Emchap’s Shit from the Internet 1/23/19 🍠
I spend approximately 70% of my waking hours fucking around on Twitter, which means that periodically I have something go micro-viral. Not, like, "did a rottweiler write this" viral, but something I tweet will get retweeted by some famous-in-my-corner-of-the-internet person, and I'll get 200 likes rather than my normal double digits at best.
Previously, this happened with a dumb screenshot of a Jon Cho profile that Nicole Cliffe retweeted. This week, however, it happened with my online dating profile, which is of a very different emotional tenor!
The tweet was picked up by Captain Awkward, who writes an advice blog that I like a very great deal and have been reading for years and years; to a lesser extent it was amplified by Josh Fruhlinger (a person I know in real life who also writes a very funny blog about newspaper comics) responding and twitter's snitch-engagement algorithm bumping that into folks' feeds; engagement from both continued to boost the visibility of the tweet for other folks rather than letting it blip out of existence like might normally happen.
I like both of these people and respect their work and hope that Josh continues to allow me to tell dumbass jokes about tree law on his comedy show. But! It was a reminder that the risk of that sort of weird micro-virality is being exposed to other peoples' audiences.
With Josh, this was less of an issue—there's not-insignificant overlap in our Twitter followers, and as far as I can tell the boosting that Twitter did mostly just exposed the tweet to more of the folks in that overlapping bubble than would have seen it otherwise. But, with Captain Awkward's audience, that's not the case, and my "senpai noticed me" cheer at the original retweet was replaced with some concern about who was going to wander into my mentions on a somewhat personal (even if joking) tweet.
Though I love her work and recommend it constantly to everyone, I find many of the participants in the Captain's community somewhat trying. This isn't because of anything she does, to be clear; she's very funny and very kind and her blog has helped me through some deeply difficult times. But her audience (geeky advice seekers) can tend towards very literal and very tenderhearted in a way that does not always play well with comedy or with anything other than an arms-wide-open acceptance of all God's creatures.
This isn't specific to the Captain, to be clear—Nicole Cliffe's audience contains a lot of internet Christians/fringier bits of former Toast readers that have the same sort of Deal—but the Jon Cho tweet she boosted didn't have nearly the same sort of personal note that the OKCupid profile did.
It's easy to tell anyone including oneself to not read the comments, but of course I did. Knowing what's good for you and actually doing it are two totally separate things. And—to be clear—most of them were funny, or at least nice. One was creepy and sexual because the internet is gross.
One person (not of the gender I was advertising for in the post, not in my geographic area, not someone I was attracted to, not single) said that I seemed very negative, which of course bothered me because it's something I'm not-so-secretly afraid of because the patriarchy forces us all to internalize a goal of being likable to everyone even when that is actively counter to our other goals of finding good life partners or not having to deal with tedious people online. (This did lead to Captain Awkward calling me a "professional comedian" in my defense, which caused my heart to grow three sizes.)
But on some level, the criticism that the irritating person raised is in fact kind of the point. I'm cute and in my late 20s and living in a major metro; the volume of people is such that I really do in fact want to filter out the folks who want a Catan partner or a hiking buddy or to go out with me once before revealing that they are poly and that they will try to logic me out of jealousy while explaining libertarianism to me.
Engagement on the tweets seems to be dying down, and no real damage has been done, but it was a weird beginning to an already-weird between-jobs week, and a reminder that I am trying to put fewer things online that are really close to my also-very-tender-I-read-CA-too heart. It is not useful to throw my whole self out in public.
Shit to read
I finished up Kids These Days yesterday, and if you are at all interested in sociology books or in Millennials, it is a million percent worth picking up.
For everyone watching the Fyre documentaries at home I really need you to understand that the same dumbass white dude overconfidence grift works in venture-funded tech all the time in a way that we will probably eventually have to reckon with.
Play this realistic teen witch simulator, it is SO GOOD. Brought me back to doing a Samhain ritual in my playhouse structure in the backyard when I was like 13. (My Renaissance Faire necklace on a cord was a griffin, though.)
I'm watching 27 Dresses tonight.
A great primer on the context of the LA Teachers' strike.
Hell yeah heavy bitches lifting heavy shit. (My sister, who is a fat woman who's also a gold medal weightlifter who can squad 407 lbs, said that I was the third person to send this to her.)
This is my actual nightmare, though my hope is that being a picky bitch will prevent it.
I liked this piece on cooking and labor and recognition but also think that this woman maybe needs better people in her life and to stop trying to show off for garbage children.
I remember the Harry Potter erotic fanfiction banning discussed in this piece on the rise and fall of LiveJournal and recommend the article with my whole early-2000s internet trash heart.
Shit to eat
Go somewhere cold.
Resent it.
When you return home and are feeling jetlagged and migrainy and peevish, resolve to make something nourishing.
Peel and chop a knob of ginger into small pieces. This will be from the ginger you bought a year ago and stuck in the freezer, because the quantities ginger is sold in and the quantities with which it is used to cook the kind of food you cook are wildly different.
Put a dutch oven over medium heat with some oil in it, and once it is hot toss in your chopped ginger and a few minced cloves of garlic.
Cut up an onion into relatively even pieces, and toss that in there as well.
Find a sweet potato in your root vegetable drawer, and half-heartedly peel it. You will take a chunk out of your knuckles, and consider it a tribute to the kitchen god.
Attempted to evenly dice it but know that it doesn't really matter, and once you've given it your best shot, toss it into the pot.
Put in a teaspoon of cumin and a quarter teaspoon of red pepper, and stir everything around until the sweet potato is a little darker or you get bored. (Five minutes or so.)
Add in a can of tomato paste if you have it, or 3/4 of a can from the last thing you cooked if you have that. Sort of mash it in in an attempt to stir it all together.
Add half a cup of the natural peanut butter that we're supposed to eat like lifestyle bloggers who claim that sugar is "too sweet" and season with some coconut-derived bullshit instead, and which we keep in our pantries alongside the good peanut butter that we actually like.
Stir everything together and add 4-6 cups of broth or water. The recipe says 6 cups, but you know that 6 cups produces a bananas amount of stew.
Cover the pot and turn the heat to high.
Rise and chop a bunch of collard greens or whatever big leafy tough thing is eaten where you live. Discard the stems if you're a coward. Toss them into the pot.
Once the soup boils, uncover it and simmer for 15 minutes.
Add salt. I used something like half a tablespoon of very salty kosher salt. Live your truth. Read Salt Fat Acid Heat.
Immersion blend everything.
Serve in generous portions (so much soup) with cilantro and whatever sort of hot sauce you have in your fridge.
(Adapted from Budget Bytes' peanut stew recipe, which is very good.)
Shit to watch
Shit to buy
I bought Glade plugins full of cat pheromones for the animal who lives in my house and sometimes screams at me. I'm telling myself it's working.
Speaking of: do you have a cat? Get a litter genie. (I actually have an off-brand diaper pail but this seems like a better choice.)
I also have a dumbass expensive litterbox, because my cat's toilet is in my living room, and I recommend it very much if you want your cat to not toss litter onto the floor while also suggesting through the art of design that you might be someone who refers to themselves without shame as a creative.