequila(?!)

And of course, it wouldn’t be a Republican candidate video without a “That’s outrageous. And we’ve got Joe Biden to thank for this!” at the end.

He even mispronounces the name of the very popular New England grocery store he’s shopping in. There’s no way this man has entered a grocery store in the past two decades.

Are you productive enough?!?

Across industries and incomes, more employees are being tracked, recorded, and even ranked amongst their peers with the help of dystopian tech and f*cked workplace ideals. Some examples of this absurdity:

• New York’s MTA told engineers that they could work remotely once a week if they agreed to full-time digital productivity monitoring
• Amazon notoriously monitors body motion in their warehouses second-by-second, minute-by-minute
• Barclays Bank just had to scrap prodding messages to workers, like “Not enough time in the Zone yesterday,” after people got pretty pissed off about it

Would you work at a company where a variable like low keyboard activity can affect compensation and sap bonuses? I spend 9–9:10 a.m. every morning putting together my to-do list on paper for the day. Sometimes, when I’m brainstorming copy, I’ll write it down on scratch paper instead of on my computer. Should these natural human activities mean a pay deduction?

The Times did a fantastic job with an interactive article about all of this, where your productivity is tracked as you read.

Nothin’ like a military propaganda rom-com

The premise of Purple Hearts: an aspiring singer-songwriter struggling with diabetes can’t afford insulin and meets a Marine who also has money problems. A sham marriage, perfect! That’ll allow Cassie to enroll in the military health insurance plan and Luke to reap the financial benefits of legal marriage, even though Cassie is (at first) a die-hard Latina Democrat and Luke is an unswayed white Republican.

Jezebel describes it perfectly as “a movie that pretty blatantly romanticizes U.S. military occupation in Iraq and somehow even the United States’ violent privatized healthcare system.” The entire thing appears to be Cassie and Luke constantly having brainless, ~meta~ left vs. right conversations that often frame the U.S. military as a benevolent, un-imperialist, necessary force saving our lives.

And I must include these quotes for your reading pleasure:

• Luke asking Cassie: “What exactly would you like us to do — go over there and teach them pronouns?”
• Luke’s fellow Marines making a toast to “hunting down some Goddamn Arabs” and telling women: “We’re good enough to fight for your ass, but not enough to touch it?”

Hello, Harper’s 2022 Icons!

Top of the list: actress Florence Pugh, poet Amanda Gorman, singer Bad Bunny, multihyphenate Hailey Bieber, rapper Jack Harlow, comedian Ziwe, and artist Ella Emhoff.

So far, it’s Flo Pugh’s interview that has everyone talking. First, she confirmed that she and Zach Braff (who were frequently poked fun at online because of their 21-year age difference) split earlier this year. Second, she further enflamed rumors of a feud between herself and Don’t Worry Darling director Olivia Wilde.

Other opinions I have on this list:

• Is Jack Harlow really a *2022* icon? His new album flopped and I’m pretty sure he peaked in early 2021.
• Someone please tell me what Hailey Bieber’s job is and why she’s on this list. I’m dying to know.
• Ziwe should be a cover star for this! Not #17 behind Kamala Harris’ stepdaughter Ella Emhoff! Ziwe’s gone viral multiple times this year for her savage interviewing techniques and the star-studded guest lineup on her Showtime series. Give her the credit she deserves for climbing her way into the industry and building a new place in the media sphere.
• Credit to Harper’s Bazaar for the diversity here. A majority of the featured icons are P.O.C. and there are plenty of newcomers (like, not already extremely popular like Flo Pugh and Jack Harlow) on the list.

The CW really misunderstands their viewership

The CW, a network hosting hit shows like Riverdale and Supernatural, has determined that its average viewer is 58 years old. Therefore, it plans to start catering to this demographic.

What they don’t understand: Younger generations can’t afford cable, therefore mooch off their parents’ network logins (myself included), and likely skew network data big time.

Think logically for a moment here, CW and other networks/streaming platforms that severely misunderstand their current data: is the average 58-year-old watching the American supernatural horror crime teen drama television series Riverdale?

Whew! That’s it for today. Tomorrow, look for your daily edition of Content Consumed plus a separate book review of Matthew Rowland Hill’s Original Sins.

Love ya!
Casey