Welcome to the Second Thought newsletter, my weekly tour of what’s going on in the zeitgeist: This week in pop culture, like most weeks, began with a meltdown over Sydney Sweeney. This time, it was about her character on the show Euphoria, the HBO series that mirrors Sweeney in at least two ways: First, people never fail to get riled up over what it shows, and says, or what they think it might be saying—and second, they simply cannot look away.
On Tuesday, I wrote a piece about how, in the season of the show that’s currently airing, Sweeney’s character, Cassie, plays an aspiring OnlyFans star who is willing to do anything, pretty much, for money and attention. That includes donning a ridiculous baby costume (though more often she’s donning nothing at all), and fulfilling the requests of her thousands of male followers: for her to humiliate them, eat hot dogs in front of a camera for them, or simply whisper their name.
