How Embarrassing It Is To Exist Online š¾
A loving goodbi to the pun titles. Plus an excerpt from a novel I adored: Isle McElroy's The Atmospherians!
In the spirit of spring cleaning, letās start with some housekeeping. Hereās a few things I need to tell yāall:
A PSA: Substack has an app! Itās only for iPhone right now but if you have one of those, I highly recommend itāespecially for people like me who subscribe to way too many newsletters.
A technical thing: Mamaās got a new domain! You can now access The Bi Monthly via jenerous.substack.com. Cheers to consistent personal branding (aka being Team Taylor Lorenz).
A mini-announcement: I trust that youāre a loyal Bi Monthly subscriber who opens every email, hangs on every word, then forwards each post to ten friends? If so, youāve probably gotten accustomed to a particular structure (personal tidbit ā> essay or guest feature ā> Bisexual You Should Follow ā> me begging you to subscribe). But because Substack is basically Instagram now, Iām here to ~announce~ that the format of my newsletter is likely to evolve! Iāve been v inspired by the way other writers organize their content (or better yetāthe way they donāt organize their content) and Iām excited to try some new things for yāall. I canāt say how exactly things will shift, both because thatās Top Secret and also I donāt know. What I do know is that 1) Change is the only constant, and 2) I canāt commit myself to a lifetime of titling these newsletters with bi punsāespecially since I already made the best one of all time. š
Ok, WHEW. Believe it or not, Iāve spent WEEKS agonizing over how to convey those bullet points to you. That probably sounds absurdāthe information above isnāt personal or vulnerable; writing it didnāt require the usual Hemingwayan routine of sitting down at my laptop and āopening a vein.ā Those announcements (if you can even call them announcements) required little-to-no introspection or self-reflection from me. You may have skipped them entirely. You may have read them, then found yourself wondering why *I* didnāt just skip them entirely.
For a while, I couldnāt figure it out: Why did I dread this part of my newsletter so much? And why did that dread also make me feel so ashamed?
After agonizing over both questions (we love to have anxiety about the anxiety about the anxiety!), I think Iāve finally tracked down the origin of my stress: No matter how Onlineā¢ļø one is (and indeed, I am Very Onlineā¢ļø), itās humiliating to publicly state decisions youāve made about your digital presence.
This reminds me of an idea Iāve noticed floating around the ether: The notion that it is deeply embarrassing to exist online. (Hereās a few TikTok captions to serve as evidence, but Iāve also seen several memes on the subject that I forgot to screenshot.)
By now most of us are aware that itās embarrassing to exist in a general sense. For those lucky enough to have avoided this discourse, allow me to provide an overly theoretical explanation: To be āembarrassed to existā essentially means being cognizant that no human actively opted in to being born, yet now that weāre alive, weāre forced to consider our actions and ourselves through the lenses of modernity and how other humans perceive us to be. My favorite manifestation of this shame is this Ayo Edebiri tweet:
But naturally, this conversation has evolved to spotlight the specific pains of being forced to exist online. Existing online is humiliating for similar reasonsānone of us really āchoseā to be here, yet since we are here, we have to be mindful of how we present ourselves and conscious of how others may receive us. But thereās an element to online existence that makes it so. much. worse. That element is, essentially, capitalismāspecifically an obligation to optimize ourselves toward being productive for society, often by blurring our personal and professional selves. Itās a mouthful, but we often refer to it in shorthand, calling it The Personal Brand.
This brings us back to being Team Taylor Lorenz. Taylor and I have a complex friendship, by which she doesnāt know who I am and I often think about a time I acted weird around her. (We crossed paths at a work event three years agoāsince I was jealous of her ability to turn memes into a full-time career, I DMed her afterwards to say we should get coffee sometime. Given that sheās an internet rockstar, she, of course, didnāt reply. But rather than accept the Occamās razor of it all, I overthought my entire friend-making approach and convinced myself that no woman wants to be my friend because My Brand Is Sexuality Crisis which means anyone I digitally engage with can very clearly tell that Iām bisexual, thus all women I speak to probably think Iām hitting on them even when Iām not hitting on them although Taylor is of course a catch!!!)
Our (my) past aside, I still hated watching Maggie Haberman and an army of establishment journalists come for Taylor in a Twitter feud last month. ICYMI the personal brand was at the core of this debate, and hereās the specific quote of Taylorās that got everyone so worked up:
Younger people recognize the power of having their own brand and audience, and the longer you stay at a job that restricts you from outside opportunities, the less relevant your brand becomes.
This entire discussion is old news now, and trust that a disgusting amount of think pieces popped up right after it happenedāfor example, Should Journalists Be Brands? by Elizabeth Spiers on Medium, or Welcome To The Little Bitch Olympics by Tarpley Hitt for Gawker. The subject of personal branding feels incredibly 2010 to me, but obviously it inspires much debate. (Iām also not one to talk because alasāhere I am, participating in the discourse.)
Though Iām obviously in the BE CRINGE DO BRANDS camp, Iām now acutely aware of what the internet thinks about people like me who take their personal brands seriously, and that awareness causes tension. If youāve read my book, you know I struggle to advocate well for myself in moments of inner truth vs. social acceptabilityāmost of the time I wind up stuck in a thought spiral, overthinking as a procrastination tactic to keep myself āsafe.ā
Iām pretty sure thatās what happened to me re: those bullet points. But to be clear, this was not on purpose. I donāt want to be like this. I donāt want to get so in my own head about changing my newsletter framework that I literally write an ENTIRE newsletter processing the shift. I want to be the kind of person who sends out a two-sentence Substack on a whim! The kind who says FUCK IT, I donāt owe anyone anything, especially not an explanation as to why Iām bi-yond sick of puns!!
But thatās not who I am. Who I am is a sincere loser who happens to love attention and hopes that many people read their writing. Who I am is someone who cares deeply about connecting with people through words and digital platforms, who wants to evolve my career as a writer into one where Iām allowed (asked, even?) to tackle subjects beyond bisexuality. So, as innocent or annoying as that housekeeping section may have seemed, the act of writing it forced me to reconcile with myself and decide what kind of person I want to be.
I wish every decision we made in an online era didnāt have this level of ramification on our psyches. I also recognize that, for many people, it doesnāt. Most of my role models fall into one of two categories: Artists who happen to be younger than me and whose online presences seem effortless, or reclusive millennial creatives whoāve chosen to abstain from online spaces entirely. I find hope in Gen Zās ability to show up as they are. Iām inspired by the Twitter absence of geniuses like Ottessa Moshfegh and Michaela Coel.
These two groups may seem distinct from each other, but they have one major commonality: They donāt give a fuck what the internet thinks. Thatās something I (and, alas, my ~brand~) could learn a lot from.
Time for an Extra Special Guest Writer: Isle McElroy!
ICYMI, I canāt shut up about how much I LOVED Isle McElroyās novel The Atmospherians. Itās got an excellent premise: Sasha, a cancelled influencer reunites with her high school best friend Dyson to start a cult to reform problematic men. Along the way Sasha and Dyson deal with questions of fame, friendship, support, existence (both online and offline), masculinity, rehabilitation, and more. Iāve said this several times already, but The Atmospherians is the most fun Iāve ever had reading about gender.
Read Isleās excerpt below, then get their novel in hardcover or paperback here! Once youāre done, be sure to watch our IG live convo from last week.
How To Start A Cult: An Excerpt From Isle McElroyās The Atmospherians
Today, when I'm asked about Dyson, everyone expects stories of a charismatic manipulator, tales reminiscent of cult leaders theyāve seen on TV. But that wasnāt his way. The Dyson Iād known my whole life didnāt persuade; he listened. When I was in trouble, he let me talk. He nodded along, encouraged my grudges and gripesāmany of which emerged in the aftermath of relationships, when Dyson would trash the men I believed I had loved. More than anything, he knew how to remind me of what had brought us together.
As teenagers, we spent hours on highways singing along to moody mix CDs that he meticulously arranged. The bands were independent and neglected, far too brilliant for popular recognition. We pretended we were the only people alive who knew these songs existedānot even the bands, we joked, knew of their songs. Dyson transferred the contents of the mixes onto a massive playlist for the drive. By now, nearly a dozen years later, these songs frequently played in car commercials or life insurance ads or over tinny speakers at corporate bagel shops, and although hearing these songs in public, reduced to jingles and Muzak, filled me with the shame of crossing paths with an ex, hearing them that day, with Dyson, I fell quickly into singing along. We both had good voices, though mine was better, and he knew when to silence himself to prevent the timid lilt of his voice from holding me back. The playlist was an attempt to blot my mind with nostalgia, to distract me from wondering where the hell we were headed. It nearly worked, too. But once we got out of the city, I asked Dyson where exactly we were going. āMy grand-parentsā place,ā he answered, then turned up the music to signal he wouldnāt say any more. I welcomed the distraction. For the first time in months, I felt unburdened.
I mistook this feeling for safety.
An hour into the drive, Dyson stopped at a towering three-story mall to stretch his legs. He straightened his arms against the roof of the car, resting his weight on one leg and swinging the other pendulum-like in front of his body, as if preparing for a race. I lounged on the trunk, swallowing the sky with my eyes. A few rows away from our car, in an empty corner of the parking lot, five white men crowded around a station wagon raised on a jack. They were changing the rear passenger-side tire in total silenceānot one mumble of small talkāworking via some ant-like understanding of the task, passing tools and unscrewing bolts, dropping screws into the cupped palms of their partners, cradling the spare like a child. Two of the men wore torn T-shirts and sweatpants and had the foggy, undershaven faces of the terminally unemployed. The other three men mustāve come from work, two in khakis and button-downs, the last one wearing fashionable jeans and the black employee polo of an electronics store. I was too far away to see their eyesāin news reports, their eyes had been described as gluey, dulledāand I wouldāve inched closer were it not for the woman behind the wheel. She slapped her window and shouted, āLeave me alone!ā
Her fear of the men gave me reason to fear them.
Dyson took a step toward the car. āIāve never seen a man horde in person,ā he said.
I hadnāt, either. āCanāt you hear that woman screaming?ā I asked, hoping to minimize his curiosity, and mine. I didnāt want to get involved.
āMaybe we ought to go help her.ā
āThere was the one in New Hampshire, last week, who chopped down the trees in front of the courthouse. They might have weapons for all we know.ā
Over the past year, more and more menāalways white menāhad been hording together unprompted to perform mundane social activities. There was no way of telling how a man horde would act once it formed. Some, like the horde at the mall, changed strangersā tires. Others washed windows at retirement homes. One broke into a duplex and folded all the homeownersā laundry. Another broke into a duplex and strangled the homeownersā beagle. The men who horded never remembered joining a horde. When shown footage of their actions, they laughed in disbelief, insisted they were watching actors; some spontaneously wept. Hordes had become popular subjects on the local news programs I watched every day, and I considered myself an expert on the whims of the hordes.
The men lowered the station wagon off its jack and departed in separate directions. They would probably never speak to one another again. The driver sped away, flipping them off out the window.
āWhat a letdown,ā said Dyson. āNot exciting enough for you?ā
āA letdown for people like you who think the hordes are dangerous.ā He started in the direction of the mall.
The mallās shadow stretched over the lot like a stain. The air was chilled, shiver-inducing. I felt a pang of anticipation as we drew closer. We had grown up in a rural patch of New Jersey notorious for ample skies and groundwater toxicity. Ours was a town of paranoia, of grief. We had lost two classmates to cancer. The disease had taken dozens more in the surrounding grades. As teenagers, we obsessed over escapingāpartly out of generic adolescent angst, partly out of an unconscious impulse for self-preservation. We were drawn to expressions of life that seemed endless and immortal, and nothing suggested immortality more than commerce. After school, we darted onto highways en route to movie theaters and restaurants and arcades and flea markets and magic shows and specialty grocersābut most often we drove straight to a mall.
Malls were repercussionless places. There, the future didnāt exist. You ate pizza slices thick as bricks or grease-leaking pretzels under the pretense that no discomfort would follow. The elderly roaming the promenade ignored the grip of mortality. There was no mortality in the mall. There was no paranoiaāonly praise from employees who wrote our names in script on dressing room doors, who told us how pretty we looked in clothes we couldnāt afford, who lifted samples of meat to our mouths like servants feeding a queen in her castle.
The mall was the kingdom where nobody died.
But time had overtaken this mallāas it had overtaken so many other malls. Fluorescent lights gagged overhead. The air reeked of the cleaning solution used to mop up the vomit of children. The mall teetered between its decay and a naĆÆve faith in its revitalization. Harried managers carnival-barked from the entrances offering sickening discounts: 30 percent, 40 percent, 50 percent, 75 percent. āThe Death March of Discounts,ā Dyson called it. Storesā faƧades masked in plaster apologized for their dust but promised to transform into exciting new enterprises: and soon! At the entrance to a record store was a cardboard cutout of my ex-boyfriend, Blake Dayes, gripping a guitar by the neck. āThe You I Knew,ā the title of his latest single, appeared in red script across his body. It took everything in me not to topple the cutout. Four stores down, a poster of Cassandra Hanson promoting noise-canceling headphones hung in the window of a laptop store. She was my former mentor and business partner. When my wellness program, ABANDONāa regimen that encouraged its followers to refrain from all products both toxic and non-, all rinses, creams, tinctures, and tonicsāfirst started gaining attention, it was Cassandra who stepped in to guide me. She introduced me to important influencers and podcasters and the unmistakably wealthy. She was one of the unmistakably wealthy. She was also a prominent online meditation instructor. Her career didnāt really take off, however, until she appeared on TV denouncing me as a fraud. The headphones were her biggest sponsorship yet. An evolved version of me would have been happy for her. I wasnāt that person.
Dyson was going off about his cult. He rambled to me about men, the dangers men faced, how men were depressed and threats to themselves. He waved his arms, pointed, nodded diligently, and blathered with the scattered enthusiasm of a child giving a TED Talk. It wasnāt unusual for him to speak in such perplexing extremes, hopping from truisms to clichĆ©s to conclusions as if they were rocks in a stream. He ended on a solution: our cult.
āWeāll call it The Atmosphere,ā he said. āThe men will be Atmospherians. Itās a film term. Another word for extras: people who provide the atmosphere and stand in the background. What better aspiration for men? To cede power, the spotlight, to let others speak, let the action continue without them.ā
āGive me a pen,ā I said. Dyson was one of the few people left who still carried a pen.
āYou donāt need to take notes.ā He tapped his forehead. āItās all in here.ā
āJust give it to me.ā He handed one over. I marched to Cassandraās poster intent on drawing an X over each eye, but the poster was hanging inside the glass.
āIf youāre interested in a poster I can get you an excellent deal,ā said a pouchy man in a tucked polo shirt. He had a face like an electrical outlet. āIāll throw it in free with a pair of Ear Locks.ā
āSheās a bad person!ā I said.
āPlus my employee discount. Thatās fifteen percent on top of the twenty- five youāre already saving. Itās an unbeatable deal.ā He spoke like someone who had never been excited.
āYour company shouldnāt associate with bad people,ā I said.
āI do commercials,ā Dyson said to the employee. āA ton youāve probably seen. Movies, too. Blockbusters. And Iāve heard terrible things about how Cassandra treats people. Sheās notorious for it. Sheās the worst-kept secret in wellness.ā Professionally, he was an actorāa career extra in films, TV, and adsāand loved elbowing his experience into conversations. I normally found the habit grating and insecure, but today I was heartened by his defense of me.
āSoon youāll know!ā I shouted. āSoon youāll all know.ā I sensed people staring and covered my face with my hand to prevent anyone from recognizing me. Any one of the men from my building might be in this mall. āWe need to keep moving,ā I said to Dyson.
Dyson and I rode an escalator to the second floor and skirted the food court. Cashiers thrust cuts of teriyaki chicken into our faces. Dyson refused, so I took his, and mine, then his and mine when we circled past a second time.
He said, āItās my fault I havenāt been here for you. But I want youāif you canāI want you to tell me how you are, where you are emotionally. Cults are founded on honesty, Sasha. And trust. We canāt get where weāre going if you donāt tell me where you are.ā Had these words come from anyone else, I would have cackled. But he was calming, sweet. And familiar. That meant more than anything else. āDonāt leave a single thing out,ā he said.
The past three months tumbled out incoherently: A man who left explicit comments on my photos and videos, the same man who emailed me pics of my head cropped into porn videos, the same man who made new profiles every time I reported him and who used a VPN that the police were too lazy to traceāthat man had taken his life after I told him to leave me alone. This man was Lucas Devry, a āpreacherā and āfather of threeā who live-streamed his own suicide. In the video, he told the internet he was ending his life because I had harassed him. Did I use poor judgment? I did. In response to one of his comments, I told him the world would be much better without him. Cruel. Callous. Correct. But hardly harassment. And the internet? It believed him! My ex couldnāt associate with me after the scandal. Cassandra used my downfall as a chance to boost her career. Then the men with their signs. Now I was being evicted from my apartmentāI was too toxic to rent a room in New Jersey. My mouth emptied as tears rinsed my cheeks. āIām so embarrassed,ā I said. āCrying in a mall on a Tuesday afternoon.ā
āNo oneās watching,ā he said.
I peered around me. People passed without looking, their avoidance intentional. My anonymity was a relief. After Lucas Devry, Iād become recognizable, a point of discussionāexactly what Iād desired for years. In an effort to remake my imageāand to pay rentāI had applied for jobs at a number of charities: the ASPCA, the Organization for African Children, Save the Peruvian Mice, MĆ©dicos Sin Fronteras, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, Make-A-Wish, Have A Heart, Break A Leg, Give A Lung, Teach For America, Cats in the Schools, and L.A.M.B. But even the laziest Google search disqualified me from being hired.
āWhere weāre going,ā he said, ānone of what happened will matter.ā
āYou havenāt told me where weāre going. Iāve never been to your grandparentsā place.ā
His fatherās parents had left him property in southern Jersey, on the northern edge of the Pine Barrens. It was as off-the-grid as you could get without leaving the grid. No shouting, no protesting. āItās the perfect place for the men to grow and reform,ā he said.
āWhat men?ā
āThese men Iāve been working with. Theyāre harmless, but theyāre so full of rage. Theyāre depressed. Theyāre at risk for suicide. Theyāre like my father.ā He inhaled, collecting himself. āIf my fatherād had a place to talk out his feelings, who knows what might have been different.ā
Dysonās father had died in a car crash while driving to work the summer between our junior and senior years of high school. It was an accident, we told ourselves, because we both suspected it wasnāt. No explanation was the explanation. But the simplicity of Dysonās new equation disturbed me. If his fatherās death could be reduced to cause and effect, maybe Lucas Devryās could be as well, and I was more at fault than I wanted to believe.
On the third floor, we paused on a bench so close to the railing that our knees pressed into the glass. Dyson gave me a pep talk on all the barriers Iād leapfrogged, the ceilings Iād shattered: āYou changed lives. You helped women who struggled with toxic standards of beauty. You gave hope to the despairing, the outcast, the ignored, the desperate, despondent.ā
āAll that work destroyed by one stupid comment.ā
āAll that work prepared you for this,ā he said. āEverything you thought you did with ABANDON, all the good you brought to the world, all the people you helped, itāll be nothing compared to what weāre gonna do. Cassandra Hanson, Blake Dayesāyou know how meaningless their work will look beside ours? Cassandra makes wealthy dullards relax. Blake writes earworms for idiots. But Sasha: Weāre gonna change the world. People will talk about us and The Atmosphere for generations after weāre gone. Weāll make the world safer for everyone. Because the world is full of terrible men. Despicable men like Blake Dayes and Lucas Devry who get worse every day. And nothing gets done. It might seem crazy to do this, but itās crazier to do nothing.ā
I pretended I couldnāt tell he was flattering me. I wanted him to say more.
āI know what youāre thinking,ā he said. āBut donāt worry. Cult: itās an organizing principle. Strong leader at the top. Two leaders in our case who dictate how those below ought to live. Have there been bad apples? Absolutely. Jonestown. Heavenās Gate. The Manson Family. Rajneeshpuram. But the model is perfect. Because if any social group ever deserved forced isolation, ever needed their worldview shaped by trusted leadersāfor the greater goodāitās men. White men, especially. And weāre the only ones brave enough to commit to this work.ā
āI just want this all to end.ā
āWrong,ā he said. āYou want vindication. Exoneration. Hell, you want revenge. You deserve it. Imagine Cassandraās face when she sees you interviewed on morning talk showsāspreading your message of radical transformation for men. Imagine how quickly Blake will call you, desperate to get back together, when he sees youāre more famous than he is.ā
āIād never get back with him,ā I said, though Iād often imagined it.
āOf course not. You wonāt even answer his calls.ā
I shaped my hand into a phone and spoke into it: āSee you in hell, you goat-voiced fraud.ā Dyson was laughing. But the pain of losing Cassandra and Blake flooded back into me, and I curled over my knees. āYou donāt get it,ā I said. āPeople despise me.ā
āLucas wouldnāt leave you alone. You told him the world would be a more beautiful place without him. I wouldāve said the same thing.ā
āI wonāt be any help.ā I regret it now, but I wanted him to tell me he needed me, for him to douse me in praise. I wanted to be convinced.
He intuited this: āYouāre organized. Brilliant. Persistent and patientāeverything Iām not. Iām a big thinker. An ideas man. I shoot from the hip. Pow! Pow! But you have experience. You already made one program from scratchā had it senselessly taken from you. Youāre an expert about group management, planning. I couldnāt possibly do this with anyone else.ā
āYou do need me,ā I said, stupidly confident.
āAnd you need this. Youāve hit rock bottom. Youāre broke. Evicted. The Atmosphere is your only path to redemption. I wish this could happen some other way, but this is the world we have: Americans love reckonings. Theyāre obsessed with atonement. Reform some men, prove you can care for guys like Lucas Devry, and the media will slobber over your tale of redemption. Boom: you get your life back.ā
He insisted the plan was simple: The men would arrive at his property in a week. Over the next six days, he and I would prepare the camp, brainstorm strategies for transforming these men, strategies for bringing The Atmosphere to the publicās attentionā āFor your sake,ā he said, though I knew Dyson was desperate for notoriety, albeit too proud to ever admit his desperation. He promised me a beautiful cabin in the woods and men who were ready to grow and evolve.
āHow does that sound?ā he asked.
āToo good to be true,ā I said.
āSometimes things can be good and true. Have confidence in me for once. Just trust I know what Iām doing.ā
He was right: I had no confidence in him. But if something went wrong, I had confidence in myself to fix it, or escape. I stood and leaned against the railing, rested my arms over the edge.
Dyson took this for what it was: a sign I would join him. He edged in beside me, shoulder to shoulder, and I felt unexpectedly safe.
A young girl screamed from the ground floor of the mall.
She was pointing at a purple helium balloon that was drifting to the ceiling. āI got it!ā Dyson shouted. It was a foolishly confident thing to say and even more foolish for him to stretch over the railing. I pressed a hand to his back to hold him in place. I was sure the balloon would slip past him, that a gust of central air would blow it beyond his reach and that heād tumble over the railing to his death. But he palmed the balloon with one hand and cradled it to his chest. He rushed down the escalators to deliver it to the girl. Bystanders applauded the miracle they had witnessed. The girl hugged the balloon. Dyson refused the motherās attempt to slip him some bills. He ascended the escalators as if gliding on a wave of his own self-satisfaction and pride. A bright, blinding light of inevitability shined inside me: Perhaps I had every reason to trust him. Everything he described would happen exactly as he described it. I was sure of it then.
The girl released the balloon. A collective gasp spread through the mall.
Adapted from THE ATMOSPHERIANS by Isle McElory. Copyright Ā© 2021 by Isle McElroy. Reprinted by permission of Atria Books, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Woah I feel so seen by your writing about personal brand! Glad itās not just me that feels that way! I loved what you said about it just being embarrassing to exist online. Itās hard when you spend a lot of time online and then you chat to friends that follow you but donāt usually engage. āOh yeah I saw your post on instagram about that!ā It makes me really cringe š¬