Emmys 2025: The Planet Pauses Doomscrolling to Watch America Crown Itself Again
Emmys 2025: The World Watches America Hand Itself Another Trophy
By Dave’s Locker Foreign Correspondent (currently in self-imposed exile from polite society)
LOS ANGELES—While Gaza smolders, the Arctic melts, and TikTok’s algorithm learns to read our diaries in real time, the global village took a brief, synchronized gasp on Sunday night to watch the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards. From Lagos living rooms to Seoul nail salons, humanity paused its doom-scrolling just long enough to see which streaming service could buy the most golden statuettes. Spoiler: it was the one that also just laid off 3,000 animators for “cost synergy.”
This year’s ceremony, hosted in the newly climate-controlled Crypto.com Arena (formerly known as Staples, formerly known as “a place where sports happened”), was less a celebration of storytelling than a multinational shareholder meeting with better gowns. Netflix, flush with subscribers from countries it still can’t find on a map, carted home 27 Emmys—proof that nothing unites the planet quite like British actors pretending to be American lawyers. Disney+ countered with a respectful 11, mostly for a Korean revenge drama that the Academy suddenly discovered after Seoul threatened to stop buying Marvel merch.
The geopolitical seating chart alone deserved its own Writers Guild credit. Ukraine’s delegation sat between Apple TV+ executives and a Saudi sovereign-wealth rep bankrolling the next dystopian prestige series, “Sand: The Final Frontier.” Meanwhile, the French delegation boycotted the red-carpet photo line, claiming cultural imperialism, then quietly accepted the International Emmy for Best Accidental Surrealism (a CCTV clip of Parisian rioters reenacting Les Mis with tear gas).
Not that the winners lacked universal themes. Best Drama went to “Algorithm of Sorrow,” a German-American co-production about an AI that learns to feel regret—marketed simultaneously in 42 languages and zero discernible human emotions. The acceptance speech, delivered by a hologram of the showrunner who’d been replaced mid-season by ChatGPT-6, thanked “the carbon offsets that made this possible.” Greta Thunberg subtweeted the moment from a train somewhere near Malmö; the tweet was ratioed by a Brazilian bot farm promoting next year’s Best Comedy contender, “Favela Royale,” a laugh-tracked romp about crypto landlords.
Viewership numbers reflected our fractured zeitgeist. In the United States, ratings hit an all-time low among humans but an all-time high among household pets accidentally left near smart TVs. Globally, however, the ceremony trended #1 from Mumbai to Montevideo, mostly because Twitter (rebranded “X” in an act of alphabetical self-harm) auto-pinned the hashtag to every timeline in exchange for a Marvel trailer. China’s Weibo users live-snarked via coded emojis; the most popular translated roughly to “rich foreigners cosplaying sincerity.”
The after-parties, held on a rented aircraft carrier docked in Long Beach “for tax purposes,” showcased late-capitalism’s finest finger food: lab-grown caviar served in recycled Netflix envelopes. A senior EU commissioner was spotted asking Timothée Chalamet if Europe could be written into Season 4 as “a quirky side character with debt.” Chalamet promised to “ask the writers’ room,” which is mostly now a server farm in Reykjavik.
And yet, beneath the sponsored mirth, a quieter truth flickered: the Emmys remain the world’s most successful soft-power infomercial. Every trophy handed out is another data point in America’s ongoing PowerPoint to the planet: Our stories matter more than yours—unless yours can be dubbed. The global south tunes in not out of admiration but anthropological duty, like watching the last velociraptor learn to vogue.
As the night ended, the aircraft carrier’s deck lights dimmed to reveal a drone formation spelling “CONTENT IS KING” in 12 alphabets, then immediately crashed into the Pacific due to an unpaid software license. Rescue crews retrieved the drones, the statuettes, and a single Gucci loafer belonging to a Scandinavian finance minister who’d hoped to pitch a Nordic noir about central banking.
Back on shore, the world resumed its regularly scheduled catastrophes. But somewhere in a refugee camp in Sudan, a teenager queued up the pirated finale of “Algorithm of Sorrow” on a cracked phone screen—proof that even amid collapse, humanity still craves narrative. Preferably with subtitles and a second season already green-lit.
