When quirky online fun turns sinister
Rob Long
On every movie or television set, tucked away behind some set dressing or behind a practical wall, there’s a table loaded with snacks. It’s called the “craft services” area, and for the duration of the shoot, it will be replenished with candy, chips, and occasional warm treats such as fresh brownies, pizza, and mini cheeseburgers. As a result, if you’re ever looking for someone on a set, the first place to look is the craft services area.
It’s the most democratic place in Hollywood. Everyone, from the set electricians to the stars of the show, needs a Dorito every now and then. Grazers from every department of a film or television production gather around the table in a happy clump of snackers, irrespective of caste or prestige. In many ways, it’s a lovely show business tradition. In a business filled with power players and haughty stars, the craft services table reminds us that we’re all in this together.
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It also, unfortunately, reminds you that some of the people you work with are nuts. I was grabbing a stack of Oreos one afternoon and heard one camera operator explaining to a sound engineer how the Freemasons, along with Henry Kissinger and the late Queen Elizabeth II, were responsible for the international drug trade. I also heard a makeup artist extolling the virtues of drinking her own urine. You people are insane, I thought as I stuffed Oreos into my mouth and pockets. I’ll be moving along now.
It’s probably the very collegial nature of the craft services table that brings out the crazy in people. Or at least makes it more visible. I’m sure the makeup artist has issued that nutritional recommendation to others, probably on that very set. And I’d be willing to bet that the camera operator had other, immensely more creepy beliefs that he shared with the other camera operators. I just hadn’t heard them because most of the time on a set, we all stick to our little worlds — camera people with camera people, wardrobe with wardrobe, writers with writers — and we don’t get the full picture of how unhinged many of our co-workers really are. Until snack time.
It’s a little like the constellation of social media platforms, in which people from all walks of life jostle up against each other. Mostly, it’s dog pictures and arguments about pineapple on pizza, but you’re always about three short scrolls from something depressingly paranoid or purely hateful, no matter how tightly you’ve curated your “friends” or how carefully you’ve curated your algorithm.
When the conversation veers into the baroque conspiracy theory or the benefits of homebrew, it’s easy to walk away rolling your eyes. That’s how I’ve handled my trips to the craft services table in the past. And I know that we all have some peculiar insights into the world around us, and each of us harbors some weirdo philosophies. I wish I didn’t know that about the makeup artist, is what I thought to myself as I mumbled pleasantries with a mouthful of cookies. But the truth is, it just made trips to the craft services table a little more fun and quirky. Freemason plots, urine drinking — these are bonkers, of course, but they’re harmless unless you’ve been sharing a glass with the makeup artist.
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For the past few weeks, unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the Loony Town Square of social media, where a lot of us have been surprised to discover how close we are, via “friends” or “liked by” or some other algorithm, to some genuinely sick, utterly indefensible, and completely unharmless ways of thinking. There’s been very little on my social media feeds, for instance, that I could just roll my eyes about and move away from. Since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, “quirky” has given way to “murderous” and “appalling.”
I wish I didn’t know a lot of things about the mostly unidentified and unknown — to me, anyway — people who have crowded into my social media. I wish I could go back to thinking of it as a global craft services table. But for now, anyway, I’ve lost my appetite. I won’t be returning for a while.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer, including as a screenwriter and executive producer on Cheers, and he is the co-founder of Ricochet.com.