Never News: Don't do it, little girl!
The summer is here, the heat dome has taken over my fair city, and I have become more ice cream than woman. The other night, I took myself to see The Rose Of Nevada and it was amazing - for those who, like me, crave movies that have texture and color and do NOT look like commercials...this movie is for you, divas. Get thee to the theater!
Let us not delay any further - the news cometh!
PAPER MAG: Lushious and John Waters and Eli, oh my!
It may be July, and thus no longer Pride Month, but damned if I won't be sharing this wonderful issue of Paper featuring a veritable family reunion of queer legends, new and old (I believe John Waters would forgive me for using that word). This issue's got something for everyone – there's John Waters, Symone, Margaret Cho, pop sensation Eli, and notably one of my favorite drag queens who is really using the social internet to great success: Lushious Massacr. If you take nothing else from this piece, I highly, HIGHLY recommend that you find Lushious on your platform of choice, though TikTok or YouTube is really where she shines. She has an ongoing video series "drag-vestigating" places like Dick's Sporting Goods and AutoZone with a slew of special guests and it's fantastic. She also uses audio stingers like nobody else [BRICK!] and I am certain that many people will be copying her for it [TERROR!]. Lushious is an amazing example of how drag queens play with the tools of the Internet in hilarious and fabulous ways (also, an honorable mention here for queens who really blossomed online: Miss Ma'amShe).
SHOW NEWS: We want your stories for an upcoming episode!
Senior Producer Hans and Producer Audrey are working on a very cool story on how AI weasels its way into our jobs, and they are looking for listener submissions about it! Do you have a story about a moment where AI was brought into your workflow by a colleague (either mandated by the organization or not) and you had to reckon with it? Was there a moment where you had to relate to how you use AI in your job - are you forced to use it, or are your colleagues using it and you’re not sure when it got decided? Or are you all in? Send us a note on our subreddit or our Airtable, and you may be included in the episode!
ADDITIONALLY!!! Hans has been doing research around what he has termed "inheritance posting" – where folks make grief content online using the objects they inherit from their dead people. If you have inherited something that you'd like to share, send us a short recording of you telling us about your object and your person, and if we get enough, maybe we’ll make a episode of Inheritance Posts!
THE CUT: the debate on whether parents should post their kids terrifies and confounds me
I swear to GOD this article was rage bait. In it, writer Jason Diamond defends posting photos of his toddler-aged daughter on Instagram with her face obscured by the bagel emoji. He explains that he likes showing off the fun outfits he and his wife (more on her in a second) dress her in. But more to the point, he admits that he likes the dopamine rush of getting likes on these photos. Jason even confesses that he relies on the instant gratification of those likes because it's a rare time he engages with his extended social world since he works from home, which is also where his daughter is most of the time. Jason's wife doesn't like this, and has expressed her discomfort with the idea of sharing so much content about their daughter when she is too young to decide if she wants that to happen to her. But Jason doesn't care. He wants the clicks. I was ready to rip this to shreds, but a quick peek at the comments under this article show me that that job has already been taken. Instead, I am curious about your thoughts around the way parents post/don't post their children online. I don't have kids, and most of my friends are child-free. But this debate is one I see crop up regularly, and it always sort of baffles me. The online world Jason waxes poetic about – one where he simply shares photos of his child for his own friends' appreciation – cannot exist when his profile is public and has thousands of followers. The solution seems painfully obvious: make a private account for friends and family...but Jason shan't do it. The whole thing feels gross and bad. I offer it to you and say...yikes.
ITSNICETHAT: Since when did everything become an aesthetic?
This has been a special interest of mine for years. And this article is one of those things that I love and simultaneously resent...but only due to the fact that I wish I had gotten to write it. Because just as writer Elizabeth Goodspeed points out in this wonderful piece, I too have noted that there's been a persistent insistence on social media that any given image isn't just a singular thing, but could be – and in fact surely is – part of an "aesthetic." Look at the comment section on popular posts of virtually any image, scroll for a while, and you will likely find some user asking "what aesthetic is this?" Goodspeed tracks the shift of online visual culture toward this equating of, as she gorgeously puts it, "visual resemblance as evidence of broader affiliation," pointing understandably to the algorithmic categorization of media as a big source of this change. There's also some great musings about the difference between an aesthetic, an artistic movement, and a subculture – another fascination of mine! Also, for any other former scene kids in the chat, you'll be thrilled to hear that this article includes a mention of Your Scene Sucks, which I haven't thought about since 2010.
And thus I leave you to live out your summer day and, in fact, your summer weekend. A day of great hot dog eating possibilities approaches – may we each enjoy one with all the fixin's.
I have declared this the song of the summer, so what if it came out in 2003?