Given the above, the characters in I Love LA are painfully acquainted. Whether or not it’s the Balenciaga bag and declined Monzo cost or the affinity for imprecise self-help affirmations and the soundbite dialogue, in I Love LA, Sennott has captured the Zillennial situation in all of its dead-eyed, Tales-watching glory.
I’m, after all, biased. Everybody desires to be in on the joke, and as a 27-year-old who works in trend and sometimes wears Tabis, I like to think about myself because the target market for the Dilara Findikoglu references and Wildflower cellphone circumstances. I, too, have a graveyard of useless vapes by my mattress and love going for over-priced, dimly lit dinners, so to see it performed out on the display screen—arguably for the primary time—affirms the campy absurdity woven into all of it.
Photograph: Kenny Laubbacher/HBO
Not too long ago, I’ve discovered myself doubling down on the Zillennial literature: Zoe Dubno’s Happiness and Love, Anika Jade Levy’s Flat Earth, and Honor Levy’s My First Ebook, all of which felt slightly too near house. The anxiety-inducing accounts of evenings spent amongst self-proclaimed artists and thinkers in Dubno’s novel specifically felt eerily correct, disgustingly relatable, and made me wish to delete social media and block anybody with an Eames chair or a Crimson Scare Patreon subscription.
On the flipside, I Love LA hasn’t had the identical impact. Possibly it’s the light-hearted tone, or possibly it’s as a result of it’s set in LA, which isn’t a severe place, however the collection has left me feeling weirdly affectionate in direction of these car-crash characters, bringing to thoughts culturally important reveals like Completely Fabulous. Sennott’s LA natives could also be delusional and shallow, however I’ve a comfortable spot for his or her cheesy, overblown methods, in the identical method I do for Harvey Nicks-obsessive Edina and Stoli-swinging Patsy. The world is a bleak and scary place lately, and personally, I’d moderately take pleasure in a little bit of absurdity when attainable, moderately than replicate on how adrift, aimless, and usually screwed us Zillenials are.
