Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Schrader and other Seniors Gone Wild on Social Media

I don’t know where she’s going with this but I do not like it.

As readers of this blog are well aware, I have a love-hate relationship with social media that leans heavily towards “hate.” On the whole, I think of social media as a toxic realm full of cruelty, arrogance, and division, particularly after Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into an online Alt-Right clubhouse where the worst people in the world are celebrated. 

Unfortunately, I need to be on what I will never stop calling Twitter because I am a perpetually struggling small businessman, and Musk’s site remains an okay vehicle for self-promotion. 

I wish I didn’t need to be on Twitter. But right now, it is an unfortunate and regrettable necessity. 

I have a much more positive attitude towards Facebook, in part because I am quite fond of my group, the Society for the Toleration of Nathan Rabin, which never gets any bigger no matter how many times I mention it here. 

Social media can bring good things. As an autistic adult, it allows me to maintain relationships and friendships without having to actually talk to other human beings.

If you’re as introverted, shy, and self-conscious as I am, the internet is a godsend. 

But I also dig the internet because it provides a fascinating insight into important artists. 

I am particularly fascinated by the social media of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull screenwriter Paul Schrader and novelist Joyce Carol Oates. 

I’m pleased to report that on Twitter and Facebook, these legendary writers are exactly who you think they’d be. Paul Schrader, god bless him, is a horny weirdo with a massive, perhaps one-sided crush on Taylor Swift, whose work and body and image he has praised extensively. 

It’s adorable that a man synonymous with some of the darkest and most disturbing films in American cinema has a schoolboy crush on America’s Sweetheart. 

I do not begrudge Schrader his fixation on a performer young enough to be his granddaughter. What’s not to like about Taylor Swift? She’s beautiful and talented, her songs are catchy, and she seems like she’d be fun to hang out with. 

When he’s not crushing on Taylor Swift, the screenwriter of Bringing Out the Dead shares opinions on movies, music, and life that you have to respect on some level because he’s Paul Schrader, and he wrote and directed Mishima.

Schrader is unwisely candid and honest on social media, to the point that when First Reformed was in awards contention, his people “encouraged” him to be less active on social media so that voters could focus on his critically acclaimed film instead of his strange personality. 

I’m also fascinated by Joye Carol Oates’ Twitter account. The eighty-five-year-old social media addict is as prolific on Twitter as she is churning out novels. I counted, and in the last twenty-four hours, she’s posted or re-posted over twenty-five times. That means that she’s tweeted for every hour of the day and then some. 

What does Oates tweet about? Everything and anything. She has the kind of wonderfully weird takes on movies, music, politics, and art you would expect from one of American letters’ true eccentrics. 

When I think about the positive side of social media I think Roger Ebert. When the cruelty of life had robbed him of that booming, confident, inimitable voice, he was able to communicate constantly with the world through Twitter.

Twitter became an incredibly important, valuable way for the Pulitzer Prize winner, far and away the most famous and influential film critic of all time, to digitally communicate with a public that loved him and that he loved in return. 

I’m glad that Elon Musk did not own Twitter when Ebert was tweeting, in part because, being a huge asshole in need of attention, I’m sure he’d take weird potshots at Ebert for being a Progressive and then have his army of mindless sycophants congratulate him on his flawless rhetorical victories. 

The Big WhoopNathan Rabin