A quick catch up before we resume normal programming
“I know I’ve been gone a long time. I’m back” - Jai Paul
Hi besties,
So obviously my endeavours to make this a weekly-ish thing didn’t come through for a few months there. I went overseas, marked countless essays, worked, did some thesis-ing and my laptop died so I had to get a new one. It’s been a time but I’m back!
This is a lazy first post back, a little something I wrote on millennial nostalgia and tumblr, after listening to the Jai Paul Coachella set. But some new content is coming, I’ve been doing some research on state-sponsored brand trips, inspired by that Shien trip.
To keep you subscribed, I’ll be doing two book reviews, whichever one I read first will be out first. They’ll be Caroline Calloway’s Scammer if it arrives (I genuinely have faith that it will) and former ALP staffer turned three-times Bachie contestant Alisha Aitkin-Radburn’s The Villian Edit, which I am deeply intrigued/confused by.
Special shout out to all the gals reading this whilst waiting to get Taylor tickets, I see your BeReal’s on both personal and work laptops on Ticketek.
Things that have kept me sane over the past few months
Supernanny re-runs on Facebook watch
How did I only just realise that Loyal Carner did a video with Ottolenghi
Love is Blind and the Ultimatum
The Kool-Aid watertok drops I got in DC. It’s literally just more sugary cordial but I love it.
Dress Rehaerslas by Madison Godfrey (also some of the source of my nostalgia for this post). I think my favourite power from the collection (there are so many) is Retired from Slutdom, New Career in Gingham. Would recommend this short collection to anyone in their mid-to-late 20s who was on tumblr.
Reading my gorgeous friend Katie’s substack, postmodern millennial
New Jessie Ware and Arlo Parks albums
Some notes on the politicisation of millennials on tumblr and Jai Paul
I remember where I was the first time I heard Jai Paul. It was a school night, I was skyping a boy from Tumblr who lived in Sydney, and a Tumblr friend from the UK messaged us saying that we HAD to listen to this song. We paused the episode Skins we were watching on ProjectFreeTV, and we listened to BTSTU through our shitty school notebooks. Two years and a couple of days later, we were still on Tumblr when the leak happened. After the leak Paul pretty much disappeared from the internet, feeling disillusioned with the music industry. His brother A.K Paul went on to do some super cool stuff, my favourite was his collab with Nao. Many albums have been lost to leaks, Chalie XCX’s XCX World is the first that comes to mind, Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia. But, Charlie and Dua didn’t disappear from the Internet, they built it into their brands.
Adrian Horton in her review of Paul’s Coachella performance described the announcement of his performance triggering “joyous meltdown in certain corners of the millennial internet”. Despite feeling incredibly #seen, she is right. Dormant group chats became abuzz with the news.
Watching the performance and sitting on r/jaipaul was the closest experience I’d had to live blogging Splendour in the Grass sets as a teen. I experienced the same chronically online teenage fan-girl joy as listening to Lorde at 16 replace Frank Ocean headline Splendour 2013 (something the music you loved to at sixteen you’ll grow out of).
The return of Jai Paul in April sent me into this weird icky place of nostalgia and cringe. I think it’s been creeping up for awhile, with 2020 ushering ‘indie sleaze’, whatever that actually is.
The election of Biden has triggered something very Lena Dunham-Hillary Clinton-Amy Poehler in the culture. I mean that with all of the glossier millennial pink-tinted white feminism cringe that you think about when seeing those names listed.
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