is the head half empty or half full?
not an email at midnight what is this??? (feel free to read this later or real quick like a late night snack). the election approaches … make plans not just to vote, but to care for yourself and your community in any aftermath. speaking of, your friendly community org mutual aid houston is redistributing $$$ — tell ya friends
face first in the firehose
the way I write goes as follows: I think about something, it percolates in my head for weeks while I shower, do laundry, and walk around the same 10 square feet in my house; I start picturing the sentences and structure in my head; it ripens into something somewhat okay. then I write it down in one go, edit, and it’s done transforming from a piece of sludge in my brain into a somewhat more polished product. i don’t have the patience to make diamonds.
lately, however, my brain is entirely sludge with little to no polish or product ever emerging from the muck. there’s so many possible reasons for sludge brain, but austin made it most clear when he looked at me, approaching my 4th or 5th hour of tiktok that day, and said: “this app is stimulant overdose. how can you absorb so much content?”
this is pretty much the central criticism behind any vice/vox/etc. investigation and also one theme of jia tolentino’s ‘trick mirror’ — a groundbreaking book that i am legitimately disrespecting by letting it gather dust (sorry, anna). tolentino talks about the ‘firehose’ that is the internet and the news cycle: every day, we are blasted with so much information and jokes and existential crises and messages and general Content, all mixed in with each other until they become grey, well, sludge. the spark of excitement from a good read or the flash of anger from bad news or the pain from traumatic, graphic videos are all immediately dulled and softened by oodles of other, somewhat less compelling content that fills the rest of the day, and the feed, until we find the next Thing.
here’s a pull quote to break up the text, one of the many tricks i feel like i have to play on you so that you don’t lose interest just yet
one of the points that tolentino makes (also, if i’m mischaracterizing her book it’s because i’m on page 70, because, tiktok) is that social media is designed to be mostly boring, with moments of excitement, joy, and most frequently anger. in search of those feelings, we scroll relentlessly until we find them. it’s probably why people look at vine or old tweets with nostalgia — the very best of the sludge resists the passage of time, letting us forget all the other crap that came along with it.
tiktok and twitter have started to defy this model for me — tiktok is always exciting and interesting, but it is also designed so that my patience has worn so thin that i can’t watch a tiktok longer than 30 seconds without feeling antsy, and that has translated into an inability to watch film (besides reality tv which is addicting in much the same way) and also, alarmingly, less ability to sit on phone calls with friends. twitter is largely rage-inducing nowadays, which feels incredibly unhealthy but also comes with the threat of feeling completely out of the loop from Society ™. i deleted twitter for a bit and came back to find out that texas gov abbott was threatening felony charges for a wide range of organizers — info that i felt i should know but wouldn’t have without twitter. so i stay on twitter pretty much from sheer fomo.
i’ve tried many things: time limits, deleting apps, using web-version only. none work longterm, especially in a time where the only way i feel connected to the world and my friends is through my phone. conversely, i feel noticeably further from those friends who don’t post as often, or aren’t on all the platforms i’m on — a testament to the social trap i have subjected myself to, where friendship and general awareness of peoples’ lives is determined through digital interactions as opposed to personal connection.
my struggle with social media could take up many more pages, but like me, you probably have also developed the attention span of an earthworm. maybe you already clicked away after you saw the fifth em-dash and decided you had had enough of this! totally fair! someone take em-dashes away from me!
*note: i am so mad at myself, because i just looked at my last newsletter and noticed that i had already used the sludge/diamond metaphor to talk about the internet. i’m leaving it in because it shows how little creative power i have left going on up there
how is everyone doing with self care? what is radical to you?
this is just a question for you — answer by replying or texting me! are you practicing self care? does it feel like self care to you? what is possible to you during this time?
the only example i can think of for myself is yesterday. while racked with some of the absolute worst period cramps i have ever experienced, a familiar feeling of ‘let’s work through it, ignore this pain because you have shit to do’ came top of mind. instead, i decided to just go to bed at 9:30, ignoring the list of things to do because i wanted to prioritize how i felt. the fact that that felt radical to me was a little scary and is just a testament to workaholism. but, baby steps
if i ever
i started a spotify playlist called ‘if i ever,’ themed after if i ever get around to doing a certain activity that i want to, but am scared of doing (hint, it rhymes with rooms). so far it’s only got two songs so if you have recommendations of songs that sound kind of like swimming underwater, but with a good beat, send them my way. it did get me thinking about making more playlists about potential future events that may or may not happen any time soon, like going to a party. :’(
the internet things that made me feel something
last newsletter, people read the ebay cockroach scheme and also found it nuts so please check it out if you didn’t because it’s genuinely a trip
for this newsletter, you should read vanity fair’s cover story featuring alexandria ocasio-cortez. yes we should not stan politicians, yes i am still obsessed with aoc and would have also been obsessed with her had she been around when i was active on tumblr. i’m only a little sorry about it. the fashion is pretty, the photos immaculate, and the interview is candid and sharp. it’s also full of quotes that are just destined to become someone’s etsy sticker business soon. my favorite is: “I don’t want to be a savior, I want to be a mirror.”
t/w mentions of sexual assault // you should read an anti-rape movement without police which discusses how a domestic violence org lost $25,000 in grants and faced backlash from police after simply putting Black Lives Matter signs up (!!! what!). the article discusses the history of women fighting to separate policing and prison from sexual assault / domestic violence cases, noting that often the police or prison guards were perpetrators themselves, notwithstanding the lack of justice from those cases in the first place. whew.
you should take this quiz by the new york times, which tests if you can guess who is voting for who by looking into their fridge. honestly there isn’t some Big takeaway here besides the fact that biden supporters like yogurt. it’s just generally kind of fun in the way that buzzfeed quizzes about which kind of bagel you represent, are fun
you should read the tenants who evicted their landlord, a piece that tested the absolute limits of my attention span but at the same time, kept me engaged the whole time. it paints a vision of an alternative future and a path forward. also i know i include too much nyt, but i have to milk the shit out of this subscription. plus their relative success is making it harder to find equivalently well funded and researched pieces. but that’s a thought to be explored in another newsletter!
you should have an existential crisis over this instagram post (but seriously it did send me into a crisis and is an extremely raw portrayal of what life feels like a lot of the time. do not recommend if you are feeling not up for it, only if you need a nice cry. thank you tammy for sharing!):
lastly, you should read these beautiful pieces of poetry by beautiful people aris and anna maría <3 it’s a blessing to know people who are so gifted that they ARE the spark on my social media feed that i’m looking for
if you made it here, i love you like really. thank you for spending time reading my scrambled eggs of thoughts! if you know a friend who would like this, tell them to subscribe at onatangent.substack.com.
thank you for the “anti-rape movement without police” recommendation!!