To leave or not to leave Instagram?
Also, expanding this joint to two Tuesdays a month; it’ll still be all free for now, though
I jumped into social media around the time F was born nearly 18 years ago. I don’t necessarily regret it, but I lament The Cesspool That Oligarchy Built that it has become. (The wonderful word “enshittification” comes to mind.) So, I’ve been rethinking my social media ecosystem as I consider anew how I spend my time online.
Although I stepped away from X, I never deleted my account. (I really need to.) But I’ve tossed Facebook twice — my original account and an under-the-radar account I used this year for FB Marketplace purchases — and dumped Threads for good. I’m still on Bluesky, but sporadically so and mainly as a consumer of the ersatz wire service it has become for me.
(Substack is evolving — or devolving, depending on your view — into a social media platform with its Notes functionality. I find Notes to be a great way to find new writers and newsletters, but that’s about it. It doesn’t help that the hustle influencers shilling Notes formulas to widen one’s Substack empire are appalling.)
That leaves Instagram as the only Evil Meta product in my world. It’s the last platform standing that keeps me connected with friends, and I largely use it to keep up with creators I support. But I’ve seen artists on YouTube making the case to leave IG (here, here, and here, among others — and I do see the irony of making such points on YouTube). And folks like Cal Newport and Jaron Lanier make excellent points against the soul suck of social media.
All that said, I really don’t spend nearly as much time as I used to on the old ‘Gram, mainly because I’ve been so busy with Substack and my various other online sales ventures. So, rather than social media pulling me from real life, it seems that real life is pulling me away from social media. As long as that continues, I’m not going to worry about Insta for now.
This week’s artwork: Same as the old artwork
I’m a little irritated that I haven’t gotten around to creating new art this week, but I did unearth some ATC pieces from a couple of months ago that I haven’t yet shared online. As with other work of mine, some of these incorporate F’s doodling that I’ve kept over the years.
What’s for sale: Fall discounts on Etsy!
On Etsy, everything is on sale starting today! Save 25% on all inventory through Sunday, November 2. This includes new and replenished stock like the following:
New ephemera packets (posting this weekend)
I’m also looking into an alternate platform for bookselling, as sales have slowed down to almost nothing on eBay. I sold used books on Amazon years ago, before F was born, and did pretty well. But I’m avoiding Amazon this go-round and giving alternatives a try.
The Bucket List: Beauty, zines, and grief
Plus-size living, going bald, and the thin right wing. Sad to see that fewer plus size models are turning up on fashion runways. My first impulse upon seeing the headline was to blame the resurgence of thinness in what has been called “body fascism.”
“Fascist ideologies — in the past and today — tend to paint an idealised vision of the human body and women’s bodies in particular are seen as vessels for producing the next generation of ‘pure’ and strong children. With the rise of far-right movements, we also see a return of narrow-minded beauty ideals and body shaming.”
For far-right women, there is no such thing as body positivity or body neutrality. Thinness is a moral imperative; it shows dominance over the body and aligns oneself with European beauty standards.
The Guardian piece about the diminished presence of so-called curve models alludes more to the use of Ozempic and other GLP-1 weight loss drugs as a reason why. But more than enough has been written about shifting beauty standards, conservative girl fashion, and the “brutal aesthetics of MAGA” (hard to miss when half the Trump administration and the Mar-a-Lago crowd sport that distinct Botox Barbie look) that it’s not difficult to consider a connection.
Meanwhile, a refreshingly different piece surfaced from the AP this week about a “bald is beautiful” moment afoot — among women.
“There’s a whole community of us out there,” said Dash Lopez, a content creator who posts a weekly video series of her shaving routine called “Fresh Cut Friday.” “We need to talk about it because we do find comfort and empowerment and beauty in what some people think is weird.” …
As soon as she turned 18 and could get a haircut without permission, she chopped her locks into a pixie cut. Then she shaved it all off during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It makes me feel powerful in the sense that I’m able to detach from the things that people place so much emphasis on,” Lopez, 29, said. “I’m not sitting here planning, ‘Oh my gosh, when am I going to get my next color appointment done? That’s gonna cost me $300. Oh my gosh. I’ve got to get my hair done before I go to this event.’”
As someone who has dealt with varying degrees of hair loss for years now, I’ve considered shaving my head a few times. I wore berets and baseball caps for a while, but took a break because I was sick of hunting down a hat before heading out. I suspect I’ll go back to my headcoverings as the weather gets chillier.
As for the body image thing, I’ve also been a lifelong fat person, and my weight has been all over the map since I began disappointing my bariatric doctor four years ago. (He’s not a surgeon; he’s just been my source for diet guidance and meds — including the aforementioned GLP-1 stuff — for a few years.) I’m fine with being plus-size indefinitely, but I still aim to drop pounds for health’s sake. Even so, if being large is an act of resistance, so much the better.
Zine Fest! I made it through my first zine fest last weekend in suburban Hoffman Estates, though I left earlier than I had planned because (a) I was feeling a little physically woozy, back-achy, and a wee bit overwhelmed; and (b) I wanted to catch some of the No Kings action out in the suburban streets. So I didn’t pick up as many items as I had intended to support the creators there. But I still landed a bit of a haul, and I got to talk to some fascinating writers and artists (including one college-age kid who insisted on calling me “ma’am,” which I found hilarious).
“Spirited Away.” I love how the annual Studio Ghibli Fest runs the Hayao Miyazaki masterpiece around Halloween. F and I went Wednesday night to what I think was our fourth or fifth viewing, and we took C with us. Yeah, we could watch it at home on HBO Max, but it really must be seen in a theater. And it never, ever gets old.
ASMR gaming on YouTube. Stardew Valley, a game I haven’t played in months, put me to sleep the other night.
Baseball, eh? Canada is lining up behind the Blue Jays. I suspect that given Toronto’s competition in the World Series, all of San Diego probably is, too.
Is college worth the trouble nowadays? I’m very annoyed that this New York Times article covering the debate over the value of a college degree actually has me agreeing with Linda McMahon:
“Attending these schools, for many students, feels like a burden. Or a waste. An obsolete and expensive credential,” she said, adding, “Don’t they realize? The alternatives to college are warming up in the dugout ready to replace the four-year diploma. This is not a time for dithering.”
This is definitely something I’m thinking about as the parent of a high school senior. And apparently I’m not the only one.
Victoria Chang and poetry in grief. I came across poet Victoria Chang’s work this past week and was smitten by the fact that she wrote a book of elegies for people and things she grieves and called the book “Obit.” She followed up that volume with “Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief.” (I just ordered a used copy through Alibris.)
My last few years have been haunted by so much loss, so I was particularly drawn to Chang’s focus on grief in recent years. There are several readings and interviews (here and below) where she talks about her work and how she has processed her losses through verse.
No one experiences grief at the same time, as I just mentioned, and few experience it in the same ways. While my sister and I both lost our mother, and it was comforting to know she was feeling terrible too, we still didn’t know how to talk about our grief. The public and others are not super interested in your grief because it seems to infringe on their lives and their own happiness, and possibly remind them of their own mortality. That’s when I turned to writing my poems because I figured out that I ultimately had to grieve alone.
I’ve been going back and forth on when to expand the number of times I’ll write for the newsletter. As excited as I am to write regularly again, I don’t want to take on so much that I’ll overwhelm myself and burn out, especially after finally recovering from work burnout over the summer.
So, I’m adding another post, for now, on the first and third Tuesdays of each month, starting November 4. I expect the Tuesday posts will be more essay- or newspaper column-like than these, but that could change before they debut next month.
As for paid subscriptions, I won’t charge for the newsletter through the rest of this year. But as I write more, I’ll likely charge sometime in 2026.
Regardless of what I decide about monetizing, the Friday newsletter will always be free.
(If this scheduling and approach sound familiar, it’s pretty much the same approach that my role model in newslettering, Austin Kleon, takes with his Substack. I like to think I’m taking the “Steal Like an Artist” author literally. And if you’re not subscribing to his newsletter, you’re missing out.)
So, this thing is still free of charge for a while. You have no excuse to get rid of me yet.