Money Money Money
Single people have debt, people are making divorce registries, and everyone's in on Mommunes.
Featuring emotional support British accents, banning QR codes, and the perfect cocktail to complement your exercise routine.
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Literally Just Something I Think Is Funny (Innit?)
Sometimes it just takes one article to remind me that I’m long overdue on an issue of the Good Links - this time around, it was this Guardian article about young American people who adopt British accents in stressful situations. Yes - you read that right!
“I was on a date recently ordering something, and the name of what I wanted came out wrong when I asked for it,” Lieberman said. “So I just talked in a British accent for the rest of the order. It’s a defense mechanism, a kind of buffer from my actual personality.”
He also uses the voice as a conflict-management tactic. “I asked my roommate, ‘Can you please take out the rubbish,’” Lieberman explained, sounding like an EastEnders guest star. “It’s me being playful. It’s the British part of me asking for something that needs to be done, not the real me.”
Brinton Parker, a 30-year-old who lives in the Bay Area, works in tech marketing. The deluge of bad news out of Silicon Valley has her feeling like she’s approaching burnout, and she recently asked her manager for support at work.
“I said, ‘It’s affecting me mental health, innit?’” she explained. “And my boss was like, ‘Why did you say it like that?’ I think it adds levity to a vulnerable situation. The tougher the conversation, the more Cockney I become.”
I really implore you to read the entire article - I learned some of the stupidest facts I’ve ever come across - including the fact that apparently young children were doing British accents in 2019 because of Peppa Pig.
A Less Serious Item (Small Victories are Victories Nonetheless)
Is technology good? Will AI ruin humanity as we know it? Are you on your phone too much? I won’t be answering that here, but I will be celebrating one miniscule victory: apparently everyone fucking hates QR codes in restaurants as much as I do. From the very obvious downsides of QR code menus (many old people simply can’t figure it out and furthermore many old people don’t want to) to the very stupid, unthinkable ones (trying to place an order on a QR code menu in a restaurant only to have the IRL waiter tell you that beer you ordered on your phone is actually no longer on draft), I have never once been like “oh? A QR code menu? Isn’t that neat!” Instead I am simply sad that another activity in life has to be done on my godforsaken iPhone. But lo and behold, the NY Times says everyone feels the way I do.
The motivation for the about-face is simple, restaurateurs said: Diners just hate QR-code menus.
“They are almost universally disliked,” Ms. Hawley said.
One reason is etiquette. Everyone knows it’s rude to take a phone out at a table, but that’s what a digital menu demands. And having to make a special request for a paper menu is awkward. No one wants to be That Guy.
Another drawback to the coded menu is its feel. As the pandemic ebbs, restaurants are trying to coax people to eat out, and the seduction of a dining room is part of the get — dusky candlelight and uninterrupted, eye-to-eye conversation. A QR code can kill the mood: phones up, blue lights on, conviviality off.
“The bottom line is: The QR code is the antithesis to romance,” said Richard Boccato, the owner of Dutch Kills Bar in Long Island City, Queens. “It hinders communication and it hinders intimacy.”
This Week’s Theme: “Alternative” Financial Planning
A quick selection of links about debt and nifty, new financial trends:
First, a British poet laments the debt she feels she’s accrued because of her status as a single woman. And then reveals the ways in which she’s tried to create meaning out of her life when the world isn’t built for it:
When I bought the ring, I wasn’t saying I’m single, so I’m marrying myself! like a vapid banner of feminist empowerment, attainable only by buying into the traditions that had no place for me. Instead I was attempting to mark a change in my status: I was moving across the threshold from my 30s to my 40s, and I was about to publish my second collection of poems. I wanted a carnival of my own…
…Without this openness from others, it takes a person who is willing to make a fuss of their own life to have their occasions noted. Or else that noting becomes a private act that no one else can acknowledge, because to celebrate oneself is shameful, greedy, undignified behavior. What are we missing of our friends’ and family members’ lives that are every bit as important as a change in legal status or the growth of a family? I fear it’s so many things.
Next, two women have started a new business (Fresh Starts) capitalizing on a new trend: divorce registries! But are they really going to fix all our problems?
Businesses like Fresh Starts want to be part of the destigmatization of divorce. They want divorce to be seen as it should be: a life change like any other rather than a shameful detour. Maybe commerce is the only way to find us where we live. A lot of our feelings show through how we consume. Can a convenient way to shop for one another bring us closer to a world in which divorce is widely socially accepted as a transition instead of a failure?
Finally, take a peek into childrearing’s next big thing: mommunes. Don’t have a spouse? No problem, white American women are finally doing what the rest of the world has done for millennia - letting it take a village.
Carmel Boss, a mommune veteran who said she coined the term “mommune” years before it entered the social media lexicon, started CoAbode, a house-sharing platform for single mothers, as a nonprofit after her divorce 20 years ago. At the time, she had just become a single mother to a 7-year-old son, and decided to invite another single mother in Los Angeles to live with her. She realized, however, that there was no easy resource for single mothers in seeking communal housing to find each other, and an idea was born.
And some women are finding fun twists in the whole experiment:
But the co-living partners [Ms. Hopper and Ms. Harper], who call themselves platonic spouses, have had their ups and downs. A year after moving into the Siren House [the home they bought and share together], the women launched a drinks and snack shop that failed. Their two new tenants, one of whom had never dated women before, fell in love with each other and eventually moved out. Ms. Hopper and Ms. Harper still live in the home, but they now rent the basement unit to a gay man, and are keeping the upstairs unit vacant as a shared space for homework, dance parties and quiet time.
Being married is so gauche these days.
[The] Politics [of Drinking While Exercising]
Somebody over at Slate wants you to know that the missing piece in your exercise routine might be a little bit of alcohol. Not because it’s going to make you stronger or help your body expend energy more efficiently, but because it might be just the thing you need to get you in the zone:
Yeah, a little bit drunk. My sweet spot is about a shot and a half, particularly in that 20-minute glossy narcosis that occurs after you break the seal on an evening. I am all-powerful within that wondrous stupor. I can pump out bicep curls with vulgar, pre-first-date intensity; I can make loud, obnoxious Rafael Nadal grunts as I rut through sad, back-buckling squats; I can snarl at myself in the mirror and turn up the gym playlist that’s gone more or less unchanged in a decade. I can scream “LET’S FUCKING GO” after flexing out the mildest definition in my shoulders. When I’m a little bit drunk, all the damp humiliations of home exercise are sanded away. For a few moments of inebriated valor, I finally become a Chad.
The article also talks about running clubs that love alcohol, a new set of exercise joints opening up in NYC that have an explicit alcohol tie-in, and how actually alcohol is probably bad for you overall but hey - if one drink helps you do an extra crunch? Maybe that balances it out?
A Celebrity Thinger (Giving It Up for Swiftie Dads)
I’m back and still reporting on Taylor Swift. Harkening back to the reason I started this newsletter - this GQ article about Swiftie dads who traveled to Philadelphia with or without Taylor Swift tickets only put me in a good mood and did not make me spiral about anything bad going on in the world (except that I myself didn’t get to go to the concert). Scroll for an incredible selection of dad t-shirts - including a Hawaiian shirt with Taylor Swift’s face involved in the logo, a black tee that reads “It’s me, hi. I’m the dad. It’s me,” and another one that says “Who the fuck is Jack Antonoff?”
Here’s a picture of Taylor Swift with her own dad - who knew that’s what he looked like?
P.S. I’m sure overall moms did 1000x more than this for their Swiftie kids, but I’m finding there to be something progressive about all the dads being happy to talk about this - feels in some way like the world’s tiniest deconstruction of patriarchy! Alexa, play “The Man” by Taylor Swift.
Would You Rather? (Can you tell I’m trying to plan a wedding?)
Would you rather get a haircut during your wedding or have your wedding on Roosevelt Island?
A Recommendation
Haters fall back! Because I LIKE that show Platonic on AppleTV+ where Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen play old friends who reconnect once Seth Rogen divorces his wife! It’s easy watching, and Byrne and Rogen have great comic chemistry (s/o to all my Neighbors fans out there), and you know what? Maybe we do need more literature about whether or not men and women can be friends (so far? this show says they can!).
The Interactive Bits (Interact with me!)
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Want more pop culture content? Listen to my podcast Flop Soup that I host with Good Links contributor Justin Crosby.
