Aug 23, 2023·edited Aug 23, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
"Two Under Two." It's been blazing through my community in Chicago recently, and seems to be inspired by/part of a TradCore/Nostalgia Parenting trend. It's not medically advisable, it's overwhelmingly a "white lady thing on the internet" and it's something that's been historically weaponized against WOC (too many babies, baby machine, welfare mom, etc). It feels very marketing driven - quippier to say/easier to hashtag as 2 under 2 than 2 under 3? 2 under 4? Seemed to have stormed onto the scene around the time that Roe protections started getting aggressively slashed, and I couldn't help but feel like it was a subversive attempt to drive women back into the home with the promise of something special in that age grouping. Absolutely no shade for those who chose to do it and it makes them happy - truly, I have friends in this camp - but globally it feels more and more like a trend than a decision.
Yes! Good to know I'm not the only one who doesn't love #girlmom/#boymom. I'm not a mom, so I'm sure there's lots I don't know. But it feels so prescriptive and stereotypical and always dismays me.
Oh goodness yes. I'm Facebook friends with someone who constantly tags herself as a #boymom and I do not understand it at all. The photos she posts just look like the same things you'd do with any small kid as far as I can tell.
And also, I have never once seen #boydad even though #girldad and #girlmom both exist as well.
Yes this is so interesting!! My read is that it comes out of the assumed (straight, cis) preference for a child of your same gender - because a boy dad is just “dad” but a #girldad is for dads showing interest in the “feminine” things their daughters like or like learning how to braid their hair, it feels tied to the same low bar that leads dads to getting complimented for “babysitting” their kids
I have three sons and for reasons I've never been quite able to articulate, the whole hashtag boymom thing just gives me the absolute wiggins. I actually also rarely (now that I think about it) ever refer to my kids as my "boys" or my sons, like if someone says "your boys might like this" or something like that. I always just refer to them as my kids, unless I'm describing something very very specific. I like this notion you've hit on that you don't have to valorize masculinity because it's the default. The whole idea of "boymom" feels like it's somehow claiming some kind of....status, maybe? for having produced male children. I'm not sure exactly, but there's definitely something there.
I think that’s offensive, honestly. Maybe if they have a private account it’s ok, but if they don’t, I think about all the people who will see those tags and feel like crap. I hope they aren’t doing it to underscore their beliefs about a gender binary… but it still underscores it.
I think the people who participate in the hashtag and identify this way are people who have all boys or all girls (rather than both boys and girls) because of their perception that the parenting experience is different in a meaningful way, and should therefore justify a sub-grouping. (I suspect that for many, they are compensating for feeling that they are missing out on the experience of having a child of a different sex). And while I believe gender is a spectrum, the society we live in does contribute to a different experience for boys vs girls, even from before birth.
That said, even when I was just a “girl mom” myself, I too felt uncomfortable with #boymom and #girlmom because it seems like it would just reinforce outdated gender stereotypes. Also, it feels weird for me to define myself based on my child’s gender, especially because that could change.
Okay "two under two" as marketing quip is fascinating to me. (Side note: as a mom to twins, the whole "two under two" thing has always irked me. I've always had two under two (and under one, and under six months, etc., dammit!)
it’s impossible to work with 2 under 2, so I see it as: moms saying look how hard I work, even tho i’m not in the formal economy. they’re grasping for identity, validation, and recognition. they’re working in the home, but nobody recognizes the all encompassing difficulty of parenting, so this is advertising how much they do.
My assumption when I see influencer types having kids that close together is that it's to only have to go through the "get your body back" routine, including whatever surgery, once.
i’ve absolutely gotten that “getting it over with” impression, to which i say... why did you have kids? honestly also the general concept of people having kids who seem to know nothing about kids, constantly complain about their kids, and make it seem like the worst thing in the world so why did you have them???????
To be fair, while I adore my kids, I have miserable pregnancies and have had difficult postpartum recoveries so I fully understand wanting to bang out a few kids and then get your pelvic floor back allll to yourself. And having a five-year gap between my kids made sleepless nights round 2 a bitter pill to swallow.
Still doesn’t make me wish I’d had 2 under 2, though. That sounds gnarly!
This is SO interesting to me. My youngest children are 22 months apart, and for that six weeks or whatever it is, I absolutely cringe when people ask their ages, because they're so close together. I always feel slightly judged, like 'don't you know how that happens?' I was on the old side when I got married, so we intentionally had our kids close together because I didn't want to be chasing babies when I was any older than I had to be, and my kids are thick as thieves, but as a Latina, I absolutely feel like it hits different than my white peers. It makes me uncomfortable as hell.
“2 under 2” is also a byproduct of women having children later - all of my mom friends who had their first kid after 35 (and are trying to finish having kids by 40) are on the 2u2 track whether they like the catchphrase or not.
Rae, a great point about the compression of available years! Of the women in my circle who have gone this route, that hasn't seemed to be the focus/intent, but definitely a factor for many I'm sure.
Ok, this is fascinating, because also, as someone who is a year and a half into secondary infertility, 2 under 2 feels so much like bragging--like, look at me, I have enough resources to be able to do this stressful thing and I am fertile enough that I can choose when to have my children and it happens for me. It's obviously my own issues coming through, but I am so stressed by the ever widening age gap between my first and potential second child because there's this narrative of two years apart being ideal, and we should be able to control it.
That's a lot to contend with. If it makes you feel any better, the gap between my first and second child is 13 years and they still see to recognize each other as the same species, love each other, and all the good parts about having siblings. My oldest was very happy as an only child and now loves his younger brothers very much. No matter which way it goes, there are always things that are incredibly challenging and things that are so cool and you wouldn't want it any other way. Two years apart is great, and so is 13 years apart. Good luck on your journey, and I hope it brings you happiness!
I have always despised this phrasing, especially when people expand it and are like “I have 3 under 7!” When does it end? Is my mom supposed to go around telling people she has “2 under 33”?
I’ve been thinking about this more and I wonder how much of it is also a strong desire to be part of a community/group. I want to reiterate that this comment wasn’t intended to denigrate anyone who made that choice. My own mom did! But I wonder how much of the #twoundertwo aspirational trend is linked to the access that comes with a hashtag or the coding. More an indictment on society than the women drawn to that decision!
Oh my god is right. I didn’t know this was a trend and yet, I have in-laws who fits your description. I have 2 kids that I had to space due to unpaid leave. IOW, I had to save up vacation time and rebuild my status at work.
Hasn't this been a thing for a long time, though? I know a few moms a generation above me who had paid careers and close pregnancies was their "get it over with all at once" strategy to get back on the ladder (issues there FOR SURE but this would be 15+ yrs ago). And for others who started having kids "late" it feels like the "only way" to get the number of kids they want in a shorter window.
Sure! I mean entire (harmful) ancient stereotypes exist on this (“Irish twins”). My point is that social media seems to have launched it into the stratosphere (or made it more visible, acceptable, aspirational) for a very specific group of people - white women. It’s not a new thing, but it’s certainly a “thing” right now and this was intended to tease out why that might be - maternal age, capitalism, instagram, subversive retro family nostalgia, whatever!
Restock videos. Especially the refrigerator ones. I need some words on their proliferation over on TikTok: the (specialized!) clear containers. The ASMR component. The cost/privilege of it all. The performative nature. The videos that JUST restock different kinds of ice. (!!!) And why I can't keep myself from watching anyway.
I think this also aligns with some of the questions we were working through re: remodel culture, the market gaze, and the desire to make your kitchen look like a professional kitchen — restocking videos are making your fridge into a restaurant fridge, or, like, a vending machine fridge????
Do you think there’s a relationship between wanting your kitchen to look like a store or restaurant and wanting other parts of your home to look like a luxury hotel (bedroom, living room)or a spa (master bath)?
This conversation always reminds me of the scene in Downton Abbey where the Dowager Countess is flabbergasted by a new servant trying to serve the way they do at the Ritz (or whatever fancy hotel). Hotels were thought of (by that class) as a cheaper imitation of their own private homes. Homes were definitely not meant to imitate hotels!
Also having a (fully stocked) pantry the size of a small apartment. I guess it is a little bit of a post-pandemic prepping hangover as well as a display of wealth (when you post it to insta) but the house as supermarket / fortress phenomenon intrigues me
It has to, right? Looking to commercial enterprise for aesthetic inspiration, being so comfortable with the transactive nature of commerce that you want the same feeling in your home.
Yes. The Netflix show The Home Edit from a few years ago was the first time I started to think about this. I think they even use language like "backstock" to refer to the extras of things like paper towels and canned goods, and since TikTok restocks, I feel like it's everywhere. Do we want homes to look like stores because the next consumerism step is to never leave the store? I admit, I do this in my closet. I try to use all those little merchandising tricks I learned in my retail days to fold my jeans in perfect stacks, style my outfits for the week on a separate rack, respace my hangers, dress a mannequin (dress form), etc. and try to "shop" my closet before buying something new. WHY? Why do we want our home to look like a store? Those little rows in our pantries and closets feel like a rich text.
I followed the home edit instagram slightly before the Netflix show and slowly realized it gave me huge ick-Clea’s home and kids appeared frequently and the projected image of not a speck of dust anywhere, no single item ever out of place was bizarre in a deeply uncomfortable way. Of course instagram isn’t a reflection of real life but for everything in your house to be presented as basically antiseptic really felt like projection of some deep pathology.
Their Instagram has gotten rough to follow. Clea has clearly stepped back from doing so much of the content since her cancer diagnosis. And then when she does pop up, it kind of feels like it's all about her breast cancer and somehow she thinks people are unaware of breast cancer, but also weirdly performative and unrealistic (my grandmother had breast cancer, both my aunts, multiple friend's mothers and none were having their hair shaved for IG content)
Yes, Home Edit. Organizing and buying specific things to organize in. Organizing in colors and specific organizing aesthetics. Headbands and decanting everything into plastic bins.
My hugely attention deficient 9-year-old just spent the last couple of days doing this very thing. Does he generally play with legos? No. Does his brother? Not really. I think we have a billion legos as an attempt to assuage our parental guilt for how much time our kids spend playing video games, but whatever. Anyway, he spent hours on this task and was so happy when it was done. Is it sustainable? Maybe, given the aforementioned lack of use (lol) but we'll see. I can't IMAGINE doing this as a regular part of my homekeeping/maintenance.
Yes! Especially because as the parent of three elementary-aged kids, I know absolutely none of that would last more than a few hours, tops. 😂 Introduces interesting questions on repetitive labor, who is this for, etc. Also? I can't deny it looks pretty.
My 6 year old loves watching cleaning and restocking videos, and it was actually a really interesting segue into teaching her some critical thinking skills around social media (what are they trying to get you to buy here?)
I am with your 6 year old! I am totally mesmerized by cleaning and restocking videos. I can literally watch hours of people cleaning their houses while sitting on my couch and ignoring the pile of laundry that has been sitting on my dining room table for days waiting to be folded. It's deeply soothing in a way I don't really understand and maybe I just need to get it out of my system like a stupid iphone game I'm addicted to?
I follow someone on Instagram (British man, can't think of his name right now) who duets with rich people videos and the first time he showed an ice restocking video... wow! Also, those ladies who have entire cabinets of flavored coffee syrups and powdered drink packets calling it 'water', no it's non carbonated pop, lady!
You are not alone. The first time I flicked and saw "monthly ice restocking" as a post title I was deeply confused. I mean, I still am, but for other reasons now.
I was drawn in by one that showed up on my IG feed last night. Ice made with coffee (one of my fave work breakfast places does it & I fully get that!), ice made with fruit purees, ice with different fruits cut in different shapes inside, ice made with milk (I think?), everything in different molds-not just your standard cubed ice! And, there were trays of it.
I wonder how much of that was pandemic driven, too. Influencers were home, clothing was... well it just got really weird/chaotic.... and the one thing people could fixate on was making their spaces tidy and bringing the calming store environment into their home where they didn't have to mask or worry. A lot of folks were also stockpiling more on some things due to supply chain issues and limiting store trips, so they inherently had more in their home to organize and manage than perhaps they did before. (Was the case for us!)
I have no idea about "restocking," but I got hooked on a company called GoCleanCo on Instagram in early 2020. It started as a home cleaning company in the Calgary area, and when the pandemic started, her business basically shut down. She started making home videos for her Instagram account to keep the name out there, and gave people tips on disinfecting, etc., and it took off from there. When I started following her on Instagram at the start of the pandemic, she had about 30,000 followers. She now has 2.4 MILLION and is sponsored by Procter & Gamble and other big cleaning-related companies.
I was so influenced by her!! I bought her mop and rags and recommended products and ebook...and don’t even use it. I’m a Dirty Person. I hope she is enjoying her financial success, because her astronomic rise is a marvel.
Me too -- mopping the floor is probably the one cleaning task I procrastinate doing the most. I bought the mop and like it, and while I can't say I use it regularly, or as regularly as I should, I probably do mop it more often now! lol I also bought the Aquablade system and while it's pricey, is it is good!
Why does everyone in my office use the "sweating turkey" gif as a reaction to almost everything? Why is there a "sweating turkey" gif on Microsoft Teams?!
YES. The novel Several People Are Typing (written entirely in Slack messages) dives into the secret language of the reaction emoji. Highly recommend. I used to work with (and Slack!) the author, and I can trace the origin story of one very niche emoji's meaning back to its inception at a *different workplace* — a former colleague carried it here (she had left by the time I joined, and people were surprised that I immediately understood the meaning of the dusty stick)
omg I forgot about the dusty stick! This book absolutely killed me. I tried to tell my current colleagues about it but we use Teams and the difference between Teams and Slack cultures is so big as as to make them not even comparable platforms.
The closest direct translation would be side-eye, but specifically towards bad puns, dad jokes, and the like. It is definitely done in a laughing-with-you way (the most common dusty stick recipients were generally well-liked).
YES! THIS! My work chat does not have a humping emoji, but it has very strange parameters on what gifs you can send. Like there are none from South Park, but lots of totally inappropriate Always Sunny, Archer, BoJack Horseman, Family Guy...
Please, come sit next to me. Right here is a nice spot and we can have a lovely chat. Wait just a sec while I see if my work chat has the :humping: emoji.
Lived this myself recently when I used this guy in Teams: 🫠. For me and my mum friends it means we are melting down, disappearing into a puddle of overwhelm. My colleague thought I meant I was feeling the heat.
if this interests you at all, or you have lived this particular world (nightmare?), i highly recommend the brilliant debut novel Several People Are Typing. I haven’t laughed so much and felt so seen in years. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54468020
Read that last year and it was a solid 3/5 stars for me, but I'm glad it found it's audience elsewhere as I'm always supportive of books doing something just a little weird with format!
Aug 23, 2023·edited Aug 23, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
I'm cheating a bit because I too was trained as a cultural historian, BUT:
- Raw milk becoming a thing again (and it's strangely popular right now among TikTok influencers and Fundamentalist Christians - maybe a signifier of purity? Distrust in science? A return-to-nature sort of thing?)
- Mullets
- The narrowing of LinkedIn discourse - there's a particular style of communicating in a few categories ("Don't do this bad thing in an interview," "I was laid off but am grateful to my company nonetheless," "I'm delighted to share that...")
- Mums and garters - something I hadn't heard of until I moved to Texas
obsessed with the raw milk discourse — as someone notes below, it was a big Brooklyn moms thing but it's also such a huge thing amongst the ultra-conservative in Idaho, one of things (like anti-vaxxing) where the political spectrum really shows itself to be a circle
Back in my day, the early aughts that is, all the Bethesda and Chevy Chase folks were very much into raw milk. Perhaps it’s a case of their kids, following in the footsteps of their parents.
There's also been some interesting analysis of the fact that the mullet is tailor made for Zoom calls and remote work, because people only see your business front on camera!
as a uni student in the queer mullet camp- you're onto something. for some people it's an embracing both sides thing. i also had a friend cut her mullet into a fully short haircut and she said it felt like freeing herself from a last attempt at femininity, which made me took a look at myself!
And the meaning of a mullet is so slippery - it used to be a hip-ish hair style (80s), then was associated with rural/lower class white culture, particularly in the south, then now it's part of pro sports culture, queer culture, hipster culture? And there's a relationship with the pandemic, too, since people weren't able to get in-person haircuts for so long and decided to don a mullet for Zoom calls?
Truly a wild and rich text of a haircut - not just belonging to the "redneck" stereotype.
I have a 5 year old and see a lot of kids with mullets, and generally my assumption is it was a compromise for a parent who did not want to cut their kid's hair. At least the circa 90s rat tail hasn't come back?
My 17 year old son got a mullet! They call it a "burst fade." Omg. It's 100% a mullet and he has senior pictures in a few weeks. Cannot WAIT for him to look back at it in 10 or 20 years.
Having hosted a reunion for a college hockey team with many players in the 80s, they fucking loved looking at their old photos with mullets. I hope such joy for all former mullet havers.
Raw dairy was SUCH a thing in my mom world in North Brooklyn circa 15 years ago. There was a google group for customers of an Amish farm that delivered to all the usual suspect North Brooklyn neighborhoods. Buying raw dairy wasn't illegal, but it all had to be well-organized because one person would have to place an order with the only relative of the farmer who could go to a payphone. My son was in a Steiner school and the raw milk to anti-vaxxer pipeline is VERY real. This is indeed a massively rich text and I have much to say about it and should probably write something.
Same in suburban Atlanta in the mid-00's. You had to say the milk was for your pets for it to be legal in Georgia, and the holistic moms groups (FB group and IRL) were definitely anti-vax. Lots of muscle testing for "food sensitivity" too, hence the raw milk.
I'm from New England and went to college in TX and Mums and Garters were one of the MANY culture shocks I encountered. Also - Drill Teams, Debutantes and big "C" Christianity.
I grew up in Texas so I was definitely aware of mums, drill teams, debutantes, Christianity, but as I've lived other places I've realized just how messed up/ not normal across the US my school was. Two further examples: front yard signs to show off what activity your child was in (eg 3 foot high music note for choir, drill team figure, football helmet, etc with child's name on it), and on game day the drill team and cheerleaders had assigned football players that they had to bring treats to and decorate their locker. My husband was raised in the south and when I told him the football thing his jaw dropped.
My daughter was a cheerleader in MN, and the team had to bring buckets of cookies to the games and form two lines to hold out to the football players after the game while saying things like "great game!" The cheer coach was a former cheerleader at the school, so I assume they did that when she was on the team. I found it very retrograde, but my daughter didn't care so I didn't fuss. No decorating lockers.
I live in a suburb of Chicago (North Shore) and the yard signs for activities are a thing here, and was also in a suburb of Indianapolis where I lived before. I think the cheerleader thing happens here too.
Signs are popular in the North Shore of Chicago and certain suburbs in MN (where I live now) BUT they are not those huge 3 ft high ones, or the ones that span your lawn (some people get those when they have a child/kid graduates from pics I've seen on FB). The ones I see are the size of political signs, i.e. noticeable but not over the top.
@Pam B, I lived in one suburb of Toronto where grad signs were not a thing but then moved to another where they are. They're also a modest size, like election signs, as you mentioned.
New England/NYC here and I never saw one of those signs before Covid and then they were really for graduation. I do recall seeing them in NE PA for football several years ago - post Friday Night Lights/Varsity Blues.
Never heard of Mums and Garters. I assumed it was a trend among moms/mums groups that had suddenly rediscovered nylon stockings and garter belts until I Googled. You learn something new every day...! (I'm Canadian.)
Homecoming garters are my guilty pleasure. They're fascinating! When I was very small, we lived in TX and my babysitter had one that I was obsessed with (this would have been in the mid 80's). I didn't even remember it until my mom told me after I rediscovered them in my 20's while traveling. If you've never seen one, please google homecoming garter (and then google large homecoming garter!)
A friend's mom (in the early aughts) was convinced that pasteurized milk somehow caused homosexuality. Because in her youth they didn't have pasturized milk and also didn't have so many gay people. That was a dinner conversation to remember. Couldn't decide whether to laugh, cry, or aspirate my food.
There's a lot of reasons being a public health professional is frustrating, and raw milk is one of them. Why?? Whyyyy is pasteurization a bad thing?? Anti-vax sentiment is a little more complicated, but the anti-science overlap of the raw milk and anti-vax individuals is fascinating. I know I've read something on this before, but I think about it often.
Aside from general distrust, there's the victim of their success thing going on it seems to me. I remember listening to a conversation between a coworker who was saying "I don't see what the problem is with unpasteurized milk: people don't get [disease] any more." while another (whose elderly mother had been a rural nurse) practically screamed "because we pasteurize our milk!"
I think a related thing may be the distance from the production? I have a colleague who owns cattle near an apple orchard which gets a lot of families from the nearby city. She's had a number of weekend apple pickers (who are parking on her private land, btw) come up and insist that they should be able to buy raw milk from her.
She has beef cattle.
People simply have no clue the amount of work that goes into making our modern food and making it safe.
Edited to say: it wasn't just their inability to spot a dairy vs beef cow. Once she told them that those were beef cattle, they still asked to buy raw milk.
I worked at an ice-cream shop that was part of a working dairy farm and the family who owned the farm were so grossed out by all the asks for raw milk (as well as the attempts to just wander through their working farm with thousand pound animals about!!) My dad, who grew up on a working dairy farm, is also befuddled by the trend.
I will say I had a childhood friend whose father was a dairy farmer who definitely drank raw milk -- and I think, decades later, may have capitalized on the market for it in some way.
Oh yeah, clearly there are some who have! And both my dad and the family running the farm I worked on probably both occasionally drank raw milk themselves. But I think viewing it as a "superior" product that someone would drive far and ask for is the befuddling part for them.
Back in the late 90s I was into raw milk. For me, it was the idea that pasteurization killed off the "good" parts of the milk in addition to the pathogens because it was overly processed (which meant that even organic milk was not as good since more often than not it was ultra-pasteurized which was even worse). So it was the sense that it was healthier. Thinking back on it, there was also the appeal of the "purity" of it...you did not just buy milk from some faceless big agra company out to make money (and ruining the environment) but from a local farmer who you could trust. There was also a level of community around it - we were a bunch of crunchy moms coming together to do something fairly subversive (I don't think it was legal.) We coordinated via a private email list and would come together on pick-up days at the drop-off location. It made us part of a smaller community.
I have learned to have a lot of compassion for that version of me who was just trying to navigate being a new mom in a scary world.
The raw milk thing has also been taken over by the "wellness" people who still consumer dairy. As an aside, just before Covid I visited a dairy farmer here in NY and he said he flat out refuses to sell anyone raw milk because people do not transport it correctly and if they are not farmers or food scientists, they have zero good sense about how quickly the milk can go off with improper storage.
My family drank raw milk a lot when my kids were small. Looking back, it's true I first heard about it as an option from the anti-vaxxers in my community who also all seemed to be local/regional food fanatics. But it was also true that we lived next door to a small, organic, family dairy farm starting when my oldest was 13 months old and they let us buy raw milk by the gallon super cheap right off the bulk tank. It was the cheapest way for us to get really good quality milk. My oldest resisted weaning, but he would drink raw milk mixed with a little maple syrup to mimic the sweetness of breast milk and it didn't ever give him digestive trouble so it was a win-win for me.
Yes...I also think that the discourse around it was different back in the 90s and early aughts then it is today when it seems like everything has completely jumped the shark. Even the anti-vaxxers back in the 90s just felt more overly cautious rather than conspiracy driven (at least in my circles.) It was seen as more of a personal decision that each family made rather than a fight against a conspiracy of doctors who wanted to kill (!) babies.
I do wonder how much of this is driven by social media and how it completely shifted how the conversations were held. Back then, we were moms who came together on email lists or bulletin boards trying to figure out this stuff together, sharing what we were learning as we went. Now, with social media, it is about finding the right influencer who has figured it out and can give us the answers and tell us what we need to do.
Milk is definitely a rich text. For any London (U.K.) based culture study readers, the Wellcome Collection has an exhibition on milk in the last century on at the moment which is excellent and covers So. Many. Ideas. / is generally fascinating.
The LinkedIn posts for sure. Ninety percent of my feed reflects some the following norms: the posture must be grateful, thrilled, and/or inspired. If personal circumstances are relevant, the poster must mention that family/personal life is primary, but then thank or declare themselves inspired by an employer/manager/mentor for supporting work/life balance. If the post is about a professional accomplishment or work function, the poster must be grateful for employer/manager/mentor/team support and contributions, thrilled by the honor of being noticed or allowed to participate, and/or inspired by everyone they met in the process or at the function.
I'm grateful for the few people that still post interesting articles.
Oh, oh, I love this prompt. I just spent a week doomscrolling and writing about this so it's top of mind for me, but a rich text I think about a lot are the zillions of tiktoks under the #GutHealing, #GutTok, #GutHealth, etc. tags, especially the "before and after gut healing" videos that focus on bloating, like this one: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8F9vT8Q/.
I'd loooove to hear Virginia Sole-Smith's take on these, too. (If she's discussed this kind of content already and someone could direct me to that work, I'd be very thankful!)
I had a coworker a few years ago who was trying to “heal her own gut biome” and taking all these supplements and stuff… but not seeing any doctors. Western medicine has issues for sure, but if it’s been going on for months/years like she said? Please see someone! She was Instagram coursing her way through it and it stressed me out everytime. (And she talked about it a lot.)
This feels to me like so many other versions of an attempt to exert control where you can when so much is out of your control (like Emma said below: see diet culture). And since actual comfort/discomfort in your human torso is so ambiguous you can feel (in your gut!) like you have succeeded. Or if you haven't, it's because you just need another tweak (or to try harder).
So I’ve flirted with this before but am super psyched/ready for what I see as a trend towards maximalism. That said, I remember seeing something like “millenials are minimalists because all of our parents and grandparents are hoarders” AND YES.
I’ve brought up the topic of Swedish Death Cleaning to my mom, who was thankfully receptive. But the biggest problem lies with my in-laws, who currently have five acres of “treasures” in possession. 😬
My mom got SO offended when I mentioned it to her. I didn't back down on it, though and now she's starting carting bags of stuff to the thrift store, almost as much as she brings home bags of stuff from the thrift store. She's not a hoarder, she's more like a magpie. I find myself doing similar things the older I get, but man.
my current hot take is that aspirational minimalism and pseudominimalism that we see from the tech bros and instagrammers is mostly supported by other people's labor (.e.g take out or restaurant food, hiring people to clean/fix/do things instead of keeping the supplies to do it yourself), requires a lot of privilege and is still very consumer driven.
I want to know why everyone in my elder millennial orbit is suddenly into astrology. And I’m curious why it’s the same people who are quick to tell you how unscientific Meyers Briggs is and scrupulously read Emily Oster for parenting advice, and then turn around to post nonironically about Saturn’s Return.
So, what’s up with calling people mother? The way it reclaims and upends and makes meaningless and makes sexy and knights with utmost power the title of “mother” -- I love it and it makes me uncomfortable and I have started to say it and it seems to say so much about our whole motherless overmothered motherfucked world.
Also maybe this is totally obvious but I really want to write an entire book on Swifties. The true-crime level of analysis into all Taylor does, the cultish devotion -- the proliferation of the chants and ceremonial objects (fship bracelets) and lore and obsession with ritual numbers, the in-group kindness, the rampant, rabid bullying, the brute economic power, the way Swiftiness dovetails into a certain white girl entitlement and ferocity and lack of awareness. I could write a book actually just on Gaylors omg.
Would read either of those books in a heartbeat!! Also very interested in the rich texts of the narrative Taylor Swift creates around her self/image, and super specifically the re-recordings and the vault tracks.
I have some thoughts about this!!! Lots of my friends who left the church then got into tarot and astrology — myself included — and i think there is a thrill in the “occult”. A little transgression, as a treat! That’s one of the initial sparks, but what I think keeps people coming back is the way these (plus personality tests etc) are mirrors to the self. Where you used to perhaps listen to a sermon on a sunday and do some introspection within a rigid framework of sin and forgiveness— well, now you get a reading and have a tidy little pagan framework to think about big ideas for thirty minutes before going on with your life.
This sounds dismissive, it’s not! I like tarot & i think these new age things are generally more healthy way to engage with the self than evangelical xtianity is.
This comment is getting long, but humans love to be told about themselves, and we love a mirror! And we love a ritual! In the absence of overarching social rituals, we create them!
I have so many thoughts on this, as someone who absolutely has that 'witch thing' going on in my family and both of my sisters (they're twins, and they're Geminis) read tarot, but it's also a whole other thing in which my mom and my grandmother (who is now 90, and very devoutly Catholic) have been recollecting stories of my great aunts/uncles who were very creative, very *different* types and were also working-class Mexicans and ended up in institutions. Trying to reconcile what their lives were like, and being unable to find any other suitable framework except slightly occult explanations. My tia and tio weren't crazy; they were something very different than the mainstream.
oooh thank you for sharing!! my comment was v focused on my own white exvangelical millennial experience, a v whitewashed understanding of this stuff —but historic looks at the “occult” & what it was used for, and the intersection with Catholicism and non-white communities— that’s a completely different experience! And really important to think about, especially when you look at historic understandings of mental illness or neurodivergence. A rich text!
Also witches and witchcraft- I was looking through the book section at a JoAnn's, and fully half the books included some tie-in to witchcraft- and these are craft books. Where did that come from?
Oh, these are my favorite subjects. I actually find a really important continuity among all the bullet points on the list--and it's (Conservative) Women With Money. It is the easiest slice of culture to dismiss as trivial (Pumpkin Spice lattes, anyone?), but it informs our wider cultural norms and values in really deep ways. These are the "homey" values we raise our children in (Momfluencers), the styles we invite into our *homes* (shiplap & the Gaines), our experience of our own bodies (Peleton, Goop, diet culture...). It's what books are available and what our schools teach. It's how wealth concentrates (from the marriage markets of debutantes to sorority-frat relations). I 100000000% see this as all the SAME text.
Inspired by the RushTok dive, I also have a working theory about Mainstream Traditional Gender + Conspicuous Consumption as a *countercultural* movement, in a generation that is more queer, more socialist, more likely to unionize, with more experience in activism (climate change + gun violence esp.), than previous ones. We see so much 'content' about buying things, and things we've bought. So many faces that all look the same. Sometimes it shows up like 'tradwives' and sometimes it shows up like college kid's OOTDs. It's the Y2K fashion, which millennials and gen x remember as profoundly misogynistic. It's the hunger for good ol boy country. It's extremely white supremacist. It feels dangerous to me.
-Kathryn Jezer-Morton has written a lot about FALL & Cozy Season. As it's the final days of August, I'm seeing so much PUMPKIN content, and the Influencer Publishing Calendar is pulling us further and further away from nature. Why are we obsessed with fall??
-Contemporary evangelizing is *so subtle.* I can read "Mega Church" or "Mormon" from 100 miles away in Ballerina Farm, in the Gaines, in so much momfluencer content, but my sister in law misses the invisible Jesus signaling. To her, it's just "normal" mainstream culture.
-Air Fryers are table top convection ovens with a basket instead of shelves. InstaPots are decent slow cookers. These are not miracle brand new gadgets. They're just effective old things. Why do we need things to be *new*?
“Little treat” culture against the backdrop of late-stage capitalism! Not a judgment against little treats, I am a big fan of getting myself little treats! Like this is one of those things where on first glance I think, yeah, a little iced coffee and a pastry can make a huge difference on a crummy day, it’s not that deep. But then, within the walls of the internet - aka TikTok - it can feel like an interesting whiplash between critiques of capitalism and our current landscape and “Starbies” runs. (Which also…has there been a recent Starbucks renaissance? Or is it just that I grew up in the PNW which went through a proud anti-Starbucks, support-your-local-coffee-shop push?) I don’t know, I have a feeling this intersects with a whole lot of other consumerism texts folks are mentioning.
Here's my take from me plus my GenZ kids: everything is bad and bad for you and makes you feel bad (see also ChickfilA, WalMart, etc), so why not go to Starbs and have basically a milkshake or delicious coffee little treat?
Galvanize does some really interesting research on moderate white women and this is absolutely the outlook of the group uncertain individualists. YOLO isn't so much hedonism, it's more the world is burning, I'll never afford a house, might as well take that vacation/have spay day/treat myself to little treats.
“Everything is bad for you and makes you feel bad” — oof this resonates. This totally makes sense to me, and makes me think of all the other instances where individuals are left weighing the impact of systems-level issues.
Exactly. Especially with Gen Z, since it's basically all they've known, and they are aware of the systems issues that I KNOW I wasn't as a cishetero white Gen Xer.
As a millennial, can definitely remember my first exposure to a lot of these issues coming in a “personal responsibility” package—personal carbon footprint, etc!
I am wondering if the Starbucks renaissance (of which I am part of, to my chagrin but I've accepted it lol) is a part of the Y2K renaissance?? (Mainly pondering upon that because in You've Got Mail--which is 1998, so a little bit pre-Y2K but I'm rounding up--there's a whole bit about Starbucks and obviously our leading lady (Meg) and leading man (Tom) are Starbucks frequenters)
I think it’s because they’re in Target and mid-price hotel chain lobbies. But more Target. I know of many many children who got cake pops for being good while mom was shopping who are now good little Starbucks rewards members, even in New England when Dunkin is king.
The comment about Starbucks Rewards makes me think about the Starbucks Is A Bank thinkpieces, which I believe was kicked off in Wired circa 2014/2015? It’s been in my head since I first read about it
My partner and I literally call this “the little treat economy” because it feels like there are now all these shops and small businesses that are solely dedicated to providing little treats vs. a broader, more “practical” menu. Niche tea cafés, artisan donut shops, if you’re a PNWer, Rachel’s Ginger Beer - it feels like none of these places could possibly exist if we didn’t all collectively decide we need a little treat to get us through the trials of late stage capitalism on a daily basis.
On the one hand I love that small business like these can exist and people get to live out their very specific dreams of being a craft kombucha brewer. But it also raises a lot of questions of who can access little treats, who can build and own these types of businesses, etc. And then it brings me back to that old headline that millennials can’t buy houses because we spend all our money on avocado toast. But in reality, we spend all our money on avo toast to make ourselves feel better about not being able to buy a house!!!
I’m actually not sure if this is a global phenomenon or if tiktok has just increased our exposure to places where third wave coffee culture never fully took root anyway. My extended friend network--on the gen z/millennial cusp, all in major US cities--don’t personally frequent Starbucks, but i’m also shocked by how often i see it on TikTok/IG
I guess on further reflection it’s not whether Starbucks is or is not in vogue but whether being ANTI starbucks is trendy, which it definitely isn’t. Maybe we’re all more aware of cultural elitism being thinly veiled classism? Tired of greenwashing?
**Pre-ordering versus in-person ordering! The incentives to pre-order; the entitlement you feel when your beverage is not ready at the right time; the generational divide; the burden it puts on workers; the lack of social interaction; what it means for staffing; what it means for businesses when their entire business becomes pre-order; what happens when it doesn't work; who pays when you accidentally order at the wrong location; the capitalism of it all.
As an aside, my sister was at a family member's lake house and placed a pre-order at a small local coffee shop. When she showed up, they were making her order, but asked her how she had placed it. Apparently they had a pre-order system they didn't even know existed until her order printed out. HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN?!
** The constant customer satisfaction survey: who fills them out? How much time do they take out of the average week/month/year? What causes people to actually fill them out? Do they really provide a full picture of customer experience? Or only customers of a specific class/gender/age/experience? How do companies use them? Do they keep people from going to Yelp to post scathing reviews--and is that part of the purpose?
It 100% has ruined the quality of every one’s experience at most Starbucks I go too: the regulars (me) and the pre-orderers ALL have to wait much longer now and staff are miserable and perpetually “behind”. We. are. such. a. dumb. species.
Interesting bunny trail, if I may: I think pre-order culture has infected my library. Since COVID, there's been a huge rise in people placing holds and a drop in people simply browsing for books. It's to the point where the incoming new books are becoming very Bookstagram trendy, whereas before there was an excellent mix of rising bestsellers and obscure local publishings. But the budget hasn't gone up much so now over 100 people will place a hold a week early on the one copy the library purchases. They'll wait months before receiving it, and meanwhile as more people hear about it the line gets longer. And someone doesn't return the book, good luck ever getting it through the library. What happens when the library shifts its budget even further to include more copies of popular books while ignoring less trendy works? Does less library perusing, and exposure to all sorts of books, correlate with less interaction between people of differing opinions? I think pre-order culture festers deep.
Librarian here! I have Actual Anxiety when I think about this - relatedly, just like so many things in our culture/society, capitalism is working in dangerous ways here that you can't see until it's too late. In previous decades, it might've been the norm for the library to order a variety of books from a variety of publishers, etc, but slowly all these things are being condensed as vendors buy each other up and make ever-slicker interfaces for ordering books that it's largely algorithm based now. Sure, we can still go in and order a specific book if we want to, but it typically makes more fiscal sense to get these big package deals that we're not necessarily in control of... especially thinking of this as it pertains to ebooks. People LOVE ebooks and Libby, but the library doesn't "own" those books like it would a physical copy and it's more like you're getting a streaming service where individual books can drop in/out. And the popularity of Kindles/Libby means all libraries are pressured into the same vendor, and then that vendor gets to unilaterally decide things about the way book lending works that maybe shouldn't be up to a profit-driven company to decide. But of course at the end of the day, the (overworked, underpaid, traditionally pink collar) librarians are left having to explain and provide all the customer service to their community. GAH.
"Because e-books are not regulated under the same laws that govern physical books, publishers can price them however they choose. Rather than emulate the physical model, where libraries pay a fixed cost for a certain number of books, they instead offer digital editions through a license that usually includes a limit on the number of times a book can be checked out, the length of time a library holds an edition, or both. "
YES!!!! PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT: Libraries pay many many times what individuals pay to lease electronic material and have a ton more restrictions. Economically, electronic materials at libraries are a dumpster fire of week-old-fish that just moved into your spare bedroom. Originally it was academic libraries, but now public libraries are getting flattened by it as well. Basically, libraries exist (in the US--I should know other countries, but I don't) because of the First Sale Doctrine (https://libguides.ala.org/copyright/firstsale): I own this copy of a copyrighted work, therefore I can lend, sell on, give away this copy. For reasons that I really REALLY do not understand, publishing powers-that-be haaaate that libraries can do this and constantly argue that they are undermining their profits. Which is bonkers, because the middle-level sales people and authors and promoters know that libraries are absolutely the way to get your book into hands and therefore purchased by more people. Enter digital materials, which publishers only LEASE to you. So you don't have first sale, and you can't do what you want with it, and the publisher is going to squeeze the library for all it can. So the library is paying over $100 for access to a "copy" of an ebook that will expire after 25 uses or a year, whichever happens first. Because the publisher claims that is a reasonable comparison for a physical book.
Oh, and please, get me started on academic journals and that whole pipeline. Academic libraries pay millions (not hyperbole) to purchase electronic articles that were created by faculty in their very institutions for free! Faculty are creating the content for free, other faculty are reviewing for free, yes, there is some cost involved in the administration and editing and overhead, the same faculty's' libraries are then buying their content for EXTREME prices that increase by margins like 10% annually.
Which is not to say that I don't think we should provide electronic materials! I realized I sounded like a huge luddite and I don't think that at all. Libraries are just over a barrel when it comes to the actual process.
AHHHHHH hello you are my people! I recently had a career pivot but spent the last 10 years working in an academic library in scholarly communications, Open Access advocacy, data sharing for rigor and reproducibility, predatory publishing awareness, etc. So few people *in academia* even know the full extent of it, and it's so FASCINATING and INSIDIOUS and I just end up sounding like Chicken Little I think?! Anyway - hi! I see you!
Oh, hey, we're hiring an open access librarian! Yes! I have had arguments over margaritas and nail polish with faculty friends about predatory publishing and the bull-poop model the industry is trying to claim as the *only* alternative of having places pay to publish? OMG angry flaming face. Yes, making a journal costs money and no, I don't want to further perpetuate the model of expecting faculty (usually junior of disadvantaged in other ways) to provide free labor WHICH IS ALREADY HAPPENING SO DON'T PRETEND IT ISN'T, but since they're not getting huge raises every year and digital storage and delivery costs clearly aren't going up, is it too much to ask where all that extra cash is actually going?? hmmmmm??? I'm not even saying anarchy and free love and research! I'm just saying could you try pricing in a way that wouldn't make an extortion racket blush? [also I want to know what you pivoted to, but that's probably more of an academia: wtf thread]
Holy cow! That's a whole different window into things. Thanks for sharing this perspective. Is there still a process for customers to request the library buy certain physical books? Or has that been done away with in favor of this streaming-type model?
You can still request a specific book, definitely! I know when I was doing the ordering, I was always super appreciative of genuine requests because that's a guaranteed use. You're always looking for return on investment, and it's sad to think of the money spent on a book that never circulates - if I know something has at least one guaranteed reader, I'd bump it to the top of the priority list (within reason). It's also a lot easier to do for physical books - I know libraries all have individual contracts with their vendors that are customized for their user base to an extent (which is why some library systems seem to have so many duplicate copies of all the popular books), but they can still go in and request certain titles. In the system we used, for example, a certain number of ebooks were added to the catalog and looked like normal ebooks, but we didn't "own" them until they'd been borrowed 3 times; at the end of each contract year we'd get an itemized list and could veto/add items up to our budget, and it was also possible to add on targeted purchases proactively. (There was so much fuckery afoot in this arrangement I'm having to restrain myself from typing a full on rant, FYI)
This is also knocking loose an old memory from a different library I worked at - we had a deal with one of our physical book vendors that they'd send a slew of duplicate hardback copies of popular bestseller books, but we were basically just renting them. We rented them for cheaper than it would be to buy them, and we weren't left with dozen of copies of each Dan Brown book or whatever. The returns were resold in bulk to places like Books A Million (do those still exist?) to live on those clearance racks near the front of the store, sometimes with the clear library dust jacket still on.
Your comments are making me pine for a deep dive into the economics of libraries. I'd assume something that used to be relatively straightforward is now incredibly complex.
Second this! Also partly so I can be a supportive library patron and not make things harder for my local librarians! I live in a small town that’s part of our provincial library network, and I request a LOT of interlibrary loans (physical books). Is that still ok? I think it’s better than borrowing ebooks but would love to be corrected if I’m having a negative impact on my favourite local institution!
I feel like our kids don’t browse libraries anymore either in the same way we used to growing up because most things arent even in the library, they’re on hold or traveling around - but this might be a city (specifically NYC thing). Or maybe the small number of things that are able to physically be at a library seems paltry and these days and not worth our browsing time.
Librarian-in-training here! I think it's a weird (to me -- Gen Xer) combo of product overwhelm + general sense of being strapped for time & attention + having so many things curated by algorithms (often driven by commercial goals), the whole thing bearded as "personalization". So we're becoming accustomed to something else making our associations for us. Although, to be fair, any organizational scheme or finding scheme is an associational scheme at some level -- Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress groups connections, some of which are now contested -- but at least they're not black box, and the logic/ illogic) is visible.
Maybe this is just product overwhelm everywhere: books, TV, podcasts. And then lists and curation to deal with it. I even get a little overwhelmed by the CS recommendations because I’m thinking did everyone get through the LAST list of recommendations already? I know I don’t have to dive into each list of recommendations but the existence of those lists fuels that capitalist induced sense of not being good enough….
It IS everywhere, and anxiety-inducing. But I'd still take recos from actual people over an algorithm any day. (And no, I don't get to even 1/100th of what people suggest here on CS -- so many good recos!)
I started pre-ordering library books during the pandemic when the building was closed and that was our only option for getting books. I still occasionally browse but I do like that if I see a book I'm interested in while I'm reading things online (including this substack!) I can just place a request for it.
I'm a big library holder. We have a huge county library system, there is no way my local library has any of the books that are currently being reviewed in stock. So I get on the waiting list and don't mind if I'm number 297, because I have other books that I'm closer in line for. I even pause holds (when I remember) if I think I will end up with too many at the same time. Inevitably, I do wind up with 5 books at the same time, and some I just have to let go without picking up.
Another librarian here! One of our main metrics is how many items we circulate each month and each year. High circulation numbers, and higher numbers month over month, justify our budget and any increases we ask for. But we're also now having to show how many items DON'T circulate. A sure bet for more circs is to buy more copies of that NYTimes bestseller and the books with the most holds on them. But we also want to have books that aren't as popular, that people can discover while they're browsing, and that make our collection interesting. Those books they can check out while they wait for their holds to come in. When people browse less, fewer of those items check out, leading to a higher number of never circulated materials.
Yikes, I had never thought about it deeply, but I'm sure book club/ book club social media is a piece of this as well. My book club generally tries not to read only the trendy books--partially because the wait times at the libraries are SO LONG. But at the same time, you want to read them before they go out of fashion and no one remembers all the little details any more. Spoiler-culture comes into play too.
I never even thought of spoiler-culture! I've never been part of a book club and it's only now with the availability of the ebook apps from the library that I'm so tuned into the popular current books. But spoilers! Ugh.
I'm not sure which reply to reply to so everyone in the thread sees it, so I'm posting here:
HELLOOOOO, fellow librarians! Although I'm just starting my 2nd year in an MLIS, I'm working remotely for my school's Open Scholarship Commons, so I'm really excited about OA & all the opens (and interested in what can be done with the tools & ethos in the public space, too!). And a hearty "Oh, hell, YES" to everything that Megan & Alisia said. Subscription services are almost always overpriced, whether they're to you as an individual buyer but especially for institutions. It's rent-seeking, and the cost of library materials has increased at a rate that's close to vertical on a line graph, whereas inflation over the last 20-30 years has only actually pushed up at a moderate angle (maybe 25* angle? -- trying to give a visual in words....)
Bahaha I love the graph in words! And I definitely want to rage read those now! I did my degree in 04/05, but it was absolutely not on the radar in our curriculum. Now I want to get back on the discord with the Culture Study library peeps! I just kept getting flattened by my adhd when I had it on my computer so I took it off!
Oooh, I didn't know there was a Culture Study on Discord! My whole cohort lives on Discord. I will jog right over and join that server right now. Thx for the tip. (And I swear all the social media induces temporary adhd...)
If you would like to get *really* good and angry about this stuff (and the surveillance economy in general), take a look at Sarah Lamdan's *Data Cartels* and/ or Shoshana Zhuboff's *The Age of Surveillance Capitalism*. Lamdan's is shorter, and in some ways more polemical, but very, very thoroughly sourced, so you can always check her sources to see if you agree with her take. Zhuboff's is wayyyy larger (the book is a good 3"-4" from front to back), and takes a much larger view, but worth reading in spurts.
I don't have insight into the retail customer satisfaction survey, but my sister was in charge of documenting "Patient Experience" at hospitals for a few years. Filling out those surveys (good or bad) has HUGE impacts on funding and reputation for hospitals (in Press Ganey rankings), and can potentially make or break careers.
Because the people who fill them out are either the highly satisfied or highly unsatisfied patients, the negatives are taken very seriously (probably due to a justified fear of litigation). But what my sister did was lots of legwork to investigate why certain people were getting negative feedback--and in one case she found out that supposedly "negligent" nurses were actually impeded from hearing patients verbally call out because the air conditioning unit above the Nurses Station was too loud.
Oh man i also work in the medical field, though not in direct patient care, and net promoter scores (NPS) from patient surveys are GOSPEL TRUTH. Trying to break away from using NPS as a metric for shit that doesn’t even make sense - like say, a diversity workshop for employees - is like pulling teeth. But on the patient side of things it is very important for “service recovery” to address negative responses to essentially right wrongs or prevent things from happening again (because “wrongs” in a medical setting can be actually deadly!). But as someone who previously worked in nonprofit and gov sectors it is WEIRD for me to see this much focus on NPS as the be all end all metric for success.
That's a rich text in the business world - why, oh why is the Net Promoter Score (NPS) *still* so overhyped and overused and misapplied, after 20 years!
The link below is one of the classic and still excellent criticisms, by User Experience (UX) expert Jared Spool. Since then, Jared and his 'Measuring Usability' (measuringu.com) team have gone much deeper down the rabbit hole of "well, what alternatives to NPS would work instead?" and they have reams of quantitative findings to support their analysis. Highly recommend for anyone curious about actual useful data-driven metrics.
This is SO FASCINATING to me, and also I think part of a generational divide? or maybe geographic? or both?
I have 100% never even considered the possibility of pre-ordering anything (other than, like, classic takeout). Once in a while I'm somewhere where I see that happening and just feel like I am on another planet. Similarly, it's never occurred to me to order groceries for delivery. Even when we all had Covid we had a friend get groceries for us. But I recently found that I know people who do this all the time, and again there's just this strange feeling of disconnection.
I guess the general idea of purchases being done 'on an app' is maybe the larger picture here. I've never done that, but I'm sure a lot of younger people/people in cities do all the time.
I'd love to think about how that changes relationship to business, changes the things people buy, etc.
We do so much of our shopping online, including groceries. One way it’s changing things is that my kid hardly ever spends time in stores and doesn’t really experience physical shopping much as he’s never had to do that thing of being dragged around from store to store by a parent.
The customer service surveys at my old job were used to keep employees from getting raises if every customer didn’t give a 5 out of 5 for every question. Like, their issue could have been that the elevator in the building was slow, but it wasn’t all 5s and so you got less of a raise (which was already less than a standard COLA).
How awful! I always try to answer staff questions with all 5 stars, but sometimes you want the company to know that their app didn't work correctly, etc. Sucks to know at least at that place they don't care the reason for the less than 5 stars.
I hate knowing that the results are used in the ways they are. It's a dehumanizing system that puts everyone in a shitty position. Potentially placing someone else's livelihood in your hands, like you're saying, impacts the ability to give honest feedback and you're left with either not reporting problems out of solidarity with workers or saying hey, something's not great here, and feeling complicit in the company's bad behavior if that's misused. I completed one of those phone surveys recently that used the 1-10 scale and it was so stressful- I remember reading a few years back about systems that weren't recognizing the 1-0 and processing it as a 1, so people were saying to rate 9, but then what if 9 instead of 10 is a substantive difference for performance metrics, and so on. Gah.
I wonder how the death of internet cookies is connected? The proliferation of individual apps is related to this (if you can't get 3rd party cookies you need to gather that data directly) and once you have an app... well might as well add pre-ordering.
on the pre order system -- if it was google, then it’s all “backend ops” meaning that google has someone (likely in an indian call center) call the phone number and place the order if they don’t have an online system. this has caused immense consternation with many businesses because they want to control their own flow of business and have decided (or not decided) to create an ordering system. this is also how google updates listings, by using people who call the business and ask for hours. yelp may also do this, they appear to.
Does pre-ordering also cover drive/pick up from grocery stores, big box stores? Because I would love to hear about that (or maybe I wouldn't, since I am heavily invested in it now).
Oh god, it's a nightmare and yet I use it every day. It wouldn't suck so much if Starbucks would staff for it, but meanwhile, the baristas are flat out most of the time. Pity the baristas at my local right next to a high school (imagine dozens, I kid you not, of brightly colored iced drinks waiting for pickup at any moment between 7:15 and 7:55) and the grade school (picture dozens of a greater variety waiting for moms after dropoff). I don't know why any of them stay.
To be honest, the social interaction wasn't that great even before we could order online, though.
This has probably been done before, but it’s front of mine as I’m in the thick of it - kids packed lunches for school! When/why did they become so performative with the bento boxes and the expectation to include so many different components.
you can also connect this to the type of parenting that aims to control but actually ends up just taking a ton of agency from the kid — I feel like I actually learned a lot about my tastes (and what lasts until noon, lol) from packing my lunch pretty much from 2nd grade on!
I have a theory! The performance of motherhood on social media is so interesting, and how that translates to the real world. I had kids cookbooks and childrens magazines that had "food crafts" and "lunchbox ideas" as a child in the 90s, but the narrative was that I, the child, would be making these crafts with a parent or guardian. It was an activity. But since social media is consumed by adults, those "cute lunches" are now chores for parents to perform loving motherhood, rather than a nice thing to do with your kid on the occasional rainy day.
Yep, it's all part of performative parenthood, in my opinion. If it doesn't look good in a square picture with a caption, is there any value in it all? (Needless to say, my kids have been making their lunches since second grade - they're 16 and 13 now.)
I’m earlier in the parenthood journey so for me, it’s baby-led weaning. I’m guessing exclusive breast feeding leads to BLW which morphs into fancy lunchboxes? There’s so much pressure there on how to feed your child that feels like it’s a way of transferring adult diet anxieties into “healthy” / “caring for your child” behaviors
When my daughter was about 1, and going from milk to food, I remember asking her pediatrician how to go about it. Herself a mother of 3, and supremely sensible, she looked at me calmly and said, "You just give her food. You know, whatever you're eating. Just smoosh it up a little so she doesn't choke." And that was that. Thank god for that advice. There were so many paths towards debilitating anxiety, and she just cut them all off in one go.
I find that once things are named, they take on a life/culture/connotation of their own. It helped when people asked "what we were doing" about weaning to say, "we give them food," similar to how Anne's pediatrician framed it. Using the name, "Baby Led Weaning" indicated an adherence to a whole Thing, rather than just describing the action.
Virginia Sole Smith has some excellent work here! She's got an article on school lunches and how it's all tied up with a bunch of diet culture/fat phobia/control/motherhood/barf. I will have to dig around and find it but it is excellent work. The person behind Yummy Toddler Food does a nice job reality checking those perfect bento boxes sometimes. I remember when I had to start packing my kids lunches. I hate it. I hate the mental load. I hate the work. But there were requirements around what could we could pack that came from the daycare! We had to include a vegetable no matter what. We couldn't do 2 servings of fruit if our kid was going through a no veggies phase. Ugh.
Oh that would result in a Strongly Worded Email from me about not controlling kids’ food choices. Restrictions because of an allergy in class? You got it, no prob. Telling me how much fruit/veg my kid should bring to daycare? Absolutely not.
My sister in law was telling us about these kinds of restrictions at my nephew’s school, and I was losing my mind. They are so strict—they will confiscate food from their lunch boxes if there are two “treats”! My nephew is super picky so he is essentially going hungry. It is unbelievable. My kid isn’t in school yet and I am DREADING having to deal with something like this, because I’m with you—I would make a fuss about it—but how much of a fuss might/will be required?? It stresses me out.
I had to stop because they gave me mad anxiety and I got paralyzed packing my kids lunches. There's nothing I love about summer more than NOT having to do it.
I don’t have kids so I’m far removed from this but I’m very curious to read more about school lunch expectations. When I was in elementary school in the early 80s, I remember it being very NOT cool to get hot lunch, which seems weird since it signals having money to pay for it.
I don't know about the 80s, but at my kids' elementary school, the kids who got hot lunch did so because it was subsidized - free and reduced lunch. Families with the resources to do so sent lunches with their kids.
This is one reason we do not have our kids pack their lunches. 91% of their school qualifies F/R lunches, and if that food is good enough for the poor kids, it's good enough for mine. Also, to be honest, since they started eating cafeteria lunches, they are significantly more adventurous/tolerable eaters at home.
Yep! Plus, the schools get more funding if more kids indicate they'll be eating hot lunch, regardless of whether the families are able to pay for it. I didn't know that until my kids were out of elementary school, or I would have signed them up.
I want to drop this here, from a 1999 Salon article: "An expatriate mom in Japan learns that a dewhiskered Hello Kitty rice ball in her child's lunch could forever condemn her as a rotten mother." I went to college with the author and was dumbfounded at the pressure she was under to perform mothering perfectly. https://www.salon.com/1999/01/19/feature_389/
It seems to be influencing the older kids, as well. My middle daughter is in 7th grade, and she loves the bento trend because she likes lots of variety. But I think there's also pressure from friends and social media to include certain types of foods.
Those yard signs for kids schools. The most common, that I've seen, is to celebrate graduation. But there's also signs for announcing kids' participation in sports or activities. And this weekend, I started seeing signs for students who are *going* to start at a school (like, an incoming freshman at St. Rita or whatever).
I kind of hate these signs. I was on board with the graduation ones, but as they expand to encompass more of the kids' lives, I find them obnoxious. It's like the social media mentality of broadcasting life choices for an audience is being reproduced IRL. In cities, they also seem like such a blatant projection of class status, as they're often advertising the most selective or expensive schools. I wish kids could just, like, go to school and do their thing and not have it be projected to strangers on the street.
I feel like they really bloomed during the pandemic, when maybe it was the only way to sort of celebrate a graduating senior, and then just kept expanding.
One of the local high schools (the rich one, of course) takes professional photos of their student athletes in their uniforms and makes LIFE SIZE BANNERS that they put around the school, and they eventually make their way home with the students and into their yards. The 18"x24" plastic signs seem so tame in comparison!
Haley Neumann / Maybe Baby recently brought up one I've been thinking about lately...the casual, constant mentions of how we're all living in "hell", said cynically but meant emphatically, for supposedly obvious reasons.
There's both the truth of this hell—the terror of the climate crisis, the alarming way that modern society fails to truly care for its member, an ongoing ignored pandemic that's turning into the biggest mass disabling event, the fall of capitalism, the widening wealth gap, shootings at supermarkets and microplastics in our hearts.
And there's the absolute inanity and emptiness of hearing this sentiment expressed by those with roofs over their heads, food in the fridge, decent jobs, modern conveniences, freedom and rights, loving friends or families, living in low crime areas. People with access to books and antibiotics and shoes with arch supports.
Especially when we consider what our ancestors who regularly lived through (or died in) actual hells like winter starvation, serfdom, plague, colonization, religious persecution and more would have thought of our current "hellscape."
I'm so curious about why this is pervasive now, why we think we're entitled to more, what would it mean to NOT be in hell, in what ways is this attitude contributing to the ways this hell is real, do people in horrifically worse circumstances constantly comment on hell, is this suffering somehow sanctified (possibly with religious roots) and ennobled, etc.
Young, highly competitive athletes suffering cardiac episodes, potentially related to overconsumption of "pre-workout" powders, mixes, etc. and extrapolate that to how certain kinds of drug taking is not only ok, but preferred, and it is obviously super dangerous??? It's not not doping, right? And how the pursuit of exercise and athleticism is considered Morally Good even if its maybe Bodily Bad
I'd also love a deep dive into what happens to the thousands of kids who tear up their bodies chasing the dream and then don't make any $$. They've sacrificed so much, maybe even through college years and have a body to prove it, but they don't always have a back-up plan. I think this happens way more to men then women, just because of the economics, but I think about it a lot. Like the 38 year old minor league baseball player, or the NFL practice squad guy who never gets his chance, but his body is destroyed. (Been thinking about it with Damar Hamlin coming back this year too...)
I have a cousin who was a promising athlete in high school until a car accident, which meant she could no longer play sports. Overnight she lost her sports community. Her coach was no longer her best friend, etc. She had hard times for many years as a result of losing her status, identity, and value to the community. However it happens, that has got to be a painful transition for many athletes. It was especially painful in her case.
Yes, I think there's a lot to mine about what happens when athletes lose their status, identity, and community. I think within that topic, one could even explore how former athletes' grief about their losses often manifests as anger. In my community, there's a real pipeline between "used to be a local minor hockey star" and "is now abusive to his family" and/or "is now really susceptible to reactionary politics and conspiracy theories".
Interesting. Also sad. In some cases, that can also be a fast track toward developing addiction issues. Americans are, after all, encouraged to identify with our jobs and/or our roles to unhealthy degree. That’s gotta be a bumpy transition for many of us.
Yes! Or what about the ones who do "make it" to some extent but aren't stars, are told at 26 that they're basically old, and have devoted themselves to their sport at the expense of other things. What do they do in the inevitable, long after? How do they cope? Sports therapists are becoming more accepted, I think, but do any of them use just regular therapy to process when it ends? I started to really enjoy both hockey and baseball in grad school and, oops, can't turn the brain off while watching the sports. (I think it's also partly that I expect to reach my professional peak in my 50s, probably, and I'm in my 30s now. Trying to imagine myself as being PAST a professional peak just...doesn't compute.)
“Morally Good even if it’s maybe Bodily Bad” is going to stick with me! My 18 yo niece has already had a knee surgery and recently recovered from a broken collarbone but there continues to be a ton of praise for her athleticism and no one is pausing to see if she’s listening to her body, etc.
I think we’ve gotten BETTER about this (important of rest days, etc.) but I think American culture will always still break toward pushing to one’s limits and always praising those who do 🙃 I hope your niece develops a relationship with her body where she does listen to it!
I am a big major league baseball fan and I think about this a lot. The fact that Tommy John surgery (elbow ligament repair/replacement surgery that has a many months if not years long recovery time) seems to be accepted and basically assumed for many pitchers throughout their careers, sometimes twice. Sure, pitchers are pitching with higher and higher velocities, but what if...they didn't, and surgery was no longer seen as an occupational hazard? Seems like a bit of a Jurassic Park "we could but we didn't think about if we should" situation.
I was just speaking with a friend of mine about this. He's in his late 60s currently and did wrestling from late elementary through high school. And he quit after his last high school season because of heart problems - in the 1960s! Before most of the performative garbage vitamins and beverages came on the market. My mind was blown, I thought this body wrecking for athleticism was a newer thing. But he was sharing with me how much coaches pushed back then, and with the way masculine culture was coded in those days, it was typically rougher, meaner, and full of shaming. I'd love to learn more about the comparisons between the trends today vs when they started (when did this start?)
Thank you for this prompt! My entire world view is shaped as, "what is at stake? and who gets to decide?" (Anthropology/English lit educated lol) I feel like I am always looking for Rich Texts! Some I am dying to see:
1. Celebrity podcasts
2. Skims
3. Paw Patrol
4. Meme crimes
5. Love Island
6. The terrifying concept my partner has clocked as "Everything getting worse all the time"--more expensive for less services/goods, reduced capacity of social and public services across the board, the meme crimes, the insane book banning in schools, etc. etc. etc.
YES to “everything gets worse all the time” -- I especially feel like algorithms are ruining the world by optimizing towards “what is the worst version of (literally any thing) that consumers will tolerate, and what is the most money they will pay for it.”
having worked in the departments (data science & engineering of corps) where this work happens, i can confirm that this is literally the goal. continuously modify products toward jointly maximized profit and minimized cost.
could expound for days on the extent of impacts of this optimization and just how disconnected the 24 year old engineers who deploy this work are from those impacts and how unresponsible they feel and act. i started talking about how algorithms enshrine and propagate discrimination in 2015, but what i didn’t anticipate fully was just how pervasive the enshittening would be... indeed many have spilt good ink on it across the webs about this.
And also how it's such a thinly veiled ploy to sell toys (there's even a wink at that in the movie). I'm convinced they make the toys first and write episodes around whatever merchandise is in the pipeline.
One thing I've noticed is that all the adults are silly, and the one person who is smart/ takes action is a young white boy, Rider- he makes all the decisions, and consistently 'saves the day'
I think this is wish fulfillment for kids and as such is a common trope in kid-oriented media. Kids are very much controlled by the adults around them, esp in our "optimize every minute of their existence for future success or they'll die a horrible death" parenting culture (highly marketized). And we can seem so arbitrary and screwy to them (who isn't, from time to time?) So this trope is one way for kids to carve out some space where they make sense & the adults can't seem to, where they aren't always the learners (which can involve some sense of being incomplete, unfinished, or wrong, i.e., needing *fixing*).
YES! I hate PP and have kept my kids away from it with a vengeance that surely is subconcious, since it's very out of line with my personality. YET my daughter's daycare shows them it, and she's absorbed so much about the characters and concept that it's terrifying.
But I hadn't thought about it in terms of goods and services in this framework, too. Is it just that stuff we now have a higher standard, because "luxury" experiences are aggressively marketed to more than just the ultra-rich? Is it a result of social media/the internet making us aware that the grass will always appear greener elsewhere? Someone please write this master's thesis, then share it.
I just read somewhere (probably C.S. or related, but can’t think of the exact source) that companies have pushed costs towards consumers by cutting costs in areas that cause consumer experience to be crappier/harder. They train less and provide fewer resources, resulting in the consumer investing more time into getting better/appropriate help. And that feels related to this point.
Examples were underfunded post offices, which means it takes longer to get out of there; and poorly staffed/trained call centers for support lines which mean the consumer spends more time waiting and getting transferred repeatedly before they can get an issue resolved.
This would explain why whenever possible, I go in person to a store and wait for in-the-flesh assistance to help me, rather than sit on hold and get kicked around from person to person for hours. Our state's unemployment system only allows you to sort out most things over the phone, or via *fax* (murder me pls) and nothing else drives me up the wall faster. Yet to your point, the companies/groups doing this aren't losing money over my customer dissatisfaction, because they know I must go forth with the help even when it's like pulling teeth. Argh.
One deep dive into “everything getting worse all the time” is Luke O’Neil’s first book, and ongoing newsletter, both called Welcome to Hell World. I love his writing.
I know I've read an article or two on this before, but want to read more. It drives me crazy!! My 8 month old consistently has more pockets than I do. And for what?! Baby keys?!
As someone who never uses pockets when I have them (sensory issues, SO UNCOMFORTABLE to have things attached to my body like that), I am always noticing all the ads for women's clothes that emphasize that they have pockets. So, in general, pocket discourse.
See also: wedding dresses with pockets. Huge selling point sometimes. Now, can photos look sharper wigh hands in pockets? 100% yes. But on the whole if there’s ever a time you dont need a pocket… it’s in a wedding dress.
Oh I totally disagree. You absolutely need pockets in a wedding dress to hold a tissue, your vows, whatever else you need! My wedding dress was custom and I specifically added pockets because of course.
Makes total sense! I guess my thought process was on your wedding day you’ll have people around who can hold that stuff for you vs in everyday life BUT I also prefer not to have to ask so adding them does make sense!
and the size of the pockets compared to the things people carry. WTF. My phone and wallet barely fit into my jeans/athleisure pants back pockets. I am old enough to remember that the pockets used to be bigger
And even when dresses or whatever do have pockets, they're often comically small. Like, this thing has a full circle skirt, you can literally hide a hardcover book in here, no need for the teensy pockets!
"Two Under Two." It's been blazing through my community in Chicago recently, and seems to be inspired by/part of a TradCore/Nostalgia Parenting trend. It's not medically advisable, it's overwhelmingly a "white lady thing on the internet" and it's something that's been historically weaponized against WOC (too many babies, baby machine, welfare mom, etc). It feels very marketing driven - quippier to say/easier to hashtag as 2 under 2 than 2 under 3? 2 under 4? Seemed to have stormed onto the scene around the time that Roe protections started getting aggressively slashed, and I couldn't help but feel like it was a subversive attempt to drive women back into the home with the promise of something special in that age grouping. Absolutely no shade for those who chose to do it and it makes them happy - truly, I have friends in this camp - but globally it feels more and more like a trend than a decision.
OH. MY. GOD.
okay the two under two AND the #girlmom #boymom ~identities~ 🤢
Yes! Good to know I'm not the only one who doesn't love #girlmom/#boymom. I'm not a mom, so I'm sure there's lots I don't know. But it feels so prescriptive and stereotypical and always dismays me.
I am both and identify with neither.
Same!
Oh goodness yes. I'm Facebook friends with someone who constantly tags herself as a #boymom and I do not understand it at all. The photos she posts just look like the same things you'd do with any small kid as far as I can tell.
And also, I have never once seen #boydad even though #girldad and #girlmom both exist as well.
Yes this is so interesting!! My read is that it comes out of the assumed (straight, cis) preference for a child of your same gender - because a boy dad is just “dad” but a #girldad is for dads showing interest in the “feminine” things their daughters like or like learning how to braid their hair, it feels tied to the same low bar that leads dads to getting complimented for “babysitting” their kids
I have three sons and for reasons I've never been quite able to articulate, the whole hashtag boymom thing just gives me the absolute wiggins. I actually also rarely (now that I think about it) ever refer to my kids as my "boys" or my sons, like if someone says "your boys might like this" or something like that. I always just refer to them as my kids, unless I'm describing something very very specific. I like this notion you've hit on that you don't have to valorize masculinity because it's the default. The whole idea of "boymom" feels like it's somehow claiming some kind of....status, maybe? for having produced male children. I'm not sure exactly, but there's definitely something there.
The girlmom/boymom hashtags are the worst. It feels incredibly prescriptive, especially when people who do it have BABIES. Who are just BABIES.
I think that’s offensive, honestly. Maybe if they have a private account it’s ok, but if they don’t, I think about all the people who will see those tags and feel like crap. I hope they aren’t doing it to underscore their beliefs about a gender binary… but it still underscores it.
I think the people who participate in the hashtag and identify this way are people who have all boys or all girls (rather than both boys and girls) because of their perception that the parenting experience is different in a meaningful way, and should therefore justify a sub-grouping. (I suspect that for many, they are compensating for feeling that they are missing out on the experience of having a child of a different sex). And while I believe gender is a spectrum, the society we live in does contribute to a different experience for boys vs girls, even from before birth.
That said, even when I was just a “girl mom” myself, I too felt uncomfortable with #boymom and #girlmom because it seems like it would just reinforce outdated gender stereotypes. Also, it feels weird for me to define myself based on my child’s gender, especially because that could change.
Adjacent rich text: the moms who refer to their sons as "their boyfriend" on social media.
YES. WHAT IS UP WITH THAT??
NO.
OMG THIS TOO’
Okay "two under two" as marketing quip is fascinating to me. (Side note: as a mom to twins, the whole "two under two" thing has always irked me. I've always had two under two (and under one, and under six months, etc., dammit!)
it’s impossible to work with 2 under 2, so I see it as: moms saying look how hard I work, even tho i’m not in the formal economy. they’re grasping for identity, validation, and recognition. they’re working in the home, but nobody recognizes the all encompassing difficulty of parenting, so this is advertising how much they do.
My assumption when I see influencer types having kids that close together is that it's to only have to go through the "get your body back" routine, including whatever surgery, once.
YES- this is definitely a part of it. I've heard this spoken, also the idea of "getting it over with"
i’ve absolutely gotten that “getting it over with” impression, to which i say... why did you have kids? honestly also the general concept of people having kids who seem to know nothing about kids, constantly complain about their kids, and make it seem like the worst thing in the world so why did you have them???????
To be fair, while I adore my kids, I have miserable pregnancies and have had difficult postpartum recoveries so I fully understand wanting to bang out a few kids and then get your pelvic floor back allll to yourself. And having a five-year gap between my kids made sleepless nights round 2 a bitter pill to swallow.
Still doesn’t make me wish I’d had 2 under 2, though. That sounds gnarly!
Kindly - This comment is a lot.
like that TOTALLY makes perfect sense (and i’ve definitely heard people who have planned it intentionally that way)
This is SO interesting to me. My youngest children are 22 months apart, and for that six weeks or whatever it is, I absolutely cringe when people ask their ages, because they're so close together. I always feel slightly judged, like 'don't you know how that happens?' I was on the old side when I got married, so we intentionally had our kids close together because I didn't want to be chasing babies when I was any older than I had to be, and my kids are thick as thieves, but as a Latina, I absolutely feel like it hits different than my white peers. It makes me uncomfortable as hell.
Also love Rihanna but I'm scared that she's making this shit look too good for us normies.
“2 under 2” is also a byproduct of women having children later - all of my mom friends who had their first kid after 35 (and are trying to finish having kids by 40) are on the 2u2 track whether they like the catchphrase or not.
Rae, a great point about the compression of available years! Of the women in my circle who have gone this route, that hasn't seemed to be the focus/intent, but definitely a factor for many I'm sure.
Ok, this is fascinating, because also, as someone who is a year and a half into secondary infertility, 2 under 2 feels so much like bragging--like, look at me, I have enough resources to be able to do this stressful thing and I am fertile enough that I can choose when to have my children and it happens for me. It's obviously my own issues coming through, but I am so stressed by the ever widening age gap between my first and potential second child because there's this narrative of two years apart being ideal, and we should be able to control it.
That's a lot to contend with. If it makes you feel any better, the gap between my first and second child is 13 years and they still see to recognize each other as the same species, love each other, and all the good parts about having siblings. My oldest was very happy as an only child and now loves his younger brothers very much. No matter which way it goes, there are always things that are incredibly challenging and things that are so cool and you wouldn't want it any other way. Two years apart is great, and so is 13 years apart. Good luck on your journey, and I hope it brings you happiness!
Constantly proclaiming that you have two under two is the new proclaiming you’re super busy all the time as a signifier of stress/value/something.
Guilty! But it’s always said with a, it’ll pay off in the end tone
This is my sister. It feels like a socially accepted rebrand to FUCK MY LIFE.
I have always despised this phrasing, especially when people expand it and are like “I have 3 under 7!” When does it end? Is my mom supposed to go around telling people she has “2 under 33”?
I am imagining my mother in a puckish mood saying, "I don't wanna brag, but I have two under forty-five."
I’ve been thinking about this more and I wonder how much of it is also a strong desire to be part of a community/group. I want to reiterate that this comment wasn’t intended to denigrate anyone who made that choice. My own mom did! But I wonder how much of the #twoundertwo aspirational trend is linked to the access that comes with a hashtag or the coding. More an indictment on society than the women drawn to that decision!
Oh my god is right. I didn’t know this was a trend and yet, I have in-laws who fits your description. I have 2 kids that I had to space due to unpaid leave. IOW, I had to save up vacation time and rebuild my status at work.
Even if that wasn’t the case...
Hasn't this been a thing for a long time, though? I know a few moms a generation above me who had paid careers and close pregnancies was their "get it over with all at once" strategy to get back on the ladder (issues there FOR SURE but this would be 15+ yrs ago). And for others who started having kids "late" it feels like the "only way" to get the number of kids they want in a shorter window.
Sure! I mean entire (harmful) ancient stereotypes exist on this (“Irish twins”). My point is that social media seems to have launched it into the stratosphere (or made it more visible, acceptable, aspirational) for a very specific group of people - white women. It’s not a new thing, but it’s certainly a “thing” right now and this was intended to tease out why that might be - maternal age, capitalism, instagram, subversive retro family nostalgia, whatever!
Restock videos. Especially the refrigerator ones. I need some words on their proliferation over on TikTok: the (specialized!) clear containers. The ASMR component. The cost/privilege of it all. The performative nature. The videos that JUST restock different kinds of ice. (!!!) And why I can't keep myself from watching anyway.
Yes - and the question I have been noodling on for a while is:
Why is it aspirational to have your home look like a retail store? (rows of tidy beverages and snacks)
I think this also aligns with some of the questions we were working through re: remodel culture, the market gaze, and the desire to make your kitchen look like a professional kitchen — restocking videos are making your fridge into a restaurant fridge, or, like, a vending machine fridge????
Do you think there’s a relationship between wanting your kitchen to look like a store or restaurant and wanting other parts of your home to look like a luxury hotel (bedroom, living room)or a spa (master bath)?
This conversation always reminds me of the scene in Downton Abbey where the Dowager Countess is flabbergasted by a new servant trying to serve the way they do at the Ritz (or whatever fancy hotel). Hotels were thought of (by that class) as a cheaper imitation of their own private homes. Homes were definitely not meant to imitate hotels!
Also having a (fully stocked) pantry the size of a small apartment. I guess it is a little bit of a post-pandemic prepping hangover as well as a display of wealth (when you post it to insta) but the house as supermarket / fortress phenomenon intrigues me
It has to, right? Looking to commercial enterprise for aesthetic inspiration, being so comfortable with the transactive nature of commerce that you want the same feeling in your home.
I think because people think it projects both abundance and organization, things the algorithm has taught us to prize.
ABSOLUTE ABUNDANCE
(which, I will say, if you're a parent who feels like you can't control other things — you CAN control the abundance in your fridge)
But also the abundance of a store is in tension with the minimalism of a curated boutique. Both sides feel connected to capitalism.
My personal theorem is: the fewer things in the store, the more each individual thing is going to cost!
Yes. The Netflix show The Home Edit from a few years ago was the first time I started to think about this. I think they even use language like "backstock" to refer to the extras of things like paper towels and canned goods, and since TikTok restocks, I feel like it's everywhere. Do we want homes to look like stores because the next consumerism step is to never leave the store? I admit, I do this in my closet. I try to use all those little merchandising tricks I learned in my retail days to fold my jeans in perfect stacks, style my outfits for the week on a separate rack, respace my hangers, dress a mannequin (dress form), etc. and try to "shop" my closet before buying something new. WHY? Why do we want our home to look like a store? Those little rows in our pantries and closets feel like a rich text.
I mean, I would live in a Costco if they would let me.
I followed the home edit instagram slightly before the Netflix show and slowly realized it gave me huge ick-Clea’s home and kids appeared frequently and the projected image of not a speck of dust anywhere, no single item ever out of place was bizarre in a deeply uncomfortable way. Of course instagram isn’t a reflection of real life but for everything in your house to be presented as basically antiseptic really felt like projection of some deep pathology.
Their Instagram has gotten rough to follow. Clea has clearly stepped back from doing so much of the content since her cancer diagnosis. And then when she does pop up, it kind of feels like it's all about her breast cancer and somehow she thinks people are unaware of breast cancer, but also weirdly performative and unrealistic (my grandmother had breast cancer, both my aunts, multiple friend's mothers and none were having their hair shaved for IG content)
Yes, Home Edit. Organizing and buying specific things to organize in. Organizing in colors and specific organizing aesthetics. Headbands and decanting everything into plastic bins.
Those fucking knotted headbands. I hate them, but why do they make me so angry?
I love rainbows- but sorting legos by color takes the cake😵💫🤯 In what world is that sustainable?!
My hugely attention deficient 9-year-old just spent the last couple of days doing this very thing. Does he generally play with legos? No. Does his brother? Not really. I think we have a billion legos as an attempt to assuage our parental guilt for how much time our kids spend playing video games, but whatever. Anyway, he spent hours on this task and was so happy when it was done. Is it sustainable? Maybe, given the aforementioned lack of use (lol) but we'll see. I can't IMAGINE doing this as a regular part of my homekeeping/maintenance.
The Home Edit is a VERY rich text. Especially if you followed them early on and have seen the transformation/ growth.
Yes! Especially because as the parent of three elementary-aged kids, I know absolutely none of that would last more than a few hours, tops. 😂 Introduces interesting questions on repetitive labor, who is this for, etc. Also? I can't deny it looks pretty.
My 6 year old loves watching cleaning and restocking videos, and it was actually a really interesting segue into teaching her some critical thinking skills around social media (what are they trying to get you to buy here?)
I am with your 6 year old! I am totally mesmerized by cleaning and restocking videos. I can literally watch hours of people cleaning their houses while sitting on my couch and ignoring the pile of laundry that has been sitting on my dining room table for days waiting to be folded. It's deeply soothing in a way I don't really understand and maybe I just need to get it out of my system like a stupid iphone game I'm addicted to?
I will add that I ONLY let her watch these with me, she does not have access to social media right now, nor will she for a long long time
No judgement here. No judgement. Do what you gotta.
I follow someone on Instagram (British man, can't think of his name right now) who duets with rich people videos and the first time he showed an ice restocking video... wow! Also, those ladies who have entire cabinets of flavored coffee syrups and powdered drink packets calling it 'water', no it's non carbonated pop, lady!
I love this guy!!!!! Shabazsays is the @
YES! So funny! He had one about a woman going to spray her menstrual blood on her plants (YES) and I literally screamed ;)
Omg SAME
I kept scrolling to ensure someone mentioned him and his making fun of IceTok! Soooo funny
I did not know this was a thing, and I am baffled. Ice????
You are not alone. The first time I flicked and saw "monthly ice restocking" as a post title I was deeply confused. I mean, I still am, but for other reasons now.
ICE!!! It's a whole THING!
I was drawn in by one that showed up on my IG feed last night. Ice made with coffee (one of my fave work breakfast places does it & I fully get that!), ice made with fruit purees, ice with different fruits cut in different shapes inside, ice made with milk (I think?), everything in different molds-not just your standard cubed ice! And, there were trays of it.
Thank you so much for explaining this so I don’t have to hunt down the content to get my head around WTF is “ice restocking.”
I wonder how much of that was pandemic driven, too. Influencers were home, clothing was... well it just got really weird/chaotic.... and the one thing people could fixate on was making their spaces tidy and bringing the calming store environment into their home where they didn't have to mask or worry. A lot of folks were also stockpiling more on some things due to supply chain issues and limiting store trips, so they inherently had more in their home to organize and manage than perhaps they did before. (Was the case for us!)
I have no idea about "restocking," but I got hooked on a company called GoCleanCo on Instagram in early 2020. It started as a home cleaning company in the Calgary area, and when the pandemic started, her business basically shut down. She started making home videos for her Instagram account to keep the name out there, and gave people tips on disinfecting, etc., and it took off from there. When I started following her on Instagram at the start of the pandemic, she had about 30,000 followers. She now has 2.4 MILLION and is sponsored by Procter & Gamble and other big cleaning-related companies.
I was so influenced by her!! I bought her mop and rags and recommended products and ebook...and don’t even use it. I’m a Dirty Person. I hope she is enjoying her financial success, because her astronomic rise is a marvel.
Me too -- mopping the floor is probably the one cleaning task I procrastinate doing the most. I bought the mop and like it, and while I can't say I use it regularly, or as regularly as I should, I probably do mop it more often now! lol I also bought the Aquablade system and while it's pricey, is it is good!
YES! Especially the ice making videos!
Yes!! Agreed.
Rich text: work slack emoji culture!
Why does every team lead but one have a custom emoji?
Is the :eyes: emoji being used sarcastically or sincerely?
DEAR GOD WHY does this otherwise very formal consultancy have a :humping: emoji??
My work takes me into the slack channels of all kinds of businesses and I. Have. Seen. Some. Things.
this comment just made me spit out my coffee a little, thank you
Why does everyone in my office use the "sweating turkey" gif as a reaction to almost everything? Why is there a "sweating turkey" gif on Microsoft Teams?!
Oh the Microsoft Teams emojis are very strange to me. Ha. Wow.
YES. The novel Several People Are Typing (written entirely in Slack messages) dives into the secret language of the reaction emoji. Highly recommend. I used to work with (and Slack!) the author, and I can trace the origin story of one very niche emoji's meaning back to its inception at a *different workplace* — a former colleague carried it here (she had left by the time I joined, and people were surprised that I immediately understood the meaning of the dusty stick)
The dusty stick . . . ? You can't just leave a cliff hanger like that!
omg I forgot about the dusty stick! This book absolutely killed me. I tried to tell my current colleagues about it but we use Teams and the difference between Teams and Slack cultures is so big as as to make them not even comparable platforms.
Loved this book!
please tell me it means stick as in carrot and stick but the stick is disused i have to know
The closest direct translation would be side-eye, but specifically towards bad puns, dad jokes, and the like. It is definitely done in a laughing-with-you way (the most common dusty stick recipients were generally well-liked).
YES! THIS! My work chat does not have a humping emoji, but it has very strange parameters on what gifs you can send. Like there are none from South Park, but lots of totally inappropriate Always Sunny, Archer, BoJack Horseman, Family Guy...
Please, come sit next to me. Right here is a nice spot and we can have a lovely chat. Wait just a sec while I see if my work chat has the :humping: emoji.
Lived this myself recently when I used this guy in Teams: 🫠. For me and my mum friends it means we are melting down, disappearing into a puddle of overwhelm. My colleague thought I meant I was feeling the heat.
if this interests you at all, or you have lived this particular world (nightmare?), i highly recommend the brilliant debut novel Several People Are Typing. I haven’t laughed so much and felt so seen in years. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54468020
Read that last year and it was a solid 3/5 stars for me, but I'm glad it found it's audience elsewhere as I'm always supportive of books doing something just a little weird with format!
💯💯💯
I'm cheating a bit because I too was trained as a cultural historian, BUT:
- Raw milk becoming a thing again (and it's strangely popular right now among TikTok influencers and Fundamentalist Christians - maybe a signifier of purity? Distrust in science? A return-to-nature sort of thing?)
- Mullets
- The narrowing of LinkedIn discourse - there's a particular style of communicating in a few categories ("Don't do this bad thing in an interview," "I was laid off but am grateful to my company nonetheless," "I'm delighted to share that...")
- Mums and garters - something I hadn't heard of until I moved to Texas
obsessed with the raw milk discourse — as someone notes below, it was a big Brooklyn moms thing but it's also such a huge thing amongst the ultra-conservative in Idaho, one of things (like anti-vaxxing) where the political spectrum really shows itself to be a circle
Back in my day, the early aughts that is, all the Bethesda and Chevy Chase folks were very much into raw milk. Perhaps it’s a case of their kids, following in the footsteps of their parents.
MULLETS. What!! IS!! HAPPENING?!?!!!
My mullet theory is that instead of "business in the front, party in the back" it's "masc in the front, femme in the back" queer signaling?
There's also been some interesting analysis of the fact that the mullet is tailor made for Zoom calls and remote work, because people only see your business front on camera!
as a uni student in the queer mullet camp- you're onto something. for some people it's an embracing both sides thing. i also had a friend cut her mullet into a fully short haircut and she said it felt like freeing herself from a last attempt at femininity, which made me took a look at myself!
I live in a college town and the mullets will not stop. All genders, no genders- mullets everywhere.
And the meaning of a mullet is so slippery - it used to be a hip-ish hair style (80s), then was associated with rural/lower class white culture, particularly in the south, then now it's part of pro sports culture, queer culture, hipster culture? And there's a relationship with the pandemic, too, since people weren't able to get in-person haircuts for so long and decided to don a mullet for Zoom calls?
Truly a wild and rich text of a haircut - not just belonging to the "redneck" stereotype.
Highly recommend this "history of the mullet" episode of Decoder Ring: https://slate.com/podcasts/decoder-ring/2020/08/the-history-of-the-mullet
I was going to suggest this! A fascinating listen. They will need a sequel given the renaissance of the old short-long.
I have a 5 year old and see a lot of kids with mullets, and generally my assumption is it was a compromise for a parent who did not want to cut their kid's hair. At least the circa 90s rat tail hasn't come back?
I told my husband you all are saying mullets are making a comeback, and his response was "They weren't bad enough the first time??"
At home (dc) I do not really ever see mullets, but last week we were in Maine and I saw toddler mullets everywhere. Why?!
Lot of kpop stars with mullets a few years ago, many more now. https://www.koreaboo.com/news/not-drill-bts-jungkook-mullet-happening/
My 17 year old son got a mullet! They call it a "burst fade." Omg. It's 100% a mullet and he has senior pictures in a few weeks. Cannot WAIT for him to look back at it in 10 or 20 years.
Having hosted a reunion for a college hockey team with many players in the 80s, they fucking loved looking at their old photos with mullets. I hope such joy for all former mullet havers.
That’s really lovely!
My husband (and my son’s dad) had his own mullet in the 90s and does not enjoy the look back, but I think my son will.
My friend's 18 year old son has a mullet and I think about this too hahaha
Raw dairy was SUCH a thing in my mom world in North Brooklyn circa 15 years ago. There was a google group for customers of an Amish farm that delivered to all the usual suspect North Brooklyn neighborhoods. Buying raw dairy wasn't illegal, but it all had to be well-organized because one person would have to place an order with the only relative of the farmer who could go to a payphone. My son was in a Steiner school and the raw milk to anti-vaxxer pipeline is VERY real. This is indeed a massively rich text and I have much to say about it and should probably write something.
Same in suburban Atlanta in the mid-00's. You had to say the milk was for your pets for it to be legal in Georgia, and the holistic moms groups (FB group and IRL) were definitely anti-vax. Lots of muscle testing for "food sensitivity" too, hence the raw milk.
I'm from New England and went to college in TX and Mums and Garters were one of the MANY culture shocks I encountered. Also - Drill Teams, Debutantes and big "C" Christianity.
I grew up in Texas so I was definitely aware of mums, drill teams, debutantes, Christianity, but as I've lived other places I've realized just how messed up/ not normal across the US my school was. Two further examples: front yard signs to show off what activity your child was in (eg 3 foot high music note for choir, drill team figure, football helmet, etc with child's name on it), and on game day the drill team and cheerleaders had assigned football players that they had to bring treats to and decorate their locker. My husband was raised in the south and when I told him the football thing his jaw dropped.
My daughter was a cheerleader in MN, and the team had to bring buckets of cookies to the games and form two lines to hold out to the football players after the game while saying things like "great game!" The cheer coach was a former cheerleader at the school, so I assume they did that when she was on the team. I found it very retrograde, but my daughter didn't care so I didn't fuss. No decorating lockers.
I live in a suburb of Chicago (North Shore) and the yard signs for activities are a thing here, and was also in a suburb of Indianapolis where I lived before. I think the cheerleader thing happens here too.
Interesting. I don't recall seeing them in Wisconsin. Maybe it's a middle of the country + bigger city thing?
Signs are popular in the North Shore of Chicago and certain suburbs in MN (where I live now) BUT they are not those huge 3 ft high ones, or the ones that span your lawn (some people get those when they have a child/kid graduates from pics I've seen on FB). The ones I see are the size of political signs, i.e. noticeable but not over the top.
@Pam B, I lived in one suburb of Toronto where grad signs were not a thing but then moved to another where they are. They're also a modest size, like election signs, as you mentioned.
New England/NYC here and I never saw one of those signs before Covid and then they were really for graduation. I do recall seeing them in NE PA for football several years ago - post Friday Night Lights/Varsity Blues.
I think it's a particular kind of suburb thing- upper middle class, somehow seems to go along with the college stickers on cars thing.
That's all incredibly wacky. Were the cheerleaders assigned to provide sexual favors, too?
I *think* people would at least get assigned their boyfriend if he was on the team, but I don't know what happened if they broke up.
Mums and Garters is an entirely new thing to me. I love the new things I learn about in this community.
Yes I just had to Google this because we didn’t even have homecoming never mind all the TX-size trappings!
Never heard of Mums and Garters. I assumed it was a trend among moms/mums groups that had suddenly rediscovered nylon stockings and garter belts until I Googled. You learn something new every day...! (I'm Canadian.)
Homecoming garters are my guilty pleasure. They're fascinating! When I was very small, we lived in TX and my babysitter had one that I was obsessed with (this would have been in the mid 80's). I didn't even remember it until my mom told me after I rediscovered them in my 20's while traveling. If you've never seen one, please google homecoming garter (and then google large homecoming garter!)
A friend's mom (in the early aughts) was convinced that pasteurized milk somehow caused homosexuality. Because in her youth they didn't have pasturized milk and also didn't have so many gay people. That was a dinner conversation to remember. Couldn't decide whether to laugh, cry, or aspirate my food.
There's a lot of reasons being a public health professional is frustrating, and raw milk is one of them. Why?? Whyyyy is pasteurization a bad thing?? Anti-vax sentiment is a little more complicated, but the anti-science overlap of the raw milk and anti-vax individuals is fascinating. I know I've read something on this before, but I think about it often.
Aside from general distrust, there's the victim of their success thing going on it seems to me. I remember listening to a conversation between a coworker who was saying "I don't see what the problem is with unpasteurized milk: people don't get [disease] any more." while another (whose elderly mother had been a rural nurse) practically screamed "because we pasteurize our milk!"
I think a related thing may be the distance from the production? I have a colleague who owns cattle near an apple orchard which gets a lot of families from the nearby city. She's had a number of weekend apple pickers (who are parking on her private land, btw) come up and insist that they should be able to buy raw milk from her.
She has beef cattle.
People simply have no clue the amount of work that goes into making our modern food and making it safe.
Edited to say: it wasn't just their inability to spot a dairy vs beef cow. Once she told them that those were beef cattle, they still asked to buy raw milk.
I worked at an ice-cream shop that was part of a working dairy farm and the family who owned the farm were so grossed out by all the asks for raw milk (as well as the attempts to just wander through their working farm with thousand pound animals about!!) My dad, who grew up on a working dairy farm, is also befuddled by the trend.
There's definitely a lack of exposure thing.
I will say I had a childhood friend whose father was a dairy farmer who definitely drank raw milk -- and I think, decades later, may have capitalized on the market for it in some way.
Oh yeah, clearly there are some who have! And both my dad and the family running the farm I worked on probably both occasionally drank raw milk themselves. But I think viewing it as a "superior" product that someone would drive far and ask for is the befuddling part for them.
Like when I saw someone make the case for not vaccinating against polio because "we never see polio anymore!"
Back in the late 90s I was into raw milk. For me, it was the idea that pasteurization killed off the "good" parts of the milk in addition to the pathogens because it was overly processed (which meant that even organic milk was not as good since more often than not it was ultra-pasteurized which was even worse). So it was the sense that it was healthier. Thinking back on it, there was also the appeal of the "purity" of it...you did not just buy milk from some faceless big agra company out to make money (and ruining the environment) but from a local farmer who you could trust. There was also a level of community around it - we were a bunch of crunchy moms coming together to do something fairly subversive (I don't think it was legal.) We coordinated via a private email list and would come together on pick-up days at the drop-off location. It made us part of a smaller community.
I have learned to have a lot of compassion for that version of me who was just trying to navigate being a new mom in a scary world.
Reading through the replies to this prompt I keep thinking “Really? That’s a thing? THAT’S a thing?” I feel old lol
The raw milk thing has also been taken over by the "wellness" people who still consumer dairy. As an aside, just before Covid I visited a dairy farmer here in NY and he said he flat out refuses to sell anyone raw milk because people do not transport it correctly and if they are not farmers or food scientists, they have zero good sense about how quickly the milk can go off with improper storage.
Yeah I know a few dairy farmers and none of them will sell it to people who ask (even if their own family's occasionally consume some).
I second mullets!! WHY are they back? Who told them that was okay? (I have strong negative feels, can you tell?)
My family drank raw milk a lot when my kids were small. Looking back, it's true I first heard about it as an option from the anti-vaxxers in my community who also all seemed to be local/regional food fanatics. But it was also true that we lived next door to a small, organic, family dairy farm starting when my oldest was 13 months old and they let us buy raw milk by the gallon super cheap right off the bulk tank. It was the cheapest way for us to get really good quality milk. My oldest resisted weaning, but he would drink raw milk mixed with a little maple syrup to mimic the sweetness of breast milk and it didn't ever give him digestive trouble so it was a win-win for me.
Yes...I also think that the discourse around it was different back in the 90s and early aughts then it is today when it seems like everything has completely jumped the shark. Even the anti-vaxxers back in the 90s just felt more overly cautious rather than conspiracy driven (at least in my circles.) It was seen as more of a personal decision that each family made rather than a fight against a conspiracy of doctors who wanted to kill (!) babies.
I do wonder how much of this is driven by social media and how it completely shifted how the conversations were held. Back then, we were moms who came together on email lists or bulletin boards trying to figure out this stuff together, sharing what we were learning as we went. Now, with social media, it is about finding the right influencer who has figured it out and can give us the answers and tell us what we need to do.
Milk is definitely a rich text. For any London (U.K.) based culture study readers, the Wellcome Collection has an exhibition on milk in the last century on at the moment which is excellent and covers So. Many. Ideas. / is generally fascinating.
Within the arts community, there were always mullets, often in the form of shags, mixies (yes that's a pixie mullet), or fauxhawks...or Edgars.
This reminds me of a GREAT article in LA TImes https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/image/story/2023-08-10/the-edgar-haircut-all-the-rage-among-the-foos
I have a friend who is editor of an agricultural journal, they just published something earlier this year about legislation of raw milk https://ambrook.com/research/legislation/legalize-raw-milk-wisconsin-dairy-safety
The LinkedIn posts for sure. Ninety percent of my feed reflects some the following norms: the posture must be grateful, thrilled, and/or inspired. If personal circumstances are relevant, the poster must mention that family/personal life is primary, but then thank or declare themselves inspired by an employer/manager/mentor for supporting work/life balance. If the post is about a professional accomplishment or work function, the poster must be grateful for employer/manager/mentor/team support and contributions, thrilled by the honor of being noticed or allowed to participate, and/or inspired by everyone they met in the process or at the function.
I'm grateful for the few people that still post interesting articles.
Grew up in Texas and I'm sure SOME grad student SOMEWHERE has written a masters thesis on Mums, gender, and class.
Mullets never went away—they’re just social class signifiers. And I love them and wish there were more of them. Great topic!!!!!
Oh, oh, I love this prompt. I just spent a week doomscrolling and writing about this so it's top of mind for me, but a rich text I think about a lot are the zillions of tiktoks under the #GutHealing, #GutTok, #GutHealth, etc. tags, especially the "before and after gut healing" videos that focus on bloating, like this one: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8F9vT8Q/.
I'd loooove to hear Virginia Sole-Smith's take on these, too. (If she's discussed this kind of content already and someone could direct me to that work, I'd be very thankful!)
Oh god. Even just the rise of the use of the word gut!
Exactly. It's (often, though not always) diet culture, rebranded!
I had a coworker a few years ago who was trying to “heal her own gut biome” and taking all these supplements and stuff… but not seeing any doctors. Western medicine has issues for sure, but if it’s been going on for months/years like she said? Please see someone! She was Instagram coursing her way through it and it stressed me out everytime. (And she talked about it a lot.)
It seems like a catch all for when we don't really understand something! "Ah, yes, it's the gut biome"
This feels to me like so many other versions of an attempt to exert control where you can when so much is out of your control (like Emma said below: see diet culture). And since actual comfort/discomfort in your human torso is so ambiguous you can feel (in your gut!) like you have succeeded. Or if you haven't, it's because you just need another tweak (or to try harder).
My (Gen Z) sister banned our mom from saying the phrase “gut biome” in her presence!
Genius!! I wish I could do that for all my social media channels 😂
Perhaps check out Christy Harrison’s work, too? The Wellness Trap is her latest book but she speaks to similar content in other mediums as well.
Yes Virginia’s podcast episode with Christy talks about this! It’s called “Elimination Diets Are Not A Panacea https://open.substack.com/pub/virginiasolesmith/p/elimination-diets-are-not-a-panacea?r=f48aw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thank you!! I will definitely check out her work.
Rich text: capsule closet/minimalism/de clutter movement (along the lines of the all neutral personality less spaces).
Definitely things have been said about this one before.
So I’ve flirted with this before but am super psyched/ready for what I see as a trend towards maximalism. That said, I remember seeing something like “millenials are minimalists because all of our parents and grandparents are hoarders” AND YES.
Can concur - I'm an elder GenX here with Silent Gen hoarder parents and the stuff just makes me crazy
I’ve brought up the topic of Swedish Death Cleaning to my mom, who was thankfully receptive. But the biggest problem lies with my in-laws, who currently have five acres of “treasures” in possession. 😬
My mom got SO offended when I mentioned it to her. I didn't back down on it, though and now she's starting carting bags of stuff to the thrift store, almost as much as she brings home bags of stuff from the thrift store. She's not a hoarder, she's more like a magpie. I find myself doing similar things the older I get, but man.
I have so many hot takes on this. If anyone can recommend some longreads on this I'd be thrilled
Re capsule wardrobe I thought this piece was interesting! https://open.substack.com/pub/virginiasolesmith/p/are-capsule-wardrobes-just-for-thin?r=f48aw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I want to hear one of your hot takes!
my current hot take is that aspirational minimalism and pseudominimalism that we see from the tech bros and instagrammers is mostly supported by other people's labor (.e.g take out or restaurant food, hiring people to clean/fix/do things instead of keeping the supplies to do it yourself), requires a lot of privilege and is still very consumer driven.
I am fascinated by my own minimalist desires and have blogged about it a few times. https://oldbiddyblogging.blogspot.com/2019/02/minimalist-dreams.html
https://oldbiddyblogging.blogspot.com/2022/06/tiny-houses.html
I want to know why everyone in my elder millennial orbit is suddenly into astrology. And I’m curious why it’s the same people who are quick to tell you how unscientific Meyers Briggs is and scrupulously read Emily Oster for parenting advice, and then turn around to post nonironically about Saturn’s Return.
So, what’s up with calling people mother? The way it reclaims and upends and makes meaningless and makes sexy and knights with utmost power the title of “mother” -- I love it and it makes me uncomfortable and I have started to say it and it seems to say so much about our whole motherless overmothered motherfucked world.
Also maybe this is totally obvious but I really want to write an entire book on Swifties. The true-crime level of analysis into all Taylor does, the cultish devotion -- the proliferation of the chants and ceremonial objects (fship bracelets) and lore and obsession with ritual numbers, the in-group kindness, the rampant, rabid bullying, the brute economic power, the way Swiftiness dovetails into a certain white girl entitlement and ferocity and lack of awareness. I could write a book actually just on Gaylors omg.
When I learned about Gaylors I had one thought: this is exactly like QAnon. Luckily someone else wrote about it: https://www.salon.com/2022/10/31/taylor-gaylor-swift-qanon-conspiracy-esoteric-writing/
This is fucking fascinating!! Thank you for sharing
Would read either of those books in a heartbeat!! Also very interested in the rich texts of the narrative Taylor Swift creates around her self/image, and super specifically the re-recordings and the vault tracks.
Yesss so interested in this too!
Whoops lol sorry to crash this thread. I lost this comment and reposted I’m a mess
I have some thoughts about this!!! Lots of my friends who left the church then got into tarot and astrology — myself included — and i think there is a thrill in the “occult”. A little transgression, as a treat! That’s one of the initial sparks, but what I think keeps people coming back is the way these (plus personality tests etc) are mirrors to the self. Where you used to perhaps listen to a sermon on a sunday and do some introspection within a rigid framework of sin and forgiveness— well, now you get a reading and have a tidy little pagan framework to think about big ideas for thirty minutes before going on with your life.
This sounds dismissive, it’s not! I like tarot & i think these new age things are generally more healthy way to engage with the self than evangelical xtianity is.
This comment is getting long, but humans love to be told about themselves, and we love a mirror! And we love a ritual! In the absence of overarching social rituals, we create them!
I have so many thoughts on this, as someone who absolutely has that 'witch thing' going on in my family and both of my sisters (they're twins, and they're Geminis) read tarot, but it's also a whole other thing in which my mom and my grandmother (who is now 90, and very devoutly Catholic) have been recollecting stories of my great aunts/uncles who were very creative, very *different* types and were also working-class Mexicans and ended up in institutions. Trying to reconcile what their lives were like, and being unable to find any other suitable framework except slightly occult explanations. My tia and tio weren't crazy; they were something very different than the mainstream.
oooh thank you for sharing!! my comment was v focused on my own white exvangelical millennial experience, a v whitewashed understanding of this stuff —but historic looks at the “occult” & what it was used for, and the intersection with Catholicism and non-white communities— that’s a completely different experience! And really important to think about, especially when you look at historic understandings of mental illness or neurodivergence. A rich text!
And also tarot!
Also witches and witchcraft- I was looking through the book section at a JoAnn's, and fully half the books included some tie-in to witchcraft- and these are craft books. Where did that come from?
YES I would also like to know why! And I have to say, I'm kind of drawn to it and I don't know what my deal is -- I need to think about it.
In my network, it's mostly former evangelicals riding hard for astrology. It's externalizing identity formation to a cosmic force we can observe.
YESSSSSSSS
Oh, these are my favorite subjects. I actually find a really important continuity among all the bullet points on the list--and it's (Conservative) Women With Money. It is the easiest slice of culture to dismiss as trivial (Pumpkin Spice lattes, anyone?), but it informs our wider cultural norms and values in really deep ways. These are the "homey" values we raise our children in (Momfluencers), the styles we invite into our *homes* (shiplap & the Gaines), our experience of our own bodies (Peleton, Goop, diet culture...). It's what books are available and what our schools teach. It's how wealth concentrates (from the marriage markets of debutantes to sorority-frat relations). I 100000000% see this as all the SAME text.
Inspired by the RushTok dive, I also have a working theory about Mainstream Traditional Gender + Conspicuous Consumption as a *countercultural* movement, in a generation that is more queer, more socialist, more likely to unionize, with more experience in activism (climate change + gun violence esp.), than previous ones. We see so much 'content' about buying things, and things we've bought. So many faces that all look the same. Sometimes it shows up like 'tradwives' and sometimes it shows up like college kid's OOTDs. It's the Y2K fashion, which millennials and gen x remember as profoundly misogynistic. It's the hunger for good ol boy country. It's extremely white supremacist. It feels dangerous to me.
This would be a good piece, Amanda. Just sayin’
This is so interesting!! I can already tell I’ll be mulling this over for weeks
If anything, the timing makes it more suspect (and reactionary) than anything.
Other pieces of this text that fascinate me:
-Kathryn Jezer-Morton has written a lot about FALL & Cozy Season. As it's the final days of August, I'm seeing so much PUMPKIN content, and the Influencer Publishing Calendar is pulling us further and further away from nature. Why are we obsessed with fall??
-Contemporary evangelizing is *so subtle.* I can read "Mega Church" or "Mormon" from 100 miles away in Ballerina Farm, in the Gaines, in so much momfluencer content, but my sister in law misses the invisible Jesus signaling. To her, it's just "normal" mainstream culture.
-Air Fryers are table top convection ovens with a basket instead of shelves. InstaPots are decent slow cookers. These are not miracle brand new gadgets. They're just effective old things. Why do we need things to be *new*?
This! So well articulated, thank you for putting into words what I was feeling but couldn’t quite grasp.
“Little treat” culture against the backdrop of late-stage capitalism! Not a judgment against little treats, I am a big fan of getting myself little treats! Like this is one of those things where on first glance I think, yeah, a little iced coffee and a pastry can make a huge difference on a crummy day, it’s not that deep. But then, within the walls of the internet - aka TikTok - it can feel like an interesting whiplash between critiques of capitalism and our current landscape and “Starbies” runs. (Which also…has there been a recent Starbucks renaissance? Or is it just that I grew up in the PNW which went through a proud anti-Starbucks, support-your-local-coffee-shop push?) I don’t know, I have a feeling this intersects with a whole lot of other consumerism texts folks are mentioning.
Here's my take from me plus my GenZ kids: everything is bad and bad for you and makes you feel bad (see also ChickfilA, WalMart, etc), so why not go to Starbs and have basically a milkshake or delicious coffee little treat?
Galvanize does some really interesting research on moderate white women and this is absolutely the outlook of the group uncertain individualists. YOLO isn't so much hedonism, it's more the world is burning, I'll never afford a house, might as well take that vacation/have spay day/treat myself to little treats.
“Everything is bad for you and makes you feel bad” — oof this resonates. This totally makes sense to me, and makes me think of all the other instances where individuals are left weighing the impact of systems-level issues.
Exactly. Especially with Gen Z, since it's basically all they've known, and they are aware of the systems issues that I KNOW I wasn't as a cishetero white Gen Xer.
As a millennial, can definitely remember my first exposure to a lot of these issues coming in a “personal responsibility” package—personal carbon footprint, etc!
I am wondering if the Starbucks renaissance (of which I am part of, to my chagrin but I've accepted it lol) is a part of the Y2K renaissance?? (Mainly pondering upon that because in You've Got Mail--which is 1998, so a little bit pre-Y2K but I'm rounding up--there's a whole bit about Starbucks and obviously our leading lady (Meg) and leading man (Tom) are Starbucks frequenters)
I think it’s because they’re in Target and mid-price hotel chain lobbies. But more Target. I know of many many children who got cake pops for being good while mom was shopping who are now good little Starbucks rewards members, even in New England when Dunkin is king.
The comment about Starbucks Rewards makes me think about the Starbucks Is A Bank thinkpieces, which I believe was kicked off in Wired circa 2014/2015? It’s been in my head since I first read about it
My partner and I literally call this “the little treat economy” because it feels like there are now all these shops and small businesses that are solely dedicated to providing little treats vs. a broader, more “practical” menu. Niche tea cafés, artisan donut shops, if you’re a PNWer, Rachel’s Ginger Beer - it feels like none of these places could possibly exist if we didn’t all collectively decide we need a little treat to get us through the trials of late stage capitalism on a daily basis.
On the one hand I love that small business like these can exist and people get to live out their very specific dreams of being a craft kombucha brewer. But it also raises a lot of questions of who can access little treats, who can build and own these types of businesses, etc. And then it brings me back to that old headline that millennials can’t buy houses because we spend all our money on avocado toast. But in reality, we spend all our money on avo toast to make ourselves feel better about not being able to buy a house!!!
I’m actually not sure if this is a global phenomenon or if tiktok has just increased our exposure to places where third wave coffee culture never fully took root anyway. My extended friend network--on the gen z/millennial cusp, all in major US cities--don’t personally frequent Starbucks, but i’m also shocked by how often i see it on TikTok/IG
I guess on further reflection it’s not whether Starbucks is or is not in vogue but whether being ANTI starbucks is trendy, which it definitely isn’t. Maybe we’re all more aware of cultural elitism being thinly veiled classism? Tired of greenwashing?
I have also been noticing the Starbucks renaissance! Why??
Oh interesting! Yeah we have a lot of small shops based on the little treat, little conveniences. It’s a $4 cookie y’all
**Pre-ordering versus in-person ordering! The incentives to pre-order; the entitlement you feel when your beverage is not ready at the right time; the generational divide; the burden it puts on workers; the lack of social interaction; what it means for staffing; what it means for businesses when their entire business becomes pre-order; what happens when it doesn't work; who pays when you accidentally order at the wrong location; the capitalism of it all.
As an aside, my sister was at a family member's lake house and placed a pre-order at a small local coffee shop. When she showed up, they were making her order, but asked her how she had placed it. Apparently they had a pre-order system they didn't even know existed until her order printed out. HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN?!
** The constant customer satisfaction survey: who fills them out? How much time do they take out of the average week/month/year? What causes people to actually fill them out? Do they really provide a full picture of customer experience? Or only customers of a specific class/gender/age/experience? How do companies use them? Do they keep people from going to Yelp to post scathing reviews--and is that part of the purpose?
I would love to read a deep economics dive on pre-ordering costs and profits GAH
It 100% has ruined the quality of every one’s experience at most Starbucks I go too: the regulars (me) and the pre-orderers ALL have to wait much longer now and staff are miserable and perpetually “behind”. We. are. such. a. dumb. species.
Yes, please. If you find it, let us know!
Interesting bunny trail, if I may: I think pre-order culture has infected my library. Since COVID, there's been a huge rise in people placing holds and a drop in people simply browsing for books. It's to the point where the incoming new books are becoming very Bookstagram trendy, whereas before there was an excellent mix of rising bestsellers and obscure local publishings. But the budget hasn't gone up much so now over 100 people will place a hold a week early on the one copy the library purchases. They'll wait months before receiving it, and meanwhile as more people hear about it the line gets longer. And someone doesn't return the book, good luck ever getting it through the library. What happens when the library shifts its budget even further to include more copies of popular books while ignoring less trendy works? Does less library perusing, and exposure to all sorts of books, correlate with less interaction between people of differing opinions? I think pre-order culture festers deep.
Librarian here! I have Actual Anxiety when I think about this - relatedly, just like so many things in our culture/society, capitalism is working in dangerous ways here that you can't see until it's too late. In previous decades, it might've been the norm for the library to order a variety of books from a variety of publishers, etc, but slowly all these things are being condensed as vendors buy each other up and make ever-slicker interfaces for ordering books that it's largely algorithm based now. Sure, we can still go in and order a specific book if we want to, but it typically makes more fiscal sense to get these big package deals that we're not necessarily in control of... especially thinking of this as it pertains to ebooks. People LOVE ebooks and Libby, but the library doesn't "own" those books like it would a physical copy and it's more like you're getting a streaming service where individual books can drop in/out. And the popularity of Kindles/Libby means all libraries are pressured into the same vendor, and then that vendor gets to unilaterally decide things about the way book lending works that maybe shouldn't be up to a profit-driven company to decide. But of course at the end of the day, the (overworked, underpaid, traditionally pink collar) librarians are left having to explain and provide all the customer service to their community. GAH.
I've worked myself into a Big Mad state over this and must post one more thing:
https://www.protocol.com/ebooks-libraries-libby-overdrive-publishers
"Because e-books are not regulated under the same laws that govern physical books, publishers can price them however they choose. Rather than emulate the physical model, where libraries pay a fixed cost for a certain number of books, they instead offer digital editions through a license that usually includes a limit on the number of times a book can be checked out, the length of time a library holds an edition, or both. "
YES!!!! PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT: Libraries pay many many times what individuals pay to lease electronic material and have a ton more restrictions. Economically, electronic materials at libraries are a dumpster fire of week-old-fish that just moved into your spare bedroom. Originally it was academic libraries, but now public libraries are getting flattened by it as well. Basically, libraries exist (in the US--I should know other countries, but I don't) because of the First Sale Doctrine (https://libguides.ala.org/copyright/firstsale): I own this copy of a copyrighted work, therefore I can lend, sell on, give away this copy. For reasons that I really REALLY do not understand, publishing powers-that-be haaaate that libraries can do this and constantly argue that they are undermining their profits. Which is bonkers, because the middle-level sales people and authors and promoters know that libraries are absolutely the way to get your book into hands and therefore purchased by more people. Enter digital materials, which publishers only LEASE to you. So you don't have first sale, and you can't do what you want with it, and the publisher is going to squeeze the library for all it can. So the library is paying over $100 for access to a "copy" of an ebook that will expire after 25 uses or a year, whichever happens first. Because the publisher claims that is a reasonable comparison for a physical book.
Oh, and please, get me started on academic journals and that whole pipeline. Academic libraries pay millions (not hyperbole) to purchase electronic articles that were created by faculty in their very institutions for free! Faculty are creating the content for free, other faculty are reviewing for free, yes, there is some cost involved in the administration and editing and overhead, the same faculty's' libraries are then buying their content for EXTREME prices that increase by margins like 10% annually.
Which is not to say that I don't think we should provide electronic materials! I realized I sounded like a huge luddite and I don't think that at all. Libraries are just over a barrel when it comes to the actual process.
AHHHHHH hello you are my people! I recently had a career pivot but spent the last 10 years working in an academic library in scholarly communications, Open Access advocacy, data sharing for rigor and reproducibility, predatory publishing awareness, etc. So few people *in academia* even know the full extent of it, and it's so FASCINATING and INSIDIOUS and I just end up sounding like Chicken Little I think?! Anyway - hi! I see you!
Oh, hey, we're hiring an open access librarian! Yes! I have had arguments over margaritas and nail polish with faculty friends about predatory publishing and the bull-poop model the industry is trying to claim as the *only* alternative of having places pay to publish? OMG angry flaming face. Yes, making a journal costs money and no, I don't want to further perpetuate the model of expecting faculty (usually junior of disadvantaged in other ways) to provide free labor WHICH IS ALREADY HAPPENING SO DON'T PRETEND IT ISN'T, but since they're not getting huge raises every year and digital storage and delivery costs clearly aren't going up, is it too much to ask where all that extra cash is actually going?? hmmmmm??? I'm not even saying anarchy and free love and research! I'm just saying could you try pricing in a way that wouldn't make an extortion racket blush? [also I want to know what you pivoted to, but that's probably more of an academia: wtf thread]
Holy cow! That's a whole different window into things. Thanks for sharing this perspective. Is there still a process for customers to request the library buy certain physical books? Or has that been done away with in favor of this streaming-type model?
You can still request a specific book, definitely! I know when I was doing the ordering, I was always super appreciative of genuine requests because that's a guaranteed use. You're always looking for return on investment, and it's sad to think of the money spent on a book that never circulates - if I know something has at least one guaranteed reader, I'd bump it to the top of the priority list (within reason). It's also a lot easier to do for physical books - I know libraries all have individual contracts with their vendors that are customized for their user base to an extent (which is why some library systems seem to have so many duplicate copies of all the popular books), but they can still go in and request certain titles. In the system we used, for example, a certain number of ebooks were added to the catalog and looked like normal ebooks, but we didn't "own" them until they'd been borrowed 3 times; at the end of each contract year we'd get an itemized list and could veto/add items up to our budget, and it was also possible to add on targeted purchases proactively. (There was so much fuckery afoot in this arrangement I'm having to restrain myself from typing a full on rant, FYI)
This is also knocking loose an old memory from a different library I worked at - we had a deal with one of our physical book vendors that they'd send a slew of duplicate hardback copies of popular bestseller books, but we were basically just renting them. We rented them for cheaper than it would be to buy them, and we weren't left with dozen of copies of each Dan Brown book or whatever. The returns were resold in bulk to places like Books A Million (do those still exist?) to live on those clearance racks near the front of the store, sometimes with the clear library dust jacket still on.
Your comments are making me pine for a deep dive into the economics of libraries. I'd assume something that used to be relatively straightforward is now incredibly complex.
Second this! Also partly so I can be a supportive library patron and not make things harder for my local librarians! I live in a small town that’s part of our provincial library network, and I request a LOT of interlibrary loans (physical books). Is that still ok? I think it’s better than borrowing ebooks but would love to be corrected if I’m having a negative impact on my favourite local institution!
If this isn't a Rich Text topic I don't know what is. So much I'm learning here!
I feel like our kids don’t browse libraries anymore either in the same way we used to growing up because most things arent even in the library, they’re on hold or traveling around - but this might be a city (specifically NYC thing). Or maybe the small number of things that are able to physically be at a library seems paltry and these days and not worth our browsing time.
Librarian-in-training here! I think it's a weird (to me -- Gen Xer) combo of product overwhelm + general sense of being strapped for time & attention + having so many things curated by algorithms (often driven by commercial goals), the whole thing bearded as "personalization". So we're becoming accustomed to something else making our associations for us. Although, to be fair, any organizational scheme or finding scheme is an associational scheme at some level -- Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress groups connections, some of which are now contested -- but at least they're not black box, and the logic/ illogic) is visible.
Maybe this is just product overwhelm everywhere: books, TV, podcasts. And then lists and curation to deal with it. I even get a little overwhelmed by the CS recommendations because I’m thinking did everyone get through the LAST list of recommendations already? I know I don’t have to dive into each list of recommendations but the existence of those lists fuels that capitalist induced sense of not being good enough….
It IS everywhere, and anxiety-inducing. But I'd still take recos from actual people over an algorithm any day. (And no, I don't get to even 1/100th of what people suggest here on CS -- so many good recos!)
I started pre-ordering library books during the pandemic when the building was closed and that was our only option for getting books. I still occasionally browse but I do like that if I see a book I'm interested in while I'm reading things online (including this substack!) I can just place a request for it.
Or.....maybe it’s the internet....
I'm a big library holder. We have a huge county library system, there is no way my local library has any of the books that are currently being reviewed in stock. So I get on the waiting list and don't mind if I'm number 297, because I have other books that I'm closer in line for. I even pause holds (when I remember) if I think I will end up with too many at the same time. Inevitably, I do wind up with 5 books at the same time, and some I just have to let go without picking up.
Another librarian here! One of our main metrics is how many items we circulate each month and each year. High circulation numbers, and higher numbers month over month, justify our budget and any increases we ask for. But we're also now having to show how many items DON'T circulate. A sure bet for more circs is to buy more copies of that NYTimes bestseller and the books with the most holds on them. But we also want to have books that aren't as popular, that people can discover while they're browsing, and that make our collection interesting. Those books they can check out while they wait for their holds to come in. When people browse less, fewer of those items check out, leading to a higher number of never circulated materials.
Yikes, I had never thought about it deeply, but I'm sure book club/ book club social media is a piece of this as well. My book club generally tries not to read only the trendy books--partially because the wait times at the libraries are SO LONG. But at the same time, you want to read them before they go out of fashion and no one remembers all the little details any more. Spoiler-culture comes into play too.
I never even thought of spoiler-culture! I've never been part of a book club and it's only now with the availability of the ebook apps from the library that I'm so tuned into the popular current books. But spoilers! Ugh.
I'm not sure which reply to reply to so everyone in the thread sees it, so I'm posting here:
HELLOOOOO, fellow librarians! Although I'm just starting my 2nd year in an MLIS, I'm working remotely for my school's Open Scholarship Commons, so I'm really excited about OA & all the opens (and interested in what can be done with the tools & ethos in the public space, too!). And a hearty "Oh, hell, YES" to everything that Megan & Alisia said. Subscription services are almost always overpriced, whether they're to you as an individual buyer but especially for institutions. It's rent-seeking, and the cost of library materials has increased at a rate that's close to vertical on a line graph, whereas inflation over the last 20-30 years has only actually pushed up at a moderate angle (maybe 25* angle? -- trying to give a visual in words....)
Bahaha I love the graph in words! And I definitely want to rage read those now! I did my degree in 04/05, but it was absolutely not on the radar in our curriculum. Now I want to get back on the discord with the Culture Study library peeps! I just kept getting flattened by my adhd when I had it on my computer so I took it off!
Oooh, I didn't know there was a Culture Study on Discord! My whole cohort lives on Discord. I will jog right over and join that server right now. Thx for the tip. (And I swear all the social media induces temporary adhd...)
If you would like to get *really* good and angry about this stuff (and the surveillance economy in general), take a look at Sarah Lamdan's *Data Cartels* and/ or Shoshana Zhuboff's *The Age of Surveillance Capitalism*. Lamdan's is shorter, and in some ways more polemical, but very, very thoroughly sourced, so you can always check her sources to see if you agree with her take. Zhuboff's is wayyyy larger (the book is a good 3"-4" from front to back), and takes a much larger view, but worth reading in spurts.
I don't have insight into the retail customer satisfaction survey, but my sister was in charge of documenting "Patient Experience" at hospitals for a few years. Filling out those surveys (good or bad) has HUGE impacts on funding and reputation for hospitals (in Press Ganey rankings), and can potentially make or break careers.
Because the people who fill them out are either the highly satisfied or highly unsatisfied patients, the negatives are taken very seriously (probably due to a justified fear of litigation). But what my sister did was lots of legwork to investigate why certain people were getting negative feedback--and in one case she found out that supposedly "negligent" nurses were actually impeded from hearing patients verbally call out because the air conditioning unit above the Nurses Station was too loud.
I would love to read about your sister's job and the resulting insights. Interesting stuff.
Oh man i also work in the medical field, though not in direct patient care, and net promoter scores (NPS) from patient surveys are GOSPEL TRUTH. Trying to break away from using NPS as a metric for shit that doesn’t even make sense - like say, a diversity workshop for employees - is like pulling teeth. But on the patient side of things it is very important for “service recovery” to address negative responses to essentially right wrongs or prevent things from happening again (because “wrongs” in a medical setting can be actually deadly!). But as someone who previously worked in nonprofit and gov sectors it is WEIRD for me to see this much focus on NPS as the be all end all metric for success.
That's a rich text in the business world - why, oh why is the Net Promoter Score (NPS) *still* so overhyped and overused and misapplied, after 20 years!
The link below is one of the classic and still excellent criticisms, by User Experience (UX) expert Jared Spool. Since then, Jared and his 'Measuring Usability' (measuringu.com) team have gone much deeper down the rabbit hole of "well, what alternatives to NPS would work instead?" and they have reams of quantitative findings to support their analysis. Highly recommend for anyone curious about actual useful data-driven metrics.
Essay on NPS Considered Harmful:
https://articles.centercentre.com/net-promoter-score-considered-harmful-and-what-ux-professionals-can-do-about-it/
This is SO FASCINATING to me, and also I think part of a generational divide? or maybe geographic? or both?
I have 100% never even considered the possibility of pre-ordering anything (other than, like, classic takeout). Once in a while I'm somewhere where I see that happening and just feel like I am on another planet. Similarly, it's never occurred to me to order groceries for delivery. Even when we all had Covid we had a friend get groceries for us. But I recently found that I know people who do this all the time, and again there's just this strange feeling of disconnection.
I guess the general idea of purchases being done 'on an app' is maybe the larger picture here. I've never done that, but I'm sure a lot of younger people/people in cities do all the time.
I'd love to think about how that changes relationship to business, changes the things people buy, etc.
We do so much of our shopping online, including groceries. One way it’s changing things is that my kid hardly ever spends time in stores and doesn’t really experience physical shopping much as he’s never had to do that thing of being dragged around from store to store by a parent.
The customer service surveys at my old job were used to keep employees from getting raises if every customer didn’t give a 5 out of 5 for every question. Like, their issue could have been that the elevator in the building was slow, but it wasn’t all 5s and so you got less of a raise (which was already less than a standard COLA).
How awful! I always try to answer staff questions with all 5 stars, but sometimes you want the company to know that their app didn't work correctly, etc. Sucks to know at least at that place they don't care the reason for the less than 5 stars.
I hate knowing that the results are used in the ways they are. It's a dehumanizing system that puts everyone in a shitty position. Potentially placing someone else's livelihood in your hands, like you're saying, impacts the ability to give honest feedback and you're left with either not reporting problems out of solidarity with workers or saying hey, something's not great here, and feeling complicit in the company's bad behavior if that's misused. I completed one of those phone surveys recently that used the 1-10 scale and it was so stressful- I remember reading a few years back about systems that weren't recognizing the 1-0 and processing it as a 1, so people were saying to rate 9, but then what if 9 instead of 10 is a substantive difference for performance metrics, and so on. Gah.
Exactly this!!!
I wonder how the death of internet cookies is connected? The proliferation of individual apps is related to this (if you can't get 3rd party cookies you need to gather that data directly) and once you have an app... well might as well add pre-ordering.
on the pre order system -- if it was google, then it’s all “backend ops” meaning that google has someone (likely in an indian call center) call the phone number and place the order if they don’t have an online system. this has caused immense consternation with many businesses because they want to control their own flow of business and have decided (or not decided) to create an ordering system. this is also how google updates listings, by using people who call the business and ask for hours. yelp may also do this, they appear to.
uber grub hub has done this too -- to hilarious results in some cases. this is a gem of that era https://www.readmargins.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-arbitrage
That story about pizza arbitrage was WILD
Does pre-ordering also cover drive/pick up from grocery stores, big box stores? Because I would love to hear about that (or maybe I wouldn't, since I am heavily invested in it now).
Oh god, it's a nightmare and yet I use it every day. It wouldn't suck so much if Starbucks would staff for it, but meanwhile, the baristas are flat out most of the time. Pity the baristas at my local right next to a high school (imagine dozens, I kid you not, of brightly colored iced drinks waiting for pickup at any moment between 7:15 and 7:55) and the grade school (picture dozens of a greater variety waiting for moms after dropoff). I don't know why any of them stay.
To be honest, the social interaction wasn't that great even before we could order online, though.
Pre-orders... ugh such a good one!!
This has probably been done before, but it’s front of mine as I’m in the thick of it - kids packed lunches for school! When/why did they become so performative with the bento boxes and the expectation to include so many different components.
you can also connect this to the type of parenting that aims to control but actually ends up just taking a ton of agency from the kid — I feel like I actually learned a lot about my tastes (and what lasts until noon, lol) from packing my lunch pretty much from 2nd grade on!
That reminds a lot of this piece, which I thought was spot-on
https://www.thecut.com/2023/03/what-does-helicopter-parenting-do-to-kids.html
I think about that piece constantly, bless Kathryn
I have a theory! The performance of motherhood on social media is so interesting, and how that translates to the real world. I had kids cookbooks and childrens magazines that had "food crafts" and "lunchbox ideas" as a child in the 90s, but the narrative was that I, the child, would be making these crafts with a parent or guardian. It was an activity. But since social media is consumed by adults, those "cute lunches" are now chores for parents to perform loving motherhood, rather than a nice thing to do with your kid on the occasional rainy day.
Yep, it's all part of performative parenthood, in my opinion. If it doesn't look good in a square picture with a caption, is there any value in it all? (Needless to say, my kids have been making their lunches since second grade - they're 16 and 13 now.)
I’m earlier in the parenthood journey so for me, it’s baby-led weaning. I’m guessing exclusive breast feeding leads to BLW which morphs into fancy lunchboxes? There’s so much pressure there on how to feed your child that feels like it’s a way of transferring adult diet anxieties into “healthy” / “caring for your child” behaviors
there's absolutely a line there and it's covered in homemade baby food
Yesssss it is. Recently was in this baby phase and this resonates as true for me.
When my daughter was about 1, and going from milk to food, I remember asking her pediatrician how to go about it. Herself a mother of 3, and supremely sensible, she looked at me calmly and said, "You just give her food. You know, whatever you're eating. Just smoosh it up a little so she doesn't choke." And that was that. Thank god for that advice. There were so many paths towards debilitating anxiety, and she just cut them all off in one go.
I find that once things are named, they take on a life/culture/connotation of their own. It helped when people asked "what we were doing" about weaning to say, "we give them food," similar to how Anne's pediatrician framed it. Using the name, "Baby Led Weaning" indicated an adherence to a whole Thing, rather than just describing the action.
Virginia Sole Smith has some excellent work here! She's got an article on school lunches and how it's all tied up with a bunch of diet culture/fat phobia/control/motherhood/barf. I will have to dig around and find it but it is excellent work. The person behind Yummy Toddler Food does a nice job reality checking those perfect bento boxes sometimes. I remember when I had to start packing my kids lunches. I hate it. I hate the mental load. I hate the work. But there were requirements around what could we could pack that came from the daycare! We had to include a vegetable no matter what. We couldn't do 2 servings of fruit if our kid was going through a no veggies phase. Ugh.
Oh that would result in a Strongly Worded Email from me about not controlling kids’ food choices. Restrictions because of an allergy in class? You got it, no prob. Telling me how much fruit/veg my kid should bring to daycare? Absolutely not.
My sister in law was telling us about these kinds of restrictions at my nephew’s school, and I was losing my mind. They are so strict—they will confiscate food from their lunch boxes if there are two “treats”! My nephew is super picky so he is essentially going hungry. It is unbelievable. My kid isn’t in school yet and I am DREADING having to deal with something like this, because I’m with you—I would make a fuss about it—but how much of a fuss might/will be required?? It stresses me out.
YES!!!!
There are whole instagram accounts dedicated to kid lunch packing. It's bonkers.
I had to stop because they gave me mad anxiety and I got paralyzed packing my kids lunches. There's nothing I love about summer more than NOT having to do it.
I don’t have kids so I’m far removed from this but I’m very curious to read more about school lunch expectations. When I was in elementary school in the early 80s, I remember it being very NOT cool to get hot lunch, which seems weird since it signals having money to pay for it.
I don't know about the 80s, but at my kids' elementary school, the kids who got hot lunch did so because it was subsidized - free and reduced lunch. Families with the resources to do so sent lunches with their kids.
This is one reason we do not have our kids pack their lunches. 91% of their school qualifies F/R lunches, and if that food is good enough for the poor kids, it's good enough for mine. Also, to be honest, since they started eating cafeteria lunches, they are significantly more adventurous/tolerable eaters at home.
Yep! Plus, the schools get more funding if more kids indicate they'll be eating hot lunch, regardless of whether the families are able to pay for it. I didn't know that until my kids were out of elementary school, or I would have signed them up.
I want to drop this here, from a 1999 Salon article: "An expatriate mom in Japan learns that a dewhiskered Hello Kitty rice ball in her child's lunch could forever condemn her as a rotten mother." I went to college with the author and was dumbfounded at the pressure she was under to perform mothering perfectly. https://www.salon.com/1999/01/19/feature_389/
It seems to be influencing the older kids, as well. My middle daughter is in 7th grade, and she loves the bento trend because she likes lots of variety. But I think there's also pressure from friends and social media to include certain types of foods.
Those yard signs for kids schools. The most common, that I've seen, is to celebrate graduation. But there's also signs for announcing kids' participation in sports or activities. And this weekend, I started seeing signs for students who are *going* to start at a school (like, an incoming freshman at St. Rita or whatever).
I kind of hate these signs. I was on board with the graduation ones, but as they expand to encompass more of the kids' lives, I find them obnoxious. It's like the social media mentality of broadcasting life choices for an audience is being reproduced IRL. In cities, they also seem like such a blatant projection of class status, as they're often advertising the most selective or expensive schools. I wish kids could just, like, go to school and do their thing and not have it be projected to strangers on the street.
Yeah, what is the *point* of them if it's not to project your class status?
Ok wow yes -- have these have REALLY popped the last five years or was I never really an age to notice them before??
I feel like they really bloomed during the pandemic, when maybe it was the only way to sort of celebrate a graduating senior, and then just kept expanding.
No they are definitely a new thing.
One of the local high schools (the rich one, of course) takes professional photos of their student athletes in their uniforms and makes LIFE SIZE BANNERS that they put around the school, and they eventually make their way home with the students and into their yards. The 18"x24" plastic signs seem so tame in comparison!
It feels like another version of bumper stickers and how ridiculous those became in terms of performative parenting and identity/status signaling
Our public elementary school sells those signs as a fundraiser for their end-of-year party. It's definitely not just a class signaling thing here.
Haley Neumann / Maybe Baby recently brought up one I've been thinking about lately...the casual, constant mentions of how we're all living in "hell", said cynically but meant emphatically, for supposedly obvious reasons.
There's both the truth of this hell—the terror of the climate crisis, the alarming way that modern society fails to truly care for its member, an ongoing ignored pandemic that's turning into the biggest mass disabling event, the fall of capitalism, the widening wealth gap, shootings at supermarkets and microplastics in our hearts.
And there's the absolute inanity and emptiness of hearing this sentiment expressed by those with roofs over their heads, food in the fridge, decent jobs, modern conveniences, freedom and rights, loving friends or families, living in low crime areas. People with access to books and antibiotics and shoes with arch supports.
Especially when we consider what our ancestors who regularly lived through (or died in) actual hells like winter starvation, serfdom, plague, colonization, religious persecution and more would have thought of our current "hellscape."
I'm so curious about why this is pervasive now, why we think we're entitled to more, what would it mean to NOT be in hell, in what ways is this attitude contributing to the ways this hell is real, do people in horrifically worse circumstances constantly comment on hell, is this suffering somehow sanctified (possibly with religious roots) and ennobled, etc.
Yes! This was the newsletter that pushed me to a paid subscription. So good!
Love this point!
Oh I LOVE this.
Absolutely fascinating. Need to know more!
YES, this!
Young, highly competitive athletes suffering cardiac episodes, potentially related to overconsumption of "pre-workout" powders, mixes, etc. and extrapolate that to how certain kinds of drug taking is not only ok, but preferred, and it is obviously super dangerous??? It's not not doping, right? And how the pursuit of exercise and athleticism is considered Morally Good even if its maybe Bodily Bad
I'd also love a deep dive into what happens to the thousands of kids who tear up their bodies chasing the dream and then don't make any $$. They've sacrificed so much, maybe even through college years and have a body to prove it, but they don't always have a back-up plan. I think this happens way more to men then women, just because of the economics, but I think about it a lot. Like the 38 year old minor league baseball player, or the NFL practice squad guy who never gets his chance, but his body is destroyed. (Been thinking about it with Damar Hamlin coming back this year too...)
I have a cousin who was a promising athlete in high school until a car accident, which meant she could no longer play sports. Overnight she lost her sports community. Her coach was no longer her best friend, etc. She had hard times for many years as a result of losing her status, identity, and value to the community. However it happens, that has got to be a painful transition for many athletes. It was especially painful in her case.
Yes, I think there's a lot to mine about what happens when athletes lose their status, identity, and community. I think within that topic, one could even explore how former athletes' grief about their losses often manifests as anger. In my community, there's a real pipeline between "used to be a local minor hockey star" and "is now abusive to his family" and/or "is now really susceptible to reactionary politics and conspiracy theories".
Interesting. Also sad. In some cases, that can also be a fast track toward developing addiction issues. Americans are, after all, encouraged to identify with our jobs and/or our roles to unhealthy degree. That’s gotta be a bumpy transition for many of us.
Yes! Or what about the ones who do "make it" to some extent but aren't stars, are told at 26 that they're basically old, and have devoted themselves to their sport at the expense of other things. What do they do in the inevitable, long after? How do they cope? Sports therapists are becoming more accepted, I think, but do any of them use just regular therapy to process when it ends? I started to really enjoy both hockey and baseball in grad school and, oops, can't turn the brain off while watching the sports. (I think it's also partly that I expect to reach my professional peak in my 50s, probably, and I'm in my 30s now. Trying to imagine myself as being PAST a professional peak just...doesn't compute.)
I swam competitively in college. Several women on my team had at least one shoulder replaced before coming to college.
“Morally Good even if it’s maybe Bodily Bad” is going to stick with me! My 18 yo niece has already had a knee surgery and recently recovered from a broken collarbone but there continues to be a ton of praise for her athleticism and no one is pausing to see if she’s listening to her body, etc.
I think we’ve gotten BETTER about this (important of rest days, etc.) but I think American culture will always still break toward pushing to one’s limits and always praising those who do 🙃 I hope your niece develops a relationship with her body where she does listen to it!
I am a big major league baseball fan and I think about this a lot. The fact that Tommy John surgery (elbow ligament repair/replacement surgery that has a many months if not years long recovery time) seems to be accepted and basically assumed for many pitchers throughout their careers, sometimes twice. Sure, pitchers are pitching with higher and higher velocities, but what if...they didn't, and surgery was no longer seen as an occupational hazard? Seems like a bit of a Jurassic Park "we could but we didn't think about if we should" situation.
I was just speaking with a friend of mine about this. He's in his late 60s currently and did wrestling from late elementary through high school. And he quit after his last high school season because of heart problems - in the 1960s! Before most of the performative garbage vitamins and beverages came on the market. My mind was blown, I thought this body wrecking for athleticism was a newer thing. But he was sharing with me how much coaches pushed back then, and with the way masculine culture was coded in those days, it was typically rougher, meaner, and full of shaming. I'd love to learn more about the comparisons between the trends today vs when they started (when did this start?)
Thank you for this prompt! My entire world view is shaped as, "what is at stake? and who gets to decide?" (Anthropology/English lit educated lol) I feel like I am always looking for Rich Texts! Some I am dying to see:
1. Celebrity podcasts
2. Skims
3. Paw Patrol
4. Meme crimes
5. Love Island
6. The terrifying concept my partner has clocked as "Everything getting worse all the time"--more expensive for less services/goods, reduced capacity of social and public services across the board, the meme crimes, the insane book banning in schools, etc. etc. etc.
YES to “everything gets worse all the time” -- I especially feel like algorithms are ruining the world by optimizing towards “what is the worst version of (literally any thing) that consumers will tolerate, and what is the most money they will pay for it.”
having worked in the departments (data science & engineering of corps) where this work happens, i can confirm that this is literally the goal. continuously modify products toward jointly maximized profit and minimized cost.
could expound for days on the extent of impacts of this optimization and just how disconnected the 24 year old engineers who deploy this work are from those impacts and how unresponsible they feel and act. i started talking about how algorithms enshrine and propagate discrimination in 2015, but what i didn’t anticipate fully was just how pervasive the enshittening would be... indeed many have spilt good ink on it across the webs about this.
Cory Doctorow has coined the memorable "enshittification" to describe this process.
Enshittification is such a good and useful word. New to me and instantly in my forever-lexicon.
The documentary The Social Dilemma gets into this in a deeply unsettling way.
oh god, this is a great way to describe it
What is going on with Paw Patrol?? It makes me so uncomfortable but I can't articulate why.
EXACTLY! The “copaganda” of it all and the chokehold it has on 3-4 yo’s!!
And also how it's such a thinly veiled ploy to sell toys (there's even a wink at that in the movie). I'm convinced they make the toys first and write episodes around whatever merchandise is in the pipeline.
One thing I've noticed is that all the adults are silly, and the one person who is smart/ takes action is a young white boy, Rider- he makes all the decisions, and consistently 'saves the day'
I think this is wish fulfillment for kids and as such is a common trope in kid-oriented media. Kids are very much controlled by the adults around them, esp in our "optimize every minute of their existence for future success or they'll die a horrible death" parenting culture (highly marketized). And we can seem so arbitrary and screwy to them (who isn't, from time to time?) So this trope is one way for kids to carve out some space where they make sense & the adults can't seem to, where they aren't always the learners (which can involve some sense of being incomplete, unfinished, or wrong, i.e., needing *fixing*).
For Paw Patrol, try here: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/aug/11/puppet-pups-is-paw-patrol-authoritarian-propaganda-in-disguise
YES! I hate PP and have kept my kids away from it with a vengeance that surely is subconcious, since it's very out of line with my personality. YET my daughter's daycare shows them it, and she's absorbed so much about the characters and concept that it's terrifying.
To your #6, Vox had a helpful video and article awhile back about how products are crappier. tl;dr: capitalism! https://www.vox.com/videos/2023/2/9/23592998/consumerism-quality-decline-technology-fashion
But I hadn't thought about it in terms of goods and services in this framework, too. Is it just that stuff we now have a higher standard, because "luxury" experiences are aggressively marketed to more than just the ultra-rich? Is it a result of social media/the internet making us aware that the grass will always appear greener elsewhere? Someone please write this master's thesis, then share it.
Yes to all of this! I think the experience of flying these days could be a good microcosm for all of this lol
I just read somewhere (probably C.S. or related, but can’t think of the exact source) that companies have pushed costs towards consumers by cutting costs in areas that cause consumer experience to be crappier/harder. They train less and provide fewer resources, resulting in the consumer investing more time into getting better/appropriate help. And that feels related to this point.
Examples were underfunded post offices, which means it takes longer to get out of there; and poorly staffed/trained call centers for support lines which mean the consumer spends more time waiting and getting transferred repeatedly before they can get an issue resolved.
Poorly trained staff at call centers who are overly reliant on a script! Omg, yes!!!
This would explain why whenever possible, I go in person to a store and wait for in-the-flesh assistance to help me, rather than sit on hold and get kicked around from person to person for hours. Our state's unemployment system only allows you to sort out most things over the phone, or via *fax* (murder me pls) and nothing else drives me up the wall faster. Yet to your point, the companies/groups doing this aren't losing money over my customer dissatisfaction, because they know I must go forth with the help even when it's like pulling teeth. Argh.
One deep dive into “everything getting worse all the time” is Luke O’Neil’s first book, and ongoing newsletter, both called Welcome to Hell World. I love his writing.
What are meme crimes?
I don't know if there is a documented definition, but this summer in DC there seems to be rampant, a sort of brazen commitment of crimes due to the knowledge that there won't be prosecution, as well as flash mod style shoplifting. Things like this: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-16/smash-and-grabs-flash-mob-robberies-shopper-fear-retailer-concern
The lack of pockets in women's clothing.
I know I've read an article or two on this before, but want to read more. It drives me crazy!! My 8 month old consistently has more pockets than I do. And for what?! Baby keys?!
As someone who never uses pockets when I have them (sensory issues, SO UNCOMFORTABLE to have things attached to my body like that), I am always noticing all the ads for women's clothes that emphasize that they have pockets. So, in general, pocket discourse.
See also: wedding dresses with pockets. Huge selling point sometimes. Now, can photos look sharper wigh hands in pockets? 100% yes. But on the whole if there’s ever a time you dont need a pocket… it’s in a wedding dress.
It’s always driven me nuts how pockets can be a selling point on A-line skirts or dresses while women’s pants might not even have them.
Oh I totally disagree. You absolutely need pockets in a wedding dress to hold a tissue, your vows, whatever else you need! My wedding dress was custom and I specifically added pockets because of course.
Makes total sense! I guess my thought process was on your wedding day you’ll have people around who can hold that stuff for you vs in everyday life BUT I also prefer not to have to ask so adding them does make sense!
and the size of the pockets compared to the things people carry. WTF. My phone and wallet barely fit into my jeans/athleisure pants back pockets. I am old enough to remember that the pockets used to be bigger
OMG YES THIS
And even when dresses or whatever do have pockets, they're often comically small. Like, this thing has a full circle skirt, you can literally hide a hardcover book in here, no need for the teensy pockets!