how to give yourself a lobotomy
in 3 easy steps
I’ve become someone else since the pandemic.
I was put in a box for two years and rattled about like I was the school hamster spending a weekend with the class sociopath.
“Look, little buddy, all your kind are dying, and you’ve got to pace about in a flat the size of an old shoe. But don’t worry every Friday you can queue up outside a dying pub as they hand out beer in milk cartons and then sit at home and watch The Prime Minister pretend he’s Winston Churchill except, somehow, more racist!”
At first, B. and I glued ourselves to the twenty-four-hour news cycle. How many thousands are needlessly dead today? But as months went on and the political circus got more untethered from reality — we detached ourselves too. I made a concerted effort to protect our brains from the onslaught of BAD NEWS THAT SELLS because it was destroying our mental health. Animal Crossing had started to feel like putting a plaster on a missing limb.
So, I gave us a content lobotomy. Reduce the news — increase the trash.
Five years ago, ask me what I enjoyed watching, and I’d reel off ten harrowing indie films I’d watched from around the world. I loved challenging stuff that wasn’t afraid to explore the darkest depths of humanity. It’s almost laughable to think about now — having the mental resilience to withstand such films was a privilege afforded to those with a nice life. Ask me what I watch today, and I’ll give you my top 10 most dramatic moments on Vanderpump Rules.
I deleted my BFI Player, Shudder and Mubi subscriptions and replaced them with Hayu (Reality On-demand!). Get your Russian Melodrama away from me — I want to spend my days with sexy people on a boat. Below Deck is a show that follows young preppy adventurers working on a yacht to transport rich people around beautiful locations. It was the closest I could get to taking a holiday. At the time, my work threatened redundancies if we couldn’t “prove our worth” during furlough. Really cool fun. I spent my days wiggling my mouse every 15 minutes to appear active on Microsoft Teams and then staring into the abyss of tanned bodies, tropical climates and early 2010s haircuts (what were we thinking?!)
The best thing about reality TV is that it’s endless. You can spend hundreds of hours on a single series only to discover it’s got eight spin-offs, each its own endless series. It’s like a many-headed hydra that you beg to consume you.
Since 2020, I’ve watched:
Below Deck — 154 hours
Below Deck: Mediterranean — 121 hours
Below Deck: Adventure Yacht — 10 hours
Below Deck: Down Under — 20 hours
Real Housewives: Atlanta — 314 hours
Real Housewives: Beverley Hills — 268 hours
Keeping Up With The Kardashians — 280 hours
Love Island — 489 hours
The Circle - 61 hours
Traitors (UK and Australia) — 12 hours
Gordon Ramsay’s Hotel Hell — 22 hours
Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares USA — 98 hours
Vanderpump Rules — 205 hours
But it didn’t just stop with the shows. My music tastes changed — gone were the angry punk or sad boy electro I used to enjoy, now replaced with white noise, music for concentration, and The Lord of the Rings soundtrack.
The moment I sensed some bullshit drama at my job, instead of having a difficult conversation, I simply found a new job. I had zero capacity for egotistical bosses, anti-vax rhetoric or lousy pay. I knocked back four jobs over the two years during the pandemic. 99% of it was spent at my little metal desk, with my little 2016 Macbook, in my little one-bed flat.
Why go to the shop and join the apocalyptic queue and maddening crowds chasing after the last of the loo roll when I could buy idiot-proof pre-made meals with all the ingredients included and only took six steps to create?
Why go outside when you could explore the lush landscapes of Zelda: Breath of the Wild?
Why even think if all you’ll think about is bad stuff?
I removed everything that reminded me of the messy, angry, broken world I was living in. Burnt. Destroyed. Never to be remembered.
Chuck Palahniuk has a short story called Zombie, which opens with:
It was Griffin Wilson who proposed the theory of de-evolution. He sat two rows behind me in Organic Chem, the very definition of an evil genius. He was the first to take the Great Leap Backward.
It’s about a group of teenagers who decide to zap their brains with defibrillators to become brain-dead zombies without a care in the world. I often think about that story — how much am I willing to give up to stop caring about shit?
The problem with metaphorical lobotomies is that they don’t work as well as real ones. Once lockdowns started lifting and we could finally see each other again, we were no longer protected from each other’s Kentucky-fried emotions. There was pressure to have a good time because we’d had so many bad ones. According to WHO, Covid triggered a 25% increase in the prevalence of anxiety and depression worldwide. So, of course, these meet-ups went terribly. At one point, I started a BS argument with one of my best friends in an abandoned pub smoking area which ended in us both crying.
A part of me wishes I was still wrapped in that mental cocoon of brain bubble-gum content. No calories. No goodness. No worries.
Now we’re a few years away from all that, and I’m struggling to find my way back to the person I was before. I still watch hours of trash TV. I still avoid difficult conversations. I still hate reading the news. Some of my old darker tastes have come back, though — I went to see HEALTH (fucking sick) in November and read The Doloriad (fucking depressing) this year, but there’s still something missing from the person before.
I think it’s the concreteness of my reality. Before 2020, reality seemed certain: it had its rules and flaws, but it felt like reality. Whatever the fuck you and I are living in now doesn’t have that. Maybe it never did. Maybe I’ve spent too long in “reality TV”, where every episode has a story arc. The sexy bartender learns that cheating on his girlfriend is bad. The alcoholic stewardess learns not to drunkenly yell at the billionaire. The chef learns that Gordon Ramsay is always right (even though only 20% of the restaurants have remained open.) Maybe I can’t avoid the fact that the world is messy, angry and broken. But I also have people who love me. Family. Friends. A dog.
Would I give that up for a lobotomy? Hell no.
I just need someone to help guide me through the darkness.
You’ll help me, won’t you?
As Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire says, “I rely on the kindness of strangers.”
Lots of love,
jacob x