Reading List #37 (Patreon)

Hey!  Here are 14 things you may want to read.

1. The Do-Gooder Ploy (Kaitlin Menza)

When I first clicked the link for this story I mistakenly thought it would cover the brazen and greedy GoFundMe and cash app scams ran by people across the political spectrum (but perhaps most alarmingly on the left). I was particularly interested in that topic for research on a future video. While this article did not directly address what I assumed it would, it was a fascinating look into the skeevy businesses ran on social media that cash in virtue-signaling, guilt, and people’s genuine desires to do better. One thing that stood out to me is how these businesses (especially on instagram) can quickly change their names and face zero consequences for their actions, while also changing to poach new victims. It reminded me of my online encounter with an instagram gentleman who said he wanted to flay me alive— a lot of you guys came to my aid and went to go report him, but he quickly changed his name (twice) and moved right along into the internet abyss.

Read Length: Medium

2. The Girl In the Kent State Photo (Patricia McCormick)

This is one of those featured profiles that is all at once quirky, unbelievable, and devastating. We’ve all seen the above picture in our history textbooks of the 1970 Kent State Massacre. But very few of us knew that the screaming young woman was actually a runaway of 14. As I discussed in Lexual Does The 70s, teen runaways were a growing problem— and it’s wild to me that a Florida runaway ended up in one of the most iconic American photos of all time. Also, if you want a reminder of how chilling this country is and can be— this article has got you covered.

Many people refused to believe the nearly 6-foot-tall girl with the long, flowing hair and the mournful face was only 14. Her family received calls and letters calling her a drug addict, a tramp, a communist… Back in Kent, Ohio, local business owners ran an ad thanking the National Guard. Mail poured in to the mayor’s office, blaming “dirty hippies,” “longhairs” and “outside agitators” for the violence. Some Kent residents raised four fingers when they passed each other in the street, a silent signal that meant, “At least we got four of them.” Nixon issued a statement saying that the students’ actions had invited the tragedy. Privately, he called them “bums.” And a Gallup poll found that 58 percent of Americans blamed the students for their own deaths; only 11 percent blamed the National Guard.

Read Length: Medium

3. The Soul of Bravo (Anna Peele)

If you, like me, got into the shamelessly guilty pleasure of reality tv during quarantine (or you already loved it before), you’ll appreciate this article on The Real Housewives Franchise and Bravo’s attempts to keep the series as PC as possible while also still showcasing ratings-worthy personalities. You’ll also appreciate the shade.

“It’s troublesome to me,” Cohen tells me with the look of perturbation you might have seen him use while questioning RHOP husband Michael Darby about pinching a cameraman’s bottom during filming.

Read Length: Long

4. ‘Fake Heiress’ Anna Delvey on her time in prison and what she’ll do next (Laura Pullman)

Do you ever feel like hate-reading? You know, shoving an essay or article piece by piece down your gullet while resisting the urge to claw your own eyes out from disgust? Me too, as long as there is a healthy dose of clear disdain by the writer for their subject.

I paint a picture of the funds drying up and her returning to her parents’ home in Germany. Sorokin looks disgusted. “With everything that I have going on, I think it would be stupid of me to run out of money.” As we wrap up, Sorokin tells me about some of the people she met in jail: a woman who stabbed her boyfriend to death after he posted naked photos of her online; another who hired men to murder her boyfriend and set him alight; a girl who killed an old lady over $20 in a robbery gone wrong. “The scariest part is they’re completely normal,” she says, putting her sunglasses back on. “I guess people expect a freak show.”.

Read Length: Medium

5. US Companies Are Helping Mexican Cartels Get Rich Kidnapping Migrants (Emily Green and Keegan Hamilton)

A must-read investigative piece. The author points out that “money transfer companies and U.S. authorities have tools to track the millions of dollars being sent to human smugglers and kidnappers. But most of the information gets lost in a web of bureaucracy."

Also:

There are no reliable statistics on migrant kidnappings. The Mexican government’s most recent report, from 2011, documented more than 11,000 in just six months. If that pace continued, it would work out to over 200,000 kidnappings in a decade. Assuming the kidnappers received around $2,000-$4,000 per victim, the going rate in the receipts we reviewed, that works out to $40 million–$80 million annually paid out in ransoms. The true total is impossible to pin down, since most kidnappings go unreported and only the most horrifying cases ever make headlines.

Read Length: Long

6. The Ornamental Objectification of Asian American Women in Pop Culture (Sarah Wong)

If you’re searching for additional context on anti-Asian violence and femicide in light of recent events, this is a good thing to read. Gwen Stefani’s L.A.M.B. was the first album I ever bought in the 6th grade, and I’m grateful to Sarah Wong for making me re-examine Gwen’s legacy and pointing out the fetishization of Asian women in modern culture!

Further Reading: The Madame Butterfly Effect- Tracing the History of a Fetish (Patricia Park)

Read Length: Short

7. What You’re Saying When You Give Someone the Silent Treatment (Daryl Austin)

As I continue to grow and evolve into the woman I’m meant to be, I must do a lot of self-reflecting. This means occasionally dragging myself for childish or even cruel behavior and forming new habits. This article caused me to drag myself because one of my main weapons for avoiding pain/hurt/discomfort is making a preemptive strike and ignoring someone or going ghost on them. If you find yourself doing this, read this.

Humans are predisposed to reciprocate social cues, so ignoring someone goes against our nature, Williams said. The perpetrator is therefore forced to justify the behavior in order to keep doing it; they keep in mind all the reasons they’re choosing to ignore someone. “You end up living in a constant state of anger and negativity,” Williams said.

Read Length: Short

8. Why The Black Women Gold Digger Trope is Total BS (Sesali Bowen)

I appreciated this essay and will be including it in an upcoming video on black women, class, and wealth. A recurring theme in Intelexual Media content as of late is emphasizing how black Americans, leftists, liberals, sex workers, lgbt advocates, etc and other groups I all identify with are NOT monolothic, and don’t always agree on how to approach certain issues. This includes black women, and our responses to stereotypes about our sexuality and assumptions about what we deserve and how much we must sacrifice in any concept of revolution. This essay is definitely not about black women’s roles in a hypothetical class revolution, but rather an observation on how black women’s financial success and ambitions are actually viewed in our capitalist and patriarchal society.

Both of these stereotypes — the emasculating Black woman who won’t let her man lead, and the Black woman who will stoop to criminality for a handout — have resulted in a culture that does not trust Black women, especially not those with money… Black women know all of this is bullshit and we’ve clapped back at these claims using several, sometimes conflicting, tactics. Some of us embrace our paper chase in music. For example, when the City Girls demanded, “I show him how that neck work. Fuck that Netflix and chill, what’s your net worth?” on Drake’s new single “In My Feelings,” it became a rallying call. And at the other end of the spectrum, I know other women, some of them friends of mine, who proudly embrace the title of “independent women,” refusing to ask a man (or anyone else) for gifts, money, or financial help out of fear that it will reflect poorly on their values.

Read Length: Short

9. The Crimson Klan (Simon J. Levien)

Not enough people know about the history of slavery and Ivy League institutions, but they also don’t know enough about the Ku Klux Klan and Ivy League institutions like Harvard.

Read Length: Long

10. How To Learn Everything: The MasterClass Diaries (Irina Dumitrescu)

As someone who was nearly sucked into paying for Gordon Ramsay’s MasterClass course, I was very excited to read this essay. I appreciated the snark, but also I loved that the writer actually gleaned something she found valuable from the courses. However, I think I’ll leave Ramsay’s [unbelievable] course to other wannabe home chefs.

Read Length: Long

11. The Power And Heartbreak Of Watching Ma’Khia Bryant’s TikToks 

The effect of being able to watch a young person's life played and replayed online immediately after learning about their death IRL is a new, discomforting paradigm for everyone. Social media experts and trauma psychologists say that this public outpouring of grief via posts can help humanize victims of police brutality.

Read Length: Short

Related Read: Who’s Keeping Black Children Safe? (Mary Retta)

12. Tea, Biscuits, and Empire: The Long Con of Britishness (Laurie Penny)

Oh lookit, the Brits are total imperialist prats, even if they aren't stupid, greedy, uncultured Americans! And--gasp-- they use propaganda too!

Lavish Britscapist vehicles like Downton Abbey, The Crown, and Belgravia are more popular with Americans than they are at home. Trudging through Finsbury Park in London on a cold morning last Christmas, a poster advertising The Crown had been gleefully tagged “royalist propaganda” by some local hero with a spray can. My American friends were confused when I explained this to them. “Don’t you like your royal family?” They asked. No, I explained.

Read Length: Long

13. Can Clubhouse Keep The Party Going? (Ashley Carman)

When this app first debuted I was bombarded with invites but never felt compelled to join. This article highlighted some of the reasons why. I see the appeal in the app, especially for those who are as social as they are loquacious, but the [trendy?] app just isn't for me.

But Clubhouse isn’t always a great time. In Lamarr’s case, she says she’s asked big-name comedians, like Tiffany Haddish, to participate in her biweekly stand-up room only to be turned down because of concerns over joke stealing. (Joke stealing is already a problem on Twitter, which has a searchable, written history. Now imagine how that could happen on a live app with no native recording function or archive.)

Read Length: Medium

14. How Humanity Gave Itself an Extra Life (Steven Johnson) 

Often, usually in response to absurd conspiracy theories, I have mentioned on twitter how human life expectancy has grown tremendously-- thanks largely to science and medicine. But this illuminating article goes a step further in pointing out the way activism has played a role. 

Read Length: Long