Never News: You're all gold medalists in my heart
Hello one and all! It's me, Producer Georgia, here once again with your prescriptive dose of Never News. The winter Olympics are here, and I for one will be watching the U.S. singles women's figure skating competition with the rabid, obsessive attention of a woman possessed. And what of OUR Olympiad, which took place live on twitch.tv/theneverpost on Monday? Well, more on that later.
But first, on to the news!
KELSEY WEEKMAN: The cautionary tale of the hard launch
If you know me, you'll be unsurprised to hear that I continue to be interested in the ways that dating apps affect our relationship to the more scary parts of romance – primarily, vulnerability. And this piece from Kelsey Weekman really digs into something I've been scratching at for the last few weeks. Posting publicly about your love life is a fraught but common practice online: sharing the fact of your relationship (not to mention your own happiness because of it) can invite judgment, cringing, and a general feeling that eventually, the other shoe will drop. And sometimes, it does – a few posts after that original "I'm in love" video, we may see the same woman as before, tear-stained and choking through a "story time" about how the love of her life was anything but. This kind of thing leads a lot of people to think twice before posting about their respective beaus. But...then what does that do to our relationship to romantic love? More on that later from me, probably.
SHOW NEWS: Meet the medalists of our Olympiad!
If you somehow missed the livestream of our first-ever Never Post Olympiad on Monday, allow me to introduce you to our incredible listener contestants, who each fought valiantly for the glory of being gold, silver, or the most coveted of all, bronze at our twisted and crazed internet games. Also, if you'd like to watch the games, they should be up on twitch for a short time, after which they will be lost forever and THEN what will you do?!
Kimberly – Gold 🥇
Kimberly won by an ASTOUNDING margin, absolutely smoking the competition in the category of "get someone to send you pictures of yourself," to which her father-in-law sent OVER 1,000 PHOTOS JESUS CHRIST.
Find Kimberly online here:
Chants of a Lifetime
Literary Connections
Top Fiction of 2025, according to 91 lists
May – Silver 🥈
May gave an incredible performance, using lateral thinking in multiple challenges to get ahead of her competitors. Viewers of our Livestream Week will also recognize May as the glass artists whose incredible PC stained glass piece we auctioned off during our member drive!
Find May online here:
Touch Glass Studio on Substack
For commissions, you can reach May at: touchglassstudio@gmail.com
Talia – Bronze 🥉
All three of our contestants declared that their goal was NOT to win the gold...but to, in fact, win bronze. But only one would be able to complete this challenge, and Talia stuck the landing with incredible conviction. Also, I personally award Talia a secret, non-official trophy for being awake at 3 IN THE GODDAMN MORNING to take part in the games. It's dedication like this that gets you qualified for the Olympiad, folks!
Find Talia online here:
TECHCRUNCH: Looks like everybody is still on TikTok
All of us over here at NevPo HQ have been curious to see how much the TikTok/U.S. sale would actually affect how many people use the app. And despite a few very vocal folks who have been talking about the importance of leaving the app once and for all...it looks like not much has changed. There was a dip, for sure, but as TechCrunch reports, TikTok quickly righted itself and continued on with similar user activity to before that deal took place. This begs a larger question, and one that we've been chewing on over here: what does it take for people to truly leave a platform en masse? What threshold must be crossed for people to maintain that feeling of disinterest, disgust, or distrust enough to keep them off the app for good? All things to think about as we watch TikTok settle in to its new life in the U.S., that's for sure.
THE CUT: On Pilates, and the broader playbook of the viral workout
I have never taken a Pilates class and I don't really understand how it works. But that hasn't changed the fact that for the last decade or so, I have heard the word whispered around me like an incantation. And in this piece in The Cut, Pilates is examined as its own kind of myth – a workout, sure, but also a concept that has been used for all kinds of things, good, bad, and strange. This piece is very long, and I think you can dance through it and still get something interesting from it. But what interests me here is how Pilates is a great example of the cult of the viral workout writ large, and shows what an iPhone-facing workout practice tends to signify: thinness, whiteness, class, Western beauty standards, the works. Exercise is difficult to wrench from the politics of gender, race, and class, and that is surely more true now than ever before.
And that's all for now from me. It's almost Friday night, and something tells me the feeling's right. Hopefully you have a restful, lovely weekend – and at the very least, that you eat something delicious. And be sure to take your Vitamin D, god knows I keep forgetting to. Ciao!
In fact, since you're trapped in here with me and must bend to my whims, here's a non-exhaustive list of some favorites (minus anything from Debí Tirar Más Fotos because that album is a masterpiece, every song is perfect, and we'd be here forever):
Safaera (friend of the show Luis López Levi wrote his grad thesis in part about this song and the way it cites so much in the history of reggaeton and beyond)