In the internet trenches
Am I a football fan now? Girl summer, Famous Rivalries, The Tabi Swiper, True Crime, Girlfailures, My Just Dance aspirations and more!
Hello!
Spring is coming! Time for new beginnings, or at least the lifting of seasonal depression… Finally! I can see the end!
I thought I was fairly in the trenches of the internet, however, this week I was proven just how wrong I was. I’m doing a uni project with a group I now love (totally unheard of in the group project world I know) who made me feel a bit like a Victorian-era child amongst gen zs. I was urban dictionarying words and everything! They’re so funny, and in no other context have I ever been asked “so what’s everyone’s favourite type of fanfic?”
Anyways, one of them, out of nowhere, in the middle of the library, asked if we wanted to see her perform the entire Rasputin dance from Just Dance which she knew off by heart. Immediate yes. So brilliant. She ate. No crumbs. No notes. Long story short, we’re all friends who get dinner now.
If you need me, I’ll be learning one of the newer Just Dances in an attempt to impress (and completely beat in Just Dance) the younger girls in my family at Christmas…
This newsletter is very chronically online, apologies to the mentally healthy readers, I promise the next newsletter will be a little more intellectual… here’s this week’s lineup:
I owe men an apology
Girl Summer
Woman of the people
We live in a Utopia. Just not the one you’re thinking of…
Famous rivalries
Chaotic good, evil, or neutral? We love a Girlfailure
The ethics of true crime
The Tabi Swiper
I owe men an apology:
I owe an apology to all the men I’ve called silly for screaming and crying at sports on tv. It turns out I just needed it to be women, and for them to all be dating each other.
I have been so emotionally invested in the Matildas this World Cup. Stress, anxiety, heartbreak, elation. All things I never thought I would feel for a group of people running around chasing a ball in ugly uniforms (please, please, Australia can we petition for something other than yellow and green?).
In what can only be called Football Fever, I have become extremely invested in soccer. I don’t really know all the rules yet, but I’m in. I’ve even picked a team (Arsenal) to follow in the Women’s Super League in the UK and Barcelona in the Champions League! Much to my colleague’s entertainment (who was trying to sway me to Arsenal), on the weekend I drew up a chart to decide my team based on the factors: Favourite players, Dating Gossip, Team Outfits, Looks, Club Stereotypes, Rivalries, oh and skill. I even got so far as to ask a friend if they wanted to “kick the ball around with me?” when we next catch up…
A totally bizarre turn of events…
And from Sammy:
Regardless, the Matildas have got a lifelong fan in me. I’m rarely patriotic, (there’s not much to be proud of these days) but damn, was I proud to be Australian and supporting the Matildas this past month. And in all sincerity, it’s been beautiful to watch a national, record-breaking celebration of women and women’s sport. It’s so impressive to watch them play. Can’t wait to see what comes next.
Last night though, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d gone too far. I was up late, guiltily watching Lucy Bronze edits and this newsletter title popped up on my phone… Jump scare. I took it as a sign.
I will also soon have a degree in the woso chart for the Women’s World Cup which I’ve been studying like this.
Okay. Really. This is my final comment on the soccer.
Girl Summer:
A hint at how long this newsletter has been in my drafts… The ship has sailed for Barbie commentary. Instead, I will share some memes and the theory that this is Girl Summer (girl dinner, girl math, etc. etc.).
Taylor Swift’s Eras, Beyonce’s Renaissance, Barbie, The Matildas! A mass celebration of women. It’s so rare these days to experience monocultural events, so the fact they have all culminated in one summer is kind of beautiful. Everyone’s dressing up in pink and shiny costumes and having fun. If we’re slightly delusional for a minute (which as some would say, “the best thing about being a woman, is the prerogative to have a little fun”) and put aside all the horrible shit things women deal with on a daily basis, it’s a nice time to be a woman.
My favourite fun fact at the moment is that, every time the Matildas were playing in the World Cup, Barbie sales dipped! There’s a Venn diagram waiting to happen (@Kamala Harris?)
I had a little chuckle at Waleed Aly’s article where he wrote about the phenomenon, writing:
“If you’re older than, say, 35, you’ll probably recall this phenomenon of unified popular culture, where you could have stopped anyone on the street and had a decent chance of striking up a conversation with them about the thing of the moment. But when did it last feel like that? Maybe when Patrick died on Offspring?. As a dedicated Offspring fan, I have to give him his flowers. What a time.
Michelle Goldberg also shed some light on the matter in her NYT article:
“An obvious lesson from the gargantuan success of both “Barbie” and the Eras Tour is that there is a huge, underserved market for entertainment that takes the feelings of girls and women seriously. After years of Covid isolation, reactionary politics and a mental health crisis that has hit girls and young women particularly hard, there’s a palpable longing for both communal delight and catharsis.”
But seriously, “Might this be evidence of a re-emerging public; of the continued possibility of genuine popular culture? I confess I would like to think so. Not because I value stars, particularly. But because I think the concept of a public is precious, even essential to human life, and that popular culture, for better and for worse, has always been one of the signs that a public exists.”
& on Ken… I think it’s hilarious (and slightly concerning) that somehow it’s part of the universal female experience to have a man play guitar and sing AT you whilst you just sit there…
Woman of the people!
She may be the first woman to make $1 billion at the box office on a film but Greta Gerwig is just like us. In what can only be described as a basic (but classic!) party outfit: a sheer sparkly top and black mini skirt. Purse open, hair a bit of a mess, and the biggest smile. Where was she? At the Renaissance concert in the normie section. Who said celebrities lose touch?
They did, however, do my girl wrong in this Elle photoshoot.
Why’d they make her look like Margaret Thatcher?
We live in a Utopia. Just not the one you’re thinking of…
Famous rivalries:
We’ve had many famous rivalries throughout history
Ireland and England
US and Russia
Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton
Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci
Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader
The list goes on. Now it seems there’s a new battle, the one of which media source is going to be the first to drop breaking news. Pop Crave vs. Pop Base. It is truly insane to me that the media source that is giving us the weirdest celebrity gossip is also breaking top global political headlines? The state of the world. Terrifying.
Chaotic good, evil, or neutral? We love a Girlfailure:
The enigma that is Caroline Calloway! You might remember the infamous scandal with her ghostwriter (and best friend) that was written about in a Cut essay back in 2019. The essay exposed her for scamming her way into Cambridge, high British social life, early internet fame, and a book deal. A book deal she failed to write and spent the advance of, and then preceded to create all sorts of entrepreneurial schemes to try to pay back her publishers (‘snake oil’, ‘writers’ workshops she cancelled last minute, Tarot cards, an Onlyfans etc.) Her “Scamming Era”. She’s been branded as a “one-woman Fyre Festival”, for the chronically online, she’s the Anna Delvy or Elizabeth Holmes (All hail the Girlfailure).
The point? Recently Caroline released her long-anticipated self-published memoir (it was initially meant to be released in 2020). Surprisingly, it has been well-reviewed, and she’s got another 2 books coming out at the end of this year!
The ethics of true crime:
Bri Lee wrote a great essay about the ethics of true crime and Rebecca Makkai’s new novel ‘I Have Some Questions For You’. Studying criminology everyone thinks I must love true crime shows and podcasts. This couldn’t be further from the truth (about me or what criminology actually is) but I do find it fascinating so many people (73% of true crime audiences are women) gobble it up. Anyways, Bri Lee did a better job at articulating all the nuances of this than I will in her recent substack essay. She talks all about the ethics of the true crime industry and how it has become a participatory genre.
The Tabi Swiper:
Speaking of true crime, Twitter has been having kittens about the Tabi Swiper. The Tabi Swiper in question matched with a fashion influencer on tinder, passed her in the street, they went on a date, he stayed over. THEN he stole her Maison Margiela Tabi Mary Janes and regifted them to his girlfriend?! In a twist, a friend of the girlfriend responded to the drama saying that her friend was just gifted a pair of Tabis… Turned out it was the same guy! Unsurprisingly twitter found him, called him out and he eventually returned the tabis. Fashion boys are next-level unhinged. Inner north girlies watch out…
The whole thing feels like a Seinfeld skit. Elaine would 100% be the girlfriend getting gifted the stolen Tabis, blissfully unaware of the saga.
and finally, for all those also in the internet trenches, I give you: Succession characters as jars rolling down stairs.
I’ll leave you all with this tweet which captures how I feel walking around Carlton, except maybe add a few elderly local residents, the butcher, parents of kids I went to primary school with, and the local postman…
Love,
Rimini