Ryan Phillippe is done with politics, Halloween and 'fake love.' He announced it on Instagram
Two days before the midterms, the Cruel Intentions star posted a numbered list of "things i no longer engage with." The internet recognized the genre immediately.
On November 1, Ryan Phillippe, 52, posted a list to Instagram titled "Things i no longer engage with going forward." Among the 18 entries: "Halloween," "fantasy football," "the majority of podcasts," "pro sports (except the sixers)," "politics," "doomsday scenarios," "fake love," "grudges," "being used," "being judged," "anything processed: foods or people," and "anyone who disturbs my peace."
He captioned it "Putting this on main to keep me accountable," called it "prob a partial list btw w more to come," invited followers to tag him with their own, and signed off "Resolution Revolution." Entertainment Weekly asked his rep for comment and got nothing.
The Valmont problem
The list reads like the work of one very specific fictional character, because Phillippe already played him. In Cruel Intentions, his Sebastian Valmont kept cold judgments of everyone around him in a private journal — and the journal is the thing that exposes him in the end. Twenty-seven years later, the actor is keeping the list of everything beneath him again, except now he's publishing it himself, to 1.2 million followers, with a request to be held accountable.
The thread needed one line to reach the same diagnosis:
"It's giving middle aged Sebastian Valmont's diary."
— a commenter on r/Fauxmoi
Detached and above-it-all was magnetic on a 24-year-old in 1999; typed into Instagram's list format at 52, between other people's costume photos, it reads like a Tumblr bio from 2012. Replies kept reminding him he's "in your 50s" and filing the list under "edgy teenager shit," and the sharpest of them upgraded the roast to a general law of celebrity: stars stay frozen at the age they became famous. The aloofness didn't age with the actor — it stayed exactly where the fame was minted.
Sebastian Valmont kept his contempt in a leather journal that leaked. Ryan Phillippe posts his straight to main.
The timing nobody missed
Declaring an exit from "politics" on the Sunday before a midterm election gave the thread its sharpest edge:
"Must be nice to be able to opt out of all this."
The Halloween entry got jokes — his daughter Ava posted her cat costume to Stories the same weekend. The "politics" entry, sitting in a list published 48 hours before the country votes, is the one the thread read as a luxury item, and the reason the post kept circulating after everyone's costume photos were gone.
Don't miss: Elle Woods would never: Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine layoffs land weeks before the holidays
Phillippe, meanwhile, is mid-promotion: season 2 of 9-1-1: Nashville, where he stars as Rogue Kelly, premiered in mid-October. "The majority of podcasts" presumably excludes the ones booking him.
Previously we wrote: Ken Jennings' 2026 net worth: the $4.5 million he won on Jeopardy isn't the biggest line anymore