#49: the bitch is back
a mini trip recap, thoughts on para-social relationships, and so much has happened in the past two weeks
hi hi hi sisters ♡ okay the title of this week’s post was a wee bit dramatic, but hopefully it caught your attention. there is truly so much I want to chat about and I feel like I have so many ideas rushing through my head of what to discuss, so lets see what ends up sticking. but before I get into any of that, I just want to say a HUGE thank you to
for subbing in for me while I was away. it was so so so fun to be on the other side and read my substack from a new writer. so thank you thank you thank you Alyssa, and whos in favor of her coming out with her own substack?!?! MEtomorrow I start my last year of law school. holy cow, I cannot believe it. law school has been a very different experience from what I imagined it to be. I think I was expecting myself to really excel and be in love with everything I was learning. I’ve seen Legally Blonde, On The Basis of Sex, and How To Get Away With Murder; I knew what law school was going to be like obviouslyyyy, but once again, to my dismay and surprise, law school is nothing like they portray it to be from movies and television. can we get a collective womp womp. that being said, I have enjoyed my time in law school. I have learned a lot, and know that I will be learning so much more this next year. i’m stressed about finding a job and paying off student loans, but who isn’t these days? nonetheless, no need to continue to bore you all about my thoughts on law school at this moment, i’m bound to write about it again in the next year.
for the next little bit I want to keep the recommendations section to recommendations for different substacks that I read. I find it to be really important to support small “businesses” (that sounds odd to use here, but maybe influencers is another word I can use?) and one way I can do that is by sharing about them!
this week I want to highlight the substack
by S.L.H. each week she writes up and shares about her favorite things and things she’s loved. she also does some little report check ins and shares a hyperfixation questionnaire from her readers. I love how jam packed her substack is of links and treasures to find. youre bound to find something that interests you as well!
movies: even though I was out of the country and on a trip, I was still able to watch some movies in the past couple of weeks. to prep for our trip to austria (specifically salzburg) I watched the sound of music, which I had to finish the night before we did a sound of music tour. DAMN now thats a movie. and going on the tour made me cry :’) while in a tiny town in switzerland, bjørn* and I watched the grand budapest hotel, which actually takes place in the alps, so it was the perfect movie to watch. AND it was on disneyplus, which was really nice because most of the time you have to rent wes anderson movies. on the airplane ride back I watched the taste of things. its a french film about cooking and it was gorgeous and marvelous and emotional and beautiful and I loved it SO much. food is incredibly powerful and truly a connector of people. and lastly, bjorn and i recently watched amadeus, its a film about mozart and his arch nemesis salieri. truly a really fun film.
music: unless you’ve been living under a ROCK, you’ll know that sabrina carpenter released her newest album, short n’ sweet on friday. and WOW its a banger after banger of an album. truly a no skip album. its short- hence the title, at only 35 minutes long, so its perfect for a hot girl walk, a commute to work, or doing some chores in your room. also perfect for fantasizing about a lover. its perfect for any occasion really. I can’t pick favorites but I do love Juno, Bed Chem, and Slim Pickins. and even though i’ve heard Please, Please, Please and Espresso about 1,000 times by now, I am not sick of them and they fit perfectly into the album.
also really need to share a new song that was released this week, its called my body’s my buddy by tessa violet and brye. holy cannoli, it is a gorgeous song and very emotional. its about loving our bodies because they have been with us from day 1 and will be with us until the end. so please go take a listen!!
in my mind: i’m currently reading julie & julia for our book to movie club. this was my pick because julie and julia is one of my all time favorite movies and I had never read the book before. I will say, the book is okay, the movie is SO. MUCH. BETTER. but because I love the movie so much, I really am enjoying the book. the author is more crass than she is in the movie, or maybe watching it instead of reading it seems less so, but thats okay. i’m glad they took this story and made it into a movie, cause the movie is perfect. we are watching it on wednesday, so I need to finish the book before then! we are also going to make some food from the book and enjoy that while watching the movie, i’m very excited.
in my stomach: bjørn recently got me a cookbook for my birthday. its called start here by sohla el-waylly. she is a cook from the new york times and quite literally as i’m typing this out I find out that she has a substack and i’m SO excited to read that. anyways, I found her on youtube a couple of years ago and really enjoyed the way she cooked and taught about cooking, so when I was in SF earlier this year I saw her cookbook all around and I was really intrigued because I want to learn to be a better cook- seems like a good life skill idk. and I made my first recipe from it. it was a charred lemon parmesan risotto, and it was very tasty. so fun to see a recipe come together and have it turn out good. like that is a satisfying feeling
who knew i’d be talking so much about cooking in this week’s newsletter…
lets chat about para social relationships shall we?
FYI, I get pretty long winded in this section, if you don’t have the bandwidth to read my whole rant, please at least watch this video, you can watch it on double speed and it will be 2.5 minutes long. its so good and hits on all the notes I want to bring to the table.
according to the internet, a parasocial interaction is: a kind of psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with performers in the mass media, particularly on television and on online platforms. while a parasocial relationship is: a one-sided emotional connection between a person and someone they don't know personally, such as a famous person or a fictional character. the person in the relationship invests time, interest, and emotional energy into the other party, who is often unaware of the relationship's existence.
we have all experienced a parasocial interaction or relationship during some part of our life. for most of us we have probably experienced it from taylor swift, i know i have. taylor swift has really encouraged these relationships through her use of language. not only are her songs a way to connect to her fans on an emotional level, she herself has been active on social media and has been creating “relationships” with fans since the early days of tumblr. she has sent easter eggs for decades to try to get fans in on whats to come next for her music. in some ways these relationships can be positive, as it gets fans to connect to the music and the artist on a deeper level, but in a lot of ways, these parasocial relationships can become extreme. and thats where I want to take this chat ted talk.
chappell roan, a household name at this point (or at least her name should be) has come out recently with some videos and posts expressing a desire for her fans to stop being fucking creeps (im paraphrasing but thats the gist). and the internet is up in arms about a girl trying to create boundaries, TYPICAL SOCIETY.
and then we have chris olsen, he’s known to people active on tiktok, so if you don’t recognize his name, I don’t blame you. but he has 13 Million followers and is at almost every social event you could imagine. he’s funny, a theater kid, has had an incredibly hard past, and currently is dealing with a lot of harassment and bullies and is suffering from degradation on tiktok. he has been practically bullied off of the app. and this isn’t the first time that an influencer has been bullied away from posting on tiktok. typically its happening only because the consumers think that a creator is “cringe” and the internet wants to bring them down. let me remind you all, CRINGE IS A VICTIMLESS CRIME (thank you eli rallo for that phrase)
why am I bringing up both of these people when talking about parasocial relationships? well because of the internet and social media and our access to celebrities (social media ones and/or music/movie ones) fans and their consumers have the ability to learn about these people, stalk them, and harass them from the tips of our fingers. while there has always been crazy fans (celebrities have always been stalked and some have been killed…) being mean has become SO casual to people online. someone is so willing to slew absolute HATE on someone’s video because they feel like it. there are reddit snark pages made for people to just hate on these influencers and creators. and there are no repercussions for these people, but there are major consequences because of their actions. influencers and celebrities are constantly sent hate and their self-worth is diminished because of the callous remarks from others. and there is no sense of privacy on the internet to these people (and all of us). and the worst part about all of this is that people think that celebrities, internet or not, deserve this because “this is what they signed up for” NEWS FLASH: NO THEY DID NOT. when becoming a popstar or a content creator or a celebrity, they did NOT sign up for death threats or hate or snide remarks day after day. they did not sign up for stalkers and people trying to find their family members. they *might* have signed up for a photo taken with them here or there, but with that, they are still allowed to say no and are deserved that respect and privacy to say no to a photo without someone then bashing said person online for being a bitch because they wouldn’t take a photo with them.
sure, we may find a creator, influencer, or celebrity annoying or cringey or we may not like their content, but guess what? we dont have to consume it. you can block them and move on. you don’t need to post hate and send death threats and tell someone to kill themselves just because you don’t like their content. and you especially don’t need to go after them like a witch hunt. I feel like i’m preaching to the choir because if you read my substack or are part of the substack community in general, you most likely are not actively engaged in online bullying or threatening people for funsies.
its sad to me that the two options given to these types of individuals is either 1) deal with all the shit that comes with fame or 2) go into hiding, come out to make something, but then become a shell of a person. where the hell is option #3 that allows someone respect from strangers and gives them the chance to live a life where they can go a day without feeling like their life is threatened?!
all that being said, I do think that sometimes there is a difference between hating on a celebrity and asking for them to be accountable for their actions, or lack thereof. with the movie, it ends with us, recently being out, blake lively has gotten a lot of backlash for her lack of discussing domestic violence when promoting the movie. I do think that the backlash is warranted because promoting a movie that features domestic violence predominately and not talking about that at all during the promotion is pretty shitty and tricks people into not knowing what will happen during a movie (this happened to me basically). calling out for celebrities to talk about palestine because their platform could make a huge ass difference in calling for a ceasefire or an arms embargo is different than degrading an individual because we don’t like how they are private or if they are cringey.
and also, here’s the thing, I definitely feel like I have parasocial relationships with some of these internet stars as well. I LOVE emilie kiser and her videos so much. I love jaci marie smith and chelsey jade curtis and hayley rawle (these names might not mean anything to you which is fine, but they are people I follow and listen to their podcasts and watch their content and have cried over and with them) and they feel like people I know. when in reality I don’t. and while I consider myself to be quite normal and not someone that will go and stalk an individual, I also recognize that my relationship with these strangers might be a little much at some points. will I stop consuming their content for the sake of cutting off this parasocial relationship? nope. but I will speak out against those sending hate to people online. I will try to learn more about what can be done from a consumer perspective to try to be more normal in general.
phew that was a LOT, thank you for reading, i’ve really been thinking about this a lot the past couple of weeks and it felt good to gather my thoughts and write them all out. but ugh oh my goodness I didnt even get to talk about how maisie peters is also being bullied by people on the internet because of her performance at the eras tour. WHEN WILL IT END?!?
tiktok: chappell roan and olivia rodrigo performing hot to go; this tattoo placement is so perfect
pinterest: relatable; very much me as well
instagram: these clips are DARLING
I’m happy to be back writing to you all. I hope you guys are having the best last week of august this week (yikes thats a scary sentence) and I hope that everyone has a safe labor day weekend. we still have a couple of weeks of summer left, so squeeze out the long days while you can, go read in the park, and eat some ice cream!! LOVE YOU ALL!!
*bjørn is my boyfriend for new readers who are confused
Thank you for supporting my small business!!!! Made my day :)