My dad fucked up
Mōrena lil shits!!
Holy shit team, this hasn’t happened in a while but this morning I am so hungover that I ALMOST SLEPT THROUGH ALL MY ALARMS. Imagine if you just didn’t get today’s edish of the newsy? There would be hell to pay.
Last night Rubes, Liv and I went out with some new mates and holy SHIT it was a great time. It started with pasta & prosecco, moved on to Craig David’s (not his house, the DRINK named after him) (if you don’t know what these are they consist of tequila shots chased down by pineapple juice) (Ruby actually had to RUN TO THE DAIRY to get pineapple juice to give to the bartender, legend), and ended with karaoke and kebabs - and on a Thursday????? Anyway, I woke up still in last night's makeup, with a mouth as dry as the Sahara, so it must’ve been a great one.
This newsy will be a little light via the state that I'm in, but keep reading for a REALLY good story about my dad XD
In today’s newsletter:
An iconic story from my Dad
The Resse Witherspoon section I forgot yesterday!
Everyone wants forgiveness, but no one is being forgiven
The inventor of the GIF died
New episode of The Shit Show
WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING TRAILER
Horoscopes
Do you have your eyes open or closed while getting your hair washed at the hairdresser?
My dad fucked up
So my Dad, Normy (who one may compare to Gerry Gergich from Parks and Rec) flew to Queenstown (down the other end of the country) yesterday for a week of golfing and banter with his mates. As he does, he was sending us all pics of his flight and rubbing his holiday in our faces, but when he landed we got these texts:
Dad told me, under no circumstances am I to put this in the newsletter, but I'll sacrifice everything for my art xxx
Today I learnt: Reese Witherspoon isn’t actually Reese Witherspoon’s name
So many of you kindly pointed out that I SIMPLY FORGOT TO ADD THIS IN yesterday and you were thinking about it all day. Here you go!
Yep, it’s actually a Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon, and you can fact check it here if you want.
Everyone wants forgiveness, but no one is being forgiven
“The state of modern outrage is a cycle: We wake up mad, we go to bed mad, and in between, the only thing that might change is what’s making us angry. The one gesture that could offer substantive change, or at least provide a way forward — forgiveness — seems perpetually beyond our reach.”
This is so important and is tied extremely closely to chats we’ve had about cancel culture before on Culture Vulture - but I really want to do/write/make/say something longer about the changes I’ve noticed in the internet and in how we, as users of the internet behave, so instead of doing a half assed version of something that could be ✨ really good✨ and deserves to be ✨ really well communicated✨ I’m just going to give you some of my fave excerpts from this piece to tide?? tie??? (I sense a mundane poll coming on) you over.
“Everyone wants forgiveness, but no one is being forgiven, and no one knows how to negotiate forgiveness at a cultural level. In an era of polarized politics, “cancel culture,” and the tendency of social media users to conduct informal modern tribunals without a lot of due process, seeking and granting public forgiveness is increasingly complicated.”
“Bound up in the hand-wringing over cancel culture is the idea that lurking on the internet is a potential vigilante justice mob, out to insist that a score must be settled and retribution must be taken. In this messy context, on such a public stage, there’s little room for humanization between offense and vengeance.”
“The idea of “canceling” turns every potential interaction into a bad-faith nightmare, reframing earnest calls for accountability as witch hunts and often derailing the possibility of penitence before the question of forgiveness can ever arise. Those who sound the cancel culture alarm do have some valid concerns, namely: How is anyone supposed to attain lasting forgiveness at a cultural level without having their past offenses permanently held against them? What if they don’t want your forgiveness — can you still interact with them and their work? When is it okay to move on? Is it ever?”
“If we applied a positive road map to a typical outrage cycle, what we would hope to find after that initial period of outrage is discussion, apology, atonement, and forgiveness. That process almost never happens on the modern public stage.”
“To reach a point where anger and toxicity are diminished, we have to engage with each other sincerely and respectfully, believing that the people on the receiving end of our anger have the best of intentions in engaging with us. We have to replace bad-faith engagement with good-faith engagement. That doesn’t mean, necessarily, that we must wind up dealing in good faith with extremists, conspiracists, disinformation agents, and other bad actors. It might mean that we stop assuming everyone who says anything with which we disagree falls into one of those categories.
We’re a long way from knowing how to do that.”
“Social media rewards pithy, angry takes rather than nuanced, balanced discussions, then boosts those takes so they attract more angry, non-nuanced takes. It can feel good to be part of that collective anger, especially when you feel righteous. It’s often extremely difficult to let that anger go, to forgive, adjust, and move on.”
Please, please, please go and read the full piece. And if your eyes glazed over while reading those excerpts, scroll back up & try to take it in. I think adding a bit more grace to our interactions online is super important if we wanna live in/on a better web!
The inventor of the GIF died
And we actually had a toast to him last night. First of all, to honour Stephen Wilhite today we will pronounce it as he intended us to pronounce it - ‘jif.’ Second of all, I blame the rise of NFTs. Third, he died at the age of 74 of COVID :(
WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING TRAILER
I’M SO EXCITED FOR THIS, AND THERE’S AN EXCLUSIVE TAYLOR SWIFT SONG IN IT!
NEW EPISODE OF THE SHIT SHOW
A Plane Crash & A Pay Gap - The Shit Show — open.spotify.com
A lot to cover this week! A 737 crashed in China, Ash Barty retired from tennis, Russians are downloading Wikipedia, European countries might have to publish their pay gaps, and Squish talks about... the Kardashians??? Tune in wherever you get your pods!
I'm hungover, so you get some horoscopes
Do you have your eyes open or closed while getting your hair washed at the hairdresser?
Here we are again asking the really tough questions.
25% of keep your eyes open
75% of you are kind to your hairdressers
A Plane Crash & A Pay Gap (The Shit Show)
Inner monologues: Explained (Culture Vulture)
The internet’s meth underground, hidden in plain sight (NBC)
A locked-in man has been able to communicate in sentences by thought alone (MIT Tech Review)
MIU MIU MINI SKIRTS, KIM KARDASHIAN & THE "END OF THE BBL" (Nylon)
You can listen to us talk about all things pop culture on Culture Vulture, about THE WORLD on The Shit Show or watch us explain the internet on Extremely Online.
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LOVE YOU THE MOST, LUCE XX
