i watched pretty much the entire sydney sweeney GQ interview and i have so many thoughts. first, people do not give this girl enough credit for the level of psychic groundedness and perceptiveness she has to be navigating this highly adversarial landscape towards her so gracefully. second, the interviewer kept trying to bait her to defend herself to the vitriol that was being said about her online. sydney deadpan looked her in the eyes and said ‘i was working 16 hours a day filming euphoria, i never had my phone on set, i didn’t even see most of what has happening online’ something about this made something click sooo deeply for me. i have been in much more mild internet storms than her, and when you aren’t spending time observing / stewing in them, it quite honestly just feels like nothing is really happening to you. but when you go deep into it, you feel this need to defend yourself and disagree with all these truly random statements being made about you with zero basis in reality or understanding of who you are…. and then midway through you’re like: what am i even doing? these people know genuinely nothing about me and are just using me as a projection canvas for their own psychic malaise, and i am filling myself with THEIR toxic energy to participate in a battle i will never win (because there is no winning; it’s endless, and there is always a way to extract more energy from you) it seems sydney sweeney has a very strong practice in distancing herself from the online discourse - especially the discourse about her - which is apparent in her ability to keep shining, working, and being apparently unaffected by whatever is being said about her online. she’s just making her art. doing her ads. hanging with her friends. being fucking beautiful. moving on with her life. this interviewer kept trying to implicate her in something she had nothing to do with: people’s opinions about her online!!! and she basically says [without actually saying it]: those have nothing to do with me. and she is entirely correct. it is just so rare (and new) to see someone be able to stand up to whatever cultural projections and demands are being made of them in some specific zeitgeist moment they were pulled into, and the person being like: i actually barely even know what you’re talking about because i just wasn’t paying attention. if you’re going to be in the public eye, and be as admired and revered as she is, you need to have such a strong sense of self and ego to NOT implicate yourself in other people’s perception of you. and that is exactly what she has managed to do. the interviewer is baffled because she has clearly deeply implicated herself in whatever internet memes have told her she needs to serve them and be their vessel for attack and perpetuation, and she squirms with discomfort when sydney does not comply. at the end of her attempts, you can even feel the interviewer’s own discomfort with her shadowy attempts to trap sydney. she has clocked that sydney is more psychically resilient than she thought and she is standing there naked, with her toxic agenda out in plain sight, knowing sydney sees it, knowing she won’t obey, but feeling like she still needs to do her ‘job’ of being a slave to those memes anyway. it’s embarrassing to watch, honestly. she even says towards the end “i think i know how you’re going to answer this but i’m going to ask you anyway” she is cringing at her own inexplicable devotion to this agenda. because SHE IS A SLAVE TO THE MEMES SHE HAS SUBSCRIBED TO WITHOUT QUESTIONING THEM. she could have just stepped back and said to herself: what if i allowed sydney and i to have an open-hearted conversation about what sydney is genuinely excited to talk about instead of trying to (unsuccessfully) trap her in some uncomfortable situation that closes her off to me and makes her distrustful of my presence?? in other words: WHAT IF I WAS JUST A DECENT, TRUSTING, CURIOUS HUMAN BEING FOR A SECOND? but no, the Agenda must come first. the era of the Agenda having authority over thriving, successful individuals is over. people are starting to think for themselves again, and whenever they do so out in public (like sydney did here), swaths of people behind the scenes who have felt trapped by the Agenda cheer and feel more and more free. this will continue. and the ideologically resilient and sovereign people at the top will continue to grow and expand while those who make themselves subservient to an ever-evolving, irrational Agenda that tells them to always act subservient to it and apologize for things they didn’t say or do will injure their sovereignty and slowly dampen their drive to be seen and create. the artists who can think for themselves and stay true to their work and mission without relenting to the toxic, irrelevant projections and character attacks cast upon them will prevail. well done, sydney. i hope to see more of this.