hmm what's john cena up to on instagram
anomolous
To begin to understand the journey of John Cena, one must first endeavor to parse the path of The Rock.
The Rock, in case you live under one (har har har), is the nickname of pro wrestler turned actor Dwayne Johnson. Johnson was ridiculously, incredibly well liked toward the end of the Obama era, full of natural charisma, a winning way with people, and enough talent to get the job done. Plus, he could raise one eyebrow! He represented a kind of pan-racial non-toxic masculinity, proving that you can be a girl dad who also throws tired around for fun. He was like, if 2014 was a person.
But his career never quite measured up to his star status. He was good in comedies and great on talk shows, but his bigger swings didn’t seem to connect. Baywatch flopped at the box office and was panned by critics, effects-driven epics like Rampage, Empire State, Snitch, San Andreas, Hercules and GI Joe: Retaliation didn’t exactly generate the goodwill or cultural leverage he seemed to get just by being himself, and his they’re muscleheads but this is actually about something movie (Pain and Gain) did not make a splash the way Channing Tatum’s they’re muscleheads but this is actually about something movie (Magic Mike) did.
He joined the Fast & Furiousverse, which seemed like a slam dunk, until reports came out that he couldn’t get along with Vin Diesel, so the franchise spun him and Jason Statham off into their own series. For a guy like Johnson to keep his stellar reputation, on-set clashes should never be the story. Keep that in mind.
There were some successes. He voiced the fan favorite character in the massively popular Moana, a kids movie parents also liked, nearly cementing his status as a family-friendly star. He was (arguably) the most famous quarter of the Jumanji reboot quartet, which got a sequel and was pretty good. I didn’t see Jungle Cruise, but I heard it was…fine? And did OK for a pandemic release? The Disney stamp of approval counts for something! Ballers on HBO trucked along for a few seasons, its main cultural impact being that Elizabeth Warren liked it.
The wheels began to come off around 2021. Netflix’s Red Notice was supposedly a hit (streamers are notoriously cagey about revealing their viewer numbers, but they greenlit two sequels) but was decimated by critics, who didn’t necessarily call out Johnson’s performance as a problem, but got the ick from the artificial “YOU WILL LIKE THIS” ethos of the project, and Johnson fit only too well into that narrative. His sitcomYoung Rock got off to a rocky (har har har) start.
Oh, you don’t remember Young Rock? It’s about The Rock as a child, adolescent and adult, with the framing device being that near-future Johnson is telling us these stories so we can get to know him…as he runs for president.
It was immediately evident, to me at least, that this was Johnson’s test balloon for a real run. Like, this dude’s ego…he totally wants to be president. He’s been telling us. And telling us. And telling us. And telling us. And I sort of, kind of, get where he’s coming from, insofar as Reagan was an actor and Trump was a reality TV star and Johnson has been both, and was arguably better at each than his presidential predecessors.
Then in 2022, Black Adam tanked. Hard. And it wasn’t just that Johnson had been so laughably serious about it. And it wasn’t just that he had interfered in other people’s movies before his even came out. It was that there’s a code of silence in Hollywood that basically says, if you’re making everyone money, we’ll shut up about you being a weirdo. Black Adam lost enough money that the code was null, and people began to talk.
At the end of April 2024, The Wrap released a bombshell story about Johnson, alleging that he is routinely and purposefully hours late to set, generally uncooperative, and made the age old mistake of placing his friends into positions of power so that he can have more say in his projects, despite his friends having no idea how to make movies. There are a couple of eyebrow-raising (GET IT?) allegations, too, like that he pees in bottles (!), and loudly flouted Covid protocols during the height of the pandito. It’s a pretty juicy read.
As a few people pointed out, his tardiness was an open secret, and the pee bottle thing wasn’t a secret at all. He’d posted about it. We just wrote it off as “quirky” instead of “bizarre” because we liked him.
The story was also perfectly timed, dropping a few weeks after Johnson publicly declared that in the upcoming presidential election, he would…not be endorsing anyone. In addition to the obvious non-news of announcing that you’re not going to say something, this was strange because…who asked? Johnson’s Hollywood career may not be over, but the days of his star power holding sway over people’s votes has certainly passed. He was one of many celebrities to support Biden in 2020, but now he doesn’t want to “divide people” and is gonna keep his vote to himself. Cool story bro?!?!?!?!!?!? This can’t be anything other than a move to the center to court a more conservative audience. Which to be honest, in theory, I’m okay with. I think it’s fine for celebrities to be apolitical. But it’s bizarre to be proud of it.
Oh, also, duh, he’s not cool with cancel culture and woke.
Before this year, the most interesting thing Johnson had done, politically, was find out about — and tease on social media! — the killing of Osama Bin Laden before Obama announced it.
Looking back, Johnson was always an obnoxious try-hard, desperate to be relatable and completely un-self-aware. He was semi-recently caught lying about going to In-N-Out, repeatedly saying it was his first time at the restaurant chain, despite providing evidence to the contrary himself. Did he not know about receipts, or does he have some kind of burger-specific amnesia?
Clearly, Johnson is going to have to re-tool his brand. Branding is incredibly important for famous people, and social media — specifically Instagram — is probably the most obvious way celebrities express their brand, though news stories and style also play a part. And a brand is not a bad thing. Kaia Gerber’s brand is “reading books.” Jennifer Garner’s brand is “goofy mom.” Ryan Reynolds’ brand is “sarcastic mogul.” All three of these feel consistent and authentic. Good job, celebs.
(Click here for my post about times famouses did something insane online.)
(And yes, not being on social media is a brand.)
Wrestlers-turned-actors are especially aware of branding, since so much of wrestling is about playing a character. Which is why, in the wake of Johnson’s flopification, I am keeping close tabs on the man clearly setting himself up as Johnson’s successor, wrestler-cum-movie-star John Cena.
His brand is “big, nice guy,” and he also happens to be in the Fast & Furiousverse. And he does seem to be really, really nice. He holds the record for most Make-A-Wish visits granted, and when a woman whose son has Down’s Syndrome had to flee Ukraine, she couldn’t explain the war to him, so she lied and said they were going to Amsterdam to meet John Cena. And John Cena heard about this and went to Amsterdam to meet the kid. So nice!!!!!!!
So, how is Cena’s brand reflected online? Friends, readers, fellow Americans…it’s so weird.
On Twxtter, he follows 3/4 of a million people, including yours truly :) This is a self-promoting measure that even Obama took part in (Barry follows over half a mill). He and/or his team uses the platform to promote his projects, but more often, to post empowerment word salad.
Cena’s bio reads “A forum of thoughts and perspectives designed to ignite conversations and actions leading to growth, and occasional self promotion. #NeverGiveUp #RiseAboveHate” and this is what that amounts to…
Okie dokie, John! How these ~ deep thoughts ~ reflect Cena’s Goofy Good Guy persona is anyone’s guess, but maybe they just need gobbledygook to keep engagement high, and it’s better to let the man tweet whatever the above is than his actual day to day thoughts. Because his actual day to day thoughts are…
For context, Peacemaker is a comic book character Cena plays on an HBO show, and he posted this the day Russia invaded Ukraine. Makes sense why he then flew to Amsterdam to give a kid a hug.
To be clear, I don’t think the guy is like, unmoved by war crimes. I do think he’s been hit in the head a bunch and should run this stuff by his publicist. But what fascinates me most is how his Twitter lines up — or more accurately, doesn’t — with his Instagram. Cena’s Instagram bio reads: “Welcome to my Instagram. These images will be posted without explanation, for your interpretation. Enjoy.”
And that is exactly what it is. On the platform, Cena follows zero accounts and posts almost every single day. Posts are never captioned, comments are left on, no one is tagged. The images tend to be memes, many of them to do with wrestling, or recent pop culture moments. Others are random images from the Internet. There is occasional promo for his projects, but always couched within another image. A lot are “Stone Cold ____” with another celebrity covering a fist with their other hand. One post is just a dinner menu…
The posts aren’t completely random. He posted Christmas content around Christmas and this image of Taylor Swift on Taylor’s birthday:
I don’t have the time to scroll all the way back to the start of his Instagram and check when he started doing this, but it could be as long as ten years, since there are over 3,600 posts.
It seems that in the face of The Rock failing to live up to the impossibly perfect personality he projected, Cena has decided to have Nonsense as his online persona, so that if he ever slips from his Big, Nice Guy pedestal, well, at least there are no aged-like-milk posts to tease him with.
Or? Maybe Cena thinks this is a hilarious bit and like so many charming white men, has never been told that not all of his bits are hilarious.
Or??? There’s a hidden encoded message somewhere in all of this, and anyone genius enough to decipher it will be recruited to a secret faction within the CIA, like in Alias.
Think about how hard it is to have a brand everyone likes. Dolly Parton can’t get everyone. Denzel Washington can’t get everyone. Not even Oprah can get everyone. The last person liked by everyone was Steve Irwin, and he was never on Instagram. But I think that’s what Cena’s going for: everyone. And he’s taking the online road less traveled. I wish him luck. If you have theories on the Cenagrams, drop em in the comments!
Lizzie
John Cena referred to democratic and free Taiwan as a country. Chinese Communist Party threatened to keep his films out of their huge market. Cena cravenly apologized (in Chinese). See, YouTube 5.26.21. Mr. Not so nice guy.