ICMYI: Duggars, Journos on TikTok, and Millennials have nowhere to go
Welcome to ICYMI, a bi-weekly list of recommendations to get you off of Instagram and out into other parts of the Internet! Here you will find articles, discussions, or trends happening elsewhere on the Internet, so you can spend some time away from our favorite Instagram influencers.
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy these recommendations! I’d love it if you would let me know what you think of this format. This basically takes the recommendations out of the old newsletter format and puts them in their own newsletter. I’m hoping that makes most newsletters a little more digestible. Do you prefer this?
This Week’s Recs
👩💻 Confused, uncool, and nowhere to scroll: The internet has become hostile for millennials like me, by Harriet Gibsone
“How pathetic it is to be a millennial social media addict.” Oh, how this article made me laugh and also nod along in agreement so hard. Where are the millennials to go on social media when we’re too old for Tiktok and too young for Facebook?
So where are millennials destined to go? Instagram can have supportive communities (particularly when it comes to parenting), but generally speaking the platform feels like a strange, artificial universe. There’s a tragic sensation that everyone is still playing along with a game that ended a long time ago – the one in which we all pretended our lives were relentlessly fabulous and our skin was naturally that smooth. All the old hot girls I used to obsess over have had babies or become doulas or business women and their brands are too curated to reveal any grit or dirt. Sometimes they’ll do a post about their cellulite and tell you “not to believe everything that you see on the internet”, but a few hours later it’s back to the bikini shots and handstands at sunset. Zoomers see through it. Boomers couldn’t care less. It’s just us, millennials – staring at far-away pics of bike rides or some kind of new domesticated tedium involving homemade crisps or the aforementioned paddleboarding, and yearning for the adrenaline spike of logging on in 2006.
🌸 'I’m undoing a lot of the damage Natalie’s done in my life over the past couple of years': Caroline Calloway is in her post-scammer era by Siam Goorwich
The events that have led to Caroline Calloway finally releasing her memoir Scammer are too bizarre and too many to go through in detail (and I really only know the highlights… there are so many weird things she has done over the years), but the “most offensive” being pre-selling a book that was never going to be released. She missed deadlines. This article does a good job of going through what has defined Caroline Calloway over the years.
🔍 New Mexico Teen Charged in Death of Newborn She Is Accused of Leaving in Hospital Trash Is Released from Jail, Inside Edition
I have gone deep down the rabbit hole on the Alexee Trevizo case thanks to Tiktok. If you haven’t heard about this story, Alexee Trevizo was a high school student in New Mexico who was charged with the murder of her newborn baby. The details are horrific.
The internet has been buzzing, speculating if Alexee and her mother knew she was pregnant beforehand. The story all started back in January and Alexee was charged with murder in May, so it seems as though the autopsy results show the baby was alive when he was born. There are some videos online of police bodycam footage taken at the hospital and when the arrest happened that people are watching over and over again to detect body language.
❤️ 25 Hobbies You Can Start at Home Today by Ashley Selleke
I regularly proclaim that I have no hobbies so I’m always looking for something to do try out that will make me a more interesting person. This list was actually really helpful for me to understand that I very much enjoy cooking. Cooking is a hobby. I love reading, running A Lot of You Have Asked, and my dog. I have hobbies but they are so fully integrated into my life that I don’t stop to consider they are a hobby. So I think I’ll try carving more intentional hobby time into my day so doing it feels more special.
💀 Lauren the Mortician on Tiktok
I keep getting served her thoughts on baby products being used incorrectly and the dangers of it. And honestly, I’m grateful for it. While I wasn’t aware that about half of these products existed, it’s great to see someone with over a million followers using their platform to promote using products how they are intended. I also think she’s very respectful while also being no BS. Here for it!
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🎤 Niall Horan’s Feel-Good Philosophy by Maria Sherman
Niall Horan, the former member of One Direction and now solo artist, has big golden retriever energy to me and this feature on his proves it. If you need a little palette cleanser, this is a great one!
📺 Shiny Happy People on Amazon
After seeing a lot of hype about this documentary, I decided to watch it. Wow! I was not prepared for how triggered I would feel watching it. I didn’t grow up going to church or closely identifying with any specific religion (which is strange for someone who grew up in the South in the 90s), but learning more about the IBLP teachings helped me realized that it permeated far deeper into people’s beliefs. I talked to a friend about it who is a self-proclaimed Duggar Obsessed, and she felt the same way. She grew up going to a Catholic school and thought the IBLP principles had become so common that some of the language was very common among her peers and teachers. It was just very jarring and something that I didn’t expect to feel watching the doc.
And then don’t even get me started on how infuriating the Duggars are. Watching it, I was so mad that mainstream media gave these people a platform for so long. And while I somewhat followed the Josh Duggar sexual predator stuff a few years ago, I didn’t realize that people knew this was a thing he was doing since 2003. I feel so awful for his sisters and the fact that their parents did absolutely nothing to protect them. It’s sickening and goes to show that they cared much more about appearances than what is morally right.
I don’t know. I just have a lot of thoughts on the Duggars in general and probably need to do an entire normal newsletter/series on them because I know y’all have a lot to say about these insane parents too.
📱 Influencers are outranking journalists as news sources on TikTok and other platforms that win with younger audiences by Nathan McAlone
I thought this article was interesting. Turns out that journalists are not doing so well on TikTok as they do on other platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. I shared this article on Instagram and asked y’all why you think that is because I had my own theory. My theory was that no one is using TikTok to see the news, but more as an escape from the news. Personally, that’s why I’m on there. I just want a few mindless moments of scrolling.
However, a lot of you added that mainstream media can feel biased while others mentioned that people would take the news on TikTok, but most journalists are not the right age. This seems true based on how well The Washington Post and NPR do. They have brought in younger journalists to share short-form videos with their audience.
📚 Becca Freeman’s Most Anticipated Reads of Q3
I love Becca Freeman, co-host of the Bad on Paper podcast and new author. I want to be her friend IRL, but we’ve never spoken but I could manifest this. I feel like she’s just so much fun and so real. She also always has great book recommendations and she shared her most-anticipated reads of Q3, which includes her debut novel The Christmas Orphans Club.