Taylor Swift has destroyed the Internet today, thanks to a photo of her wearing a shirt that says “no its becky” across its chest. This photo wouldn’t be a bigger deal than any other candid of T-Swift, but this time she was fully acknowledging a Swiftian meme that had already been making waves on Tumblr. This is like that time Chuck Norris read Chuck Norris Facts, only with somebody way more famous and with fans who aren’t your dad or your friends from IRC. It’s a strange thing when celebrity collides with or acknowledges its own fandom, like a TV becoming sentient and looking in on itself, acknowledging all of the parts that make up its whole.
Or maybe it’s more like realizing that a person is more than a product, or an image of a product, such as everybody’s pumpkin spice lattes are. The Internet glows with the sugary haze of the PSL every autumn, so it’s no surprise that somebody has gone and applied postmodern philosophy to Starbucks’ biggest money maker, and come to the conclusion that the PSL, devoid of actual “pumpkin,” is merely a simulacrum of pumpkin, an image of an image of a thing that does not really exist as we think it does. That’s deep, everybody. I think I need a PSL. Maybe venti.
I bet weirdo blues singer Willis Earl Beal doesn’t drink PSLs, but he did just make a movie called Memphis, where he plays someone who could be him, but isn’t. Go read this interview with him over at Noisey for another dose of introspection. A taste for you: When asked how his year has been, Beal answers, “More than good or bad, there’s just been a lot of emptiness. A lot of just plain emptiness.” Take another sip of that PSL, everybody. And then maybe go learn about the saddest scene in all of Fresh Prince , another piece of visual entertainment starring a musician playing a version of himself that isn’t quite himself.
Lastly, as you start your long, dark climb from the cave of existential introspection you’ve just fallen into, go take a look at the A.V. Club’s interview with Chris Call, the prop master on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Alias, Body of Proof, and various others, to see into the mind of a man who makes real things for fake people on real shows that make us feel real things.