Most sane people realized, upon seeing the manufactured romance between Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper that so captivated Oscar viewers, that their love was an act. After all, this was the Oscars. Which celebrate acting and fantasy and fiction. But then again, not everybody is sane. That’s what Lady Gaga pointed out to Jimmy Kimmel when he asked her about the onstage dalliance with Cooper, after a performance that triggered hopeful speculation that the love people saw on stage was real. It wasn’t, Gaga said, rolling her eyes and taking the air out of the fantasy. But then Lady Gaga couldn’t stop. She not only wanted to disavow the romantic moment and the perception of love, Lady Gaga had to go and say that that love only flourished in “the toilet.”
“Social media, quite frankly, is the toilet of the internet and what it’s done to pop culture is abysmal. Yes, people saw love and, guess what, that’s what we wanted to you to see. This is a love song, Shallow. The movie is a love story.”
Again, sane people know this. But a look at social media speculation about the Gaga-Cooper romance doesn’t immediately conjure images of the plumbing. The social media comments and hopes may be fantastic and naive, but the people rooting for this romance to be real aren’t the same types that make social media and Internet comments section so regrettable (they aren’t 4Chan bigots, for example). These people just want a little romance and fantasy to root for — a new Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, an Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton — something like that. We understand what the hugely talented Gaga means, but to characterize all of social media as the toilet seems ungrateful at best. This is the Lady Gaga with 34.3 million followers on Instagram that help enable her career, adore her and root for her. Are they all in the toilet?
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