Hi, hello - you’re here & so glad you are. I’ve turned on the option for a free 7-day trial of locked posts, so next week you can start a trial if you’d like :) With locked posts, you’ll receive a mix of long form essays, Best of the Worst lists, and maybe someday a pod (keep your fingers crossed THAT doesn’t happen!)
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I should stop trying to process information moments after I wake up. A fault of my own for opening Twitter, Instagram, and my email in rotating succession the second my eyes open. Read an essay while pouring my cold brew. Gag when I eat an overripe banana. Lock my phone and log into work, then a few minutes later scroll again. Speed reading. Realizing there are still eight more paragraphs in this thing. Skip to the last paragraph. Curse myself because I know I’ll have to go back and read it again.
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Lately I start thinking about Audrey Wollen’s Sad Girl Theory. Sad Girl Theory worked back when a little self-indulgence wasn’t seen as rampant narcissism (i.e. white feminism). It’s true, somewhere in 2013 I saw Sad Girl Theory on Tumblr and indulged myself. I leaned into not pre-girlboss feminism, but into my own wrenching sadness. It was the thing to do. I thought about death a lot, poured the Smiths and Bright Eyes into my ears morning, noon, night. Mostly “Lua,” another Sad Girl Theory. I still do those things. I stare at the ceiling and wonder if I have gotten much further than 2013. I too am lonely because of a) the city I live in, b) the internet, c) late stage capitalism, d) my later mid-twenties, e) I am a freak, f) all of the above.
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When I finish reading Will Harrison’s “Escape from Dimes Square” in The Baffler, I think wow, he must be lonely. I reread it a few days later. I follow him on Instagram and Twitter. Then I read comments on the essay, many reposted by the writer himself. Most are negative, but it’s all in-fighting. The main debate is over who is really on the inside and who is clearly on the outside. A general consensus on the latter: Will Harrison. I keep reading. I’ve read more comments than I have spent time with the actual essay.
Wow, I must be lonely. I eat a PB&J and get jelly on my trackpad. It stays there for days until I read the piece again. I want to write about it (the essay, not the jelly). The thought exhausts me. I could just comment like everyone else. You can comment and that is now Critique. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to write about it last week when I meant to. Instead I read more comments. A comment/critique: The person who wrote this clearly has never been to New York. They probably live in Ohio.
Writing about New York when you’re not there is fundamentally writing about a place that doesn’t exist. Or at least you’re not sure where you’re writing about actually exists. Creative writing professors will tell you that you shouldn’t write about a place if you’ve never been there. If you haven’t been there, at least don’t name the town (last night googling where Bob’s Burgers is set after my dad says New York, my sister says Rhode Island, and I say New England, none of us are right, there is no name). What professors mean to say is writing about anywhere when you’re somewhere else is fiction.
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Sad Girl Theory suggests the existence of Sad Boy Theory. It must exist, but I haven’t found it. At least not explicitly. Then again Sad Boy Theory doesn’t need to be defined because there is a large pantheon of men’s writing about being sad. Anytime a man vague posts on the internet = Sad Boy Theory. Why as a man are you writing long, thinly veiled odes to your dick (novels). Generously, we call it Sad Boy Theory. As with most theory: I’m really happy for you, or sorry that happened, but I’m not reading all of that.
Canonically sad boy Earnest Hemingway hatching Sad Boy Theories
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Even though the Ohio critique of Harrison’s writing is mean, it’s not wrong. I’d call his writing atmospheric if I could even enter his atmosphere. I can’t. I don’t think he can either. Harrison positions himself as an outsider from the get-go—assuming a meme alter ego “Go Piss Girl”—and this persona is meant to show us he gets it. He can be ironic and he can have a fake persona, just like the people he writes about. THE SAD [BOY] HAS AN OBVIOUS INVESTMENT IN INDIVIDUAL STYLE AND PERSONA. His persona isn’t really Go Piss Girl. His persona isn’t even Outsider.
“Escape from Dimes Square” isn’t an essay about decadence, reactionary downtown politics, or gentrification’s destructive nature. It’s an essay about alienation, a de facto Sad Boy Theory. Even though Harrison draws distinct geographical lines (the physical Dimes Square and the digital Dimes Square), he isn’t alienated from the internet subculture he describes. It’s alienation from the actual place he lives. He uses persona to mimic the personas people (specifically the downtown figures) use online. And in that persona, he becomes placeless. Just as empty as the neighborhood he’s describing. I imagine this is the Point he’s trying to make. But personas aren’t real. Ask any Jungian acolyte. To Harrison, Dimes Square is a state of mind. But you can’t live in the mind forever. You’ll get priced out.
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Wake up, babe, new kind of dude just dropped. Wait—another dude dropped, apparently he doesn’t read. I say out loud Jesus Christ that’s what’s out there huh. Greta Gerwig Simps for Clout Anonymous. Literary men who were once the worst, now replaced by Non-Lit men who are worse than the worst.
Now only accepting dudes who are young Al Pacino.
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I take my car to a local car wash in my hometown. When my dad sees the state of my car, he says your car is an extension of your persona! I tell him I don’t think anyone would describe me as a Ford Fiesta. He’s right though. My car is truly disgusting. There’s a small order of McDonald’s french fries scattered under the seats. I find my voter registration from 2019. There are two full sets of loose tennis balls covered in leaf detritus and lint. Sad Girl Theorem number 4: THE SAD GIRL AVOIDS THE DOMESTIC NOT OUT OF DEFIANCE BUT A SELF-DESIGNATED INCOMPETENCE.
The young man who works at the carwash helps me through my ineptitude. He’s probably twenty. His car is probably very clean. There’s a tennis racquet in my backseat. He asks me if I play tennis, for fun I say I don’t. He seems so well adjusted. Intuits my need for a smaller vacuum attachment before I think to ask him for it. I assume he thinks I’m cute, but the truth is he’s only being helpful. He isn’t going to make up stories so I pay him attention. He’s not even trying to get a better tip. He’s just nice! I wonder what it’s like to have your niceness be the first thing people notice about you. We talk through my problems (with my car). The mats are still dirty. He offers to clean them again. I tell him he’s too nice.
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Maybe I defined Sad Boy Theory my freshman year of college before Will Harrison got a chance to. I was obsessed with one boy I christened Broody Boy. He loved the Smiths and Dharma Bums. He was in a shoegaze band. I was the groupie he didn’t ask for. I assumed he was a depressive, which only increased his appeal. I actually knew very little about him. So when feelings were unreciprocated, I could continue to mourn the image I had of him in my head. From him, other replicas materialized. One night my friends and I pulled out our craft supplies like the Paris Gellars we were trying not to be. We drew a bubble map of the Broody Boy’s every iteration. Sporty Broody Boy. Rilke-songwriter Broody Boy. Cringe Tattooed Broody Boy. Poet Broody Boy. Broody Boy Twins. Normie Broody Boy. Amateur Philosopher Broody Boy. Youth Group Broody Boy. Film Club Broody Boy. Mormon Broody Boy. Broody Boy Who Knows My Name. Some I’d date, some I’d only yearn for, some I’d kiss, some I would forget until I redraw the map now in my mind.
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Names, characters, businesses, events and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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The loneliest part of “Escape from Dimes Square” comes in the second to last section. (If I hated myself I would have used the word penultimate.) It also happens to be the most memorable scene in a 2,000 word ramble chockfull of terms like blackpilled, based, and vibe shift (can we PLEASE euthanize this soulless term!) Anyways, this is the scene: Harrison is eating cheap noodles in the park before a shift at the curséd Metrograph. He’s hating himself for already writing this scene down in his little notebook. An Eastern European woman asks him if he likes his meal even though it’s not from his culture. I picture him there, though I barely know his face, slurping noodles that stain the Metrograph tie he claims to have never worn despite the theater’s supposed authoritarian management and a mandatory dress code.
My parents say I need someone to look out for me in New York. Indignant, I tell them I have friends there already. What they actually mean is they want an adult to supervise me. What I mean is I hope I won’t be eating noodles in the park as my primary social activity. When I start to write this down, I realize I’m in de facto Ohio.
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A few weeks ago, a friend told me about her theory of types in Nashville. Specifically, a sect of women she called Trinas. There were many kinds of Trinas. Out of town Trinas. Trinas who unapologetically cut the bathroom line. Trinas who look for photo-op-friendly bars with neon signs that say “Rosé All Day” or “Best Night Ever.” I learned a lot about Trinas in the ten minute car ride to pick up a pizza. The easiest way to spot a Trina is by their wide brimmed felt hats. I’m convinced by the theory. I’ve seen many Trinas in the wild. My friend has a regional equivalent of Chad for their male counterparts that I don’t remember. I bounced my knees under the heat of the pizza boxes, nodding. I wanted to write it all down, and I didn’t hate myself for wanting to.
I can’t tell you more about her theory because it’s not mine to tell. I will say my friend is a genius. The rain started to coat the pavement as we returned to the bar where other friends waited for us and our pizzas. There wasn’t a Trina in sight. This was a dive bar, after all. There were a lot of Sad qualifiers, writing theories of their own with each new round of Modelo on draft.
What I meant to ask but didn’t: what is Trina’s emotional weather? Does she have her own Sad Girl Theory? Where does her loneliness come from? I can’t quite picture it. What I can imagine is Trina sitting alone waiting for six Trina friends to arrive. She orders bottomless mimosa carafes, and hopes her friends offer to split the cost six ways. She won’t ask them. She starts to worry she actually isn’t a hat person. For a second, she considers taking it off and placing it on the empty chair beside her.