Tag: Class

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Internet Culture

Day 689 and Dick Riding

As chaos continues to unfurl around the world, the tendency towards hero worship is getting out of control. Cults of personality are having a moment absolutely everywhere, even as we are treated to even more spectacular variants of the Emperor Has No Clothes. You’d think the recent flameouts in finance, technology and politics just this week would make us all a bit more skeptical of authority and yet that does not appear to be the case.

You cannot go onto Twitter without exposing yourself to someone’s daddy issues disguised as a low rent business school case study thread. I was concerned about the information hygiene as platform capacity degraded. But I honestly wasn’t expecting the first disease that actually emerged. Twitter is in the throes of an emotional venereal disease.

I am talking about dick riders.

If you are not familiar with the term, being a dick rider means praising absolutely every move of someone you perceive as having more power than you. Dickriding is a particularly uncomfortable form of reply guying wherein you praise absolutely every move of the person whose dick you are riding.

It’s especially virulent among regular people without personal expertise or exposure to the problem at hand. Not knowing any better is not however a prerequisite for dick riding. You can lend your credibility to someone else by using your expertise to rationalize just about anything.

Humans love power and hierarchy. I guess it makes us feel safe to believe that someone knows what the hell they are doing when we are afraid. But the sad reality is that we are all human. Even the most accomplished and brilliant among us are still saddled with bias, self doubt, insecurities and blind spots. If you are inclined towards the religious, we are all sinners. Though I’d recommend you combine that with a side of grace as I don’t mean this to be judgmental.

I realize it’s pretty funny to bring up the redeeming power of grace in the context of sexually explicit slang. But I do think it’s helpful to remember that even the worst of us have redeeming qualities and even the best of us have flaws.

So if you are tempted to engage in dickriding because you think someone is better than you, might I encourage you to consider that we are all equals in the eyes of God. Or at very least equal in the face of a good shit post.

I’m a straight woman so I like riding dick but I don’t know what excuse the rest of you have.
Categories
Aesthetics

Day 646 and Birthday Shopping

My birthday is next Tuesday and I’ve been using it as an excuse to browse my favorite cosmetic and clothing websites. I should treat myself right? No gift is better than what you select for yourself. Plus, I love a free gift with purchase. A birthday is often the anchor of any decent loyalty program so I’m justifying this as an exploration of current merchandising trends.

Sephora in particular has dedicated itself to a Birthday Gift franchise that women obsess over all year. If you are part of their loyalty program called Beauty Insider or Very Important Beauty (VIB if you spend $350) you get to chose a gift during your birthday month. There are a lot of other perks in the program but the birthday gift doesn’t require spending any of your hard earned rewards points and it’s free to join.

Sephora’s Loyalty Program Birthday Gift Options for 2022 for VIB & VIB Rouge included Laura Mercier, Tatcha, Amika, NEST & Olaplex

It’s a big deal for the brands to be selected as one of the gifts for the year by Sephora as it’s a great way to get sampling and visibility for twelve straight months. Plus Sephora kicks in on some of the hard costs. It’s one of the better gauges in the cosmetics industry of who is up and coming and desirable, but also has enough cachet that it drives desire around the program.

They generally offer one color cosmetic, one skincare brand, one haircare brand and a fragrance but it can be a bit mix and match depending on what trends are in the industry overall. And they offer up slightly fancier rewards for the $350 and $1000 spending tiers.

This year haircare brand Olaplex was so popular as a VIB gift that only January birthdays got the gifts causing some angst. That slicked back clean girl aesthetic bun TikTok wave and the brand’s IPO last year might have been too much demand for it to be a part of a loyalty program that is intensely scrutinized.

I have actually never used Olaplex as I’ve got low maintenance princess hair. I would have loved to try it in a sample gift just to see but the merchandising gods said sorry girl you ain’t a Pisces.

I’ll admit I was pretty bummed as it was advertised all year but I only realized it was sold out when I was able to begin my own birthday gift selection process. Guess I should have kept closer tabs on the beauty influencers.

Charlotte Tilbury Sephora Birthday Set with Pillow Talk mini Matte Lipstick and Mascara

Because I am VIB I had access to a gift that wasn’t initially pictured in the Birthday section. My theory is it got added in after the Olaplex debacle but this is just me putting on a tinfoil hat. I ended up selecting the Charlotte Tilbury gift. When I was the CEO of Stowaway Cosmetics we duped their best selling shade Pillow Talk many years ago.

I’d never actually purchased the original one from Tilbury as I simply had access to the original source contract manufacturer. I never tried it in matte as Stowaway’s original formula was a satin, so I thought “let’s select this” as my gift for the year. I thought it was a nice throwback to remember a time when I wasn’t a civilian but had access to all the cosmetics I wanted straight from the factory. And yes I miss it but not necessarily enough to go back. But I’ll let you know if I like the lipstick!

Categories
Politics Travel

Day 631 and Reunion

I normally spend a lot of time my husband. During the pandemic we got very accustomed to being around each other twenty four seven. We quite enjoy each other’s company so it’s been a life upgrade.

But occasionally we take longer chunks of time apart. It started as a deliberate effort, but now as the post pandemic world works itself out travel is starting to happen naturally again. We haven’t seen each other for two weeks. And completely organically.

And we couldn’t have had more diverse life experiences and seen more varied cross sections of America if we’d planned it. Alex was at an investment firm’s CEO summit in Santa Barbara while I was in Billings Montana taking wilderness medical incident first responder training. He was hobnobing with bankers while I was doing “stop the bleed” with wildfire fighters and EMTS.

When we reunited this evening after being apart, and for such disparate types of experiences, it was so much fun to compare notes. The types of concerns and the expectations for the good life couldn’t be more divergent for the two poles of people. And I am modestly afraid that as America polarizes and different industries code for different versions of America that it will be rare for different classes to intersect.

And that’s a real problem if bankers are so far removed from paramedics as to have entirely different interests and ideals for their shared country of America. It’s clearly possible to encounter all types of Americans across all classes but I’m not sure I’m optimistic about enough people making the effort to bring us all together.

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Culture

Day 622 and Uneven Bars

I’m not very temperamentally even. I run hot and excited and passionate and I’ve got a mean streak a mile wide. I can only assume the reason I’m so popular with some men is they love a bitch. Everyone does.

It’s not the most appreciated trait in popular culture but it does seem to be the dominate preference of a lot of very intelligent people. At least these days plenty of people both conservative and progressive appreciate the necessity of a ball buster. It’s a status object too. We don’t trust men with weak wives. It makes them look weak.

But I’m not sure anyone thinks it’s a particular good thing for the majority of women to act forcefully. If you hold your ground it can bring out howls of ostentatious victimhood. Which if you point out, they quickly gender the tactic a dark feminine trait of less less powerful that they learned from you.

It’s a really stupid party trick that somehow works well past the age of reason. After about 21 you should have really learned men tell you are weak because they know you are powerful over them. But honestly I still get caught flat footed by it. It’s a fickle power to be wielded without assurance or trust. But it is still a power and it’s insulting women women don’t claim it.

Women deciding to dismiss the uneven hold of their power makes balancing power for everyone a bit of a mess. The default switches from human manufacturing got reset.

Gender essentialism is pretty deep. It’s very jarring for the literal minded mainstream of society in particular. And unfortunately for everyone the world is run by the mainstream and they are prone to revanchist sentiment. Just look at everyone simpering for monarchy. Even if you are above that sort of thing no you are not. And so the uneven bars of progress continue. If you aren’t a realist about it you might get screwed.

Categories
Culture Politics

Day 610 and Labor Day Weekend

America isn’t much for holidays compared to say Europe. The Chinese outwork us with 996 but by and large Americans are a people that work. Paid time off isn’t really our thing. Well, it’s not something that capital is keen on allowing labor to have as a thing.

But you can rely on Memorial Day and Labor Day to act as the basic bookends of summer and as days you should have off from work. I find it a bit comical that we have a holiday celebrating the labor movement. You’d think we would have rolled it back with the Reagan Revolution. But Labor Day is the summer ending day off we all know and love even if we killed most of the unions.

Ive got labor on my mind as I’ve taken all of August to move my family to Montana this summer. Most of my energy went into getting us here and settled. The month flew by. It still feels like I have so much left to do. And not just because we still don’t have a dining room table or a mirror in the bathroom suitable for doing makeup. Getting unpacked is a process.

I’m slowly readjusting my mindset back to a workflow that includes labor outside the home. Well, I still work from home. But labor with other people beyond my family. Calling it labor is a bit funny in the context of Labor Day as my labor is working with capital I suppose I’m allowed to celebrate Labor Day as the spiritual placeholder for back to work season even if I am technically “the man.”

Categories
Aesthetics Biohacking

Day 587 and Transhumanism is Here

The wealthy are now dramatically better looking than the average person. This is not because because beauty is somehow genetically distributed more heavily to the rich but because you can buy good looks. I bet you are agreeing with me. Maybe nodding. You watch tv. But I’d be willing to bet you’d be surprised by how much work has been done because the good shit is discreet. It looks natural. Super natural.

The horrifying frozen faces, super symmetrical gravity defying boobs, and super puffy dick-sucking-lips are low status cosmetic work now. It’s what you get if you are either poor or have low status taste you haven’t yet figured out how to get rid of. You can tell and I can tell and everyone else can tell you had work done. Maybe you even like it. Porn is it’s own very popular aesthetic.

But looking like you are naturally beautiful requires a bit finesse. And wealthy beauty is natural. It’s more Napa Valley than San Fernando. I’d argue it’s not any less fake but but it’s so perfectly crafted as to aspire to the most believably close to natural as possible. In some cases it’s functionally transhuman at the rate they biohack their looks. Permanently shifting the Overton Window of beauty levels is arising.

Now good health is closely aligned culturally in our minds with good looks. That’s bullshit in a lot of critical ways but also broadly true in enough ways that it is common knowledge. So it feels truthy. This naturally brings up a lot of politics as to who deserves the world’s wealth and how do we determine that. “It’s the true and the beautiful obviously!” And well you can see it’s not a huge leap to fascism’s aesthetics.

I think we will see a backlash against slowing aging in noticeable ways. We will have a new hippie back to the land era of aging naturally. Except people will cheat it. We will hack finer and finer grades of the natural look to signal we value traditionalism but in reality the battle is over. Transhumanism may solve for longevity but it’s going to arrive by vanity.

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
Politics

Day 575 and Harm’s Way

I got put in a hotel room for the final days of packing up our Colorado townhouse. I’m useless at lifting heavy things right now. I find this to be vaguely insulting as I used to be an avid power lifter.

But I can’t dispute that the high cost of my energy makes it uneconomic to involve me in physical labor. My family and friends reasonably want to keep me out of harm’s way. My role in our groups is to be Tom Sawyer not the paint brush brigade. Or if you prefer a story with less moral grey area, I am the mouse Frederick from Leo Leoni’s classic tale about story tellers and community. I scan the horizon and organize people. It’s probably the original professional path for the disabled. We’d have gone instinct in a Darwinian view of simple capacity and yet here we remain.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to mitigation of tail risks recently as the person tasked with keeping our group out of harm’s way. The average prepper isn’t much more convinced that the world is ending than your average person. We simply think that probability being what it is, it is worth doing some work to stay out of harm’s way if you can. Complicated worlds have complicated risk profiles. Buying insurance is just doing the math.

Not everyone is convinced that moving to Montana is staying out of harm’s way. A marketing executive and Vice contributor recently wrote a viral essay about how people like him (and me) are walking into some kind of a Trumpian civil war. I am skeptical of this position having been raised in the mountain west that things are quite so dire in Montana. It’s not Idaho.

But I agree with the basic gist that culture wars are getting hot. But I’m also a native of the West and deserve to be there as much as anyone. I code just as much right wing as I do left wing. My plans are to integrate back into country living. I am all for good neighbors and church and building sustainable communities. But I am also virulently anti-MAGA as populism tends to go badly for diverse populations. And I believe the only way we keep anyone out of harm’s way is by simply resisting simple narratives and taking sides.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 570 and Fuck Boys

I’m a little too old to have ever thirst trapped. It isn’t that I wasn’t aggressively on social media when I was younger and single but the forms and semiotics of the space hadn’t codified yet. Clout was a lot more protean in 2014.

I’m absolutely fascinated by how much sexual status is now played out by your consumption choices on Instagram and Tik Tok. You filter it because your dating apps remove you so completely from the context of each other’s lives. No one meets through friends anymore. The apps have dominated costal enclaves in particular.

This atomization is affecting our our behavior in some negative ways. The more we moderate our professional profile the harder it is to discern morals and intent absent from your best marketed self.

Everyone is signaling in a giant sexual market place where even electricians have to worry about personal brand. And this is the origin of the fuck boy I suspect. There is a kind of man (and I’d argue woman too) that just doesn’t play by fair emotional rules. People get atomized and they get comfortable using other people independent of their own agency to consent. Power and status has never been less clear.

This is all on the backdrop of a world where sexual mores are being restricted back to retrograde positions previously only held by the reactionary right last generation. Everyone else got a whole lot chiller about advertising their sexual lives just as the new generation of prudes would rise up. But also maybe everyone just wanted to go back to being prude. Vibe shifts are coming at you fast.

Our elites have never been more promiscuous. Everyone is fucking each other but not so discreetly as there once did in our British colonial past. Our gossip columnists have fewer boundaries and besides everyone knows visibility is good.

But if you had ever considered that you might hold yourself to more relaxed standards of acceptable social relationships well that was a mistake. You plebeians better shape up and go with the conservative social family ideal. Even the gays. Especially the gays. I’d buckle up for some rapidly shifting cultural waters as I don’t know where this goes but I’m not optimistic.

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.