How is the rise and fall of the Liver King an instructive lesson on moral depravity, Faustian Bargains, the absence of positive male role models, the grift of Bro Culture, and the dehumanization of the social media age? In your analysis of the Liver King’s consignment to the Shame Dungeon, consult the Netflix Black Mirror episode “Nosedive,” Naomi Fry's essay “‘Fake Famous’ and the Tedium of Influencer Culture,” and Shirley Li’s “The Horrors of Being Extremely Online.” With these sources, develop an argumentative thesis about the connection between our thirst for fame and attention and our inevitable depravity and dehumanization.
Related movies: Fake Famous, Not Okay, The Deep End.
Consider Scott Galloway’s critique on modern society and the plight of young men. He has YouTube videos about this subject.
Consider Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves.
What does the rise and fall of the Liver King say about the contradictions of Bro Culture and social media? How does the artifice of the Liver King speak to our hunger for authenticity and dramatic personal change? How does social media relax our critical thinking skills so that we are seduced by salient images of power, transformation, authenticity, and masculinity?
Your Short Liver King Essay:
Many of us have gleefully witnessed the fiery crash of the charlatan Liver King, a ripped bodybuilder claiming to be an all-natural practitioner of “ancestral” living when in reality his own liver was saturated with Performance-Enhancing-Drugs.
But beyond the schadenfreude we enjoy for his consignment to the Shame Dungeon, we can see his rise as a social media star teaches us important lessons about the search for meaning in the social media age. Millions of men are hungry for positive images of masculinity, a healthy lifestyle that treats the mind, body, and soul with respect, and a lifestyle that gives men a sense of purpose, belonging, and self-worth. The Liver King pressed all those buttons and relaxed people’s critical thinking skills so that they swallowed disbelief and embraced him as Natural Man. He manipulated social media’s algorithms by curating an extreme image of a muscle man dragging trees and boulders while nourishing himself with bloody organs.
Our outrage over the Liver King’s fall seems disingenuous. We knew all along we were embracing a fictional demigod to fuel our own Alpha Male fantasies. We should replace those adolescent longings by taking care of our bodies in a healthy way and freeing ourselves from social-media-fueled images of hypermasculinity.
Exercise and nutrition are vital to our self-worth and sense of purpose, but we don’t need grotesque bodybuilding caricatures to inspire us. As an alternative to the Liver King, I recommend you watch the Netflix documentary Stutz in which therapist Phil Stutz argues persuasively that taking care of our bodies is essential to summoning the Life Force. We can embrace self-care while at the same time repel mountebanks like the Liver King.
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