Not to be confused with ’s Hate Read, which you should read. —Kate

New on ICYMI: Why has being online gotten so…annoying? Everyon’s fav joins!

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It’s easy to tell when you’ve become someone’s hate read. Most hate readers do their hate reading in silence, but a select few will speak out. They write about you on subreddits or even comment directly on your content, letting you know over and over again that they have the lowest possible opinion of you and everything you publish.

Hate reading is one of the fundamental pillars of the internet. Social media introduced us to a wealth of uniquely horrible (or just mildly annoying) people we’d never otherwise come across, and it can be hard to look away. The 2010s term “bitch eating crackers” described people who were triggering even when doing something as simple as, well, eating crackers. Snarkers in online forums will often use “BEC” to refer to bloggers and influencers, who irk them for, admittedly, no real reason (“She’s my BEC”).

BEC is not meant to describe genuinely harmful people. No one who publicly exerts influence online is entitled to only positive feedback, and those publishing written work should expect it to be discussed. But the normalization of hate reading, combined with the rise of ragebait has resulted in a deeply unpleasant experience for the average poster. If hate followers are not willingly consuming content they know they hate, they’re approaching everything else in bad faith, anyway, because anger and rage has become the norm.

I think about this whenever I scroll r/nycinfluencersnark. The subreddit is generally good at self-policing, and I find most of the discourse on there to be genuine and thoughtful. But the posters there have a particular obsession with a group of New York creators who I otherwise see almost nothing about. Halley Kate cannot post a single picture or TikTok without an unflattering screenshot making its way into the sub for dissection. Even a totally normal photo will be captioned with something like “her face,” or “her lips,” or “what is going on.” The hate consumption has gone so deep it is no longer even legible to the average person.

I’m not immune to the hate follow. I’ve been trying to figure out why some things that make me feel bad are so irresistible, and I think it’s a matter of validation. It feels good to confirm that this person sucks exactly like I thought they did. But they’re still innocent—they’re not forcing me to consume their posts. If I know the very premise of their content is not for me, then it’s my problem if I keep successfully seeking it out in order to feel angry.

What I didn’t realize until I was on the other side of it is that hate readers don’t merely seem annoying—they often come across as insane.

If a vegan kept going to a steakhouse and then leaving Google reviews about being served steak, the vegan would be in the wrong. It might feel to them like they’re making a point, that it’s necessary for them to register their outrage. But to the steakhouse and pretty much everyone else, their credibility is undermined by the fact that they keep coming to a steakhouse and getting mad that it serves steak.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if you spent three hours shaking your head while scrolling a creator you hate to make sure everyone knows you hate them—you spent all day taking in content that upsets you, gives you a bleak outlook, and makes your everyday life worse. (Or to return to the vegan/steakhouse metaphor: After everything, you’re hungrier than ever.) Not only that, but you’re conditioning yourself for annoyance. This makes it worse to be in your own head, and can affect your real-life relationships. I know when I’ve done this to myself: It’s like getting the jitters from from eating too much candy. I have to log off and eat some vegetables.

I’ve always maintained that you are what you scroll. And when I say you should consume what makes you feel good, I don’t simply mean, like, puppy videos (although, please feel free). I deleted Twitter because, while the same horrible things are making headlines, it feels better to learn about them from NPR’s Up First during my morning shower than to get an all-day drip from people who I don’t know. It feels better to end my night watching a show on TV that ends rather than a feed of videos that could go on forever. And my experience online improved significantly a few years ago when I just unfollowed or muted the people who, fairly or not, get under my skin whenever they pop up on my screen. Do the same and I promise that not only will the online experience be better for you, but also for the person you hate read, because they no longer have to keep fielding your comments. Win-win.

I always thought Center For Fiction was the place where you were most likely be seated across from an old coworker or Twitter mutual, but after running into both (sorry I was naked) and Sonia Weiser (sorry I was talking about Lindsay Clancy) at the gym this week, I’m starting to think it’s Chelsea Piers?? If this is also you DM me and I’ll tell you about the time I hated an instructor so much I walked out mid-class… —Kate

Nick’s Riff This Week

How smoking weed paradoxically became “self-care”: “One of the worst coworkers of my professional life was openly—famously—a stoner, and she was either inexplicably hostile or zonked with bloodshot eyes, and always furiously undermining anyone who drifted too close to her jealousy hoarded contacts or stories.”

I did not know the media softball scene was still active (I had always assumed, like comped town cars and the concept of “going to print,” it was a relic from an earlier era of the industry) until Slate was short the amount of players it needed to play against The New Yorker. I asked if I could cover it for media_gossip and was told it probably wouldn’t happen at all unless I also volunteered to join.

I hadn’t played any kind of competitive group sports since quite literally high school, so I forgot about the unique kind of fear and nausea that ensues after being told you’re “up to bat.” But the stakes dissolved pretty quickly. It turns out this was Slate’s one and only game this season, whereas The New Yorker had custom shirts and hats, and were beating us so handily that at one point they just started sending in their kids to play instead. They were still gracious enough to invite us to eat their victory pizza with them after. If I knew we got pizza, I probably would have tried a little harder.

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Every other week (or so) we quiz a “very online” person for their essential guide to what’s good on the internet.

Today we welcome Grimes, a singer, songwriter, and producer. Two of her albums, Art Angels and Visions, were chosen for Pitchfork’s list of the 200 Best Albums of the 2010s. She has a new song and music video, “Miku-Maxxing,” with the virtual artist Hatsune Miku and producer さたぱんP (SatapanP).

Grimes finds deals on Victorian- and Edwardian-era clothes on Etsy, has been hacking her health with Claude, and recently learned the hard way that ice cream is not a superfood. —Nick

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EMBEDDED: What’s a recent meme or post that made you laugh?

GRIMES: I have been mostly off social media for the last year and a half but I like the Chinese ads with strange women selling industrial products. Or the Chinese grape leaves ads.

EMBEDDED: What do you use Instagram for?

GRIMES: I’ve only been back on Instagram for a few days, but I am intrigued by eye enlargement surgery.

EMBEDDED: What do you like about TikTok? What do you dislike?

GRIMES: I enjoy psy-ops and political intrigue, so TikTok being a bizarre ground zero for that makes it intriguing. I am against the infinite scroll. I think it’s a crime against humanity and should be illegal (the same goes for all social media; I’m not singling out TikTok). In general, we should have war crime tribunals for the people responsible for this. Needs to be regulated out of civil society. Actively causes brain damage and is a legitimate addiction. Every platform is guilty tho.

EMBEDDED: Are you concerned by the claims of censorship that some users have made since TikTok was taken over by investors led by Larry Ellison, an ally of President Trump?

GRIMES: I am not a citizen of this country, so I will decline to comment, but the state of media is the PsyOpera.

EMBEDDED: Do you watch Twitch, Kick, or any other livestreaming services? If so, which streamers?

GRIMES: I am sorry I don’t use social media haha, I may be failing this interview. But I feel like I have seen videos of Kai Cenat that were good. Woah Vicky seems cool, if she is a streamer. I enjoy her poetry.

EMBEDDED: Where do you tend to get your news?

GRIMES: Breaking Points is the best for news.

Outside of that, podcasts, thinkers, friends, Ground News. I subscribe to things like the by , and my friends update me. My current favorite podcast for news is Hidden Forces with and the Patrick Boyle podcast.

EMBEDDED: How do you keep up with the online discourse? How important is it to you to do this?

GRIMES: I’ve been fairly clocked out for a year and a half besides a few AI or war things. I’m learning about it again now. Trying to use Instagram. Social media is the opiate of the masses, and I consider myself an addict, so yeah

EMBEDDED: What’s the last strong opinion you had about a story, topic, or controversy online?

GRIMES: I think Addison Rae is a good live performer and Chinese social media seems good at comedy

EMBEDDED: What’s a popular misconception that you see repeated online?

GRIMES: Recently learned the hard way that ice cream is not a superfood.

EMBEDDED: What words, phrases, and/or people do you have muted?

GRIMES: None

EMBEDDED: What are your favorite newsletters?

GRIMES: Newsletters? I don’t think I get newsletters, maybe the Bismarck Brief? What is a newsletter?

EMBEDDED: How do you think Substack has changed media, if at all?

GRIMES: I love Substack! I like longreads. I’m not online enough to have a sense of how Substack has changed things. I do think it needs to become less boring if complex ideas are going to get in front of more people. But there should be some boring things actually. Substack is important.

EMBEDDED: How would you describe the culture of Substack, in terms of the types of writing and thinking that it has encouraged?

GRIMES: I mostly just follow my friends and some writers I love on there. is really smart. I think she should be taken more seriously.

EMBEDDED: What’s one positive media trend? What’s one negative trend?

GRIMES: Positive: furries

Negative: face filters

EMBEDDED: What, if anything, is there to learn from the popularity of the looksmaxxing trend and influencers like Clavicular?

GRIMES: Mouthtaping seems genuinely useful.

EMBEDDED: Do you have any advice for people who use sports betting apps or prediction markets?

GRIMES: Well, you are betting against quant bots, so you probably won’t win. It seems like it favors insider trading and bots. I guess perhaps the point seems to be insider trading. So therein lies the quandary. This is not financial advice

EMBEDDED: Have you found Claude, ChatGPT, or any other AI tools useful? How so?

GRIMES: Yes, I use Claude a lot. I’ve been hacking my health.

EMBEDDED: Are smartphones bad for us? Where do you fall on the Jonathan Haidt-Taylor Lorenz divide?

GRIMES: I don’t know what this divide is, but is great. The phones are bad. Could have had weird glasses or something.

EMBEDDED: Do you try to limit your phone use? If so, what methods have been helpful for this?

GRIMES: Yes, I would probably be considered sort of extreme about this. I have my main phone; I keep Opal on it. It can only do basic things. Social media etc. is on another phone. I often don’t have this phone.

EMBEDDED: What’s something that you have observed about the online behavior of Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and/or Boomers?

GRIMES: Boomers cannot detect AI. Despite being against it, they are the main consumers of it.

EMBEDDED: Who’s the coolest person who follows you?

GRIMES: Ian McKellen

EMBEDDED: Are you into any podcasts right now? How and when do you usually listen?

GRIMES: I hate silence, so I have them on most of the time. Obsessed with Patrick Boyle. The rest is history. Hidden Forces, Breaking Points

EMBEDDED: Are you in any groups on Reddit, Discord, or Facebook? What’s the most useful or entertaining one?

GRIMES: No.

EMBEDDED: What is your Wordle starting word?

GRIMES: I don’t know what this is.

EMBEDDED: What’s your go-to emoji, and what does it mean to you?

GRIMES: The wing 🪽

EMBEDDED: What’s the most basic internet thing that you love?

GRIMES: Any messaging is glorious. Signal is preferred. Group chat.

EMBEDDED: Is there any content you want but can’t seem to find anywhere online?

GRIMES: Good audio content about the late 1800s-1930s. Suffragettes, flappers, Art deco, art nouveau, etc. Belle Époque/Romantic era into WW1 is woefully underrepresented.

EMBEDDED: Do you regularly use eBay, Depop, or other shopping platforms? What’s a recent thing you’ve bought or sold?

GRIMES: I recently sold most of my clothes.

I love Etsy because u can get real Victorian/Edwardian-era clothes for fairly cheap if you dig. It’s insane.

EMBEDDED: Do you consume any content about fitness, diet, or other types of “wellness”? What creators or sites do you find most useful?

GRIMES: Yeah, I’m very into and . I started biohacking intensely this year and ended up screwing myself over a few times in quite profound ways because women’s health is actually not well understood. Lots of clinical trials have only included men or a majority of men due to the difficulty of factoring in cyclical hormonal changes.

So Kate’s focus on women’s health is huge; I can’t endorse this project enough.

EMBEDDED: Is there a site you like for product recommendations? How do you decide, for example, which air filter to buy?

GRIMES: YouTube/friends/Claude/if there are awards and things. Need at least two sources tho. Can’t trust anything rn. Don’t love this. Try to speak to experts tbh.

EMBEDDED: Have you recently read an article, book, or social media post about the internet that you’ve found particularly insightful?

GRIMES: Cute Accelerationism by Amy Ireland and . Real futurism in every sense.

EMBEDDED: What’s the last thing that brought you joy online?

GRIMES: The Pope’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas.

Thanks Grimes! Listen to her new song. 🪽

More My Internet Shaad D’Souza ∙ Noelle Perdue ∙ Charlie Sosnick ∙ Grace Byron ∙ Sean Fennessey ∙ Mitchell Jackson ∙ Samuel Hine ∙ Julia Vitale ∙ Sam Kriss ∙ Scaachi Koul ∙ All

Keeping my iPhone 17 tucked away in a box so one day my kids can reflect on simpler times…—Kate

New on ICYMI: There’s always trouble when a fandom explodes and has to navigate new members. But what’s happening with the WNBA is something even weirder.

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When women’s razor brand Billie launched in 2017, they faced a conundrum. They came onto the scene as an openly feminist company, marketing their subscription service as a way to fight the “pink tax.” But at that time, feminist culture was all about not shaving, and Billie had to figure out how to advertise their product in this climate while adhering to their feminist image. “A new razor brand is encouraging women not to shave,” Quartz wrote in 2018. All in all, the efforts across billboards and social media came out sounding a lot like this:

2026 is the year of the anti-phone. Whether or not people are actually logging off is irrelevant. Culturally, we’re going analog, buying a Brick, and acting embarrassed about our screen time. As I wrote earlier this year, being chronically online is cringe now, and the idea of getting more plugged in is not appealing to anyone.

“I have a complicated relationship with technology,” host Trever Noah began the 2026 Made By Google event, which I attended as press. “I love it, but I wish I could use it less, but I can’t live without it at the same time.”

It was an interesting way to kick off what would go on to be an hour of promoting said technology, mainly the Google Pixel 11 smartphone and the Google Pixel 5 watch. But the sentiment was woven throughout most of the demonstrations that evening. “What if I told you there’s a new way to quickly grab great photos and a video at the same time so you can experience the moment without being glued to your phone?” Kenny Sulaimon, a project manager at Google, asked when promoting a new camera mode called “Magic Capture.”

Google has read the room. People do not want to be on their phones. And yet, Google still has to sell them. Which means big tech is having its Billie moment.

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“I’m in a lot of journalist groups. Journalists are using AI constantly. I think there are a lot of people who are very performative about AI online. They’ll spend all day shitting on AI 24/7, and then they’ll come into the group chat saying, ‘By the way, does anyone know how to use this new Claude tool?’” — in

Nick’s Riff This Week

On shame and taking a “sexual inventory”: “We have changed how we talk and think about sexual conduct, but we haven’t bettered our actual sexual conduct. And avoiding each other is not the solution.”
Plus, I answered the Ask a Sober Oldster Q&A.

They should invent an advertiser that isn’t evil

I try my best to keep my finger on the pulse, so of course I finally watched The Devil Wear’s Prada 2 on my flight home from Paris earlier this week. It’s certainly not good, the script propped up solely by the talents of Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, and Stanley Tucci, but its representation of journalism was much more palatable than, say, The Bold Type, which I had to turn off after five minutes.

It accurately paints the problems decimating the industry, but unfortunately offers no solutions other than “Maybe find a good billionaire to own your publication?” Those don’t exist. Next!

One thing I thought it illustrated well, though, is the media’s relationship with advertisers, a topic I was already thinking about after last week’s media_gossip, which included an item about The Cut posting a Meta Glasses sponsorship while publishing an article critical of “surveillance chic.”

When you work in edit, you’re often separated from the moves the publication’s ad sales team are making, which is precisely how these kerfuffles happen. But as the host of a podcast, I’m now much closer to these decisions.

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New on ICYMI: Broke down the Hank Green situation with fellow science creator Charlotte Moore-Lambert:

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On August 9th, The Cut published exactly the kind of headline I like to read: “The Food52 Executive Who Used the Company Credit Card for Everything.” Shannon Muldoon, former director of Food52’s in-house creative studio, reportedly spent more than $270,000 with the company credit card on flights and luxury clothing. Perfect media gossip story, no notes, no one gets hurt except a company that for some reason took months to notice they were missing almost $300k.

The comments, as always, were not as fun, but it was one in particular that got me hot and bothered during my one precious life on earth. It read: “Once again proving the age old wisdom: ‘Few things in life are more useless than internet influencers.’”

This comment struck me as odd, because nowhere in the story is Muldoon described as an influencer. In fact, the piece makes note of her professional credentials:

“But she had some major places on her résumé,” said a former staffer. “She had worked at Bon Appétit prior, and she had a bunch of stories about those times, and she said she’d worked at the New York Times and Wayfair.” (The Times confirmed her employment as a producer for T Brand Studio.)

Muldoon no doubt had a following on her Instagram (now offline), but she had a full-time job—that’s where she was stealing from! Evidence of her lavish purchases were posted on her social media and screen-grabbed for the piece, but social media (at that time, at least) did not appear to be her career.

I’ve noticed something in the years I’ve covered internet culture. The word “influencer” is often used when really the commenter or outlet just means “woman.” In Muldoon’s case, her infractions were being used to affirm a pre-existing dislike of content creators. In other cases, a woman is labelled an “influencer” as a way to justify why she’s being written about at all.

I first remember this happening in 2020, when Houston “influencer” Alexis Sharkey went missing. Her body was found the next day on the side of a road; she was believed to have been killed by her partner. It became national news, with the lede of every article being sure to identify her as a content creator with as many as 23,000 followers. The thing is, many of those followers were rubberneckers who had heard about her disappearance and were tuning in. I remember this because I was covering the story on the website that was the predecessor to Embedded (hypocrisy, thy name is Kate). Sharkey now has over 70,000 followers.

Alexis Sharkey was a representative for the MLM beauty company Monat and would post about their products. But at no point, at least on her grid feed, had she ever posted or disclosed sponsored content. She was a career influencer in headline only, because if she’s an influencer, then it’s okay to profit off clicks about her death.

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Nick’s Riff This Week

On the bad writing that long dominated the internet: “We shouldn’t be nostalgic for the years spent pandering to Google Search and Facebook or big-name editors presiding over virtue-signaling print publications underpinned by clickbait websites.”
Plus, a guest column: Kathryn Jezer-Morton visits America B

My Lyft dropped me off 30 blocks from Wednesday night’s Made By Google event because, as about 25% of attendees now know, there are two 127 12th Aves. The other 75% must have figured this out earlier, or chose not to blithely exit their vehicle directly into a major on-ramp in the middle of nowhere. But I’m someone who tends to go gentle into that good night, and so I gave my driver a hearty “thanks!” and then panicked alone on the sidewalk. Luckily, another straggler spotted me, having just experienced the same thing, and we took a new car the remaining distance.

One of my goals this year has been to go to more industry events, and starting this side newsletter has become another incentive. When I was in my early 20s, full weeks of dinners were sustained by press events. I’d go with my Refinery29 coworkers and drink wine until I got home and threw up into my own sink, and then still go into the office the next day—tired, but not flattened in the way I am now after two glasses.

When I went freelance, however, my relationship with these happy hours and presentations and special dinners changed. Almost always, I was going to the events alone. They became necessary if I ever hoped to interact with a single human who wasn’t my husband during the workweek. And while I’m now at Slate, I don’t often overlap with my coworkers at events. Once I finally made it to Made By Google, I knew no one.

I’ve found there’s only one trick to actually enjoying these kinds of events. No, I’m not about to tell you to mingle. “What’s the worst that could happen?” The worst that could happen is you have too many cocktails and interrupt Stephanie Danler’s conversation to tell her you went to the same college, talk at length about being cheated on without her once contributing anything but but polite nods, wake up horrified, comfort yourself with the fact that she was probably drunk too, and then open Instagram and see that she’s just announced she’s pregnant. So no. No mingling.

Instead, you have to go full-send selfish. It’s just you, and so there’s no reason not to do the night exactly how you want. This is what it looks like for me:

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Every other week (or so) we quiz a “very online” person for their essential guide to what’s good on the internet.

Today we welcome Shaad D’Souza, the editor of Shaad Magazine on Instagram and writer for The New York Times, The Guardian, Vogue, GQ, Pitchfork, and New York. Shaad enjoys keeping up with the ridiculous gamified nature of American politics, never made a Substack because he hates the idea of preaching to the converted, and prays for God to take away all his opinions. —Nick

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EMBEDDED: What’s a recent meme or post that made you laugh?

SHAAD D’SOUZA:

EMBEDDED: Do you tweet? Why?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: I have a secret account on X that my friends know about. I think X was better than ever in the early days of the Elon takeover, if only because all the most annoying posters left, leaving behind the most deranged gay guys and shitposters. It was so ridiculously funny and avant-garde for a while. Lately it just feels like engagement bait/AI stuff, which is boring.

EMBEDDED: What do you use Instagram for?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: Kind of everything? About a year ago I turned my personal Instagram into a text-based magazine called Shaad Magazine, but I still occasionally post photo dumps and my stories are exactly the same, which I have to start thinking about more—when I started SM I had like 5,000 followers and now there’s like 20,000 more, and so when I post dumb shit on my stories I get all these weird message requests. But I also use it to message people, make friends, contact people for stories, all that stuff.

EMBEDDED: What types of videos do you watch on YouTube?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: Lots of cooking videos, movie trailers, stuff from WSJ/Business Insider about business trends, that kind of thing. YouTube Premium is my favourite streaming service, and I probably spend more time on YouTube than any other app. YouTube Shorts has my favourite shortform algorithm by far. I like watching these cooking videos by this couple who always seem totally drunk and are cooking the craziest things, and I’m often the only person who likes their videos, and also the skits of this MAGA-ish bartender from North Carolina.

EMBEDDED: What do you like about TikTok? What do you dislike?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: I don’t use it. I have it, but I don’t use it. The algorithm changes too fast—if I spend even a moment too long on a video, that’s all I’ll see. And it feels too fast-paced and trend-driven.

EMBEDDED: Are you concerned by the claims of censorship that some users have made since TikTok was taken over by investors led by Larry Ellison, an ally of President Trump?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: I think if you trust a private corporation, especially a social media company, to ever be making any decisions in the public interest you’re a rube. If you’re using these services, you’re already subject to all kinds of covert censorship and algorithm rigging. So, not really—especially because Larry Ellison’s primary interests are already very aligned with those of the social media companies.

EMBEDDED: Do you watch Twitch, Kick, or any other livestreaming services? If so, which streamers?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: No. I need some kind of narrative and dynamism—there’s no storytelling to streaming, just a guy basically saying and doing nothing for six hours.

EMBEDDED: Where do you tend to get your news?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: The Guardian, but I also keep tabs on The New York Times and I’ll occasionally read Australian outlets to see what’s going on back home. (Answer often is: Nothing good!) I read a lot of New York magazine’s political and cultural analysis—I think Intelligencer is really great, and I enjoy keeping up with the ridiculous gamified nature of American politics.

EMBEDDED: How do you keep up with the online discourse? How important is it to you to do this?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: Not particularly important. I’ll have a handle on what’s happening on Twitter, which tends to give me a good idea of how people are responding/relating to music and pop culture, which is important for what I write about mostly, but I find that a lot of the “discourse” that sparks from other places, like TikTok or whatever, is so braindead that I’m rarely ever forced to have an opinion. The discourse I want to engage with is usually more localised.

EMBEDDED: What’s the last strong opinion you had about a story, topic, or controversy online?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: Like, pick one! I pray for God to take away all my opinions. I guess I feel like everything this year has been even more literal than before. Like, The Invite could have been freaky and laden with emotion and tension, but instead the movie has to stop so the characters can all verbalise their problems.

EMBEDDED: What’s a popular misconception that you see repeated online?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: People who talk the loudest about music generally have no idea how charts, label budgets, contracts, etc. work. I also get annoyed by how stupid a lot of people sound when they try to sound even vaguely smart—misuse of historic vs historical, for example, or fact vs factoid. I am, my friend Jackson tells me, a quintessential “well actually” guy, which I think is better than sounding like a fucking idiot.

EMBEDDED: What words, phrases, and/or people do you have muted?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: None! I find it generative for my blood to boil, truthfully

EMBEDDED: What are your favorite newsletters?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: , , , just started a great one, Larry Fitzmaurice, , , but my number one is Zoe Latta’s .

EMBEDDED: How do you think Substack has changed media, if at all?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: There’s a lot more low-quality writing on the internet now, because a lot of writers who think they don’t need an editor ABSOLUTELY DO!

EMBEDDED: How would you describe the culture of Substack, in terms of the types of writing and thinking that it has encouraged?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: I find that it’s lot of people tossing off uninterrogated ideas into an echo chamber. Because you build your own audience, it’s a lot of dumb bitches telling each other exactlyyyyyyy. I’ve never made a Substack letter because I hate the idea of preaching to the converted—I don’t really see it as a hugely generative place, even if there’s also a lot of amazing writing on there.

EMBEDDED: What’s one positive media trend? What’s one negative trend?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: I think editors seem to be wanting to take bigger swings these days, in terms of both formats and ideas. I don’t mean to be fully down on Substack, but I think it’s encouraged a lot of terrible writers to write.

EMBEDDED: What, if anything, is there to learn from the popularity of the looksmaxxing trend and influencers like Clavicular?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: I dunno, maybe that ’20s beauty culture has been toxic and devastating for a lot of men too. Or that each new generation will always find a new way to justify using meth, and for this generation it’s just straight-up doing meth.

EMBEDDED: Do you have any advice for people who use sports betting apps or prediction markets?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: Think about how numbskulled and lame sportsbetting ads are and consider whether that’s a culture you want to align yourself with!

EMBEDDED: Have you found Claude, ChatGPT, or any other AI tools useful? How so?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: I didn’t know how to even use ChatGPT for a long time, and I find it kind of stupid and counterintuitive. If you use AI, as a journalist, you’re a fucking loser, I don’t know what else to tell you—for me, what I like about both criticism and reporting is how it allows you to do a lot of weird, specific research, and I think I’d hate this job if an app was doing that research for me. The only time I’ve used ChatGPT was to ask it to write a review “in the style of Shaad D’Souza,” to see if I should be worried. It kind of basically got my tone correct, but it didn’t have any really interesting ideas, which put a lot of my fears to rest.

EMBEDDED: Do you believe that advances in AI will spawn a new “underclass,” as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has suggested might happen?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: Don’t we already have a permanent underclass? Seems like a lot of the professional managerial class, who never really seemed to care about the fact that a lot of people were basically kept unemployed/underemployed by various other evil systems, are now just terrified that they’ll soon become that DoorDash driver they so love to scream at and undertip. This isn’t an answer to your question because I don’t really think about AI all that much, truthfully.

EMBEDDED: Or do you believe that the AI bubble about to burst?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: I basically think that all the things people really care about now are things that AI could never recreate—an AI film will never be bad in the specific way that Obsession is, where you actively want to talk to all your friends about it, and an AI will never be able to like, write a Babe dot net article about Aziz Ansari not letting you choose the colour of wine you wanted to drink, or whatever.

EMBEDDED: Are smartphones bad for us? Where do you fall on the Jonathan Haidt-Taylor Lorenz divide?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: Woof—the secret third option of any ‘Would You Rather’ is always “k*ll yourself,” right? I don’t really know or care. Truthfully, I think I have a mostly healthy relationship with my phone—I am on it a lot, but I never feel like it’s taking up time that could be better used for other things. I mostly think people scared of phone addiction are thinking about it too much.

EMBEDDED: Do you try to limit your phone use? If so, what methods have been helpful for this?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: No. I Bricked for 16 minutes once and found it annoying. Going on Do Not Disturb is the main thing for me, but again, phone is kind of an important tool for what I specifically do, and with an “everything is copy” mindset you can find ways to make phone work for you.

EMBEDDED: Have you had posts go viral? What is that experience like?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: I’ve had a lot of reviews and articles go bad viral, which often results in something like this, which then results in thousands of teenagers posting photos of me calling me a fat disgusting curry muncher pig who deserves nothing less than a public suicide in front of my whole family. But you get used to it, truthfully.

EMBEDDED: Who’s the coolest person who follows you?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: Sky Ferreira.

EMBEDDED: Who’s someone more people should follow?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: I think Straight Diva podcast is so funny, and their clips are actually contributing something to the world.

EMBEDDED: Which big celebrity has your favorite internet presence, and why?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: Madonna—crazy photos, crazy captions, weirdly poetic concepts.

EMBEDDED: Are you into any podcasts right now? How and when do you usually listen?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: I listen to all the Puck podcasts and How Long Gone and Caleb Hearon’s podcast So True.

EMBEDDED: How would you describe Tumblr’s legacy?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: Introduced me and a lot of people I know to parts of culture that we would never have found otherwise, but was also ground zero for a lot of the hatred and intense unwarranted scrutiny that’s taken over the internet, through blogs like Your Fave Is Problematic.

EMBEDDED: Do you use Slack or Teams for work? What’s the best thing about Slacking with your co-workers? What’s the worst thing?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: I’ve been trying to get a real job for about a decade now, but since I was laid off from Vice, age 19, about 9 years ago, I’ve only ever been offered permalance contracts. So no, I don’t “use Slack”

EMBEDDED: What is your Wordle starting word?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: Boring to have a Wordle starting word! Live a little! Like, what if I want to use “COCKS” today? Or “FLINT”? Having a Wordle starting word shows a fundamental lack of joie de vivre.

EMBEDDED: Do any of your group chats have a name that you’re willing to share? What’s something that recently inspired debate in the chat?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: There’s a chat called GGF, where we work out where we’re going to drink and party on Gay Guy Friday

EMBEDDED: What’s your favorite non-social media app?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: It kind of is social media, but Discogs.

EMBEDDED: Do you regularly use eBay, Depop, or other shopping platforms? What’s a recent thing you’ve bought or sold?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: Sadly I was banned from Depop back in 2020

EMBEDDED: What’s the last thing that brought you joy online?

SHAAD D’SOUZA: Posting

Thanks Shaad! Follow his magazine.

More My Internet Noelle Perdue ∙ Charlie Sosnick ∙ Grace Byron ∙ Sean Fennessey ∙ Mitchell Jackson ∙ Samuel Hine ∙ Julia Vitale ∙ Sam Kriss ∙ Scaachi Koul ∙ All

I don’t use AI. I like to burn myself out the old fashioned way! —Kate

New on ICYMI: My former coworker Sesali Bowen joined the pod to talk about TikTok’s “skinnyphobic” controversy and, not to brag, commenters are saying it’s their favorite episode of ICYMI ever!!

Head over here to subscribe to ICYMI wherever you listen to podcasts 🫶

A little over a week ago, longtime YouTuber Hank Green admitted to using AI in his research for a recent video posted by Complexly, Hank and brother John Green’s media company. In the offending video, Hank commented that he “appreciated the pushback”; this was a reference to a guest he had just been speaking with, but many assumed he had inadvertently left a response from a chatbot in the script. In the words of in : “If he was lying about that, yikes. If he was telling the truth, then it means he’s emulating the cadence of a chatbot, which is probably worse.”

In a Reddit reply, Hank says he’s been “relying too heavily on AI as a research aid” and that the level of dopamine he’s been receiving from using LLMs in his work is “not healthy.” He announced he would be taking a step back.

This incident has received a lot of coverage. Hank Green has a large fanbase, and just enough name recognition outside of it to pique the general public’s interest. But it doesn’t hurt that many outlets are framing Hank’s “not healthy” admission as evidence of something like AI psychosis. “Hank Green Confesses AI Addiction in Rare Creator Warning,” one headline reads (he never said this). If you actually read Hank’s words, you’ll realize this story is about something else.

Take this sentence from his first now-deleted tweet addressing what happened: “I was relying too much on generated notes. That’s a thing I’ve been doing and it’s a bad habit at a time when I’ve overcommitted myself.”

Or this, from his reply to a post about his tweet on Reddit: “I’ve been feeling the pressure of ‘Oh, I have this little video idea, I need to get it out real fast so I can get to the more important stuff’ and I create when I feel that pressure.”

Even a quasi-intervention from his brother John and his wife Katherine has, in my opinion, been taken out of context. “Neither of them think I’ve been being healthy,” he wrote. “I need to readjust.”

But here’s the sentence that preceded it (emphasis mine): “I need to come to terms with the fact that the level of dopamine I’ve been getting from interacting with LLMs...with doing more and more and more and more...is not healthy for me or good for the world.”

Hank does not have a problem with AI. He has a problem with burnout, and it’s one all creators will soon face.

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Nick’s Riff This Week

On the malevolent energy of storage units: “Onto this American dark matter we project our fears and fantasies. We see the terrorist, stockpiling his weapons behind a roll-up door, on the news or in a movie. It’s where Rust Cohle keeps his snuff tape. Storage Wars, still airing after 18 seasons, tells the story of unearthing treasure, or simply extracting value, from the confiscated belongings of people who miss their rental payments.”

On Wednesday night, I was in the room where it happened—and by that I of course mean, the room where Good Noticing’s Claire Parker ran into Caroline Calloway and Caroline left mid-conversation and then filmed a front-facing video on her way home accusing Claire of being one of “the meanest bitches in New York City.” In the background of this extremely niche internet drama was a quiz show! The Shit Show, to be specific, hosted by ’s who is truly one of the nicest sweeties in media, probably because she lives in New Zealand. And yet, I’ve still had so many opportunities to spend time with her IRL and each one has been a treat. Also on stage with me were writers like , , and creators like Tefi Pessoa, Brianna Chickenfry, and Eli Rallo, which had Casey and I repeatedly wondering aloud how on earth we had ended up there. —Kate

Tuesday night, Kate and I one-upped each other with stories of past social anxiety as we traveled between events—yes, two in one night. First, we visited the Shopify offices (subscribe to In Stock!), where we took in the view of Little Island and gossiped with the team there about Substack writers having to get ahead of their use of AI thanks to the Pangram integration. Then we saw interview about her new book, The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything, which yielded a gem from Kathryn, who predicted (I’m paraphrasing) that we will soon abandon social media to the AIs, as they begin to exclusively talk to each other. —Nick

You Probably Think This Media Gossip Is About You…

When I started this newsletter, my biggest anxiety was that the people I was obliquely writing about would find out and get mad at me. This is perhaps reason number one why a people-pleaser should not start a gossip column, but it turns out I needn’t have worried. In the first few months of writing media_gossip, an entirely unexpected, and yet in retrospect unsurprising, trend has emerged: People who I’m not writing about are getting mad because they think I am.

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I’m appearing alongside some great Substackers for the live quiz show at Joe’s Pub TOMORROW! The event is free—I hope to see you there!! —Kate

New on ICYMI: joined us to turn her viral Substack piece into an episode!

Head over here to subscribe to ICYMI wherever you listen to podcasts 🫶

“Influencer” was not coined by any one person. It emerged organically out of late-2000s creator culture. And in my 10 years of talking to creators, it’s not a word any one of them has used to describe themselves. When it comes up, it’s usually with air quotes, or an apologetic wince. “I hate that word,” they say.

Is that because it’s sexist? This is the question after a store in Nantucket posted a “No Influencers” sign, prompting a disappointed response from creator (and fellow Nantucket business owner) Paige Lorenze. Creator Levi Coralynn posted a video saying that hating influencers is just an acceptable way to hate women.

Influencing is unavoidably linked to women. I’ve written before about how any time a woman is murdered or commits some kind of social offense or faux pas, the media slap the word “influencer” in front of her name whenever possible to justify breathless coverage of an otherwise private citizen. I also think it’s no coincidence that, as Levi points out, once women unlocked this career path giving them creative and financial independence over their own image and femininity, the first word for it became derogatory.

Now that the term “creator” has gone mainstream, it is worth asking why a publication or person chooses “influencer” instead. I do believe that reason is often sexism. John Sylvia, owner of the “No Influencers” store, told The New York Times that, “I feel sometimes my store is used as someone’s background, a stage.” This is a legitimate gripe—but one that could have just as easily been addressed with a sign that said “No Pictures.”

In two decades, mostly female online creators have built an industry that dominates culture and commerce. You are not exempt from their influence, even if you don’t follow them (the Devil Wears Prada “cerulean” monologue comes to mind…). And yet creators are treated like gnats—scourges on a society that nevertheless actively consumes their labor.

Not that creators are above reproach. The ones with the most followers and exposure continue to uphold a status quo of thin, white femininity, only growing their privilege in the process. Lifestyle, fashion, and beauty creators also often promote overconsumption. Plus, they also model behavior online that can be disrespectful or merely oblivious IRL, and they encourage gentrification by promoting certain businesses and neighborhoods.

But “‘influencer’ has a sexist connotation” and “influencer culture is problematic” are both true. When Sylvie posted that sign, in my opinion, he was directing it at women. And? Those women were probably fucking annoying.

Creators rely on our attention. That’s why Sylvie made the sign and Lorenze posted the comment and Levi filmed the video and I’m writing this blog. But the attention is ours to give—or withhold. It’s infuriating when other people’s attention enables a creator who you feel is harmful, but all we as individuals can do is be mindful about our own.

There’s so much more to the world of content creators than the ones making headlines. Around one third of people under 45 identify as creators, which means, if we went by stereotypes, that many of the people we encounter have millions of followers and go on #gifted brand trips and spend all day making matcha and doing pilates. Instead, most creators are gig workers, with inconsistent pay and no healthcare. This isn’t to say they’re oppressed. But when we talk about “influencer culture,” what we often mean is not actually representative of most creators. You might even want some of them in your store.

FWIW, this really helped, and I’ve started doing some version of it eve…

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I’m appearing alongside some great Substackers for the live quiz show at Joe’s Pub next week. The event is free—I hope to see you there!! —Kate

Nick’s Riff This Week

“I would eventually find myself working at The Atlantic—editing, with respect and admiration, David French and Tom Nichols and Molly Jong-Fast, among others—and seeing some validity in arguments about the ‘excesses’ of wokeness. I’m on the Millennial/Gen X cusp; had I, like so many others around my age, drifted right?”

Read at RiffPost

What Happened At A Journalist Sleepaway Camp

By Angelina Mazza

I’ve just returned from the National Critics Institute, where I experienced some sort of 18th-century medical miracle. Like an Englishwoman of delicate constitution, I was sent away to convalesce by the sea. Twelve days later, I am pink-cheeked, restored. I believe in journalism again.

There were 14 of us: mostly mid-career theater critics, but also writers covering dance, food, music, television, and literature. We stayed at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut, where Chris Jones, chief theater critic at The Chicago Tribune, and Naveen Kumar, former theater critic at The Washington Post, led us through an intensive writing program. The program itself is fully funded. Every evening, we went out to see a play, musical, film, or dance performance. By morning, we had to turn in a review, visit the campus pub, and, ideally, sleep.

Sleep! I was not getting any. My sentences were hostile, delinquent creatures I’d summoned in a fugue state. There was no time for the leisurely tinkering and second-guessing I am indulging in now. In workshops, no one apologized for a rushed draft. We held each review up to the light: What had I noticed? What was I really trying to say? Why did it matter?

Zadie Smith once said that a writing life requires “a great capacity to be alone.” Most days, I hunch over my dining table in a dirty sleep tee, surrounded by books, crumbs, and cans of seltzer. I read and type and Cmd-Z my way toward what I am trying to say. I love that solitude. But there is another kind, too: the fear that you may give yourself entirely to this work and still never make a life from it.

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Every other week (or so) we quiz a “very online” person for their essential guide to what’s good on the internet.

Today we welcome , a writer, producer, and Internet porn historian who publishes the newsletter Porn World. She recently wrote the widely shared post Notes on Getting Destroyed, about the dark side of the journalist-to-influencer pipeline. Noelle likes to dip her toe into exotic animal husbandry YouTube pages and once had a brief moment of TikTok vitality making contraptions. —Nick

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EMBEDDED: What’s a recent meme or post that made you laugh?

NOELLE PERDUE: I loved this one

EMBEDDED: Do you tweet? Why?

NOELLE PERDUE: I’ve never really tweeted (the platform just never drew me in), which always really surprises people. It never feels like a compliment when people tell me that I seem like I would be active on Twitter. It feels like they’re trying to tell me as nicely as possible that they think I’m annoying and self-righteous.

EMBEDDED: What do you use Instagram for?

NOELLE PERDUE: I use Instagram as a professional page, but also (as many others do), a jungle-bird-esque mating display.

EMBEDDED: What types of videos do you watch on YouTube?

NOELLE PERDUE: I watch a lot of deckbuilding video game streams (Slay The Spire, Balatro, etc). Sometimes I like to dip my toe into the exotic animal husbandry pages, but only when it seems like they’re really committed to the animal’s care. I like Leafy Street. He’s committed to the animal’s care!

EMBEDDED: What do you like about TikTok? What do you dislike?

NOELLE PERDUE: I had a very brief moment of virality on TikTok—years ago—for making very simple stupid contraptions, which was fun. There’s an alternate timeline where that virality led me to make contraptions over and over again for the rest of my life, abandoning my writing career altogether and too scared of algorithmic punishment to expand on the initial concept. And I think that’s pretty much exactly what I like and dislike about TikTok.

@all_day_breakfast_Good sounds come to those who wait 🥒💥 #asmr #lifehack #troomtroom #satisfying #crunch #fy #fyp #crunchy

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EMBEDDED: Are you concerned by the claims of censorship that some users have made since TikTok was taken over by investors led by Larry Ellison, an ally of President Trump?

NOELLE PERDUE: Absolutely. I’ve always found Tiktok to be one of the most heavily censored platforms online, but I am definitely concerned about what direction—politically—that censorship has entrenched in after the sale. I think it’s easy to write off these platforms or pretend it’s all just silly or dumb, but ultimately social media is where young people are getting their news and being exposed to political influence. It’s worth being concerned about.

EMBEDDED: Do you watch Twitch, Kick, or any other livestreaming services? If so, which streamers?

NOELLE PERDUE: This is as good a time as any to come out as a longtime Northernlion superfan. I remember when his daughter was born!

EMBEDDED: Where do you tend to get your news?

NOELLE PERDUE: My best friend Allie works in news journalism and to be totally honest that’s one of the main reasons I know what’s going on at any given point.

EMBEDDED: How do you keep up with the online discourse? How important is it to you to do this?

NOELLE PERDUE: I am a Substack doomscroller, and unfortunately it feels very important to me to keep up with online discourse. I tell myself it’s because I do “cultural commentary” and I need to know what the zeitgeist is saying, but I think it’s probably more of a straightforward pressing-the-bruise bad habit.

EMBEDDED: What’s the last strong opinion you had about a story, topic, or controversy online?

NOELLE PERDUE: Too many to count, unfortunately. I am currently in sort of a one-woman, one-sided battle against the emergency contraceptive brand Julie—for promoting unsafe women’s sexual health practices, but also just being weird and corny and a pharmaceutical company performing a relatable-cool-girl persona. It grosses me out!

Porn World

Who profits off the women’s sexual health epidemic?

Several weeks ago I attended an influencer event in New York City for a company that sells emergency contraceptive pills. Read that sentence as many times as it takes for it to fully digest, its not something anyone should understand at first pass…

Read more

2 months ago · 294 likes · 25 comments · Noelle Perdue

EMBEDDED: How do you think Substack has changed media, if at all?

NOELLE PERDUE: I recently wrote about my complicated feelings on this. Not to say that Substack has created the journalist-to-influencer pipeline, but it has fortified it. On one hand, I think legacy media losing some of its iron fist control over information dissemination is a good thing. But I don’t believe this new expectation, that journalists must perform for online platforms to have their work seen and rent paid, is reasonable or responsible. I think both writers and audiences suffer for it.

Porn World

Notes on Getting Destroyed

For the last couple of years I’ve been on what can only be described as a never-ending media tour. I talk about porn, obscenity law, and censorship. There is a huge range in the style of media I’ve been on, and in the level of hostility I’ve been approached with by interviewers. During one of my earlier experiences, I went on a fairly well-known podcast…

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a month ago · 254 likes · 26 comments · Noelle Perdue

EMBEDDED: How would you describe the culture of Substack, in terms of the types of writing and thinking that it has encouraged?

NOELLE PERDUE: There’s an interesting culture of performing self-hatred and revulsion on here. A diaristic style of writing where the author describes being an unlikeable or morally destitute character, but also revels in it. Not to say that’s “the” culture of Substack, but it’s undeniably a thriving genre.

EMBEDDED: Have you found Claude, ChatGPT, or any other AI tools useful? How so?

NOELLE PERDUE: I don’t use any AI tools. Sometimes I’ve made rational justifications for why; citing plagiarism, or the environmental impact, or flaws in the technology etc. etc., but the real reason is that I just don’t want to.

EMBEDDED: Do you believe that the AI bubble about to burst?

NOELLE PERDUE: In my work analyzing intimacy and pornography, it already has. Unless someone is being tricked into it, the novelty of a fully AI performer has worn off for most people. One thing that’s been heartening to see in the AI boom is how much people ultimately value human creativity and craft. Output for output’s sake only appeals to a relatively small percentage of people—certainly fewer than these companies anticipated.

EMBEDDED: What’s something that you have observed about the online behavior of Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and/or Boomers?

NOELLE PERDUE: Lately I’ve been thinking about what my “tells” are that I’m not fully Gen Z.

Like, I recently updated my bio because I realized that the “x, x, x” format (for me: “porn historian, writer, former internet anarchist”) was going the way of lolcats and reaction gifs.

Or sometimes I take like 60 selfies and all of them end up having the distant, glassy-eyed intensity of an aging former child star who manages her own Instagram account. Do you know the look I’m talking about? I can’t shake it …

EMBEDDED: How do you find recommendations for what to watch, read, and listen to?

NOELLE PERDUE: I read a lot of nonfiction with citations, which tends to be how I find other books in areas I’m interested in. For example, I recently read Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,” which is a play on the concept of the bag as feminist technology from Elizabeth Fisher’s Women’s Creation. I had never heard of Elizabeth Fisher, but now Women’s Creation is next on my list. I like when books are participating in conversation with each other.

EMBEDDED: Who’s the coolest person who follows you?

NOELLE PERDUE: Jan Hakon Erichsen follows me from when I went viral for making simple machines (callback!). He’s one of my favourite artists of all time. Sometimes I check if he still follows me- I would understand if he didn’t, but I always get a kick out of seeing that he does (at least as of 27/7/2026).

EMBEDDED: Which big celebrity has your favorite internet presence, and why?

NOELLE PERDUE: I really respect when celebrities have no internet presence. Any person who is already famous—in a way that they can live off without having to be online—but still chooses to remain in the hamster wheel of content output is totally unrelatable and in fact seems spiritually unwell to me.

EMBEDDED: How would you describe Tumblr’s legacy?

NOELLE PERDUE: I think Tumblr proved that girls and gays would be dominating media culture for at least another millennium. And my feet are currently beat up from wearing an absolutely decrepit pair of ballerina flats every single day for god knows how long.

EMBEDDED: Are you in any groups on Reddit, Discord, or Facebook? What’s the most useful or entertaining one?

NOELLE PERDUE: Oh my god. Okay, this is huge for me. I have been part of a Facebook group for nearly 10 years of people who think drinking their own piss can make them immortal. I could write genuinely 10,000 words on what I’ve observed and how I’ve tried to make sense of it—but the best part has been that, after many of them got divorced due to spouses not supporting their daily piss drinking, they made an offshoot matchmaking and dating group. A Facebook group for piss drinking singles. Sorry Love Island, I’m busy watching the piss drinking singles personal ad Facebook group!!

EMBEDDED: What words or phrases do you have muted?

NOELLE PERDUE: None, I’m a masochist

EMBEDDED: Do any of your group chats have a name that you’re willing to share? What’s something that recently inspired debate in the chat?

NOELLE PERDUE: I’m part of a group chat for sharing soup photos/recipes/recommendations called The Stock Exchange.

EMBEDDED: What’s your go-to emoji, and what does it mean to you?

NOELLE PERDUE: I like the “nodding” emoji. It feels calm and supportive. 🙂‍↕️

EMBEDDED: Do you text people voice notes? If not, how do you feel about getting them?

NOELLE PERDUE: I love a voice note and I love getting a voice note—unless it’s giving me information I actually need, then I would like it to be put in writing!

EMBEDDED: Do you pay for a music streaming service, and if so, which one? What’s a playlist, song, album, or style of music you’ve listened to a lot lately?

NOELLE PERDUE: I go wherever Joanna Newsom publishes, which takes Spotify off the table. But there’s something too clinical about Apple Music, I can’t put my finger on it. Right now I use SoundCloud, which I actually really enjoy and think is underrated.

EMBEDDED: If you could only keep one streaming service for TV and/or movies, which would it be, and why? What’s a show that you’re really into right now?

NOELLE PERDUE: BitTorrent. I’m worried that we’re losing the ancient texts of pirating content—these streaming platforms have gotten way too comfortable!

EMBEDDED: What’s your favorite non-social media app?

NOELLE PERDUE: Too Good To Go, easily. I think I have a latent gambling addiction and something about the “surprise” element of TGTG is so effective I’ve had friends stage interventions over how many stale pastries I’d collect in a week.

EMBEDDED: What’s the most basic internet thing that you love?

NOELLE PERDUE: Email. Email is perfect.

EMBEDDED: Is there any content you want but can’t seem to find anywhere online?

NOELLE PERDUE: Honestly if people did more Too Good To Go surprise bag haul videos I would probably be able to cut down by living vicariously.

EMBEDDED: Do you regularly use eBay, Depop, or other shopping platforms? What’s a recent thing you’ve bought or sold?

NOELLE PERDUE: I am a thriftbooks dot com power user. I think if you recommend a book to someone, you have to provide them with said book; either by putting it directly in their hands or getting it sent to their house. You’ve already given this person homework; expecting them to go out of their way to seek out and purchase it is totally unreasonable. So I buy and send a lot of books. The last thing I bought was Penny: A Graphic Memoir by Karl Stevens for a friend who recently lost their beloved cat.

EMBEDDED: Do you consume any content about fitness, diet, or other types of “wellness”? What creators or sites do you find most useful?

NOELLE PERDUE: I am obsessed with swholeanimal, though I’m not sure at this point his content is about “wellness” so much as like, biohacking to the point of The Fly-style body horror. He expanded the flexibility and width of his toes so much that he can make fists with his feet.

EMBEDDED: Is there a site you like for product recommendations? How do you decide, for example, which air filter to buy?

NOELLE PERDUE: I use Reddit for recommendations. I know brands try to subtly plug on Reddit so I usually only listen to comments from people that seem to have genuinely off-putting personalities. Like, if someone is being extremely condescending to the original post’s author *and* getting off-track in a somehow self-aggrandizing way while suggesting a product, I know that’s a genuine Redditor (said with love) and not a corporate bot.

EMBEDDED: Have you recently read an article, book, or social media post about the internet that you’ve found particularly insightful?

NOELLE PERDUE: I’m on a big Donna Haraway kick and I recently re-read Cyborg Manifesto. In tech media there’s incentive to constantly be responding to things the moment they happen (or ideally earlier!), but that can get into isolatory, horse-blinder territory pretty quick. Recently I’ve been enjoying reading theory from a couple decades ago and seeing how it lands.

EMBEDDED: What’s the last thing that brought you joy online?

NOELLE PERDUE: I’ve been trying my hand at genuine online vulnerability (terrifying) and the response has actually been really nice. I’m grateful for it.

Thanks Noelle! Subscribe to her newsletter.

More My Internet Charlie Sosnick ∙ Grace Byron ∙ Sean Fennessey ∙ Mitchell Jackson ∙ Samuel Hine ∙ Julia Vitale ∙ Sam Kriss ∙ Scaachi Koul ∙ All

This is repost of a post from last year. Paid subscribers know why. — Kate

New on ICYMI: The people falling in love with chatbots are not the problem — with Bridget Todd!

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Whenever I go to Google something on my phone (recent searches: the name of the ex girlfriend of a friend’s situationship, “mexico outlet plug,” and “whats wrong with Halo Top”), my mobile browser prompts me to “Try more ways to search in the Google app.” I’m presented with two options, but there’s only one they put in a blue button, and that’s “continue.” Continue, one would assume, with what I’m already doing, which is getting the identical experience in a mobile browser. Unless, of course, you read the other option, the one in a white button that blends into the background: “Stay in browser.” It’s only the existence of “stay in browser” that defines what “continue” actually means in this context, but it’s already too late. I am stupid, the “continue” button is blue, and this is all on purpose.

Not only do I now find myself in the App Store, but I am UNABLE to return to the browser page I was on without being immediately forced off again. By pressing “continue,” that tab has been sentenced to an infinite loop of sending me back to the App Store. The only way to stop this from happening is to quickly close the tab entirely before it can boot you off again. I’m always so angry about this that, even if I would have downloaded the app, I won’t now.

I have similar experiences everywhere online now. You can hardly access anything without logging in, and if you can access the reddit thread or article or what have you, you will be prompted to open or download the app, which will then require you to log in. As someone who deleted their Twitter and Facebook accounts, I can no longer view even a public profile in its entirety. If I want to watch a TikTok on my browser (because I’m on my laptop or trying to get the link), I have to navigate the worst UX imaginable. These platforms will allow you to see something without logging in—Twitter, for instance, will show you a user’s most popular posts—but their message to casual browsers is clear with every App Store pop up and tedious design choice: We fucking hate you.

Of course, sensitive information should be password protected, and it makes sense to plant your flag by building a profile on a platform you use often. Still, I fear we have lost the plot. I have to download a new, never-before-heard-of app any time I want to access my ticket to attend a concert. My sister got permanently locked out of her Hatch and had to buy a new one because she switched her WiFi modem. I once was lost on a hike with limited service and could only access the map that would get me to safety by downloading AllTrails. You can get logged out of your toothbrush.

The sheer number of usernames and passwords life now requires can only be managed with a password manager, which I have the privilege of paying $35 a year for. That, of course, requires a password, too. But no matter how hard you try to stay on top of them, there will be a day when you find yourself trying to pick up a package at an Amazon Locker, the pin for which you can only view in the app. So you download the app but cannot remember your login info because your computer has just been auto-completing it for the past four years. You request a new password. That password gets sent to your Gmail, which you cannot access, because Google requires you to resubmit your login every few weeks. You go to your password manager to get that login, only to get hit with two-factor authentication. Open your YouTube app, Gmail tells you, and click “yes” to confirm it’s you. You open YouTube. You’re logged out.

This is not a hypothetical worst-case scenario, but something that happened to me when I was trying to pick up a replacement part for my dishwasher.

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This week’s media_gossip is lighter than usual, because this was the week of both the ICYMI live show (thank you so much to those of you who came!!!) and my kitten’s spay appointment. Anxiety about both those things meant I tried to stay as offline as possible, which means I’m even more thankful than usual for the blind item that ended up falling into my lap this week 😎. —Kate

, the brains behind Club Internet, and I had been scheming this ICYMI live show for months, and it truly went better than I had even hoped. As anyone who had to deal with me that day knows, there was a goddamn tornado warning that had me convinced nobody was going to actually show up—but it was a full house! Turns out, the best people to shelter in place with are , , , and Princess Weekes! Shout out to all the amazing listeners and readers I met there, as well as to the the one who I didn’t get to meet, but apparently had one-too-many Littlefield cocktails, necessitating Princess frog-marching them into an Uber home. Queen behavior on both sides!

Meanwhile, over at RiffPost, joined , , , , , , , and for a virtual roundtable on whatever happened to woke. I argued that Gaza and the unaffordability crisis have put another vibe shift into motion, and the nine other respondents put forward, well, nine other smart theories about the roles of AI, Israel, cancellations, X, corporate media upheaval and much more in just how free our speech remains in America. Read and decide for yourself! —Nick

I’m worried about this:

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FINAL reminder that ICYMI, the Slate podcast I host, is doing a live show TOMORROW, July 21! I’d love to see you there!! —Kate

New on ICYMI: joined the podcast to talk about Dave Portnoy’s memoir, and Barstool’s secret influence on the entire internet.

Head over here to subscribe to ICYMI wherever you listen to podcasts 🫶

Like fashion trends and taste in music, internet behaviors and aesthetics are often embarrassing in retrospect. Peace signs and shot-from-above MySpace selfies, for instance, are only ever used ironically today, and even early TikTok behaviors are already being spliced into cringe montages. What, we say to ourselves, were we thinking?

Normally it’s a futile effort to predict what will later seem embarrassing, but I am certain I’m right about one current habit. If you want to reduce the amount of digital kompromat your future romantic partners or children or job prospects or anyone else can find on you, I’m begging you now: Stop talking to brands online.

Stop liking brands’ comments on viral videos. Stop tagging brands in your posts if they’re not paying you. Stop commenting “the marketing team deserves a raise” when brands riff on a meme. I never thought I’d miss the days of people dusting off their Twitter for the first time in a year to yell at an airline about their seat assignment, but in hindsight, those people were the only ones with a sane relationship to a company’s online presence. You are, at best, talking to a customer service agent, not your bestie.

This is not a dig at the employees behind these brand accounts. The brands started replying to us, but then we started replying to them. We’re stuck in a cycle of delusional capitalism.

Look, it’s not that I think the couple who scaled the Empire State Building were revolutionary, and yes, their “when the power of love beats the love of power the world knows peace” flag was a little “tell the world, stop the war” for me, but is this not worse:

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Screaming! At the media happy hour

According to Nick (above right), it would be better for this newsletter if I spent more time at media parties mingling and less time “talking to the same four people I already know.” As a result, my presence there can be best described as “not mentioned in anyone else’s roundup.”

Otherwise, I’m sure these photos have been all over your feeds, so you don’t need me to tell you the first Deez Drinks was a hit. What fewer people are talking about is that it took place on the same night as a Substack Bestseller gathering, so it was a real test of loyalties (except for me, because this was the second Bestseller drinks in a row I’ve only learned about day-of, suggesting I have fallen off that email list due, probably, to the behavior outlined in paragraph one).

However, I did still get some gossip, thank you very much:

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Every other week (or so) we quiz a “very online” person for their essential guide to what’s good on the internet.

Today we welcome Charlie Sosnick, writer and star of the short film Jasper Jelqs, and a GQ contributor who has reported extensively on looksmaxxing trends like bonesmashing and the PSL scale. There will be a live table read of his new screenplay on September 15 at The Bell House. Charlie is among the world’s 500 fastest New York Times crossword solvers and says that his goals to work out more, eat slightly fewer pointlessly decadent meals, and drink a little less can all be achieved without content to guide him. —Nick

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EMBEDDED: What’s a recent meme or post that made you laugh?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: This one

EMBEDDED: Do you tweet? Why?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I make a solid chunk of my income ghost-tweeting for people in tech, so yes.

But as myself, barely ever anymore. I was quite good at it and went viral many times. I think I aged out of it. Tweeting is for when you are young, broke, lost, aimless, and awash in ideas. Then you grow up, have stuff to do, and it doesn’t scratch the itch anymore. It’s basically this:

EMBEDDED: What do you use Instagram for?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: Sending Reels of weird-looking animals to my girlfriend and saying “This is you.”

EMBEDDED: What types of videos do you watch on YouTube?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I watch all sorts of stuff, but I am interested in paleoanthropology. People make very impressive documentaries about archaic humans and prehistoric life. Stefan Milo and North 02 are two, but there are lots of others. I also watch a lot of music videos and Live Lounge-type recordings.

EMBEDDED: What do you like about TikTok? What do you dislike?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I haven’t used TikTok since 2020. I was quite early to the app, actually, because I used to make videos on Musical.ly. When it turned into TikTok, I somehow immediately recognized it as a new type of media and the most addictive thing ever. By some rare feat of discipline and self-awareness, I deleted it and never looked back.

EMBEDDED: Are you concerned by the claims of censorship that some users have made since TikTok was taken over by investors led by Larry Ellison, an ally of President Trump?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: Short-form video is for watching people dance, chug alcohol, and do pranks. As long as they don’t censor that, we’ll be ok.

EMBEDDED: Do you watch Twitch, Kick, or any other livestreaming services? If so, which streamers?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I cover male subcultures like looksmaxxing, so I know about a lot of streamers. But I don’t really watch streams. I’m too old for it by about five years, which is enough to make it completely foreign to me. I can’t imagine having a stream on for hours and watching it. I like watching the clips, though. Sometimes they are truly charming and impressive with a slapstick flair, like when Kai Cenat made the room with giant furniture. Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner used to watch Dodgers games on TiVo, so they could fast forward to only the ball-in-play action. That’s how I feel: I’m too old for the whole thing, so I watch the clips.

EMBEDDED: Where do you tend to get your news?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I listen to an NPR podcast every morning in the half-sleep between the alarm going off and getting out of bed. I also read The New York Times and Financial Times, but not religiously. I wish it was more of a concrete habit to thoroughly read them every morning. I bet I would feel like Warren Buffett.

EMBEDDED: How do you keep up with the online discourse? How important is it to you to do this?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I guess I do. It’s not on purpose. But I’m on the computer literally all day long. Whenever “discourse” comes up as dinner party conversation and I know what we’re talking about, it makes me feel like an idiot. I wish I had no idea.

EMBEDDED: What’s the last strong opinion you had about a story, topic, or controversy online?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I don’t think anyone has ever sounded smart discussing “native New Yorkers” and what the Internet calls “gentrification.” One of my personal mantras is: Nothing changes and nothing stays the same.

EMBEDDED: What are your favorite newsletters?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: , the food critic.

EMBEDDED: What’s one positive media trend? What’s one negative trend?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: A positive trend is that there have been a lot of good, original movies in the theater lately.

A negative trend is people talking to AI to help them think about their life. I saw a self-help guy on Twitter telling people to ask themselves reflection questions about your path in life, and he added a caveat to do this without chatbots. Bizarre.

EMBEDDED: What, if anything, is there to learn from the popularity of the looksmaxxing trend and influencers like Clavicular?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I say this as one of the foremost non-looksmaxxer experts on looksmaxxing:

The most important lesson is that being a Twitch streamer or YouTuber is, to many 15-year-olds, the most viable way to quickly make a lot of money. (Getting rich quick then living off risky investments is the only way many young people imagine succeeding financially.) That career path incentivizes them to do incredibly stupid things in public. This is much more dangerous than bonesmashing, in my opinion. We should all be judicious, as the adults in the room, to recognize when a young person is acting out for attention and try to help them.

EMBEDDED: Do you have any advice for people who use sports betting apps or prediction markets?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: Check into a residential treatment facility TODAY!

EMBEDDED: Have you found Claude, ChatGPT, or any other AI tools useful? How so?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I use Perplexity. I think I started using it because it was clearer where it got the information from, but I ended up brand loyal out of habit. I pretty much use it like Google.

EMBEDDED: Do you believe that advances in AI will spawn a new “underclass,” as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has suggested might happen?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: Isn’t there already an “underclass”? The proletariat?

I don’t know if he’s right from a political economy standpoint, but he’s correct that not learning how to use new technology is terrible for your existence. My grandmother never learned how to use a computer, and it kept her life very small as she aged. Meanwhile, her husband was emailing with friends and family, researching things, managing money, and generally staying in touch with a changing world. I suspect that remaining permanently skeptical and afraid of AI will similarly constrain your life as it becomes more ubiquitous.

EMBEDDED: Or do you believe that the AI bubble about to burst?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I think the real bubble is in venture capital and private credit, though that bubble and the AI bubble are two conjoined bubbles connected by surface tension.

EMBEDDED: Do you try to limit your phone use? If so, what methods have been helpful for this?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I use a Brick and Jomo, two overlapping methods to keep me off Twitter, Instagram, and the ESPN Fantasy Baseball app. When I’m writing on my computer, I use ScreenTime to turn distracting websites off. It’s all embarrassing; I have to put myself in a digital crib in order to get anything done.

EMBEDDED: What’s something that you have observed about the online behavior of Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and/or Boomers?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: Donald Trump is a very bad president and a very bad person. But Trump Derangement Syndrome is real. Many older people have their mood ruined multiple times per day by push updates about his malfeasance. The first thing they do upon waking is check the news and get angry. The last thing they do before bed is check the news and get angry. That’s no way to go through life.

EMBEDDED: Have you had posts go viral? What is that experience like?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: Many times on Twitter. I remember wanting it so bad, and then it happened, and it felt like nothing. It’s almost like desire is the root of suffering …

One funny incident: one time, I replied to myself with the vibrator link people used to post under viral tweets and said “I love going apeshit on my scallop with this product.” (I had not actually been contacted or paid by the vibrator company.) People got really mad at me.

EMBEDDED: Who’s the coolest person who follows you?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: The girl reading this.

EMBEDDED: Who’s someone more people should follow?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: Errands, my friend Noah Blau’s wonderful Reels show about people doing their errands.

EMBEDDED: Which big celebrity has your favorite internet presence, and why?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I like the way Shohei Ohtani posts on Instagram. “Great game! Love my teammates! Looking forward to the next one! Here’s my beautiful wife and cute dog!” Classy.

EMBEDDED: Are you into any podcasts right now? How and when do you usually listen?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I like True Anon, Odd Lots, and Baseball Today. Certain interviews on How I Write have been very helpful to me, but listening to writing advice all the time would just stress me out, so it has to be occasional. I listen while walking around in order to have a constant barrage of other people’s thoughts that prevents me from ever having ideas or inspiration of my own.

EMBEDDED: How would you describe Tumblr’s legacy?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: It saved the entire publishing industry, and perhaps literature itself, by getting a generation of women addicted to erotica.

EMBEDDED: Do you use Slack or Teams for work? What’s the best thing about Slacking with your co-workers? What’s the worst thing?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I’m self-employed, so no. Past projects have required me to use Slack. Awful experience. There’s something about it that feels antithetical to making really exciting and great work. Maybe it’s the UX or something, but I can’t imagine an incredible movie or album or whatever coming together on Slack.

EMBEDDED: What is your Wordle starting word?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I share a NYT Games app with my dad and he does the Wordle. I do the Crossword. I have a 6+ year streak, and am among the 500 fastest crossword solvers in the world.

EMBEDDED: What words or phrases do you have muted?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I report a lot about online subcultures, which has changed my Twitter algorithm over time. I also think something fundamentally changed after Elon took over. About a year or so ago, I began seeing shockingly racist and anti-Semitic tweets—like, things out of Der Stürmer. I muted a lot of those accounts because it was just extremely unpleasant to see.

EMBEDDED: What’s your go-to emoji, and what does it mean to you?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I’m fond of this combo: 🫵😂

It means I’m laughing in your face like a schoolyard bully.

EMBEDDED: Do you text people voice notes? If not, how do you feel about getting them?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate. Do not make me hold my phone up to hear you talk. Just write it out. You’re saving time by wasting mine. Fuck you.

EMBEDDED: Do you pay for a music streaming service, and if so, which one? What’s a playlist, song, album, or style of music you’ve listened to a lot lately?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I have Spotify. I really like kora and balafon music from Senegal and elsewhere in West Africa. It helps me relax.

EMBEDDED: If you could only keep one streaming service for TV and/or movies, which would it be, and why? What’s a show that you’re really into right now?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: HBO I guess? The new Game of Thrones is pretty amazing technically. Whenever they have those big set-piece battle scenes, I wonder how they made it.

EMBEDDED: What’s your favorite non-social media app?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I have used a budgeting app called YNAB for three years, and it is the best thing I’ve ever done financially.

EMBEDDED: What’s the most basic internet thing that you love?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: Texting. Sometimes, on a free night, I pull out iMessage on my computer and text 20 people, see who bites, then just continue those conversations on my laptop all night long. This 28-year-old writer still makes AIM the old fashioned way!

EMBEDDED: Is there any content you want but can’t seem to find anywhere online?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I went to Senegal two years ago and learned about the fascinating culture of the Mourides, a powerful Muslim brotherhood there. I want to learn more about that and have found it very challenging to find information in English online. They have a unique tradition of decorating taxis in honor of their marabouts, and I can’t seem to find good pictures of it.

EMBEDDED: Do you regularly use eBay, Depop, or other shopping platforms? What’s a recent thing you’ve bought or sold?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I like giving really good gifts. My method is to think hard about a person’s very subtle interests which only a close friend would know, or inside jokes between us. Then I go on eBay to find something that represents it. Examples: a Swarovski Hello Kitty, a signed Jon Taffer baseball card, a rare Dr. Fauci bobblehead.

EMBEDDED: Do you consume any content about fitness, diet, or other types of “wellness”? What creators or sites do you find most useful?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I look at a lot of that kind of stuff for article research: Looksmaxxing Discords, Ray Peat Twitter, jelqing subreddits. The personal lesson I’ve taken away is that your mental defenses are amazingly weak, and just looking at that kind of stuff can quickly take you to really nasty places. I’m lucky to have a fairly chill relationship to my body, my diet, and exercise. I’d like to preserve that. My current health goals are to work out more, eat slightly fewer pointlessly decadent meals, and drink a little less. All of that can be achieved without content.

EMBEDDED: Is there a site you like for product recommendations? How do you decide, for example, which air filter to buy?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I ask my mom, who then uses her subscription to Consumer Reports.

EMBEDDED: Have you recently read an article, book, or social media post about the internet that you’ve found particularly insightful?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I read The Age of Surveillance Capitalism about five years ago, which did a good job of convincing me that social media is a mechanism of behavioral modification. Shoshana Zuboff argues that “Internet privacy” is important, not so much because you need to safeguard your secrets, but because it protects you from being unknowingly controlled. It’s cool to learn about the Internet by reading a giant 800-page hardcover book.

EMBEDDED: What’s the last thing that brought you joy online?

CHARLIE SOSNICK: I play the bass and I learned how to play “Midnight Train to Georgia” from a tab on UltimateGuitar.com. It’s awesome to be able to hear any song and find the sheet music instantly, for free.

Thanks Charlie! Read his writing and watch his short.

More My Internet Grace Byron ∙ Sean Fennessey ∙ Mitchell Jackson ∙ Samuel Hine ∙ Julia Vitale ∙ Sam Kriss ∙ Scaachi Koul ∙ All

Another reminder that ICYMI, the Slate podcast I host, is doing a live show on July 21! I’d love to see you there!! —Kate

New on ICYMI: We turned this Embedded piece into a pod ep, featuring my fave Tatum Hunter!

Head over here to subscribe to ICYMI wherever you listen to podcasts 🫶

Not long after the publication of Kim Kardashian’s Selfie, selfies stopped being cool. Not that there was a cause and effect, but it certainly helped to solidify what I feel became a gaucheness associated with posting something that so openly communicated your own desire to document how good you looked. It had a decade-plus run, and was eventually superseded by a new trend, one in which someone else takes the photo of you.

I remember noting this at the time, because it was often difficult to engineer a friend at the coffee shop, bar, or concert wanting to take a picture of you of their own accord. Enter: the Instagram boyfriend. Or girlfriend. Or the overall expectation among people that if another person looks good, they’d probably want a photo of it.

While this has been the new status quo for about a decade, there are signs we might be at the beginning of the next era, one that puts us at an even further remove from the act of documentation. I’m calling it “surveillance chic.”

This was inspired by my friend Rachel, who first clocked this as a trend in the fashion space. Allegra Lorenzotti, director of ASH Hotels, has recently been using her building’s elevator security camera as a means of documenting her daily outfits.

At the same time, Alexa Chung posted a similar series through her doorbell camera.

Once I started looking for this, I saw how much surveillance footage was already making up a substantial portion of our creative output. Much has already been written about Ring doorbell footage becoming its own genre of content, but last month, debuted a short film on YouTube made up entirely of security camera footage in her bedroom. This meant subjecting herself to a full month of her every move being recorded. We see her sleep, cry, eat, attend therapy, take meetings, and talk with friends, no matter how potentially unflattering.

To the extent that anyone can be when repackaging this footage for consumption, this kind of content is as close as we’ve gotten to true authenticity. It’s messy and unposed, the video equivalent of a “dump.” If everything is being captured and tracked, then we have access to what some might feel is their truest self, the one not performing for anyone.

But that’s the troubling truth behind all this: everything is being captured and tracked, and some of Alexa Chung’s followers, at least, were not thrilled with her post:

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