I actually have some sympathy for Dylan the person. Despite the fact that he seems to be having the time of his life and to have scored a great gig as a celebrity/symbol, I also think that his life under the Klieg lights might be even more difficult than that of many in a similar situation.

Given what we know about how celebrity can distort the lives of the not-so-well-adjusted, I suspect that Dylan truly does have some dark corners of his soul that have suffered over the past few months.

For that Dylan, I feel genuine compassion.

When I saw the video of James O’Keefe chasing Dylan through a hotel lobby I cringed and hated not Dylan, but the ass who was harassing him. That was awful to watch. Even celebrities should have rights, and one of them should be being free of people with cameras hanging outside of bathrooms to chase them.

JUST NOW AT FOUR SEASONS IN LA.: James O’Keefe Questions @budlight’s Dylan Mulvaney on OMG Jailhouse footage showing women inmates testifying on being housed with male rapists claiming to be transgender.

Subscribe at https://t.co/QeHZGnqqBF @OKeefeMedia #MillionDollarBaby pic.twitter.com/25fGkr8AFg

— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) April 14, 2023

On the other hand, I have zero sympathy for Dylan Mulvaney the social media influencer, who serves as something of a cult leader to the gender confused, and as a weapon in the gender wars. That Dylan Mulvaney needs to be destroyed. Not in the sense of personal destruction, but rather in the sense that the Dylan Mulvaney character is somebody to celebrate and emulate. That idea must be crushed because the “influencer” is a bad influence, as so many are on TikTok.

That these two “people” are separate and distinct is clear to me, although I could see how it might seem complicated to others given that they inhabit the same physical body. But the Dylan Mulvaney at the center of the culture war is a symbol and not a person; nobody at Bud Light or in the media establishment either knows or cares about Dylan the human being.

As we have seen thousands of times, the cultural elite chews up and spits out “celebrities” by the boatload.

Hollywood doesn’t care about child actors whose lives get ruined, aspiring starlets who get swapped around on casting couches, or any of the people who are used up in the cultural machine.

They are as important to them as the 2nd-tier gladiators in the Roman Coliseum who exist solely for the entertainment benefit they provide, and their bodies discarded once they are used up. But for the top moneymakers, who become the Elite themselves, no “talent” in Hollywood matters after they are used up.

Dylan is in this category, although he probably doesn’t know it. Perhaps he is realizing it a bit.

In a TikTok video Dylan goes through his idiosyncratic version of the Bud Light affair and drops a bit of a truth bomb: despite or perhaps because of all the controversy sparked by his partnership with Bud Light the company hasn’t said a word to him since everything blew up. When Mulvaney became a problem, he was discarded.

That may not be striking to you, but it is to me. It wasn’t just Bud Light taking flak; Dylan certainly got more than he expected in bad publicity.

Of course, Bud Light executives had quite a bit on their minds at the time, but for a company that claims to care deeply about LGBT people, they were quick to ignore that they had perhaps inadvertently placed a particular one in a pretty tight spot.

Here is how Dylan has described the past few months:

“And I should have made this video months ago, but I didn’t. And I was scared,” he said. “And I was scared of more backlash. And I felt personally guilty for what transpired. So I patiently waited for things to get better. But surprise, they haven’t really. And I was waiting for the brand to reach out to me, but they never did. And for months now, I’ve been scared to leave my house, I have been ridiculed in public, I’ve been followed.”

“For a company to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse in my opinion than not hiring a trans person at all,” he later added. “Because it gives customers permission to be as transphobic and hateful as they want. And the hate doesn’t end with me, it has serious and grave consequences for the rest of our community. And, you know, we’re customers, too. I know a lot of trans and queer people who love beer, and I have some lesbian friends who could drink some of those haters under the table. But to turn a blind eye and pretend everything is okay. It just isn’t an option right now.”

Dylan Mulvaney opens up about how the anti-trans uproar over her Bud Light partnership has affected her mental health. pic.twitter.com/aNiFKMwf0T

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) June 29, 2023

Sure, Dylan got paid. Reportedly $10 grand or so. And that was a pretty awful investment for the company, obviously.

But whatever else you might think, I don’t doubt that Dylan’s life got a lot more difficult after everything blew up, and it would have been decent for somebody somewhere in the hierarchy of people involved to see how he was doing–not as a celebrity, where he was toxic, but as an actual human being.

As Dylan Mulvaney the person.

I am not getting soft here or anything; Dylan Mulvaney the character is a symbol of much that is wrong with our culture, and his image and persona have been wielded as a weapon in the culture war. He is not some random individual who happened to hit it big; he is represented by some of the biggest talent marketers in America for a purpose, and that purpose is much larger than making money.

I want that purpose to fail. It must fail because it is poisonous to America’s children.

But honestly, I don’t want Dylan the person destroyed. From what I can see he is just another version of the child actress or Britney Spears, a tool of others who seem utterly indifferent to whether they live or die, are sane or insane, and who are forever condemned to a life ruled by others unless they break out of it somehow.

Perhaps I am not cynical enough about Dylan Mulvaney the person, and certainly, he has gotten a lot out of the bargain. But something tells me that someday soon he will be tossed on the ash heap of former celebrities who are no longer useful. It’s not like he is a superstar like Tom Cruise, and pretty clearly he is not a model of mental health. I fear he is deeply unhappy and in need of affirmation, and while it may seem like he is getting a bucketful now, I doubt it will last much longer.

Think of all the child stars who wind up discarded addicts, lives ruined by fame they could not control. They had no idea what they were getting into, while the people who got them there knew exactly what they were doing.

Dylan Mulvaney the “influencer” is a very bad influence, but he is a creation of a system far larger and more cynical than Dylan the person. He would never have taken off without the manipulation of a much larger cultural infrastructure than needed him to. It is they who are the real bad guys, and it is they who will, soon enough, leave Dylan behind.