Yesterday’s site prompt was, Who are your current most favorite people? It’s an strange question, feeling clunky and slightly unsettling. Most Favorite People should surely be capitalized, as if a title or award that is bestowed on the deserving. However, the inclusion of the word “current” implies that this title can also be rescinded. What is earned can be taken away.

Current MFPs are Chris Evans and Bong Joon-ho, star and director of the dystopian nightmare (yet still hopeful) Snowpiercer movie. Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, who is expecting a baby with his girlfriend Sarah Jane Ramos, is, too. Why do I know who his girlfriend is? Or especially that they are pregnant? Is this really important for us to know? I’m not certain that all lines between public and private should be erased, but that’s a little strange for me to say as I sit in my living room chair writing a blog where I share all of the personal, sometimes intimate, details of my life with you. But I get to choose what is shared. Maybe Dak Prescott or Ms. Ramos issued a press release, but very often the breaking information/news is clearly not for me. The social contract of fame, whether I like it or not, has a very high cost.

What is unsettling to me about this question is the conditionality of it all. If Snowpiercer was terrible, would Joon-ho make this list? I wasted an hour of a Netflix movie, 6 Underground, before I had to turn it off with extreme judgment, and that director isn’t an MFP. Dak has been awesome lately, but the next time he throws 4 interceptions, or loses another playoff game, will he, his girlfriend, and his baby still be Most Favorites?

Nev Schulman, Max Joseph, and Kamie Crawford – hosts of Catfish – are perpetual MFPs. That sounds right. If they are truly our Favorites, they should remain favorites, right? Not all episodes of Catfish are great. In fact, most new episodes aren’t.

Morrissey is the best example of this contrast. He often says regrettable, problematic things, not every song is an A+ anymore, some solo albums are admittedly average, but he will stay my #1 MFP forever.

I’m so far considering celebrities or famous artists I’ve never met, but the temptation to carry this idea of currency is insidious, infiltrating our actual relationships and lives. We commit to our spouses, children and friends with the same level of faithfulness as our quarterbacks, and directors. If we don’t feel it right now, we move on, they were a current love, but that’s over and we’re down the road onto the next “current.”

Fidelity means “the quality or state of being faithful or loyal,” and maybe the term hi-fi shouldn’t apply only to our stereos. Maybe we should be hi-fi. Currency is fine for singers and sports teams, but not families and communities. I wonder how everything would change overnight if the impulse to disconnect, leave and find a new current based on this moment alone, were left behind. If our MFPs were never again current, and just remained the favorites they are now. Maybe we could just give our love, based not on performance, covering over the metaphorical interceptions and 6 Undergrounds. Maybe we could begin to choose hi-fi over why-fi, and just see what we could build.