Is it the end of an era, or am I just getting old?

Surprise Me

July 28, 2023

Two women, one painted in green and one in orange, both with dark hair and fairly abstract, sit with their knees bent, in conversation. The background is vibrant oranges, greens, and pinks.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Nackte Mädchen unterhalten sich

I've been wondering if social media is finally, truly, really, over for me. This isn't a trend analysis so much as a personal gut-check: I have no intention of joining Threads. The death throes of Twitter fail to interest me; I emotionally divested years ago. Alternatives like Mastodon or Bluesky? I don't care enough to figure out how to use them. My approach to TikTok remains anti-social. And Instagram has been off my phone for a few months now—I just log in once a week in-browser to check my messages.

Nagging sub-questions: Is this the end of a media era, or is it just me getting old? Is it because I'm now established in my career and don't feel the pressure to produce for free in these more public spaces? Is it because I prefer the affirming little community of this newsletter to anything a tech entrepreneur could possibly offer me at this point?

Yes, I think, to all of the above. I am both comfortably middle-aged and the enshittification is complete. It's a privilege to opt out, and a pleasure.

-AF

READ

Natalie Adler on the rise of rich-person minimalism in an era when so many people are hungry. And Planet Money's Greg Rosalsky reports on affirmative action for rich people, which remains firmly in place.

Pink is the oldest color, explains Kasha Patel. And Elvia Limón on being a Barbie girl in a first-gen immigrant world.

“Keep honking, it’s empty!” Kari Paul reports on the group of activists stopping self-driving cars in San Francisco.

Carrie Battan reports on what's going on inside the family business of Dr. Bronner's.

"If 100 million years can easily wear the Himalayas flat, what chance will San Francisco or New York have?" Peter Brannan asks if the anthropocene is really a new “epoch” of geological time... or were we always destined to be a blip?

And a great roundup of stuff from the writing fellows this week: Paige Curtis with a hike to remember (your favorite rom-com wishes it were this cute!). Vera Blossom diagrams a hot engine. And 2022 fellow Celia Mattison with the summer movie roundup I needed.

PIE CHART

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LOOK & LISTEN

Mikki Halpin catalogs all the times artists and activists used Barbie to fuck shit up. Louise Bourgeois peels an orange. A peek inside the world's last internet cafes.

A MOMENT

The crown of Sinead O'Connor's head is visible above a photo of the pope, which she is about to tear in half.

An iconic act of protest, a prescient commentary on which people really pose a danger to society, and a reminder that what goes down in history as brave is always vilified in the moment. "I’m not sorry I did it. It was brilliant,” Sinéad O'Connor said in 2021. “But it was very traumatizing.”

"She was owed so many apologies that she never got," writes Hanif Abdurraqib. "I’m glad we had her for a while. So glad she shared herself with us."

All I want to do is just sit here
And write it all down and rest for a while.

THE CLASSIFIEDS

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Write your book. Finish your project. Make it happen. Homework Club. For artists and other weirdos. By Beth Pickens and Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.

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A CALL FOR ADVICE Qs

Writing fellow Vera Blossom wants your gender, sex, and romance quandaries! These will be for Advice Editions of her newsletter (read the first installment here), which are, metaphorically, "all of us sitting around a table, having a kiki, gabbing, and laughing."

Girlhood, adulthood, queerness, political praxis... it's all on the table. Send your questions to dearverablossom@gmail.com or leave an anonymous message at 3words.ngl.link/cuteflesh.

Also, a related reminder that social media is a tenuous place for people who write about sex and relationships, especially through a queer lens. I was reminded of this yet again when Vera was suspended from Instagram this week. To support the unfiltered work of queer writers, subscribing is always better than following. Sign up for Vera's newsletter here!

TESTIMONIALS

"This this THIS. I never knew I felt this about Barbie and baby dolls till I read this. Thank you." -Grace. It's funny because when I saw the Barbie movie I was like, "Oh, Greta Gerwig makes the very point I made in last week's newsletter within the first 5 seconds of this film." Clearly many of us feel this way!

This newsletter is not on Threads.

Forward it to someone who refuses to be enshittified.