It’s been hard to choose sides in this whole Ellen Degeneres toxic workplace scandal. On one hand, Degeneres’ executive producers sound like terrible bosses, while Ellen herself comes off as aloof at best and complicit in their nastiness at worst. On the other hand…do I really have to feel sorry for Millennials living in Hollywood who whine to Buzzfeed about “microaggressions”? Or grouse that no one took seriously their complaints over the offensiveness of the term “spirit animal”?

Please don’t make me.

Clearly, in this age of wokeness, the old instinct to always side with labor over management can yield some serious teeth gnashing. Still, it is possible to be too evenhanded about these things, and the more you read into this story, the more it starts to sound one-sided. Ellen staffers were reportedly sexually harassed, including by a top producer. Employees were fired after taking medical leave and attending funerals. Celebrities and producers have alleged that Ellen herself treats her staff, and sometimes her guests, like dirt.

All of which is a contradiction of her brand, which emphasizes niceness, dancing, laughter, charitable giving. It was always saccharine, it might now be hypocritical, but it’s also entirely unsurprising. TV and radio are full of personalities who behave tyrannically behind the scenes, which makes sense if you think about it. A mainstay host like Ellen begins from the premise that people, in spite of the endless other things they could be doing, are going to tune in to her, care about her. That assumption isn’t always rooted in narcissism. I used to work in radio and some of the most generous people I’ve ever met have gabbed behind mikes for a living. But it certainly can be narcissistic. And that narcissism is often then reinforced by the structure of these shows, which gives the host close to absolute control.

Television is a fundamentally myopic medium (most platforms are), a theater of the mind. Ellen didn’t actually need to be nice; she only needed to appear nice in front of the cameras. Likewise does a right-wing radio host not actually need to be that right-wing; he only needs to sound that right-wing to his listeners. These qualities, whatever their virtues, become commodities to be sold to consumers. Consider the former MSNBC producer who emerged this week and accused the network of making almost every coverage decision based on ratings. Consider, too, your grandfather’s eternal lament, that the History Channel now airs crowd-pleasing reality shows instead of actual history. The goal is always more eyeballs and ears. And so long as those eyeballs and ears keep coming, no one cares much what happens behind the scenes.

At least, that’s how the thinking went. If this Ellen fiasco teaches us one thing, it should be that TV shows are no longer just a pact between stars and viewers, exchanging product for Nielsen ratings, with perhaps a few (mostly fawning) entertainment reporters in between. The internet hasn’t leveled the old media fiefdoms, but it has significantly empowered those who labor in their vineyards. A mid-level producer who feels abused by a host doesn’t have to take it anymore. He can tweet about his experiences, his feed just as accessible as that of his powerhouse boss. Or he can run to one of hundreds of media outlets. The web has exposed our theaters of the mind as never before.

Yet perhaps there’s a dark side too. Perhaps in addition to making fiction more real, this democratization has also made reality more fictional, blurring the two together. We’re all little Ellens now, in a way. We all post glamor shots and photos of sunsets on social media, while obscuring our uglier moments. We all create brands for ourselves that we can never hope to live up to.

Whatever the case, there’s still the question of Ellen herself. After these revelations, it’s tempting to say she’s the Amy Klobuchar of daytime television. Klobuchar is the senator from Minnesota who, at least on paper, should have been my favorite Democratic presidential candidate this year. Then came reports that she was hideously abusive to her staff (Klobuchar had also touted her supposed niceness). And shouldn’t that be all we need to know? You can dance with a celebrity, you can bleed with empathy for the middle class, but if you don’t treat your subordinates well, it’s all just an extravagant fraud, a favoring of the distant and abstract over the near and real. That doesn’t mean managers can’t push for excellence. But it’s a fundamental test of character how you treat those under you, whether you lord your power over them or make them feel like collaborators.

Spirit animal-triggered cisgendered microaggressions aside, Ellen appears to have failed that test. So maybe it’s time for her to go. And maybe we should all depart our theaters of the mind for a while and spend some time amid what is firmly real.