fame monsters

The saga of Lily Allen just keeps getting sadder. Not so ago, she announced that she was probably going to quit making music (though her publicist denied it), and deleted her anti-file sharing blog after it was deluged with angry comments and criticism from the sort of people who believe that having to pay for someone else's work is one of the greater and more terrible forms of oppression. This week, she decided to quit, not just her blog, but the entire Internet: she's reportedly left MySpace, Twitter, and even e-mail.

Lily Allen is shutting up. Lily Allen is shutting down. And I don't even know that I blame her.  

So: I went to the zoo today. I thought it would be nice! I live in New York City! It is hard to see animals bigger than squirrels or lap dogs out here, so I imagined it would be very fulfilling and grounding, in some sort of hippie Earth Mother way, to actually see some of those and remind myself that I do not live on a planet entirely composed of Pinkberry outlets. But here's the thing: zoos, if you are not seven years old, are very depressing. There's nothing nice about captivity. Even if you wouldn't wish to see some of these animals out and wandering around in your neighborhood - even if they are dangerous or gross or otherwise undesirable - there's something deeply sad and wrong about seeing them stuck behind glass walls, with nothing to do, just waiting for someone to come by and look at them.

It was under these circumstances, then, that I began to think about Miley Cyrus deleting her Twitter.