And… we’re back!

Jan 09, 2022

Mōrena lil shits!!

Happy New Year my angels!!! Damn, despite the MASSIVE fright I got when my alarm went off this morning it’s so nice to be reunited with you all. How are you??? I’m about to make a big call here but I reckon I’ve just had the best break/holiday/#pettygirlsummer I’ve ever had. Not that you asked but here’s a quick recap:

Got out of lockdown and came home to see all my family and friends
Spent a lot of time submerged in the Marlborough Sounds

Headed down south with my little brother and a pop-top caravan

Found a QAnon inspired cafe in Geraldine

Spent a week by the lake with no reception

Stayed with my pals in Wānaka & flew over the Milford sound

Came home (again) and resubmerged myself in the Marlborough sounds

I gotta make a special shoutout to each one of you that I met during my travels! It’s so funny because when you get chatting to people, naturally they ask what you do for a job, which is a question that makes me ✨nervous ✨ because either the person I’m talking to has no idea what Shit you Should Care About is or they’re really excited about it, but then I remember that they literally know my innermost thoughts. It is so cool tho - I met a father and daughter duo on a beach yesterday who asked what I did for work and then both physically YELPED when I told them (the dad then proceeded to show me his Instagram - he was in fact following and we were in fact at the top of his feed - we love an engaged king, and of course, we got a selfie for the family group chat.)

And just to balance out all that wholesomeness, here's a funny message I received:

I guess he's entitled to say all that, as a man

Anyway, just because it’s 2022 and I'm the most relaxed I've ever been doesn’t mean that anything about me/this newsletter/ the chaos of the world/my life/ my brain has changed, and I’m just real excited to be back in your inbox to try and make sense of it together.

PS, thank you for the HUNDREDS of responses to my last newsletter of the year - you are all so kind and I love u all right back.

PPS, if you know someone whose new years resolution was to stay more up to date/ get their shit together, you should totally forward them this email and get them to subscribe??

PPPS, this newsletter is gonna be a little bit different because I read a bunch of good shit over summer and I wanna share it with you, so it’ll probs be a lot of short little links. Back to normal tomorrow, I promise!!! (Ok I wrote that before I’d actually started writing the rest of the newsletter - I read too much good shit over the summer, so maybe we’ll be back to normal on Wednesday hehe.)

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In today’s newsletter:

The world needs the Wordle fandom
Novax Djocovid
I’m Obsessed with Brand Twitter
What Daily Routine Videos Actually Show Us
The 2014 Tumblr Girl is back
2022 Public domain day was exciting!
A summer mundane poll recap

The world needs the Wordle fandom

“Be a 🟩 in a sea of ⬜.”

So at the beginning of the summer, my whole Twitter feed was just a bunch of green, yellow and grey blocks, and I was like… “wtf is this?” and “no i will not play your silly little word game, I am sophisticated and busy.” Anyway, considering I harbour ✨ extreme anxiety ✨ about getting out of touch and not knowing the latest trends (you’d all be screwed if I didn’t keep updated), I got on board (with some helpful pressure from my flatmate Flo and her family.) As it turns out, THIS GAME IS ACTUALLY BRILLIANT. It’s not time-consuming, you can only play once a day, so it’s not trying to take advantage of our addictive personalities (cc: Facebook for a lesson) and it’s to do with words which are my favourite thing ever. It’s also just got a real cute origin story - it was created during the pandemic by Josh Wardle (great jump from Wardle to Wordle) for his partner Palak Shah who loves word games. What I love most about it is that (and I could be being naive but just let me have this) I don’t think any money is being made from it? It seems to be just this cute and wholesome thing at the moment (which the internet needs more of) and Josh actually said this in a New York Times article about it:

“I think people kind of appreciate that there’s this thing online that’s just fun, It’s not trying to do anything shady with your data or your eyeballs. It’s just a game that’s fun.”

My prediction is that The New York Times will either buy Wordle, or we’ll see “copy/acquire/kill” in action and someone will replicate it and chuck in a bunch of ads/ charge us to play/ make it into an app. But until then, here’s an excellent piece in Embedded about the Wordle fandom!

Also here’s mine today:

Wordle 204 4/6

⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜

🟩🟨🟨⬜🟩

🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Novax Djocovid

I’m purely including this story because I wanted to use that title. I’m a narcissist - sue me! Or Novac! Or just don’t let him into your country! Anyway, what happened here was that Novax (real name Novak) who is pretty good at tennis, told his fans that he had an exemption from needing to get the vaccine, and he could still play in the Australian Open later in the month. And the Aussie government were on board! Usually, Australia requires all foreign visitors entering the country to be double vaccinated - otherwise, they need to complete 14 days in quarantine. Djokovic - who has said he is opposed to vaccination - thought that he was exempt from this, but when he got to Aussie they had changed their minds on the exemption (after a lot of public outrage) and turned him away at the airport. The reason they couldn’t let him in was because he didn’t have paper evidence of a valid reason for needing the exemption. Context: Aussie is in the depths of its worst Covid-19 wave yet and public anxiety is super high.

Anyway, this has turned into a huge sporting/ political/ health story and Novac’s lawyers are trying to get his Visa reinstated.

For a much better explanation of all of that (which I should’ve given you at the beginning really) read this.

I’m Obsessed with Brand Twitter

And you should be too. For the longest time, I have had an obsession with watching brands interact on social media. You’ve probs seen all the brands wildin’ on TikTok (shoutout RyanAir and Duolingo) but let me tell you, Wendys walked to that these brands could run.

Go and read this whole thread lmao:

Wendy’s @Wendys

Time for everybody’s favorite made up social media holiday. It’s #NationalRoastDay, like right now. Drop a “Roast Me” below and feel the burn.

Idk why it’s so funny to me when brands feel like they are people or have personalities (it’s marketing 101 tbh) but there’s something about someone behind the Tesco Mobile account absolutely roasting a troll that just tickles me.

Tesco Mobile @tescomobile

@JayFeliipe Are you really in a position to be turning girls away?

Anyway, Vulture did a history of Brand Twitter and I think it’s the best article I read over the summer.

Denny’s @DennysDiner

we have food

What Daily Routine Videos Actually Show Us

Thankfully when we hit the new year I was as far from technology as one could be, so I got to miss all the low-key toxic new year’s resolution content about every little part of yourself that you want to change/ the “healthy” habits people want to adopt. I’m all for self-improvement and bettering yourself, but seeing all of the “healthy morning routines” and “what I eat in a day” and aspirational but non-realistic TikToks (it used to be Tumblr posts) just makes me want to scream WHO IS PROFITING FROM MAKING US FEEL THIS WAY?!?! It’s not a hot take at all, but according to this study the global market for weight loss products and services is already worth $254.9 billion and they do not need our help in growing that number. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t set goals, I just want you to be kind to yourself before you reach them & on the journey. That’s all.

The 2014 Tumblr Girl is back

Unless it’s not, and it was just a slow week in content for Vogue. Kinda following on from the above… 2014 Tumblr was not a good time for a lot of people (see: me) so I just hope if we’re seeing a resurgence it’s only for fashion (and should we even be bringing that back?? lol) and we can leave behind all the romanticised mental illness stuff. Not going back there. I’m here for the One Direction GIF sets tho.

We all own Winnie The Pooh!

I didn’t even know ‘Public Domain Day’ was a thing, but according to this website:

“On January 1, 2022, copyrighted works from 1926 will enter the US public domain, where they will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon. The line-up this year is stunning. It includes books such as A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, Felix Salten’s Bambi, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Langston Hughes’ The Weary Blues, and Dorothy Parker’s Enough Rope.”

I also didn't realise that there was a shelf life for copyright here, but Ryan Reynolds did - and used the newly accessible Winnie The Pooh in his latest ad for Mint Mobile. HUGE kudos to the marketing team here.

The summer mundane polls were cray

As much as I wasn’t “working” over the past few weeks, when a mundane poll comes knocking, ya girl has to get to the bottom of it. Here are some of the results for our summer mundane polls: