The Answer is...
On authenticity, AI, and the iconic 90s film Reality Bites
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In case you didn’t know, the title of my post today is a quote from the iconic 1994 movie Reality Bites. I went to see this movie at the second run movie theater in my hometown with girls who would hate me the following year, for reasons I still don’t recall. We also snuck into see Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. It was one of those perfect, fun days that can really only happen when you’re a teenager.
Reality Bites had a killer cast. It introduced the world to the amazing Janeane Garofolo and Steve Zahn. Ben Stiller was perfect casting for “yuppie head cheeseball” Michael Grates, and he was also the director. Ethan Hawke and Winona Ryder had insane chemistry, and gosh they were pretty. It also has an iconic soundtrack, including this Forever Emo Jam:
If you haven’t seen the film, here is a brief synopsis, Words by Me:
Lelaina Pierce - a 23 year overachiever who just graduated as the valedictorian of her university - has a shitty job at a horrid morning show, is filming a documentary about her friends, and is stuck in a love triangle with two shithead dudes. One dude (Troy Dyer) is a slacker who thinks he’s Jack Kerouac but actually can’t even keep a job at a bodega, the other (Michael Grates) is a harbinger of corporate media douchebags of the future. When not dealing with the romantic advances of staggeringly mid guys, she hangs out with her best friends, Vickie and Sammy, who absolutely deserved their own spin off.
I have seen this movie like nine thousand times. I can still recite it verbatim. It is infinitely quotable. To this day, it’s one of my Comfort Movies.
When I was a teenager, I thought it was an Epic Love Story for the Ages. To be fair, I think it was sort of a requirement for girls my age to lust after Ethan Hawke. He proved himself lust worthy when he was super nice to me at a fancy theater party. I pretended to be chill while 14 year old me was dying inside.1
Reality Bites is one of my biggest cultural touchstones. As an Elder Millennial, I always felt a kinship with Gen X, and still do. I think Gen X and Millennials (especially us Elders) have more in common than we think sometimes. The Gen X philosophies of the time are almost quaint now, sort of how Gen Z views the Obama years, but it forged my creative ethics. Being a “sell out” and a “poser” were Deeply Uncool Things. You weren’t supposed to want money from corporations, and putting on a suit or a pencil skirt and working in an office was not the dream. The dream was to make art, or music, or documentary films like our girl, Lelaina.
At the beginning of the movie, Lelaina is giving her valedictorian speech at her graduation. Things do not go according to plan when she realizes she is missing the last notecard of her speech.
…they wonder why those of us in our 20’s refuse to work an 80 hour week just so we can afford to buy their BMW’s. Why we are interested in the counterculture that they invented, as if we did not see them disembowel their revolution for a pair of running shoes.
But the question remains - what are we going to do now? How can we repair all the damage we inherited? Fellow graduates, the answer is simple. The answer is…
The answer is….I don’t know.
Hard same, Lelaina.
Hard same.
It may be a little naive2 , but I have still tried to hang on to the 90’s idea of authenticity. When I was coming of age, that meant being true to yourself, making work you believe in, and not selling your work to corporations. It meant not allowing someone to take your gritty documentary and turn it into an ad for Pizza Hut, like Michael Grates did.
Now? What even IS authenticity? As it has become harder and harder to make a living - not only in art, but in general - you are the CEO of your “brand”, even if you never wanted to be a brand. I have struggled with the idea of myself as a “brand”, but I suppose I have one. If any of you know what it is, let me know! Because do not get me wrong, I am not above “selling out”.
So, Michael Grates - please call me on your giant cell phone. I am absolutely for sale and yes, I DO accept checks.3
Kidding aside, I really do struggle with it all, especially as I’ve ventured back into personal writing. I have been writing on Substack for almost two years now. For the most part, it has been an incredible experience. I’ve opened up about things I didn’t talk about. I grappled with my ADHD diagnosis. I made friends and found writers I love. I even got some people to pay me for my writing, which is wonderful, and I remain terribly grateful.
But there’s been a shift, and I know I am not the only one feeling it.
When I started, there was no Substack Notes. It came out shortly after I started publishing. At first, it was sort of fun, and a good way to get noticed. Today, Notes is beginning to feel like Twitter 2.0, and not in a good way. Over the past couple of months, the engagement on my actual writing has gone down significantly. Once in a while, a Note will get some eyes on it, but the engagement with the actual long form part of it is down.
I started to panic. What was I doing wrong? Should I offer more to my subscribers? Should I do something different for Paid Subscribers? I have tried a few different things, but none of them really move the needle. I don’t necessarily need or expect to have a bunch of people pay, but I feel like I need to give them something if they do.
Having ADHD means that I forget about doing the “extras”, and having a full time job and a life restricts my time. Then I start spiraling like….should I do videos? I hate myself on video. I stopped doing voiceovers because it was so much extra work and also didn’t move the needle, but I also hate that there’s an AI voice reading my work…
Bringing me to the unavoidable issue of AI.
Trust me, I wish I COULD avoid it.
There has been much debate about AI on Notes. Some people are loudly and proudly saying that AI writes their Substack posts. They accuse those of us who don’t think that’s a good thing of being “old”, and clutch their pearls when its implied that letting an AI write your whole post isn’t writing.
Got some news for you.
IT ISN’T WRITING.
Part of being a writer is the actual process of writing. Yes, it can be painful, and tedious, but it can be joyful and fun, too. It’s fascinating to watch your own process, to take the time and care to go “okay, what am I writing about here, really?”. And yes, it can even result in egregious typos that you only notice the second you publish and it goes to your whole email list, because human beings make mistakes.
If you choose to use ChatGPT for things like spellchecking and grammar, okay fine. I personally wouldn’t put anything into ChatGPT that I wrote myself, but you do you. But if you just vomit some ideas out and plug them in, and it spits out a competent sounding article, that’s not writing. It may contain your ideas, but it does not contain your writing. It was written by a computer that only “knows” how to write because it was trained on stolen work.
I had someone reply to a Note I wrote about AI saying that “AI is good at writing”. No, it’s fucking not good at writing. It’s great at aggregating, and aping structure and form, but it is not good at writing. Because computers are not writers. They are computers.
And look, I’m not some anti-tech Luddite. I was forged in the early days of the internet. I have been on some form of social media or blogging platform since I was 18 years old. I think technology can be an incredible tool, and can connect us. But as we have seen, it can be destructive and divisive.
There was a slim chance that AI maybe could have been used for good - but as with everything else in this dumb ass timeline, the worst people on earth are in charge of it. Environmental impacts aside, it is already blunting our creativity and ability to read and learn, which is going to blunt our humanity and our empathy. Some scientists claim that AI is already “better” at empathy than humans, but this does nothing to address why empathy is undervalued in our culture. Replacing actual empathy with a simulation of empathy is not a solution.
Regardless of my feelings about it, the changes are here. AI is here to stay.
I can’t fight a computer. I’ve read enough science fiction to know how that turns out. But I can choose how I engage with it, at least for now. I refuse to use AI to create my work - plays, painting, or essays. I don’t want computers to speak for me. I don’t want to be something I am not.
I just want to write.
And that is what I will continue to do, as authentically as I can, even if authenticity simply means “written by an actual human”.
At the end of Reality Bites, Lelaina chooses authenticity. Or, she thinks she does. She chooses Troy - a Peter Pan fuckboy who can’t even make himself finish his frickin philosophy degree - over Michael.
It’s hard to root for Lelaina and Troy in 2025, because we know too much. We know that Peter Pan never becomes a real boy4 never grows up in the end. Lelaina wants to believe that he will, in part because she is only 23 years old. Troy isn’t her forever person, but she knows what kind of life she actually wants, and for the moment, he feels like a step towards the authentic life that she craves.
But Michael isn’t the right choice either, not only because of his worldview, but because Troy has something he doesn’t - which is Lelaina’s love. She’s in love with Troy, and it’s bone obvious from the first time they share a scene. Just because you shouldn’t be in love with a fuckboy doesn’t mean that you’re not. Who among us has not been in love with someone we shouldn’t be? Following your heart is authenticity, too, even if you find out thirty years later that your ex-boyfriend now has his own Alt-Left podcast5 and definitely voted third party.
This is why the movie still holds up for me, because I am nothing if not your Over-earnest Cringe Millennial, and I intend to keep it that way. The kids can do what they want, I will be over here riding my own melt.
I still don’t know what that expression means, exactly. But it was in a good script that was written by an actual human woman (her name is Helen Childress), and that’s good enough for me.
There is no point to any of this. It’s all just a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. So I take pleasure in the details. You know, a quarter pounder with cheese, those are good; the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain, the moment where your laughter becomes a crackle…and I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights and I ride my own melt. - Troy Dyer (as written by Helen Childress)
Sometimes, when I feel extra wistful, I wish I could time travel just to tell my teenage self that one day she will be cool enough to talk to Ethan Hawke at a theater party, fueled by nothing but an open bar and fake confidence, and that he will physically hold her hand and tell her to keep writing. I feel like it would have gotten her through some dark days.
“Evian is naive spelled backwards” is still one of the most hilarious lines ever.
as did Domino’s
I only noticed that I mixed up Pinnochio and Peter Pan after I published, because of course.
Troy’s podcast would ABSOLUTELY be called “Ride Your Own Melt”
I really liked this because I also love that movie. (Solidly an X with cusp little sister). And it inspired me to ask ChatGPT “what does ride your own melt mean?” And the machine gave me about 3 pages that amounted to “I have no idea but I’m supposed to come up with an answer.” And that felt right. That’s why you write. To frame ideas anew.
Wow! You packed a lot of wisdom and excellent writing into this "authentically written" post. I'm smitten. Thank you.