Never News: Sunday Edition

Hello angels! It's me, Producer Georgia, offering you a weekend edition of Never News for your hungry brains. It's in the single digits over here in Chicago, which always happens but never fails to shock me every year.

For this edition of the newsletter, I offer you a few more pieces to read on this chilly afternoon, or really any day that you'd like to spend reading and thinking and going "hmm, interesting."

So let's jump right in:

THEM: why are the gays so mean to each other online?

I've been thinking a lot about the bandwagon-ing of posts online – something that isn't new, but is something I'm noticing more nowadays. Look anywhere online and you'll find it: an innocuous, sincere post about getting breakfast with your husband or hanging out with your friends, overrun by comments from people frothing at the mouth about how not everyone has a husband or has time to make friends, and how this fact makes the poster an evil, bad person. This piece from Them takes that trend and looks at how it exists within the queer community (well, largely within the cis gay male online world). In a digital landscape where we should support and protect each other from the worst of the Internet's trolls, it's demoralizing to see how so much vitriol can come from within the queer community itself. I hope this piece is the beginning of a much bigger conversation about this.

THE NEW YORKER: on performative reading

This is another conversation I've been following a lot online lately – the fixation on "performance" in the real world, as it is deciphered and digested through online channels. The best example of this is what this piece offers as its first example: the concept of the performative reader. He (and it's always "he") can be found at a park, at a bar, anywhere public really, his legs crossed, reading intently from a copy of bell hooks' All About Love with the cover visible for all to see. I am guilty of lambasting this kind of guy, I'll admit it. But as this piece explores, I do wonder if we are worrying too much about the aesthetic signifiers of An Inauthentic Person and never bothering to wonder what authenticity looks like (or, frankly, what real personality traits might be more worthy of our ire beyond someone's reading list). It also makes me think about the latest "I don't think so honey" rant that Lucy Dacus did on this week's episode of Las Culturistas about "the boy with the dangly earring." Lots to chew on here.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: crypto casinos never close

If I had to name an addictive habit that the digital world has done a horrifically good job at rebranding to young, heavily online consumers, I would offer two things: smoking and gambling. The move from cigarettes to vaping is another beast to slay – what with its memetic nature ("ripping mad cotton" is a phrase meant for the Internet) and how everything about it lends itself perfectly to making online content. That's a topic for another article. But as this piece in the Times reports, the world of gambling – especially crypto casinos – has its claws deep in the world of the chronically online. The addictive nature of gambling pairs perfectly with the internet (something that Mike beautifully covered in a previous episode of the show, as I am sure you are aware). Online, the casino never closes, and a sucker is born every second. What could possibly go wrong?

THE CUT: the cliff of aging comes for us all

Ah, another article about aging. In this one, we explore the notion that there's an "aging cliff" in which the signs of age begin to show up physically, and what that means for elder millennials. And I do think there's interesting stuff in here about how millennials (and gen z'ers, frankly) no longer subscribe to the same cultural milestones of aging (job security, settling down, buying a house), and are thus stuck in a kind of endless adolescence. Say what you need to say about the economy, etc, but there's also data to back that up on a neuropsychological level – a recent study shows that adolescence does continue into our 30's. But I was interested in this piece more because it seems like an extension of the fact that the newer generations are fixated on aging in a particularly brutal way. I am always interested in how aging is discussed online, and this is an interesting addition.

Alright snow bunnies, that's all from me today. As I write this I can hear the gentle hum of my radiator heat, and I am reminded that I need to refill my humidifiers, lest I become the beef jerky version of myself. Stay warm, stay awesome, stay curious. Besitos.

Here's a song I've been listening to recently, off of Rosalía's new album Lux.