The Internet Inside My Mind, Vol. II
Twitter legitimizes rage-farming & a Black cishet woman says womanhood is about suffering, and you can't take that from us!
Hello and welcome to the long overdue second edition of The Internet Inside of My Mind, a weekly gathering of the most absurd and sometimes mundane things on the internet (This was supposed to come out on Friday, July 21, my bad…)
A Reminder: Paid subscribers get an audio version of this newsletter!
In this week’s post, we’re covering:
Of Course, Elon Would Incentivize Rage-Farming
Boy, can you believe it’s only been nine months since South African Emerald mine heir Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion when it was worth, at most, $10 billion?
In his latest fundraising bid, late last week, Twitter announced a new ad revenue-sharing model, where tweeters can make big bucks for going viral on the beleaguered social media app. The catch? You have to subscribe to Twitter Blue, the $8/month subscription service that replaced verifications, you have to have earned more than 5 million impressions each month over the past three months to join, and it appears it is either invite-only or Twitter HQ has some interesting parameters on who gets the opportunity to make big bucks.
Best we can tell from the first few payouts; Musk is going the Joe Rogan/Spotify route: paying the most money to the loudest, most radical and rage-inducing creators on the app.
And they’re catching on. One user, who goes by the username “MrOverpaid,” (don’t look him up; it’s not worth it), decided to go for one of the most tried and true methods of rage-baiting for engagement: talking shit about Black women.
It took the above video post just less than 24 hours to amass close to five million views, and remember; you have to net at least five million impressions each month to qualify for the payout. Human beings are hard-wired to respond to negativity; psychologists call it the “negativity bias” (I explored it earlier this year in a post about Kanye West and Nope: check it out), and the best rage-farmers know that.
More rage means more interactions, means more engagement means more money. Musk is aware of that and hopes to ride all of that anger and outrage to the bank—even though it probably won’t save Twitter, especially with Zuckerberg’s Threads hot on his tail. Reportedly, the new Meta platform took less than one week to surpass 100M users.
Please Stop Eating Borax :(
I already covered this in yesterday’s “Thursday Thoughts” post (which is free for all subscribers), but let’s talk about it a bit here, too, from a more practical standpoint:
Why are y’all eating borax? Seriously, the data about the safety profile of ingesting is, at best, not great, and at worst? Fatal.
Even when I tracked down a source that totes the many benefits of borax consumption (arthritis, urinary tract infections, inflammation, etc.), the article notes at the bottom:
Internal use of Borax is generally not suggested. Due to its highly alkaline nature, it might cause skin irritation. There are also reports of adverse reproductive and developmental impact on the foetus. Its use in the long term is not recommended as there is a possibility of causing renal dysfunction as the borax accumulates in the body. It can also cause fatigue or vomiting due to toxicity. Some research suggests it could also cause genetic damage and be toxic to lymphocytes, the building block of the body’s immune system."
I mean…there has to be a better way to get rid of UTIs that won’t cause my kidneys to fail, right?
Right????
Jess Hilarious ironically has nothing funny to say…is just transphobic?
Recently, social media comedienne and former Wildin’ Out cast member Jess Hilarious, born Jessica Moore, made her position on transwomen very clear: “Hey you, only us WOMEN have a monopoly on suffering.”
Yep. Womanhood is defined by our ability to push human beings out of our lady parts and endure a monthly bloodbath. That’s womanhood. Do you know something that’s always bothered me about ciswomen who use their narrowly-defined idea of womanhood to try and exclude transwomen? What do we have a monopoly on, exactly? So I compiled a list:
Femicide: The U.S. ranks 34th worldwide for femicide, broadly defined as “the intentional killing of women or girls because they are female.” Millions of women are murdered every day for the crime of being a woman
Menstruation: Let me be clear: there’s nothing inherently wrong with menstruation, but let’s be honest; it comes with its own complications. For an unlucky few, who might suffer from Endometriosis or Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), periods can be a debilitating monthly visitor. Or you can have Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), a severe form of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) that can make the weeks leading up to your period mental and emotional torture. Even if you’re one of the people with a standard, three days long, no cramps, perfectly delightful period, you still have to pay for period products, which no health insurance covers. DYK that 500 million people don’t have adequate access to period products in the U.S. alone? It’s called period poverty, yet another thing we “women” monopolize.
Medical Mysogny: But don’t expect medicine to solve any of the above problems because medical research simply cannot give less of a fuck. Gender bias in medical research quite literally kills women. Women who suffer from cardiac episodes are less likely to receive care than their male counterparts. Why? Because most cardiac research and guidelines are built around the symptoms and treatment for MEN.
There’s also the other fun shit like the gender pay gap, intimate partner violence (yes, men can be DV victims, but women tend to outnumber men), the unequal share of child care and domestic responsibilities, etc.
Do you see a common theme here? Suffering. Sure, the ability to create life is amazing, but childbirth can also kill you if we’re being honest. And what if I don’t want to give birth, or I cannot? Then what? Am I not a woman? By their own transphobic standards, womanhood is just suffering and childbirth. Remove childbirth, and it’s a lifetime of suffering.
Who the hell wants a monopoly on that?
And, of course, there’s this:
Transphobia is so often turned against Black women (remember how quickly rumors of singer Ciara being intersex or born a man circulated?), and DJ Akademiks didn’t have to say it, but I know why he “thought” Jess Hilarious was a man: shes a tall, dark skin Black woman with angular facial features. Dark skin women, especially, are so often masculinized that I’m not surprised Jess Hilarious is clinging to, what she believes, the “advantages” of womanhood. But having a period does not defines a woman; giving birth does not defines a woman. It never has been, and it never will be.