Hi Wetgirlies,
I’m pausing this newsletter for a minute. I haven’t been all that active with it, and while I’ve been donating 100% of proceeds, I still don’t want to swindle anyone into setting up a subscription, forgetting about it, and then just randomly getting billed by Stripe for a product I haven’t done an excellent job of providing lately. I don’t think any of you feel that way, really. I just don’t want any of you to be confused even for a minute!
If you get stuck in an in-between billing cycle, and it seems too confusing to contact Substack about a refund, just let me know and I’ll Venmo you or buy you ~2.5 of these refillable hand sanitizer bracelets that roughly add up to the $7 you spent on me this month.
The politics of having a Substack right now is maybe interesting to eight people, and I think they’ve already written about the politics of having a Substack better than I can. There is no ethical blogging under capitalism!
Ok, lol, that said:
Starting next week, and then more importantly when the site launches at some point in the next few months, I’m going to be writing at new Gawker, probably about beauty, but also about the totality of what’s been occupying my mind: that one tweet from three years ago that said that Aladdin, Grimes, and cop horses were class traitors, the espresso martini agenda, fear of oblivion, fear of socializing, fear of men, this jaw chiseling “chewable” I keep getting ads for that is hailing itself as “flagship jaw muscle growth technology” (incel), and I guess that’s probably it. My brain is slower than it used to be, and I am less sure of myself than I was when I was younger.
I haven’t had a staff job in a long time, and this one has somewhat of a cultural cachet attached to it, and I’ve only been back in New York for two weeks, and I’m not used to anyone having an opinion about what I’m doing at all. I’m not even used to being a part of an organization or a group. I forever feel like some random chica, or someone’s sister with less-precise eyebrows, or the one who got off the waitlist, or the tacked-on wedding guest added to a low-energy table because I ask follow-up questions and allow people to feel seen and heard while the hotter people are off doing drugs in the bathroom. So I’m a little nervous!
I’ve asked for part-time work because I’m in a real high-octane circuit editing and rewriting my book (my book! MY BOOK! My Book! MY BOOK!), but I will be on the site 3-4 days a week. That’s a lot of visibility, even from my miniature ground-floor sublet mostly occluded by a tree and a set of stairs.
My dad and I have had to talk about Hulk Hogan and Peter Thiel a lot, and the people I go to for career advice have not unkindly reminded me a few times about the time a few years ago, when I was still a niche micro-influencer, I took a “lunch meeting” for the first second failed re-boot of Gawker and I asked about the hiring timeline and the then-editor said, “Let me put it this way: HR has gone through your tweets, and nothing stood out,” and then, in my memory at least, I got on the subway to go home and by the time I emerged into the bright light of 96th Street at 3 pm, there was a Daily Beast article about her own deeply racist, classist, and also not even funny tweets and behavior, leading to a coup. I excused myself from the hiring process, and then, I think, I moved to Utah by accident for almost two years. There might have been a year in between those two events. I don’t remember, and it doesn’t really matter. That was a whole different thing, and I don’t think that person ever knew who I was, nor would she remember this meeting. I got yogurt!
People may generally be confused about how I got this job (I haven’t written online for money in over two years), and I know many of those who know about how media works believe this to be a doomed experiment funded by a dork corporation. I don’t think blogging was really ever anarchist (??), though, and there are maybe four companies left that aren’t yet Amazon Whole Foods, and I can’t imagine we have more than ten years left on this inhospitable earth, and so I can’t wait to be a part of this. I used to come home from high school newspaper production my senior year of high school at nine pm in Illinois, crack open a Chipotle burrito bowl as my third dinner, and see what Emily Gould was up to. This is brand allegiance!
I hope you will follow me over there, and click yourself into the site while you’re at work like you used to. Everyone that Leah has hired is so wildly special (including the only entity besides Adrian Grenier’s Jarlsberg grilled cheese to almost bring Conde to its knees!!!). You can follow me @Clocarustwo for occasional updates (I might even put my name on there in the name and bio in there where now only “Very famous woman’s burner account” stands).
I might be back here, too, or elsewhere, maybe charging for subscriptions, maybe not. Or maybe this book will materialize one day in the next four years, before Manhattan falls into the sea! I also think someone should pick up me and Julia’s 5 episode podcast called Gorgeous that hasn’t been produced in 15 months. My money, my seven dollars, as far as me becoming a media personality, has always been on that. E! News anchor is always a close second.
Love you,
Claire