Hello again.

As we drudge through the slush encrusted holiday season, I am searching fervently for a single cheer to be had. Usually I enjoy this time: the calming scent of vanilla candy cane candles, America’s perennial Christmas carols that haunt the FM airwaves in every convenient store, and the spindly webs of fluorescent string lights outside every car dealership you drive by (they really put their neck, back, and p*ssies into their holiday displays…at least SOME faceless entity is using our consumer paychecks for GOOD).

But this season feels different. Perhaps it’s my low stock of situationships of which tinge my reality with a foul type of entertainment I can’t seem to quit. Or maybe it’s the skinni apocalypse and your aunt’s little debbie’s recipe is now substituted with f*ck ass protein powder and monk fruit. Enshitification is Merriam Webster’s word of the year…or so it seems based on the amount of podcasters dissecting the death of culture and all things enjoyable…does Gen Alpha even know what the Merriam Webster dictionary is?

Upon looking, Merriam Webster’s word of the year is polarizing. How fitting amidst Pantone naming its color of the year WHITE. Sydney Sweeney’s red hot republican bob feels like a fitting image of the year to wrap things up nicely, don’t you think?

Maybe it’s that I feel (am) fully addicted to my phone, yet equally paralyzed by the endeavor of utilizing it to enhance my life in any material way. Instead I choose to post thirst traps on Instagram and obfuscate any meaningful markers of my true identity. It feels much more palatable to operate through my digital proxy than to actually bare my full chest to the masses. Is there nothing sacred anymore??? Hath we lost the art of gatekeeping our personalities for the sake of mystery???? To my viewers, my voyeurs, and my beautiful army of bots…I am just girl with cute dog and cool job and whatever else I don’t want to know u think I think u think I am.

If I had a dollar for every person who told me to get on TikTok this year, I’d maybe have $50…enough sheckles to buy me a handful of sugar free vanilla almond milk latte’s from La Colombe. They say I have to! Like I’d turn up dead somewhere if I don’t! Or perhaps, never get my business off the ground…But here’s the thing…

I CAN’T MAKE CONTENT ON TIK TOK. Even if it would help my business. There’s something so uncanny valley about stuffing my life into the meat grinder of social media politic just to architect the perfect version of me that feels “relatable.” What’s ironic is that I am VERY relatable. I am single, broke, childless…have too many credit cards, 189 unread texts, and delude myself daily with charming affirmations and visualizations my TikTok astrologer tells me will fix my life. Are you feeling the connection yet? But to actually get on camera and sell my lore to the vacuous galactic nucleus of TikTok is where I draw the line.

I have no issue consuming the TikTok fodder of my peers. What’s that I hear? Someone made a 64 part series of how their boyfriend transformed into an evil vampiric succubus and started feasting on the souls of young hot women in the night? I am sat. But me? I am far too embarrassed and lack the shameless ambition to climb cringe mountain where there may or may not be rewards worth the trek in the first place. Don’t get me wrong…those who succeed are living a far better life than I (or so it seems). And for that, I applaud them. My mind is already warped, beat, and broke beyond any sensible repair due to the 2012 tumblr epidemic, so when I hear plastic surgeons are experiencing a surge in requests to “look like their tiktok beauty filters,” I am a little more than triggered. I am homicidal.

But even so, we must soldier on and muscle through. Who knows…maybe I will start making videos on TikTok - give me a follow if u even care!

Xoxo,

Madelyne

PS: Hope all of you have a restful, peaceful, and joyful holiday. Kiss a baby, squeeze a dog, eat the carb babes. See you when I see you!