Vivienne Pratfall on dates, deadlines, and a documentary everyone keeps texting her about
Late night, second date of the week, and my phone will not stop buzzing with people asking if I’ve seen the new Musk film yet. I have not. Four hours is longer than most of my relationships this year, and considerably longer than most of my dates, which tend to wrap up somewhere around the second cocktail once the conversation runs dry, which it usually does around the time someone mentions their crypto portfolio.
Apparently the whole internet has opinions on it, and somebody sent me the full writeup on the four-hour Musk documentary at 1am like that’s a normal thing to send a girl, mid-date, unprompted, with no context beyond “you need to see this.” I read it on the night bus instead of sleeping, which is very on brand for me, sandwiched between a man eating chips and someone playing music without headphones, which felt like the correct atmosphere for processing a four-hour film about a billionaire.
The strange part is how much of the piece actually stuck with me. There’s a whole section about why people will sit through political documentaries far longer than they’d sit through almost anything else, provided the subject is someone they already have feelings about. I found myself nodding along on the bus, which is embarrassing to admit, because I came into this diary entry planning to make fun of the whole thing and instead I’ve accidentally engaged with the argument. That’s the trap, apparently. You start out mocking the four hours and you end up quoting the psychology behind it at brunch.
There’s also a poster war happening, apparently, and I got sent the piece breaking down the Musk movie posters, which honestly had better one-liners than my date did, and considerably better pacing. Somewhere out there a graphic designer is having the worst week of their career because two competing camps have decided the poster itself is a political statement, which feels like a lot of pressure to put on a piece of promotional artwork, but here we are.
My date, for the record, asked me twice if I’d seen the film and I lied both times and said I had opinions. I did not have opinions. I now have opinions, three hours later, thanks to the night bus and a very committed group chat. That’s London for you. You go out for a date and come home having accidentally done homework on billionaire media psychology instead.
Bed now. Or not. More diary chaos at my page.