On white tears and aggressive Indians.
Our own Jade Sylvan on Facebook’s real name policy and why it jacks up queers like herself:
It’s that second part that I have trouble with. “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.” This, to me, sounds like the words of someone who has absolutely no concept of what it’s like to exist outside of mainstream culture. I’m not saying you’re a bad person – most of what I know about you is from a biopic I watched half-drunk a few years ago mostly because Trent Reznor did the soundtrack for it. I’m saying you and your personal social network view having more than one named identity as sketchy because you generally have not experienced discrimination and/or violence because of one or more of your identities.
This is not really about Justin Timberlake, but it’s FASCINATINGLY how-sausage-gets-made about songwriting:
The ninth rule of hit songwriting is silence. Why? Because most people who are listening to music are actually doing something else, he explains. They are driving a car, or working out, or dancing, or flirting. Silence gives you time to catch up with the lyrics if you are drunk or stoned. If you are singing along, silence gives you time to breathe. “Michael Jackson, his quote was ‘Silence is the greatest thing an entertainer has,’” Caren continues. “‘I got a feeling,’ space-space-space, ‘Do you believe in life after love,’ space-space-space-space-space.”
“Death to the Fascist Insect,” a look back on covering Patty Hearst and the SLA, forty years on (I agree that the SLA had zero idea what they wanted and were Grade-A losers as revolutionaries, but I didn’t love the “Vietnam was winding down and everything was getting better, so not clear why anyone was making a fuss” parts):
When Patty Hearst was kidnapped on the night of February 4, 1974, it threw the newsroom into convulsions. This wasn’t just any kidnapping. Patty, enrolled as a sophomore at Berkeley, was the daughter of Randolph Hearst, then editor and president of the San Francisco Examiner. TheExaminer, an afternoon paper, was ostensibly in competition with the higher-circulation morning paper (the Chronicle), but in fact the two papers shared profits in a joint operating agreement. The newsrooms were separate, but we all worked in the same cluster of buildings. And when it came to the Patty Hearst story, the Chronicle was hesitant to publish anything without first checking with its bedmates. Bill Workman, an ace Chronicle police reporter in the Oakland bureau at the time, had the kidnapping story within an hour of the heiress being snatched from her home, and phoned it in to rewrite. There was plenty of time to get it into late editions, but the paper embargoed the story and didn’t run anything until February 6, a day and a half after the event.
no everyone has to love me or i will die trying oh god if one person hates me i cannot go on
Here is an excerpt from John Darnielle’s novel!
If you live in NYC, I would start planning to go see this exhibit at MoMA now, because it looks incredible, and also sent me on a Wiki binge for Bert Williams-related information.
Well, I guess I DID wonder how things like that happen.
This just in: New York Times spots extremely small subset of population, reports as “trend” that the other 99.9% of America will never even come close to, everyone pats each other on the back and congratulates.
Seriously, how few people does it take before it’s a “microtrend”? Eight?
The saying is “Three’s a trend!” so, for a microtrend….one?
MICRO-trend. MICROTREND. That’s like, 30 people, tops.
“Microtrend”???? So they’re basically admitting that they’re full of shit?
It means they’ve heard of two people doing it, I think.
Next up: the NanoTrend. A trend so small that one person (typically under 5’3″) thought about trying it once, but then reconsidered.
So if I’m 5’8 and I think about trying something, is it then already a Microtrend? That seems sizist somehow.
I just started a nanotrend but I’m not telling anyone what it was.
Hipster
Also an article that will make many of you laugh and cry and laugh bitterly http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voice…
Alison Green is the best. I like that she uses the word mythology to describe the obsession with ‘handling’ Millennials, because that’s exactly what it is. It’s a belief system that helps older workers explain to themselves why younger ones can’t succeed (they must be entitled snowflakes, not people who are doing the best they can in a terrible market!).
I love Ask A Manager, she’s so spot-on about everything. She answered a question I wrote to her once about how to deal with a job offer when you’re waiting for your dream job to get back to you, and it didn’t end up working out with either job offer, but it was excellent advice and I deferred to her blog in general when I was attempting to quit my last job.
Also, yes yes yes to this, I never hear it mentioned in popular “millenial exploration” pieces but it’s so true:
And as if that weren’t enough, consider that the popular conception of “millennials” is largely confined to a particular socioeconomic demographic, leaving out huge swaths of people who don’t fit the narrative.
In the UK, there’s definitely something about employers retreating from the responsibility of investing in training new staff, too. I work in higher education careers, and one of the things that gets talked about is employers wanting “oven-ready” graduates. It’s not enough to be 21, willing to learn and work hard: you’re supposed to already know everything you need to know.
Surprise! This benefits people from professional families who can go to their parents and other trusted adults with professional-level problems, and disadvantages people who are first-generation graduates and who don’t have professional role-models in their immediate families and peer groups.
I guess I don’t understand this “entitlement” label that Millennials have been slapped with – or, I do, but it’s pretty infuriating that it’s coming from Gen Xers raised by Baby Boomers/the Me Generation (as much as those words mean anything at all in combination). Let’s see, people who were raised in times of unparalleled economic opportunity raised children who not only had economic prosperity but also access to institutions previously forbidden to them (the non-white, non-males, that is), who then raised children who…what? Grew up believing that they also could have those things, the things that literally everyone, from their parents to politicians to teachers to fucking McDonald’s commercials, told them they would have if they just followed the rules? I’m not saying Millennials aren’t narcissistic or lazy or entitled – of course they are, just like EVERY OTHER GENERATION IN THE HISTORY OF EVER. They are also hardworking and ambitious and doing the best they can. This “we have to treat these poor whiny babies special” sentiment is pure “get off my lawn” bullshit coming from people who don’t want to admit that they fucked up our futures and are more than a little scared that we will eventually come into power and hold them accountable.
I completely disagree with the “entitled” label for Millennials, and I get nervous just trying to characterize an entire generation with a bunch of fairly meaningless labels.
The fact is, many of us Gen X-ers also graduated during a serious recession (early 90s), took a while to find jobs and career paths, and were branded as lazy/entitled/unambitious/whatever by the older generations too. (See Reality Bites for a sort of accurate, if fairly annoying, portrayal of the time.) It’s too bad some of us have conveniently forgotten that.
Yes, completely true, and apologies for not acknowledging that. These generational divides are so pointless when you try to view them in detail – to use your example of the ’90s recession, 2 people in the same generation but a few years apart in age could have had completely different experiences depending on when they tried to enter the workforce. It’s a huge generalization and a lazy shortcut to a conclusion, rather than an opening to a discussion about the societal and cultural factors that are influencing the people of that age.
This is extremely surreal because all the things the Millenials are being accused of are exactly the same things we were accused of as Gen-Xers. Lazy! Unfocused! Entitled! Not willing to pay our dues! Daring to have opinions about workplace codes and mores!
I thought the whole point of sending your kid to boarding school was the peace of mind of knowing they’re hundreds of miles away and you don’t have to be bothered with them for months at a time.
Yes, that’s what I always figured. It’s why I’m shopping for toddler boarding schools for the next few years. (Nicole, you have a toddler. Is it any better if it’s your own toddler? I can barely make it through an hour with someone else’s toddler…)
I have no interest in anyone else’s children. I like other children LESS since having mine. Mine is a delight.
That is good to hear! I like other children very little to start with; I do hope mine delights me as she ages.
^ seconded.
I always think of the Louis CK bit about not caring about other peoples’ children when I talk to parents about this, because it seems like an almost universal phenomenon.
Exactly this. I was obsessed with the idea of boarding school as a kid; you get to go to this place, with weird traditions and school trips to a ski chalet (ignoring, of course, that to ski means going out into hateful, cold snow), and you make friends from all over the world and there are no parents anywhere, ever. It’s like being an orphan and also getting to go to school all the time!
I was a very odd child.
So you also read Bloomability at a young, impressionable age?
YUP. Plus a whole slew of British boarding school novels, plus the school I was going to at the time had a yearly boarding school fair for the eighth-graders (which meant every year, there was a list of all of them in the school newsletter, so I could read it on the bus home and dream about going to school in far-off places).
But oh, Bloomability. I think I still have my copy somewhere–I should dig it out and read it soon.
For me it was The Girls of Canby Hall.
I bugged my parents regularly about wanting to go to boarding school. But nooooo, they were all like, But we like you and want you to live with us! They were the *worst.*
The absolute worst, for sure. I distinctly remember being peeved that because we moved back to the US after I finished fifth grade, it completely tanked both my ability to go to boarding school and any chance I had of learning to play the viola (the intermediate school I would’ve gone to taught you the instrument as a component of band/orchestra; the middle school I ended up going to required a background in whatever instrument you wanted to play).
For me it was the MacDonald Hall books. So I not only longed to go to boarding school, I wanted it to be in Canada.
The school in Bloomability sounded so good. I was distressed that I couldn’t go there.
You are clearly a fellow Elinor M. Brent-Dyer fan! (Well, I would be a fan of hers if I could *find her books* — as it is I am just a fan of feminist analysis of her books.)
…are you some kind of psychic or something
CHALET SCHOOL FOREVER
But the Tyrol era for preference, right?
I am slowly closing in on having read all of the books, but it’s hard. Why are they so scarce?
That first link is blocked by my work filter as “sports,” much to my chagrin. Will have to remember to read later.
Also, a group of Japanese scientists have done a study demonstrating that people that look at pictures of cute baby animals are more productive and more efficient at their jobs. I knew all the time I spent looking at baby otters was worthwhile!
Yesterday I picked up my husband at his office. I had some cute animal photos on my phone that I couldn’t wait to show him, so we stood around in the lobby looking at them. One of his coworkers came out and asked what we were doing. I said, “Looking at cute animal photos” and he gave me a 😐 face and went, “Why?”
Now you can respond with “because SCIENCE!!”
Quick, dismantle him and thwart the robot revolution!
It is this sort of scientific discourse that makes the Toast comments so worthwhile. Brb, off to look at baby sloths!
So Homer’s “Do it for her” is really some canny work advice.
This explains why written kitten is such an effective essay-writing aid for me. (written kitten is a thing which will show you a new picture of a kitten every certain number of words specified by the user).
How the heck do I get funding for this kind of study?? Dear Government of Canada, I would like to investigate the potential impact of looking at pictures of cute baby animals on work productivity and efficiency. I will use the respected “cute-overload” methodology… I can haz funding now, right?
This is a tangent, but that block quote about silences in songwriting reminds me of the slideshow chapter from A Visit from the Goon Squad. The kid’s presentation was on “great pauses in pop music” or something similar. Man, that was a great book.
That guy’s rules for pop song hits… I am not ever going to be able to listen to Top 40 again without thinking “oh, there’s the personal statement!”
That freaked me out, because I was like “WAIT MY GOD THEY’RE EVERYWHERE AND NOW I KNOW WHY.” It was especially weird as applied to that Ludacris song, which came out when I was young enough that I still sort of believed in the concept of spontaneity in pop music.
It is bisexuality visibility day! (and week) and I would like to direct you all to the wonderful Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution by Shiri Eisner. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16073046-bi
We have a day? A week? WHO KNEW? Not me, apparently.
I just typed it into the local library’s catalog search and the only result it gave me was “For the Bible Tells Me So.” Ummm no.
Man, the Gays just have an Agenda and the Bis get a whole holy BOOK? Niiice.
By these rules, who just gets stuck with a Pamphlet?
Ace I think.
For the record, “For the Bible Tells Me So” is a pro-LGB book… but it’s probably not inciting a Bisexual Revolution in any way, shape, or form.
Interesting! I nope’d it out of there pretty quickly so I had no idea.
I only know the documentary by the same title, but in the case of the doc, it’s a semi-ironically used title, examining (among other things) whether the Bible actually backs up religious-based bigotry. (Spoiler: it does not) I would imagine any books by the same title to do something similar.
We’re here, we really are queer, get used to it?
I posted publicly on Facebook about being maybe-bi for the first time! I know nobody will have negative responses, but am nervous that people will try to talk about Feelings and be all sympathetic when I just want it to pass without comment.
I think Nicole linked more generally to the longform tag on serial killers a few months ago, but I found a very upsetting but worthwhile article there yesterday and thought other Toasties might find it thought-provoking. Again, it’s heart-breaking, so maybe don’t read it at work or at all, but if you’re interested in a wonderfully written essay on the invisibility of at-risk groups, especially women, this is it:
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201211…
Last year I read the Ann Rule book about the Green River Killer, and it was so upsetting to see how disposable these women were.
The scariest, saddest part of the GQ article is the part about how they use video of one of the women who escaped as training today, and that most officers react to it by not believing her.
The general theme of no one believing these women is what struck me too, but the part that really got me was the people she questioned at the very end who swore up and down that no girls had ever been murdered “around here.” It’s all happening somewhere else where we don’t have to think about it!
It is really awful how invisible this whole part of our culture is. I am not sure how to change that on a big scale.
This is why I left Facebook. My account was hacked, and I was in the middle of changing my name (I had made the switch socially & publicly but had not gotten the government paperwork sorted yet). I was using my new name, obviously, on my FB account. FB demanded that, in order to re-access my hacked account, I send them a scan of a government document “proving” my identity. Um, no. Not ever, not even once I used my racial/educational/financial privileges to obtain government documents in my chosen name.
Well THAT just sounds like a nightmare. I’m so sorry that happened to you!
Thanks, though it was probably for the best! I often joke that “Facebook and I broke up, and it wasn’t amicable.”
Is anyone else getting a giant banner ad for a book called “The Evil Librarian” with the tagline “He’s young. He’s hot. He’s also evil. He’s….the librarian”? Was that book written solely to be marketed on the Toast?
I am not getting that ad, which is too bad, because I would click it so hard!
Same here. I neeeeed to read this book.
Yes! I was like, whoa, this computer knows it’s target demographic!
Its*. Ugh, I am clearly not a librarian, much as I would like to be.
YES. Today in “super targeted marketing.”
There’s ONE FRAME in the gif banner though that has an endorsement from Stephanie Meyer (I screenshotted it below and totally didn’t see your comment). OH THE IRONY.
I am! it makes me chuckle whenever I see it.
if it weren’t about a Man, I’d think it was just a Toast MadLib
Wait, Ripper-era Giles?
So with the Facebook anonymity thing. I feel weird, because last week I wrote a piece on my etiquette blog about the frustrations of people using other names on Facebook. What I’m talking about is not people who use aliases for protection or privacy, but basically those people who get married and don’t change their name on Facebook and make no other announcement then get mad at you when you don’t know they’ve changed their name (this has happened to me). But then this thing blew up and now I’m all self-conscious because honestly, fuck Facebook if they think you’re being dishonest! So if you happen to read that article, know that I’m not talking about changing your name for work or protection or just because you have a nickname you like!!
Oh man, I am equally annoyed when women do change their name at marriage and immediately take their previous name off Facebook! Wait, who are you again??
I know a couple who both use the same fake last name on FB, which they started when he was job-hunting, and now I kind of forget that’s not their real name.
Just last night I got annoyed that yet another person I know got married and took her husband’s name (and erased any trace of her maiden name) because a) I can’t remember who you are and b) how come no one I know is keeping their own name?!
Then an hour later I was annoyed that a girl from my high school still had the same name because I couldn’t tell if she was married or not.
SO HYPOCRITICAL, HAM.
I have been noticing that every one of my female friends to get married has taken their husband’s name. I’m very much “you do you” about it, but I guess I’m just surprised, because I figured that SOMEONE would do something different, statistically.
Yes–exactly! My official position is “everyone makes the choice that’s right for them” but I have frankly been very surprised because literally all of my friends save one has taken her husband’s name. And we’re all hippy-ish progressive New Englanders who went to college in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts!
Mine and my partner’s friends got married in two tiers: the mid-late twenties brigade, and the thirties-and-over brigade. There was a statistically significant* difference in name-changing behaviour between the first brigade and the second. In some cases it was just correlation (“I’m fairly traditional and that’s why I’m getting married reasonably early and also why I’m changing my name”/ “Getting married later and not changing my name are both feminist values to me”) but in other cases it was definitely causation (“I’ve established a professional identity in this name and I’m buggered if I’m changing it.”) So if your friends are mainly in their twenties, it’s possible that you’ll see a change over the next ten years or so.
*Probably. I mean, I never actually worked it out.
tbqh the main reason I wanted to get married instead of ~living in sin~ was so that I could change my last name. I had always hated my birth surname and felt ridiculous using it (the thought of establishing a professional identity with it made me cringe). I could have just gone ahead and changed it without the wedding beforehand, but that would have been a lot more complicated and would have hurt my parents’ feelings.
My husband wanted to get married for proper reasons like being really in love with me and stuff.
That someone was you, Jaya
Oh my god I’m the statistic.
My sister-in-law changed her last name, for one main reason: her name is Kuntz (pronounced koontz), and people mispronounce it in awkward ways. She probably would have kept the name if she weren’t sick of the jokes.
My FB feed has been about 50/50 in terms of married name changes (plus the name changes back with the divorces).
I do get annoyed by the random acquaintances who get married, have a baby, and change their name to their husband’s and their profile pic to a baby. Thanks– now I have no idea which high school classmate you are.
don’t they remember how many Jessicas/Rach(a)els/Jennifers they went to school with??
A good friend at work just got married and has been updating me with complaints about all the hoops to jump through to get her name changed – I…have not been good about not being judgemental and saying she brought it on herself. At one point, I yelled “PATRIARCHY” and went back to my desk.
…
ARE YOU PENN JILLETTE’S DAUGTHER???
Ahaha, no, I just stole her name for all of my Internet handles.
I told a co-worker to smash the patriarchy last week. It was very satisfying.
Related– I have like a dozen female friends whose facebook names are first name+ middle name and I can never remember who they are because 1) everyone’s middle name is Marie for some reason and 2) who knows their friends’ middle names? I get wanting to be anonymous but I also sometimes need to find your email address or something.
I’ve got a significant number of people on my facebook who went from Firstname Lastname to Firstname Middlename Marriedlastname. I have no idea who the hell anyone is anymore.
Marie and Elizabeth and Lynn. So many. So…many.
I have THREE SEPARATE Jennifer Maries and two different Michael Johns on my Facebook I can only tell the Michael Johns apart because one of them is my cousin and the other is not.
My fakeo FB name is Elyse Trilobite, which is pretty distinct because I’m pretty much the only Elyse-with-a-Y that my friends know and if any of them know me at all they are aware that I have a big-ass tattoo of a trilobite on my right arm, so it makes sense.
I think it’s what teachers are told to do in some places. All the teachers on my feed are just first/middle (both men and women). I assume it’s to keep their feed hidden from inquisitive students.
Yup, many of my teacher friends do this to keep their students from finding them.
Perhaps it is because I’m just not a sports fan, but I just can’t understand why you insist that your love of a team trumps someone else’s right to not have their culture and identity mocked and slurred. Like, I really don’t get it, you can still love your team if they have a different name and it’s eye-roll-inducing to think that these white people are somehow “threatened” because they had to look into the faces of the people who are hurt by their actions and couldn’t accept that using a racial slur as a team name could be wrong.
Also, lol, white lady, threatened how, exactly? Like they were going to burn down your neighborhood, introduce diseases that kill your whole family, forcibly remove you from what’s left of your home, destroy your food supply and if you survive all that, take away your children?
The worst part was the guy who was like, “I wouldn’t have worn my jacket if I’d known I was *actually* going to meet with a Native person. It’s important to have respect [when you’re forced into a room with one of Them, but at no other time, apparently]!”
“I wouldn’t have worn my Offensive Slur memorabilia if I’d known members of marginalized populations could just be, like, walking around freely in the general populace to see it!”
Especially not when he’ll be on national television
I don’t understand it either. I guess these kinds of people live in a bubble where none of their ideas has ever been challenged before. And I think they know deep down that they are wrong, and they’re defensive because of that. It’s pretty pathetic.
Jay Smooth did a great video years ago about how when you call people out for racism, it helps to call out the action instead of the person. A lot of white folks have a very specific idea of what bigotry and racism look like, and they aren’t like that, so they can’t be racists. Racists are bad people, and they are good people, and thus they cannot be racist, because that would make them bad, and they know that they are good. The fact that one can occasionally DO/SAY racist things without being intentionally and consciously racist is not something they can wrap their brains around, so when you say “hey, that thing is racist” they hear “you are a bad and terrible person” and so they get super-defensive.
I am a sports fan- and a lifelong fan of the team in question- and I don’t understand it either. Those fans got everything that was coming to them and I rejoice in their discomfort. I await with joy the day when my favorite team stops insisting on using a horrible slur to describe themselves. (It is /literally/ the least we could do. The LEAST. It is the TINIEST POSSIBLE THING.)
JESUS, that article about the Daily Show segment. The bit quoted from WaPo where one guy describes himself as “an average fan” and the Native Americans as “activists who have media training and talking points” was a smack upside the head. Yeah, they’re ready with arguments, because they keep having to pull them out and defend them to people. People’s lives become your “talking points”, which is such an icky, gross, dismissive term that I’ll just leave that there.
Also there’s something kind of grotesque about the notion that he doesn’t have to be challenged on his beliefs or what he likes because he’s never thought about them before.
“I don’t know, I’m just some idiot who does whatever, man! Leave dummies like me alone to just be thoughtless and stupid!”
And he knew he was going on there for a debate. Yeah, I guess he didn’t realize he’d have to do it with non-white people, but it’s not like he couldn’t have prepped what he wanted to say a little. I guess he thought it’d just be some gentle all-in-good-fun ribbing from the interviewer, and he’d chuckle along, because surely the white guy will be on his side deep down!
because surely the white guy will be on his side deep down
But seriously, this is what he thought. It’s like how serial rapists genuinely think all other men are serial rapists.
Toasties! I am sharing for _love_:
Tanya Tagaq won the Polaris prize so if you like sometimes-Björk sometimes industrial music with the industrial replaced with hair-raising forest sounds, you should probably go listen to her and maybe buy her album, it’s p. great.
tanyatagaq.com
Yes! I’ve listened to a bit of her stuff since she won and it’s incredible.
oooh, that sounds like it could be right up my alley. 😀
Ooooh that sounds great, thank you for sharing!
Thank you for sharing this! She is amazing!!
At the gala last night most of the women (and probably some men) in the audience were crying during her performance. It was incredibly powerful and I was not surprised at all when she won.
I just want to point out that the banner at the top of the page is trying to use this as a selling point on The Toast.
(I’m not against this or almost any other banner running on The Toast, I’m just giggling fiendishly at the irony)
Whenever I see an article about how women are not funny, I always say -What do you mean women aren’t funny? We are hysterical!-
I love this. So much.
This is the same Evil Librarian book being discussed excitedly above. I’m so torn.
I think if they’d left this frame out of the gif we’d all be fine.
That’s the part that kills me. It’s TOO FUNNY. For me, an endorsement from Stephanie Meyer is a damning thing. BUUUUUT she was probably paid for it. So.
CONFLICTED FEELINGS.
I’m trying to read that Captain Awkward post, but I can’t get over the fact that there were THREE COUPLES living in ONE apartment. That seems like hell.
Seriously. I stopped halfway through like “Wait, here’s your first problem.”
When I was in college we had three-bedroom, one-bath apartments that housed 6 people (not couples though). But yes, rife with drama opportunities.
Oh yeah, me too, but I can’t imagine being an adult with a job and a partner and choosing to move into a place where FIVE PEOPLE ALREADY LIVE.
Maybe this is somewhere housing is really, really, really expensive?
One five or six bedroom apartment? Maaaaybe. A 3 bedroom? NOPE.
Yes, it’s a miracle that there is only one axis of hate in that situation.
I have done this, sort of! In college I lived in a 4 bedroom apartment with 8 total people, 2 couples and 2 sets of roomies.
It was about 30% fun and 70% terrible. People are revolting.
Did anyone else find that “Justin Timberlake Has A Cold” article incredibly depressing?
As a vaguely aspiring creative person, it made me feel like jumping off the roof.
Ya-huh – I’m not even vaguely creative, let alone aspiring, and, I mean:
‘She shakes her head.
“And when you hold me
“I come alive.
“I want you to—hold me!”
The shape of a pop song is beginning to emerge, but she has left herself with nowhere to go. “It needs something dumber in the middle.” She sighs.’
DOES IT THOUGH HOW COULD IT GET ANY DUMBER.
That Captain Awkward piece is so good. DON’T HANG OUT WITH TERRIBLE PEOPLE. IT ISN’T WORTH IT.
And the more temperate version of that advice is also so useful: Not everyone’s going to get along, [shrug], oh well.
Honestly, I have found Captain Awkward’s variations on “Not everyone likes you and that is fine” SO COMFORTING. I think there are a lot of us anxious, awkward people out there who have been conditioned/have conditioned ourselves to think that, if someone doesn’t seem to like us, it’s DEFINITELY OUR FAULT and there is something wrong with us that we must FIX IMMEDIATELY. It’s very reassuring to hear someone point out, “Actually, some people just don’t like each other. Are there people you don’t like, for no particular reason? Yes? Well… like that, except the other way around. It’s fine.”
Yes!
Because liking someone (or being liked by someone) is not the same thing as judging their fitness as a human being. Nor should it be! But it took us a long time to figure this out. 🙂
If somebody doesn’t like me, it takes my inner small, bullied child a long time to remember that one.
A girl from my friend group in college had an inexplicable dislike for me which caused me to dislike her. We were both going to be doing research on campus that summer and decided to room together with a third friend in a suite rather than getting stuck with randomly assigned roommates. The problem was for the first few weeks before the third girl arrived it was just the two of us, and it was hilariously uncomfortable. I guess I didn’t make things better by using her TV to marathon DVDs of My So Called Life that I got from the library. I wish I had been braver and went for the random roommates, because then I at least would have had a chance to make new friends!
re: advice on shitty people; IMMEDIATELY STOP SPENDING TIME W SHITTY PEOPLE YOU ARE AN ADULT YOU DO NOT HAVE TO INVITE EVERYONE TO YOUR PARTY.
but on a more subtle note, the advice could also be “dont ever have 6 people live in a 3 bdrm apt and expect to remain friends”. As was noted on an Open Thread a few months, the quickest way to grow closer to your mate is a contentious roommate situation where you cling closer to one another in affronted solidarity.
“You do not have to invite everyone to your party” is like… the number one thing I wish my social circle would figure out already.
“cling closer to one another in affronted solidarity”
This is what’s happening right now in my home, except the cat is the bad roommate.
YO BAY AREA TOASTIES, I am putting out my Toast-shaped batsignal to come to Thursday evening’s reading with ROXANE GAY at City Lights Bookstore!! It starts at 7:00 but I am anticipating quite a crowd so show up any old time and say hello, I’ll be there wearing a t shirt that says FEMINIST KILLJOY in drippy pink letters for easy finding.
deets: http://www.citylights.com/info/?fa=event&even…
And for East Bay Toasties, she’s at Mrs. Dalloway’s tomorrow (Wednesday): http://www.mrsdalloways.com/events/roxane-gay
Oh no now I have to figure out if I can completely rearrange my life to get to these! (No I cannot because kids)
Near ICI! We can get ice cream too!
Thank you for this important announcement. I went to Patricia Lockwood’s reading at the JCC last night and if I make it to Roxane Gay this week will be Peak Toast.
OH HEY I just saw this, I’m coming! Yay!!!
Also, will you have enough copies of Bad Feminist for sale? Do I need to reserve one or anything?
I don’t understand why you would send your kids to boarding school and then move to be closer to them. That seems counter to the entire point of boarding school. And if you are rich enough to have two houses and send your kid to boarding school, can’t you just move someplace with decent public schools?
I think what’s going unsaid in that article is that there is a shit-ton of networking that goes on amongst the rich that often begins in these elite boarding/prep schools. So if you have the money, why not give your kid that extra leg up, move there to still spend time with them, and maybe do a little networking of your own amongst the parents?
Yeah, that networking is definitely a huge chunk of the reason to choose one of those schools.
This is what we and many of our friends in the Boston area have done. Instead of shelling out thousands for private school, we’ve put that money into a house in a relatively more expensive town with great public schools. The kids get a great education, and you’ve got a nice asset (and place to live).
Back in the seventies (before students were considered adults and the University of California had no concept of privacy), there was a room in Sproul Hall when you entered that had giant tables full of card files. These cards were filled out by students and had your address and phone and other info. Anybody could walk in and look up anybody.
This directory was what the SLA used to learn Patty Hearst’s address so they’d know where to go to kidnap her.
D:
My boarding school also issued an actual “face book” to each student that included an entry of name, home address, dorm address, and a photograph of every student. It was certainly useful for those who wanted to know who their fellow students were, but it also made a handy tool for crushers, harassers, and stalkers.
At the end of term we were asked to submit our home address details to be included in a spreadsheet to be emailed around, so people could send Christmas cards to each other if they wanted. It was completely optional, though.
oh god
I know more than one person whose parents followed them to their college town (including my mom– grandma was recently divorced and wanted a change of scenery) but none of them did it out of like, wealth and trendiness.
Yes my parents did this with my brother because he developed a mental illness and they wanted to look after him and they were retired so it didn’t matter where they lived.
My friend’s little brother has SEVERE allergies to basically everything environmental (don’t know about food, but, like, dust, or cleaning solutions, etc etc ad infinitum) so they moved to his college town and I think moved into the same off-campus apartment complex or building. Apparently it was a good thing but I could not IMAGINE.
I’m always so confused about how all NYT writers seem to live in the same bubble as the uber-wealthy. Last I heard newspaper reporters, even at fancy papers, were not THAT well-paid.
And if the Times is in fact paying their reporters so much that “buying a second house to be near your child’s boarding school” is a fairly common thing in their social circle, I think MAYBE I have some ideas about solving their financial issues.
Are they all married to the uber-wealthy?? That’s the only thing I can make sense of. Or they all have trust funds.
This quote from the Captain Awkward link makes me want to go on a massive Facebook purge and possibly just get rid of it altogether if they keep being terrible:
“There’s nothing there for you. I cannot describe the peace of mind that comes when you stop subjecting yourself to a constant ambient awareness and interaction with someone who annoys the shit out of you. Be free!”
I ALSO have a fake Facebook account, and I will be very surprised if FB ever makes me verify it’s real. I’m not even sure why they care so much, all of a sudden. Plus people change their names for all kinds of reasons, and making that more difficult is going to drive people away from the service.
The revelation in the comments of that Captain Awkward piece of the catalyst for the whole situation is so amazing that it has overridden my being stuck in an audit all day.
“*wails* But I used to be THE Kayla of the group *sob* she’s replacing me”
it’s just
so dumb
WAIT! Roumbaba! Did anyone get into contact with you about the Oct 5th Coterie meet-up at Gantry Plaza Park?!
Hi! Yep, and I joined the FB group (with my fake account) and commented on the page. I'll be there!
It was a great video. But so many privileged people (the fans in this incident being a prime example) go to pieces when anyone so much as suggests their farts don't smell like flowers.
I mean, I get it, it's embarrassing and not fun to have someone tell you you're wrong. My 4-year-old will often break down in tears if I tell him not to do something. Which is fine, because he's 4. I expect him to grow out of it before he's an adult.
Maybe what the world needs is a Jay Smooth video telling people how to handle it like a grownup when you're called out.
You do not even have to throw a party. You can stay home and just marathon OITNB again with your best friend and eschew all parties forever. I mean. If you want to.