Bruce f*cking Chanen

I’m calling this: The day I got into it with Bruce Chanen. Okay, that day was yesterday. Who the f*ck is Bruce Chanen? If you read Humans of New York (HONY) and have even taken the briefest glances down into the comment section, you will have seen Bruce Chanen’s name before. He is a HONY icon and many people from around the world love his comments (filled with faux-pithy positivity and a quote for every circumstance) at least as much as they love HONY. Bruce must have a notification alert on his phone for when HONY posts, because he is there faster than 911 with a ready-made-shit-asterpiece. I hate Bruce’s comments a little (and by a little, I mean with the heat of at least a handful of stars). Why?

In the grand scheme of things (and lately there are a lot of things that are so, so dire), why the heck do I care to enough to waste time hating this joker, writing about hating him, and even belonging to a FB underworld group of dedicated fellow haters? I’ll let you know the real reason as soon as a therapist tells me. It’s going to be a minute. (Also, in 2025 one of my new resolutions (as of today) is to pick better ways to waste my time.)

Some of it is learned behavior, I am sure. Maybe like me, you’ve had a couple people in your life who have blindfoldedly wielded positivity that they then plunge into innocent, unsuspecting bystanders without hearing their pain or stooping from their high ground to touch empathy? Maybe it’s the fakeness of it all. It so performative and handsy and not in a fun way. Keep your memes to yourself. In particular I have had one person who used aggressive positivity and non-consenting life coaching to mask a frightening amount of rage and manipulation to tear a hole in my family. Luckily, so very, very luckily, many people I love saw right through that bullsh*t. But like ol’ Bruce up here—many people didn’t. In Bruce’s case, he’ll say his nonsense and then the hearts and a** kissing will flow in by the thousands feeding his maw of need. If anyone counters him, his hive will send the commenter into anaphylactic shock with their internet vitriol pile on.

Today, Humans of New York posted about a woman who was in her 50s and at a life crossroads. I related hard…and then there was Bruce flinging his dirty positive quotes against the wall, completely tone deaf to the speaker. So it hit me the wrong way and I did something you are wayyyy to smart to do, I wrote a comment to Bruce. Online. On a page with millions of followers. With the Bruce Hive patrolling the premises. I got some positive support and took a good ol’ fashioned internet comments beating with some men calling me a man basher (come on, give me some credit, if I was a man basher—I’d do it in real life with BamBam’s actual Flintstones club). Then the actual Bruce Chanen himself, got up and daintily climbed down from his very high throne and wrote a response (see receipts above). Apparently, he has since edited his response because some people didn’t like it—I wouldn’t know what he changed it to since he blocked me. Some people in my underworld FB (fellow-time-wasters) page let me know.

I am always amazed at group brain. Somewhere along the way Bruce gained this notoriety on someone else’s page and since he consistently posts early on—he gets more likes that’s how the algorithm works. People see that and think he must be a treasure of wisdom. It’s not reality—but group brain doesn’t care about reality. Piling on and feeling part of something just feeds that very primitive part of our brains. My anti-Bruce page feeds it for me. My wish for this day is that we look for ways to starve that primitive part of our brains and think for ourselves. Who is really making our lives harder? Not Bruce f*cking Chanen for me. Not people who have it way more difficult than I could even imagine for any of us.