Trends of the week

Twitter loves reminding us of the fact that celebrities live fake and absurd lives. Beneath its fair share of adoring fan tweets is a palpable jadedness over famous people’s narcissism, which makes a spontaneous goofball like Jennifer Lawrence suddenly important, the Internet eager to designate an antithesis to the inherent phoniness of celebrity. The irony, of course, is that most people on Twitter fancy themselves celebrities, crafting their digitally euphemized persona and doing things they somehow believe to be worth broadcasting, not because they’re famous for an exceptional skill, but because they are technologically allowed to do so.

In another week of the pot calling the kettle black, of celebrities and fake lives, here were the top Twitter trends:

Anne Curtis

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past week, you probably know the reason why Anne Curtis trended. In case you were, here’s an abridged version of what reportedly happened: Anne Curtis slapped a few people at a club, one of them being John Lloyd Cruz, whom she also called an “addict,” and screamed the now-infamous words: “I can buy you, your friends, and this club” at Phoemela Baranda. Anne Curtis owned up to all of these on Twitter and explained her behavior by blaming it on her “famous three-day cleanse” and her inebriation.

Social media is now a grizzled veteran when it comes to celebrity scandals. We all know the drill: diehard fans defend her, casual fans get a little turned off, haters gloat, people with no rooting interest turn her into the latest example of why celebrity life is evil, and then everyone forgets after about a year. Anne Curtis, who’s been in show business since she was 12, is inarguably the most familiar face in a country that is, on balance, certifiably insane. Somehow, the incident doesn’t feel shocking, tragic, or especially significant. It just makes a whole lot of sense.

Tom Daley

Luckily, this week also gave us a positive flip side to fame. British Olympic diver and reality TV star Tom Daley came out via YouTube, announcing his almost yearlong relationship with a man. The manner in which this announcement was made, along with its staying power as a trending topic on Twitter, offers a glimpse as to how homophobia may be quelled. You can’t learn to tolerate something that’s always hidden. With the definition of “privacy” seemingly narrowing every day, the idea of someone still being “in the closet” becomes increasingly nonviable. How can you possibly hide the fact that you always seem to be going to dinner with the same guy every night when society practically compels you to take photos and share them? Maybe the “hey, look at my life!” impulse proliferated by social media can cause some long-term good after all.

RIP Paul Walker

The only thing social media cares about more than famous people is famous dead people. The rush of “RIP” tweets and Facebook posts has become one of the most predictable events in modern pop culture, a confluence of people’s imagined intimacy with celebrities and their insatiable desire to be publicly identified with them.

The circumstances of Paul Walker’s death were so culturally symmetric — the star of The Fast and The Furious franchise getting killed in a speeding car accident  became a Twitter-ready symbolism. It was almost too scripted, in fact, that people on the Internet started to suspect that it was a hoax, until it was finally verified by everyone with actual professions like “coroner” and “journalist.” It’s the Internet’s job to play up the snippets of details that dovetail on their constructed image of Walker, a real-life speed demon who just came from a Typhoon Yolanda fund-raising event — the reckless hero with a heart of gold. We never really knew Paul Walker, the same way we don’t really know if he ever actually said this quote spreading all over social media: “If one day speed kills me, do not cry because I was smiling.” No one seems to be questioning its veracity. We accept the hoax we think we deserve.

#FictionalCharactersIWantToMarry

From last week’s #CelebritiesIWantToSeeNaked to this week’s #FictionalCharactersIWantToMarry, it seems Twitter has gone from a Miley Cyrus relationship commitment level to Taylor Swift in a matter of days. To hell with the getting-to-know-you stage, I guess?

But we’re all intimately familiar with our favorite fictional characters, many of whom defined our idea of romance way before we even had actual real-life relationships. Pop culture writer Chuck Klosterman once posited that women who grew up in the ’80s are forever looking for men like John Cusack’s impossibly devoted Lloyd Dobler from the movie Say Anything, and are therefore forever prone to disappointment. The 21st-century female equivalent of this non-existent entity is the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a term coined by film critic Nathan Rabin and personified by the likes of Natalie Portman in Garden State, Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown, and Zooey Deschanel in (500) Days of Summer — cute, kooky, and free-spirited girls specifically born to inject life back into brooding, sensitive boys.

So what are today’s fictional ideals for romance? The most popular results for #FictionalCharactersIWantToMarry from females are Chuck Bass, the smooth player from Gossip Girl and Christian Grey, the bondage fetishist from 50 Shades of Grey; while for males, it’s Ramona Flowers, the millennial Manic Pixie Dream Girl from Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. If Twitter is to be believed, then Lloyd Dobler is dead. Men are the new romantically deluded girls.

#RickyAndMayasNewBundleOfJoy

As far as fictional romances go, very few have been as enduring as the Sir Chief-Maya pairing from ABS-CBN’s Be Careful With My Heart. The TV series has been running for more than a year now, covering every stage of the two protagonists’ relationship: from maid and master of the house, to lovers, to husband and wife, and now, mother and father. People will never tire of fake romances, but it seems like this series is testing the limits of people’s endurance for the same fake romance. As this trending hashtag shows, people are still gleefully taking the bait.