#708: Sepia brides and folk heuristics

“This is insane to me. I don’t understand.”

We don’t typically follow the antics of social media main characters here — frankly, I’m too old for a lot of this shit — but let’s suspend that unspoken policy to rag on Sepia Bride for a minute.

The unhappily toned bride — née Alexandra Jaye Weinstein, now Alexandra Jaye Conder — took to TikTok 14+ times last week to savage the work of her unwitting wedding photographer. The photographer, one Hannah Elise, flew to Anguilla last November to shoot Conder’s lavish seaside ceremony. Then, weeks after Conder got the photos back and pronounced her “love” for them, she decided she no longer liked Elise’s heavy-handed, golden-hued editing style … kicking off a week of very tiresome rich-girl drama that has since spilled over onto Reddit and Threads.

For what it’s worth, I have no real opinions on the style or editing of the photos themselves. I think anything that cribs an Instagram aesthetic will look pretty dated in 10 or 20 years. (But so does everything after the cruel march of time, so — I don’t know, whatever, who cares.) Instead, I fell down this particular rabbit hole because Conder’s articulated orientation toward both her wedding photographer and the world was so immediately and profoundly unlikeable to me — the pretty, privileged paragon of elevating aesthetics over absolutely everything.

Conder admittedly straddles three worlds where aesthetics are king: She’s a former professional make-up artist who is now making a go at “influencing,” in large part by posting many, many photos and videos from her extravagant destination wedding. Much time and thought and actual money were clearly invested in the look of that event, where a videographer, a film photographer and a social media content creator joined the now-disfavored photog in the production of #wedding #content. Guests were even instructed to wear “chic” clothes, which, lol — if I’m paying $800 a night for your destination venue, I’ll wear Vera Wang for Kohl’s and you will like it.

“Do people get married for the photos?” One commenter asked Conder. “This is insane to me. I don’t understand.”

“No, we do not get married for the photos,” she responded. “But we do get married. And love photos.”

Alternatively, maybe we take photos … and love weddings. Maybe we take photos and love existing on this earth. Who’s to say, really, when content is rewarded so exuberantly and by so many people, while lived experience fades from our individual, nonviral, unaesthetic memories like so much sepia ink in old-timey photos. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

🎤 Programming notes: Links will be off next week for the July 4 holiday. I’m also planning a trip to New York City in August and wondering if … it might be fun to organize some kind of very casual social hang?? If you live in New York and would be interested in meeting up at a bar or some such with me/Jason/other Links subscribers, please comment or email me.

💌 Reminder!!: This is your LAST CHANCE to submit long-forgotten personal emails for my project running later this summer. I’ve gotten lots of wonderful messages so far but am still taking submissions. Learn more about that project here and forward your emails to linksiwouldgchatyou@gmail.com OR submit them via Google Form by June 30.

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If you read anything this weekend

“Generation Franchise: Why Writers Are Forced to Become Brands (and Why That’s Bad),” by Jess Row for Literary Hub. I think about Rebecca Jennings’ piece on the “soul-sucking labor” of artist self-promotion at least once a week, so imagine my delight (also: anxiety, unease) when I discovered this very highbrow and writing-specific take on that selfsame theme. Row weaves a few big threads together here: the rise of autofiction and influencing, the bloggy tendency toward self-disclosure, the modern impulse to make a corporate brand your personality (see also: Disney, Sephora). The result, he argues, is a culture that regularly confuses a writer’s “personhood” with her work, an insight that probably extends far outside of literature.

“What Game of Thrones Did to the Media,” by Kevin Nguyen for The Verge. This isn’t actually about Game of Thrones, as such — it’s about Facebook and Google and the manic, madcap moment in digital media history when both platforms hosed news sites with sweet, sweet traffic. I was there for that time; shit was fun! And hopeful. And obviously destined not to last. Curiously, a lot of media outlets apparently still recap every episode of House of the Dragon, even though it is (by all accounts!) not very good and the online monoculture is a thing of the past.

“Tiktok LLM,” by

Eleanor Stern

for The New Inquiry. WHEW, okay — this one’s a journey, and I mean that as the highest of compliments. I didn’t see where it was going until after I’d finished, but I was nonetheless pretty happy to go along for a fascinating, unexpected ramble through TikTok algospeak and language learning and African linguistics. (Incidentally, this is the best of at least four essays on internet slang that published in the past six days; see also: The Atlantic, The New York Times and Fast Company.)

“Swallowing: I Was Mike Mew’s Patient,” by Gabriel Smith for The Paris Review. Mike Mew is a hero among incels and other internet unfortunates, who have embraced his quack methods for “facial restructuring” with an enthusiasm verging on desperate. Smith is a writer (with a very distinct facial structure, I feel compelled to point out?) who was also, as a child, Mew’s dental patient. Really interesting, kind of creepy, beautifully written — between this and the Twitter fights Smith picks with his reviewers, I’m definitely sold on reading his new novel.

“Hawk Tuah and the Zynternet,” by

Max Read

for Read Max. The analysis is good, the writing is brilliant — let’s just quote from this one:

“Over the last ten years or so, a broad community of fratty, horndog, boorishly provocative 20- and sometimes (embarrassingly) 30-somethings — mostly but by no means entirely male — has emerged to form a newly prominent online subculture. This network is adjacent to the ‘sports internet’ of 40something dads and the ‘hustle internet’ of Miami crypto bullshit and the ‘reactionary internet’ of trad influencers, but is its own distinct community with its own distinct cultural referents — college sports, gambling, light domestic beers, Zyn nicotine pouches —and influential personalities and media outlets …

These groups may never have really been organized into a subculture absent two other important developments: The first is Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, which has been extremely beneficial to all kinds of demonstratively macho subcultures for reasons that have been discussed ad nauseaum. The second is the legalization of sports gambling in many states, which has flooded media properties that cater to Zynternet demographics with cash, either as advertisers or often as owners.

The result is an internet culture that is on the whole much frattier than it was in 2014. I would say ‘for better and for worse’ but I’m not exactly sure what the ‘for better’ part is.”

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In case you missed it

The most-clicked link from last Saturday’s edition was this LAT write-up of the free streamer Tubi. (Every time I think I know what you guys will click on … you go ahead and throw me a curve ball like that!)

#707: Rodent boyfriends and right-wing fantasies

On Thursday, I wrote about my personal song of the summer and the inexorable, ubiquitous mainstreaming of TikTok-viral songs.

TikTok on the radio

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Postscripts

The meme-ification of Anthony Bourdain. The Canva-ification of everything. Facebook is an AI spam wasteland where Hot AI Jesus is lord and king. Wtf is happening at The Washington Post? Are noise-canceling headphones bad for you? Celibate girl summer. Anti-escapist games. Listen to the AI “ripoff songs” that got two companies sued.

The surreal fiction in Apple Store inboxes. A “folk heuristics of credibility.” The current topography of reservation apps. The (less bountiful) future of TV streaming. I’m not late, I’m just time optimistic. TikTok is selling egg-freezing treatments that most women never need. Last but not least, a fascinating theory of tradwifery: “Women only get to be full citizens if they have control over when and how they have babies. When that changes, your citizenship becomes vulnerable, so you attach yourself to a citizen: men.”

BELOW the paywall you’ll also find:

• Unlocked links from the The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic

• The most entertaining documentary you can stream right now

• The single best link I clicked this week

• A small giveaway for paid subscribers

That’s it for this week! Until after the break. Warmest virtual regards,

Caitlin