Exclusive: Randy Rainbow Says Goodbye To The Internet!

Here is Parade’s exclusive excerpt from best-selling author and internet sensation Randy Rainbow’s new book Low-Hanging Fruit. You know Randy Rainbow, he’s a Broadway darling and the hottest satirist since Jon Stewart, thanks to videos that cleverly comment on the issues of the day with song parodies and witty theatrics.

Rainbow shot to fame–or went viral, as they say, but…eww–with a video joking that he was dating actor Mel Gibson. Its success was no fluke. He’s hobnobbed and enjoyed compliments from Broadway’s greatest, produced a string of acclaimed and successful parodies ever since and published a best-selling memoir.

Now Rainbow is out with a new collection of humorous essays to give David Sedaris a run for his money. The book is out Oct 1 and Rainbow is criss-crossing the country with a book tour all month long. (Oh, and he's running for President.)

With Low-Hanging Fruit and his self-described “Sparkling Whines, Champagne Problems, and Pressing Issues From My Gay Agenda,” Rainbow dishes the (loving) dirt on his famous friends, shares intimate and tough moments from his childhood and does some Olympic gold-medal quality complaining about well, everything.

In this exclusive excerpt, Rainbow has some words for social media. (And no, he’s not really leaving the internet. I mean, duh.)

Exclusive: Randy Rainbow Says Goodbye To The Internet!

Low-Hanging Fruit ($28; St. Martin’s Press) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

From Low-Hanging Fruit, by Randy Rainbow. Copyright © 2024 by the author, and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group

A Dear John to Social Media

Dear Social Media,

I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can do this anymore. I’ve tried for over two decades to make it work with us, but our relationship has now grown toxic, and I think it would be best for me to move on.

I’m grateful for all you’ve done for me, but I’m losing myself in you. I’ve become so consumed with sharing my every thought, my every action, my every pricey crab-dip appetizer that I’ve forgotten what it all really means. Things that once brought me joy are now just empty vessels in the hollow sea of other people’s approval, floating on an endless quest for clicks and likes. That’s no way to exist. Don’t get mad, but I feel like I want to start dating my real life again, at least casually. I miss it. I know I’ve broken up with you in the past, but this time I made it official with a self-important, holier-than-thou Instagram post telling people I would be taking a break from you. I just checked, and it already has over sixty-seven likes, so I fear there’s no turning back this time. The world is watching.

When we first met, I had just opened an account on Friendster. God, we were just kids then; so young, so naive. I really believed all those strangers you introduced me to were my friends. It was such a fresh rush of deliciously superficial connection. I was finally “getting out there and meeting new people” like my mother had always pushed for me to do, but without the displeasure and inconvenience of actually having to meet people or go out. All my introvert prayers had been answered. Then, thanks to the influence of your old pal Ashton Kutcher, things really started heating up between us in 2009. It was fun and new. It was romantic. Everything was so easy. Now, being with you just feels like sheer drudgery . . . a never-ending chore. You need so much more from me than I’m able to give you.

I can’t trust you anymore. You’re too fickle, too impulsive. I need to focus on my career, and I just don’t feel like I have your support. I spent years building my brand on Facebook only for you to turn around and decide all my hard-earned followers weren’t cool anymore. How do you think that made me feel? Then I finally get my Twitter off the ground and, on a whim, you let a maniacal space-nerd billionaire turn it into a politically controversial rage-fueled hell-scape. It’s not even called Twitter anymore. I don’t even know what to call it. It’s just an X. And as far as you’re concerned, now so am I.

I can’t help but question your intentions in all this. What do you want from me now? More TikTok videos? How long can I count on that? Do you know that I have a meeting with my fancy digital media agent today at 1 p.m. to discuss boosting my TikTok numbers, and our lunatic Congress has a meeting one hour later to try to ban TikTok as a national security threat? This is insanity. I need stability in my life, and clearly you can’t offer that. How do you expect me to plan a future with you when our entire relationship is built on a foundation of quicksand? PS, are you seriously leaking my shit to China?

I miss my independence. I resent that I need you so much. The stress of having to rely on all your goddamn platforms is keeping me awake at night. If one of them goes down, even for an hour, I feel like my entire identity is lost. What if they were all to just go away one day? In the blink of an eye, all my friends and I would no longer be life coaches, gurus, or professional models. I cannot live in that uncertainty, always at the mercy of Meta. I need to go find myself. I’ve been to Zuckerberg, but I’ve never been to me.

The screen time feature on my iPhone thinks I’ve been spending way too much time with you, and honestly, it’s not wrong. I can’t keep scrolling like this. There’s no room left—in my head or my heart. My tiny human brain was not built to constantly process such a wide-ranging avalanche of information all at once: the war in Ukraine, Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner in matching tracksuits, somebody’s grandmother just died, random girl doing a Jennifer Coolidge impression, Kanye West’s latest apology, random hot dude doing a cold plunge, baby ducks being rescued from a storm drain to an Adele song, Kanye West rescinding his latest apology. This is a roller coaster I am not prepared to ride every day for the rest of my life. I am emotionally exhausted, and my thumb hurts.

Please, let me go…… Set me free!

Release me from the feelings of inadequacy and sadness I take with me every time I leave you. I don’t want to compare myself to other people anymore. You’re constantly reminding me that I don’t do enough, that I’m not good enough. I cannot compete with Taylor Swift. I will never be her. And I’m not starting a new business, no matter how much Gary Vee yells at me. I’m too tired and lazy to even start the new season of Love Is Blind on Netflix; a new business is highly unlikely.

Liberate me from having to read the cringey, forced, hypercasual ads and headlines posted on you by every brand and news outlet (even the most prestigious) that now thinks the way to drive traffic and seem relatable is to adopt the written tone of a fourteen-year-old who watches too much RuPaul’s Drag Race and has a blog: Besties, we are so shook by the smackdown Hillary Clinty just served the GOP, we literally can’t even! Smash the link in our bio because we are spilling all that yummy tea, mama!

Why are they talking like that? They’re The New York Times.

Free me from the zombie fog I walk around in all day as the result of your unrelenting distractions. All your pings and notifications have left me so cognitively impaired that sometimes I can’t sit through an entire ten-word meme, let alone a full-length feature film. I miss my precious attention span.

I’ve had enough of all the noise—figurative and literal. You’ve become an endless barrage of people screaming into the Internet: LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME . . . ! STOP SCROLLING . . . ! GET READY WITH ME . . . ! WATCH ME, WATCH ME, NOTICE ME, WATCH ME . . . ! Everyone is so terrified of not being heard above all the noise that all they do is yell at their audience. It’s like suddenly everyone is Crazy Eddie. Remember Crazy Eddie, the electronics chain that had those annoying commercials in the ’80s with that guy (Crazy Eddie) who talked really fast like he was on coke and was always yelling that his “PRICES ARE INSAAAANE”? I think it was just a Northeast thing. Anyway, I’m sure you can look it up. You’re social media. Where was I? Oh, yeah....

Give me back my attention span! Also, enough with the Jennifer Coolidge impressions. Even the really strong ones all sound exactly the same.

I am done participating in every one of your inane challenges, hashtags, and trends: Do the latest dance… Buy the newest foundation…. Eat a box of dishwasher detergent…. Post a picture from your first abortion…. Why do we always have to do what you want to do? Can’t I have an original thought?

I am sick and tired of your infinite stream of negativity. Did you know that because of you, the average human currently absorbs in one day what would have been considered a lifetime’s worth of tragedy twenty-five years ago? I have been so conditioned to expect only the worst news from you that I can no longer scroll past a picture of a celebrity without assuming that celebrity has died.

I don’t recognize you anymore. You’re hateful and bigoted sometimes. You used to be nice. You won’t like me saying this, but it’s because of you that psychopathic morons are being elected to the most powerful positions and the worst of humanity is mobilizing to wreak havoc on society. I remember the good old days, when the scariest thing about the Internet was the dial-up sound my modem made every time it connected to AOL. Look at what you’ve done.

Lies and misinformation are everywhere, and it’s all because of you. As we navigate these precarious times, rife with deception and distortions of the truth, there is nothing more dangerous than misinformation. I remember reading an article in Teen People back in 1999 that quoted Justin Timberlake as saying he believed that “even one stray eyebrow could ruin an entire look.” In hindsight, I’m pretty sure JT never really said that, but it sure did lead to my severe overplucking well into the late aughts. I don’t ever want to go back there again, and that is why I have to say Bye Bye Bye.

There may come a time in the future when I’m ready to give you another chance (probably tomorrow morning, if not later this afternoon). For now, though, I ask that you please give me MySpace and allow me this much-needed pause to work on my mental health. And my Jennifer Coolidge impression.=

Sincerely signing off (for now),

Randy 

From Low-Hanging Fruit, by Randy Rainbow. Copyright © 2024 by the author, and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

Low-Hanging Fruit ($28; St. Martin’s Press) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org