Unformulated exhaustion-brain ideas
Half a cent, at best
I’m tired. Probably becuase I haven’t been following a seventy-five step skincare routine. Or attaching little weights to my wrists and ankles to optimise muscle tone-age during my daily household chores. It could be because I haven’t had a single protein smoothie in 2024, or because never bought the waterpik, or because I saw a dying child, a best-selling book, a sausage dog wearing a raincoat and four different outfits to wear to a wedding in the space of about 10 seconds. Maybe it’s because I had to quit the only affordable acupuncturist in my area becuase he wouldn’t stop talking about chemtrails (😭).
ANYway, sometimes I get tired and instead of resting I make a long list of non-essential things I need to do and beat myself up about not doing them. One of the things on this list was ‘write the substack posts that have been floating around your brain for the past month’, hence my presence in your inbox today. But don’t worry, I won’t be doing that. When I’m tired, I can become boring - as can my writing - prone to veering off into doom and gloom, cynical takes and over-written critique because it’s easier to pull something apart and leave it that way than it is to examine each piece and then put it back together with cautious hope.
Instead of unnecessary essays, I’ve done a very quick summary of what my brain has been munching on lately, becuase I do think they (the topics, not necessarily how I feel about them) are interesting, even if I’m not currently capable of explaining why.
So here goes.
I’m a subscriber to New York Magazine and a recent cover weirded me out a bit.
Now (somehow) I find myself defending both Trump and Biden(!), not because they’re world leaders and deserve respect blah blah but because I assume that the technology used to make this was probably AI generated? And even if it wasn't, there is a history of using AI to digitally strip bodies down to their underwear - or less. They just happen to be women. 2019 analysis by Deeptrace (an org specialising in AI) found that 96% of deepfake videos are porn - the vast majority made of women, without their consent. Deepfakes are not always exclusively made by AI, but those videos leverage machine-learning techniques and tools to generate the images, video and even audio. But we know they’re biased - often reinforcing patriarchal norms. There’s evidence to show AI objectifies women and contributes to new forms of gender-based violence. And even though the image above and the digital stripping of women aren’t anywhere near each other on the morality scale, I do think its dangerous for NY Magazine to engage in/normalise using digitally manipulated images of real people to sell their copies.
Especially becuase when deepfakes aren’t being used to terrorise women they are also being used to destroy journalistic integrity, like the Biden deepfake Republicans circulated after he stepped down as Presidential nominee, featuring PBS snippets. It scares me how quickly and willingly media and print journalism is tumbling down the AI rabbit hole, and what it might mean for the unravelling of public trust, and I don’t think they should be doing it. I’m aware that I *might* be conflating AI and strategically edited imagery - although I think the overlaps between them are quickly increasing - but nevertheless, I think it’s a questionable choice for a news outlet that publishes incredible, high-calibre journalism to dip its toes into the AI cesspool. Even more so, when that cesspool reeks of violence against women. My metaphor is starting to swim away from me, which means it’s time to stop.
The Chappell Roan industry plant accusation (people saying she’s only famous becuase a big label has paid for her to be) is what happens when people (misogynists) fail to grasp that not every creative output is made to serve their tastes and appeal to them specifically.
Chappell Roan has responded directly to this, pointing out that she’s put in a decade of hard graft and learning to express herself in a way that feels both subversive and authentic. So, if she’s a plant, then whoever put her there has done an incredibly shitty job. Also, sorry, but as if the mainstream could have handled Roan - a queer, drag performing, White-House-invitation-rejecting powerhouse. She was dropped by her label in 2020, right before she exploded. Bet they hate themselves now!
The internet may be bad for my rat brain but thank god for the memes
I know the Kamala Harris / coconut posting is old news by now (but in case you need reminding, this is the viral clip) and we’ve been gifted so much since, from Momala to the death of Brat Summer to the cursed venn diagram. To be honest though, when the coconutmaxxing began spreading far and wide, the only thing I could thing of was how the word has been weaponised against Black and Asian people (particularly women) as an insult. A coconut (see also: oreo, banana) is a divisive term used against people of colour - often by their own communities - to imply that they may be brown on the outside, but they ‘act’ white - a very loaded and problematic concept. Ella McLeod, a Black writer and poet, has unpacked the complexities of this far better than I can - I recommend reading her article arguing against its use. Not everyone will agree with that though - as the quote below evidences.
Kamala obviously didn’t use it in that context - in fact, the point she was making was a really important political one that you could, if you wanted to, use as metaphor for radical solidarity. But the way this took off and became mainstream lexicon made me uncomfortable - was there an undertone here that was laughing at Kamala, rather than with her? Were people aware of how loaded the term was, and was that why it was being flung around with such gusto - or was I reading way too much into it? Was anyone going to talk about the very alarming fact that a Pro-Palestinian protestor - a woman of colour - in the UK has been charged with a hate crime for levelling the word against Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman?
I couldn’t find anyone writing about this (I’m sure it’s out there though, so if someone finds it please send it my way). I asked some of my Black and Asian friends who felt comfortable talking about it for their thoughts and they, without fail, all said variations of: there’s something off about it/it’s clumsy. It makes them uneasy. It makes me uneasy. But I’m not the person to write an article-length piece about it, and I’m definitely not smart enough to be the only writer to have thought about this. Back to scouring twitter - I know that think piece is out there.
“I had no idea that our word, ‘coconut’, would be hijacked by a demographic that doesn’t use these words and then used against me to criminalise me…Being a woman of colour and a Muslim coupled with my deep criticism of our government aiding and abetting a genocide against the Palestinian people, these factors combined have made me the perfect scapegoat for far-right ideologies. I was under the belief, and still am, that I have full ownership of that word, as each culture has their own language used to hold to account people of ethnic origins who use their positions of power to push white supremacy ideals, narratives and policies.”
-Marieha Hussain, the protestor, to Al Jazeera before being charged
Bonus unrelated content: I still think about this image I came across when scrolling twitter. I day dream about living inside this giant pistachio. My bedroom would be at the very top. I wonder how she's doing.
Bonus bonus content: I made this list on my phone after being alone with my brain for like, half a day.
That’s enough brain soup from me/back to nap time 🫡
A quick favour. I love writing these posts, and I intend to do them for free for as long as I can. If you enjoyed reading this, tell me! Leave a comment! Forward it to a friend (or three) who you think might like it too. It helps massively, because validation from strangers is truly the only thing that makes the horrors bearable for me.
Really resonating with the ‘most things I was taught are lies’ bit. At least I was never relevant 😅