Fiction is a lie, but the biggest lies in fiction are things that we don’t perceive as fiction.

A straightforward case where this happens is with actors themselves. No matter how realistic a movie tries to be, every single movie happens in this fake world where the characters are not (famous) actors. Nobody stops Bruce Wayne to tell him he looks just like that guy from American Psycho. Nobody notices that Maid #3 is too hot to be a maid and that she could easily find a better job, maybe, I don’t know, being a 5 minutes character in a Hollywood movie.

But what did you expect? You can’t make a movie without actors and this is just a stupid theoretical point, there are no implications. Of course there are. They are letting you lie to yourself, and it’s gonna come back at you.

I would also empathize with a hobo that looked like her.

You are learning that it’s possible to have a beautiful big apartment with a balcony in New York and buy all your kitchen stuff from Jamie Oliver while being a part-time waitress and spending most of your time jerking around with your hot Friends™. You are shown that there is such a thing as a sexy police officer that enjoys smooth jazz and reads Foucault at home while thinking that infinite zoom cameras are the only fiction at play in cop shows.

And you don’t understand why you are ass deep in debt. You just bought normal stuff: a computer, some clothes, a basic cable subscription. You have been told it was okay to pursue your life dream of an English major — minor in theater — and own an iPhone. It works for Penny, why doesn’t it work for you?

But here is the place where they take all you have and give nothing back. You think this is all a coincidence, a stupid theory from some internet chick with nothing better to do on a Saturday night.

You don’t see that there are no coincidences in the system. If it’s there, it’s there for a reason. If those stories teach you what to desire, they exist to teach you to desire. If movies are enabling you to cope with your life then they are also the reason why you are coping instead of living.