Earlier this week, I had some free time, and as I was scrolling on TikTok, I came across a clip of a movie, “Mainstream.” It seemed interesting and combined with the fact that both Andrew Garfield and Alexa Demie played in it, I figured it would be the perfect movie to watch.
Mainstream is a satirical drama that explores the volatile world of internet fame. The film follows Frankie, a young woman who along with Link, a stranger she meets in a mall, as they build a viral social media presence. As their follower count skyrockets, the two must grapple with the consequences of their rise to stardom, ultimately revealing the darker side of internet culture.
One main point of the movie is how Link hated phones and the internet because of how it makes people blind to the real world, yet throughout the movie, he only becomes more and more consumed by the very thing that made him famous. Through this consumption, the movie shows the insane lengths that people will go to to achieve internet immortality.
However, by showing this, the movie also sheds light on the toxic nature of cancel culture. Mainstream forces us to question whether the internet has become more punishing than productive. There’s really no chance for growth, and people are reduced to being on one side of very nuanced opinions. Rather than letting influencers and celebrities learn from their mistakes, the internet would rather shut the person down, and the majority of the time, the influencer is eventually forgiven after a little while.Â
All this does is create an endless cycle of judgment, which boils down to the fact that we can’t really trust much of what we see online. Social media in itself is where people go to show a very specific version of their life, and oftentimes influencers can lose touch with their authentic selves. As people become more dependent on the external validation of social media, they only end up sacrificing their morals and values in the process.Â