How I watched the Oscars without watching the Oscars

The truth is, I never really watch the Oscars. I am usually pretty tuned in to pop culture, but when Oscar season rolls around I feel like a weird old lady who has been living in a cabin and just doesn’t go to movies.

Bad metaphors aside, I really don’t see a lot of films. Out of the whole lineup nominated, the only film I actually saw was “Les Misérables.”

It’s not even completely out of laziness. I had a friend who, on probably three or four different occasions, tried to get me to see “Django Unchained,” and each time I turned him down.

Why? I don’t even completely understand my motives.

I already have somewhat of an aversion to Quentin Tarantino as a director. It’s nothing technical. He’s just not my style.

But this year, it was with complete determination that I flat-out refused to see any movies that seemed even remotely award-worthy.

Perhaps it is the whole notion of something being “Oscar material” that is off-putting.

Watching an Academy Award-nominated film during awards season is like listening to an album that’s been getting a lot of buzz on Pitchfork.

It becomes almost impossible for me to separate the product from its reviews, and I start to feel like I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it.

These are all pretty lame reasons to not watch a film, I know, but social media makes me feel like I don’t even have to watch to have a discussion about them.

Just through reading my Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr feeds on awards night, following a big national event feels like involuntarily getting the SparkNotes of a book you weren’t even trying to read.

It has turned large, nationally aired events into some kind of feeding frenzy. After reading through my various streams, I didn’t have to watch a single second of the Oscars to know everything that was happening, as it was happening.

From live-tweeters and bloggers to vapid parody accounts, every major social and political event is now punctuated with an asinine gifset on Buzzfeed.

Jennifer Lawrence fell down, Seth MacFarlane said a lot of things you would expect from MacFarlane and Michelle Obama was elegant, radiant and perfect. Michelle Obama didn’t even win anything, despite being radiant, and would probably be an amazing actress if we would just give her the chance.

But no, thousands of Americans instead decided to willingly participate in an event that involved listening to MacFarlane and celebrating a lot of very costly, very long movies.

Not watching the Academy Awards was probably the only good decision I even made last week.  

I didn’t have to experience the pain firsthand of watching MacFarlane be an absolute turd, but I can still join in when people talk about how terrible his jokes were.

To quote John Darnielle (@mountain_goats), otherwise known as the front man of The Mountain Goats — and possibly as the voice of our generation, or at least a very excellent tweeter — “rumor has it the giant ceremony celebrating hegemonic mainstream culture sucked hard. who could possibly have foreseen this development.”

Tell me about it, John.

— alliston@indiana.edu