Every time you read some voice-y dispatch from @Tostitos or @Pepsi or, unnervingly, @MrPeanut, you are consuming the considered thoughts of a salaried adult, whose job it is to replicate some believable form of humanity while hawking its products. Over the years, the brand Twitters have appropriated AAVE, hopped onto the trending memes of the moment, faked depression, horrifyingly commemorated Pearl Harbor, and so on. This is often all unreadable and embarrassing, and still enough of it is tolerated by the internet’s users to encourage new linguistic transgressions in the service of selling Sunny D. A sea change in what customers find acceptable may someday come, but for now, it’s just the way things are.
That said, why is Netflix so horny, all of the time?
Like many corporations, the streaming giant operates several accounts dedicated to the many global branches of its product. Different countries have different streaming rights, and so there is a Netflix account for Canada, Ireland, France, and so forth. There are also accounts dedicated to customer service, news about Netflix Originals, and memes. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference between accounts, or what specific service they provide. This is fine, inasmuch “this is fine” is all you can really say about a great many things on the internet, except for one part: The accounts all want to kiss and fondle and tug you, and perhaps each other and the other brand accounts. Check this out:
Every post makes me shudder: The overfamiliar tone, the tease of physical contact, the explicit need to look at Adam Rippon’s dick. This is just what I’ve pulled from the last month or so. There is surely more, if you need to find it.
Performative enthusiasm from these accounts is one thing. Real life customer service is built on the appearance of sincere human joy when the employee is halfway dead inside, so I understand the @Cheerios account telling one of its followers, “It’s so lit you buy our cereal, fam.” But the performative horniness suggests a specific and uncanny directive to read the room, and act accordingly. The modern internet is so conducive to the hyperbolic, suicidal expression of lust — run a motorcycle over my leg and jack me off with a sandpaper glove, Ariana! — that it would be weird not to talk like this.
Millennials and Gen Z hate sex, if you believe the reports, but they don’t hate acting like they want to have it. And though the people behind all these accounts may be real, and may just be having fun because what else is there to do at a job involving computers, so they imbue the Netflix logo with a libidinous glow, begging its followers to gaze upon a post about how badly they want Toni Collette to ruin their life, mutter mood, and click the like button.
Someone more pessimistic would suggest this is emblematic of society’s downfall, though I’m sure it’s just entertaining to 93 percent of the people involved. Goofing off on the internet is basically the only thing that makes people happy, in between life’s regular degradations. I believe, or at least want to believe, that if you polled all of the users who follow these accounts about whether they have more considered devotion to Netflix because of how charming they find the posts, most of them would say it doesn’t really matter. The appeal is the cheap fee to stream infinite amounts of content, not the witty feed. Otherwise, we’d all be eating Steak-umm’s for dinner.
But knowing that Netflix wants to be my friend is one thing. Feeling like it wants to watch me jerk off is another. It’s fine, I guess. It’s just the way things are.
Correction: A previous version of this story mistakenly claimed the SpaghettiOs corporate Twitter commemorated 9/11, when it in fact commemorated Pearl Harbor. The Outline regrets the error.
