Welcome to 5 Quick Things that I saw since last month that I thought were interesting enough to share with you. None of them are particularly timely so feel free to just enjoy 🙂

>Number One<

Delicious Recipe for Haters

Creator harassment comes from a lot different angles but every now and then people suggest I start a tiktok for my recipes or that I turn my blog into a real money making machine and this article lists only one of the 1000s of reasons why that’s a terrible idea. Most of our social media is built on the idea that any press is good press, and no press gets more traffic than hate and controversy. No one blows on Twitter because of something wonderful these days. I don’t think it’ll blow anyone’s mind that even in the rote world of food recipes this isn’t any different and if you choose to engage with it, well that’s just more fuel for the fire. What I do find annoying about this article is that people want their cake (attention and virality) and to eat it too (fostering a nice community) and I just don’t think you can have them both. The truth is that just posting recipe, in a niche, isn’t enough and you do need this kind of viral engagement with “haters” to push your content outwards most times. It’s extremely disheartening to me because I’d love if people would just come and enjoy my posts and my recipes but instead I post them for myself and the void (thanks void, I know you always have my back).

>Number Two<

There Are No Great Men, Just People

This kind of messy article about revolution and how we affect people is just really lovely and encouraging to read. It’s good to stop and remind ourselves in the face of crushing machines that we do still have direct impacts on each other and the things we do, even when they don’t feel substantial, can change someones life for the better. It’s good to strive for big things but if you can only do work with and for the people around you, that’s good work, that’s the revolution too. It always helps to remember that other peoples aren’t making giant changes in the world on their own both in that every little bit helps.

>Number Three<

(A)Sexy Thoughts

If you are like me you might remember June Xie from her great budget videos on Delish where she frantically cooked and ate random things in her kitchen. She no longer works for Delish but has been doing both edited and mostly live streaming on her own YouTube channel for about the past year. This video is roughly edited and jumps from topic to topic much like most of her Budget Eats content on Delish did but it also find June telling stories about her sexuality, giving history on asexuality, and answering questions you might not know you had all while telling you how to cook without a recipe, giving you wild ideas about foods and relationships! What more could you ask for? Absolutely one of the strangest videos I have tried to get people to watch but also, extremely important.

>Number Four<

We Used to Make Fun

Are you a Millennial of a certain age who remembers signing up for one, or two, or fifteen free Angelfire/Geocities sites so you could expand your weird anime picture empire and massacre eyeballs with you 8 tables stacked together and your css boosting too many colors? Are you curious about learning HTML and CSS and playing around on the internet. Are you interested a community of people who do not want the internet to only be made by 5 billionaires who won’t do anything but steal our data and try to sell us trash while the world burns? Well then I have a website for you! The html editor being in your browser and updating to modern standard (I used to do all my coding in Notepad, it’s amazing I only have very mild sight problems) are great quality of life improvements but it’s basically a very fun modern version of ye old web where you’re meant to play and create and have fun and maybe accidentally you learn javascript and it haunts you for eternity. But mostly fun!

>Number Five<

Downer Ending

Part-poem, part-tableau this fantastic piece by John DeVore is about the internet. It’s about the evolution of digital media a naive thing to the well oiled machine that is now crushing humans told though witty notes, mini stories, and scattered ideas. I first saw it around when it was posted in 2019 and I’ve probably read it 4 or 5 times now every time it resurfaced on Twitter (usually during a journalism layoff for obvious reasons) and while I’m not quite as dour about the future of the internet as John is, I sure understand his viewpoint where I am standing at the edge of the message board, waiting the cursor to stop blinking so I can turn off.

That’s all for this month and hopefully I’ll see you back again next month with some more exciting and cool things!