going viral
I was hanging out on my computer on Sunday night, scrolling through Twitter, when suddenly everyone I knew was tweeting about this absolute bonkers story in Elle Magazine on the journalist who fell in love with Martin Shkreli.
My very online friends obviously know who he is — but for those who might not remember his name right away, he’s the dude who decided to increase the price of a lifesaving drug by 5000 percent because he could.
The piece is absolutely worth the read and everyone has a million takes on it and I’ve been texting friends about it constantly because it’s a very egregious example of what not to do as a journalist and also really sad when you think about how manipulated she is, but that’s actually not why I’m writing about it today.
Unlike most of my time spent during this quarantine, I actually am lucky enough to not be living alone right now. And while I was refreshing Twitter, my friend was also scrolling through her phone right next to me that Sunday night, while watching football (probably one reason why I was more focused on my computer than the TV). Oddly enough, I didn’t think to tell her about it until the next night, 24 hours after it had made its way from journalist Twitter to more mainstream eyes.
She’s not one of my ~extremely online~ friends and she was actually one of the people I started this newsletter for. Over the past few months, it’s pretty much become a list of things I like, but I did start it as a way to try to translate all the information I intake while people with other jobs are actually doing things that don’t involve reading everything online.
She had not seen the piece, which didn’t really surprise me. But then it made me wonder if it had made its way to any of my friends who aren’t journalists but are generally informed about the world. So I did my first ever Instagram poll to see who HAD even heard about it, 24 hours after it came out.
And while it’s a very small sample, I was very surprised when it stayed at 50% had seen it, 50% haven’t for most of the next few hours.
One friend messaged me that her very offline dad had asked her about it, which made me think that probably most people HAD seen it, probably shared on Facebook. But the final poll results — though it’s not a big sample at all — are 57% had seen it, 43% hadn’t. And there wasn’t really a pattern, beyond every journalist I know saying yes.
And while this story isn’t even close to the most important thing happening in the news, it was briefly a thing that everyone in my Twitter bubble was talking about, like that Cut piece on Caroline Calloway last year (super curious as to if everyone reading this even knows what I’m talking about here). But it clearly wasn’t something that EVERYONE had seen, and I sort of find that fascinating.
We hear a lot about how Twitter isn’t real life, and that is sort of true in this case. Not everyone I know wants to discuss Martin Shkreli nonstop, even if a lot of my friends do. But it does make me wonder how different all of our inner lives can be from each other, especially with all of the options for us to read and watch and intake. And I think — while I’d love for everyone to be ready to talk about anything I want to talk about — that that’s not a bad thing.
what else i’ve been reading:
Texas Monthly: Texas Wedding Photographers Have Seen Some $#!+, by EMILY MCCULLAR
This is actually another piece that *I* think went viral because it’s infuriating but am not sure if that’s actually true!
The bridesmaid said the groom had tested positive for the coronavirus the day before. “She was looking for me to be like, ‘Oh, that’s crazy,’ like I was going to agree with her that it was fine,” the photographer recalls. “So I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And she was like, ‘Oh, no, no, no, don’t freak out. He doesn’t have symptoms. He’s fine.’ ”
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“I have children,” she told a bridesmaid. “What if my children die?” The bridesmaid responded, “I understand, but this is her wedding day.”
Vox: America’s hollow middle class, by Anne Helen Petersen
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — everything Anne Helen Petersen writes is genius even if it can be super depressing!
Delia is part of an expanding group of people whose income technically places them within the middle class of American earners but whose expenses — whether for housing, medical costs, debt payments, child care, elder care, or the dozens of other expectations that attend supposed middle-class living — leave them living month to month, with little savings for emergencies or retirement.
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Forty years ago, the term “middle class” referred to Americans who had successfully obtained a version of the American dream: a steady income from one or two earners, a home, and security for the future. It meant the ability to save and acquire assets. Now, it mostly means the ability to put your bills on autopay and service debt. The stability that once characterized the middle class, that made it such a coveted and aspirational echelon of American existence, has been hollowed out.
a fun twitter thread:
my response:
That’s all I have for this year — Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! Stay tuned for a special early January blog on my favorite albums/EPs of the year.