This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here.
This week:
- Thanking God that Jackass Forever is here.
- A harsh truth about Wordle.
- Choosing to think positively about Joe Rogan.
- A new low for reality TV.
- A “Dolly Parton Is an Angel Among Us” update.
In the very first minutes of Feb. 2, 2022, I announced myself to the world as a genius.
I had solved the new daily Wordle puzzle in just two guesses. If you’re unfamiliar with the game/phenomenon, Wordle is a simple game in which a player has six tries to guess a five-letter word, receiving clues about which letters might be in the final answer after each attempt. A great or strategic player is lucky to solve in three or four guesses. I, the new braintrust of the universe, had done it in two.
Over the next 24 hours—only one Wordle puzzle is released a day, and everyone shares their results—I scrolled through Twitter and realized, in horror, that many people had proudly accomplished the same feat. It turns out I wasn’t the prodigy whose intelligence might save the human race. I was just another idiot gay who made the obvious second guess of “MOIST.”
We’ve talked a lot as a culture these last few weeks about the Wordle phenomenon. Like a slew of other pandemic fads—jigsaw puzzles, sourdough starters, Jackbox games over Zoom—it has fleetingly bonded us.
Its creator made headlines this week for selling the game to The New York Times for a seven-figure deal. On the one hand, we’re all skeptical that the purity of the daily puzzle will remain intact under the supervision of corporate overlords. On the other, this guy made this game for him and his partner to enjoy. It’s an act of love that, as writer/producer Caissie St. Onge observed on Twitter, unexpectedly turned into a cash grab. All I’m asking in life is for someone to love me, and also for that love to turn into a few million for us to enjoy.
I would like to offer another take on this Wordle craze, which is that it has ruined my life.
For roughly two and a half minutes a day, I switch my phone’s internet browser over to the Wordle website. I do my little puzzle, and I smile. I have convinced myself in those 150 seconds that I have a hobby. That I have done something for pleasure in my day. That it’s OK to work around the clock, have no social life, and exist in an otherwise constant state of stress because, whoo-ee, do I love to make my Wordle guesses each day. What fun! What satisfaction! What frivolity in this hellscape of life!
And then it happened. One day last week I didn’t guess the word.
My will to live plummeted. It was non-existent. I was Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf in The Hours. Cut to me putting playdough on my nose, sticking rocks in my pockets, and stoically walking into the Hudson. I have never reached such a nadir of self-worth and such electric, unsettling awareness of the bleakness of my existence—that this dipshit game gives me such joy, and my only joy—as I did when I didn’t get the Wordle answer. (The irony that the word that day was “PERKY” is not lost on me.)
Anyway, Wordle sucks. Long live Wordle. Also I obviously wrote this rant after getting the word wrong for the second time. But congrats to everyone who guessed SHARD and not SHARP like me, a bloomin’ fool.
I don’t love the fact that I have to have an opinion on Joe Rogan. This is not something I ever wanted for myself. But apparently centuries ago, our Founding Fathers betrayed a witch and now, as her prophecy foretold, the societal apocalypse is upon us and thy name is Rogan.
It’s not so much that I entirely reject the idea that the closest thing we have to a cultural thought leader is the guy who hosted the show that forced people to eat bull testicles for money. It’s that it’s almost too on-the-nose for where we are as a society.
In any case, while the rest of the world is debating whether or not they should boycott Spotify, which paid $100 million for exclusive rights to Rogan’s controversial podcast (more information on that here) and say things like “Oh but the interface is so much better!” as a reason not to listen to Adele songs literally anywhere else, I would like to focus on the good that has come from this. As writer Mike Ryan says, it took Joe Rogan’s buffoonery to do it, but Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young have finally come together again.
I have spent my entire career rejecting the idea that reality television represented any sort of cultural decline and rebuffing the argument that, even at its basest and trashiest form, the medium was regressive or devoid of value.
I now retract everything I have ever said.
I choose to believe that Dolly Parton, as is her superhuman power, sensed that a travesty on the scale that might threaten our faith in humanity was nigh, and thus responded with this: Not only a forthcoming documentary on the making of and significance of her film with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, 9 to 5, but a new duet version of the title musical track with none other than Kelly Clarkson. God (Dolly) is good.
Jackass Forever: Sometimes all you need in life are some penises and fart jokes. (Fri. in theaters)
The Worst Person in the World: What I would vote for Best Picture if I got to do such things for the Oscars. (Fri. in theaters)
Raised By Wolves: This was one of those “there are 5 million shows on TV so you can’t watch everything good” situations. Now that season two is here, you can try! (Now on HBO Max)
Moonfall: I can’t actually recommend Moonfall. But do know that I will be seeing Moonfall 5-7 times in theaters. (Fri. in theaters)