It was billed as “the biggest event in the history of the Internet”. A global mass online session where Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey will be our guide to “the future we can’t wait to see”. As he spoke with an authentic South American accent: “It’s time to stop settling down and start living” (It’s time to stop settling down and start living). The gerund “live” has lost the final letter “r”, referring to the colloquial speech of the Texan – the vernacular, the idiom of “ordinary, everyday people”.

Inspired by the great commercial success of his autobiographical book Green Lights (2020), one of the many self-help publications of our time, McConaughey hosted an online consultation workshop called “Road Trip” where our lives are described in (perfectly familiar to the American public) automotive terms. and a road map is proposed to overcome its obstacles. Participation costs $396, and there will be an “online event” on the evening of Monday, April 23 that will build on the philosophy of this workshop and book. Anyone could watch it, but by paying $45, you could get a “VIP pass” and a number of privileges, such as direct communication with the actor.

At eight o’clock sharp on Monday night, the session began with the host standing in front of a digital backdrop constructed from a “wall” of VIP pass holders’ videoconferencing windows. Her words were accompanied by recorded cheers from the crowd, a kind of canned laughter used in television sitcoms.

“Don’t you think it’s crazy that you’re going to meet Matthew McConaughey?” she exclaimed excitedly, looking to the left and to the right, where the spectators should have been in some kind of imaginary stands. Soon McConaughey himself appeared, sitting on a stool and playing the bongo, before he got up, turned to us and directly asked: “Why are you here tonight?”

In the live chat window, responses began to appear in a dizzying stream. Connected 2.5 million people from around the world. Then the host, as a religious leader, addressing his flock, asked them to publicly confess their secrets: what frightens them, what they lie to themselves, what they long for to happen in their lives. Returning to his bongos, which he continued to play in a relaxed tone, he read aloud some of the messages and quickly responded to them, laughing, agreeing, commenting. “I want to honor God every day” was one of the things he chose to read. “Amen,” reverently replied the Texas superstar, who has been particularly active in his state’s “public domain” in recent years, where some say he is considering becoming a politician in the future. If this is true, then last Monday’s popular pilgrimage was a very good poll.

During the hour he spoke to an audience, his kinesiology suggested that a politician or miracle worker saint was promising magical solutions.

tragic messages

There was something truly tragic about many of the messages, however, that seemed out of place in the hurried “positive” mood of the evening. “I hope I don’t die of cancer in my head,” one of them said. “Ever since my husband died, I feel so alone,” said another. “I’m drowning in debt,” others said, and Matthew McConaughey didn’t seem to want to—or couldn’t—answer them. Tanned, charming and full of confidence, a cross between a demagogue, a messiah, an interlocutor and an actor, he continued to tell his cold jokes and general life advice.

The public message window turned into an unstoppable scream of loneliness, barely drowned out by the show’s “holiday” direction with recorded crowd screams. Five hours later, when McConaughey replaced a number of his fellow speakers to give his own “spiritual” lectures, the seminar closed. The star actor and his team hugged triumphantly on stage, dancing and clapping their hands as if it were a political party that had just won an election. At the bottom of the screen, in large letters, was another reminder to sign up for the $396 seminar that promised to show us how to catch life’s green light.