The Gossip Girl Reboot Was Too Online
The original Gossip Girl characters get a temporary high from being perceived online. In the reboot, they are crippled by their need to be. Lilly opines on why the reboot didn't stand a chance.
Good morning, Upper East Siders… You may have heard the news: the Gossip Girl reboot has been canceled after its second season. This isn’t a huge surprise; despite a decent amount of buzz leading up to its release, the HBO Max series (which I’ll call GG2 for the sake of brevity going forward) continually fell short of what its predecessor did best: creating enough intrigue to make regular people care about the lives of Manhattan’s scandalous elite. Maybe it was because its characters were too online.
In GG2, the characters are on their phones constantly. Everyone at school has post notifications turned on for the Gossip Girl Instagram account, they send each other voice notes, and DM each other using Instagram’s vanish mode (maybe I’m too old but I didn’t know people actually did this.) They live every minute in fear of what Gossip Girl will post next about them. They also spend the entirety of the show trying to uncover her identity and stop her (notably, this was a plotline that occurred for only one episode of the original show.)
The entire project is consumed with what it means to “be online,” but it never really talks about the issue with that mindset.
The entire project is consumed with what it means to “be online,” but it never really talks about the issue with that mindset. The teenage characters are convinced that, with the deletion of the Gossip Girl account, their lives will go back to normal. Meanwhile, the teacher characters running the account believe that the issue with these students’ attitudes is that they aren’t being held accountable enough online. Both parties ignore the elephant in the room: With lives that start and end online, constant surveillance is already a given. And, shockingly, it doesn’t make you the best version of yourself. The GG2 Gossip Girl account—and the show’s plot—is too late to this conclusion. These characters were born into the controlling arms of social media, of constant dopamine rushes from external validation, and the show doesn’t seem to consider that there is no alternative, less-harmful option for them at this point.
Perhaps it’s because the all-encompassing effects of social media on Gen Z are so debilitating that any attempt to expose them feels glib. A show like GG2 is prone to overlook the subtleties of how a teenager’s every action is quietly informed by how they will be perceived online; it struggles with being heavy handed about how much its characters talk about their online persona IRL (cue Julien mentioning her Instagram live series “Stop the Story” at any given turn). By hammering into the broad strokes of social media’s grasp and focusing on public displays of anxieties about being online, this show misses the meta experience of Gen Z: the pictures posted because you think you look slimmer than usual, the way you smile when you think your friend may be filming a story of your night out, or the micro-trend clothing item you only wore once. It ignores this feeling, this real villain, while desperately trying to create a fake one in the form of Gossip Girl.
Granted, the original Gossip Girl (GG1) had the benefit of being created in a world that was just starting to open up to Big Posting. The characters in GG1 see their anonymous tormentor as someone more akin to an entertaining frenemy, the kind who’s always prepared to bite back but who is all too uninterested in mutually assured destruction. They read her posts when a blast is sent out, but hardly talk about her when she isn’t posting. She’s a background character, albeit an important one. She’s a member of the group in the same way that New York was the fifth friend in Sex and the City.
In GG1, Gossip Girl is usually the narrator rather than the creator of drama—a setup that is reversed in the reboot. Serena is hardly concerned when pictures are posted of her casually purchasing a pregnancy test. Similarly, despite her status-obsessed ways, Blair also has a short memory when it comes to Gossip Girl—even through a public breakup with a British lord engaging in quasi-incest with his stepmother, a year of non-Ivy education (the horror!), and multiple public rejections from Chuck, the man she loves most. In fact, Serena and Blair are most upset when Gossip Girl temporarily declares them irrelevant and not worth posting about.
With lives that start and end online, constant surveillance is already a given. And, shockingly, it doesn’t make you the best version of yourself.
In GG1, the characters get a temporary high off the feeling of being perceived online. In GG2, they are crippled by their need to be. Unfortunately, most of us can relate to this feeling more than we’d like to admit—whether we have an anonymous gossip account posting about us or not. In GG2, the characters panic that Gossip Girl will turn them and their friends against each other—that someone they trust will send in a life-ruining secret about them. These fears come true, but, confusingly, their consequences all come across as temporary. For example, Julien’s father gets exposed for assault, but she moves into Zoya and Nick’s apartment immediately after, ready to film her next Instagram story. In the final episode—despite breakups and blowup fights between friends—most of the group ends up together, more or less unscathed, in Italy. Gossip Girl is dead, their bogeyman slain, and for some reason we’re left with a happy ending—one that doesn’t acknowledge that Gossip Girl was just one account on a platform that has over a billion users, or that each of these characters will have to keep thinking about posting for the rest of their lives.
In the original show, we learn to love despicable characters like Chuck and Blair for their designer everything and desires to be king and queen of New York—and we learn to see ourselves in their attempts to navigate the social minefields of high school and college. In the reboot, we watch them stay close to static in their personal lives while following the ups and downs of their digital ones. An interesting plot this does not make. To an extent, this may be the only story to be told about high schoolers in the 2020s; a show as carefree as the original Gossip Girl couldn’t exist in the same way today. But without the necessary nuances, a show with the impossibly bleak promise of showing us how beyond-recovery our online addictions are can only fall flat. — LM
Hunter-gatherer corner
What we’ve read and DMed each other about lately— our internet bounty is below!
A review of Lil Yachty’s latest album, “Let’s Start Here” by Alphonse Pierre - Pitchfork — The 6.0 score here makes a lot of sense to me. I like Lil Yachty, and while some of the tracks try too hard for my taste, others are fascinating enough to make it worth the listen. — MF
The Fleishman Effect by Caitlin Moscatello - The Cut — I know we’re not supposed to feel bad for the rich city moms, okay, but also this is a story about the hopelessness of parenthood, striver culture, and the timeless allure of The Big City Family Life. I feel like everyone is pretending not to know that, or is too angry about the world right now to get it…..this is why! — MF
and…The Fleishman Moms Know Exactly Why They're In Trouble by Jessica Blankenship — For her motherhood and sex Substack “Ran Through” (incredible name), Blankenship adds some much needed nuance to the convo. [If you’re looking for more Fleishman stuff, we wrote about it in our Love Issue.] — MF
The Agoraphobic Fantasy of Tradlife by Zoe Hu - Dissent Magazine — “After watching enough tradlife content, one starts to wonder if, in addition to love, there also exists among tradwives a real fear of men. After all, the homebound tradwife has managed her life such that she rarely interacts with men as a group.” I….think I just got dragged?? — MF
Why Not?
Why Not? is our biweekly list of recommendations. Think recipes, gift guides, podcasts, clothes, and anything we consider to be generally chic. Have a suggestion? Let us know!
“More Like Dumb Phone :(” - Binchtopia Podcast — Melinda recommended Binchtopia to me a little while ago and I’ve been making my way through their episodes. This episode about phone addiction is the first that really pulled me in, and convinced me to stop using TikTok. — LM
Siena Farms CSA Farm Share — This one is for the hyperlocal girlies only unfortunately (they are Massachusetts-based, but deliver in NYC as well!), but it has singlehandedly taught me to incorporate fresh produce into my everyday life. Would also make a great gift for a home cook! — LM
On Vegetables by Jeremy Fox — I recently received this as a gift and it’s the only cookbook I’ve ever read cover to cover. Jeremy Fox teaches you how to use vegetables from seed to stalk in his inventive recipes. And no, he doesn’t see veggies as boring “health food.” A bit more advanced than my go-to cookbooks but the recipes are worth the time investment! — LM
Recess Mood sample drink packs — I love a little bevvy to get me through the day; these are probably overpriced and I don’t want to hear about it! The flavors are good and I don’t know if the magnesium actually does anything, but I get these delivered every 8 weeks like I own a startup or something. — MF
If you liked this issue, go post girl! Tell us your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter (@lillymilman | @melindafakuade), or send this to the Serena to your Blair. (Worth mentioning that I feel like me and Melinda are both Blairs…)