Not Okay: Adventures in Exploitation and Clout

What did Danni Sanders do to make her worse than someone who committed mass genocide?

Danni Sanders is a nobody. She provides little value to her workspace, doesn’t have many friends, and blames her exclusion on her straight, white female identity mixed with lack of trauma in her life. She is an aspiring writer with no writing to back her up. Danni is privileged and shallow, but does not realize it and will do anything to get the attention she desires. Even staging a fake trip to Paris and claiming to be a survivor of a terrorist attack.

After establishing an unlikable female protagonist with an intro scene that tells us all we need to know about Danni, the rest of the plot is pretty formulaic except for its ending. She becomes famous online by pretending to be a terrorist attack survivor therefore exploiting trauma for personal gain. Eventually someone will put the pieces together that she was lying and she will be faced to tell the truth herself or be outed. This could end with some type of redemption arc. For someone so unlikable committing such an offensive act, this won’t end well for her.

Danni never explains or hints at what she wants out of her social media fame. She is only motivated by obsession. In the film she is fixated on Rowan and trauma. She wants to feel what Rowan and other survivors have but just the ability to exploit and use it for fame. Her character arc as a whole feels incomplete and she seems to be just a stand in for influencer culture as a whole.

The sad part is that this isn’t really a satire, it just shows a terrible person exploiting trauma for clout. Audiences will relate to it because they have seen it time and time again but it adds nothing new to the conversation. The film feels very 2019 but is set in the present. It feels like it acknowledges the problems with internet fame but doesn’t say anything about it. Almost performative in nature.

The performances are enjoyable to watch. Zoey Deutch embraces her inner obnoxious influencer, there always seems like a point that Dannie will develop feelings or come to her senses but she never becomes human. Mia Issac is a standout as Rowan and puts her soul into the role. She makes up for the lack of emotional impact throughout the film.

For a digital age that we live in, it appears that no one has quite figured put yet how to translate the social media experience into film.