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I wanna hear your thoughts on Ariana Grande and Ethan Slater situation and her new "Yes, And?" song.
Also, do you think Shakira's diss track about her ex was petty? Do you think women trash-talking their exes affects their future romantic prospects?
This question submitted by a listener struck a nerve for me.
Minutes after Sex and The City ended its six-season run; you could hear every single girlie in Manhattan run to the laptops and start typing away in the hopes of filling Carrie Bradshaw’s now-empty Manalo Blahniks.
I was one of those girlies.
Keep in mind this was 2004. There was no Tiktok or Instagram. Being anonymous on the internet was easier. People weren’t Googling their dates yet. That meant bloggers had a freedom influencers nowadays can only dream of having. With that freedom came a lot of stupid choices. We (or at least I) were too comfortable discussing the gritty underbelly of our love and sex lives. Some writers had the foresight to self-edit. Others, well, we didn’t consider the bigger picture.
As social media became more prevalent, people could connect the dots of information we gave them, setting off the ripple effect that seeped into our real lives. What we wrote now affected our interpersonal relationships.
And by affected, I mean damaged. We’d salvage one relationship, and another would begin to crumble under the weight of public scrutiny. People loved watching our lives go up in flames, sometimes even fanning them with comments like, “You’re so brave!” As I said in this episode, when people praised us for our authenticity, what they meant was, “God, you are such a fucking trainwreck.”
Personal memoir writing became the new “in” thing. This became such a popular niche that websites like xoJane popped up to capitalize on the abundance of women willing to place themselves on a cyber spit roast to be rotated over flames for a mass audience.
Women’s trauma had become a commodity. Stories of our disappointment, humiliation, and pain meant clicks and eyeballs. That is not the case for tales of our success, though. For many, women with thoughts and opinions are only palatable if they’re a mess.
In this episode, I go into more detail about my experience with publicly trashing lovers and other romantic entanglements and discuss the pros and cons involved.
If you’d like to hear the full episode and not just a snippet, I’d love for you to become a subscriber to my Patreon. You’ll receive weekly essays and podcast episodes directly to your inbox.