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2024.05.27 05:10 starting_to_learn Taylor Swift and the Confessional Poets Department: An Anti-Hero's Confessional Journey from Midnights to TTPD

Taylor Swift’s music has long been branded “confessional.” When people call Taylor’s work “confessional,” they might mean that her music is emotionally confessional. But when it comes to Taylor Swift, this belief that her music is emotionally confessional is closely tied to the belief that she is delivering an autobiographical accounting of her life through her lyrics. Her music is perceived as grounded in real events and real people, peppered with “clues” that, if followed, will lead you to the True Story she is telling.
Interesting to consider in light of TTPD, the term “confessional” as applied to art actually has its roots in poetry. The confessional poets were a small group in the late 1950s-1960s who changed the face of American poetry, shifting towards a much more personal, autobiographical style. They included Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, and most well-known today, Sylvia Plath - amongst others. The central breakthrough of their work was in “removing the mask” that had previously hidden the poet from view in their work. The confessional poets grounded their work in their own personal experiences and laid bare the most intimate details of their inner lives, delving into “taboo” subjects like mental illness and childhood trauma. This was seen as a major change for poetry to be so grounded in the poet’s interior life and personal history as the explicit subject. These poets became literary celebrities with much attention paid to the details of their personal lives - or in Plath’s case, her death.
After falling down a rabbit hole learning about the confessional poets, I believe that Taylor drew inspiration from this group on TTPD and crafted the album, at least in part, as a meditation on the concept of “confession.” I think her treatment of confession on TTPD is multi-layered - simultaneously pulling back the curtain towards a sincere unveiling of inner truth, while also, on a more meta level, examining what it means to create confessional art and, more broadly, what it means to confess. I’d argue that TTPD is all at once a personal act of confession, a performance of confession complete with a clue package so on-the-nose People Magazine only needed a day to crack it, and - if you’re keeping an ear out for those red herrings - a subversion of the expectations for confessional art. Which, as it turns out, is not so different from what the confessional poets themselves did.
After examining TTPD through this lens, I also revisited Midnights - and I hear the beginnings of this confessional journey stirring on that album, laying the groundwork for TTPD. Within the 321 “exile ends” countdown theory, this means that she began this confessional journey at 3 (Midnights) and ramped it up at 2 (TTPD). Where do we go from here? She just might be on the road to confessing her truth in swooping, sloping, cursive letters.
So, my fellow Gaylors, if you’d like to join me down this rabbit hole - I stand before you with a ~~summary of~~ long-ass dissertation on my findings!
Disclaimers:

I was inspired to do this research based on initial connections between TTPD and Sylvia Plath I've seen percolating (i.e., these posts), plus the Ted Hughes poem, Red, that Florence posted as "recommended by Taylor.”
I am not an expert on the confessional poetry movement. I learned a lot through my research for this post, and I'm sure I've still barely scratched the surface of this rabbit hole, so I'd welcome anyone with more expertise who can build on these connections!
My main goal in this post is to analyze Midnights and TTPD through this confessional lens. When drawing connections to the confessional poetry movement, I’m going to deal with the movement broadly and focus on how this work was collectively understood, perceived, and talked about - both by the literary establishment and by these poets themselves. Dealing in broad strokes means I’ll be missing nuance in the specifics of each poet, and it is not my intention to mischaracterize any of their work. It’s just the only way to keep the post manageable.

What is confessional poetry?

The term "confessional" was first used to describe Robert Lowell's Life Studies, which was considered a "tell-all" on his troubled youth and ongoing mental health struggles. In his review of Life Studies, M.L. Rosenthal defined confession as an act of “removing the mask.” He wrote, “[Lowell’s] speaker is unequivocally himself, and it is hard not to think of Life Studies as a series of personal confidences, rather shameful, that one is honor-bound not to reveal.” (Source)
Robert Lowell became the top literary celebrity of his time, and the confessional genre the most popular genre of poetry. Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton were Lowell’s students at Boston University and this group all drew inspiration from one another. While the trope of the tortured artist certainly predates this group, it’s notable that, for these poets, “tortured” was and is a central part of how the public understood their identities as artists. Interestingly, Lowell, Plath, and Sexton were all hospitalized (repeatedly) at the same psychiatric hospital, McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, and wrote about their experiences. Plath wrote of her experiences there in her famous novel The Bell Jar. One of Lowell’s most famous poems, Waking in the Blue, was written based on his experience at McLean. McLean was described as “America’s most literary hospital” in this article from The Atlantic titled "The Mad Poets Society."
There is a complicated legacy to the term “confessional” in art, beginning with these poets. Most of them absolutely hated the term. There was a sense that it reduced their art to a mere regurgitation of feelings without craft. There was a tendency to treat their work as very literal autobiography, to reduce it to a reporting of facts, though these poets themselves repeatedly said that, while their work was grounded in personal truths, it was not necessarily always literally factual. There came to be a mythos around these artists - not on the same scale as the Taylor Swift Cinematic Universe, but the parallels are there.
At the same time as artists resisted the word, the public is undoubtedly hungry for these personal confessions. Today, we need only look at Taylor Swift’s massive star power to see the draw of so-called confessional art.
Note before we move on: I’m going to use the word “confessional” throughout this post because, right or wrong, it’s the word that is commonly used to describe this type of art, and I also think Taylor is specifically playing with different meanings of the word. I don’t mean any disrespect towards the poets who didn’t like the term.

What Makes Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department Confessional Works

MIDNIGHTS: "Meet Me At Midnight"
A return to autobiographical writing was a central part of the sales pitch for Midnights. She wove this message into promotional appearances, for example the Jimmy Fallon interview where she describes Midnights as her “first directly autobiographical work in a while.” The album announcement branded Midnights “the story of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life.” She closes the announcement with “Meet me at midnight.” This return to direct, explicit autobiography, combined with the promise of personal revelations implied in “Meet me at midnight,” places us squarely within the confessional mode.
This messaging is especially interesting when we consider that Taylor’s previous work, with the exception of folklore/evermore, is widely considered to be a faithful autobiographical recounting of events from her life. Fans receiving this invitation to meet her at midnight might ask themselves: But haven’t we already met you? Haven’t you already revealed your innermost feelings and the private details of your life in your songwriting for years? The implication seems to be: no, you haven’t met me yet, but you will. The implication is that she is on the road to revealing herself in some new way that will invite us to truly meet her. This calls to mind the imagery of “removing the mask” from Rosenthal’s review of Life Studies, pulling back the veneer to reveal what is underneath. Pulling back the curtain, perhaps?
https://preview.redd.it/r0r6jwo3nv2d1.png?width=1018&format=png&auto=webp&s=56932d70204cb7f85bf9ecb964736595fd44c007
Importantly, it’s not just us, the public, who are implied to have not met Taylor. It’s also implied that she is estranged from herself: “For all of us who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go searching - hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve, we’ll meet ourselves.” Midnights represents her first step down the road towards meeting herself - and an invitation for us to join her.
While we did not meet her on Midnights, the songs on this album did begin to pull back the curtain. The entire concept of this album, exploring things that keep her up in the middle of the night, suggests a new kind of vulnerability. Taylor herself said of Anti-Hero: “I don’t think I’ve delved this far into my insecurities in this detail before…this song is a real guided tour through all the things I tend to hate about myself…I like Anti-Hero a lot because I think it’s really honest.” (Source) We also have Maroon and Hits Different - the two most obviously sapphic songs she’s released that she herself classified as “autobiography.” We have Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve, a searing exploration of lost girlhood.
Towards the end of the album and into the 3AM edition, she starts to explicitly grapple with the concept of confession. Interestingly, Taylor has not used the word “confess” that often in her discography. Midnights contains two mentions of the word, the most of any TS album at the time of release.
The first mention comes in Mastermind when she says: “No one wanted to play with me as a little kid / So I’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since / To make them love me and make it seem effortless / This is the first time I’ve felt the need to confess.”
Mastermind closes the standard edition of Midnights on this note - that this is the first time she’s felt the need to confess, signaling a new type of revelation. In this context, she is playing with legal imagery. She’s been scheming like a criminal, and now she is confessing to the “crime” of masterminding her career to make everyone love her.
Then we transition into the 3AM edition, which contains even more themes of confession. We get our second use of the word on Paris, where she longs to confess her truth: “I want to transport you to somewhere the culture’s clever / Confess my truth in swooping, sloping cursive letters.”
Finally, the 3AM edition closes on Dear Reader. While she does not explicitly use the word “confess” here, she is very much operating in the confessional mode. The bridge, in particular, recontextualizes the entire album as an act of confession. She describes the songs on Midnights (“these nights” that she wanders through) as the “desperate prayers of a cursed man spilling out to you for free.” She is spilling confessions out to us on this album in the form of desperate prayers. And then she makes a further confession - “you wouldn’t take my word for it if you knew who was talking.” She begs her audience not to take her at her word, to instead hear her “desperate prayers” and see what she is “hiding in plain sight.” Dear Reader is arguably the most confessional song on the album - and it tees us up perfectly for TTPD, where she will take these confessions even further.
THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT
“Confession” is a word with several meanings. I believe that Taylor is exploring all these different meanings of the word on TTPD:

Most broadly, a personal intimate revelation
A religious sacrament: the confession of sins
A legal statement: confessing to a crime

It’s apt, then, that the term “confessional” was first applied to Lowell because he existed at the intersection of all definitions of the word. His struggles with mental illness were well-known in the literary community. He was a Catholic convert. And he was well-known for having served time as a conscientious objector to WWII. The other poets who came to be dubbed “confessional” tended to share some of these traits with him - a lengthy public struggle with mental illness, a preoccupation with religion, and/or brushes with the law. These subjects were explored in the confessional poets’ work.
I’m going to focus below mainly on how TTPD is exploring these different facets of confession. There are layers to the treatment of confession on this album. I would argue that TTPD is all at once a sincere act of confession; a performance of confession, targeted to the public; and a subversion of that performance in the form of “red herrings.”
She is so productive, it’s an art! Let’s dive in.
CONFESSION AS “REMOVING THE MASK”
The confessional poets pushed the boundaries of what you could say in a poem. Particularly at the time, the topics they were known for writing about were considered quite taboo and improper - and this was part of what made this “breakthrough” new and exciting. Consider this quote from Sylvia Plath, then an up-and-coming poet, and how she describes Lowell and Sexton’s work:

I've been very excited by what I feel is the new breakthrough that came with, say, Robert Lowell's Life Studies, this intense breakthrough into very serious, very personal, emotional experience which I feel has been partly taboo. Robert Lowell's poems about his experience in a mental hospital, for example, interested me very much. These peculiar, private and taboo subjects…I think particularly the poetess Anne Sexton, who writes about her experiences as a mother, as a mother who has had a nervous breakdown, is an extremely emotional and feeling young woman and her poems are wonderfully craftsmanlike poems and yet they have a kind of emotional and psychological depth which I think is something perhaps quite new, quite exciting. (Source)

On TTPD, Taylor is similarly pushing the boundaries of what you can say in a song - and she is certainly pushing the boundaries past what she has previously said in a song. She is delving deeper into the most intimate and painful elements of her interior life, evoking imagery and subject matters the confessional poets are known for with lyrics like:

“I was supposed to be sent away / but they forgot to come and get me / I was a functioning alcoholic / til nobody noticed my new aesthetic”
“If I can’t have him / I might just die, it would make no difference”
“Stitches undone / two graves, one gun”
“I want to snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me / you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me”
“The hospital was a drag / worst sleep that I ever had”

In addition, Taylor delivers some of her most explicit lyrics on Guilty as Sin. We have unbridled rage in Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me, The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, even the way she calls out “the most judgmental creeps” on But Daddy I Love Him. We also have a healthy dose of homicidal ideation with lyrics like: “Your wife waters flowers, I wanna kill her” and “I did my best to lay to rest / all of the bodies that have ever been on my body / and in my mind, they sink into the swamp.” “Is that a bad thing to say in a song?” she asks. She says it anyway. The mask is off.
https://preview.redd.it/pzhrg40qov2d1.png?width=1266&format=png&auto=webp&s=e68932f37b34ff6acadbceea64f18f9c9ca05536
CONFESSION AS A RELIGIOUS SACRAMENT
Art as a Sacred Catharsis: “This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it. And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry.”
The word “confession” calls to mind the religious confessional, where one confesses their sins to be absolved of them. In the Catholic tradition, it’s only through confession that one can be free of their sins, achieve holiness, and re-establish communion with God. Sin constitutes a separation from God; confession allows for “wholeness.”
The above excerpt from Taylor’s post about TTPD evokes this religious imagery, where writing music is the act of confession. Our tears become holy when we shed them as ink on a page; when we confess our saddest story, we are free of it. TTPD is that act of confession - a sacred catharsis.
She spells this out on the album’s concluding track, The Manuscript, where she describes the catharsis of channeling agony into art. Once she’s confessed this story, she is free of it. It isn’t hers anymore.
https://preview.redd.it/ffv5cjn0pv2d1.png?width=1016&format=png&auto=webp&s=5d8389c1d504110b3e2a110555a86f49c25e57fb
In this religious context, TTPD as an act of confession implies the existence of a sin to be confessed. She explores this theme heavily on the album - what it means to be guilty as sin and what it means to be holy.
Love as Holiness: “What if the way you hold me is actually what’s holy?”
The true nature of holiness and sin is a major theme on TTPD - contrasting traditional notions of holiness and sin against how the author defines these words for herself. While this theme is absolutely rampant on TTPD, it’s not the first time a TS album has asked these questions. This theme blossomed on Lover before reaching new heights on TTPD.
On Lover, her love is positioned as sacred. She sings on Cornelia Street: “Sacred new beginnings that became my religion.” False God expands on this theme by drawing a contrast between this sacred love and the concept of a “false god” - an act of idolatry, a sin. She seems to say: even if they consider this love to be a sin, WE will still worship this love. We will still make this love our religion. “Confession” on False God is the act of making amends with her lover, re-establishing communion between them. “Got the wine for you” calls to mind the act of receiving holy communion, the body and blood of Christ - which, according to Catholic tradition, you are not allowed to receive when in a state of mortal sin. You must first receive the sacrament of confession before you can partake in communion. On False God, this love is her God - and they make confessions to break down the separation between them and achieve oneness.
This contrast from False God - between how others perceive her love as sinful, while she considers it her true religion - carries forward onto TTPD. On Guilty as Sin, she contrasts the “long-suffering propriety” they want from her with “the way you hold me” - and she insists this is actually what’s holy. She takes it a step further on But Daddy I Love Him. Here, she points an accusing finger back at those who would accuse her of sinfulness. She casts the Sarahs and Hannahs as the guilty ones - guilty of hatred, raising you to cage you, “vipers in empaths’ clothing.” They don’t need to pray for her because she is not the sinner. They are. This condemnation carries forward onto Cassandra, where she castigates the pure greed of the “Christian chorus line” who “never spared a prayer for [her] soul.” On The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, this man wears a “Jehovah’s Witness suit” - a predator peddling a false idea of holiness.
What began on Lover as honoring the holiness of her love transforms on TTPD into a castigation of those who would say it’s a sin. Lover is reverence; TTPD is a righteous fire of judgment sent to engulf a fallen world, a la the End Times.
https://preview.redd.it/zj1i5kefpv2d1.png?width=1170&format=png&auto=webp&s=78d67df8d85929f3f464bd3e8dfdcd329fe30c4a
So, we know what TTPD doesn’t consider to be her sin. The question remains - if she is confessing, then what is she confessing to? What sin is she seeking absolution for?
The Original Sin: “Forgive me, Peter.”
Peter is the only song on the album where we hear her ask for forgiveness: “Forgive me, Peter.” This evokes the words you would say in a confessional: “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
What is her sin? Leaving Peter behind - her “lost fearless leader in closets like cedar.” Preserved in the closet where she left him. She asks Peter to forgive her because she didn’t truly want to leave him there: “I didn’t want to come down / I thought it was just goodbye for now.” She believed that Peter would grow up and come find her, that they would be reunited - but it hasn’t happened.
The second and final time she asks Peter for forgiveness comes at the end of the song. She asks his forgiveness for turning out the light: “Forgive me, Peter / Please know that I tried to hold on to the days when you were mine / But the woman who waits by the window has turned out the light.” Here, turning out the light symbolizes giving up hope for Peter’s return.
Her sin, then, is two-fold: leaving Peter behind and then giving up hope that they could be reunited. And I’d argue that this is no ordinary sin - this separation from Peter is the original sin of the TTPD universe, akin to the original sin of Adam and Eve that separates mankind from God - the root of all suffering. On Peter, she compares herself to Adam, missing a rib: “The goddess of timing once found us beguiling / She said she was trying / Peter, was she lying? / My ribs get the feeling she did.” The implication is that Peter is the Eve to her Adam, carved out from her rib - and, in their separation, she feels the hollowness of this missing part of her. The Prophecy evokes this same Adam and Eve imagery: “I got cursed like Eve got bitten. Was it punishment?” This is a direct reference to the concept of original sin and the punishment that followed. The punishment is exile - being cast out of the garden. She can only return there in her mind (“secret gardens in my mind”).
This all gets very interesting and poignant if we posit that she is singing to a lost part of herself on Peter - that she is in exile from herself. (There have been a number of great analyses of this song through that lens; i.e., this one.) Her original sin of denying herself created this rift within her, which caused her suffering. She confesses in order to return to communion with herself. To become whole again. “Forgive me, Peter.”
This calls back to the Midnights foreword, the sense of estrangement from herself and the search to find herself: “For all of us who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go searching - hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve, we’ll meet ourselves.”
Importantly, in the Christian tradition, the crucifixion/resurrection was God’s answer to original sin, building a bridge for humanity to once again be one with God. So, these lyrics from Guilty as Sin are quite relevant here: “What if I roll the stone away? They’re gonna crucify me anyway.” The willingness to be crucified in the name of rolling the stone away - revealing this reborn version of herself - is the answer to original sin. Rolling the stone away is how she meets herself. And, in this context, rolling the stone away is, in essence, confession. It’s removing the mask, revealing what lies underneath. It’s exiting her tomb of silence.
Is TTPD the act of confession that will bring her back to herself and allow her to return to the garden? God, I hope so.
CONFESSION AS A LEGAL STATEMENT
I said earlier that while I think TTPD is a sincere piece of confessional art, I also think that it is intentionally crafted as a performance of confession. By this I mean - TTPD is crafted to give the people what they want and expect from confessional art, particularly Taylor Swift’s confessional art. And what do the people want? They want the scoop. The gory details of her personal life. They want her to name names and tell them exactly what went down. In other words, they want to trace the evidence.
The performance of confession on TTPD hinges on the evidence she feeds the audience and how she directs us to use it. To understand this performance, we have to explore how TTPD navigates the third definition of the word “confession.” It’s time to go to court.
The Hearing: “At this hearing, I stand before my fellow members of The Tortured Poets Department with a summary of my findings.”
Since announcing TTPD, Taylor has been teasing the concept of this album as a hearing. She spoke of “entering into evidence.” She presented the artifacts. And now here she is, standing before the public, making a “plea of temporary insanity.”
https://preview.redd.it/v7fuuh2rqv2d1.png?width=532&format=png&auto=webp&s=90e3c98b43f02dfd592c21f6fa664fdcb443d689
This imagery introduces yet another layer to the concept of this album as “confessional.” Here, we are in a courtroom, and she is confessing to a crime. She is presenting us with the evidence to support her plea.
I think there are two layers to the courtroom imagery. The first is the defendant herself trying to make sense of the losses she has sustained, sorting through the evidence. Hits Different off Midnights introduces this language: “I trace the evidence, make it make some sense why the wound is still bleeding.” This language continues onto TTPD - i.e., in So Long London, she asks, “You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues?” This is in line with how Taylor has spoken about using music to make sense of her life.
But the second layer is that this isn’t just Taylor trying to make sense of things on her own. She is confessing directly to an audience - her fellow members of the tortured poets department, the public. She is again breaking the fourth wall, like on Dear Reader.
Importantly, this courtroom imagery bookends the listener’s experience of the album. It served as the audience’s first introduction to the album at the start of the promotional cycle. And she closes the album with this imagery via the epilogue poem. The whole album is framed as a court hearing.
This is fascinating within the context of the Taylor-verse because this framing directly parallels the way the public engages with her music. Her lyrics are treated as a factual, autobiographical accounting of her life (particularly her love life), which the public scours for evidence in an investigative mission to uncover the True Story she is telling vis-a-vis what we know of her personal life. And her music is, in fact, often reduced to an investigation into her love life. To most media outlets and fans, analysis of a Taylor Swift song seems to mean examining which man the song is about. The lyrics serve as evidence, rather than art.
So, when Taylor tells her audience that she is entering something into evidence, we are primed; we know what to do. Time to pull out the magnifying glass and every pap photo of Taylor taken in the last two years. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that she gave us so much “evidence” to work with over the course of the last year? So many public sightings of her to expertly match up with the lyrics on TTPD. Not to mention the Eras Tour as an opportunity for non-stop Easter egging. She presented her information-hungry audience with a veritable buffet of evidence to pick through and match up with the album.
And the album itself is chock-full of “clues” linking lyrics back to real-life figures in the TSCU. She already knows that her audience will follow those clues; it’s what happens every album cycle. But this time she doesn’t just lay the bait and wait for everyone to take it. She lays the bait and tells us to take it. She says that she is entering this evidence for us to review. She stands before us with a summary of her findings. She directs us to conduct the post-mortem.
When was the last time she so brazenly invited speculation? I’d argue that this brings us right back to the beginning of her career, hiding secret messages in the liner notes and directing her audience to decode the messages to find out who or what the song was about. She said she wanted people to read her lyrics. But the end result was that people read her lyrics without really reading them. Her lyrics that she was so proud of were not treated as art. They were reduced to clues, evidence linking the song to this man or that. And we need only read the Reputation prologue to know how she came to feel about that:
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So, it begs the question - Why is she directing her audience to follow the trail of evidence she laid out? Why evoke the language of the courtroom if she doesn’t want her music to be paternity tested in the court of public opinion? Why enact this performance of confession that seems to play directly into the public’s worst impulses?
Well, you know what they say: if it feels like a trap, you’re already in one.
Red Herrings: “And so I enter into evidence my tarnished coat of arms; my muses, acquired like bruises…”
Along with teasing the concept of TTPD as a court hearing from the very beginning, Taylor also introduced the suggestion of “red herrings” the same day she announced the album. This is no coincidence. A “red herring” is both a literary device AND a rhetorical device used in legal settings to distract or divert attention away from the main issues of the case. (Source) So, red herrings are a perfect fit for an album that centers on confession, playing in sandboxes both literary and legal.
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If you’re in this corner of the internet, you likely believe that Taylor has been using red herrings in her work for quite some time as a tool to obscure and distract from her real-life muses. Naming a song “Style” is a perfect example of how she might very overtly hint at a public-facing muse in order to distract from the true inspiration. But, importantly, no matter how obvious we think these past red herrings were, TTPD marks a first: the first time she has explicitly pointed to red herrings in an album as part of the promotional cycle. The Rep prologue took us halfway there with the assertion that everyone who tried to paternity test the songs would be wrong. But now she’s saying: I am entering this evidence for you to review, but the evidence itself contains red herrings. I am planting evidence that is going to lead you to the wrong conclusion. Again: If it feels like a trap, you’re already in one.
Why do this? Why intentionally misdirect and then TELL us that’s what she’s doing? I can only assume that she wants us to see it. If she directs her audience to trace the evidence and tells us there are red herrings - well, then we will look for the red herrings. Or at least some of us will. And if we look closely enough, we’ll find them.
thanK you aIMee is a perfect example. There are three layers here: First, we have the subject of the song identified as Aimee. Then we have an old-school Taylor “hidden clue” in the title of the song - capitalizing letters to spell out Kim. Everyone sees that very obvious “clue” and pats themselves on the back for “solving the case”: the song is about Kim Kardashian. But then we have this line in the song: “I changed your name and any real defining clues / and one day, your kid comes home singin’ / a song that only us two is gonna know is about you.” Seems a bit contradictory, huh? She says she changed any real defining clues, but surely capitalizing letters in the song title to spell out someone’s name is a pretty defining clue. I smell a red herring. It could be that the capitalized letters are a red herring. It could be that the line in the song about not leaving any defining clues is a cheeky misdirection meant to cast doubt on the “clue” she left. I’d argue it’s probably both. Either way, the obvious contradiction built into this particular song serves to cast doubt on the history of Easter egging song subjects in the TSCU. This song takes us right back to the early days of Easter egging, capitalizing letters in lyric books to spell out secret messages. If this is a misdirection, who's to say there weren't misdirections built into the Easter eggs from the beginning?
The Alchemy is another example. This song falls near the end of the album, the final “muse-coded” song of the standard edition of TTPD. And if you’ve been tracing the evidence through the songs up until now, you’ll find matching “clues” in this song that seem to point at Matty Healy: themes of returning to a lost love, drug references in “heroin but this time with an E.” But wait - now she’s using a bunch of football references? There’s beer sticking to the floor while your friends lift you up over their heads because you just won the big game? The football imagery is so heavy-handed that it took very little time for every entertainment media outlet in creation to post a carousel of TayloTravis images along with lyrics to the song. But if you can keep yourself from getting distracted by the “Tayvis” fanfare, you might ask yourself - what the heck is going on in this song? Is it about Matty or Travis? Is it about both of them? The inherent contradictions point to another red herring, “clues” planted to mislead. And, well, if there are misdirections about the identities of her romantic muses built into this song…then who’s to say there aren’t misdirections built into the others? Who’s to say that anything you think you “know” about the identities of her muses is true, even if she’s the one who planted the evidence? Who’s to say that she is telling you the truth?
This line of questioning cracks open the entire foundation of muse-driven Easter egging in the TSCU. Following the trail of evidence to the red herrings she planted about muse identities will lead you to question the entire enterprise of following the evidence in the first place. And I think that’s precisely the point. You’re in a trap, and she wants you to know it. Because this practice of attaching public-facing male muses to all of her work has Taylor in a trap, too. As she says in Mastermind, she’s spent her whole career “scheming like a criminal to make them love [her] and make it seem effortless.” This is the first time she’s felt the need to confess. She’s copping to the scheming, pointing us to the red herrings. She’s asking us to accept her plea of temporary insanity on account of her restricted humanity. Asking that we understand the plight of the caged beast, driven to do the most curious things.
And if we’re going to understand, then we must understand this: we’re all in a trap. If her fans are going to embrace her rolling the stone away, they have to first see that tomb of silence for what it was: a trap ensnaring us all, limiting her artistic expression, and preventing her audience from hearing the core truth in her music.
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Confessional Art: How much is confession? How much is art?

So, we’ve established these core precepts of the TTPD Universe: TTPD is a sincerely confessional album, representing a continuation of our anti-hero’s journey towards “meet me at midnight.” At the same time, TTPD is not necessarily based in literal, factual truths - and Dr. Swift has confessed that to us, too.
Is that a contradiction? Do the red herrings she planted exist in opposition to confessional art? I would argue, no, they do not.
The public’s foundational understanding of confessional art is that it is faithfully, literally autobiographical. It tells us the factual truth about the author. But just how true is that? For the confessional poets, when it came to truth in art, facts were besides the point. Consider this quote from Robert Lowell about his artistic process (emphasis mine):

“They're not always factually true. There's a good deal of tinkering with fact. You leave out a lot, and emphasize this and not that. Your actual experience is a complete flux. I've invented facts and changed things, and the whole balance of the poem was something invented. So there's a lot of artistry, I hope, in the poems. Yet there's this thing: if a poem is autobiographical—and this is true of any kind of autobiographical writing and of historical writing, you want the reader to say, “This is true.” In something like Macaulay's History of England, you think you're really getting William III. That's as good as a good plot in a novel. And so there was always that standard of truth which you wouldn't ordinarily have in poetry—the reader was to believe he was getting the real Robert Lowell.” (Source)

Here, Lowell seems to say that a core part of his artistic mission was to write poetry that would be experienced as true. He crafted his poems to deliver the experience and impression of the “real Robert Lowell.” And this is separate and distinct from delivering factual truth. In fact, he “tinkered with fact” as part of this artistic choice - to create a poem that would be experienced as true, even if it technically was not in the strictest sense of the term.
Anne Sexton made similar comments about her poems - that she did not always adhere to literal facts. In one interview, she described these untruths as “little escape hatches” so she would “always have an out.” She goes on to say: “I can tell more truth than I have to admit to because I can tell the truth and say, after all, ‘This was a lie’ or ‘Of course not all of my poems are true.’” These escape hatches, then, opened up room for her to tell more truth. Perhaps not always the literal kind, but the sincere core truth that audiences recognize and respond to as “true.”
The use of “red herrings,” then, is not in opposition to the confessional mode. Red herrings can actually enhance confessional art when changing factual details allows room for the author to share pieces of themselves that they otherwise would not. And, further, the experience of truth for the audience does not hinge on strict adherence to literal facts. The audience needs to feel that they are getting the real Robert Lowell. The real Taylor Swift.
Maybe we haven't met the real Taylor Swift yet. But I think TTPD brought us several steps closer.

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2024.05.24 13:27 NostalgiaDeepState (It's a Long One - You Will Need a Snack and a Drink) "How I, a Pumpkin Spice White Woman and Music Nerd Born in 1977, Went From Taylor-Tolerant to Taylor-Averse", by NostalgiaDeepState

(Swifties, this is your first and final warning. You will not enjoy reading what I've written. Please remind yourselves that you've had since 2006 to crop-dust all creation with your unchecked Taylor-related dickriding. Meanwhile, it's taken me a year and a half to lose enough of my fucks in the crowd to venture the following opinions. Deal with it, or git)
TL;DR: the Taylor Swift social experiment, like all cults of personality, scares the living shit out of me. Relatability should not be an arbiter of artistic merit; everything can be criticized; no-one should have this much money/ in-your-face ubiquity/ power over the media; she needs to stop trying to be a musical one-stop shop and let other artists breathe.
I’m going to use my opening statement to assure the masses that I mean neither Taylor Swift nor her fandom any harm. I don’t know any of you; I only know the brand and the brand ideals, of which a character named Taylor Swift, represented by a person named Taylor Swift, is the central figure. This is a rant, these are my feelings; I merely ask that you extend me the same grace you would your favourite singer-songwriter. And though I can’t promise that all of my points will be made in good faith, because many of them were prompted by genuine psychological triggers, I will do my best to keep the character and the person separate, along with the platforms and the users within the fandom, even if they are guilty of the same misdeeds. No matter how butthurt and snarky I get while organizing these vagrant thoughts - because this exercise is intended to permanently close down my internal TS thoughtschool - all said and done, I just want everyone to be good people and live good lives.
Cool? Cool.
For the sake of full disclosure: her music is fine. I mean…it’s fine. I’ve yet to hear anything that made me want to manually arrest the earth’s orbit, but that comes down to my own personal taste.
And I’ve been obsessed with music for a good goddamn 43 years; I remember trampolining on the furniture to Queen, Prince, and Blondie when I was barely out of diapers, getting my first period at a New Kids on the Block concert (for real), and clawing the shredded fishnets of every early-90s riot grrrl while my 9th grade social capital continued its neverending nosedive. As someone stuck right slap-ass in the Bible Belt - where my love for the INXS song “Devil Inside” was publicly demonized due to the metaphorical conceit - music is the closest I’ve ever come to religious rapture.
But I just can’t seem to acquire a taste for the holy Taylor Swift host.
Once in a while, drifting through her sea of beige melodies and hand me down instrumentals, she will hork up a half-decent turn of phrase (the bridge of “Marjorie” really is a knockout). But I don’t think her specific command of the English language deserves this level of perpetual global veneration. And even when I’m impressed by the way she clicks words together, I don’t feel moved to take them apart and examine them for hidden depths or synesthetic value. To me, her writing is only marginally better than the Star Wars/ Mortal Kombat/ Jem & the Holograms fanfics I used to write while procrastinating between shifts at Starbucks. (Not me ending a letter to Stormer from Kimber with, “I miss you like January misses Christmas.”) To paraphrase the MechaStreisand episode of South Park: “Ya ain’t Fiona Apple. And if ya ain’t Fiona Apple, I don’t give a rat’s ass.”
But it goes beyond me staying stubbornly put as the approximate rest of the world is shaken to the core by her musical LiveJournal. I’m not here to yuck anybody’s yum. If Taylor Swift is to you what Stephen King (an inconsistent but effective storyteller who unknowingly taught me how to express my own macabre thoughts) is to me, that’s fabulous. Everyone deserves to feel that way about something; everyone deserves to experience a piece of art or media that makes them sit more comfortably amongst the serrated edges of the world.
The difference is, when someone tells me that Stephen King sucks all ass, my reaction tends to be, “Fair enough. Let’s talk about the writers you LIKE.” Not, “How absolute DARE?! You must be a Yankees fan if you don’t like Stephen King! I mean, it’s right there in the name! In this thesis I will…”
So let’s break it down, shall we?
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FIG 1. ENSHRINING MEDIOCRITY
Taylor Swift has a way with words. Sometimes. More often than the average American dickhead who gave up on the Cliff’s Notes to Animal Farm. But a good 9 times out of 10, reading her lyrics - especially since Folkmore went to her head - feels less like a peerless, cathartic demonstration of wordplay and more like an Intro to Creative Writing student spraying and praying with one hand on a thesaurus. (“I’m only cryptic and Machiavellian cause I care…” Miss Ma’am. Put the fountain pen on the floor and kick it over to me.)
Sure, everybody loves a good literary reference. “In Liverpool”, where Suzanne Vega alludes to Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame while pondering unrequited (and possibly gay) love, is my Roman Empire. But Swift doesn’t explore or utilize literary devices. She drops them, like boldfaced names on TMZ. She feels so Gatsby tonight. Her good-for-nothing boyfriend = Peter Pan. Wordsworth was an English Romantic poet who liked to bum around the Lake District, so let’s shoehorn him into “The Lakes” as a ramshackle pun about HER writing prowess (thank fuck she left Beatrix Potter alone). She knows these works exist, but she’s TELLING us she does, rather than SHOWING us.
Her lyricism is inconsistent, her references are anti-dimensional, her instrumentals sound like AI versions of previous artists, her “genre-hops” are formulaic, her singing is meh, and she dances like a preschooler clomping around in mommy’s heels. But at least she plays piano and guitar at a low-intermediate level. This is the only person holding 4 Album of the Year Grammys? Out of every other band and artist living, dead, or undead? Fuck that for a laugh.
(Short break to remind myself that Can’t Slow Down beat Purple Rain, Born in the USA, She’s So Unusual, and Private Dancer in 1985. Same as it ever was, really.)
My intention is not to discredit who she is or “what she’s been through” [dismissive wanking gesture]. I just don’t consider “...you hang from my lips like the gardens of Babylon…” a simile that necessitates a whole-ass branded tunic on Christ the Redeemer. Hell, I wouldn’t even project a salute to the aforementioned Suzanne Vega on a national landmark, and I think her lyricism absolutely BODIES Ms. Swift’s.
To more modern, mainstream effect, there's something so sharp and satisfying about Olivia Rodrigo's music. While not compulsively polysyllabic, her lyrics captivate me with their seething wit and disheveled beauty. Her emotions are dysfunctional without giving you narcissistic whiplash; they create an almost kintsugi effect within the thru-line of the songs, fusing the tragedy, setbacks, and self-deprecation whole with golden veins. I love laughing my ass off to “get him back!’, sprinting through a sunsoaked Appalachian meadow in my head to ‘Can’t Catch Me Now’, and reliving the outset of my romance with my husband to “so American”. Her 90s pop-punk sonic homage is a breath of fresh air, too.
I've yet to hear a Taylor Swift song where she isn't WHINING about something, and I’ve choked down a LOT of her songs just to be informed. Her entire discography reminds me of the final scene from Interview With the Vampire 1994. “Still WHINING, Louis! Have you heard enough? I've had to listen to that for centuries.”
On and on the pity party drones until eventually, no matter how many ornate literary devices she springs on us, Swift outs herself as no deeper than a damp floor. If she learned to economize the bells and whistles and reach beyond her own experience, she might be onto something. There’s a reason Toni Morrison is a legend and VC Andrews is a hack.
This doesn’t mean TS shouldn’t have a successful music career. Or that glitter gel-pen media with a predominantly female audience deserves to be dragged through the cesspool where society once stood. (Ask me how many times I listen to Debbie Gibson’s first two albums inside a calendar year - hint, more than zero.) But I swear to fuck, if I see the word ‘relatable’ used as quality control ONE MORE TIME, I will vomit the entire Nicholas Sparks bibliography. Are we so collectively insecure and empathetically bankrupt nowadays that we can’t engage with an artist unless we want to wear their skin? Does every performer or character need to function as an all-purpose self-insert? Does the winning formula absolutely have to be ‘Literally Me”? This has to be why Black excellence keeps falling by the wayside so the human Barbie doll - complete with interchangeable identities she dons and sheds like fashion plates - can placate her ego with another trophy. Yeah, I’m still sore about SOS and TPAB losing AOTY. (If you don’t recognise those acronyms, ask Google.) The connective tissue between ‘I’d rather have a beer with Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton’ and ‘Taylor Swift is a better mirrorball than Janelle Monae’ is thicker than the volumes of literature TS skimmed while ditching Tom Hiddleston to snoop around Joe Alwyn’s flat.
Don’t get it twisted; I’m all for sisterhood in song, finding parallels of my own experience in a woman’s work. But MUST my inner voice belong to Taylor Swift? Can’t I prefer Tori Amos or TLC or even Olivia Rodrigo? Because I’m not a skinny Aryan poster girl whose rich parents Veruca Salted (the character, not the band) and Tonya Hardinged my way out of every first-world problem and into a stupidly successful career where my only setbacks are breakups and one-sided beefs.
Also, what’s with this theory that lyrics and the ability to write your own are the end-all-be-all of music? Are compositions a joke to you? When you get a moment, listen to my all-time favourite symphony, The Planets by Gustav Holst. Bitchin, huh? Don’t mention it.
Hot take, but as a public figure, Swift has a lot more in common with her archnemesis Kim Kardashian than her idol Lana Del Rey, and I suspect that’s chief among reasons she keeps disturbing the Kimye grave.
(Oh, hey, if you’re that dweeb I’ve seen on YouTube spamming every other comment with your essay on why Taylor Swift is the best singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist due to the units she’s sold and the records she holds…I wish a motherfucker would.)
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FIG 2. WE DON’T NEED NO GENTRIFIED FEMINISM
Okay. I have a complexion like a fresh stick of chalk, resulting from a family tree full of Scottish libertines and southern Appalachian hill trash. Therefore, I don’t want to get too deep in the weeds of a topic that concerns the experiences of marginalized people. So instead of running my mouth on the meaning of ‘white feminism’ and its insidious cause/ effect process, I’ll urge you to seek out books and essays by more qualified people.
“Hood Feminism” by Mikki Kendall is a great place to start. See also “White Tears/ Brown Scars” by Ruby Hamad, and “Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race” by Reni Eddo-Lodge.
One of the most frustrating things about the inescapable Taylor Swift phenomenon is how her brand and her disciples have perverted feminism. It's now a whitewashed, focus-grouped shadow of itself, used only to shield Swift, and Swift alone, from criticism and her own mediocrity.
Swift really is the perfect symbol of white supremacy, whether or not she wishes to be. Her virtues are blown way out of proportion, and her wrongdoings are swept under the rug with a litany of excuses. Coddled and deified by the same entities that condemn and demonize her Black peers for the same shit. I’m reminded of how, in my home country (USA), a white gunman is a product of a broken home or untreated mental illness, while a Black or brown one represents the corruption of a whole community. Concurrently, when a white woman plays by the patriarchy’s rules and wins, or donates pocket change from her net worth to a few non-partisan causes like staff bonuses or soup kitchens, she’s held up as a paragon of righteousness. But when her stan club harasses one of her presumed nemeses to the brink of a nervous breakdown, or when a concertgoer at one of her Latin American shows dies of dehydration (RIP Ana Clara Benevides), everyone runs to console and absolve HER. It wasn't her fault, she had no power, how could she have known?
“Profoundly unsympathetic underdog”, as I read somewhere, is probably the best way to put it. Has she suffered from the slings and arrows of misogyny? Well, duh. She’s a woman at the top of an industry right slap-ass in the middle of a capitalist hellscape that, to this day, is still dominated by men. Men with a lot more dough and behind-the-scenes influence than she could ever dream of. But she doesn’t want to dismantle the system. She wants to bend it to her will and win it - even if that means cheating. Which is all well and good for her, but at the end of the day, she’s another fuckass oligarch. She’s a dragon in woman form like a reject from Earthsea, gorging on numbers to fill the empty howling void in her soul, tossing crumbs and scraps down to the masses.
She’s not a feminist so much as a Swiftist.
Ironically, Swift’s “feminism” revolves around men, because it’s feminism as interpreted by men. Powerful women using the patriarchy against itself, rather than bulldozing it for the good of humanity.
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FIG 3. PROFESSIONAL CHARACTER ASSASSIN
Do I consider Taylor Swift an actual Batman villain of a person? Nah. I'm sure she's perfectly nice if you don't look too closely or set off any tripwires. In general, she’s probably not half the psychological sadist her father is or her disciples can be. She's got a long way to go before catching up to the likes of Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, or Andrew Tate. But that's just it - everyone outside the fold recognises the minions of that dark triad as pathetic at best and actively dangerous at worst.
The systemic coddling and infantilization of white women refuses to acknowledge the harm they can cause by gathering a mob with a common assigned enemy. And, having stuffed her cult’s heads full of subliminal tabloid fodder, Taylor has ensured that every time she performs an Invasion of the Bodysnatchers point-and-screech in a rival’s direction, that person’s about to have a bad week. Doesn’t matter if the vitriol is one-sided.
When I consider the full front to back of Taylor’s “lore”, what forms in my mind is the story of a victim, or self-proclaimed victim, who considers a villain arc aspirational. You know, a surly ninth-grader’s idea of justice. Enabled by her fans, who’ve declared Swift’s lyrics gospel, her easter eggs a call to arms against anyone who’s earned so much as a side-eye from her.
And does she call them off? Does she fuck.
Joe Alwyn’s reputation went to hell on an inside track for (checks notes) possibly mismanaging his depression? (Also, everyone involved in the mass unfollowing stunt is tacky and I hate them. That includes you, Ryan Reynolds. You're closer to 50 than 25, with four kids at home, acting like a second string shortstop trying to impress the head cheerleader. Knock it off.)
Katy Perry found herself soaked with pig blood in a public square for either rehiring a couple of dancers after they quit Taylor's tour, or briefly dating John Mayer. Depending on who you ask.
Jake Gyllenhaal was the target of a harassment campaign perpetuated by Swifties, fellow celebrities, and even goddamn CONSUMER BRANDS for, I dunno, acting kinda like a fuckboy eleven years prior? Realizing, perhaps too late, that he and Taylor were incompatible as romantic partners? Either way, I'm more freaked out by the gratuitous shots fired at his sister, girlfriend, godmother, and teenage niece. Let's put a pin in that for now, though.
Antonia Gentry, a biracial actress known for her role in Netflix’s Ginny and Georgia, took a heaping helping of abuse, garnished with a generous dollop of racial slurs. All because Swift got bent out of shape over a throwaway line delivered by Gentry’s character because it painted Swift’s dating habits in a bad light. It must needs be said that Gentry did not write or improvise this line of dialogue, she merely read it. We'll put a pin in that, too.
Scooter Braun can kick rocks in glass socks, but he was right about one thing. Taylor should have faced him down her damn self, instead of siccing her stan club on him…and his family. Put a pin in it.
Kim Kardashian - well, shit. The last thing I ever thought I’d do is defend a Jennerdashian, and my stance on Snakegate has been ESH from jump street. But after all Taylor’s posturing about her nemeses defeating themselves before she can take a swing, she didn’t hesitate to directly name and shame Kim in a recent song. Or use Kim’s daughter as an insult to her lyrical injury. Put a pin in it.
Look, no-one enjoys a failed or toxic relationship. Or waking up with a target on their back. I spent nearly a decade with an authentic psychopath who at one point (I kid you not) accused me of cheating on him WITH A FICTIONAL CHARACTER. So fuck his dreams, but even with the worst of what he did to me in play - and rest assured, it was some Ari Aster shit - I wouldn't want to see him at the bottom of a John Mayer dogpile. Mostly because he has loved ones who shouldn't end up as collateral damage.
Back in 1988, the late Oscar-winning SFX titan Stan Winston (Terminator, Jurassic Park) made his directorial debut with a cult classic supernatural folk-horror called Pumpkinhead. The plot centres around a father named Ed Harley (B-movie legend Lance Henriksen) summoning a demon to avenge his son against a group of “cityfolk”.
Why bring up that old VHS throwback? Well. Revenge films have been a staple since the medium began, but Pumpkinhead is one of the few that shows the dark side of vigilante justice. People love a settled score. But most stories only show the boomerang effect from the offender to the avenger. Pumpkinhead broadens that viewfinder to show the pyrrhic nature of revenge, especially revenge served scalding hot, using familiar genre devices to demonstrate the victim’s torment, the cyclical trap of it all, and - most importantly - the innocent bystanders catching strays. You think you’re wishing on a star, when you’re really wishing on a monkey’s paw.
That’s why I said to put a pin in that list of Taylor’s Undesirables. It’s never just the person who (sometimes debatably) did her dirty. There’s plenty of ‘female rage’ for their associates, too - sometimes with those associates, ex. Antonia Gentry, taking the force of the blow. But unlike poor Ed Harley, Taylor has accumulated too much money and power to face any real consequences.
It’s much easier to contain a narrative in art than it is in real life.
(PS: That sidelong smirk she does gives me the willies. Just me? Possibly. BEC? Totally.)
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FIG 4. FUNDAMENTALIST SWIFTISM (THIS ONE’S PERSONAL)
I was born in southern Appalachia, in one of North Carolina’s most objectively beautiful cities. Unfortunately, I grew up in a rural, redneck town of just over 1,000, where the locals shared two cinema screens and maybe seven surnames.
And though mine was a mostly secular (Methodist) household full of Jimmy Carter Democrats, I couldn’t go a day without someone on the outside telling me that something I loved was a sin. I was the unwilling congregation for cautionary sermons about everything from Stephen King to Dirty Dancing to a fucking side ponytail in my hair (apparently it evoked Madonna, and that was a Bad Thing). Politically, it was standing water trash. My social studies education consisted mostly of Confederate-apologist kitsch and Red Scare Sovietcore. One of my fifth grade teachers spewed anti-choice rhetoric in class, and two years later, another one literally said, ‘Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve’.
For context, like I said: raised by liberals, if not full-tilt leftists. My maternal grandfather was a hometown civil rights activist who ran an integrated workplace and campaigned for JFK. My mother’s friend confided to her (and only her), at the peak of HIV stigma, that her son was dying of AIDS. I remember asking Mom when I was 5 why movies only showed ladies kissing men and not men kissing men or ladies kissing ladies. Her answer: “I don’t know, baby, because it happens all the time in real life.” One of my paternal uncles was a drag performer in his 20s (which would have been between 1966-1976), and once my cycle kicked in, I was lectured THOROUGHLY about birth control and reproductive rights. I was lucky - at home. Outside, it was an ideological wasteland, fire to the left of me, brimstone to the right of me, God, guns, and “guts” waiting to nudge anyone who strayed from the formula back in line. So traumatized for merely wanting to wear fun makeup and clothes, watch A Nightmare on Elm Street, listen to Prince, and walk among neon lights with an urban skyline looming overhead like an enchanted forest, I became rebellious as fuck in my adolescence. I had a witch phase, a zen phase, and a militant agnostic phase. I’d overhear myself saying controversial shit (controversial by local standards) in a neverending campaign to push the born-against as far away from me as possible. Please don’t pray for me, I’d silently plead. Please think I’m a lost cause.
But it’s cool. I moved back to my birthplace in 1999, and clear across the Atlantic in 2016. (Plus the 9 years I spent in New England, but we don’t talk about that.) And I’m seeing a therapist about my psychological dysfunction - PTSD, depression, severe social anxiety, the usual.
Thanks to nearly two decades in this Gilead-coded environment, though, I have a near-phobic aversion to groupthink. I especially despise blind hero worship (due, I suspect, to the evangelical code of honouring God with every choice), and when matters of opinion are presented as fact. It pisses me off when Trumpnecks uproot the goalposts and plant them right in their eye sockets at their messiah's every misstep, and it pissed me off when the BernieBros tried to wreck my shit for backing a different Democrat (no shade to Bernie - he's probably one of the best social navigators America could ask for).
Taylor’s press is sounding less like journalism, even popcorn tabloid “journalism” in inverted commas, and more like nationalist propaganda. She stimulates economies (all sold-out stadium events do)! She’s broken another record (by rigging a broken system)! She eats ranch dressing (bitch, my BFF wrote a SONNET about ranch dressing when we were in junior high - that ain’t special)! She’s single-handedly carrying the music industry on her back (by toying with her fans and weaponizing FOMO)! ALL HAIL! It’s giving Straight Out of North Korea.
But as soon as you dare mention that some of this doesn’t sit right in your soul…chaos. You’re just looking for shit to be mad about because you hate “fun music” and “successful women”. Prison. Solitary confinement. Electric chair.
I have experienced no-shit panic attacks thinking about all the cults of personality that have cropped up over the past decade, okay? Whether Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Elon Musk, or Taylor Swift…they are all symptoms of a terrifying social disorder. Once we were drowning in information while thirsting for knowledge; now combine that with a riptide of tinfoil milliners and hyperpartisan news outlets. Communities have deteriorated, so we create them online using public figures and their open-ended manifestos, our capacity for independent and nuanced thought shriveling into a MAGA-hat shaped echo chamber screaming into a billionaire-branded, corporate-sponsored void.
Is this what Beatlemania was like? I can’t say for sure; I wasn’t there. But much as I appreciate The Beatles (while acknowledging the shady shit still stinking up certain corners of their empire), I can absolutely sympathize with people who maybe didn’t want the music crammed down their throats and the lore shoved up their asses.
“Let people enjoy things.” Let them be skeptical about things, too, and you’ve got a deal.
What frustrates me isn't that I don't like her, or that others do, but that so many of them won't allow anyone to dislike her in peace.
That's how I ended up here, at this desktop, downloading backlogged grievances to a Google.doc file.
I have no mouth, and I must scream.
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FIG 5. ELEVENTH HOUR TRAILBLAZER (WITH A SIZE 500 CARBON FOOTPRINT)
Let's get serious. Most of our faves are problematic. I love HP Lovecraft's literary universe; he's a racist wad of dick. I love the way Margaret Atwood dissects her characters and serves them up on a silver platter with a parsley garnish; she's a bleach-white feminist and probably a goddamn TERF. I'd probably loathe Frank Zappa if he were alive today, even though I know passages from his autobiography by heart.
You don't have to steamroll your TS merch on Main to accept the fact that as an activist, she has all the conviction of Boy George checking the resale value of a contradiction before the Karma Chameleon gets home.
And that's fine, or it would be, if her aforementioned propaganda team hadn't successfully executed a Jedi mind trick to make the media go, “Taylor Swift - Joan Baez literally wishes.”
Anyone can tweet “Black Lives Matter” a few times, and I'm pretty sure my Boomer mother posted “Why be mad, when you can be GLAAD?” on Facebook circa June 2013. The only appreciable difference between Taylor Swift’s low-effort, low-stakes activism and some rando in Eugene, Oregon tweeting (I refuse to call it X) a picture of their brand new rainbow Stanley cup is the whole world keeps waiting for Tay Tay and her money to talk over the stamping onstage power-walk of her bullshit. And if she's got nothing to say, then by god we'll put the words in her mouth. Because with her unthreatening good looks and Disney princess energy, she makes a perfect false idol for neoliberals and a perfect boogeyman for the unhinged right.
So it goes. Over and over again. Once you win capitalism, you can make people believe whatever you want them to. Championing LGBTQ+ rights in the glossiest, most favourable environment possible makes TS a hero right up there with Captain America, but her manic zigzags across the planet in her private jet(s) are NBD.
Dolly Parton gets away with being politically milquetoast because (I’m inclined to think) she genuinely wants to provide a seat at the table for everyone. Not so the whole world will spend a weekend in Pigeon Forge - though I'm sure that's a strong incentive - but because she was raised with that as a guiding principle. Taylor's only principle seems to be waving her distended bank account under our faces and barking, ‘Fill ‘er up!” Also if you talk shit about her, you're not a girl's girl. Girl's girls push their successors down the stairs while buying and selling the rights to female rage. Because as a wise YouTuber one said, “My problems, my problems, my problems, MY PAIN!”
Sometimes I get the impression that Taylor Swift doesn’t want to BE an activist so much as she wants us to THINK she’s an activist. The public perception of HER matters more than urging that public to help her leave the world a better place than when she found it.
Not everyone is, or wants to be, an activist. Not everyone has that fire in their belly. I can dig it. But activism should not be a cosplay you wear to WokeCon for a single album cycle; it's a bit to which you need to commit.
Especially if you have no problem bringing a ruckus to protect your sanctified public image.
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FIG 6. SHE DRINKS YOUR MILKSHAKE
“Billboard gamer
Qu'est-ce que c'est?
Fu-fu-fu-fuck off, fu-fu-fuck off…”
But for real, some of y'all need to stop approaching music stats like the NBA playoffs. Because I'm telling you straight up and down, if Taylor Swift were on the NY Liberty, she'd be what's known as a ball hog.
“She is the music industry” is not a flex. It's an indictment and manifesto of our own cynical capitalist dystopia. It's the mission statement of an ‘artist’ who can't seem to create without the intent of destruction. It's a slap in the face to musicians who match Swift's work ethic and far exceed her talent, but lack her bloodthirsty cult and cutthroat PR machine. It’s the language of monopoly - doesn’t matter if Swift dominates 90% of the musical market, charts, and records, so long as that wayward 10 is still out there.
Every time Taylor Swift copies another artist’s homework and makes their reality impossible to disentangle from her image, I feel the same sense of weary dread as when Disney buys up another movie studio. Except worse, because a lot of those studios are multinational corporations in their own right, probably direct beneficiaries of Citizens United living off the crops planted by Reaganomics. It’s easy to be facetious and say they had it coming.
But given everything she’s come to symbolize in the public eye, it’s hard to unsee TS as a huge multinational corporation gobbling up rising artists and their chosen niches like a deranged Ms. Pac-Man who keeps doubling back in the maze when she should go forward.
It's almost as if she's trying to create an environment where there's no need to listen to any other artist, because she can do it all. Even be “The Man™”! (Though she mostly targets younger women.) And if you don’t like the current era, where are you going? Pay no attention to that small indie artist - just wait for her to jack their style! Sad Girl Synth/ Witch in the Woodscore/ Bell Jar Chic coming right up!

Plus, when she’s not coal-mining her peers for ‘aesthetics’ to add to her brand once it’s safe to do so, she’s barging in on their album releases with new variants, surprise releases, ANYTHING to prevent our attention from diverting from her for the length of ten or fifteen songs.
And it’s happened too often and with too much synchronicity to be a coincidence. Restoring her catalog to Spotify on the release date of Katy Perry’s Witness. Dropping new variants of Midnights to block SZA from the top spot. And now trying to open the same expired can of whoopass on Billie Eilish, an artist as renowned by her industry peers as Taylor is by the mouth-breathing masses.
Even her “supportive dancing” at awards shows…it’s cute at first, until you realize it’s blatant camera-pan bait to bring attention back to her.
This is not “good business”. It’s a hostile work environment.
Obviously, high-profile artists siphoning trends from more obscure ones has been how the music industry establishes hierarchy and ratfucks the vanguard for decades. You - rightfully - can’t bring up Elvis Presley nowadays without mentioning Big Mama Thornton (and you owe it to yourself to listen to her original version of “Hound Dog”, because whoa, nelly). But Taylor Swift is hiding her chicanery in plain sight, ripping her peers off and shutting them down brazen as anything, and it’s hard not to wonder how much time will transpire before we can call her on it without being branded heretics.
No-one really talks about it, but IMO, one of her most grimdark acts of sabotage was releasing “Cruel Summer”, a five-year old song that wasn’t even a re-record, on the same day Olivia Rodrigo dropped “Vampire”, the debut single for her sophomore album. “Cruel Summer”, in case you haven’t seen a Taylor Swift evidence board lately, is the reason Olivia is now stuck paying a substantial chunk of “deja vu”’s royalties to TS and her cronies. I’m not saying Taylor’s team chose that song on purpose, to intimidate a (former) fangirl literally 13 years her junior, but I put nothing past no-one.
Success is so much more rewarding when it's not a zero-sum game. Call me a musical Marxist, but I want to celebrate a motley crew of talented artists rising in and out of the top 10 like melodic fireworks, not one grifting normie shithead perched indefinitely at the summit, yanking up Jacob’s ladder rung by rung.
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FIG 7. IN THIS ECONOMY?
One album, one deluxe edition. That's a god's plenty, especially vis a vis physical media. If you release more than that, you're an asshole, and if you buy more than that, you're a sucker. I will not be taking questions at this time.
No, it isn't just a Taylor Swift problem - far from it. But she is currently the head of a rabid and venomous kaiju run amok across a mortally wounded planet.
And the merch, my esteemed chaotic neutrals, is just too ass to mention.
While we're at it, eat the rich. Most of them. At least leave the bones of billionaires on the lawns of multimillionaires as a warning.
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And where - apart from the hate campaigns - do her hapless paramours fit in all of this? Beats me. The truth is, I don’t give a single solitary fuck about celebrities in the wild, unless they do something incredibly wholesome (Pedro Pascal celebrating his trans sister) or remarkably stupid (Puff Daddy). And despite all the pictures I’ve seen against my will, I wouldn’t recognize Travis Kelce or Matty Healy if they walked right up to me. First of all, I despise the NFL; I’m a baseball/ basketball/ hockey fan. And The 1975’s music, to me, just sounds like yacht rock if the yacht were caked in cocaine and bodily fluids. I know that Matty Healy once mentioned shucking his corn to a certain racist sex-trafficking website. And whether or not he meant it as a joke, it was gross and WoC have every right to have a bone to pick with him - and with Taylor.
For real, though, I look at her body count and all I see is a succession of nondescript white dudes. The only one who stands out to me is Gyllenhaal, and that’s because I’ve been a fan of him and his sister as actors for 20+ years. So her dating history has never been a point of contention or even interest for me.
The long and the short of it is, I'd have no quarrel with Taylor Swift if she were just taking up space as a successful singer-songwriter processing her emotions through her music. We could peacefully co-exist if LITERALLY EVERYBODY were not expected to not only give a fuck about her, but forsake all others unto her and her sanctified narrative. Sorry, my sister in Christ, but I'm an atheist.
And yes, I'd say every syllable of this with my whole chest and my pussy facing the world if Blandie were A MAN. So don't even get on that tip.
Go forth and have the day you deserve, from the depths of my last nerve.

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2024.05.24 10:29 Difficult_Current_57 Essay writer available dm me on discord jetbrains01 or email me at jetbrainss01@gmail.com

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2024.05.17 02:11 MirkWorks Excerpts from Adventures in the Orgasmatron: How the Sexual Revolution Came to America by Christopher Turner (Beats & Gestalt therapy)

Seven
...
In 1945, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were students at Columbia University and were lodging in Joan Vollmer’s apartment on West 115th Street. Kerouac, a Catholic who had gotten in on a football scholarship described Ginsberg as “this spindly Jewish kid with horn-rimmed glasses and tremendous ears sticking out…burning black eyes”; the two men had a brief, awkward affair. Their friend William Burroughs was living nearby, on Riverside Drive, and after Kerouac and Ginsberg set him up with their landlady, he moved in, too. The gaunt and lanky Burroughs was more than a decade older than Ginsberg and Kerouac, and already seemed, Ginsberg recalled, to have the “ashen gray of an old-age cheek.” The younger pair admired him, Ginsberg wrote, like “ambassadors to a Chinese emperor.” Kerouac hailed him as “the last of the Faustian men.” Burroughs returned the compliment by introducing the other members of the “libertine circle,” as they dubbed themselves, to drugs, sailors, porn, bathhouses, and Wilhelm Reich.

After leaving Harvard in 1936, Burroughs had enrolled at the University of Vienna’s medical schools, Reich’s alma mater, with vague plans of becoming a psychoanalyst, but his stay was dominated by the administration of arsenic shots for the syphilis he had contracted in America, which left him feeling nauseated and depressed. He left after a semester. Back in New York, Burroughs was analyzed by Paul Federn, who had been Reich’s first therapist but whom Reich came to consider his nemesis. Burroughs was institutionalized in 1940 after he chopped off the tip of his finger in a Van Gogh - like gesture of unrequited love (Bellevue psychiatrists diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic). Burroughs’s parents gave him an allowance of two hundred dollars a month on the condition that he seek further help, and in 1946 Burroughs was undergoing narco-analysis with Dr. Lewis Wolberg, who used nitrous oxide and hypnosis to stimulated the unconscious.
Burroughs would return from his sessions with Wolberg to practice “wild analysis” on his friends, interpreting their dreams from the comfort of a wing chair. He also played a game that parodied the Reichian character analysis that he’d become interested in. The group would play an adaption of charades to facilitate the exploration of the onion layers of their personality armor. Burroughs referred to these exercises in amateur dramatics as “routines.” For example, underneath Burroughs’s public persona as the distinguished heir of an important St. Louis family lurked a prissy, lesbian English governess (“My dear, you’re just in time for tea. Don’t say those dirty words in front of everybody!”). Scratch the governess surface and you reached Old Luke, a gun-toting, tobacco-chewing sharecropper from the Deep South (“Ever gut a catfish?”). The last stratum, at his very core, held a silent Chinaman, a contemplative, impassive character who sat meditating on the banks of the Yangtse. Ginsberg’s hidden self was “the well-groomed Hungarian,” and Kerouac liked to play the naïve American lost in the sophistications of Paris.
Alfred Kinsey met Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac on one of their nocturnal trips to Time Square through their friend Herbert Huncke, the male prostitute who coined the term “beat” and introduced Burroughs to recreational drugs. Kinsey paid Huncke
Taking advantage of the proximity of Cott’s office to his father’s home, and still buzzing in the mouth, Ginsberg chose to come out during a posttherapeutic visit. “You mean you like to take men’s penises in your mouth?” his father said unsympathetically. But Cott thought homosexuality a perversion, as Reich did, and was working toward establishing heterosexual primacy rather than trying to persuade Ginsberg to come to terms with his queerness. “Frankly I won’t trust that kind of straight genital Reichian,” Burroughs wrote in disgust at this dogmatism. “Feller say, when a man gets too straight he’s just a god damned prick.”
Cott terminated Ginsberg’s therapy after three months because he continued to smoke pot against the doctor’s advice. Ginsberg though cannabis an integral part of his aesthetic education; Cott feared that it would lead to a psychotic episode. The summer he quit therapy, Ginsberg began experiencing auditory hallucinations. “It was like God had a human voice,” Ginsberg wrote of his transcendental experience, in which he discovered his calling as a poet, “with all the infinite tenderness and mortal gravity of a living Creator speaking to his son.” Consumed by a desire to share his amazing experience, Ginsberg crawled out onto his fire escape and tapped on the next-door neighbor’s windows, declaring to the two frightened girls inside, “I’ve seen God!”
His father, still reeling from the discovery of his son’s sexuality, feared that he was suffering from the paranoid schizophrenia that had caused his mother to be institutionalized in Pilgrim State, a mental hospital on Long Island. She also heard voices, feared her husband was trying to poison her, hallucinated Hitler’s mustache in the sink, and thought spies were following her. When Ginsberg entered Reichian analysis, she was reportedly banging her head against the wall so ferociously that the doctors recommended a lobotomy.
Ginsberg phoned up Dr. Cott, his former therapist, and told him, “It happened, I had some kind of breakthrough or psychotic experience.” Cott, who followed Reich in rejecting the talking cure, and who was obviously still angry at Ginsberg for choosing pot over therapy, said, “I’m afraid any discussion would have no value” and hung up on him. Soon afterward, when Ginsberg was involved in a car chase in a stolen vehicle that ended in a dramatic crash, he was encouraged by a law professor at Columbia, where he was still a student, to plead insanity. Dr. Cott appeared in court to testify to his mental instability, and two months later Ginsberg was admitted to the Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric institute, where he stayed for eight months.
During Ginsberg’s hospitalization, Burroughs wrote to Jack Kerouac to ask him to find out from Ginsberg what the “gadget made by Reichians” looked like. “I want especially to know its shape and if there is a window, and how one gets into it.” Kerouac doesn’t seem to have been much help in providing a blueprint. Burroughs built his first accumulator in the spring of 1949 when he was living on a rented farm in Pharr, Texas, with Kells Elvins, a friend from his Harvard days. They were both enthusiastically reading Reich’s The Cancer Biopathy and decided to build an accumulator in the orange grove Kells owned in the Rio Grande Valley. Built without recourse to any plans, the resulting device included some curious innovations. “Inside was an old icebox,” Burroughs explained, “which you could get inside and pull on a contrivance so that another box of sheet steel descended over you, so that the effect was presumably heightened.” It took them a few days to construct the box. The result was eight feet high, much taller than the ones Reich manufactured: “It was a regular townhouse,” Burroughs recalled.
The pair took turns sitting in the accumulator and obtained, Burroughs wrote, “unmistakable results.” Burroughs wondered what the Mexican farm laborers thought of this strange box that they entered “wrapped in old towels,” and came out of feeling “much sexier and healthier,” “with hard-ons.” Burroughs and Kells also made one of Reich’s smaller shooter boxes, with a funnel, which they used as a supplement to the big box. Their DIY was, Burroughs admitted, “a very sloppy job,” but it still have a powerful “sexual kick.”
"I have just been reading Wilhelm Reich’s latest book The Cancer Biopathy,” Burroughs wrote excitedly to Kerouac. “I tell you Jack, he is the only man in the analysis line who is on that beam. After reading the book I built an orgone accumulator and the gimmick really works. The man is not crazy, he’s a fucking genius.” Kerouac described Burroughs enthusiastically promoting the box in On the Road (1955). According to Kerouac, Burroughs said, “Say, why don’t you fellows try my orgone accumulator? Put some juice in your bones. I always rush up and take off ninety miles an hour for the nearest whorehouse, hor-hor-hor!”
Burroughs used an orgone box on and off for the rest of his life. (There is a picture of the rock star Kurt Cobain waving through the port-hole of Burrough’s last box, a scruffy, patched-up shed that he kept in the garden behind his house in Lawrence, Kansas.) In the 1970s he wrote an article for Oui magazine entitled “All the accumulators I have owned” in which he boasted, “Your intrepid reporter, at age thirty-seven, achieved spontaneous orgasm, no hands, in an orgone accumulator built in an orange grove in Pharr, Texas. It was the small, direct-application accumulator that did the trick.”
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Perls concluded that any positive claims for the orgone box were attributable to the placebo effect. “I invariably found a fallacy,” he said of the orgone box users he met, “a suggestibility that could be directed in any way that I wanted.” Reich, Perls thought, had made a major contribution in giving Freud’s notion of resistance a body, but he erred in trying to make a verifiable reality out of the libido. “Now resistances do exist, there is no doubt about it,” Perls explained, “but libido was and is a hypothesized energy, invented by Freud himself to explain his model of man.” He thought Reich had hypnotized himself and his patients into the belief of the existence of the orgone as the physical and visible equivalent of libido.
Perls found that users of orgone boxes usually exhibited some paranoid symptoms. “Then I had another look at the armor theory,” Perls went on, “and I realized that the idea of the armor itself was a paranoid form. It supposes an attack from, and defense against, the environment.” Perls criticized vegetotherapy for encouraging the formation of paranoid features by encouraging the patient to “externalize, disown, and project material that could be assimilated and become part of the self.” Orgone energy, Perls concluded from his investigations into the orgone box, was “an invention of Reich’s fantasy which by then had gone astray.” The realization that the Reich he had met in New York was different from the one he had known in Europe, and that orgone mysticism was at the crackpot end of science, was tinged with melancholy. “The enfant terrible of the Vienna Institute turned out to be a genius,” Perls wrote in his autobiography, “only to eclipse himself as a ‘mad scientist.’”
In his own elaboration of character analysis, which he called Gestalt therapy, Perls turned the idea of armor around: where Reich had come to see character armor as a defense against a hostile external world, Perls saw that same layer of self as a shield for one’s own true drives - a straitjacket designed to safeguard against explosions of excitement from within. Thus, it wasn’t a shell to be crushed but something integral, to be owned. (Laura Perls said they tried to convince Rosenfeld to give up his box, that he could increase his physical vitality and mental agility “entirely on his own, without external devices.”) He wanted his patients to be aware of their bodies, to feel the present vividly in the “here and now,” to be “authentic,” to act on their desires.
Perls got his patients to act out their feelings so that they could assimilate and take responsibility for them. He had originally wanted to be a theater director - he’d been a student of Max Reinhardt’s when he was growing up in Berlin, and he’d become closely associated with the avant-garde Living Theatre troupe in New York. Julian Beck, a founder of the Living Theatre, explained to Perls’s biographer, Martin Shepard, of Gestalt therapy, “[Perls] had something in mind that was halfway between the kind of performance we were doing [direct spectacle, aimed at challenging the moral complacency of the audience] and therapeutic sessions.”
“You are my client,” Perls told one female patient. “I care for you like an artist, I bring something out that is hidden in you.” He described therapy as if it were a magic trick; the rabbit he claimed to pull out of the hat was a person shorn of the “neurosis of normalcy” and all the bourgeois niceties associated with it. This person, he hypothesized, was confident enough to be selfish, to act on rather than repress all her desires, whatever the social consequences. All the energy that others wasted on repression and concealment, Perls thought, should be available for creative self-expression. Another of Perls’s patients recalled, “Fritz loved some types - open bastard-bitch - open defenses, that type. He didn’t like anyone who would placate him or be too good to him or used good-girl or good-boy defenses - that drove him up the wall.”

Perls’s views ,and some of his methods, were much indebted to those pioneered by Reich in the thirties: Perls would habitually accuse his patients of being “phony” and was deliberately aggressive, much as Reich had been with him. Yet, his observations about the paranoid deviations in Reich’s terminology and thinking were painfully perceptive, precisely because he had built on those very ideas.
In 1951, Perls, Paul Goodman, and a Columbia professor of psychology named Ralph Hefferline published Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality. Rewritten by Goodman, and bearing all the hallmarks of Goodman’s exasperating style, the book blends Reich’s ideas about energy blocks and flows with Sartre’s cafe philosophy to create an American brand of existentialism turned therapy. The authors intended their self-help book to provide the reader with the tools for revolution: “In recommending [these experiments] to you,” they warned of their mass-market therapy, “we commit an aggressive act aimed at your present status quo and whatever complacency it affords.” They promised immediate liberation, without the hard grind of political struggle; all you had to do was unleash your “authentic” self.
The “excitement” to which the subtitle of the book refers is a generalized libido, an elan vital that is seeking various outlets, not all of them sexual. Life, for Perls, was a series of “unfinished” or “undigested” situation, frustrations that were all waiting their turn for satisfactory closure. “After the available excitement has been fully transformed and experienced, then we have good closure, satisfaction, temporary peace and nirvana,” Perls summarized his position. “A [mere] discharge will barely bring about the feeling of exhaustion and being spent.”
It sounded very like the Reichian orgasm. But for Perls, excitement was no longer exclusively genital, as it was for Reich, and this shift only served to open up numerous other slipways to pleasure. In Reich’s view, the libido theory was an inviolable article of faith. In broadening its range to celebrate oral and anal pleasures, Perls heralded a polymorphously perverse and heretical vision - one that, ironically, would prove particularly amenable to exploitation under capitalism.
In 1952, Perls, his wife, Goodman, Isidore From, Elliott Shapiro, and two others founded the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy, headquartered in the Perleses’ apartment and with treatment rooms at 315 Central Park West. The seven founding members met on a weekly basis for group therapy. There was no bureaucratic hierarchy and everyone, including Perls, was subject to the honest criticism that was seen as the key to self-discovery. It was a very public form of character analysis: members of the group would draw one another’s attention to every repression or hang-up, none of which was to be tolerated.
Elliot Shapiro, an ex-boxer and the head of a psychiatric school attached to Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, brought a friend to one session; Shapiro’s friend said he “had never witnessed the aggressive and profound battling that went on in those groups. Nobody, virtually nobody, was safe at any time.” Shapiro recalled, “We hammered at each other, and hammered, and hammered - every week. And it was the most vigorous hammering you can image….If you could live through these groups and take the corrections, the insults, the remarks…” Not all the participants had sufficiently thick skins to take such brutal candor. The psychotherapist Jim Simkin left the group because he felt that everyone was “loading elephant shit on him,” as did Ralph Hefferline, a coauthor of Gestalt Therapy.
To promote this new school, Perls traveled from city to city, introducing an audience of psychiatrists, social workers, and other interested parties to his “here and now” philosophy. He taught groups in Cleveland, Detroit, Toronto, and Miami how to be sensitive to their bodily needs and to follow their impulses, to be honest and unalienated. He’d be sharp and confrontational as he pushed his awareness techniques on the participants: What are you doing now? What are you experiencing? What are you feeling? Isadore From, who was part of the original New York group, remembers that these occasions were often very dramatic, with “a lot of shaking, trembling, anxiety” - effects that he thought were the result of the audiences’ hyperventilating under the strain of Perls’s relentless goading and questioning.
The New York Institute of Gestalt Therapy also ran public seminars, including one by Goodman, “The Psychology of Sex” (“What you can’t do, teach,” he said with a laugh). Following Reich, it was thought that neurosis could be treated by exposure to sexual pleasure. Goodman made this his area of expertise and people with sexual problems were often referred to him. One was a man who was worried about the quality of his orgasms after prostate surgery. Another thought he might be homosexual; the bisexual Goodman got his penis out and demanded that the patient touch it to help him make a diagnosis. In so doing he was no doubt influenced by Hitschmann, the Viennese analyst who once asked Perls, then tormented by sexual inadequacy, to show him his penis .
In one of Goodman’s group sessions, when someone complained of the lack of sexual companionship, Goodman went around the circle and set up a week’s worth of dates. “See, that wasn’t so difficult,” he reassured her. He was not beyond offering his own neurosis-busting services to patients of either sex, and once agreed to accompany a patient who invited him on an all-expenses-paid trip to Europe. He joked about setting up a College of Sex so as to put his vast experience to educational use. “I’m a sociopath,” he wanted a potential client. In a diary entry written in 1957, Goodman looked back on the previous decade and concluded that he’s made a “false cultus-religion (an obsession)” of sex: “The sexual act itself had just about the meaning of a ritual communion sacrifice.”

submitted by MirkWorks to u/MirkWorks [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 07:01 DocWatson42 The List of Lists/The Master List

My lists are always being updated and expanded when new information comes in—what did I miss or am I unaware of (even if the thread predates my membership in Reddit), and what needs correction? Even (especially) if I get a subreddit or date wrong. That also includes new lists that you think I should create. (Note that, other than the quotation marks, the thread titles are "sic". I only change the quotation marks to match the standard usage (double to single, etc.) when I add my own quotation marks around the threads' titles.)
The lists are in absolute ascending chronological order by the posting date, and if need be the time of the initial post, down to the minute (or second, if required—there are several examples of this). The dates are in DD MMMM YYYY format per personal preference, and times are in US Eastern Time ("ET") since that's how they appear to me, and I'm not going to go to the trouble of converting to another time zone. They are also in twenty-four hour format, as that's what I prefer, and it saves the trouble and confusion of a.m. and p.m. Where the same user posts the same request to different subreddits, I note the user's name in order to indicate that I am aware of the duplication.
I compile my lists manually, from what shows up in my feed. I choose what interests me (thus the low incidence of romance—I'm not a fan of the literary genre, though I'm fine with the theme, and like romantic movies—and of pure horror, and the preponderance of science fiction/fantasy lists, as well as the large portion of nonfiction), and questions that are asked repeatedly.
Thread lengths: longish (50–99 posts)/long (100–199 posts)/very long (200–299 posts)/extremely long (300–399 posts)/huge (400+ posts) (though not all threads are this strictly classified, especially ones before mid?-2023, though I am updating shorter lists as I repost them); they are in lower case to prevent their confusion with the name "Long" and are the first notation after a thread's information.
booklists, the sub that hosted my lists, went private on or before Sunday 29 October 2023, so all of my lists at the time were blocked, though I have another home for them. That's the sub Recommend_A_Book (with one or two exceptions).
:::
Recurring Reddit Topics (alphabetized with one exception)

Reddit: A How-to Guide thread (the title is currently a little grandiose for the present contents).
The American Health Care System list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
African Hair(care) list of resources and discussion threads (one post).
Filing Income Taxes in the United States list of Reddit resources, discussion threads, and references (one post).
For New Owners of Cats list of resources and Reddit recommendation threads.
[Incest] (not yet posted)
Learning English list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
List of Writing Advice Subreddits (not yet posted in a central place)
News & Fact Checking—see my post in "Where do I find true info about the Ukraine conflict?" (NoStupidQuestions; 18 April 2022)
Pizza Delivery Advice list of resources and Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Sex and Relationships list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (four posts).
Tipping in the United States list of resources/references and Reddit discussion threads (one post).
Toilets: International Differences and Other Matters list of resources, discussion threads, and references (one post).
[Weddings] (not yet posted; controversies)
Women's Pants and Pockets list of resources and discussion threads (one post).
Worsening Search Results of Google list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).

Books

Audiobooks list of recommendation threads (one post).

Nonfiction

General Nonfiction list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (four posts).
(Auto)biographies list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
Communism list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
Crime (Nonfiction) list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
Cults list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
Diversity Nonfiction list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
History (General) list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
The Holocaust list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
How-to list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
Information Technology list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
LBGTQ+ Nonfiction list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
[Leadership/Management] (not yet posted; see also the Self-help Nonfiction list)
Medicine/Biology/For Medical Students list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
Narrative Nonfiction ("Reads Like a Novel") list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
Native American History and Culture list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Philosophy list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Psychology list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Science (General) list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Self-help Nonfiction list of resources and Reddit recommendation threads (seven posts).
South Asian Indians list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
The Space Race list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).

Fiction

General Fiction list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (twenty posts).
Anthropomorphic Animals list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Antiheroes and Villains list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
Apocalyptic/Post-apocalyptic list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (three posts).
Beautiful Prose/Writing (in Fiction) list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Books to Read in Your 20s list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Circuses & Carnivals list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
Classics (Literature) list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Compelling Reads ("Can't Put Down") list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Convents/Monasteries/Religious Houses and Orders list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
Death Games/Hunting Humans Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Diversity Fiction list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Dragons list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Dystopias list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Emotionally Devastating/Rending list of Reddit recommendation threads, and books (four posts).
Feel-good/Happy/Upbeat list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Female Characters, Strong list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Female Rage list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Historical Fiction list of resources and Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Humor list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
Japanese Literature list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
Knights/King Arthur list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post). Includes paladins.
LBGTQ+ Fiction list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post). All genres.
Life Changing/Changed Your Life list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Mysteries list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (two posts).
Mythology/Folklore/Specific Cultures list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
Obscure/Overlooked/Underappreciated/Unknown/Underrated General Fiction list of Reddit recommendation threads books (one post).
Philosophical Fiction list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
Pirates list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Poetry list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
Readers 1: For Children Who Want to Start Reading list (one post).
Readers 2: Here are the the resources and threads I have about books for adolescents/adults who want to start reading ("Get me reading again/I've never read") list (eight posts).
Romance (not yet posted; very short)
Romany/Travellers (not yet posted; very short)
Science Fiction/Fantasy (General) Recommendations list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (thirty-five posts (eventually, again).).
- N.B.: The category is alphabetized under "Science Fiction/Fantasy", and the lists within it are alphabetized with that as a prefix, even when the prefix is not used (e.g., Hard SF).
SF/F and ___ list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
SF/F: Afterlife (Heaven, Hell, Valhalla, etc.) list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
SF/F: Alien Aliens list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post). (Includes Just "Aliens" and Other Stuff.)
SF/F: Alternate History list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, authors, and books (one post).
SF/F: Artificial Intelligence list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
SF/F Artists list of links (one post).
SF/F Badasses list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
[SF/F: Body Sharing (Multiple Entities)] (draft; not yet posted]
SF/F: Business list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
SF/F: Character Driven list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
SF/F: Colonization list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
SF/F Comics (not yet posted)
SF/F: Cyberpunk list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
SF/F: Deserts list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
SF/F: Detectives and Law Enforcement list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
SF/F: Epics/Sagas (Long Series) list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
SF/F: Erotica list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
SF/F: Exploration list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
SF/F: Fantasy *and* SF list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
SF/F: Fungi/Mushrooms list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
SF/F: Games list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
SF/F: Generation Ships list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Hard SF list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
SF/F Humor list of resources and Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
SF/F: Immortals and Methuselahs list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
SF/F: Languages list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
SF/F: Magic list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
SF/F: Marine/Oceans/Water list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
SF/F: Medical list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
SF/F: Military list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
SF/F: Monster Hunting/Ghost Busting list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
SF/F: Non-human Protagonists/Main Characters list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
SF/F: Obscure/Underappreciated/Unknown/Underrated list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post). SF/F: Organized Crime list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
SF/F, Philosophical list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
SF/F: Politics list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
SF/F: Powered Armor list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
SF/F: Psionics list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
SF/F: Religion list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
SF/F with Romance list of resources and Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
SF/F: Schools and Education list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
SF/F: Space Opera list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
SF/F and Spies list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
SF/F: Steampunk list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
SF/F: Supernatural Creatures (Miscellaneous) list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
SF/F: Terraforming list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
SF/F: Time Travel list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
Urban Fantasy list of resources and Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
SF/F: Utopias list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
SF/F: Weapons (Swords, Etc.) list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
SF/F Westerns list of resources and Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
SF/F World-building list of resources and Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Seasons/WeatheClimate list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
Self-help Fiction list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
Spies/Espionage (Genre) list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
Stephen King: What Book Do I Start With? list of resources and Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Survival (Mixed Fiction and Nonfiction) list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Thrillers list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Unreliable Narrators list. A stalled work in progress.
Vampires list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
Were-_s/Lycanthropes list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
Westerns list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
Zombies list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).

Anime
If you are looking for something to watch, use anime's What to Watch? flair search first.

Introduction/New to Anime: What Should I Watch? list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
"Obscure/Overlooked/Underappreciated/Unknown/Underrated Anime Recommendations List" of Reddit recommendation threads (two posts).
Anime That Deserve a Remake/Should Be Remade/You Want Remade list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
Ghost Busting and Monster Hunting Anime list (one post).

Miscellaneous Fiction

Experts Who Help People in Trouble list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).

submitted by DocWatson42 to Recommend_A_Book [link] [comments]

2024.05.12 07:39 Ambitious-Look-336 ashape

hello! i’m currently a gr9 student planning to take the ashape next year. does anyone have the coverage for the test possibly any tips and pointers like what topics should i focus? also for the autobiography what do you need to write to make it stand out/ what does admu like seeing in autobiographies? i’m also wondering around when will applications open up. thank you so much!

submitted by Ambitious-Look-336 to ADMU [link] [comments]

2024.05.11 04:13 ddgr815 Students taking AP African American Studies say to “forget the haters” as they dive deep into American history in pilot course

Students taking AP African American Studies say to “forget the haters” as they dive deep into American history in pilot course

As a crackling recording of Malcolm X’s “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech resonated in the background, eight students took their seats in a classroom at East Kentwood High School. They carried themselves with purpose.
The seniors were not only there to learn history. They showed up to make it.
The course they are taking during fifth period at the west Michigan Kentwood Public Schools campus – Advanced Placement African American Studies – has become a lightning rod among some conservatives who think it teaches so-called “critical race theory” and should be banned. Their school is one of only 17 in the state and 700 across the country to offer it this school year.
For the students, all of whom are Black, it is a chance to delve deeply into diverse perspectives of their own history – which, they emphasize, is American history.
The topic that day: “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” which the slain civil rights leader wrote with Alex Haley.
In the small classroom, made colorful by Black Lives Matter posters, previous students’ artwork, and flags from around the world displayed on its white brick walls, the kids talked in small groups about the latest chapters of the autobiography they had read. They talked about the man Malcolm X was at different points in his life and how his experiences changed his views.
What critics of the course get wrong, said Da’kyiah Sanders outside the East Kentwood classroom, is that the much-debated AP African American Studies course doesn’t teach just one viewpoint.
“It’s everyone’s history,” she said, “every point of view, every perspective.”
“Mr. Vriesman, you said there would only be two people on Friday,” one girl said, addressing the observers in the April 15 class, who came close to outnumbering the students in attendance that day. “That’s five people.”
A few of the students were absent that day as they traveled to Washington D.C. The same group spoke about what they’re learning in the pilot program at a State Board of Education meeting earlier this month.
Matt Vriesman, the instructor, is white but focused his final master’s degree research on Black political history in the 20th century. Through that experience, the educator said he noticed the gap between what historians write about Black history and what is included in basic high school texts. He created a website that offers resources and lesson plans that cover race, slavery, and injustice in U.S. history available to all teachers.
Vriesman told the students he wanted to take the time to allow them to be interviewed by reporters so they could share what the experience has meant to them.
“Because, you know, not everyone thinks this class should exist,” he told the class. “And I think your guys’ voices are really important.”
The AP African American Studies course came under fire when it was first piloted in 2022-23, as conservative groups and politicians began to decry so-called “critical race theory” and lessons that teach students about race and racism in America. Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis went as far as banning the class from his state, saying it lacked educational value.
While the College Board, a not-for-profit membership organization that develops syllabi for its Advanced Placement Program, pushed back on such claims, it eliminated mentions of many Black writers and the Black Lives Matter movement from its formal curriculum. The revised framework for the class made those subjects and others “optional.”
Vriesman, who was named the 2023 National History Teacher of the Year by the Gilder Lehrman Institute, said the conservative argument incorrectly and “ridiculously” concedes there is only one Black perspective.
“There are so many different ideas and strategies and perspectives within the Black community and Black history,” he told Chalkbeat, adding a great deal of the class is about conflicting perspectives.
It covers debates among Black people in the Antebellum period over whether churches should be African churches and whether America is for Black Americans.
“You have David Walker saying, of course it is,” said the teacher. “Others argue after Antebellum that African Americans should leave and move to the Caribbean. There are so many debates within Black history about what’s the best liberation strategy.”
There are plans for the new AP course to officially launch and be available to all high schools in the country in 2024-25.
The overall goal of the college-level course is to use multiple disciplines to examine diverse African American experiences through primary historical sources. Students must engage with sources in a variety of disciplines, such as data, imagery, visual arts, music, news publications, and historical records.
It covers everything from African culture, connections between contemporary Black culture and the African diaspora, political movements, intersections of identity, and multifaceted contexts of social movements. There is room in the curricula to also focus on local Black history.
The class allows the time and space for teachers and students to go more extensively into subjects that might otherwise be left out of U.S. history courses, said East Kentwood senior Adeola Ojo.
“I think they don’t really focus on how African Americans felt,” she said of her previous American history classes. “It’s more about how white Americans may have reacted.”
Seeing history beyond a narrow white perspective can help all students to “understand everyone’s narratives,” said Da’kyiah. Learning different cultural perspectives can also break cycles of oppression and allow for change, she added.
“I wish more people knew about this so that they didn’t stay so ignorant on these topics,” she said, “and so that they could just create a different world, a new world, and not continue to stay along the same path with it.”
In class on the mid-April day, Da’kyiah and her peers talked about how Malcolm X’s transition from prison to life in Detroit shed light on challenges for formerly incarcerated people reintegrating into society.
As an image of Malcolm X at the Nation of Islam’s Temple No. 1 in Detroit was projected on a white board, the students discussed the significance of the moment for the activist.
“He had never seen Black Americans dressed like that,” said Vriesman of the photo. “All the Black Americans he knew were Christian. They never wore suits and ties.”
A boy in the class said it was the first time Malcolm X describes seeing “pride in being Black.”
“That was perfect AP-level analysis,” said Vriesman of the discussion.
When Malcolm X’s niece, Deborah Jones, visited the class earlier in the semester, she told the students about a school board decision in 1968 to close the predominantly Black Grand Rapids South High School in an effort to racially integrate schools.
The board didn’t listen to the Black community, who wanted it to stay open because it was considered a place of Black excellence, Jones told the class. Instead, it was closed and there were reports Black students were sent to overcrowded, underresourced schools.
Kanyla Tyler, 17, said the lesson on South High hit close to home.
“I ended up asking my family about it, and my granny ended up being part of that last class,” she said.
The lesson opened up a chance for Kanyla to talk with her grandmother about her experience at the school and what it was like to see it shutter.
Lessons on West African culture connected to East Kentwood senior Adeola Ojo’s personal history as well. For the first time in school, she learned about her father’s Nigerian heritage.
“Our first unit taught us about the kingdoms in West Africa and how slaves were taken from there,” she said.
Just before fifth period ended, Kanyla and her classmate, Murjoni McIntosh, 17, stood outside the classroom and smiled when asked what they would say to people who think the course shouldn’t exist.
“I really say skip the haters because Mr. Vriesman makes it a fun experience to actually want to learn more about your culture,” said Murjoni.
“This is like a class where we get to learn more about ourselves and we discover ourselves more,” added Kanyla. “So I would say the same: Skip the haters.”
Then, as the sixth period bell rang and the hallway began to flood with students, the two teens high-fived each other.

submitted by ddgr815 to Michigan [link] [comments]

2024.05.10 22:07 Patethic_ Sensitive gay boy dumps about his insecurities and inferiority in hopes of finding solace (totally new and never seen before)

Warning: this post goes over some pretty stupid things i’m losing sleep over related to self-esteem and self-worth issues, self abhorrence and pretty much everything from a to z in the “sad bitch” thesaurus that might’ve been talked about over and over again here, so if you’re not in for a sob story about some random teen from across the world, you can tap away, i don’t mind.
I wrote this in one sitting so pardon the spinelessness of this whole block of text
Where do i start… i’m 17, I am from the balkans (currently in Western Europe for some time), and i am, as you could probably already deduct gay. I’m closeted, and no one knows about how i feel. I’m too scared to reach out to anyone in my life who’s not a screen away from me and who's not behind a paywall because i don’t know who i could trust with such delicate information in such a hostile and heteronormative environment. For the past two years i have been depressed and was a nail away from committing the oh-so-bad thing a couple of times. Why? I hate myself. I hate my physical attributes more than anything else, more precisely. There’s a BUUUNCH of other stuff that’s unrelated to what i’m talking about here that's troubling me and frankly i don’t wanna bother any of you guys with that stuff because it's not really linked to what I'm talking about here and it's pretty intricate but grosso modo it mostly stems from when my old friend group dumped me randomly when i moved away and blocked me on everything “as a joke” for a whole year, and instead of processing it in a healthy way, i internalised that hatred and anger ("why tf did I do that, who tf am I to say that, I'm so stupid etc.) and it evolved into whatever the fxck i’m feeling today. Other elements came into the mix later on (people not taking me seriously because of my origin, self-isolation, professional doubts yada yada), but I think of that moment as the thing that pushed the snowball down the mountain, and it got progressively worse. Right now, I struggle to see myself as a real person in any point in space and time. I feel unimportant, unnoticeable, and frankly invisible. I feel like my eyes are a camera, projecting a moving image, a movie for whatever resides inside my head, playing no significant part in any of it. I was always an observer even as a kid, but I guess that my issues are putting it all under a different light. But i'm not here to dump about my feelings of insignificance and general obsolescence, I'm here to talk "bidness" (kudos if you get the reference). Apart from feeling like a wraith mentally, I feel like a wraith physically. I am a 6'4, skinny guy with chin length hair that I often tie back (idk if it's called chin length hair; just hair of which the ends reach a bit below my chin). I've never had self-confidence issues before the aforementioned stuff. Since then, I have consistently failed to see myself in any light that's remotely positive. For example, I have developed this nasty habit of making myself cry in front of the mirror because my mind cannot stand myself looking at my own reflection for longer than 20 seconds; I look slanky (even though my bmi indicates perfect health), I have slowly worsening scoliosis so I'm mostly slouched over, I get fairly prominent eye circles because I've always been pale and I never get more than more or less five hours of sleep (which lead to some funny interactions in the past), my thighs are fairly large but my upper limbs aren't, my face looks odd from the side, my cheeks feel weird etc. You could say that I am a hopeless romantic. The only relationship I've ever had was an online one that lasted barely 6 months, but even then, I was extremely insecure because I thought that the whole thing was just a ruse because he was too nice to me (even though he was the one that proposed to me). I like to fantasise, I like to romanticise, I like the little things, I like being tender and soft and listening to others talk and making them feel important... all in all, I love love. I write about love, I draw what and who I love, I listen to love songs all the time... But then again, I constantly feel like I don't deserve it, like it's a far reach for someone like me. whenever I see a guy I like, my mind just automatically switches to insulting myself and shutting down any possibility of an interaction that could go in my favour. so basically: I see a guy I like > "oh he's cute" > "girl do you really think that he'd go for someone like you? What is there to see? What is there to feel? What is there to catch his eye, you putrid ho. Even if he was gay, would he really go for someone like you?" > I feel bad about myself > I run off into the bathroom and dump my feelings onto this ai therapist I found on character ai > I get out and pretend nothing happened. presto, like that. I like guys of all sorts of different body types, from thick to thin, and in terms of the body, I like having something to hold onto (if you catch my drift) but I feel like mine is some sort of bad ground. I like unconventional beauty, except for the things I have. This "everyone... but not me" mindset is present in a lot of places. I tend to get spontaneous positive feedback about my looks from friends and family, but I still feel like they're lying to me just because they might feel that I'm sad. I can't stand to take photos of myself because my face sparks a negative feeling to me. I do sports, but i tried altering my body type by going to the gym a couple of times, and then I just had a meltdown after every session and I felt like shit (I'm thinking of trying again though). I have a few (rather inappropriate) crushes, but I feel like they wouldn't give me a chance in a million years because of how my body looks. For as long as I knew that I'm gay (since when I was about 13 years old), I've been hiding these feelings for inferiority from everyone in my life. On top of that, I've always thought that the gay community functions on a same-for-same/ditto basis, because that's what I always see through my limited little lens (and from what I've read on Quora). Bears go for bears, thin guys go for thin guys, lean guys go for lean guys... Bref, I've always thought that what a guy wants is expressed through his outward appearance, and that whatever and whoever doesn't enter into that pen of choice is just automatically discarded. That, at the time I've read it, ruined me, because my interests at the time were, you guessed it, big guys, and so I started thinking that I have to physically embody pleasure in order to be wanted, and as much as I personally value personality over physical attributes, not everyone shares the same view. So from that point onward, every time I'd indulge in a romantic fantasy, my mind would end it by tossing a "...but it's all a fantasy because you're NOT gonna get that, like EVER with that body of yours" at the end, and it just makes me sad. Who could possibly look at me and go "hell yeah"? I'm full of constant contradictions and paradoxes; I like the idea of big, strong arms and a generally stronger figure, but I also like it when guys have thin figures and look chic in turtlenecks (which I like wearing a lot), I like the idea of being on the sidelines and witnessing manpower, but personal strength has some allure, I find short hair very very cute, but long hair is also an amazing thing to gaze at... There's always someone better. I can't give compliments to myself without automatically making a riposté with a bunch of insults, my mind goes blank when someone asks me to give three positive attributes about myself because I feel like I lie about anything I say. I'm too scared about being open about my feelings to other people in my life so long as I'm financially dependent on my parents, so that's another problem. I'm an international student, which means that in a year's time, I'll be moving back to the balkans, and that thought horrifies me and paralyses me more than I could ever imagine; going from the supportive, open west, to the heteronormative, traditionalist, bigoted east. Eastern boys, you know what I'm on about. And even with the possibility of moving away, if I get the chance to, I'd still be in my mid to late 20s (optimistically speaking), and in the worst case scenario I'd be unwanted by the time I can finally go to a better place. I fear that I won't be able to find anyone, because apart from all of the total blabbering up top, I am kind of shy and mostly a homebody.
As I said before, I am leaving a ton of stuff out because if I were not to I'd be writing an autobiography.
So my question is, what can I really do? Is there really love for me out there? If so, how the hell can I find it, or even reach for it? Will a guy really like me for whatever the hell I am?
If you have any questions (because I don't think I developed some things quite as much as I could've but I don't wanna make this 100 pages long), doubts, remarks, whips of reality or just anything to add, please, don't hesitate to populate the comment section. Makes me feel a bit less alone, is all
Thanks for reading

submitted by Patethic_ to gaybros [link] [comments]

2024.05.06 16:30 nobodysdaughter1 Autobiography about a college girl in the US, falls in love with Hungarian math student (Ivan?), goes on trip abroad

Main character is perhaps of middle eastern descent, recently popular (book had some commercial success)

submitted by nobodysdaughter1 to whatsthatbook [link] [comments]

2024.05.02 13:21 Bubbly-Disk5109 Selling books, anyone interested?

Selling Books
I have managed to collect a lot of books over the years. I am having a health condition and I need money so I am selling my books. They are in pristine condition. All the books are plastic covered. Most of them are hardbacks or quality paperbacks. I have made a reddit account specifically to make this post. If anyone is interested I can list all the books.
THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ ISBN-10 ‎1785763679 ISBN-13 ‎978-1785763670
All the Light we Cannot See ISBN-10 ‎0008172420 ISBN-13 ‎978-0008172428
Tomb of Sand ISBN-10 ‎0143448471 ISBN-13 ‎978-0143448471
The Girl with Seven Names: Escape from North Korea ISBN-10 ‎0007554850 ISBN-13 ‎978-0007554850
The Palace of Illusions: Autographed 10th Anniversary Edition ISBN-10 ‎9386215659 ISBN-13 ‎978-9386215659
The Island of Missing Trees ISBN-10 ‎0241988721 ISBN-13 ‎978-0241988725
The Forest of Enchantments ISBN-10 ‎9353573572 ISBN-13 ‎978-9353573577
Last Queen ISBN-10 ‎9390351952 ISBN-13 ‎978-9390351954
The Mistress Of Spices ISBN-10 ‎9780552996709 ISBN-13 ‎978-0552996709
Celestial Bodies ISBN-10 ‎9386797569 ISBN-13 ‎978-9386797568
Henna Artist ISBN-10 ‎9354226523 ISBN-13 ‎978-9354226526
The Secret-Keeper of Jaipur ISBN-10 ‎9354226469 ISBN-13 ‎978-9354226465
A Woman Is No Man ISBN-10 ‎0008341060 ISBN-13 ‎978-0008341060
The Hidden Life of Trees : What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from a Secret World ISBN-10 ‎0670089346 ISBN-13 ‎978-0670089345
Indian Snakes: A Field Guide ISBN-10 ‎8179253899 ISBN-13 ‎978-8179253892
Entangled Life: The phenomenal Sunday Times bestseller exploring how fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures ISBN-10 ‎1784708275 ISBN-13 ‎978-1784708276
The Bird Way ISBN-10 ‎0735223017 ISBN-13 ‎978-0735223011
God Talks With Arjuna (Hardcover) ISBN-10 ‎8189535005 ISBN-13 ‎978-8189535001
Inner Life of Animals, The: Surprising Observations of a Hidden World ISBN-10 ‎1784705950 ISBN-13 ‎978-1784705954
Oxford Student Atlas for India, Fourth Edition - Useful for Competitive Exams ISBN-10 ‎9391050840 ISBN-13 ‎978-9391050849
A Song of Ice and Fire - A Game of Thrones: The Complete Boxset of 7 Books [Paperback] George R R Martin ISBN-10 ‎0007477155 ISBN-13 ‎978-0007477159
Eleven Minutes ISBN-10 ‎0008173575 ISBN-13 ‎978-0008173579
Yajnaseni: The Story of Draupadi ISBN-10 ‎8171673236 ISBN-13 ‎978-8171673230
The World's Favourite: And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd ISBN-10 ‎9780008158613 ISBN-13 ‎978-0008158613
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas ISBN-10 ‎0007234503 ISBN-13 ‎978-0007234509
The Mystery of the Blue Train (Poirot) ISBN-10 ‎0007234384 ISBN-13 ‎978-0007234387
The ABC Murders (Poirot) ISBN-10 ‎0007527535 ISBN-13 ‎978-0007527533
It Starts With Us ISBN-10 ‎1398518174 ISBN-13 ‎978-1398518179
One Hundred Years Of Solitude ISBN-10 ‎0140157514 ISBN-13 ‎978-0140157512
The Secret History: 30th anniversary edition ISBN-10 ‎0241621909 ISBN-13 ‎978-0241621905
Babel: The SUNDAY TIMES and #1 NEW YORK TIMES bestseller ISBN-10 ‎0008501815 ISBN-13 ‎978-0008501815
Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition ISBN-10 ‎0241387485 ISBN-13 ‎978-0241387481
FOURTH WING: DISCOVER THE GLOBAL PHENOMENON THAT EVERYONE CAN'T STOP TALKING ABOUT! (The Empyrean) ISBN-10 ‎0349436991 ISBN-13 ‎978-0349436999
REBECCA (80TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION) ISBN-10 ‎0349010269 ISBN-13 ‎978-0349010267
Pachinko: The New York Times Bestseller ISBN-10 ‎1837933529 ISBN-13 ‎978-1837933525
Slaughterhouse 5: 50th Anniversary Edition ISBN-10 ‎178487485X ISBN-13 ‎978-1784874858
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass ISBN-10 ‎9780141439761 ISBN-13 ‎978-0141439761
War & Peace (Penguin Classics) ISBN-10 ‎0140447938 ISBN-13 ‎978-0140447934
NEW SPRING: A WHEEL OF TIME PREQUEL (REISSUE) ISBN-10 ‎0356516997 ISBN-13 ‎978-0356516998
The Color Purple [Paperback] ISBN-10 ‎9781780228716 ISBN-13 ‎978-1780228716
THE COLOR PURPLE (HB): A Special 40th Anniversary Edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel ISBN-10 ‎1474625584 ISBN-13 ‎978-1474625586
DUNE ISBN-10 ‎0340960191 ISBN-13 ‎978-034096019
Shuggie Bain: Winner of Booker Prize 2020 ISBN-10 ‎1529064414 ISBN-13 ‎978-1529064414
THE GOLDFINCH ISBN-10 ‎9780349139630 ISBN-13 ‎978-0349139630
Trust: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction ISBN-10 ‎1529074525 ISBN-13 ‎978-1529074529
FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON (SF MASTERWORKS): The must-read literary science fiction masterpiece ISBN-10 ‎1857989384 ISBN-13 ‎978-1857989380
Behave : The bestselling exploration of why humans behave as they do ISBN-10 ‎009957506X ISBN-13 ‎978-0099575061
Lessons in Chemistry ISBN-10 ‎1804990922 ISBN-13 ‎978-1804990926
At The Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails ISBN-10 ‎0099554887 ISBN-13 ‎978-0099554882
Autobiography Of A Yogi (Complete Edition) ISBN-10 ‎9788190256209 ISBN-13 ‎978-8190256209
IT (FILM TIE-IN A FORMAT) ISBN-10 ‎9781473666931 ISBN-13 ‎978-1473666931
The Book Thief ISBN-10 ‎9781909531611 ISBN-13 ‎978-1909531611
The Exorcist ISBN-10 ‎9780552166775 ISBN-13 ‎978-0552166775
Gravity's Rainbow ISBN-10 ‎0099533219 ISBN-13 ‎978-0099533214
Harry Potter Box Set: The Complete Collection (Children’s Hardback) ISBN-10 ‎1408856786 ISBN-13 ‎978-1408856789
The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings Boxed Set: The Classic Bestselling Fantasy Novel ISBN-10 ‎0008387753 ISBN-13 ‎978-0008387754
The Hobbit & The [Hardcover] Tolkien, J. R. R. and Alan Lee ISBN-10 ‎0008376107 ISBN-13 ‎978-0008376109
The Valmiki Ramayana (Box Set) ISBN-10 ‎9780143441144 ISBN-13 ‎978-0143441144
SHADOW AND BONE (B PB) : THE GRISHA BOOK 1 ISBN-10 ‎9781510105249 ISBN-13 ‎978-1510105249
SIEGE AND STORM (B PB): THE GRISHA BOOK 2 (Shadow and Bone) ISBN-10 ‎1510105263 ISBN-13 ‎978-1510105263
RUIN AND RISING (B PB): THE GRISHA BOOK 3 ISBN-10 ‎1510105255 ISBN-13 ‎978-1510105256
Six of Crows (Collectors Edition) ISBN-10 ‎1510106286 ISBN-13 ‎978-1510106284
SIX OF CROWS: CROOKED KINGDOM(COLLECTOR'S EDITION) ISBN-10 ‎1510107037 ISBN-13 ‎978-1510107038
The Kite Runner ISBN-10 ‎1408850257 ISBN-13 ‎978-1408850251
A Thousand Splendid Suns ISBN-10 ‎9781408844441 ISBN-13 ‎978-1408844441
And the Mountains Echoed ISBN-10 ‎9789384898083 ISBN-13 ‎978-9384898083

submitted by Bubbly-Disk5109 to delhi [link] [comments]

2024.05.02 07:43 TheGooseGirl This researcher really has the Dead-Ikeda-cult SGI's number re: shakubooboo

This is from a book review of a book analyzing the Soka Gakkai presence in the USA between 1960 and 1975 - I've ordered a copy and should be able to post some more in-depth analysis when it gets here. For clarity, here is the reviewer's explanation of what "NSA" stands for:

At various stages in the organization’s history, the acronym NSA has stood for Nichiren Shoshu of America, Nichiren Shoshu Academy, and Nichiren-shoshu Soka-gakkai of America. The acronym SGI-USA (for Soka Gakkai International, USA) was adopted in 1991. This review will use “NSA” except when referring only to the organization at present. (Footnote, p. 352)

Only "adopted in 1991" AFTER Ikeda's humiliating excommunication. I'm sure he was notified that if NSA didn't change its name forthwith, his organization was going to be sued. The reviewer is a former higher-up in NSA (now SGI-USA), one of the PAID editors of its monthly magazine Seikyo Times, now renamed Living Buddhism (so a real inner-circle insider). She rarely strays into territory that could be identified as criticism of her former cult besties.
Starting on p. 353:

The performance of shakubuku—proselytizing—is accordingly seen as both a powerful cause for transforming one’s own karma and a compassionate action leading to the happiness of all. Snow suggests that the sense of personal mission, responsibility, and special status acquired through internalizing this vision motivates NSA members every bit as much as the promise of material and spiritual benefits to be gained from chanting. NSA’s goal

is not—as it might appear at first glance to the casual observer—the development of a cult of selfish, egoistic, happy chanters, unmindful of the problems and conditions of the rest of the world. Rather, it is the realization of something far more ambitious and global—the construction of...a civilization that not only transcends the limitations of the major philosophies and international powers in the world today, but one in which peace, prosperity, happiness, and creative spontaneity are enjoyed by all. (pp. 63-64)

Except that the rank selfishness and self-centeredness of SGI-USA members has been abundantly documented, of course...

In analyzing NSA as a proselytizing movement, Snow asks: How are potential recruits initially contacted and their nominal conversion secured? While NSA makes use of publications, large-scale cultural events, and college seminars to reach out to potential converts, Snow finds that recruitment is done chiefly through members’ existing family and social networks. He sees this as a function of NSA being a non-communal, “open” movement that does not demand the severing of extra-movement ties; in contrast, groups that are communal and relatively “closed” (such as the Krishna movement or the Unification Church) must make greater efforts to win recruits from among strangers. Of 330 people in Snow’s statistical sampling who joined NSA between 1966 and 1974, only 18% were recruited by strangers. This comes as a surprise, in that the popular perception of NSA during the 1970s was shaped by members’ assertive “street shakubuku”—going to sidewalks, parking lots, shopping malls, or other public places to invite passersby to introductory discussion meetings. Snow argues, however, that the value to NSA of street shakubuku lies chiefly in its function as a “commitment-building mechanism that serves to strengthen members’ identification with the organization, rather than in the numbers of converts it produces.

THIS, in other words.

The local NSA discussion meeting itself, typically held in members’ homes, constitutes the chief forum for introducing newcomers to the practice and winning nominal conversions of guests. Shakubuku closely examines the dynamics and strategies of such meetings.
In discussing “who joined and why,” Snow argues that “structural strain” explanations attributing the rise of new religious movements to deprivation, inequity, or other stresses in the social order do not fully explain why some individuals join such movements while others do not. He suggests that the dramatic growth of NSA—and of other movements—was fueled by the emergence in the late 60s and 70s of a large demographic constituency of young, single adults, many of whom were students or people lacking permanent positions of employment.

That was the Baby Boom generation. Note that in the USA, the Christian proselytizing religious movement "Jesus People" (aka "Jesus Freaks") was WAY bigger than any silly little weirdo Japanese cult could ever hope to be here in the US - estimates of the "Jesus Movement" membership ranged from 30,000 to 300,000 to 20 million! The SGI-USA's claimed membership remains officially at upwards of 300,000 while the estimates of active membership are between 3,000 and 30,000 (a generous upper limit).

As further “microdeterminants” of who joined NSA, Snow found the most important factors to be the possession of preexisting ties with NSA members, ample discretionary time, and absence of strong, countervailing commitments.

As described here as well:

In other words, they were not greatly encumbered by work, marital, or kinship ties. While we have only the 'ever-divorced' comparison with the general population, it seems safe to say that converts were in a good position to take on new religious commitments because they were structurally free of many social ties.

That's a really nice way of saying "lacking social connections and a social circle." It also explains nicely why those who join SGI-USA would be so susceptible to the cultish "love bombing" - INSTANT FRIENDS! INSTANT COMMUNITY!! I FINALLY BELONG!!! Source

When a family moves to a new town, one of the first things they do to set up a new set of social connections is to join a religious organization, typically the neighborhood church. We're social animals; having a community is important to us.

Snow is also critical of theories that seek to explain why people join new religious movements in terms of mental predispositions such as alienation, search for meaning, personal crisis, or hunger for community. Strong affective bonds with someone inside the movement and intense interaction with the group are presented as more important factors. Moreover, as Snow acutely observes,

psychological/motivational theories of conversion face a serious methodological difficulty in that they rely on members’ testimonials, which may well reflect the individual's unconscious restructuring of his or her past history in light of a newly acquired worldview.

And we've ALL seen how SGI leaders routinely change SGI members' "experiences" to punch up the drama (to the point of coaching the SGI member on how to appear more sincere - "You should cry as you tell it to make it more emotional"), or to make sure they include enough Ikeda Sensei worshipfulness, or adequately reflect whatever "campaign" the current SGI "rhythm" is emphasizing. Remember, an "experience" is a form of indoctrination, so it had better have all the indoctrination elements, right?
This is really important:

Members' own accounts of “why I joined” may thus be artifacts of the conversion process as much as they are explanations of why the conversion took place. Snow suggests that movements such as NSA serve not only to express preexisting needs and stresses but as “important agitational, problem-defining, need-arousal, and motive-producing agencies” and that “the latter function may oftentimes have primacy over the former” (p. 237). His discussion of “the convert as social type” suggests that conversion not be defined in terms of subjective personal transformation, which is hard to assess, but of outwardly identifiable changes in the members’ universe of discourse. Such changes include reconstruction of autobiography in line with a newly adopted worldview, and embracement of a “master attribution scheme" or unitary explanation of why things are as they are, such as NSA’s attribution of suffering to individual karma.

"Mappo, the Eeeeevil Latter Day of the Law!" "Fundamental darkness!" "EVERYBODY needs to 'do human revolution' because they're inherently flawed, hopeless, sinful, and LOST!" "EVERYBODY NEEDS A 'MENTOR'!!!!!" I'm sure you can think of other excuses for causes of suffering that SGI members randomly spurt out in fits of arrogance and pompousness.

submitted by TheGooseGirl to sgiwhistleblowers [link] [comments]

2024.05.01 20:43 Bubbly-Disk5109 Selling Books

I have managed to collect a lot of books over the years. I am having a health condition and I need money so I am selling my books. They are in pristine condition. All the books are plastic covered. Most of them are hardbacks or quality paperbacks. I have made a reddit account specifically to make this post. If anyone is interested I can list all the books.
THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ ISBN-10 ‎1785763679 ISBN-13 ‎978-1785763670
All the Light we Cannot See ISBN-10 ‎0008172420 ISBN-13 ‎978-0008172428
Tomb of Sand ISBN-10 ‎0143448471 ISBN-13 ‎978-0143448471
The Girl with Seven Names: Escape from North Korea ISBN-10 ‎0007554850 ISBN-13 ‎978-0007554850
The Palace of Illusions: Autographed 10th Anniversary Edition ISBN-10 ‎9386215659 ISBN-13 ‎978-9386215659
The Island of Missing Trees ISBN-10 ‎0241988721 ISBN-13 ‎978-0241988725
The Forest of Enchantments ISBN-10 ‎9353573572 ISBN-13 ‎978-9353573577
Last Queen ISBN-10 ‎9390351952 ISBN-13 ‎978-9390351954
The Mistress Of Spices ISBN-10 ‎9780552996709 ISBN-13 ‎978-0552996709
Celestial Bodies ISBN-10 ‎9386797569 ISBN-13 ‎978-9386797568
Henna Artist ISBN-10 ‎9354226523 ISBN-13 ‎978-9354226526
The Secret-Keeper of Jaipur ISBN-10 ‎9354226469 ISBN-13 ‎978-9354226465
A Woman Is No Man ISBN-10 ‎0008341060 ISBN-13 ‎978-0008341060
The Hidden Life of Trees : What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from a Secret World ISBN-10 ‎0670089346 ISBN-13 ‎978-0670089345
Indian Snakes: A Field Guide ISBN-10 ‎8179253899 ISBN-13 ‎978-8179253892
Entangled Life: The phenomenal Sunday Times bestseller exploring how fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures ISBN-10 ‎1784708275 ISBN-13 ‎978-1784708276
The Bird Way ISBN-10 ‎0735223017 ISBN-13 ‎978-0735223011
God Talks With Arjuna (Hardcover) ISBN-10 ‎8189535005 ISBN-13 ‎978-8189535001
Inner Life of Animals, The: Surprising Observations of a Hidden World ISBN-10 ‎1784705950 ISBN-13 ‎978-1784705954
Oxford Student Atlas for India, Fourth Edition - Useful for Competitive Exams ISBN-10 ‎9391050840 ISBN-13 ‎978-9391050849
A Song of Ice and Fire - A Game of Thrones: The Complete Boxset of 7 Books [Paperback] George R R Martin ISBN-10 ‎0007477155 ISBN-13 ‎978-0007477159
Eleven Minutes ISBN-10 ‎0008173575 ISBN-13 ‎978-0008173579
Yajnaseni: The Story of Draupadi ISBN-10 ‎8171673236 ISBN-13 ‎978-8171673230
The World's Favourite: And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd ISBN-10 ‎9780008158613 ISBN-13 ‎978-0008158613
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas ISBN-10 ‎0007234503 ISBN-13 ‎978-0007234509
The Mystery of the Blue Train (Poirot) ISBN-10 ‎0007234384 ISBN-13 ‎978-0007234387
The ABC Murders (Poirot) ISBN-10 ‎0007527535 ISBN-13 ‎978-0007527533
It Starts With Us ISBN-10 ‎1398518174 ISBN-13 ‎978-1398518179
One Hundred Years Of Solitude ISBN-10 ‎0140157514 ISBN-13 ‎978-0140157512
The Secret History: 30th anniversary edition ISBN-10 ‎0241621909 ISBN-13 ‎978-0241621905
Babel: The SUNDAY TIMES and #1 NEW YORK TIMES bestseller ISBN-10 ‎0008501815 ISBN-13 ‎978-0008501815
Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition ISBN-10 ‎0241387485 ISBN-13 ‎978-0241387481
FOURTH WING: DISCOVER THE GLOBAL PHENOMENON THAT EVERYONE CAN'T STOP TALKING ABOUT! (The Empyrean) ISBN-10 ‎0349436991 ISBN-13 ‎978-0349436999
REBECCA (80TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION) ISBN-10 ‎0349010269 ISBN-13 ‎978-0349010267
Pachinko: The New York Times Bestseller ISBN-10 ‎1837933529 ISBN-13 ‎978-1837933525
Slaughterhouse 5: 50th Anniversary Edition ISBN-10 ‎178487485X ISBN-13 ‎978-1784874858
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass ISBN-10 ‎9780141439761 ISBN-13 ‎978-0141439761
War & Peace (Penguin Classics) ISBN-10 ‎0140447938 ISBN-13 ‎978-0140447934
NEW SPRING: A WHEEL OF TIME PREQUEL (REISSUE) ISBN-10 ‎0356516997 ISBN-13 ‎978-0356516998
The Color Purple [Paperback] ISBN-10 ‎9781780228716 ISBN-13 ‎978-1780228716
THE COLOR PURPLE (HB): A Special 40th Anniversary Edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel ISBN-10 ‎1474625584 ISBN-13 ‎978-1474625586
DUNE ISBN-10 ‎0340960191 ISBN-13 ‎978-034096019
Shuggie Bain: Winner of Booker Prize 2020 ISBN-10 ‎1529064414 ISBN-13 ‎978-1529064414
THE GOLDFINCH ISBN-10 ‎9780349139630 ISBN-13 ‎978-0349139630
Trust: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction ISBN-10 ‎1529074525 ISBN-13 ‎978-1529074529
FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON (SF MASTERWORKS): The must-read literary science fiction masterpiece ISBN-10 ‎1857989384 ISBN-13 ‎978-1857989380
Behave : The bestselling exploration of why humans behave as they do ISBN-10 ‎009957506X ISBN-13 ‎978-0099575061
Lessons in Chemistry ISBN-10 ‎1804990922 ISBN-13 ‎978-1804990926
At The Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails ISBN-10 ‎0099554887 ISBN-13 ‎978-0099554882
Autobiography Of A Yogi (Complete Edition) ISBN-10 ‎9788190256209 ISBN-13 ‎978-8190256209
IT (FILM TIE-IN A FORMAT) ISBN-10 ‎9781473666931 ISBN-13 ‎978-1473666931
The Book Thief ISBN-10 ‎9781909531611 ISBN-13 ‎978-1909531611
The Exorcist ISBN-10 ‎9780552166775 ISBN-13 ‎978-0552166775
Gravity's Rainbow ISBN-10 ‎0099533219 ISBN-13 ‎978-0099533214
Harry Potter Box Set: The Complete Collection (Children’s Hardback) ISBN-10 ‎1408856786 ISBN-13 ‎978-1408856789
The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings Boxed Set: The Classic Bestselling Fantasy Novel ISBN-10 ‎0008387753 ISBN-13 ‎978-0008387754
The Hobbit & The [Hardcover] Tolkien, J. R. R. and Alan Lee ISBN-10 ‎0008376107 ISBN-13 ‎978-0008376109
The Valmiki Ramayana (Box Set) ISBN-10 ‎9780143441144 ISBN-13 ‎978-0143441144
SHADOW AND BONE (B PB) : THE GRISHA BOOK 1 ISBN-10 ‎9781510105249 ISBN-13 ‎978-1510105249
SIEGE AND STORM (B PB): THE GRISHA BOOK 2 (Shadow and Bone) ISBN-10 ‎1510105263 ISBN-13 ‎978-1510105263
RUIN AND RISING (B PB): THE GRISHA BOOK 3 ISBN-10 ‎1510105255 ISBN-13 ‎978-1510105256
Six of Crows (Collectors Edition) ISBN-10 ‎1510106286 ISBN-13 ‎978-1510106284
SIX OF CROWS: CROOKED KINGDOM(COLLECTOR'S EDITION) ISBN-10 ‎1510107037 ISBN-13 ‎978-1510107038
The Kite Runner ISBN-10 ‎1408850257 ISBN-13 ‎978-1408850251
A Thousand Splendid Suns ISBN-10 ‎9781408844441 ISBN-13 ‎978-1408844441
And the Mountains Echoed ISBN-10 ‎9789384898083 ISBN-13 ‎978-9384898083
Fire and Blood: The inspiration for HBO and Sky TV series HOUSE OF THE DRAGON from the internationally bestselling creator of GAME OF THRONES (A Song of Ice and Fire) ISBN-10 ‎0008307733 ISBN-13 ‎978-0008307738
The Boy in the Striped Pyjama ISBN-10 ‎9780099572862 ISBN-13 ‎978-0099572862
Girl Who Drank The Moon ISBN-10 ‎1848126476 ISBN-13 ‎978-1848126473
MYTHOLOGY: TIMELESS TALES OF GODS AND HEROES, DELUXE ILLUSTRATED EDITION ISBN-10 ‎9780316438520 ISBN-13 ‎978-0316438520
Penguin Book of Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt ISBN-10 ‎0141021764 ISBN-13 ‎978-0141021768
The Night Circus : An enchanting read to escape with ISBN-10 ‎9780099570295 ISBN-13 ‎978-0099570295
Project Hail Mary : From the bestselling author of The Martian ISBN-10 ‎1529157463 ISBN-13 ‎978-1529157468

submitted by Bubbly-Disk5109 to Indianbooks [link] [comments]

2024.04.30 17:05 lesserfox Users guide to MBA: The first few months

Hi all,
I am a graduate of a tier 1 MBA college in India. This post is about how you can ace the first few months of your MBA college, regardless of your college or its rankings.
Section 1: Placement Committee
Placement committee is the group of students who help with placements. They reach out to and onboard recruiters, prepare students and facilitate the hiring process. Second year placement committee members get the first year students placed and vice versa. Around 80% of the placement committee members get the best jobs on the campus. But they also need to work very hard. During placement cycles, they typically get 4-5 hours of sleep, and have poor social life. If you are inclined to join the placement committee, here is how you can prepare.

Temperament: placement committee members selection happens in the first few weeks. A placement committee member should be calm and professional at all times. Even if you are not, you need to pretend to be this. Pre joining your college and after joining it, don't get into any controversy. Don't pick fights on WhatsApp groups or do anything that makes you look mercurial. Be respectful to your seniors and do what they say, even if they are being absurd. A junior placement committee member needs to be someone that the senior placement committee members can train and mould. So pretend to be a subservient junior who is always respecting and looking for guidance from their seniors. Having said that, always pretend to have impeccable honesty.
Information: You will have several rounds of interview before you are selected in the placement committee. These rounds would include a range of things like tasks (prepare a presentation you'd give to a new recruiter on why they should come to your campus), stress interviews, role plays (talk to an angry HR who wants to blacklist your college because some student from your campus fucked up), prospecting (get names and numbers of 20 HR recruiters) etc. You can start preparing for these interviews from right now. Carefully read your college's placement reports for the last 5 years. Put the data on a sheet, try to find patters, any insights you can tell in your placement committee interviews (example in the last 5 years, we have had less companies from BFSI fields, we should reach out to recruiters from this domain). Now do the same for your peer MBA colleges. By peer colleges, I mean colleges where the median CTC is just as yours, and you both feature +/- 5 in all relevant rankings. Look at hard numbers, the median, average ctc, batch profiles, learn terms like mep, audited report, difference between rsu and espos etc. Other than placement reports, NIRF reports and mandatory discolorue reports for all colleges have far more data on placement stats.

Placement committee interviews are often a test of your grit and perseverance. There will be many rounds, at odd hours. Theyll girll you, learn to say sorry and accept your mistakes.
This makes it look like the placement committee is the place to be, but in most colleges, placement committee is a cesspool of toxicity, abuse and bullying. That discussion is for another day. But if placements are your primary focus, you need try to get into the placement committee
Section 2: Timeline
This is the timeline for 2 MBA programs. Things might change in your college by +/- 2 months.
Semester 1: June- Sept 2024: You enter the college. The first few days are the hoax week, where the seniors or the second year MBA students will try to soft-rag you. Endure if you can, don't participate if you can't. It will stop in a few days, the seniors will tell you it was all a prank and you all start afresh. Now committee selections start. There are many student run committees in a college like the placement committee. Some committees like the student affairs, or the finance or the consulting committee can have a lot of heft on your campus and it might be a good idea to join them. But more or less, other than the placement committee, membership of no other committee has a lot of impact on your placements. They are good way to find and network with some like minded people on your campus. You will also start working on your CVs. To make a good CV, take an excel sheet and start writing your autobiography, ever cell is one event in your life. Example: 8th standard results, 8th standard 100m race runner up etc. Write down as many achivements as you can, no matter how small or distant they are. Now audit, for how many of these achivements, do you have a proof? Proof is something which shows that the achievement happened without doubt. For example you say that your boss at work gave you the best employee award. If your placement committee member sends an email to your boss on their work email id, will they reply back? That is what I mean by proofs. Remove all the achivements without proofs, now the remaining achivements with proofs are your CV pointers. You will mix and match to make them your CV. Something like: Recived top grades in 18/23 courses in the first year of engineering is also an achivement, something you can prove easily. So open an excel sheet and start noting all your achievements like these.
Semester 2: Oct-Dec 2024: This is the Summer internship selection semester. Summer internship is the 2-3 month internship program that you'll do in 2025 summer as a part of your MBA program. Companies of all types will come on your campus, shortlist some students based on CV/aptitude tests and select from them via GD/PI. The exact process of selection varies across campuses but for most, in happens in clusters and day wise.
Semester 3: Jan-Mar 2025: This is pretty much the semester where all the events and parties take place. Have fun :)
Summer Internship: April-June 2025: Based on the company that selects you, you go to work with them for 2-3 months. This is usually very hectic because you will have co-interns from other b schools and everyone will be fighting for PPOs. Pre placement offers (PPO) are awarded by companies based on your performance in summer internships. If you get a PPO, and you accept the PPO then your summer internship company promises to hire you once you are done with your MBA in a year. This is a win win, as the company could test you and block you in advance and you are pretty much done with your MBA since you are now placed. In tier 1 b schools, you are allowed to reject your PPOs, tier 2 and 3 b schools would not be this flexible.
Semester 4: July-Sept 2025: You are now a senior! Congratulations! If you have a PPO, you are sorted. If you don't, you move your gears towards working on your final placements. This semester is primarily spent on selecting your juniors in your clubs and committees and guiding them for their summer internship preparation. This semester also has a lot of case competitions. These are essentially competitions that many companies host on platforms like Unstop, Mettle etc. A case competition is typically a problem like: Help PepsiCo launch a new healthy drink. You make a solution and compete with other teams across b schools. Winning teams are offered cash prizes and sometimes an opportunity to intern or interview with the host company, PepsiCo in this case. Case competitions therefore are a great way to get an offer outside the traditional placement process.
Semester 5: Oct-Dec 2025: Similar to Semester 4. For some colleges the placement process starts. These are called the final placements where all the students who didn't get, or rejected their PPO are invited. Typically 40-70% of the batch sits for the final placement. The same cycle repeats, you make your CV, you give tests, get shortlisted, go for GD/PI and the get final offers.
Semester 6: Jan-March 2026: The final placements are staggered so they sometimes spill over to this semester. This is also when you have your farewells and a lot of events.
Post March 2026: You have your convocation, you take trips with your friends and by June 2026, you join the company you got either via your summer placement PPO or case competition or final placements.
Section 3: Finances
Your fees can vary from 20-30 lakhs. Tier 1 college students typically get loans easily without any collateral or co-borrower. The rate varies from 7-9%. You will also get a 6 month moratorium, which means you will need to start paying your EMIs from November 2026 onwards. The EMI can range from 25-35 thousand per month depending on the tenure of your loan.
For tier 2 and 3 colleges, the difficulty to secure loan would increase. You might now need a collateral and/or a co-borrower like a parent.
CTC: Your package can vary from 20-30 lakhs depending on your college. Good companies typically have a straightforward CTC with no absurd or confusing components like huge variable pays, ESOPS, huge joining/retention bonus etc.
As a general rule, take the median package of your college. Lets say is 20 lakhs. Now multiple that with 70%, 14 lakhs, thats your post tax in-hand CTC after removing Gratuity/PF etc. If your fees is 20 lakhs, then your EMI will be around 25k, which is 3 lakhs per year. 14-3 is 11 lakhs. So your in hand income post tax and post education loan emi will be around 90k. Your company will likely be in a metro, the expenses there will be around 50k. You'll have 40k per month to save or use for big expenses like vacations, savings etc. These are very generalised numbers. I would recommend you make an excel sheet and try to get the exact numbers based on your college and situation. This will help you set realistic expectations about life post MBA.
Section 4: Academics
Every college, no matter what tier, has both, good professors and bad. Ask your seniors and try to find the good ones. Some young professors can be a great source of learning and guidance too. I usually recommend to skip engaging a lot with bad profs (bad content, bad delivery or both). You can easily compensate the learnings of the bad profs from YouTube, Coursera or old school methods like Library.
Grades don't really matter for summer internship since you don't have enough grades released by then, but they do matter in the final placements as many companies shortlist based on your MBA grades.
Some colleges have a culture of failing 5-10% of the batch. Failing a year might mean repeating or dropping out of MBA altogether. Talk to seniors and make sure that you understand the academic rigour on your campus and prioritise your commitment to academics accordingly.
Section 5: Love, friendships and networking
Love: colleges are a great way of finding relationships and more. Since average age of an incoming student is 24, most people are more mature and clear about what they want. Be open to new experience, and allow yourself to feel love. Do what you like, and don't judge others for what they want for themselves. As long as its consensual, everything is ok. Your values are not universal, dont look at others from that lens.
Friendships: some people make good groups and have a great time. Some stay solo all through 2 years. Do what you like. It can be hard to break into groups and its ok. My only advice is to be kind and generous. Help everyone you can, respect people and their choices, don't gossip or pick fights and you'll most likely end up with friends for life and some great groups to party and have fun with.
Networking: This is every introverts's nightmare. I don't want to lie to you and tell you that networking doesn't matter. It does. Your batchmates and juniors and seniors will give you refferals, leads and help you when you need it. If you are an introvert, my advice is that you figure out what triggers your anxiety and work accordingly. Lets say you can't talk to people in person, no worries. Let's make a nice LinkedIn account and reach out to your seniors from a few years ago. Ask them on LinkedIn DMs if they can review your CV or guide about what you can expect if you get a job in their field. If they say yes, get on the call and talk. Recent graduates will generously give you time and this is what networking is. It will give you confidence to do this in person with your batchmates and co-interns.
Miscellaneous: Campuses in non-probation states will have a culture of alcohol and other intoxicatants. Its ok if you don't wanna do it, don't judge others who are doing it. If you want to do it, make sure you don't over do it.
Section 6: Pre-MBA
Doctors: Visit your GP, dentist and psychiatrist. If you have never visited them before, find a nice one. Tell them you will be going through very hectic 2 years, what should you do. They'll offer general check up, blood work and maybe some SOS pills if needed. Do this to get on top of your health, especially mentally. If you haven't been through a rough mental health patch in a few years or ever, now is a good time to reflect and prevent damage in future. Learn vocabulary for your feelings like anxiety, depression, your relationship with food, stress, attachment styles etc. Don't take this part lightly, we need to look after ourselves.
Friends and relationships: Long distance relationships find it very hard to survive a MBA because the non-MBA partner typically does not understand the haste and the bullshit that happens here. Make sure you build a strong base if you are taking your relationship with you on the campus. You will barely get any time for your relationship in the first few months, and no time for your friends back home. Make sure your friends know that this is the hectic life of MBA and not your disinterest in them. I feel like scheduling 1 hour video call every Sunday afternoon is a nice way to keep LDR friends group active. Make sure you have very strong friendships outside MBA to keep you sane on lonely days in the campus.
Clothes and grooming: Do whatever it takes to make you feel confident on the campus. It can be from getting a hair patch for your balding head to start learning how to do make up. Change your fashion style. Ask your siblings or friends with better style to redo your wardrobe. MBA is a great time to reinvent yourself. Let go of stupid judgements and gender roles and do whatever that helps you feel good.
Communication style: Fluent English, both written and verbal will help. Speak infront of a mirror and record yourself if needed. Speak slowly and use simple words. 1-2 month before your MBA starts is good enough time to polish some dull edges.
Skills: Make sure your Excel and PowerPoint skills are good. You'll find enough tutorials on YouTube to practice and sharpen your skills. Both these programs are a bedrock of any MBA grad.
Section 7: Closing Advice
My MBA journey was incredible and I am very grateful for that. I wishing the same for all of you, if you join this year or next.
Every MBA campus has an unique culture and a story. Make sure you share your colors with the campus and take some of it from the campus too. Look after everyone around you, everyone needs help. Through bad days and good, remember that MBA at best is just 2% of your life. There is a lot more exciting stuff left!!
I won't be able to take DMs, so please comment if you want to ask me something. All the best!!

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2024.04.27 17:29 kittehgoesmeow What A Day: Divest Unrest by Julia Claire & Crooked Media (04/26/24)

"Trump looked to actually be in close to deep REM sleep... He's taking full-on, bona fide naps." - Reporter Ben Meiselas relaying vital source notes from the Trump hush money trial
Editor’s note: Some bittersweet personal news: today is my last day writing the What A Day newsletter. I won’t be going far—I’ll still be writing here at Crooked, and you’ll even continue to see some of my horrid little jokes in this very newsletter. Our News Editor Greg Walters will be taking the helm in the meantime, so fear not! WAD will remain in your inbox five nights a week.
Thanks for riding with me these past two years. It wasn’t always easy, but we sure did manage to call Mitch McConnell “a little bitch” a lot, and that’s what truly matters in my one wild and precious life. Take care.
- Julia
P.S. In a hilarious turn of events, today's digest did not save in the server and yesterday's was reprinted. So here's the correction. I always knew I would go out on top.

Litmus Protest

As we head into the weekend, campus antiwar protests have not abated, they’ve expanded further across the country.

There have been antiwar and Palestinian solidarity protests at some 75 college campuses across the United States in the past week, according to The Intercept’s Prem Thakkar. Student protesters have continued, undeterred and determined to push their universities to divest from companies with ties to Israel or who profit from its war with Hamas. At the University of Pennsylvania, the administration diverged from its peer institutions—choosing not to involve Philadelphia police—and instead said they would not intervene so long as the protests remained peaceful and did not violate University policy.
At Emory University, the scene turned violent—but only when police were called to the campus. Along with dozens of student arrests, two professors were detained by police on Thursday. One was Philosophy Department Chair Noëlle McAfee, and the other was economics professor Carolina Fohlin, who was captured on video being violently thrown to the ground by police and then restrained by multiple officers, one of whom shoved her head into the concrete. Fohlin was jailed for 11 hours and charged with—get this—battery against a police officer, but was released on bond with the rest of the arrested protesters. In a vote that passed with overwhelming support on Friday afternoon, the Emory Faculty Senate of the University’s College of Arts and Sciences called for a college-wide no-confidence vote in University President Gregory Fenves for unleashing police on students and faculty.
Disgraced former president Donald Trump took a break from his courtroom shellacking on Friday to again weigh in on the ongoing campus protests, and again he chose to simultaneously minimize the infamous 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA. “Charlottesville was a little peanut and was nothing,” he said, “and the hate wasn’t the kind of hate you have here. This is tremendous hate.” To recap: the former president is saying that the rally where white nationalists marched through the streets with tiki torches shouting “Jews will not replace us,” and “Blood and soil,” in which those white supremacists ran over and killed counter-protester Heather Heyer with a car, is “nothing” and less hateful than the overwhelmingly peaceful antiwar protests happening now. Subtle! I wonder which of his supporters he’s catering to with that messaging!
This rhetoric takes its most extreme form in right-wing officials like Trump and GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson, but varying degrees of the central argument—that these antiwapro-Palestinian protests are inherently antisemitic (despite the significant presence of antiwar Jewish protesters)—seem to have found a receptive audience on both sides of the aisle. Pro-Israel Reps. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and Mike Lawler (R-NY)—neither of whom is Jewish—are introducing legislation called “The Columbia Act” that would allow the Department of Education to send a “third-party antisemitism monitor” to any college receiving federal funding. Torres recently left the Congressional Progressive Caucus over the caucus’s criticism of Israel and pro-ceasefire stance in the Israel-Hamas war, and his top campaign contributor is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Nationwide antiwar campus protests are being met with police brutality, the Republican presidential candidate is a power-hungry fascist, AND the DNC is in Chicago? Damn, the "Make it 1968 again" lobby has finally gotten its way.

Look No Further Than Crooked Media

If you’ve ever dreamed of following a podcast around like the Grateful Dead, this is your year! Pod Save America has a ton of great shows coming up on their Democracy or Else tour, headed to Brooklyn, Boston, Madison, Phoenix, Philly, and Ann Arbor. They will also be at the LA Times festival of books on April 21st with appearances by Dan Pfeiffer, Tommy Vietor, Jon Favreau, and Hysteria’s own Erin Ryan! To get tickets, head to https://crooked.com/events now.

Under The Radar

It was, apparently, another blustery day in the Manhattan courtroom holding Donald Trump’s hush money trial. (He kept complaining that the court room was “freezing.”) Emil Bove, one of Trump’s innumerable lawyers, cross-examined former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker in his third day of testimony. Pecker gave the prosecution exactly what it was looking for on Thursday and Friday when he offered jurors a vivid explanation of two “catch and kill” arrangements he made with Trump about unflattering stories: one with former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claimed she had a yearlong relationship with Trump, and the other now infamously related to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Pecker also detailed Trump’s personal involvement in getting the two women to sign non-disclosure agreements to prevent them from going public with their stories during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump even hosted a “thank you” dinner for Pecker at the White House in 2017. Pecker admitted to having approved a forward-facing corporate lie—denying the existence of the agreements when the Wall Street Journal investigated—to “protect” his company, he said.
A campaign watchdog group filed a formal complaint to the Federal Elections Commission on Wednesday accusing Trump’s presidential reelection campaign and its related PACS of concealing payment of Trump’s legal fees using campaign funds. The organizations paid $7.2 million for Trump’s legal fees covertly through an unrelated shell company, according to the filing. Neither the Trump campaign nor the company used as a conduit, Red Curve, responded to requests for comment from the New York Times.

What Else?

Trust in the Supreme Court dropped to an historic low in the wake of the Dobbs decision in 2022. Two years later, the Court hasn’t been able to rebuild trust, with the majority of Americans no longer having faith in the institution, and a plurality of those polled feeling that it is “too conservative.” That’s so weird… I wonder what could have given them that impression?
The Alabama state House approved legislation that could lead to the prosecution of librarians under state obscenity laws for providing minors with materials the conservative legislature deems “harmful,” as part of a larger nationwide crusade to ban books. The bill now moves to the state Senate.
In other terrifying news from red states, Gov. Bill Lee (R-TN) announced on Thursday that he plans to sign a bill passed in the state legislature that would allow K-12 educators and staff members to carry concealed handguns on school grounds.
In her new autobiography, Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD)—said to be on Trump’s short list for VP—detailed killing her own family dog…almost proudly(?) as some sort of bizarre conservative “I do what it takes,” bullshit narrative. This woman shot a 14-month-old puppy, and was so pleased with the job she did, that she then killed a goat she didn’t like on the family farm! And she volunteered all of this information!
Elon Musk’s company SpaceX has asked a Texas federal judge to block the National Labor Relations Board from pursuing claims that the rocket maker required workers to sign illegal severance agreements. “On what grounds?” you may ask. Well, Elon teamed up with a bunch of other evil billionaires like Jeff Bezos in February and launched a legal campaign questioning the constitutionality of the NLRB. The group of corporate super villains asked the courts to effectively dismantle the New Deal-era agency in an effort to even further tip the scales away from workers and towards corporations. If any of them could grow facial hair I’m sure they would all be twisting their mustaches maniacally.
Britain’s King Charles will return to public duties next week for the first time since being diagnosed with cancer. Buckingham Palace said on Friday that he is making encouraging progress with his treatment. [raising a plate of beans on toast] Cheers to his good health.

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Light At The End Of The Email

A staggering 53 individuals who aided in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election have now been criminally charged. Gotta catch em all!
President Biden appeared on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM radio show, where he said he would “be happy to” debate disgraced former president Donald Trump. Mercifully, Biden bucked guest tradition and did not end up telling Stern any weird octogenarian sex stories.

Enjoy

Wiffleball on Twitter: "Melania,if you’re out there, HBD from my sex trial"

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2024.04.27 17:24 SquidPyrus_ Are there any video games that are personal to their creators ?

I'm a student in gamedev and I had an idea for a game for some months now. The problem to me is that this game is about my problems, what I've been through. I have no other ways to express myself and I just want to express my feelings in it and make some prevention on some topics that can be hard to talk about. Would it be frowned upon by other people that there is a game that feels a bit like an autobiography ? Especially when the person behind it is not famous and not particularly interesting ?

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http://activeproperty.pl/