Tag: Attention

Categories
Aesthetics Travel

Day 600 and High Season

A lot of folks seem to be coming through Montana over the next two weeks. Maybe it’s the nature of high season that people flock to Montana at the end of the summer?

But it’s been quite fun to have all kinds of friends, mutuals and acquaintances reach out to make plans. Visibility on Twitter has played a large role in this, as anyone passing through Montana might be inclined to grab a meal or a drink if they scroll their local mutuals. I like to think I am top of mind because I am a good hang but it’s probably because I’m just quite visible.

All these tourists has got a bit of a “center of the universe” feel to it. It’s like a mountain summer town version of Manhattan during fashion week. Or Los Angeles during the Oscars. I’ve got to say it feels like I’m Monaco and it’s F1 racing season. Every city of note has an event that brings all of the jet set to their hometown.

I’m usually mixed on doing too much social activity but I’ve been feeling like socializing more. I’ve even been eating out with much more frequency. And what’s amazing about it is that in the past I didn’t want to do more than a couple events a month. But this end of summer in Montana thing has me looking forward to more deck cocktails, eating cold cherries on the marble kitchen slab, going to pubs and ale houses, and maybe even a few steak houses too.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 599 and The Lamentations of Their Women

A bunch of people asked me about what happened to me on Twitter over the weekend. I’d been hitting a bunch of different niche communities like startup Twitter, finance Twitter, doomer Twitter, and discourse Twitter with a thread that has a bunch of extremely extra and occasionally outright hostile weirdos saying reactionary shit.

I think it all started when my friend Ashley wrote a post about the commodification of women’s bodies. She was responding to another piece of discourse and found herself getting dog piled by one of the most irritating but unavoidable portions of the the internet; reactionary angry young men.

I didn’t like that Ashley was getting ripped for functionally agreeing with right coded, socially conservative men. I thought “damn, you can’t win with them”.

Entering the Fray

I decided to jump in and tease some of these boys. My inner child loves to shitpost as she finds humor and playfulness protective. I promptly got blocked. I went about my business. Now that I live on our homestead in Montana, I’ve got a lot of chores.

But I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I kept discussing the damn discourse. I expressed my concern that we’ve got such an intense population of reactionary young men who act as if they are perpetually victimized. I expressed empathy for how men are getting screwed and mostly got told it is women’s fault. It did some numbers but it wasn’t going into a context collapse situation just yet. Basically another day on Twitter.

The thread started out with all of the empathy and good faith I’ve come to expect from niche Twitter. We avoided purity politics. Tucker graciously discussed his own journey and how he let go of anger and began taking responsibility for himself and his family. Jack made some jokes. A number of internet friends discussed the varied ways they handled the systemic discrimination that some masculine virtues experience in modernity. Much wisdom was shared about how different they had grown up to be men.

Later that night I wrote a throwaway post about how we’ve got a crisis of masculinity and maybe only other men can get through to angry young boys? I suggested that perhaps right coded men who discuss modern masculinity would have an easier time reaching them. I tagged Tucker Max and Jack Murphy as men who seem to have done a good job taking responsibility for their own lives.

I basically went to bed with a sense that people had been good to each other. And I didn’t really notice being quote tweeted by a niche main character in groyper Twitter or what it would mean for my tomorrow.

It Escalates

His thread contained the following:

  • A very intense discussion of the ethics of doing butt stuff and posting about your experience with polyamory and cuckcolding.
  • The ethics of charging for coaching and clubs and whether one can have masculine virtue if your wife sleeps with other men.
  • A surprising amount of hysterics about what constitutes hypocrisy if one claims to be masculine.

Basically a bunch of people who haven’t figured out their own shadow lives told me exactly how uncomfortable they were with other people’s sex lives.

But honestly it was just so much fucking butt stuff.

Unfortunately that visibility of discourse meant I suddenly got flooded with harassment. A coordinated re-tweeting campaign began. People started digging into back posts and old news headlines. My direct messages got flooded with threats against me and my husband. It was definitely enough that we started thinking about security around the homestead.

I can only assume someone’s group chat or some message board was like “look at the phenotype on this bitch”. And to be fair, some people came with good jokes about venture capitalists moving to Montana. But then there was the graphically racist, as in, “oh we still have Nazis” plot twist. I realized I might need to actually start blocking people. I felt modestly disappointed as I hadn’t been dogpiled in a long time. But protecting myself was more important.

Why

Now you can ask why am I even stepping into these spaces if they contain this kind of abuse? What can I say there is a part of me who enjoys a frisson of danger. The feminine urge to protect our menfolk often runs head long into the reality that they can be dangerous. Walking into male spaces has inherent risks if you take up space in public life.

I have to be honest honest with myself that there is a breed of men who considers all public spaces to be male. I am an offense to them even if I am in the process of lamentation for our men. The space I take up by existing with different preferences is proof enough I am an enemy to be subjugated.

So I guess I owe anyone I teased about blocking on Twitter an apology. There are some people in too much pain out there. And I am not in anyway responsible for their emotional health. Only they can choose to let go of the pain.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 595 and Clean Girl

I am not on Instagram or TikTok. I figure after being on social media for twenty years I’m allowed to be choosy about what platforms take my attention. I’ve joined and left and rejoined every kind of social media you can imagine and the ones that prioritize the written word are my favorites at the moment. WordPress and Twitter have my heart.

I took a break from the visual platforms after I left the cosmetics industry when I sold Stowaway. This means I am in the enjoyable place of only finding out about trends when normies do. It’s quite a relief to have no clue who the fashion influencers are right now after being paid to keep track of them for so long. It brings some of the joy back into it.

Today I did enjoy a little cosplay with the clean girl aesthetic. It’s just a reimagining of the evergreen “model off duty” look but overlayed with rich preppy Carolyn Kennedy styling and a whole lot of TikTok classism and racism. Be white, be rich, have money for nutrition and wellness and whatever you do don’t tell the boys how long it took to do the no-makeup makeup. Minimalism is a look not a reality.

I am an easy fit into the aesthetic as I’ve got all the basics. I pulled out summer weight slit skirt, an airy white tee shirt, tied it together it with a long Norma Kamali gold belt and I was done. I used the super trendy Merit minimalist complexion stick, slicked up my brows, put on a touch of perfume, and some hair oil. I looked styled and I liked it.

It felt pretty fun to look styled on my run to the grocery co-op. It almost makes me want to reboot some of my fashion and beauty content consumption. And I’m super tempted to buy the entire line of Merit products as their entire vibe feels like they evolved off my own former brand Stowaway. I thought I’d be annoyed at a minimalist beauty line up done in grey but I’m just relieved that someone else picked up where I left off. That’s the best part of the style industry. It’s entire purpose is to continues to evolve and improve on classic aesthetics.

Categories
Politics

Day 592 and Politicians

We say we want accountable politicians but then we punish them when they hold firm positions. Principled politicians are begging ravages right now. Of course, they reward our fickleness with their own. It makes political discourse a conduit for performing accountability instead of doing it.

If a politician cannot hold a viewpoint or position that you disagree with but still holds your generation support, we’ve stopped having a civic body and instead developed into rabid fandoms. And we wonder why the leading lights of both parties only pay respects to their most radical members. Everyone gets abandoned in that situation. Your only options are bad ones.

I say this because I think it is time we started endorsing politicians for who they are as people, even if their policy positions might not align with yours. Trusting someone because they have demonstrated good faith is a social good. We should strive to be accountable to each other even in total opposition. That’s the only way anyone will ever build systems in which any of us are free. Otherwise it’s coercion anyway you slice it. And what’s fucked up is you probably know it but are ready to argue me on the technicals.

We have to expect others to have principles in order have them respect our own. That’s always been the fundamentally libertarian platform. That others have the freedom to hold firm in their own version of the good life and we should have our good life respected as well. Live and let live.

If just coercing someone to your side is enough for you, if mere compulsion is an adequate civilizational goal, then by all means reconsider if you are American. It’s an imperfect union.

Me having a line means that you can have a line too. Our respect for boundaries is what allows us to interact as adults capable of ring responsible for our own actions. Maybe it’s not ways to our advantage. But having a line means you can be trusted. And being trust worthy is safety.

Categories
Finance

Day 590 and Demography

User acquisition is my little niche in the startup world. While all founders are generalists my super power has always been getting the attention of customers. So I often enjoy little illustrative moments where basic principles of finding and speaking to your audience go awry.

I have tweeted extensively about my concern in the rising cost of core agriculture commodities in the face of shitstorm in the fertilizer markets. This isn’t that novel if you work in finance but it’s probably not a large group of people that are actively discussing fertilizer costs. I do not however buy fertilizer personally. I don’t finance it.

In the face of rising interest rates, partnering with Nutrien Financial™ can help you prepare for the future with confidence. Our latest blog post explores why financing your input purchases may be beneficial to your operation:🔗 nutrienagsolutions.com/blog/5-Reasons… #AgFinancing

I was served a tweet for Nutrien Financial. They would like me to consider financing my crop inputs. In fairness to this promoted tweet the final demographic detail Twitter may know about me is that I live on rural land with agricultural use zoning. I see how I got targeted. And I am delighted to be served this piece of thought leadership from them. But I’m not in anyway their customers base even though I mimic a lot that matches them.

Let’s compare this to another group of advertisements that targeted me this week. I got several pieces of direct mail in my physical USPS post. These folks knew that I had recently purchased a forwarding service from the USPS to make sure old post from my former Colorado address would reach my new one in Montana. Let’s take a look at what they advertised to me based on that piece of information.

A spread of several catalogs and promotional mailers for home furniture, blinds and window treatments and rural road paving services.

It looks likes advertisers who want to reach married couples that have recently forwarded their mail to a new address might be in the market for furniture, window treatments and also I guess rural road paving services. That one might be a rural Montana thing so slightly more niche.

Advertisers argue a lot about high intent audiences. That basically means someone who is likely to buy your product or service. Lots of people can fall into the typical demographic of what you sell but judging if if they are likely to be persuaded to make a purchase can save you a lot of money. Don’t sell to someone who isn’t buying.

Sure you can convince someone they want something with aspirations and glamour but you have to be able to be convinced. It’s a lot easier to do that for a lipstick than a couch. Significantly harder to do for rural road paving I imagine (though I’ve never done it so I can’t be sure). The hardest has got to be financial products for large scale industrial agriculture purchases. Finding people with high intent to buy fertilizer seems pretty specific.

Marketers can and do try to gussy up these facts with fancy languages but getting attention and selling to people that want to pay attention are basic. I’m not the tactics aren’t complex and the work can’t get extremely technical but at least we know we are working with human desires. And I think it’s important to think through that when planning a campaign. Don’t want to overspend on convincing someone who isn’t even in the market to be convinced.

Categories
Aesthetics Internet Culture

Day 588 and Skills Deficit

Today’s most exceptional viral Tweet is a Pyschology Today listicle that says the quiet part out loud. Men are lonely and struggling with how to fix the problem because women are higher expectations for relationships. I’m sure you are shocked by this.

A screen shot of a Psychology Today article summary that has circled the first bullet point in a red MS paint-style bubble. The circled text says “Dating opportunities for heterosexual men are diminishing as healthy relationship standards change.”

Apparently women prefer to be in relationship with men who are good communicators and emotionally available. That common sense piece of wisdom naturally caused the internet to erupt in mirth because I guess last week someone’s husband ate a peach. Women be asking for men to do more than be a paycheck and this has had mixed reception.

I struggle to understand some of the feminine discourse around husbands that don’t do any emotional or housework. My husband does most of the cooking. But I do worry about the fact that men don’t seem to be aware that you can fix not getting laid or struggling to keep a woman around just by learning some social loops. The pick up artist community wasn’t completely wrong that some aspects of dating are just techniques anyone can learn and it does help you build confidence.

I am happily married and missed the worst of the dating apps so my advice might be for shit but I do want help any lonely men out their with their up- skilling if they feel lost. I’m happy to help as your favorite male-brained autist that happens to be packaged as a cute but accessible girl. I’m basically a honeypot for right coded shape rotators. Except you can’t have me so I’m definitely safe to talk to. You too can learn how to communicate with women and even participate in hypergamy.

Categories
Aesthetics Finance

Day 584 and Fraudsters

I hadn’t bothered watching any of the numerous Netflix documentaries on how Americans love a beautiful fraud until this weekend when I made an attempt to watch Inventing Anna. I can’t tell if I regret the decision. I’ve avoided any glamorizing of the various grifters that we love to hate.

I don’t love stories about hustles gone bad because I fundamentally believe the difference between success and failure is a lot thinner than than the average person knows. “Fake it to you make it” is part of the great Pentecostal American prosperity gospel. You can come from nothing and become someone in America. We worship the idea of social mobility even if we don’t always like how people gained their fortunes. It’s an entire aesthetic in America.

This is particularly true because sometimes we actually do let the fraudsters win. Especially if we admire their hustle. And let’s be frank it’s a lot harder to tell who is a fraud these days because decades of publicly being a fraud doesn’t stop you from sitting in the Oval Office anymore.

Is it any wonder we aren’t quite sure how to feel about wealth and privilege and the black magic required to obtain it? We act like fraud is a temporarily embarrassing discovery on the way to respectability. Because it often fucking is.

Being in startups has given me a front row seat to just how much talent and capability matter. Except when they absolutely don’t. It’s genuinely hard to reconcile how little effort and outcome can be correlated occasionally.

And this absolutely lends itself to people being willing to take shortcuts. Mistaking that some hard doesn’t pay will kill you if you aren’t able to stay one step ahead. If you get caught, well that is clearly bad but who is to say you couldn’t have kept it up? It’s not like Americans trust cops or prosecutors (except for the line blue line fetishists). Maybe you were just too much of a loud mouth.

I will say the Inventing Anna series has shown me Americans are genuinely confused on how the rich stay rich. In so far as I can tell it boils down to gambling on who might be the real deal and simply writing off the frauds.

Cost of doing business. It happens to everyone. And the worse your boundaries are, well, the worse off your percentages. If your bullshit radar is bad that’s how generational wealth disappears unless you can figure out a way to rig the system (which is always an option).

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 566 and Thot Leadership

I’m only a week out from moving to the homestead in Montana. So naturally I’m having a lot of feelings that I’m coping with by being unproductive on the internet. I’ve been enjoying falling down various rabbit holes like the rise of femcels whilst torturing reply guys on Twitter with bait polling.

But through this particular exercise in self indulgence, I’ve wandered off my usual path of vaguely right coded back-to-the-land regional capitalism and stumbled into the extended universe of socialist criticism of neoliberalism feminism. Socialists spend a lot of time being pissed at capitalist visions of feminism. And it’s really good stuff.

The discourse on resistance to neoliberal feminism is fascinating and the narrative space is so rich. We’ve got the failures of female friendship because of productivity concerns. We’ve got tradwives and reactionary refusals to work outside the home. We’ve got elaborate aesthetic deconstructions of Mormon homesteading. Ann Helen Peterson is an entire Substack beat. Meg Conley has some of the best writing on consumption and home life ever written.

It’s enough to make me wish I’d stayed in academia and pursued blue check thot-leadership. How fun is it to complain about being burnt out and misused but in fancy language? Ok it’s probably not as fun as I imagine since they are mostly untangling lifestyles I actually live.

But like what if instead of being a Girlboss who became a Tradwife homesteader I did academic research on myself instead? Write what you know amirite?

It’s clearly uncomfortable being in an in-between space and I simply cannot move to Montana fast enough. I’m scattered and annoying and in hardcore goblin mode and I’ve got no other excuse but I’m scared. You can really spot it in the erratic shitposting and bitching. But I think everyone is having fun so I guess it’s alright.

Categories
Chronic Disease

Day 559 and Stuck

I got stuck on the couch today. I’m not entirely sure why but I’m in the middle of a massive symptom flare. The pain is so acute and unrelenting that if I so much as sit up from bed I’ll get stuck in that position. I made the mistake of trying to eat lunch on the couch around noon and didn’t work up the capacity to get back into bed for over an hour.

This is becoming a theme on bad days. I’ll find myself upright for forty minutes completely unintentionally because moving, even to a more comfortable position laying down, is so painful I will put it off until I simply cannot remain upright anymore. It’s just that bad. Even the higher grade pain management isn’t doing shit. I’m just stuck in the pain until an even worse pain develops.

That’s probably a good metaphor for life. We will stay in an uncomfortable position until it’s so intolerable we simply must change. And I’d love to wax philosophic about that but I mostly mean it literally. If you’ve ever wondered how I got popular on Twitter, it’s simply because it’s the only thing I can do when I’m physically stuck in place by pain. I thank the internet Gods that this has been monetizable through investing or I don’t know what I would do.

You could almost surely correlate the number of tweets I send with the pain scale of my day. If I’ve tweeted more than 50 times on any given day it’s probably because I am over a 7 on the pain scale. It’s 2pm and I’ve tweeted 32 times today not including my DMs. I keep hopping the pain will abate enough that I can shower but it doesn’t show any signs of letting up today.

Frankly I’m just relieved it’s only my spinal pain and not anything else more exotic. Earlier this week I was dealing with being itchy and then I had a migraine that took 48 hours and several Imitrax to break. Regular old spinal pain is at least a recognizable and normal return to form. But until this nerve storm abates I’m stuck. At least until something worse comes along.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 557 and Fixation

I’ve got a gift for generating momentum. If I can summon the energy and the willpower, I’ll put my total focus on unlocking whatever blocking issues hinder my goal.

The trouble is that this process doesn’t allow for multitasking. Once I turn my eye on a blocker, I’ll fixate on it until it is solved. I’m incredibly prone to tunnel vision.

I’m usually quite competent at prioritizing and ordering priorities correctly to take advantage of the is tendency toward focus. But sometimes I’ll get fixated on the wrong thing and I’ll stay stuck on a problem that shouldn’t be my first priority.

And it’s really hard for me to pull away from a problem if it’s an emotionally charged issue. Those typically involve my personal life. Problems with my friends, my family and my husband can easily hold my energy hostage. Even if it’s not a top priority, if it feels emotionally like it should be a top priority I’ll struggle to let it go.

Over the spring, one of my fixations was finding a stable living situation. In May when Alex and I went scouting for our second time in Montana I poured all my willpower and focus into removing blockers to purchasing a home. It was a grinding emotional process as where to live and when to make a major investment are hard questions.

Now that I’m less than a month out from the move, I can feel my focus shifting. The creative generative driving energy that secured us a homestead is now searching for its next home. It makes me shiver a little bit. Like I’ve got my own personal Eye of Sauron probing my reality for it’s next target. I know what it should be. But sometimes my focus isn’t well behaved.