Don’t worry Christine, you haven’t missed any editions of copypaste. I’ve been both busy and lazy. If you’re feeling shorted, I’ve been writing over at 2GIRLS1COVEN about tidying up and sparking joy and accidentally KonMari-ing a job: Konmari Left Me Cold and Broke but I’d Do It Again. There will be more new stuff over there soon (Ambition vs. anxiety! A map of Bachelor Nation!) Stay tuned.
Also, yeah, I know it’s fucking Valentine’s day. But that shit was made by corporation to sell you candies and card and make you feel bad about not conforming to heteronormativity or whatever. (Check out my Valentine’s content tho lol)
This week I’m fed up. I’m tired of the grind of this system that was designed to keep me down (and keep others down even more).
These systems cannot hold the progress we are fighting for. These articles show us that assimilation does not mean success. The system is still broken. The center cannot hold.
Oh and one is about xtian dudes trying not to fap. How’s that for Valentine’s day content?
I’m back y’all.
Good Reads
Chose Your Own Corporate Adventure - Emma Brewer
I am a sucker for a choose your own adventure journey. Once I’d finished all the ones I could find in the library, I even branched out to a series inspired by the CYOA call You Be the Jury. It was like if a choose your own adventure book and Sarah Koenig had a baby. (And, yeah, it was as boring as it sounds, but the 12 year old heart wants what it wants!)
Emma Brewer executes the CYOA perfectly but this time she isn’t taking us on a magical adventure or forcing us to guess a verdict on the Case of the Dangerous Golf Ball (real example). Brewer’s CYOA takes you down a rabbit hole of realness about what it’s like to navigate the corporate world as a woman.
You will be spit out the other end feeling a little disillusioned, a little frustrated, and a lot more pissed off about being told to “lean in.” The whole thing seems to ask: why did we fight so hard just to get here? Like, if capitalism and feminism are inherently at odds, why do we strive to meet the expectations of a capitalist system?
I mean, the answer is survival but, shit, we’ve got to want more than that.
Read this if you’ve ever cried in the bathroom at your place of work.
Ellen DeGeneres And The Limits of Relatability - Shannon Keating
Listen, Ellen is 1,000% deserving of the medal of honor and if that shit doesn’t bring a tear to your eye than idk if you would pass a captcha test. But Ellen has been showing her alliances lie not with cute dancing children and the oppressed but with similarly white, rich friends. This has given us a kind of collective pause, and for good reason.
But should we be surprised?
Shannon Keating surveys Ellen’s long and, at many points, incredibly brave career trying to figure out how we got here with Ellen. Keating orbits around the idea that America cares more about you being white and rich than it does about pretty much anything else. It allows both presidents and celebrities to echo each other in their distrust of the media. It allows rich, white folks to keep telling their own stories over and over. It forces anyone who is not rich and white into the realm of firsts and nevers.
Keating brings this disillusionment home in the last lines:
“But you would hope that a 60-year-old celebrity with nothing much left to prove might have an easier time of bucking expectations — of making more room for messiness, for the sorts of rabble-rousing at which she once excelled. It’s when I look at someone who’s now using her enormous cultural reach to smooth over the messes of other mega-celebrities like her that I see someone to whom I can’t relate at all.”
(DiD yOu KnOw ElLeN wAs 60?!?!?!?!?!)
Read this if you didn’t make it through Relatable but were too afraid to tell anyone.
Extremely Online Preachers Are Waging a New War Against Masturbation - Jordana Rosenfeld
Shit dawg. I needed to masturbate to clear my head before I even begin this.
I’ve lived in New York for exactly long enough to forget how wild the extreme Christian Evangelist rhetoric is. Like, could I have ever truly loved myself with all that swirling around me?
These guys online are giving it a try. These stone cold sinners are trying to repent of their crimes and resist the temptation to beat the devil out of their dicks. Then and only then will they be worthy to enter the kingdom of God. And they have the instagra-evangelists to help them do it.
Honestly I just included this so everyone would have to see Pastor Craig Gross. This guy is exactly like the husband character from this Weekend Update sketch. And I can’t go back to a place of not knowing about him so you have to know about him too.
(Side note: it’s WILD that this guy has barely 3K followers and get’s this kind of attention when Sadie Robertson has 3MILLION and no one is talking about it. 3 MILLION!!! That’s more than the Instagram scammer!!!)
Read this because it sells itself (and the Pastor Craig Gross’s insta post included in this is his review of 50 Shade of Grey).
Hate Reads
Let Children Get Bored Again
Why does every article about parenting speculate on teachers. Please parents. Just stop. Teachers are professionals. They are not extensions of you. They actually know what they’re doing. They have to do more than just bone and pop one out* to do what they do ok? Please stop including them in your “how to parent” takes.
In the middle of this seemingly innocuous promo piece for a parenting book is this:
“Teachers spend more time concocting ways to “engage” students through visuals and “interactive learning” (read: screens, games) tailored to their Candy Crushed attention spans. Kids won’t listen to long lectures, goes the argument, so it’s on us to serve up learning in easier-to-swallow portions.”
Like, why?
This author has fundamentally misunderstood what those words mean.
Interactive learning is a response to the overwhelming research that traditional means of educating (those long lectures you imply are part of the good-old-days) enforce the very socio-economic disadvantages educators hope to mitigate.
Engaging students is shorthand for meeting them at their ability level and measuring engagement frequently. The era of the film day is gone, sweetheart. Teachers literally lose their jobs for less. And students in school today will enter their adult lives surrounded by screens. So sure, let’s educate them only via the outdated information available in the class set text books from 1984. You know, make them ready for their adult life of ignoring Native Americans and Oxford commas.
Yes, Pamela, kids should be bored…at home. But in schools, if they’re bored they’re missing information. That information is the very shit they will then test poorly on and that you will use to take the teacher to task!!! Back off!!
Listen, parents: if you’re talking about parenting, talk about parenting. Stop bringing the teaching profession into this.
*Childbirth can be very dangerous and very hard!!! It’s why we need women’s reproductive health rights!!! But some of y’all had a completely healthy pregnancy/delivery and it shows.
Rec of the Week
Instant Hotel
I could tell you the premise or outline the drama that unfolds, but instead I’m just going to give you the best quote of the whole 12 episode show:
“The devil is in the details and you are both the devil.”
Just trust me on this one.
Watch this if you need to fall down a reality tv hole for 12 hours
This is the best thing on the internet and you should all bumping this new Backstreet Boys song. Don’t question it. It slaps.
Send this link to your Valentine to let them know why you’re ignoring them to watch a 3 minute video of Bob Ross beating his brush. https://copypaste.substack.com/welcome