Got your Spotify Wrapped? Treat it like a shopping list.
2023-03-19 01:22:45author：dointy.com
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Got your Spotify Wrapped? Treat it like a shopping list.
Every year, Spotify presents its hundreds of millions of users with a cute little gift: their own listening data, neatly packaged up with bright graphics and increasingly cringe all-purpose text pretending to be personalised. It’s wildly shareable, inevitably memed, and usually a reliable mix of accurate and hilariously off-base. (Petition to have all playlists just named “Sleep” excluded from now on.)
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The ugly truth, of course, is that all those numbers — streams and minutes listened and different fake-sounding sub-sub-genres of pop — conceal the only one that really matters. Now that streaming has largely replaced purchasing(Opens in a new tab) as the dominant model for music consumption, the vast majority of artists need you to actually buy things from them in order to make a living.
Spotify infamously pays artists fractions of a cent per stream.
The actual amount of money that makes it back to the artists varies, depending on how much of a cut labels and distributors take. But most sources agree that Spotify pays between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream(Opens in a new tab), and that’s before the money is divvied up according to whatever terms are set out in distribution contracts.
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Spotify Wrapped is here to analyze your Listening Personality
Money isn't taken directly out of your Premium monthly fee (or revenue paid from ads you listen to, if you're on the Free tier) and paid to the artists you personally listen to. Instead it all goes into one big pot, which is then divided between artists (and labels) according to how many of their songs helped make up Spotify's billions of streams each month.
Safe to say that Taylor Swift and Lil Nas X are securing the bag in other ways, on top of having some of the most popular songs in the world. But for smaller artists — even acts with hundreds of thousands of listeners — it’s brutal out here.
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Peter Hollo is a Sydney musician and radio host who plays in post-rock/electronic/jazz four-piece Tangents. The group put out a double album this year through a U.S. based label.
"We managed 170.7K streams and 71.9K listeners," he told Mashable via email. "Sounds impressive, but this has resulted in at best triple figures in our pockets."
Artists are beginning to fight back, with a new union protesting at Spotify's offices last year and campaigning consistently since for a fairer model(Opens in a new tab), including a pay out of one cent per stream. Some people have made a point of ditching Spotify in protest at this imbalance of power — either in favour of other platforms that pay out (fractionally) more, or to return to buying music solely the old-fashioned way, in album and single form.
But it’s still a useful, and fairly comprehensive, platform for both music discovery and access. There’s no shame, really, in continuing to fork out your hard-earned cash for that pleasure and privilege, any more than there is in holding onto your Instagram or Amazon account because it’s convenient for looking at photos of your nieces or getting things delivered in a hurry. (Yes, your ethical mileage may vary, but it’s your call.)
What you can also do, however, is make a point of supporting the artists who make the music that you love.
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13 best websites to analyze your Spotify data
Making music is expensive. Even at the most grassroots level, artists need to pay for gear (whether it’s a single laptop or multiple pricey instruments), insurance, paying their managers and crew, accommodation and travel for touring, studio time, paying for mixing and/or mastering, and the costs associated with putting music out physically — not to mention the countless hours of training, rehearsal, and actually writing and composing leading up to recording a single song.
All of that has to happen, over and over again, in order for you to throw on something to dance or run or cook or sob to. And working musicians have had the roughest couple of years in living memory, with COVID-19 essentially shutting down live music for all but the most irresponsible acts and venues across 2020 and 2021.
So this year, treat your Spotify Wrapped like a shopping list.
Look at your top artists, and go and buy something from them — whatever you can afford. Buy a digital or physical album from their official website or your local record store. Buy a ticket to their live shows, not just festivals, if you’re vaccinated and feel comfortable doing so — they’ve missed seeing your faces! And pick up a shirt or other gear from the merch table while you’re there, if you can afford it. Shows are usually the best place to buy merch, because generally more of what you pay will make it to the artist’s pocket with fewer middlemen and overhead costs like postage and ecommerce, but online works too.
For digital music, Hype Machine's Merch Table tool helps you see if you can buy(Opens in a new tab) your favourite songs or albums on Bandcamp — a platform that takes just 10 to 15 percent(Opens in a new tab) of the sale price (and also gives you the option to pay more than the minimum if you want), and also does Bandcamp Fridays, a monthly 24-hour period where the platform takes no cut at all. Even if you can only afford a single song, for the price of a cup of coffee, it will mean something to that artist that you made the effort and spared the change.
"For digital [Bandcamp is] really the best, but any digital purchases are good," Hollo explained. "It takes a ridiculously low number of digital sales to eclipse all streaming royalties."
And try to spend your money where it will make the most difference. Yes, you mostly listened to Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift all year like so many other people, and money spent on music is never wasted. But the $30 you could drop on a shitty sour bucket hat is almost definitely better spent on a shirt or two whole digital albums by that outlier indie artist you had on repeat all through spring then forgot about until your Wrapped reminded you.
Even if it feels like a token move to go pay a few bucks on Bandcamp for a song you loved this year, even if you never listen to that copy and keep playing it on Spotify, it’s a practical and meaningful way to help out the musicians who got you through this year, so they can get you through whatever the next year brings.
The story was originally published in November 2021, and has been updated.
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How to set boundaries in the early stages of dating
I'd just got in the bath when my phone buzzed on the window sill. It was, alas, out of reach. But I had a sneaking suspicion of who the message was from.
I got up and leaned across to my device, bath suds and water dripping all over the floor. With wet fingers, I swiped up to see the WhatsApp and instantly wished I'd stayed in the bath.
"Send pics," read the message from the guy I barely knew.
Until this moment, things had been going so well. So well, in fact, that I was deeply suspicious.
Sending nudes to a near-stranger in the early stages of dating is a boundary for me. That might not be the case for everyone, but in my case, it's not something I do unless I'm sleeping with the person. But at this point, I hadn't even gone on a first date with this guy yet. We'd simply kissed on a night out with friends and started texting each other.
I sat back in the bath and deliberated how to respond. My heart raced as I asked myself if it was easier to just comply with this request. My thoughts urged me not to be awkward, not to be a prude. But something stronger was overriding these — a fierce feeling that I just didn't want to do what was being asked of me. The anxiety I could physically feel told me I'd be crossing my own boundaries if I yielded.
I waited an hour, scrambling to find the right words to tell him 'no.' "Hey," I began. "So I have a rule that I don't send pics to someone unless I've slept with them." He replied almost instantly. "That is a very good rule," he said. The conversation went back to whatever we'd been talking about before. No awkwardness, no annoyance, nothing that I'd feared had happened.
But I couldn't shake the feeling that at age 30, I shouldn't be struggling to tell a man I'd met twice that I didn't want to do something. But here we are. My friends also tell me they feel highly nervous, overcome with anxiety when setting boundaries in the early stages of dating.
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So, why are boundaries so important? "Boundaries set the basic guidelines for how a person wants to be treated," according to Neil Wilkie, founder of online couples therapy platform The Relationship Paradigm(Opens in a new tab). "Clear boundaries are essential for our own mental health and self-esteem."
While this post deals primarily with boundaries in dating and romantic and sexual relationships, I'd note that boundaries are vital in ALL relationships — be that with family, friends, colleagues, and even your internet followers. For marginalised communities, in particular, respecting boundaries is deeply important in preventing re-traumatisation, and examples of boundary violations can include white people asking their Black friends to explain racism(Opens in a new tab) and people tagging sexual violence survivors in social media posts about sexual trauma. Everyone has the right to set boundaries and to have them respected.
Seeking approval while compromising boundaries
Boundaries are key, but in terms of dating, establishing them with someone you like and don't know very well can seem a little daunting at first. "When we’re nervous about holding onto someone else’s approval we can compromise on boundaries," Rachael Lloyd, relationship expert at eharmony, told me. "But once you start doing that, your own sense of self can erode and you can soon lose yourself in the relationship." If you're not 100 percent sure of your own boundaries, Lloyd said you might be clued in by your instincts. "You’ll know when a boundary is overstepped because you’re likely to suddenly feel triggered emotionally, within your body."
Getting in early with boundary setting also means heading off at the pass any potential future sources of resentment and friction that could arise. "In the early days of a relationship it is rare for a couple to discuss boundaries, which will mean that the ground rules are unclear and uncertain," explained Wilkie. Discussing your sexual boundaries with a new partner is particularly important in making sure you both feel comfortable and safe. "It is so much easier to talk about boundaries in the early days of a relationship as that will be coming from a place of growth and clarity rather than resentment and blame," Wilkie added.
How to talk about boundaries
What do you do if a discussion with someone you're newly dating veers into territory that you're not OK with? "If you enter into a topic of conversation that makes you feel uncomfortable or is delicate, such as political views, family life or salary, politely assert your boundary and explain that you’d rather not discuss that at this point, while changing the conversation to something that you have in common," explained Lloyd.
But you don't have to wait until a line has been crossed before having a chat about boundaries. Why not have a conversation about both your boundaries? "Introduce the topic gently, maybe by asking them, 'What is important for you in a relationship?'. If they open up, great. If not, then try again in a different way," Wilkie suggested. "Notice what is important for you and what boundaries you feel are being transgressed. Bring these up in a way like: ‘When you do x, I feel y’ rather than ‘It’s horrible when you do x’ do."
If the person is reluctant to discuss boundaries, or if they react badly to you setting a boundary, this could be a red flag. "If they are breaking the boundaries and don’t want to engage in conversation about it, question if are they right for me?" said Wilkie.
When it comes to intimacy, it's advisable to bring up sexual boundaries before you've entered a sexual encounter with that person. In the moment, if you are having sex with someone and a boundary is being crossed, remember that consent can be withdrawn at any point, and each new sexual act that's introduced in an encounter needs to be consented to. Our boundaries change and evolve over time, so if you're in a long-term relationship with someone, check in with each other and see where you're at.
If you're in a long-term relationship with someone and you want to have a meaningful exchange about one another's boundaries, you could try drawing up a list. Wilkie suggested getting each partner to draw up a list of what their boundaries are, then sharing and discussing what those boundaries mean to them, before comparing any similarities and differences. Making sure you've been listened to and understood is really important. If you feel there's room for improvement in the way your partner interacts with and respects those boundaries, let them know. If you want to, schedule regular meetings to chat about these and whether sufficient progress has been made.
Setting boundaries while social distancing
Given that we're living in a global pandemic, we also need to think about a person's boundaries in relation to COVID-19. You might feel fine with hugging a close friend, but the person you're meeting up with might not be up for that, for example. Same when it comes to dating — many will feel uneasy about meeting up in person for a first date.
Dating expert Melissa Hobley from OkCupid said it's important to remember that intimacy isn't just a physical thing, and you don't have to touch someone to create a meaningful connection.
"The hallmark sign of any strong relationship is honesty," said Hobley. "If you’re concerned about meeting your date or partner in a public place, voice your concerns. Suggest an alternative suggestion. For instance, a dinner date over FaceTime or a virtual movie night with Netflix Party — these are both ways to keep the fun alive, but also assert those physical boundaries."
It's important to remember that virtual dates aren't for everyone, and though sexting and sending nudes have been on the rise during lockdown and quarantine periods, you get to decide what you're comfortable with. If you do meet up in person, have a think about what you will and won't be OK with — even down to how soon you'd like to meet in person if you've been chatting on an app. "Be aware of your physical boundaries too, and plan the level of intimacy that you’d be comfortable with before meeting up with your new date," said Lloyd. "This will avoid any spontaneous decisions that may put you in situations that make you feel uncomfortable. It’s OK to say, 'I want to take things slowly, as I’m really enjoying getting to know you.'"
At the end of the day, we're all entitled to boundaries and we deserve to have them respected. Just because you're in the early stages of dating someone doesn't mean you have to compromise on something that keeps you feeling protected and safe. The person's response to a boundary being set will usually give you a good idea about whether this relationship is worth pursuing.
The practical guide to mid-pandemic sex, because abstinence isnt cutting it
I have a confession: I've had sex since social distancing began. With someone I met on Tinder, someone I don't live with. And I know friends doing the same.
With the pandemic still a major concern across the United States, people having sex or even just wanting to have sex may feel shame — even more shame than usual in this Puritanical wasteland. We've been told to abstain from pleasure and release at a time where we need it most.
We've also been given almost no guidance about how to safely have sex in the time of social distancing. As of publication, the CDC hasn't released safe sex practices specifically about having sex during the pandemic, apparently assuming those without a live-in partner will be celibate in the meantime.
Well, telling people to be abstinent(Opens in a new tab) doesn't work. The failures of abstinence-only sex education have been proven time(Opens in a new tab) and time again(Opens in a new tab), and experts reiterate this point. "Abstinence-only education has never worked in any setting," Holly Bullion said in a phone call to Mashable. Bullion is a nurse practitioner and director of clinical quality at Texas Health Action(Opens in a new tab), a non-profit that operates a sexual wellness clinic called Kind Clinic(Opens in a new tab).
"Now that we're half a year into a pandemic, it's definitely not going to work." So why do authorities like the New York City health department(Opens in a new tab) think that telling its residents that "they are their safest sex partner" is going to keep them satisfied?
It is, of course, true that solo play or virtual sex are the safest routes right now, but for many that simply is not a realistic or sustainable solution. Telling sexual adults to not have sex at a time when we're not only socially isolated but also increasingly anxious and depressed(Opens in a new tab) is only going to result in shame — and perhaps even drive people to engage in riskier behavior if they feel the need to be dishonest for fear of "being found out."
In addition to offering masturbation as a tactic, NYC Health also offered glory holes as an option. Glory holes themselves aren't a problem; they are actually a safe route and can get people off. The problem is that the concept of mid-pandemic safe sex practices has been largely turned into a joke, with suggestions being doled out that aren't helpful for the average horny person who can't drill a hole in their rented bedroom wall.
The lack of actual best practices for safer sex is partially why Kenneth Play(Opens in a new tab), who was called "the world's greatest sex hacker" by GQ, partnered up with Dr. Zhana Vrangalova(Opens in a new tab), Chelsey Fasano(Opens in a new tab), and Karen Ambert MD, MPH to create a vital guide: Smarter Hookups in the Time of COVID-19(Opens in a new tab).
"We wanted to write this guide because pleasure is a right, and a deep need"
"We wanted to write this guide because pleasure is a right, and a deep need," the introduction states, "and because we believe that the best way to ensure safety is to offer realistic guidelines. Telling people not to have sex just doesn’t work."
Smarter Hookups, which launched on Thursday, emphasizes the irony in the lack of guidance. We're more lonely and in need of pleasure and intimacy, yet no one has told us how to process it in a practical matter. We — those without live-in partners, those who may have multiple partners, those who just want to get off with someone else — deserve sex and intimacy, even in a pandemic. (Dare I say, especially in the pandemic.)
Play said the difficulty they had handling the coronavirus lockdown within his sex-positive community Hacienda(Opens in a new tab) (14 people living in a three-family home) is what inspired the guide. "Even though we are all highly practiced negotiators of measures related to sexual health, we still struggled navigating our group living situation during the Coronavirus pandemic," he said in a press release. "This inspired me to create a framework for navigating this challenging time for everyone else debating similar considerations."
Here are some sensible tips to help ensure that you can also have a responsible mid-pandemic sex life.
Questions to ask yourself first
The pandemic has ushered in an era of radical honesty — not just with potential partners, but also with ourselves. In some ways, navigating sex during the pandemic is similar to what we did before. Only now the focus is on contracting coronavirus as opposed to an STI. (Though, of course, it's still possible to transmit STIs and proper precautions(Opens in a new tab) should be taken on those fronts. Don't forget to continue using your normal method of birth control, as well.) The risk of exposure, however, is even more amorphous now. So if you're considering having a sexual partner (or multiple partners) that you don't live with right now, here are questions Vrangalova recommends you ask yourself:
What are the actual risks? This includes rates of infection in your community; your possible exposure, which depends on your behavior; and the likelihood of you developing serious symptoms.
How comfortable are you with these specific risks?
How much are you willing to uphold specific protocols and risk reduction strategies?
Then when you factor other people into the mix, you need to consider how comfortable they are with both your behavior and attitude on the matter. Basically, what is your tolerance for risk? If you're going to be lax about COVID guidelines while a potential partner is more stringent, you may not be a good match.
Levels of radical honesty
Smarter Hookups broke down everyone you interact with into three different levels. Level 1 is your most intimate group: Roommates and lovers, those who have highest likelihood of transmission. Level 2 is friends you see and co-workers if you have to go into the office; this is a moderate level of transmission risk. Level 3 is the wider public, those you have the lowest amount of contact with (and, hopefully, are maintaining a distance of six-or-more feet from and wearing masks around).
As you're sharing the most infectious behaviors (everything from sharing the same air for a prolonged period to kissing and exchanging bodily fluids) with Level 1, you need to have the most open and honest communication with those people. Not only that, but you should negotiate and reach a level of consent with each member of this group.
"Regardless of what you all collectively decide to do, one thing that is clear is that there should be a form of contact tracing and transparency that occurs within this group, exactly like what would happen in regard to STIs," the guide reads. "Essentially, if one of you gets sick with or tests positive for an active Covid-19 infection, everyone within this level should be informed, and should take subsequent precautions."
COVID safe sex best practicesCredit: vicky leta / mashable
This isn't unlike a polyamorous scenario. Bullion said that besides oneself, virtual play, and a live-in partner, a polyamorous-type pod is your next best bet: A mutually exclusive group where everyone knows each other and everyone is on the same page about sexual contact and following guidelines.
Smarter Hookups also recommends a pod-like structure with six to 12 people — enough where everyone can communicate openly. Of course, you don't have to be sexually involved with everyone in the pod either.
If you and a partner want to swing, the guide recommends choosing one other couple rather than changing it up each weekend.
Everyone in Level 1 — roommates, your pod, swinging buddies, etc. — should know about each other in detail. How many people are in Level 1? How often are you seeing them? What behaviors are you, and they, engaging in? If members of Level 1 have different risk tolerances, the full guide(Opens in a new tab) has suggestions on how to proceed.
For those in Level 2, you don't have to share everything that you do with Level 1 folks, but you should still be honest. If you are, for example, making out with a bunch of strangers, it's best to inform Level 2 that you're engaging in high-risk behavior. While you don't have to go into detail about said behavior, you have an ethical responsibility if you're potentially putting someone at risk.
If possible, make guest lists for parties and other functions in order to establish a level of contact tracing. Again, take note of how many people you're coming into contact with and examine your behavior. How many people are in your Level 2? How often do you see them? Do you wear masks?
For Level 3, the onus is on you to be responsible. Follow protocols and definitely stay home if you're experiencing coronavirus symptoms.
Related Video: What will sex and dating look like after the pandemic?
A note on COVID-19 testing and sex
While one might consider getting tested for COVID-19 regularly the best route to take in order to keep their partner(s) safe, Bullion said otherwise. Rather, screening questions (and being honest about the answers!) similar to the Mayo Clinic's self-assessment tool(Opens in a new tab) can better gage safety. These questions include: Have you or any of your partners been recently diagnosed? Do you have any symptoms?
"COVID testing...isn't as helpful as doing a screen that says, 'Have you had contact with anyone with confirmed COVID in the past 14 days? Have you had any of these 20 symptoms in the past 14 days?'" she said.
Further, Bullion doesn't recommend getting tested unless you believe you've been exposed. The test should be for those who are high-risk — like essential workers and their families, those who've been exposed, and those who have symptoms.
"Getting COVID testing done every month doesn't matter for any day after the time you were tested," she commented. "The test doesn't change any of those questions that we should be asking ourselves and trying to ask people that we might be potentially engaging in any kind of sexual activity with."
"Getting COVID testing done every month doesn't matter for any day after the time you were tested"
As COVID-19 has been traced in semen(Opens in a new tab) and feces(Opens in a new tab), there are still unanswered questions about how the virus is spread. Since it may not just be in the respiratory droplets, a negative test isn't the end-all.
Sex parties and casual sex
Just as the rich are paying $500 a pop for rapid COVID-19 tests(Opens in a new tab) to party in the Hamptons, some sex parties are cropping up doing the same thing. According to Bullion, the least safe sexual encounters right now are with one or more partners you don't know — and rapid tests aren't to be trusted.
"You can test negative for COVID on a rapid test and still have COVID," she warned. "It might just be that you don't have enough of the virus in your nares [nostrils] yet for it to pick it up." Screening is better than no screening, but it can give a false sense of security.
In terms of casual sex with someone you don't know, the ideal would be that they're as open and honest as you. As this may not be the case, Smarter Hookups says to assume you're at high risk for developing COVID-19 if you engage in this behavior. Thus, let Levels 1 and 2 know about this. Using physical barriers, like wearing a mask during sex (as Dutch sex workers are doing(Opens in a new tab)), could also help prevent the spread.
What about if you're immunocompromised?
"Just because we're immunocompromised does not mean that we don't deserve to have sex," said Bullion. "It's about setting tighter ground rules for yourself and your partners."
In addition to being more stringent about their partner guidelines, Bullion also said the ideal scenario is a small group of known partners. She recommends "mask sex" or positions that limit face-to-face contact if you go maskless, like doggy style and reverse cowgirl.
Immunocompromised or not, sex is an important outlet for many people. We've been isolated for months and at this point, perhaps quarantine fatigued. "For people who are out there thinking about having sex again, or who are already having sex, it's just about knowing where your resources are and making informed decisions," said Bullion.
You don't have to feel shame for wanting or having sex amid the pandemic, but you should be armed with good information and do your best to follow best practices. As Bullion commented, "The joy of sex — and everything we do, right — is about making informed decisions."
The Notorious R.B.G. taught a new generation how to dissent with her internet stardom
When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was 80 years old, she became an internet icon.
A law student started a Tumblr(Opens in a new tab) in her honor in 2013, dubbing her "The Notorious R.B.G." and in the years that followed, she became a meme that lined Etsy sellers' pockets. As much as her photo was flung around social media, her crowned head was emblazoned on T-shirts, her signature lace collar was reimagined as baby bibs(Opens in a new tab), and she became "our lady of dissent" on votive candles(Opens in a new tab) you could buy for $15. Her internet domination both fueled and was fueled by her caricaturing on Saturday Night Live as a spunky old lady who could lift weights and kick ass. She particularly liked(Opens in a new tab) a popular T-shirt that read, "You can't spell truth without Ruth."(Opens in a new tab) She kept her own supply of R.B.G. T-shirts, handing them out to friends.(Opens in a new tab)
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Swathes of people under 30 only knew her as the meme queen people love on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok when she died Friday at 87. Her internet clout became the bridge that helped her cross generations.
"Everyone wants to take a picture with me," she joked in RBG, the Oscar-nominated documentary about her life from 2018.
To top it off, her meme has meaning beyond the lulz: She wasn't a punchline; she was a role model. She symbolized standing up for what's right when you're outnumbered. She wasn't just a justice, she was justice. She also made for a cute Halloween costume(Opens in a new tab) for kids and dogs, the ultimate shareable content.
In the '50s, Ginsburg was one of nine women(Opens in a new tab) in her Harvard Law School class of over 500. In the '70s and '80s, she was a powerhouse lawyer fighting for constitutional protections against sex discrimination. In the '90s, she took on new prestige as the second woman to be nominated to the Supreme Court. For a few years in the 2000s, she was the only woman on the bench, feeling lonely(Opens in a new tab). Her dissent opinions took on a new edge, sharp and forceful(Opens in a new tab).
By 2013, when that Tumblr graced the internet, she was known, but mostly in political and legal circles. In those circles, she was still described as collegial. She was after all "best buddies,"(Opens in a new tab) with conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016. By 2020, she was known as the last liberal fortress, a protector against President Donald Trump putting another one of his Supreme Court picks on the bench.
Following the news of her death, TikTok flooded with videos of people shedding tears of grief and cursing 2020. On Twitter, too, the F-bombs abounded. They also ricocheted across liberal corners of social media(Opens in a new tab) every time she went to the hospital over the past few years. She died of complications from pancreatic cancer, but it wasn't her first stint with the Big C. She also at points battled colon, lung, and liver cancers.
Ginsburg first heard about the Tumblr from a law clerk. "My grandchildren love it, and I try to keep abreast of the latest that's on the Tumblr," she said in 2014(Opens in a new tab).
Its creator, Shana Knizhnik, now a public defender, told The New Republic(Opens in a new tab) that year, that the nickname was "obviously a reference to Notorious B.I.G., who is this large, imposing rapper, a really powerful figure; and Ruth Bader Ginsburg is this 90-pound Jewish grandmother. The juxtaposition of the two made it humorous, but is also a celebration of how powerful she really is.”
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It spiraled from there. Two other law students rapped about the Notorious R.B.G. to the tune of the Notorious B.I.G.'s (Opens in a new tab)Juicy(Opens in a new tab). In 2015, a book about Ginsburg's life was published with the same name(Opens in a new tab) as the Tumblr. Kate McKinnon started impersonating her on SNL during "Weekend Update."
In one of her first impressions, McKinnon shot out the phrase, "Ya just got Gins-burned" and started dancing. When later asked about the portrayal, Ginsburg joked(Opens in a new tab), "I would like to say "Gins-burn" sometimes to my colleagues.”
Like anything online, not everyone's a fan. Some pointed out that the memes put too much weight(Opens in a new tab) on Ginsburg's slight shoulders as her health deteriorated. By 2018, they took on a cruel edge: Fight RBG, you may be very sick, but you must save us! There was also the argument that the memes turned her into a superhero, buffing out all her blemishes.(Opens in a new tab) That often happens when one becomes flattened by the fast-churning gears of the social media machine.
Marchers with signs that say "Notorious R.B.G." with a picture of Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the January 2019 Woman's March in Manhattan.Credit: Ira L. Black / Corbis via Getty Images
Despite the criticism, much of it warranted, Ginsburg's internet alter ego taught a new generation about a trailblazing woman who stood for equality. Amid the #MeToo movement marked both by horrendous accusations of sexual harassment and hopeful women's marches, the Notorious R.B.G. evolved to represent something bigger than herself.
For her admirers, she wasn't only the protector of the highest court in the land. She wasn't solely a historical figure. She was, right then, a talisman, a magnet, a buoy in tumultuous waters. At makeshift vigils set up in her honor Friday night, Notorious R.B.G. imagery(Opens in a new tab) could be spotted among the multitude of flowers and candles.
"It was beyond my wildest imagination that I would one day become the Notorious R.B.G.," Ginsburg said last year during a speech at a university.
But it was in our imaginations that the Notorious R.B.G. thrived. Even after her passing, the internet's version of Ginsburg will live on, adding yet another aspirational element to her legacy. When we imagine a more equitable world, she is right there along with us. When we finally build that world, we will have Ginsburg and the Notorious R.B.G. to thank.
Sir David Attenborough breaks Jennifer Aniston’s Instagram record
Move aside Jennifer Aniston, there’s a new Instagram record-breaker in town.
Sir David Attenborough(Opens in a new tab) has broken the record for the fastest time to reach one million followers on Instagram, reaching the milestone in just over four hours, according to(Opens in a new tab) the Guinness World Records.
That means the 94-year-old naturalist has surpassed the previous record set by Aniston, who reached the one milly mark in five hours and 16 minutes. Before that, the record was five hours and 45 minutes, set by none other than Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
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Since joining Instagram 24 hours ago, Attenborough has racked up 2.7 million followers. His first ever post gained a whopping 10,257,883 views. Pretty impressive tbh.
The veteran broadcaster joined the social media platform for a really important reason, too. "This is my first time on Instagram," Attenborough said in his first ever Insta video. "And I'm making this move and exploring this new way of communication to me, because as we all know, the world is in trouble. Continents are on fire. Glaciers are melting. Coral reefs are dying. Fish are disappearing from our oceans. The list goes on and on and on."
SEE ALSO:
Sir David Attenborough delivers stark warning in BBC doc 'Extinction: The Facts'
Attenborough plans to use his account to share important messages about saving the planet and possible solutions for tackling climate change. Jonnie Hughes and Colin Butfield, who worked on Attenborough's upcoming Netflix film and bookA Life On Our Planet, are helping to manage the account.
Congrats, Sir David, on your record-breaking achievement!
Related Video: David Attenborough is giving virtual geography lessons to kids at home
Dwayne The Rock Johnson backs Biden/Harris in a new video with the candidates
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is getting openly political as the 2020 election approaches, and he's throwing his muscular support behind Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
The professional wrestler-turned-beloved film actor released a video on Sunday morning declaring his intent for vote for the Democratic ticket in 2020, encouraging his fans to do the same. He said it's the first time he's ever publicly endorsed a candidate for president or vice president, so you know he means it.
"As a political independent & centrist, I've voted for both parties in the past. In this critical presidential election, I'm endorsing [Joe Biden] and [Kamala Harris]," Johnson tweet reads. "Progress takes courage, humanity, empathy, strength, KINDNESS & RESPECT. We must ALL VOTE."
He caps off the tweet with a link to Vote Save America(Opens in a new tab), a resource aimed at helping visitors understand the voting process, the most important facets of the coming election, and the various ways one can get involved. The tweet also features a video featuring Johnson in conversation with Biden and Harris.
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Johnson's words are notable for never once mentioning Donald Trump by name. Instead, he preaches in favor of the virtues expressed in the text of his tweet: Courage, humanity, empathy, strength, kindness, and strength. None of which could accurately be applied to the current president, unless you're so deep in the Trump Kool-Aid bowl that the destruction of American democracy is more appealing than handing a member of the opposing party control of the White House.
The seven-and-a-half minute video also shows us Johnson sitting down for a chat with Biden and Harris. It's softball stuff, giving the two candidates an opening to repeat the same kind of messages they've been stumping on since the Democratic primary race ended earlier in 2020.
But it's one more example of an American majority slowly standing up and acknowledging that the past four years haven't been normal, and that Trump's fundamental existence as a political player has done more to undermine U.S. democracy than the 200-plus years of social and ideological struggles that preceded him.
Johnson's political reckoning may be motivated in part by his recent personal struggles. The actor recently revealed that he, along with his wife and two daughters, had contracted COVID-19. The global pandemic that has cast a long shadow across the entirety of 2020 is much worse in the U.S. than it could have been thanks to the grudging and frequently counter-productive efforts of the Trump administration.
SEE ALSO:
Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson opens up about his father's death in moving Instagram video
With more than 200,000 deaths in the U.S. attributable to COVID-19 or complications related to the illness, any diagnosis is a terrifying prospect while Trump continues to hold office. Public confidence in previously apolitical institutions like the Centers for Disease Control is shattered, to the point that the lineup of forthcoming vaccines – which were all developed in record time – is being met with widespread (and understandable) doubt.
The COVID diagnosis coming into Johnson's own home may have been the wake-up call he needed to accept that it's time to get political. Whatever it was that prompted him, it's one more example of an American majority that's been beaten down by four years of Trump rising up to say "hell no" to four more years of this madness.
Emma Chamberlain talks coffee, YouTube drama, and quarantine loneliness
Emma Chamberlain rarely took a break.
Until this spring, the now 19-year-old was constantly on the move. On top of booking appearances and collaborating with other YouTubers, Chamberlain also filmed and edited videos for her own channel, which has amassed over 9.5 million subscribers and more than 1.2 billion views since she began posting them as a high schooler in 2017.
Her signature editing style of using rapid jump cuts and quirky asides to the camera inspired a wave of imitation vloggers who emulate Chamberlain's use of on-screen text and raw honesty. Chamberlain's wildly popular videos are often fun, light watches, but the process of creating them is laborious. Last year, she told the New York Times(Opens in a new tab) that a weekly upload could take anywhere from 20 to 30 hours to put together. She often edits in marathon stretches, sitting down for 12 to 15 hours at a time to bang out a vlog that clocks in at under 20 minutes.
Whether for business or pleasure, Chamberlain traveled constantly and had adapted to editing on the go. In the last year, she was awarded Choice Female Web Star at the Teen Choice Awards, hosted the Teen Vogue "Generation Next" show at New York Fashion Week, and graced the cover of Cosmopolitan, in which she was described as "The most popular girl in the world." On top of all that, she also launched a weekly podcast: "Anything Goes With Emma Chamberlain."
Chamberlain manages her intense lifestyle with a seemingly never-ending supply of caffeine. A mason jar of iced coffee and a splash of almond milk is present in nearly every video Chamberlain uploads. In Dec. 2019, she launched her own brand of coffee. On Sept. 27, she's relaunching Chamberlain Coffee(Opens in a new tab) with a collection of five sustainably sourced and packaged blends. In addition to bags of ground coffee, Chamberlain Coffee will sell single-serve grounds packaged in mesh sachets like tea bags. (Mashable reviewed one of her original steeped coffee bags in 2019.) They're meant to be an alternative to instant coffee that Chamberlain's viewership, who are primarily teenagers and young adults, can consume without needing access to equipment like a French press or a Chemex.
Chamberlain Coffee is meant for Emma's YouTube viewer demographic.Credit: chamberlain coffee
Chamberlain's industrious wayfaring came to a halt when the COVID-10 pandemic swept across the world. Like the rest of us, she was isolated to the confines of her home in an effort maintain social distancing. In the roughly six months since Los Angeles enacted a stay-at-home order, Chamberlain has finally had the quiet to reevaluate her lifestyle and the people she spends time with. Other than seeing the friends in her quarantine bubble, Chamberlain told Mashable, and attending(Opens in a new tab) a widely criticized birthday party with dozens of other influencers at the Hype House, her social life has been scaled back significantly.
I sat down with Emma Chamberlain for a cup of coffee (over Zoom, of course) to chat about rekindling friendships(Opens in a new tab), staying out of YouTube drama, and the loneliness that we've all been feeling in quarantine.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Mashable: To kick this off, I know you've featured coffee in like every one of your vlogs, but can you personally describe your relationship to coffee?
Chamberlain: Coffee is very nostalgic for me. I just grew up drinking it, throughout every stage of my life from the time I was very, very young to now. I [was] probably too young to be drinking coffee, although my first favorite coffee drink was my mom getting a soy latte and then me asking for extra, extra, extra foam — it's literally just foam — and then a tiny bit of coffee at the bottom. But yeah, then you know, using it for studying when I was in high school and getting coffee with my dad throughout the years and stuff like that. So it's just a very social thing for me, and a very nostalgic thing, and a very comforting thing. And I'm passionate about it, I love it. I love a good cup. That's all it takes for me to make my day.
So a lot of influencers will start brands that are more geared toward lifestyle, like you've done clothing collabs, or some release hair care lines or makeup brands. Why coffee?
I think it just made the most sense for me because it's something that people know me for, for sure. A lot of people associate coffee with me. I wanted to do something a little bit different and I wanted to go a different path and I wanted to do something that no one else had done. I'm not somebody who's super into makeup and I'm very into clothes, but...you know.
Coffee was something that I feel like hadn't been done yet by an influencer. I wanted to really make it something different and special, that not only the influencer world hasn't seen yet but also the coffee industry as well. I think we didn't get to that point where those goals were met until the relaunch.
There's a mason jar of iced coffee and almond milk in nearly every one of Emma Chamberlain's videos.Credit: chamberlain coffee
Yeah. So a lot of coffee snobs will look down on coffee that's easier to make, like K-cups or instant coffee. Why did you choose this sort of, tea bag method of making coffee?
We wanted to start with a product that my demographic especially would gravitate towards, something that's easy, that's cheaper than going to a cafe out and about, that's eco-friendly because you know, my generation specifically is very into that. Something that anyone could use that you don't need equipment [for]. You can just buy it and it's like, you can do whatever you want with it, right?
The coffee quality, even though it's in a sense, instant...It's very high quality coffee in there. It's not an instant coffee, those real ground up beans, like very, very high quality beans, and they're sealed in a way so it doesn't go bad. It stays fresh for quite some time. And I think that's something that's really cool 'cause I'm not a huge fan of instant coffee myself.
That was just a great stepping stone towards introducing things that the coffee snob could use in their Bialetti, in their, you know, really expensive espresso machine. For us we wanted to start with something that we knew everybody could use.
Right, it almost seems like you've made coffee less intimidating for your target audience.
1,000 percent, that is totally, exactly the way that we look at it.
Moving past coffee, how has quarantine been for you? I know you recently posted a vlog about like, a staycation, and I was wondering how quarantine has changed the way you make content.
Content wise, I mean, it's been a little tough because I'm somebody that loves to film me doing things that I do on a day-to-day. And the problem is that my day-to-day got very boring, very fast. I really stopped doing interesting things almost immediately so that's made things a little bit tough because I want to be vlogging my day, but I'm doing the same thing every day. Half the time, I'm laying in bed, or I'm hanging out with my friends, and I don't really want to film that because it's my private, sacred time, you know what I mean? It's hanging out with my friends, the ones I'm quarantining with, not being reckless.
"Normally my life that I lived created content for me, and it was so much easier."
But I've had to get creative at home and do more videos that have concepts behind them, instead of just being able to film me going on a trip. Normally my life that I lived created content for me, and it was so much easier because it was like, OK, once or twice a month I could just film a vlog of me sitting in the new setting and it would be an adventure.
I've been doing more stuff with fashion, like flipping clothes and stuff like that. Or outfit related videos, I've been having a lot of fun with that.
Emma Chamberlain describes her personal relationship with coffee.Credit: chamberlain coffee
Emma Chamberlain describes her personal relationship with coffee.Credit: chamberlain coffee
Can you give me an example of a time when you felt just really creatively pushed by the confines of quarantine?
Let's say I'm doing a cooking video, I need to go get groceries for that. Well I remember in the very beginning, there was a solid month where every store was like, there was nothing in them. There was no toilet paper, if you wanted to get eggs, good luck. Every grocery store was crazy. Getting supplies for different concepts wasn't an option.
Getting equipment, it was like I kind of have to work with what I have. And that was fun and all, but was definitely challenging because it's weird when you're not able to just go grab something from the store. Luckily that evened out pretty quickly and then it's fine.
Definitely, and you know, the pre-pandemic version of you seemed to always be on the move, always super busy. I think everyone in the whole world has been forced to slow down. What was that experience like for you?
I think it's been one of the most transformative times of my life thus far. I have found a lot of my core values and really become in touch with them through this time because I think that all the running around that I was doing was kind of like, allowing me to avoid things that I need to address about myself. Not even bad things, but I don't know one person who doesn't need to do a little bit of self reflection. It's forced me to reflect on myself and like, 'OK. Who do I want to surround myself with?'
Because now I have all the time to think about that. I have the time to think about what I want my career to look like. I've had to look at what has failed in my life, what has worked, and really analyze all of that. And I realized the importance of having a really good support system because I think that when you're running around all the time, you're always around different people.
"Wait, who do I have? Who am I talking to on a day-to-day? Who are those people?"
You're being social constantly, there's no shortage of human interaction. But when something like a pandemic goes around, you're like 'Holy crap!' You're kind of looking around, you're like, 'Wait, who do I have? Who am I talking to on a day-to-day? Who are those people?' And it really forced me to look at that.
It's been so incredibly good for me, but also very anxiety provoking, and I've had depressive episodes throughout it and it's been tough, but I was glad to take a break.
Speaking of people you want to surround yourself with, I noticed you recently rekindled your friendship with James Charles. Can you tell me about that?
It was super cool. We haven't talked in so long, and I don't think we forgot about one another, but it was just like, we grew apart. It was not at all hostile or anything, it was just the way that it was, we just didn't talk and we both had six different groups of friends. We always had very different groups of friends when it came to our core friend groups. We hung out a decent amount, but we weren't [doing the] hanging out every day type of thing.
We sort of drifted apart, and then rekindling our friendship was super cool. It's just fun to catch up about what we make, what's going on, and update each other on everything that has happened.
You know, there's some friendships that drift away and when you get to rekindle it, it's even more fun because you get to catch each other up on everything that happened when you weren't really speaking, and I enjoyed that.
"I actually really like having a lot of alone time and having a very small circle. I don't know if I'm ready to be social again."
Yeah! That's great to hear. Do you think you would have rekindled your friendship with him, or anyone else you may have rekindled your friendships with, if you weren't sort of forced into that break and self reflection?
I think it would have happened eventually, but I think that most people are so ready to be social again. For me it's kind of the opposite. I'm kind of like, wait a minute. I actually really like having a lot of alone time and having a very small circle. I don't know if I'm ready to be social again.
But I think that because a lot of other people are ready to be social again, that may be how this all started. James was a total exception but I'm having a hard time right now because I don't know how to go out in the world anymore.
I think that's a really common experience and just like, forgetting how to socialize or act like you did before the pandemic.
Totally, yeah!
So YouTubers are sort of notorious for always being involved in drama, and always getting involved in feuds whether it's genuine or for views. But you tend to stay out of that. Can you tell me why?
There's nothing on this planet that I hate more. I hate it. I absolutely hate it. There is nothing fun about it for me! And as somebody who — I mean, I wouldn't sound any different from the next guy, I mean a majority of people on this planet deal with mental health issues — but I have really bad anxiety. And for me, one of the biggest triggers of anxiety since I was younger was arguments.
I will just avoid it at all costs. If it makes my quality of life less great, what's the point of that? So I refuse. You know, when people try to start drama about me in any way I really just try to stay out of it. It's just all...it's all dumb. It's so pointless to me. We live on this planet to have fun, have fun with it. Why are we starting shit?
I let everybody else do it if they want to and I don't judge at all, but I'm just like, I'm gonna keep this off this internet and out of my life as much as possible.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And one of my last questions, kind of going back to the pandemic and influencers, a lot of people with large followings have been criticized for continuing to party and not social distance, and live life the way they were before the pandemic struck. What is your take on all of that?
I think at the very beginning — when these things started to happen and people were starting to return to normal life prematurely — a lot of people didn't realize the severity of it. Still, I think that it got to a point where a lot of people thought that it was over. And you know, being in that place and knowing a lot of these people...I think a lot of people didn't realize that it was still as big of a problem as it was, but [they were] just completely ignorant.
I think the issue is when it becomes a recurring problem. And when people don't learn from their mistakes. I'm not somebody that ever wants to judge someone for one mistakes. I make mistakes all the time. And I wouldn't want somebody to judge me for one mistakes. But if I make the same mistake repeatedly, that's when it's a problem.
People do dumb things sometimes, but it's like, how do you learn from them? How do you move forward? That's where I think the true colors come out, is in that. It's just very frustrating to see it continue, but at the same time it's like, as an individual all you can do is your best and be as selfless as you possibly can.
Going back to talking about criticism in general, you're really open about your mental health and body image issues and insecurities. But as a public figure you're obviously the target of a lot of criticism. How do you approach it, how do you deal with that?
I mean I still struggle with it to this day. It never is easy, it's never like I have felt I figured it out, right. But I think the key is to just not read...I'm active on social media. I'm posting on YouTube weekly, I'm on Instagram daily, I'm always on Instagram. [I'm] constantly posting to Twitter. I try to post as much as I can. And so I'm on it, right, and that is part of my job. It is my job to be present on the platform. It's hard to find a balance, but I think the key is to not read the comments, to not scroll more than one or two times, to keep it very minimal.
"I can go down a rabbit hole. I could find my name on Reddit and read about myself all day if I wanted, and it would ruin my life. I would. I've done it, but the thing is, it doesn't matter."
I can go down a rabbit hole. I could find my name on Reddit and read about myself all day if I wanted, and it would ruin my life. It would. I've done it, but the thing is, it doesn't matter. There are people that love me and support me, and those people know who I am and they know what kind of person I am. And they know I'm a human. Those are the people that I want to give my energy towards.
So I try to honestly ignore it as much as possible and just not read it. And just remember that there's so much more to life than what is on the screen. I have such amazing people in my life, and it's a great support system. I need to be remembering when I'm reading these shitty comments, I have so many people that have my back. [They] would be here even if this went away tomorrow, so who cares.
You know what I mean, right?
No, definitely. For my last question, it's super bleak to think about, but say the pandemic does last another six months and social distancing is in effect for that. How do you see your content changing or evolving?
I hope to do a little bit of traveling soon, in a safe way. That's definitely a goal of mine. I don't know if that's even allowed, or what the full rules of that are, but it'd be nice to figure out ways to be safe and responsible but still do the things I missed. I would love to try and do that.
Emma Chamberlain is relaunching her coffee brand, Chamberlain Coffee, this month.Credit: chamberlain coffee
But when it comes to the day-to-day, I think a lot of it's going to stay pretty much the same for a while. Just continuing to try to make the most of my at-home life and get more creative when it comes to concepts, whether it's about fashion or whatever. Just come up with more interesting things that I can do at home that are safe and responsible.
Those things come to me at random hours. I'll be in the shower and it'll just come to me, or it'll be 4 a.m. and I'll wake up from a nightmare. I'll be like, wait a minute. I have a video idea because of my nightmare! That's the most common, it's spontaneous.
But I would love to get out of LA for a little bit, or out of California. Soon, if possible. I'm craving it.
That was it for me, but was there anything else you wanted to say?
I feel amazing, and thank you so much.
Yeah, thanks so much for answering all of these!
Have an amazing Tuesday! Oh my god, I don't know how to hang up.
These medical bills were made into oil paintings and sold to pay off the $73,360 debt
As healthcare is largely dependent on one's employer in the United States, the coronavirus pandemic has screwed many Americans from both ends: As millions lost their jobs for pandemic-related reasons, they also lost their health insurance(Opens in a new tab). While COVID-19 related expenses are leaving people in debt(Opens in a new tab), over 130 million Americans had medical debt(Opens in a new tab) even before the pandemic.
MSCHF, the group responsible for stunts like Finger on the App and MasterWiki, is bringing attention to the failures of the American healthcare system with Medical Bill Art(Opens in a new tab). Three real medical bills were rendered into oil paintings and sold for the amount of money owed via the art market. The work is aptly called 3 Medical Bills.
MSCHF sourced the bills from a magazine ad, and has never met nor has any affiliation with the billholders. According to Medical Bill Art's website, the proceeds from the art sale were used to pay off the original bills. 3 Medical Bills was bought by Otis(Opens in a new tab), an app that allows people to invest in art and collectables.
While a promotional video displays a phone number, MSCHF's head of strategy Daniel Greenberg told Mashable that the number is fake and just a parody of late-night lawyer ads on TV — so don't get your hopes up that MSCHF will do this with your debt, too. According to Greenberg, the company doesn't plan on doing this again but pointed out, "You never know with MSCHF."
In total, $73,360.36 of medical debt was paid off. You can buy shares of 3 Medical Bills by downloading the Otis app — if you're not currently bogged down by debt yourself, that is.
Doomswiping is the latest pandemic coping mechanism
As the pandemic summer creeps into pandemic autumn, I...am still on dating apps. When I lie in bed at night, the only light in the room is the screen glow as I swipe through various apps — left, left, right, left, right, right — and so it goes.
The phenomenon known as doomscrolling(Opens in a new tab), popularized on Twitter by writer Karen K. Ho, entered the cultural lexicon earlier this year. The concept is simple: One scrolls endlessly on their various social media feeds, absorbing the news of the day which, this year especially, has been disheartening at best and apocalyptic at worst.
I'd say this behavior crosses over into dating apps, too, but in a slightly different way: Doomswiping. Unlike with doomscrolling, where we read the horrors of the news and the discourse that comes along with it, doomswiping(Opens in a new tab) is the act of mindlessly scrolling through dating apps without the express purpose of actually meeting someone — especially since right now coming within six feet of a stranger is often not possible to do safely.
SEE ALSO:
How to set boundaries in the early stages of dating
The fact that we can't date the way we usually do is the great paradox of doomswiping: We want to opt out of the world around us, at least while we're swiping, but once we actually attempt to make a connection we're hit extra hard with reality.
I'm not the only one doomswiping. In a survey of thousand Hily(Opens in a new tab) users, 23 percent reported using dating apps as an escape routine, according to a press release. At the same time, 85 percent of respondents said they want to find a connection eventually.
This isn't unlike what the several people I spoke to told me about doomswiping. When I asked whether they were on dating apps to numb out (doomswipe) or to actually date, the answer more often than not was both — even if they don't actually want to meet up right now. Even if they don't want to message their matches.
This is something Pierce* experienced on dating apps. "I have this idea that I'm swiping to date and have some semblance of conversation with someone but that illusion vanishes rapidly when I get a match," he told me.
"I open up the app with some kind of intention," Pierce explained, "but the swiping just becomes another way to stare at a screen and not think about anything."
Why are we doing this to ourselves?
The motivations for doomswiping are multifaceted. Clearly, one of them is the desire to numb ourselves from the world around us; in that sense it's the opposite of doomscrolling, which results in spiraling into a wormhole of catastrophe about our current reality.
We might also crave the potential validation (and subsequent dopamine hit) of matching. Then there's the desire for actual connection — especially at a time where we can't see friends or meet new people as readily.
We can't analyze this sometimes contradictory behavior without examining how the pandemic has impacted our mental health. Dr. Ashwini Nadkarni, associate psychiatrist and an instructor at Harvard Medical School, told me that the epidemic of loneliness(Opens in a new tab) brought on by the prolonged period of isolation could contribute to the recent increase in dating app usage(Opens in a new tab). Nadkarni also pointed to this study(Opens in a new tab) that linked stay-at-home orders and personal distancing with depression, anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and insomnia.
It's not just loneliness or even depression that we're facing, though: It's generational trauma. "Recent research has also shown that the experience of witnessing the impact of infectious diseases on the world, such as in the case of COVID-19, has also produced symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in youth," said Nadkarni, citing a paper entitled The Effect of COVID-19 on Youth Mental Health(Opens in a new tab).
"An increased desire for a connection, even a virtual one, may be a coping response to such isolation," Nadkami explained. "Alternatively, for those who have become desensitized to the risks of contracting COVID, increased use of dating apps could also represent a form of an emotional escape, or emotional numbing or avoidance, in response to the distress they've experienced."
This emotional numbing is a defining criteria for PTSD, according to Nadkarni.
Doomscrolling into a doomspiral
Maia, with whom I spoke about her dating app usage, sees doomswiping as a numbing behavior. "It doesn’t do a good job of making me stop thinking about how fucked we are," she said, "but it’s better than scrolling on Twitter."
Another person, who requested to remain anonymous, said they're swiping to date and for distraction — but not out of boredom. "More like trying to keep my brain occupied so I am not just stewing in constant anxiety," they said. "But also having anxiety about dating at the same time. But at least I am not thinking about all those other anxieties!"
This person, who's nonbinary, said that they used to only check apps periodically and swipe for maybe ten minutes. Now, however, they've been spending hours on apps.
"Not that people on dating apps are ignoring the risks or acting irresponsibly, but it's like pretending that the whole world isn't on fire."
Ruth, a graduate student, told me she has the sense that she's swiping in an alternate reality where COVID isn't happening. "Not that people on dating apps are ignoring the risks or acting irresponsibly, but it's like pretending that the whole world isn't on fire," she said. Ruth described her dating app behavior as "deliberate-ignorance swiping."
When we're tired or not getting the self-care we need, we turn to convenient behaviors — swiping on a dating app, for instance — to numb us out, according to Ned Presnall, LCSW. Ned is the owner/director of Plan Your Recovery(Opens in a new tab) and a professor and researcher at Washington University in St. Louis in the Clinical Social Work and Psychiatry departments.
"Most dating apps have a variable schedule of reinforcement, which powerfully reinforces repetitive behavior," which is also how people become addicted to gambling, said Presnall. He continued, "We don’t know how long we’ll have to swipe before we get a match, but when we get a match we find it rewarding and affirming, and thus continue swiping over and over again."
But that can also backfire. The anonymous person I spoke to has several chronic illnesses, so they're trying to steer matches towards online dates or Animal Crossing meetups — but they've been getting ghosted, if matches reply to their messages at all. "Which just feeds into my anxiety about dating and I end up spending even more time swiping while I wait to see if they’ll reply," they said.
They didn't spend too much time on dating apps prior to the pandemic due to a "constant background tension" they experienced as a nonbinary user — but now they've found spending time on other social media is even more stressful.
They also just wants a connection. They said, "I am living on my own [right now] so it's kinda rough being in the same room most of the time and not being around other people at all. I miss physical contact."
This was a common theme with the "doomswipers" I interviewed. Ruth said the pandemic has slowed down her life and made her acutely aware of milestones that are passing her by, like dating. "Since everything is remote, the ways in which I would ordinarily meet people, such as through my graduate school are gone," Ruth said. "So [swiping is] kinda an attempt to mitigate social isolation."
"I'm a habitual doom swiper," said Noel Simone, who lives in Chicago and doesn't know anyone in the city. "When I run out of apps to scroll, I turn to my personal cesspool of potential lovers on Hinge."
dating apps coping mechanismCredit: vicky leta / mashable
While Simone has been on dating apps for years, she believes it seems more useless now than ever. She described the vibes as "fruitless and weird" and her app behavior as a "vicious cycle."
"As I move through the preliminary small talk, I know I won't ever MEET them. I think a man would have to be some kind of special, tick off every box, before i'd even think to sit with them in a park or at a distance in a restaurant," she said. "I feel lonely, want the companionship, but then don't want the possible virus. So I exit the app. Return hours later, to waste some guy's time."
Another doomswiper, Andrew, also described a this as a cyclical behavior. He feels lonely, he goes on the apps, he feels sad, he exits, and repeats. He started using apps after getting out of a relationship and is looking for connection, but finds that he feels insecure if he doesn't get matches. He begins a comparison game in his head, he says, thinking his ex has an easier time on the apps.
Like every social media platform, seeking instant gratification and validation is built into dating apps. Dr. Chris Leeth, therapist and professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio's Department of Counseling, told me that this is the fundamental difference between doomscrolling and doomswiping.
Doomscrolling, in Leeth's view, represents distraction and a different sort of validation: "one of joint company and shared misery." Doomswiping, however, represents seeking personal validation and connection.
Even if we're desperate for connection, it doesn't mean we're dodging social distancing rules. In fact, those I spoke to were turned off by people (particularly men) rushing to meet in person, or proudly proclaiming that they have antibodies in their Tinder bios(Opens in a new tab).
Sofía, a woman using dating apps, told me, "I feel like dudes are way more in doomsday mode if [I'm] being frank."
Prior to the pandemic, Sofía said it was difficult to engage in conversation and lead up to meeting in person. Now, matches are asking her to meet up right away — to have a drink in their home, for instance — and asking about sexual preferences early on in the conversation.
"I [obviously] have no issue talking about that but I feel like it shouldn't be the second question you ask me on a dating app," she said. She's also experienced an uptick of men DMing her on Instagram if they don't match with her.
That's not deterring Sofía from continuing to be on the apps and "finding a diamond in the rough," in her words. On whether she doomswipes, she said, "Catch me two tequila sodas in and I can doomswipe for HOURS."
"Catch me two tequila sodas in and I can doomswipe for HOURS."
Photographer Christina Casillo described her doomswiping in the same way as her "unstoppable scrolling on TikTok." It's not necessarily a spiral, said Casillo, but more of a way to fill a bottomless cup.
"I get in moods where I swipe and even when I match with people I’m like, 'Wait I don’t want to engage with ANY of you,'" said Casillo.
Pierce described similar activity. He said, "Matching with someone breaks that cycle of read, swipe, repeat in a way that almost puts me off from messaging anybody."
Swiping and matching without intent to meet makes sense to Leeth because of validation and the thrill of the chase. "Validation because even if we can’t meet — even if I don’t plan to meet — if there is a match, then someone wanted me," he said.
Nadkarni said that generally, people are looking for a reprieve from social isolation. "For some, this has meant creating more ways to interact with others virtually," she said. "For others, this may mean building the fantasy of social connection even if the reality may not be possible."
Doomswiping is fine — in moderation
It's not exactly weird to want to escape reality or find connection right now. Dating app use, as with many behaviors, is fine in moderation. It becomes problematic, according to Presnall, if it distracts so much from your day-to-day activities that it subverts your true priorities.
"If you feel like there’s an emptiness to your swiping, ask yourself what unmet need you’re avoiding," said Presnall. "Perhaps you may need to engage in more nourishing self care, find a better community, or develop a hobby that you enjoy." Nadkarni also recommended maintaining self-care during this time.
For those stuck in the swiping cycle, Leeth said, "You are so much more than your profile. Let's put that down for now (you can always go back), and work on the thing that is actually frustrating you."
For users, it may seem silly to (doom)swipe during a year as tumultuous as 2020 — but perhaps there's comfort knowing you're not the only one swiping into the void.
"Vast swaths of the west coast is on fire, huge parts of the midwest are worried about crop failures from a multi-day freeze, hurricanes are crashing into the south and south east, over 1000 people a day are dying from a pandemic, rent is still going up right alongside tuition, and healthcare is less affordable than ever," said Pierce.
"What on earth makes me think using a dating app or dating at all is a good idea right now? I have no idea but here I am, swiping away."
*some sources for this piece requested to be referred to by first name only
Do you have a story about pandemic dating you'd like to share? Email [email protected]
Cops films new episodes, but they wont air in the U.S.
Few good things have happened in 2020. Cops getting canceled was one of them.
And yet, less than four months after the Paramount Network ended the controversial reality series, Cops crew members are back in squad cars. On Wednesday, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office in Washington stated two Cops film crews had been riding along with department deputies throughout the month of September and would continue to do so through the first week of November.
Per The Hollywood Reporter(Opens in a new tab), the episodes being filmed will not be broadcast in the United States, and are being created exclusively to fulfill contracts between Cops and international territories where the show still airs.
"We have a longstanding relationship with Cops and Langley productions [the studio behind (Opens in a new tab)Cops(Opens in a new tab)], and we are pleased they have decided to return, highlighting the outstanding work our deputies provide to all of you," the Sheriff's Office statement(Opens in a new tab) reads.
"Cops film crews have ridden with Spokane County Sheriff’s Office and Spokane Valley deputies for many years. During that time, they have documented segments of the great work our deputies continually provide. This allows the viewer a glimpse of what takes place during a deputy’s shift and how unpredictable any situation can be."
Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich, quoted in the press statement, also defended the genre of policing shows writ large: “Shows like Cops highlight the work of law enforcement. They show, even for a few minutes, what the men and women out protecting our communities deal with day in and day out. People need to see how quickly things can turn, the decisions that need to be made quickly, and how well deputies and officers adjust and respond appropriately."
SEE ALSO:
TV cops know their job is changing. Some are more ready than others.
Knezovich went on, saying such programs "show the hard work and professionalism of law enforcement, despite what some anti-law enforcement activists and those in the media want you to believe.” Knezovich has publicly supported President Donald Trump since he first ran for office in 2016. In 2017, Knezovich was criticized for publicly claiming(Opens in a new tab) law enforcement officials were being "hunted and assassinated" as a result of inaction by former President Barack Obama.
Representatives for Langley Productions and Color of Change — an activist organization credited with helping secure the cancellations of both Cops and Live P.D. in June — did not immediately respond to Mashable's request for comment.
Twitter reminded everyone its against the rules to hope someone dies. It didnt go over well.
Twitter's abusive behavior policy(Opens in a new tab) is supposed to protect everyone. Following Donald Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis, thousands are claiming it doesn't.
On Friday, the social media platform attempted to clarify its rules on abusive tweets, stating: "Tweets that wish or hope for death, serious bodily harm, or fatal disease against anyone are not allowed and will need to be removed." The explanation came following a report from Vice on what content the platform would and would not allow(Opens in a new tab) surrounding the health of Trump — who, as of Saturday morning, is not yet on a "clear path to recovery(Opens in a new tab)."
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For clarity, the platform has said any tweets conveying hope that Trump dies will be removed, and accounts linked to such tweets may be put on a "read only" mode. (They will not be automatically suspended.) Many say that's far more than Twitter has managed to do in the past.
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"My life has been repeatedly threatened by Nazis/white supremacists/MAGAS and nothing was done," wrote one user(Opens in a new tab). "I reported it all; most accounts remain. Not just *wishing* me dead, mind you, but threatening to do it. Was all of that not against the rules?"
Numerous users spoke on the perceived hypocrisy of the policy, saying it was not enforced in situations where it clearly should have been. Two specific examples — independent users who were personally abused or threatened and received no protection from Twitter, and instances of other public representatives being abused or threatened (sometimes in ways staggeringly similar to what Trump is facing now) and not receiving protection from Twitter — arose in a pile-up of accusations.
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"Someone once DM'd me that I was 'going to the gas chamber,'" one woman wrote(Opens in a new tab). "When I reported it, Twitter deemed it not a violation of their rules."
"I think they just made the rule today," wrote someone else(Opens in a new tab). "[Representative] Ilhan Omar gets death threats for miles everyday. They still haven't done anything."
"Is it now?" added another(Opens in a new tab). "The last 7 years of my life would like to have a word with you."
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The egregious accusations of abuse (many of them specifically involving vulnerable groups, historically targeted by hate speech) were juxtaposed with examples some users say reflect a biased leaning on the platform that benefits Republicans — Trump supporters especially.
"I got suspended once for two weeks for saying a particular senator still being alive was proof there was no god," one user said(Opens in a new tab).
"Yep, I was suspended for calling someone on Fox News a bimbo and barbie," another commented(Opens in a new tab). "No, I’m not joking."
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The accusations contribute to a disturbing pattern of unequal censorship on Twitter. The apparent double standard has existed for years, but many say it has never been properly addressed.
Representatives for Twitter did not immediately response to Mashable's request for comment.
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But after the company was caught with its proverbial pants down on the inconsistent enforcement of rules, Twitter Safety posted a whole thread on Saturday acknowledging the issue and pledging to do better, but offering no tangible sense of what that means beyond actions that have already been taken.
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Spotify faces calls for a misinfo policy as an open letter exposes Joe Rogans COVID lies
Podcaster Joe Rogan is once again causing problems for the company that pays him $100 million: Spotify.
Last week, 270 doctors, scientists, and professors published an open letter(Opens in a new tab) to the audio streaming giant demanding that the company create an official policy around misinformation. The letter, which was first reported by Rolling Stone(Opens in a new tab), focused on Rogan's popular show, the Joe Rogan Experience, which has been a source of misinformation surrounding COVID-19 throughout the pandemic.
"We are a coalition of scientists, medical professionals, professors, and science communicators spanning a wide range of fields such as microbiology, immunology, epidemiology, and neuroscience and we are calling on Spotify to take action against the mass-misinformation events which continue to occur on its platform," reads the letter.
"With an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, JRE is the world’s largest podcast and has tremendous influence," it continues. " Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform."
An epidemiologist at University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health, Katrine Wallace, even went further in her own comments to Rolling Stone, saying she considers Rogan to be "a menace to public health."
The letter focuses on Rogan's Dec. 31 episode with Dr. Robert Malone, who claims to be the "inventor" of mRNA vaccine technology. The episode went viral on social media after Dr. Malone claimed "mass formation psychosis," what he claims means when society goes "barking mad," was to blame for the response to the pandemic.
Experts have debunked(Opens in a new tab) this "mass formation psychosis" claim.
"In episode #1757, Rogan hosted Dr. Robert Malone, who was suspended from Twitter for spreading misinformation about COVID-19," reads the letter. "Dr. Malone used the JRE platform to further promote numerous baseless claims, including several falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines and an unfounded theory that societal leaders have “hypnotized” the public. Many of these statements have already been discredited."
The open letter continues to mention other examples of Rogan's COVID misinformation. During an April 2021 episode of the podcast, for example, Rogan claimed(Opens in a new tab) that young, healthy people shouldn't prioritize getting the COVID-19 vaccine and called vaccinating children "crazy to me."
In response to the letter, Rogan's fans attempted to signal boost their own praise for the podcaster in an attempt to drown out the criticism.
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"We would be in very serious trouble right now without Joe Rogan and Spotify’s courage," read a tweet(Opens in a new tab) from podcaster and frequent Joe Rogan Experience guest, Bret Weinstein. "Let’s make #ThanksJoeRogan and #ThankYouSpotify trend. Don’t cut and paste. And consider doing them in separate tweets. Let’s let’em know we appreciate them."
Spotify has had to deal with controversy thanks to Rogan before. Employees of the company concerned(Opens in a new tab) with Rogan's content have pushed for more editorial control over the podcaster, whose program airs exclusively on Spotify thanks to a $100 million deal. The company has previously(Opens in a new tab) removed dozens of episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience from its platform due to content issues.
SEE ALSO:
Vaccine skeptic Joe Rogan got COVID and then took bogus horse dewormer drug
"Spotify prohibits content on the platform which promotes dangerous false, deceptive, or misleading content about COVID-19 that may cause offline harm and/or pose a direct threat to public health," Spotify said in a prior comment given to The Verge(Opens in a new tab) in April 2021. "When content that violates this standard is identified it is removed from the platform."
Since the episode went live, Rogan's interview with Dr. Malone has been removed(Opens in a new tab) from YouTube in accordance with the platform's policies on COVID misinformation. Dr. Malone has also personally been suspended from Twitter due to its own COVID misinformation rules.
The episode, however, remains live on Spotify. The company did not respond to an email from Mashable seeking comment
Doomswiping is the latest pandemic coping mechanism
As the pandemic summer creeps into pandemic autumn, I...am still on dating apps. When I lie in bed at night, the only light in the room is the screen glow as I swipe through various apps — left, left, right, left, right, right — and so it goes.
The phenomenon known as doomscrolling(Opens in a new tab), popularized on Twitter by writer Karen K. Ho, entered the cultural lexicon earlier this year. The concept is simple: One scrolls endlessly on their various social media feeds, absorbing the news of the day which, this year especially, has been disheartening at best and apocalyptic at worst.
I'd say this behavior crosses over into dating apps, too, but in a slightly different way: Doomswiping. Unlike with doomscrolling, where we read the horrors of the news and the discourse that comes along with it, doomswiping(Opens in a new tab) is the act of mindlessly scrolling through dating apps without the express purpose of actually meeting someone — especially since right now coming within six feet of a stranger is often not possible to do safely.
SEE ALSO:
How to set boundaries in the early stages of dating
The fact that we can't date the way we usually do is the great paradox of doomswiping: We want to opt out of the world around us, at least while we're swiping, but once we actually attempt to make a connection we're hit extra hard with reality.
I'm not the only one doomswiping. In a survey of thousand Hily(Opens in a new tab) users, 23 percent reported using dating apps as an escape routine, according to a press release. At the same time, 85 percent of respondents said they want to find a connection eventually.
This isn't unlike what the several people I spoke to told me about doomswiping. When I asked whether they were on dating apps to numb out (doomswipe) or to actually date, the answer more often than not was both — even if they don't actually want to meet up right now. Even if they don't want to message their matches.
This is something Pierce* experienced on dating apps. "I have this idea that I'm swiping to date and have some semblance of conversation with someone but that illusion vanishes rapidly when I get a match," he told me.
"I open up the app with some kind of intention," Pierce explained, "but the swiping just becomes another way to stare at a screen and not think about anything."
Why are we doing this to ourselves?
The motivations for doomswiping are multifaceted. Clearly, one of them is the desire to numb ourselves from the world around us; in that sense it's the opposite of doomscrolling, which results in spiraling into a wormhole of catastrophe about our current reality.
We might also crave the potential validation (and subsequent dopamine hit) of matching. Then there's the desire for actual connection — especially at a time where we can't see friends or meet new people as readily.
We can't analyze this sometimes contradictory behavior without examining how the pandemic has impacted our mental health. Dr. Ashwini Nadkarni, associate psychiatrist and an instructor at Harvard Medical School, told me that the epidemic of loneliness(Opens in a new tab) brought on by the prolonged period of isolation could contribute to the recent increase in dating app usage(Opens in a new tab). Nadkarni also pointed to this study(Opens in a new tab) that linked stay-at-home orders and personal distancing with depression, anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and insomnia.
It's not just loneliness or even depression that we're facing, though: It's generational trauma. "Recent research has also shown that the experience of witnessing the impact of infectious diseases on the world, such as in the case of COVID-19, has also produced symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in youth," said Nadkarni, citing a paper entitled The Effect of COVID-19 on Youth Mental Health(Opens in a new tab).
"An increased desire for a connection, even a virtual one, may be a coping response to such isolation," Nadkami explained. "Alternatively, for those who have become desensitized to the risks of contracting COVID, increased use of dating apps could also represent a form of an emotional escape, or emotional numbing or avoidance, in response to the distress they've experienced."
This emotional numbing is a defining criteria for PTSD, according to Nadkarni.
Doomscrolling into a doomspiral
Maia, with whom I spoke about her dating app usage, sees doomswiping as a numbing behavior. "It doesn’t do a good job of making me stop thinking about how fucked we are," she said, "but it’s better than scrolling on Twitter."
Another person, who requested to remain anonymous, said they're swiping to date and for distraction — but not out of boredom. "More like trying to keep my brain occupied so I am not just stewing in constant anxiety," they said. "But also having anxiety about dating at the same time. But at least I am not thinking about all those other anxieties!"
This person, who's nonbinary, said that they used to only check apps periodically and swipe for maybe ten minutes. Now, however, they've been spending hours on apps.
"Not that people on dating apps are ignoring the risks or acting irresponsibly, but it's like pretending that the whole world isn't on fire."
Ruth, a graduate student, told me she has the sense that she's swiping in an alternate reality where COVID isn't happening. "Not that people on dating apps are ignoring the risks or acting irresponsibly, but it's like pretending that the whole world isn't on fire," she said. Ruth described her dating app behavior as "deliberate-ignorance swiping."
When we're tired or not getting the self-care we need, we turn to convenient behaviors — swiping on a dating app, for instance — to numb us out, according to Ned Presnall, LCSW. Ned is the owner/director of Plan Your Recovery(Opens in a new tab) and a professor and researcher at Washington University in St. Louis in the Clinical Social Work and Psychiatry departments.
"Most dating apps have a variable schedule of reinforcement, which powerfully reinforces repetitive behavior," which is also how people become addicted to gambling, said Presnall. He continued, "We don’t know how long we’ll have to swipe before we get a match, but when we get a match we find it rewarding and affirming, and thus continue swiping over and over again."
But that can also backfire. The anonymous person I spoke to has several chronic illnesses, so they're trying to steer matches towards online dates or Animal Crossing meetups — but they've been getting ghosted, if matches reply to their messages at all. "Which just feeds into my anxiety about dating and I end up spending even more time swiping while I wait to see if they’ll reply," they said.
They didn't spend too much time on dating apps prior to the pandemic due to a "constant background tension" they experienced as a nonbinary user — but now they've found spending time on other social media is even more stressful.
They also just wants a connection. They said, "I am living on my own [right now] so it's kinda rough being in the same room most of the time and not being around other people at all. I miss physical contact."
This was a common theme with the "doomswipers" I interviewed. Ruth said the pandemic has slowed down her life and made her acutely aware of milestones that are passing her by, like dating. "Since everything is remote, the ways in which I would ordinarily meet people, such as through my graduate school are gone," Ruth said. "So [swiping is] kinda an attempt to mitigate social isolation."
"I'm a habitual doom swiper," said Noel Simone, who lives in Chicago and doesn't know anyone in the city. "When I run out of apps to scroll, I turn to my personal cesspool of potential lovers on Hinge."
dating apps coping mechanismCredit: vicky leta / mashable
While Simone has been on dating apps for years, she believes it seems more useless now than ever. She described the vibes as "fruitless and weird" and her app behavior as a "vicious cycle."
"As I move through the preliminary small talk, I know I won't ever MEET them. I think a man would have to be some kind of special, tick off every box, before i'd even think to sit with them in a park or at a distance in a restaurant," she said. "I feel lonely, want the companionship, but then don't want the possible virus. So I exit the app. Return hours later, to waste some guy's time."
Another doomswiper, Andrew, also described a this as a cyclical behavior. He feels lonely, he goes on the apps, he feels sad, he exits, and repeats. He started using apps after getting out of a relationship and is looking for connection, but finds that he feels insecure if he doesn't get matches. He begins a comparison game in his head, he says, thinking his ex has an easier time on the apps.
Like every social media platform, seeking instant gratification and validation is built into dating apps. Dr. Chris Leeth, therapist and professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio's Department of Counseling, told me that this is the fundamental difference between doomscrolling and doomswiping.
Doomscrolling, in Leeth's view, represents distraction and a different sort of validation: "one of joint company and shared misery." Doomswiping, however, represents seeking personal validation and connection.
Even if we're desperate for connection, it doesn't mean we're dodging social distancing rules. In fact, those I spoke to were turned off by people (particularly men) rushing to meet in person, or proudly proclaiming that they have antibodies in their Tinder bios(Opens in a new tab).
Sofía, a woman using dating apps, told me, "I feel like dudes are way more in doomsday mode if [I'm] being frank."
Prior to the pandemic, Sofía said it was difficult to engage in conversation and lead up to meeting in person. Now, matches are asking her to meet up right away — to have a drink in their home, for instance — and asking about sexual preferences early on in the conversation.
"I [obviously] have no issue talking about that but I feel like it shouldn't be the second question you ask me on a dating app," she said. She's also experienced an uptick of men DMing her on Instagram if they don't match with her.
That's not deterring Sofía from continuing to be on the apps and "finding a diamond in the rough," in her words. On whether she doomswipes, she said, "Catch me two tequila sodas in and I can doomswipe for HOURS."
"Catch me two tequila sodas in and I can doomswipe for HOURS."
Photographer Christina Casillo described her doomswiping in the same way as her "unstoppable scrolling on TikTok." It's not necessarily a spiral, said Casillo, but more of a way to fill a bottomless cup.
"I get in moods where I swipe and even when I match with people I’m like, 'Wait I don’t want to engage with ANY of you,'" said Casillo.
Pierce described similar activity. He said, "Matching with someone breaks that cycle of read, swipe, repeat in a way that almost puts me off from messaging anybody."
Swiping and matching without intent to meet makes sense to Leeth because of validation and the thrill of the chase. "Validation because even if we can’t meet — even if I don’t plan to meet — if there is a match, then someone wanted me," he said.
Nadkarni said that generally, people are looking for a reprieve from social isolation. "For some, this has meant creating more ways to interact with others virtually," she said. "For others, this may mean building the fantasy of social connection even if the reality may not be possible."
Doomswiping is fine — in moderation
It's not exactly weird to want to escape reality or find connection right now. Dating app use, as with many behaviors, is fine in moderation. It becomes problematic, according to Presnall, if it distracts so much from your day-to-day activities that it subverts your true priorities.
"If you feel like there’s an emptiness to your swiping, ask yourself what unmet need you’re avoiding," said Presnall. "Perhaps you may need to engage in more nourishing self care, find a better community, or develop a hobby that you enjoy." Nadkarni also recommended maintaining self-care during this time.
For those stuck in the swiping cycle, Leeth said, "You are so much more than your profile. Let's put that down for now (you can always go back), and work on the thing that is actually frustrating you."
For users, it may seem silly to (doom)swipe during a year as tumultuous as 2020 — but perhaps there's comfort knowing you're not the only one swiping into the void.
"Vast swaths of the west coast is on fire, huge parts of the midwest are worried about crop failures from a multi-day freeze, hurricanes are crashing into the south and south east, over 1000 people a day are dying from a pandemic, rent is still going up right alongside tuition, and healthcare is less affordable than ever," said Pierce.
"What on earth makes me think using a dating app or dating at all is a good idea right now? I have no idea but here I am, swiping away."
*some sources for this piece requested to be referred to by first name only
Do you have a story about pandemic dating you'd like to share? Email [email protected]
How Groundhog Day explains mindfulness and mastery
March Mindfulness is a Mashable series that explores the intersection of meditation practice and technology. Because even in the time of coronavirus, March doesn't have to be madness.
"Time Machine," the wannabe screenwriter wrote.
It was 1985, and Danny Rubin was an ambitious improv artist in Chicago, stuck freelancing for local TV. He was taking three days off to brainstorm his ten best ideas that could take him to Hollywood. "Time Machine" wasn't the most original title, not in the year of Back to the Future. The premise was more promising. "A guy is stuck in a time warp that commits him to living the same day over and over and over again," Rubin wrote. "What are the different ways you can spend the same day?"
Rubin had no idea (literally none, since he shelved it and wrote two other screenplays first) that he'd just brainstormed the idea for the script that would come to define his career, Groundhog Day. In 1985, in the happy state of Beginner's Mind(Opens in a new tab), he had no clue that his concept would become a cultural touchstone. No idea that 36 years later, in a year of global pandemic, millions would feel like they too were living the same day over and over and over.
A lot of online ink has been spilled about Groundhog Day, this year especially. Much of it attempts to answer the nerdy question of how many times we see weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) repeat the same day in the tiny town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. (Rubin never intended a specific number beyond "more than one lifetime;" here's my definitive list of non-definitive answers.)
But there's something else that keeps us coming back to this 1992 classic. It's not just the charming comedy veneer that director Harold Ramis and Murray, an improv veteran himself, layered over Rubin's fascinating but occasionally ponderous indie movie script. Entertaining car chases are not what, according to Rubin, led Rabbis and ministers to send him copies of sermons they'd delivered about the film, or entire self-help books(Opens in a new tab) to be written about it, or for Buddhist priests and scholars(Opens in a new tab) to praise its message.
No, it's this: Groundhog Day is the single most accessible explanation of how we can all live better when we pay attention to where we put our attention — the often-misunderstood practice known as mindfulness.
We may hear mindfulness and think "meditation," but Phil Connors' transformation is an object lesson in why it is so much more.
"The absolute worst day of Phil's life took place under the exact same conditions as the absolute best day of Phil's life."
"The absolute worst day of Phil's life took place under the exact same conditions as the absolute best day of Phil's life," Rubin writes in his entertaining annotation of the original screenplay(Opens in a new tab). "In fact, a whole universe of experiences proved to be possible on this single day. The only difference was Phil himself, what he noticed, how he interpreted his surroundings, and what he chose to do."
In his early days, selfish and frustrated, Phil chooses to blindly follow his urges. He stuffs his face in the town diner, punches the insurance salesman, and thinks stealing sacks of money will bring him happiness. He pursues meaningless sex, then plunges into an increasingly desperate infatuation with his producer Rita (Andie MacDowell). Loneliness and tedium lead him to recognize what Buddhist and therapists alike will tell you — existence is suffering(Opens in a new tab) — so he tries to end it.
When multiple suicide attempts don't work, Phil's ego explodes: I must be a god! This was Rubin's reference to a classic Peter O'Toole movie, The Ruling Class, in which O'Toole's aristocratic character believes himself to be the second coming. It is Groundhog Day's genius to take the premise one step further and say: yeah, so what? Not even thinking yourself divine can stop the endlessly repeating days from seeming eternally empty.
"He eventually is able to see other people and to see aspects of himself that had been untouched and unexplored."
"Repetition has the power to call attention to things — to focus awareness — and it has the power to make things invisible," Rubin writes. "Phil is able to change because eventually the endless repetitions help him become aware of things he had been blind to, even though these things surround him. He eventually is able to see other people and to see aspects of himself that had been untouched and unexplored."
And so to the movie's powerful final act, where Phil is finally mindful. He chooses the path of mastery after realizing that all this repetition is going to make him a master of something, even if it's something useless like throwing cards into a hat. So he might as well use eternity responsibly, and commit to learning things that bring him, and others, delight and joy.
(This brings to mind author Julia Cameron's response to would-be artists who complain that they're too old to change careers: Do you know how old I'd be when I finally acquire the skills to [insert lifelong dream here]? Yes, says Cameron: "Exactly the same age you'll be if you don't.")
The two pursuits that Phil decides to master both come from mindfulness. Both are art forms that were waiting in his environment, all along, to be noticed. He decides to take up the piano after actually listening to the Rachmaninov concerto that was always playing on the radio in the diner. Same goes for his slowly-acquired skill in ice sculpting: Ice sculptures made by other artists are seen in the background of shots throughout the film.
Shorn of attachment to how long mastery will take, Phil enters the zone, the much-desired state known as flow(Opens in a new tab). Appropriately enough, given that the piano takes him there, it's a very similar sensation to the one described in the recent Pixar movie Soul.
But as importantly as transforming himself, Phil starts to use his one day to transform others. He saves lives (though he cannot save the old beggar, there would have been two other deaths in the town that day if not for Phil's actions — the kid in the tree and the groundhog grandee who needs a Heimlich). He saves a bride and groom from cold feet. He turns a run-of-the-mill groundhog night into a party par excellence. Phil is completely egoless in doing so, all sense of divinity gone. It's simply that he has redirected attention to the most important parts of his environment: his fellow human beings.
"Every person who Phil encountered contained within them an infinity of negative characteristics (boring, stupid, smelly, poor speller, etc.) and an infinity of positive ones (funny, wise, loyal, pretty etc.)," Rubin writes. "These are all within the same person. So, which characteristics does Phil pay attention to? Again, we shape our own experience of the world far more often than we realize."
In a sense, every day is groundhog day for everyone.
Groundhog Day has had such an incredible half-life in our culture because, in a sense, every day is groundhog day for everyone. We all wake up each morning, shackled to our bodies, repeating the same endless routines, blinking and breathing and eating and excreting. We repeat patterns, making the same mistakes, meeting the same frustrating limits to our lives, having the same fights with the same family members. The pandemic did not change any of this; trapped in our houses like Phil in Punxsutawney simply gave us more awareness of the suffering inherent in mindless repetition.
But awareness of repetition is an opportunity to be mindful. That's the advantage of a meditation practice: It's supposed to be boring and repetitive. You're expected to lose focus, all the time. You go through all the cycles of suffering and doubt Phil experiences in the movie, only on a slightly faster timescale.
Through the pain and potential trauma of that process, you may just get a glimpse of your dharma — an ancient Sanskrit word that doesn't just refer to purpose in life, the thing you can master, but the entire nature of reality itself.
Tomorrow morning, you and I and everyone alive in the world will once again step into our time machines and go back to the beginning. Millions of alarm clocks will sound, whether or not that sound is Sonny and Cher. What will we notice this time? Where will we choose to put our attention? Will we connect with the purposes that truly make us feel alive? Will we see the best in our fellow humans or the worst?
That, my dear fellow Phil Connors, is entirely up to us.
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How coronavirus, and Zoom, turned competitive meditation into a global sport
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When do you stop sharing your location with someone?
Hailey Todhunter is walking me through all of the people she shares her location with on Apple's Find My. Before counting her mutuals, she guesses she has around 30 people on Find My. At the end of the tedious process, the 23-year-old marketing specialist from New York City realizes she actually has 97 people following her location, a discovery she finds "really scary."
"There's a lot of them that probably should not have my location, but the one that sticks out is the phone number I don't even have saved as a contact," she tells Mashable.
Todhunter is one of many young people who grew up sharing their location with friends. As she moved through different stages of life, she exchanged locations with those she was closest to, mostly for safety reasons. For high school and college students, Find My is a tool that helps streamline making plans with friends. And keeping someone on Find My is a low-effort way to keep in touch and maintain a sense of closeness. With the holidays approaching, many young people will rely on Find My to determine which of their friends are around to hang out with in their hometowns.
Find My, originally Find My Friends, launched in 2011 for iOS devices. Since its launch, the feature has become a staple of Gen Z relationships, despite lingering privacy concerns(Opens in a new tab). In 2021, the feature was combined with Find My iPhone into a singular app. It was predated by Dodgeball, a social media service founded in 2000 that gave users the ability to text their location to the service in order to receive a list of registered friends nearby. Dodgeball was bought by Google(Opens in a new tab) in 2005 and later integrated into Google Latitude in 2013 and Google Maps in 2017. Location-sharing became even more entwined with social media in 2017 when Snapchat launched Snap Maps, which allowed Snapchat users to share their location with all of their friends, select friends, or no one. Gen Z fave BeReal also has the option to post your precise location to your friends or publicly on the app.
Location-sharing is a fixture of digital intimacy, much like finstas and close-friends Stories on Instagram. Rather than giving another person access to your unfiltered thoughts, however, you're allowing them access to your every move.
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And this can be useful in making plans to hang out or to monitor when your friends arrive home safely. A survey conducted by ADT(Opens in a new tab) in 2020 found that, on average, respondents reported sharing their location with approximately four people, and those people are mostly significant others, friends, parents, and siblings. It also found that 41 percent of women felt safer after sharing their location.
But what happens when your Find My is full of people you were once close to? "It starts out with someone just going, 'Oh, we're both going to be at the same event, here's my location.' Then, you never bother to un-add them from those circles," Francesca Hodges, a 22-year-old communications coordinator in San Francisco, tells Mashable.
When you share your location with someone, you have the option to share it for one hour, 24 hours, or indefinitely. That spur-of-the-moment decision to share your location indefinitely with someone out of practicality could lead to having someone's location for years. Hodges still has a friend from a study abroad program on Find My. She doesn't even know their last name.
It starts out with someone just going, 'Oh, we're both going to be at the same event, here's my location.' Then, you never bother to un-add them from those circles.
With people like Hodges' friend and the unsaved number haunting Todhunter's Find My maps, it's important to determine when it's appropriate to stop sharing your location with someone. Some draw strict boundaries. For others, the app design makes them hesitant to remove their friends no matter how far they've drifted apart. "It's either a falling out, previous girlfriends, or people that I don't talk to as much," Cole Parker, a 21-year-old student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, tells Mashable. "But it's generally like I don't really want you to know where I am at all times. You don't really need to know this information."
If you break up with your partner, removing them from Find My is an obvious decision, but for friends that come in and out of your life it's less cut and dry, especially when Find My is a tool young people use to enable seeing their friends.
Sinead Swayne, a 22-year-old student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, has 100 contacts on Find My, the maximum number of people the feature can support. "From hitting the maximum number [of people on Find My], I'll go back through and remove somebody who is not close to me. It's nothing personal," Swayne tells Mashable. "[Sharing my location] is something natural. If I share my location with you, it's because I think it will help facilitate something and basically everybody who I have on Find My Friends has shared their location back with me."
If you remove someone from Find My, you not only stop sharing your location with them, but they stop sharing their location with you. While the other person doesn't receive a notification when you remove them, a line does come up in your texts that reads, "You stopped sharing location with X person" or "X person stopped sharing location." Parker doesn't mind that aspect. "If I'm not texting this person on a daily basis, and if I don't want your location, you probably don't want mine," he explains. "It's a mutual ghosting, essentially."
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"I delete people from Find My Friends pretty much just when I’m not close friends with them anymore," Emily Clarke, a 22-year-old teaching assistant in Spain, tells Mashable. "I've kept people on the app for longer than I would've thought was ideal just to avoid drama, but most of the time I'll take people off the next time I notice they're on it and I'm not as close with them anymore."
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Even Todhunter draws the line somewhere with her 97 mutuals. She removed a friend she had a falling out with in college. "For me it was like, I need to move on from this, and it's weird that this person that hurt me can see where I am at all times," she shares.
As strange as it may seem that Todhunter and Swayne have so many people on Find My, it's an established part of the social media landscape and a convenient tool for making plans. "I'm an extrovert with a lot of friends, so I like the efficiency of Find My Friends and not having to text people for them to respond, 'Oh, I'm working,'" said Swayne.
It's also a way for young women to feel safe and look out for their friends. Clarke only actively checks Find My when she goes out with friends or when her roommate is on a date with someone new. Most of the people Todhunter shares her location with are women from college because she felt safer with her friends knowing where she was — and knowing where her friends were.
For some, like 23-year-old Zade Kaylani, Find My is just another social media platform. "I check it in the same way that I check other apps," the UX designer says. "I find it entertaining. I like seeing where everyone is, who is closest to me, and which two friends that don't know each other are like right next to each other."
Hodges feels similarly. "At times, for me and for a lot of my friends, we've turned it into another form of social media. And it produces this Sims-like world – even though it's the world that we're living in – of seeing all these little characters floating around on your screen, in one built environment, which is really funny. I don't think about it as surveillance. That's the thing," explains Hodges.
"I have a lot of people [on Find My], and would I say all those people are my close friends? Absolutely not. And they would say the same thing about me."
If you're a pet owner, you know there's a lot that goes into taking care of them. There's training, healthcare, toys and gear, not to mention just wanting to give them the world because they deserve it.
Thankfully there are a number of apps to help us with that mission. From useful training tips, to vital emergency care, to making sure our pets are entertained and happy, we've rounded up our favorites to ensure your pets are living their best life.
Training apps for pets
1. GoodPup
When you sign up, GoodPup designs a personalized training plan, which includes weekly private 30-minute sessions with a trainer, guided daily training tips, and offers a 24/7 chat feature with trainers. This is for dog owners who are looking to commit to a full-service training plan, because it comes at a cost — $29 a month. GoodPup does offer a weeklong free trial so you can try it out first.
Price: $29/month, free seven-day trial
Available on iOS(Opens in a new tab) and Android (Opens in a new tab)
Personalized, live training sessions for you and your pup. Credit: Screenshot: PetCareNow LLC
2. Puppr
For dog owners in search of less formal training resources, Puppr is a good option. The app features training videos, over 100 lessons, live chatting with trainers, and progress-tracking. Plus the lessons are taught by famed dog instructor Sara Carson and her dogs the "Super Collies."
Price: Free
Available on iOS(Opens in a new tab) and Android(Opens in a new tab)
Free training videos featuring the "Super Collies."Credit: Screenshot: Chin and Cheeks LLC
3. Cat Training
This app is packed with information to help you understand your cat's behavior and how to train them. Covering common cat care issues related to litterbox training and scratching, the Cat Training app is pretty barebones, but provides good practical tips and tricks that every cat owner should know.
Price: Free
Available on iOS(Opens in a new tab) and Android(Opens in a new tab)
This app is simple but effective.Credit: Screenshots: Gato Apps
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Health and care apps for pets
4. Pet First Aid
Created by the American Red Cross, this in an app that every pet owner should have. The app provides step-by-step instructions for what to do in an emergency situation such as if your pet is attacked or eats something toxic. The app even has instructions on how to give your pet CPR and information about early warning signs of an emergency and a search function for finding the closest veterinary hospital.
Price: Free
Available on iOS(Opens in a new tab) and Android(Opens in a new tab)
First aid information that every pet owner should know.Credit: Screenshot: American Red Cross
5. 11pets
The 11pets app seems to cover everything when it comes to your pet's needs. With 11pets, you can store medical history, maintain a schedule for upcoming vaccines and vet visits, and even track your pet's weight and nutrition. Plus, the account can be accessed on multiple devices so your family members can also keep tabs on the latest.
Price: Free
Available on iOS(Opens in a new tab) and Android(Opens in a new tab)
A useful all-in-one platform for your pet's needs.Credit: Screenshot: 11pets
6. Pawprint
The best apps provide a simple solution to a real everyday problem, and this is one of them. With Pawprint, you'll never have to worry about tracking down your pet's medical records again. Simply, enter your pet's information, and Pawprint tracks them down for you and saves a digital copy.
Price: Free
Available on iOS(Opens in a new tab) and Android(Opens in a new tab)
Never have to track down medical records again.Credit: Screenshot: Pawprint Acquisition LLC
7. Airvet
There are several veterinary telemedicine platforms out there, but we like this Airvet because of the different options it offers. You can either pay a flat fee of $30 for a virtual call with the first available veterinarian or pay a monthly fee as an Airvet member, which basically works as a 24/7 concierge service for your pet's medical needs.
Price: $30/month or $30 for an on-demand call
Available on iOS(Opens in a new tab) and Android(Opens in a new tab)
On-demand veterinary care at your fingertips.Credit: Screenshot: airVet Inc.
8. Pet Monitor VIGI
There are other pet monitoring systems out there, like treat dispensers with cameras, but with this app you don't have to buy new hardware. With a one-time purchase, you can download Pet Monitor VIGI on all of your devices, so all you have to do is set it up on your existing computer/tablet when you leave. Plus, it has two-way audio and video so you can interact with your pet while you're away.
Price: $4.99
Available on iOS(Opens in a new tab) and Android(Opens in a new tab)
Monitor your pet with your existing devicesCredit: Screenshot: VIGI Limited
Fun apps for pets
9. Cat Fishing 2
No, not catfishing, but a fishing game for cats! Download this game on your phone or tablet and watch as your cat swipes to catch the fish on the screen. This game is great for mental stimulation and activating your cat's natural prey drive. Just be prepared to clean the screen after.
Price: Free
Available on iOS(Opens in a new tab) and Android(Opens in a new tab)
This app will keep your cat entertained for hours.Credit: Screenshot: Nestle Purina Petcare
10. BarkHappy
It's social media for dog people. With BarkHappy, you can search dog-friendly restaurants, stores, hotels, etc. and connect with other dog owners nearby. You can also send out alerts to other users in the event of a lost or found dog.
Price: Free
Available on iOS(Opens in a new tab) and Android(Opens in a new tab)
Dates for your dog.Credit: Screenshot: BarkHappy Inc.
Featured Video For You
Move over, Boston Dynamics. You can build your own tiny robo-dog now.
The concept behind this story is simple. I saw a TikTok about air frying an egg and, listen, I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to air fry an egg.
It's just such a weird idea. But when I saw the TikTok, I also immediately thought it might work.
TikTok user Jackie Hartlaub(Opens in a new tab) posted a video in which(Opens in a new tab) she air-fried whole eggs — for 15 minutes at 275 degrees — to make eggs similar to that if you had boiled them. The resulting eggs were not hard-boiled eggs in the literal sense — they were never submerged in water, after all — but they sure looked like hard-boiled eggs. It made sense to me. Hard-boiled eggs are cooked by totally surrounding them with water at a constant temperature. An air fryer, in theory, would circulate air at a constant temp and cook the egg in the same consistent manner.
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Lots of people seemed to be interested in the hack since it racked up 4 million views in a day.
Here's what the process looked like for Hartlaub, who is also known as @LowCarbStateOfMind(Opens in a new tab) on TikTok.
So I decided to test this recipe out. If I could chuck eggs in the air fryer for 15 minutes and they'll come out perfectly hard-boiled, that'd be nice to know. Plus, I weirdly needed hard-boiled eggs — a food I don't eat a ton of — for this salmorejo recipe(Opens in a new tab), which is a Spanish chilled soup.
I preheated my air fryer to 275 degrees Fahrenheit, then popped the eggs in for fifteen minutes, which is the recipe according to Hartlaub. I prepped a bowl of ice to dunk the eggs in for a five-minute bath once they were finished cooking, which, again, was part of the recipe.
Here's what my version of the air fryer egg hack looked like.
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That's a good egg.Credit: Tim Marcin / Mashable
I mean, look at the result. That looks exactly like a hard-boiled egg. There were a few issues, though. I had trouble peeling a few eggs but honestly, that's likely a me problem. I am not great at delicate kitchen tasks. Also, a few of the eggs had a speck or two of egg white that had turned a smidge brown, but that did not alter the flavor of the egg at all.
Otherwise, the TikTok hack was a pretty decent way of "boiling" an egg. It took less time than boiling because pre-heating an air fryer to 275 degrees takes vastly less time than boiling a pot of water. From there, I had ready-to-go eggs in 20 minutes, accounting for 15 minutes of cook time and five minutes in the ice bath. The recipe also provided consistent results across five eggs, which is about all you can ask for. Also, if you prefer your eggs a little runnier, adjusting the cooking time slightly should produce softer eggs.
The best astronomy apps for stargazing this summer
The Webb and Hubble telescopes blessed us with breathtaking new images of the cosmos earlier this month, leaving many folks inspired to learn more about space.
Thanks to these astronomy apps, you can use your phone to see which stars and constellations are above you in real time, day or night. Whether you’re planning on stargazing, are curious about which constellations are in your location, or simply want to flex on your family and friends around the campfire, the following apps can show you what you’re seeing in the sky.
1. Stellarium
Credit: Rizwana Zafer
Stellarium has been my app of choice for years. It’s very user-friendly, and the filters allow you to customize your stargazing experience. You can opt to have gridlines, constellations, a landscape, atmosphere, and labels. There’s also a night mode option, which tints your phone screen red. This feature lets you use the app at night without disrupting your night vision, which is essential for stargazing.
You can download Stellarium on the Apple App Store(Opens in a new tab) or the Google Play Store(Opens in a new tab).
2. Star Walk 2
Credit: Rizwana Zafer
Like Stellarium, Star Walk 2 is a multifunctional app for beginners and astronomy enthusiasts alike. The augmented reality feature connects to your phone’s camera, so that you can see a real-time, mapped out version of your night sky. Star Walk 2 not only tells you which celestial objects are visible at the moment, but also keeps you up to date on the latest astronomy news with its news section. The app also features a night mode option for in-person stargazing.
You can download Star Walk 2(Opens in a new tab) on the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store(Opens in a new tab).
3. Sky Guide
Credit: Rizwana Zafer
True to its name, Sky Guide provides a comprehensive guide to understanding the stars and constellations. You can customize your night sky viewing on the app, and can also click on each individual celestial object to learn more about it. While both Stellarium and Star Walk 2 offer this feature as well, Sky Guide offers more detailed descriptions. Sky Guide also has a news section, a calendar for upcoming astronomical events, and a night vision mode.
You can download Sky Guide on the Apple App Store(Opens in a new tab).
4. SkyView Lite
Credit: Rizwana Zafer
SkyView Lite is your basic sky viewing app. Simple and intuitive, you can use SkyView Lite to either use augmented reality to apply the sky map to your sky in real-time, or the sky map and compass as they are. You can also click on various celestial objects to know what they are and where they’re located in space. SkyView Lite also has a night vision mode, and the option to add your favorite celestial objects to a list.
You can download SkyView Lite on the Apple App Store(Opens in a new tab) or the Google Play Store(Opens in a new tab).
5. Sky Live: Heavens Above Viewer
Credit: Rizwana Zafer
A sister app of Sky Walk 2, Sky Live technically isn’t a stargazing app. However, it’s an incredibly useful app to consult before going stargazing, as it tells you the viewing conditions of a specific location. Sky Live gives you a percentage of how well the viewing conditions are at the time, so that you’re better prepared on your stargazing mission.
You can download Sky Live: Heavens Above Viewer on the Apple App Store(Opens in a new tab).
6. SkySafari
Credit: Mike Pearl
If you’re willing to spare a couple of bucks, SkySafari is a beloved stargazing app that lets you explore the solar system in detail, almost as if your phone were a telescope. You can download SkySafari on the Apple App Store(Opens in a new tab) or the Google Play Store(Opens in a new tab).
Rimming. Ass licking. Ass eating. Rim job. Eating the chocolate starfish. You’ve probably heard a lot of names for analingus (its official name). Put simply, rimming (the name we’re going to stick with) simply involves licking, penetrating with the tongue, sucking, kissing, or otherwise orally stimulating your partner's anus.
Like a lot of sex acts, rimming is riddled with a lot of misconceptions. Many people believe that rimming is simply a stepping stone on the way to penetrative anal sex, or that rimming is an activity reserved for gay and bisexual men. But the rumours aren’t true. Speaking to sex experts, we’re here to explain that rimming is actually for anyone with a butt or a tongue, and walk you through getting started and unlocking a new kind of sexual pleasure.
Why eat ass?
Like we said, rimming is for absolutely everyone to enjoy (if they fancy it, of course!). Whether you’re a submissive person in the bedroom, more dominant, or a mixture, ass-eating should be enjoyable for everyone. Sex educator and author of Boyslut(Opens in a new tab)Zachary Zane(Opens in a new tab) explains that rimming is so pleasurable for the receiver because "there are a lot of sensitive nerve endings at the actual external anus itself."
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"As for the giver, it's just something so hot and kinky and enjoyable." He likens the act to going down on people. If you’re someone who enjoys performing oral sex on penises or vaginas and offering that pleasure to a partner, you’re probably going to like rimming.
"There's also something very arousing about just being that close inside the butt and being a little smothered in a way. It’s just very fun."
How to talk to a partner about rimming
Consent and communication are the cornerstones of all good sex, whether it’s your standard missionary or rimming. Sexuality educator and coach Ashley Manta(Opens in a new tab) says having a conversation (clothed and in advance of entering the bedroom) will help set you up for success.
Having a conversation about preparation preferences for the giver and receiver is helpful.
"My colleague sex educator and researcher Reid Mihalko(Opens in a new tab) likes to open with the phrase, 'I have an idea!' [when bringing up a new sex act with a partner] which helps set the stage for a low-pressure chat. Share what you want (giving or receiving), what about it turns you on, and if you have any requests or boundaries. The other person should have the opportunity to share their thoughts as well."
If your sexual partner is into the idea, it’s also important to discuss boundaries and limitations beforehand. "Having a conversation about preparation preferences for the giver and receiver is helpful. Is the giver going to use mouthwash first? Is the receiver going to remove hair or shower or douche etc? How will each communicate what feels good and what needs to change? How will everyone know the activity is finished? What kinds of aftercare do the giver/receiver need?"
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These are all questions Manta recommends having before jumping into any kind of play, including anal. It’s particularly important to lay down whether rimming is going to be the ‘main event’ or if penetrative anal sex (or another kind of play) is the destination. Not everyone who explores rimming will want this to progress to intercourse, but misconceptions can lead to assumptions in the bedroom, so it’s best everyone is clear.
Like with all sex acts, it’s also important to have a frank conversation about STIs before getting all up in the butt. Manta stresses the importance of getting tested regularly (after every new sexual partner is best) so you know your status. "Oral to anal contact, just like oral to genital contact, can spread a number of STIs, so regular testing, and the use of barriers, can help reduce risk," she says.
How to prepare for rimming
A lot of people believe the misconception that there’s something inherently dirty about rimming, to which Manta says "People need to stop judging and shaming what other people are into. If you're not into it, don't do it! As we sex educators say, ‘don't yuck someone else's yum.'"
There’s also plenty of preparation partners can do before getting started with rimming to make sure everyone’s clean, and avoid mishaps.
As we sex educators say, ‘don't yuck someone else's yum.'
Manta explains there are several options for the pre-rimming cleaning process, depending on how important it is to you. "On the more involved side, there's anal douching. On the more low-maintenance side, you could just nip off to the bathroom for a quick baby wipe swipe."
Zane says doing a full douche isn’t really necessary for rimming. "A lot of people tend to douche expecting rimming to turn into anal sex. But if you're just getting your ass eaten you don't need to clean up six inches inside of your rectum. so you could literally just soap and water on your butthole and you would be completely fine."
Manta says you could also use a dental dam or wearable latex undies like Lorals(Opens in a new tab) to create a barrier between the giver's tongue and the receiver.
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She also notes that if the receiver is feeling like they want to remove hair from the area, they could wax or shave but this should be done at least 12 hours before rimming commences, as the skin will be very raw and sensitive. If you do remove your hair from the area, note that this can make it easier to catch an STI.(Opens in a new tab) So, safe sex is even more important in this situation.
Preparation around cleanliness is down to the individual and what both partners are comfortable with. Some people don’t do any cleaning at all beforehand (after all, butt holes are not inherently dirty and you wouldn’t spend ages cleaning before any other kind of oral sex!) and some people like a bit of sweat down there. Discuss what the two of you would prefer, and make your own rules.
How to eat ass
There are so many different ways to eat ass. And according to Zane, the key is good positions, comfort, and fun (obviously).
"You want to use positions that grant you access to lick their bum hole, so that your neck is not strained as the person doing the eating. If you're the receiver, you want to be in a comfortable position. There are a bunch of standard positions for rimming like a variation on the doggy style position where the top is spreading their cheeks wide so you can actually reach."
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How to prepare yourself for anal sex
There’s no right or wrong way to rim. The giver can start gently and work towards building intensity by kissing around the anus and progressing to soft licking around and inside the anus, and experimenting with different speeds.
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"I like to start kind of slowly by sticking my tongue in and out of the hole repeatedly. I kind of gently tap it with my tongue and just gently massage," Zane says. "Sticking my tongue directly actually on the anus itself flat on it. I think using a lot of tongue [flicking] can tire you out quickly. Darting your tongue in and out constantly is not sustainable so [it’s better to] do that intermittently."
Just as you would with oral sex on a vagina or penis, keep communication open throughout the act with your partner, asking them what they’re enjoying and what’s not working for them, and adapt your approach depending on their response.
How to spice things up
Once you’re an ass eating pro, you might want to try new ways to spice the act up —especially if you’re not using rimming as a precursor to anal sex. For this, we can add good old sex toys into the mix.
If you’re rimming a person with a vagina, you can try adding extra pleasure by using a clitoral toy like a bullet vibrator. You can do this by reaching around and placing it in the doggy style position, or they could use the vibrator on themselves. If you’re rimming a person with a penis, a cock ring can be used to add extra arousal. As an extra tip, Manta says "the giver could also hold a vibrator under their chin or next to their cheek to make their mouth vibrate while they're rimming the receiver."
Sex toys can also be used around or in the anus. "As an anal safety pro-tip, anything that goes inside the anus should have a flared or flanged base," Manta says. That means no sharpies, candles, or TV remotes (yes, people actually do this). If you use a random object as an anal toy instead of a flared sex toy, it can get stuck inside you and cause a great deal of pain. To avoid a trip to the emergency room, use stuff that’s actually designed to go in your butt.
"Use things that are designed for anal pleasure, like vibrating butt plugs, anal beads, or a prostate stimulating massager," Manta says. This is really important, as most sex toy related injuries(Opens in a new tab) stem from people inserting a foreign object that wasn’t designed for anal play into their butt. This includes vaginal sex toys — do not put those in your bum!
As Manta puts it, the most important thing with rimming is that everyone is having fun. Keep the conversation going before, during and after rimming to keep everyone comfortable and get the best pleasure out of ass-eating for the both of you.
Politics on dating apps are thornier than ever now that Trump is gone
After 26-year-old Brandon Fellows stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, he told Bloomberg News he had no regrets(Opens in a new tab). Instead, he boasted that his Bumble profile was "blowing up."
All the while, women were actively trying to locate the insurrectionists(Opens in a new tab) on dating apps. Bumble removed its political filter amid the chaos, only to reinstate it a day later after users complained.
Politics is personal, and that's been true on(Opens in a new tab)dating apps(Opens in a new tab)for awhile(Opens in a new tab) — but as the global health crisis collided with a heated election and an attempted coup, it shifted things even further and now politics on dating apps are thornier than ever.
How did we get here?
In a study published in January 2017, Neil Malhotra(Opens in a new tab), a political science professor at Stanford University, and his co-author Gregory A. Huber concluded that people sought out like-minded matches on dating apps(Opens in a new tab).
"It appears as if in the contemporary period political orientations directly affect the social relationships people seek to form, which results in increased political homogeneity in formed relationships," Malhotra and Huber wrote. "This has the potential to amplify polarization through the creation of homogenous social networks and households."
And that was four years ago. In the time since, Malhotra believes that the country has become more polarized and attributes it to a phenomenon called sorting. In the 1970s and 80s, Malhotra explained, saying you were a Republican or Democrat meant many different things. "You could be a conservative Southern democrat, you could be a liberal northeastern Republican," he said.
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That's certainly not the case now — but that's not because of Trump. While he was uniquely abhorrent, he didn't cause the riff between parties. Neither did social media. Both Malhotra and Dr. Sara Konrath(Opens in a new tab), a social psychologist at the University of Indiana, cited the rise in economic inequality in the United States(Opens in a new tab) over the past several decades as a bigger factor in the increase in polarization.
"Even though this year feels very bad and maybe everything is getting to a critical point, actually there's been a concerning rise in polarization in Americans for a long time," Konrath, author of the upcoming Culture of Burnout: American life in the age of increasing expectations, said. "It's highly overlapped with increases in economic inequality." Pew shows a widening gap in beliefs between Republicans and Democrats(Opens in a new tab) since the early 1990s — long before the Trump administration or Twitter.
As the rich have gotten richer and the poor poorer, a wedge has been driven between Democrats and Republicans over who is "deserving" of monetary benefits, as Konrath put it, "who gets more of the pie." This affects other debates about how the country should be run as a whole: Who gets to vote? Who gets to have healthcare? Who should pay for it all?
"Now when you say you're a Democrat or Republican, that is associated not just with a bundle of policy views but also a lot of identity and world views that are a strong signal [of your values]," Malhotra continued.
As University of Pennsylvania professor Yphtach Lelkes said in 2019, Trump was a symptom of polarization(Opens in a new tab) and not the cause. Along with social media, however, he did accelerate it(Opens in a new tab).
Related Video: How to stay politically involved in a post-Trump world
Political polarization on Tinder, OkCupid, and beyond
We bring our real-life experiences onto dating apps, Konrath explained, and we can see this acceleration of polarization across different platforms. It's clear from data that users want to signal their own values and care about potential matches' values as well.
From mid-2016 to mid-2017, the amount of women who answered the political affiliation question on eHarmony(Opens in a new tab) jumped from 24.6 percent to 68 percent; for men, that jump was 16.5 percent to 47 percent. Almost 3 million OkCupid users said they couldn't date someone with strong opposing political views in 2020. According to Match's 2020 Singles in America(Opens in a new tab) survey, 76 percent of signals believe it's important for partners to share political beliefs — up 25 percent from 2017. By the end of last year, mentions of Black Lives Matter on Tinder exceeded mentions of the term "hookup."
"A year and a half ago, I started adding explicit references to prison abolition and Communism on my dating profiles," an anonymous abolitionist in New York City told me. The goal, he said, wasn't to find someone who matched his politics exactly, but rather to deter those who hate them. "I had done something similar with polyamory before — get the dealbreakers out in the open early," he said.
"Now when you say you're a Democrat or Republican, that is associated not just with a bundle of policy views but also a lot of identity and world views."
If you look at dating from an economic perspective, it's basically a complicated and costly search process, according to Malhotra. Given the cost, whether it be in money or time, users want more information about potential matches to make their search a bit easier. That's one reason why people may be so ready to disclose their politics, he said.
We need ways to make information flow manageable, said Debra Mashek, relationships researcher and founder of Myco Consulting(Opens in a new tab). "Political identification is a quick cut that helps us. If we go, 'Oh if I really could go out with any of these thousands of people, then maybe I should eliminate a couple thousand based on this information.'"
Carla Bevins(Opens in a new tab), assistant teaching professor of business communications at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business, agreed that users want something to help with the search — especially right now. "We all have so much pandemic fatigue that there's not a lot of cognitive or emotional energy that we have to put out there when we're looking for someone on a dating app," she said.
Politics, Bevins said, can be an "extra filter" or shortcut to cut through hundreds of faces when we find ourselves doomswiping. Due to the politicization of COVID-19(Opens in a new tab), as well, someone's political views can also signal what measures they're taking to protect themselves and others.
"That becomes a safety issue," Bevins said, "and how much we are willing to mitigate risk." She referenced Tinder's Year in Swipe(Opens in a new tab) which revealed that mentions of masks went up by 10 times last year. People's political affiliation, she continued, can hint at their potential behavior.
While this is a generalization, the Pew Research Center reported last June that Democrats were more likely than Republicans to wear a mask(Opens in a new tab) most or all the time in stores. What's more is that Republicans and Democrats may have different moral foundations, Konrath said, referencing the work of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt(Opens in a new tab). In his 2012 book The Righteous Mind(Opens in a new tab), Haidt theorized that conservatives' most sacred moral value is preserving tradition. Liberals', on the other hand, is helping the oppressed. We've seen this play out almost a decade after Haidt's book when it comes to COVID safety measures.
"I'm not going to meet up with someone during this time unless I know they believe that COVID is real and are taking precautions," said Emma Levine, a Bumble and Hinge user in Los Angeles. "If you're serious about trying to meet someone, for me at least, politics or at least general current event knowledge is a non-negotiable."
For Rebecca, a Bumble and Hinge user in New York City, how someone handled the pandemic will be top of mind when it's over. "I've been thinking about dating post pandemic and figuring out how to ask 'did you go on vacation during the pandemic' or 'who did you vote for in 2016,'" she said. "Both answers will help me understand a person's values and what is negotiable for me or not."
Others, however, are willing to reach across the proverbial aisle on dating apps. Kristina, a liberal woman in the Tampa Bay Area, says she doesn’t mind dating across the political spectrum, but she swipes left if a potential match displays something on their profile she disagrees with. She swipes left on MAGA hats and Trump signs as well as people who say they don't vote.
"If you're serious about trying to meet someone, for me at least, politics or at least general current event knowledge is a non-negotiable."
"Unless you aren't allowed to vote, there's no excuse in my book," she said.
Kristina isn't alone in being turned off by non-voters. Last year, over 500,000 OkCupid users said they wouldn't date someone who didn't vote. Nicole*, a woman who lives outside of Washington, D.C., said she doesn't want a connection with someone apolitical. "In my view, to put apolitical in your profile says to me you're disengaged and don't care about politics because you don't have to," she said. "I think politics, while not everything, are important. To say you're apolitical just tells me we're probably incompatible."
In Rebecca's experience, people who leave political filter blank don't care. "This also isn’t ideal for me because ...in this climate!?" she asked. "Lives are at stake and it says a lot to me about your personality (and privilege) if you don’t care."
Post-Trump politics on dating apps
Now that the election and inauguration are behind us — and hopefully, the pandemic's end is in sight — there's the question of whether polarization will subside in the upcoming years. If 2020 taught us anything, it's that it's difficult to predict anything, but as Malhotra put it: The hope is that it can't get worse.
"Trump would unnecessarily inflame polarization," he said, referring to his tweets. Biden, however, only inflames when necessary. "There's actually a policy goal [with Biden]," Malhotra said.
While we thankfully don't have to bear witness to Trump's tweets anymore, Biden will have to do much more than go without all-caps tweet storms to make a dent in the polarization level. That's because the root of the issue is much bigger than Biden or Trump. If economic inequality isn't addressed, Konrath said, the problem of polarization will not go away.
"As long as the rich keep getting richer — as it's been accelerating during the pandemic — then I don't expect polarization to go away," she said. "If this administration puts policies in place that starts to help reduce inequality...then we'll see. Then I think there's some potential that people will feel more willing to collaborate."
In the meantime, then, we'll have to deal with this divide in our daily lives and dating apps. While Rebecca still sees politics pop up on apps in New York, Kristina said they've lessened in her area since inauguration. "Thankfully no more MAGA hats, Trump signs," Kristina said, "and I definitely didn’t run across people bragging about the Capitol insurrection."
Nicole, on the other hand, did see rioters on Bumble shortly after the insurrection. She reported one or two then snoozed her account, which hides her profile from potential matches. She couldn't tell me when she plans on going back.
*Name has been changed to protect the privacy of the individual.
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Nick Cave, legendary musician and writer, is decidedly not a fan of ChatGPT, the AI tool that went viral for doing a remarkable job of passably completing nearly any writing prompt.
Cave has a famously close relationship(Opens in a new tab) with his fans, one of whom sent a song "written" by ChatGPT "in the style of Nick Cave." The whole blog from Cave is worth reading(Opens in a new tab), but among some wonderful and wise observations, Cave simply notes, "this song sucks."
Writes Cave, in part:
"I understand that ChatGPT is in its infancy but perhaps that is the emerging horror of AI – that it will forever be in its infancy, as it will always have further to go, and the direction is always forward, always faster. It can never be rolled back, or slowed down, as it moves us toward a utopian future, maybe, or our total destruction. Who can possibly say which? Judging by this song ‘in the style of Nick Cave’ though, it doesn’t look good."
Cave notes that, through the process of cold replication, AI is capable only of creating empty art. It's stripped of meaning and suffering. Cave writes: "It will always be a replication, a kind of burlesque."
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OK now get ready for a bummer but profound paragraph from Cave. I'd try to paraphrase but he, obviously, puts it better than I could.
Cave writes(Opens in a new tab):
Songs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms don’t feel. Data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience, as it has no limitations from which to transcend. ChatGPT’s melancholy role is that it is destined to imitate and can never have an authentic human experience, no matter how devalued and inconsequential the human experience may in time become.
That is the troubling thing about ChatGPT. You can see its business applications. You can see it replacing or buttressing human workers. But it's inability to make anything truly artful hints at the limitations that lie in using ChatGPT. It has no true perspective, no experience, no pain, no humanity. It's a wonderful bit of artificiality. But it's still artificial.
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Writes Cave, getting straight to the point: "With all the love and respect in the world, this song is bullshit, a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human, and, well, I don’t much like it."
Granted I am not a celebrated musician, but I agree.
