meta-blogging [again]

i've stumbled again into a rabbit hole of mourning the early-00s blog culture I never participated in. I was facetiming my roommates joni and jonathan the other day to talk about renewing our lease and we ended up talking about short stories because jonathan and i are both trying to write them right now, and also because in high school our friend ebi wrote a short story that features a character based on some hybrid of joni and myself. we were talking about viral fiction, so, cat person, and jonathan referenced marie calloway's adrien brody. i'd never heard of it, which embarrasses me, but i guess i'm young and no matter how hard i try the closest i came to participating in the golden age of blog culture was stumbling upon hipster runoff animal collective content when i was in 8th grade.

i wonder how my life would be different if i had been born earlier, or ambitious enough to end up in new york media circles, or rich enough to go to the kind of school for undergrad that lands you in new york literary circles, or online enough to end up in new york literary circles by proxy, or whatever enough to be a new york art girl. i wonder what these circles think of each other, if i am just not smart enough to participate, and if their temporary allure when i follow these threads would be enough to keep me from wanting to ride to the desert on a motorcycle, as i usually do.

i like this moment in adrien brody when she says : Like I was involved with socialist politics for a while, but, like when I went to protests or whatever I felt really embarrassed. and then admits for the first time that she doesn't think there will be a socialist revolution (i guess this was in 2013).

my boyfriend is reading the golden notebook right now [prominently featured in the hulu show normal people!!] and i feel like all of these confessional internet sex pieces are just vague graspings at what doris accomplished.

I started to wonder, and felt relieved that there might be truth to the idea of intellectuals all being frauds. I knew that I certainly was.  who does this bitch think she is jia tolentino??


i think the dialogue is good and so is the character development of the narrator but her internal monologue is pretty boring and trite. i guess that's a kmart realism thing. maybe it just seems boring because it's been imitated so many times?

I felt very connected to him, like before, and enjoyed having sex with him very much.
He penetrated me and I was happy. I felt a strong sexual connection with him. 
who does this bitch think she is earnest hemingway??

also this part: From reading his articles, besides his intelligence, what I had really admired about his writing was essentially this feeling of how he seemed to uphold human dignity and the sacredness of human feeling and connection. And so it seemed unbelievable that he would cheat. That made me both disillusioned in him, and yet also sexually excited, because he was betraying those values. 

honestly adrien brody (rob horning from the new inquiry) very much reminds me of the comp lit phd student i was infatuated with throughout college who was obviously lecherous and into the idea of being so but could only pull it off with someone like me, so clearly beneath him intellectually, but you could see the facade start to crumble as he tried to disguise his awkwardness and self-loathing with apathy.
"Are you an idealist or a materialist?" I asked.
"A materialist I guess...I assume you're a materialist, that goes along with Marxism."
"Yeah," I said, smiling, happy that he was a materialist, too.
who does this bitch think she is me in 2016??

here here here are some interesting commentaries from blog world i encountered in my spiral after reading the original piece here is a piece referenced in the piece and here is a recent rob horn(y) piece i came across that involves both ariana reines and adam driver, the two celebrities i am most horn(y) for at the moment. oh and here is another short story jonathan brought to my attention that is of the same genre but much better and i have much less to say about.