In her latest YouTube video, Brie Larson paces back and forth in her living room, everything above her stomach cut off by an awkwardly positioned camera while she mutters to herself. She flops down on the sofa and lies there clumsily, in an old pair of shorts, a plain white shirt, and no makeup. She scoffs to herself, brushing her hair back – the Oscar-winning actress seemingly embarrassed at the prospect of being on camera. “I still don’t fully get how to shoot these things,” she laughs, leaning forward to reposition the camera, before throwing her arms out and shouting “Happy one year anniversary!”
Brie Larson has been on YouTube for a year now, and this is exactly how most of these videos go. In our social media-addled world, it feels like we’re closer to celebrities than we ever have been before. One quick look at Instagram this morning and I know what book Emma Roberts is reading, how Cara Delevingne got ready for her recent Dior shoot, and where Nikita Dragun went for the 4th of July. In fact, I could tell you where most celebrities went for the 4th of July, or at least what their red, white, and blue outfits looked like. I could also, if I so wished, message any of these women – or at least, the PR firms that run their Instagrams – and tell them to go and die. This closeness to the rich and famous has led to a huge rise in toxicity, and that in turn has made it very hollow – it’s an illusion of closeness, an attempt to create the parasocial relationships social media can instill between celebrities and their fans while keeping up walls to block out the hostility and harassment.
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Look a little closer and the hollowness is clear to see. Nikita Dragun’s snaps aren’t typical holiday selfies – they’re professionally captured photoshoots there to promote her current brands and attract new ones. Likewise, Cara Delevingne’s photos have clearly been curated to include other celebrities to tag, as well as a promo tag for @dior itself. Roberts’ post is more genuine, but comes with the fairly lifeless caption ‘Weekend trip’ – I don’t ask that Emma Roberts (or anybody on social media, famous or not) performs a happy little jig to entertain me while I scroll, nor should they constantly open their private lives up to the world, but it’s clear the relationship here is one-sided.
I chose these three examples entirely because they were the first three I saw, and they were very typical of how celebrities use social media. Roberts is genuine but closed off, Delevingne offers the illusion of friendship and connection through curated images designed to appeal to her demographic, and Dragun uses the platform for self or paid promotion. I have no problem with any of these approaches – but Brie Larson’s YouTube is not like that. With Larson using her one year anniversary video to shut down the channel (as Hollywood opens up again, her filming schedule no longer allows for it), it’s worth looking back on just how she managed to cut through the toxicity to create something raw and real.
The opening to Larson’s anniversary video, in which she dresses as she typically would at home, and features her talking like a normal person, is very typical of her channel – she has nothing to promote besides her hobbies and interests. Her first video starts with her sitting a little too close to the camera, hair pulled back, awkwardly waving and taking two attempts to say “Hi, I’m Brie Larson” without cracking up.
There’s an infectious enthusiasm to everything Larson does on YouTube, and what’s most impressive is how natural and unguarded she is. In one of her most recent videos, she uses the unofficial Zelda cookbook to make her own elixirs. Larson is not voicing any characters in an upcoming Zelda game or starring in any upcoming Zelda movies, nor is she being paid by Nintendo – it was the unofficial cookbook, after all. She just did it because she wanted to. In some videos, she plays Fortnite just because she likes Fortnite – she’s even had fellow Marvel alum Tessa Thompson on her channel for a few games of the battle royale. In others, she does yoga, again, just because.
Brie Larson is not your average celebrity. Her crimes seem to amount to a) playing Captain Marvel and b) suggesting that A Wrinkle in Time, a movie about a young Black girl with a Black director and mostly Black cast, was not made primarily for old white men. For this, she has been sentenced for life to incel hatred, forever cast as the enemy of the chuds. This is a young, conventionally attractive white woman who loves video games, comic books, and being a nerd – there’s an alternate universe where 4chan worships her as a queen the way they do Keanu Reeves. I know they probably paint the inside of their jeans when they see her in open-toed heels anyway, but in another universe they wouldn’t be so angry about it.
The hatred they have for Larson is very peculiar. Name any female celebrity and the chuds will likely dismiss them in misogynistic terms, but Larson gets special treatment. Her every movement is analysed. In pre-Avengers interviews, it was clear from the way Mark Ruffalo was sat, the way Don Cheadle blinked, and the way Chris Hemsworth stood that they all hated her. Every time she brushed back her hair, every time she made or broke eye contact, every smile, every laugh, every wave – it was freeze-framed, zoomed in on, blown up, in some cases masturbated over, and definitively catalogued. It all confirmed what 4chan already knew. Everyone hated Brie Larson, no one more than Brie Larson herself. You can tell, see, from the way she’s smiling and joking with Scarlett Johansson, that everyone hates her. Her life must suck and mine’s great. No mom, I won’t go to the bathroom, I'm busy playing Mafia 3!
Every celebrity can be caught off-guard with a poorly timed photograph, but few if any were watched in such a hawklike fashion as Brie Larson. It must have been tempting to close herself off from the world, to overthink her every subtle movement, to never relax again. Instead, she stuck her middle finger up. How do you fight back against an army of losers who pick apart every nanosecond that you've ever been on camera? You go on camera more. You take control of the narrative. There's no point in freeze-framing Larson's YouTube looking for cracks in her supposed veneer – she keeps her mistakes in and she's always herself. Why bother finding an unflattering frame to humiliate her? She films her workouts, which aren't Hollywood aerobics or pre-chosen clips of three-second stylised victories – this is full, genuine exercise with a red face and a scraped back bun. You can't exploit vulnerabilities in a person willing to be so openly vulnerable.
I don't think all celebrities should do this – and the fact Larson is having to shut hers down due to scheduling proves they can't anyway. I don't have a problem with celebrities only giving us a tailored view of their lives either. Larson might have weathered it, but we've seen far too often what the deluge of toxicity can do to young women in the spotlight; #FreeBritney is the latest reminder. It’s not zero sum, and Brie Larson’s success at navigating the online space does not mean other women who opt to be more private have failed. It means that the chuds don’t have to win, and it’s so perfectly fitting that Brie Larson is the one to deliver that message while playing video games.
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