#no but bless meghan she makes the podcast listenable

[deeenjoyer]

sunny being such a dude show is so funny to me because i dont read it like that at all. that's every queer friend group ive ever met

[rf-observer]

‘God bless Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. I’m sure they mean well. But if I have to listen to their new podcast, I fear my toes will curl so violently that surgeons will be helpless to straighten them out again.

The promotional trailer is painful enough – with its earnest promises to share “stories of hope and compassion from inspirational guests”, and to “bring forward different perspectives and voices that perhaps you haven’t heard before” to help the people of the world “find common ground”.

Listening to it, I began to suspect something. The main reason so many British people struggle to see eye-to-eye with Meghan – well, aside from the whole “quitting the Royal family” thing – is the language she uses. Sadly, we just don’t understand her. Because she doesn’t speak English. She speaks Californian.

It’s a curious language, Californian. Essentially, it’s like a hippie version of corporate management-speak: schmaltzy gushing mixed with robotic jargon. It’s the language of people who are perpetually boasting about how “humbled” they are. And there appears to be nothing on earth they aren’t “passionate” and “excited” about, or “empowered” and “inspired” by.

Take any statement released under Meghan’s name. When they start work for Netflix, she and Harry aren’t merely going to make TV shows; they’re going to “share impactful content that unlocks action”, and produce “powerful storytelling through a truthful and relatable lens”. The American coffee company Meghan’s just invested in, meanwhile, doesn’t just sell hot drinks; according to her, it offers “a holistic approach to wellness”.

To her fellow Californians, phrases like these no doubt seem entirely unexceptionable. But to British ears, they’re excruciating. They’re just so… sincere.

So showily, extravagantly, ostentatiously sincere. To the extent that they barely sound sincere at all.

Over here, we don’t really trust sincerity – or at least, not the gushing Californian kind. We tend to feel more comfortable around understatement, self-deprecation, sarcasm, irony. Great noisy displays of sincerity make us itch and squirm.

I don’t mean to pick on Meghan. She can hardly help it. And anyway, it’s not just her. Her husband, to judge from their podcast trailer, now appears to be fluent in Californian himself.

I’m sure he’s a very nice man. But these days he always seems to be trying so desperately, agonisingly hard to say the right thing.

Or at least, what he imagines to be the right thing.’

When one of the ‘chosen’ media outlets calls you out and rips the piss out of you, you (should) know the show is over!🤣