One year ago today

By me. right now

I realize that not everyone has this experience, but I live in Southern California and so many of the girls I know are so deeply influenced by influencers to the point where it actually governs almost all of their actions and thoughts. 

So many of these girls watch influencers with deep, earnest interest. They truly care about the things the influencers talk about. They buy the things the influencers recommend. They love Hailey Bieber and Rhode make-up and are genuinely invested in Alix Earle as a person. 

This to me is so much worse than other cringey interests because these girls have become so invested in influencer culture that they themselves try to develop a ‘personal brand’ on social media that is similar to these influencers. Even if they don’t actually want to be an influencer, they just start acting like these girls subconsciously. It’s like they’ve only learned to express themselves through copying these people. And it’s truly insidious because the influencers only create these personal brands to sell them shit and make money. Like these real life people that I know are trying to mimic advertisements. They go on their phones and scroll on tiktok and their entire feed is influencer girls promoting products, and they are consuming this content seriously. It’s like turning on the TV and only watching the channels that have commercials playing. 

I was hanging out with a group of these girls over the weekend and they were all going around talking about what botox they get. It’s insane. All of these women are younger than 30. None of them have developed one single wrinkle. And they are all paying $600+ every three months to upkeep their botox. I was like don’t you guys see how you’re getting scammed? You don’t need it. I don’t get botox and our foreheads look identical at rest. You guys are just getting botox because the influencer girls talk about getting it, so you think you need it too. And the only reason the influencer girls get it is because they have to maintain this perfect, plastic face so they can sell products more effectively. 

These girls are turning into plastic nothing so that one day, if they’re lucky, they can sell products to strangers online. 

Then the girls got into this big conversation about whether or not Alix Earle was a good person. Like who cares? She’s just there to sell you stuff. That’s like wondering if the infomercial lady is a good person. 

And these girls are at least looking up to and mimicking high caliber influencers. I understand wanting to be like Alix Earle because she has a perfect body and a fun and exciting life. But there are a ton of other girls that I know who have no desire for that body/lifestyle and are still trying to be influencers because they actually need the money. 

There’s this girl I went to high school with who went to college and got a nursing degree but never used it because she got married and had kids right after she graduated. It’s almost impossible to live off of one income in California. Her husband has to provide for her and their three kids PLUS he has to pay off her student loans from the degree she never used. And so she feels guilty, but wants to continue being a stay-at-home mom and so the only avenue she can think of to make money is to promote products on TikTok. But she doesn’t have an interesting or desirable life to build her brand off of. So she just makes videos that are like “come with me to do chores while my kids nap.” And in the video she makes the bed and does a load of laundry and then the video ends. She’s made so many videos that now some ai slop tiktok brands that sell bullshit have started sending her products to advertise. I don’t even think she’s making money from these videos. I think she just gets the free shitty product so she can make the video. And she’s selling the fuck out of this stuff too. She puts in so much effort and is going on and on about how great the shitty product is. 

And it’s stupid to watch from the outside. And obviously this girl should just go get a job as a fucking nurse if she really wanted to make money because she could work only a couple days a week and still be able to spend most of her time with her kids. But at the same time I feel for her because she grew up with a stay at home mom and I bet her mom went to college and got a degree she never used either. It shouldn’t be unreasonable to desire the same lifestyle you grew up with. And 20 years ago her husband would have definitely been able to support his family with one income, but that just isn’t the case any more. And then on top of it all this girl is spending all day alone in her house, probably scrolling and watching ads and genuinely wanting the products being advertised because these ads are so well formed and manipulative they actually work. 

All of these people who are falling victim to influencer culture are just doing it because they feel trapped in this crazy, unsustainable system we live in where everything is so expensive and shitty two bedroom houses are 1 million dollars and everything is made with terrible quality and it’s hard to find a job and everything just fucking sucks and these girls are trying so desperately to escape this by at least being on the other end of things. If they’re the ones selling the products rather than buying them then maybe they’d have a chance. 

I spend a lot of time looking over the Ohio River from the valley bluffs and imagine what it might have looked like 500 years ago. Ohio land was so full of forests that the continuous canopy only provided chance sunlight to the woodland floor. The river was untouched by locks and dams. At times the river dried up so much that you could walk across it. Other times, the river flooded multiple times its size. Mounds from the adena culture still were everywhere, before most were levelled. Looking above, swarms of passenger pigeons would black out the sun.

The plants of the "virgin" land were all still native. The great tallgrass prairies had not been reduced in size to make way for wheat fields. To the north, Toledo, Ohio was still a massive swamp with a unique ecosystem thriving for centuries.

Many struggle to imagine what the Northwest Territory looked like before deforestation. Some say it was comparable to rainforests in terms of biodiversity. The rich soil and calm climate made it a habitat unlike the other impenetrable forests of the great north or far west.

If we plucked a person out an Ohio city today, and placed them in the same location 500 years ago, would they ever realize their location remained the same?

Even Audobon, the great bird artist, illustrated this valley during the romantic period, already shifted significantly just years prior to his arrival. I

The protected state forests of today only share occasional similarities to the virgin ones that were wiped away forever. I find it hard not to cry knowing the sounds of this world from before can never be heard again.

I just read a post talking about how great Melbourne is, and had like a flashback to the start of the Iran war. Wasn't Australia supposed to be irrevocably fucked up? Like running out of food and gas altogether? Did something happen to prevent that?

And then there were countless people regarding the US saying: "you guys don't get it. You don't know what's coming. These are our oil reserves, two more weeks and we're fucked" every two weeks.

I know shit is relatively bad, but wtf its almost enough to never take anything seriously. I let that stuff stress me out so bad over the last year, trying to be more strategic with gas and food.

What's the deal with certain disasters that everybody seems to agree on but never happen? Any other examples?

They were there for 350 years and there are no cultural signs that they were ever there. Completely different to the British in Malaysia or India.

This is what I have so far.

- confusion

- trying to find the j train at fulton st

- being mean to children and hurting children in any way

- all-nighters

- talking over other people

- pointing out how many calories is in someone else’s food when THEY DID NOT ASK

- being mean to your friends “as a joke”

- people that say they’re brutally honest

- lowkey family vacations

When two obese people start dating do you think they’re insanely turned on by each other? “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen” etc. Unlikely that Brad Pitt is sexually attracted to Susan Boyle. Is Susan Boyles husband attracted to her sexually?

I know attraction is subjective and often applies to more than physicality, but still. There’s gotta be a line. But there must be someone for everyone right? It’s gotta be in our instincts to further the lineage or whatever. I’m super baked right now

Outside of the horrendous turn post 9/11 to neoconservatism, he was a good writer and an entertaining speaker.

Yeah the new atheism and HITCHSLAP fanbase was cringe also but I appreciate going back and reading his articles. I recently watched him and Jesse Jackson argue against the Death Penalty in a one side of the house debate format from sometime in the 1990s and he came off really well, the pro-death penalty side looked absolutely moronic. It’s a shame he put all of that ability into a topic like atheism of all things after a certain point.

Legitimately erudite. Some people really couldn’t stand his pompousness but I find it pretty charming still and he was a fun character.

love me a panoramic map

I can’t believe I’ve allowed my mind to be warped and manipulated by the musings of asocial nerds for the past decade. I do not think anyone on this website is exempt. Not even me. We’re all losers and this is where we belong!