S4E2| Let’s Chat: Where I’ve Been and What I Learned From Going Viral on Social Media

Surprise! I’m finally back for the rest of season 4. Find out what kept me away, what I learned from going viral in the meantime and what’s in store for this season. 

Transcript:

Well. Long time no see. I hope I didn’t give y’all trust issues waiting on me to post another episode. I know I posted one and then disappeared for two months. I thought I would take an episode to explain why that was. You know, have a little sit-down talk with y’all, before getting into the meat of the season. But I want to tell you why I haven’t been putting out episodes all this time and I want to end on a positive note with why I’ve finally decided it’s time to come back again and some of the guests and topics you can expect on this season. And also with a segue into something that happened on social media this weekend.

First and foremost, absolutely everything is overwhelming. Everything. And there are so many things. It’s kind of like that feeling when you have so much to do and you get anxious thinking about trying to do it all so you end up doing nothing instead? Like that, except the having so much to do is actually the world as we know it crumbling and the anxiety thinking about it, for me, is the thought that I’m only one person who can’t singlehandedly change the fate of humankind. And I just don’t see it for us as a species, we can’t even decide on whether or not to wear masks to save people’s lives. So coming to terms with all that’s happening has been a lot for me. And it’s been issue after issue after issue.

And first of all is climate change. When I moved to this city over 10 years ago I do not remember it being this damn hot. So I fluctuate between cursing at myself for deciding to have a dog that requires daily walks and exercise during the hottest period in world history and like, existential dread over speculation of what it will be like to live on Earth in 30 years. That alone if you think about it too much is overwhelming.

Then there’s the gun violence. It’s impossible to keep track of all the mass shootings at this point. I don’t even think all of them make the news and many of the ones that do are only in the newscycle for a short while. Sorry if this sounds morbid but it’s hard to believe that rampant gun violence can be tolerated indefinitely without ever being personally impacted by it. I know one shooting that happened maybe a couple years ago was at a grocery store in the town where I grew up. Like, this was the grocery store that I frequented as a child. And even scarier than that, the shooter attempted to go in a church before deciding on the grocery store but wasn’t able to get past the locked doors. The church happened to be the one a family member of mine has gone for decades. So talk about hitting close to home. Nobody I know was hurt that day but it’s still unnerving to think about how an everyday task or a mundane place can be used for something so ugly.

And that’s the other thing. Not only is it scary to think about how you can be minding your business when something pops off, but the reasons why these shooters are turning to violence are almost always tied back to white supremacy and/or misogyny. Like, these men really be mad that they haven’t been able to obtain the spoils of their whiteness and or the gender in the ways they feel they were promised so then it becomes everybody else’s problem. And I don’t really know what to do with that.

Ok so then there’s also this Roe v. Wade thing. That was another thing that really hit me. I did an episode about being childfree by choice so it should come as no surprise that I’m an advocate for people being able to decide for themselves whether or not they want to terminate a pregnancy. When I heard it was overturned, I was sick. And afraid. I mean, I’ve never been pregnant before so I’ve never needed an abortion but you never fucking know. And I have plenty of people in my life who’ve had abortions and I can imagine how different their lives would be had they not had the option. Who knows if some of them I would’ve ever even met since having children affects your choices so drastically. I was legit considering whether I should venture to find a doctor who’d let me get my tubes tied as an unmarried, childfree woman under 35. Then somebody on twitter posted a list and you better believe I saved that shit just in case. Formula shortage, epidural shortage, maternal mortality rates for Black women

And then inflation!!! Don’t even get me started on inflation. The thing about inflation that makes me really mad is that it reminds me of an old commercial, I think it was for state farm, where an old man has a dollar on a fishing line and he dangles it in front of a woman, then when she reaches trying to grab it he yanks  the line up saying, “ooooh you almost had it. You gotta be quicker than that” because I feel like that’s what America does, constantly shifting the goal posts. Currently, I make more money than I ever thought I’d make when I was younger, which is actually not saying a ton. I remember once when I was in grad school, they had a position in my department open that they were looking to fill and some of the faculty were discussing it. We grad students were in the room because they wanted us to understand the process of the academic job search and what to expect. So they said the salary for the position was $60,000 and when I heard that, it was funny because the only other Black guy in the room and I looked at each other and were like “Shit, that’s GOOD.” Meanwhile, the white people in the room were talking about how it was just an okay salary. Black guy and I both came from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds than the other people in the room, which is why we were the only two who thought $60,000 sounded like a lot of money at the time. So when I say I make more money than I ever expected, know that I didn’t start out with super high expectations. But now as an adult with the price of everything going up and wages not increasing comparably, the money doesn’t go as far and it’s like the lady in the commercial. She can see the dollar, she’s tryna grab for it but it’s being yanked out of reach. And I don’t even wanna be out here reaching for dollars. I just wanna be out here living but we have shit like the cost of living and that’s why I’m out here reaching for dollars.

Maybe this is a bad way of framing it and that’s my problem but it’s like, if you go outside  it feels like a matter of what’s gonna get you first. Are you gonna have a heat stroke from the boiling temperatures? Will somebody decide to unload a clip in your general vicinity? Will you catch one of the two plagues, I think maybe three at this point because they just brought back Polio, will you catch one of the plagues that’s out right now because you breathed someone’s air or rubbed up against something that was contaminated? And if you manage to avoid all that you are probably spending your rent check just to be outside. Then if you decide to sit down somewhere and lay up under somebody having some indoor fun, there’s the imperative that you do not get pregnant, unless you actually want a child right now or your sexual attachments are to people who can’t become or get you pregnant, which I envy. Then if you get pregnant there are formula shortages, apparently epidural shortages and the risk of death or other complications associated with being black and bearing children.

Given all this, for a long time I couldn’t manage to do anything more than what I absolutely had to do and sometimes I pushed didn’t even do that. Working my lil’ day job and taking care of my dog son. That’s all the bandwidth I had. And even doing that was weird because I’d go to work (meaning wake up from bed, throw some sweats on and walk to my desk to warm up my laptop) and pretend like none of those things were happening around me. And all my coworkers would be pretending. And everybody would just be pretending. So I’m at work talking about what color the arrows on this graphic should be and why we need to have this specific sentence worded this specific way in this document, all the while nobody acknowledges the chaos that has become a part of our everyday lives now. I guess maybe that was the issue, the chaos is normalized. But it’s not normal and I would even say it’s not humane for us to be enduring such chaos and grief and anxiety and stress with no end in sight and no built in rest.

I didn’t want the podcast to be that for me. I didn’t want to go plugging along and continuing to put out episodes like I was okay or like things are okay without acknowledging that I wasn’t or that a lot of things are not. And I wouldn’t even call it depression. I know what depression feels like but this is different. So I gave myself permission not to feel like I needed to keep producing and being productive in spite of the chaos around me and to just let go of things until I had the bandwidth to do them.

Now granted, I can use better self care practices. Like not doom scrolling. Or staying up til 2am when I know I have to be up for work at 8. Or like meditating. I love meditating but I’ll do it for like a week consistently and then I’m off it. So I’m working on reframing the things I can’t control.

Annnnnd speaking of doom scrolling, social media is the other very large part in why I haven’t really felt like releasing episodes. I can’t remember if I’ve said this before but I absolutely positively unequivocally LOATHE social media. I cannot stand it. Well, lemme walk that back a little bit. The one part about social media that I enjoy is Black people because as a collective, we are funny as fuck. Undefeated humor. Nobody seeing us. But I don’t even think that’s me appreciating social media as much as that is appreciating Black people and what we bring anywhere we are.

I hate social media for several reasons. You know, I’m human and even though I know it’s not healthy or conducive to a peaceful mindset to compare yourself to others, social media makes it sooooooo easy to do. We’ve all heard that it’s a highlight reel of people’s lives and it’s true. You’re only seeing what people want you to see. So sometimes I do fall into comparisonitis despite my best efforts. And that can take a toll on my day, my mood, my demeanor.

Then there’s the aspect of needing social media to succeed at certain ventures. It feels virtually impossible to succeed at most businesses without the help of social media. Because where are you going to find an audience if you’re not on social media? And I’ll admit I need to establish better boundaries for myself and social media use so that it doesn’t feel like such a drain but it really is unfortunate that social media is a required component of doing business.

What makes compulsory social media use worse is that people on there are unhinged. They are truly not okay and these platforms do not do enough to protect those who experience harrassment. ESPECIALLY on twitter, which is why when I do promote episodes, I usually promote them on Instagram. Because on twitter I have seen the ugliest, most violent harassment reserved for Black women and it can be over the most mundane, nonsensical things. But let it get into the wrong hands, or on the wrong timelines, and that’s the end of it. So with the type of content I make, I’ve actually been reluctant to share it in some spaces. And I’m going to give some examples why.

Not too long ago a girl named Lip Gloss’ tik tok made it to twitter. I had seen a couple of her videos before but hadn’t watched this particular series. If you’re on twitter, you already know what this is about but I’ll explain it for those who aren’t. She was apparently doing a series of tik toks about her journey to accept and be comfortable with her natural hair as it is, without stretching it or using a bunch of products to manipulate the pattern. Just shrunken, 4c hair. Now, I want to note that she is also a dark-skinned young woman with 4c hair because that absolutely plays a part in the reaction she received.

In the video that made it to twitter, she was fluffing out her fro, looking at it from different angles and talking about what it’s like to get it to look the way she wants it. She made a joke about how she can only pull white boys with that hair somewhere in there and moved on. It was quick and she moved on quickly. People who are actually okay heard that and laughed or maybe even could relate. People who are…shall we call them unwell…did not. When some (because I know we love qualifiers) Black men heard it they took it as a personal slight and started attacking her, calling her ugly, saying she was lying about Black men, that Black men love all types of natural hair and naming all these other reasons why she must not be able to get a Black man. There were also some Black women who joined in because wherever Black men go, their little lap dogs who love their approval are sure to follow. As if that weren’t bad enough, one guy took screenshots of Lip Gloss’ pictures and used them to make dating profiles on two apps, then paid money for premium versions. All so he could come back to twitter and show people what he did and that there were, according to him, hundreds of Black men who expressed interest in her profiles and she was definitely lying about Black men not liking natural hair.

All this and that girl didn’t say Black men’s name not one time. Didn’t say one explicit word about them. But still found it necessary to swoop in and defend their image like all they ever do is uplift dark-skinned Black women with kinky hair and they needed to set the record straight. I can’t speak for other people but for me, that’s scary enough to make me not to want to post ANYTHING online if they can take something that wasn’t even about them and make it a personal attack. And that someone could do something as weird and creepy as use someone’s else’s photos for dating profiles then come back to the internet and have their actions defended like it was some gotcha. For a lot of these men, if they’re not violent themselves they are apologists for men who are or sit back quietly. And this is what I meant when made the “good men don’t exist” episode. All men benefit from a society where a minority of men use violence, harassment and other tactics to keep women performing and behaving as they want them to. So I’ll admit I have a lot of anxiety around that with my content, because this is not the only occasion where I can think of a group of men taking something that wasn’t about them and using it as ammunition to stalk, harass and threaten a Black woman.

But then something unexpected happened, recently, actually. I had a tweet that went viral and got the kind of attention I feared. I don’t have large social media followings because I will disappear for months at a time when I feel like it, so most of my posts stay on the lower side of engagement. Most likes I’ve ever gotten might be like 1000 or something on twitter. Well this past weekend I had a tweet get over 45,000 likes, 2,000 quote retweets and 1,000 replies. So I had literally thousands of people in my mentions over a throwaway tweet I posted right before going to bed. Woke up in the morning with my notifications on fire. For those of you who aren’t on twitter, I’ll explain.

I’m going to play the audio for you, but the context is that this is a clip from the show Black Love, which is notorious for showcasing, in my opinion, dusty ass, undesirable relationships as like the pillar of Black love and what it stands for. Basically, couples come on the show to share the love stories and how they came to be a couple and grew over the years. But most of the couples it’s a bunch of mess. Like, niggas be cheating or dragging their wives through the depths of hell then praising them for their ability to bounce back from it. And people eat that shit up. So that’s the context. Here’s the audio:

Man: We were girlfriend and boyfriend, maybe six – no, about a year into your graduate school I lost my job. I had always had jobs, internships, stuff like that so I never had to go without.

Woman: And he’s a provider. Like, that’s who he is by nature. He’s a person who if we go out for drinks he’s gonna slap his card on the bar and pay for everyone’s drinks. So to not be able to do that was taking a toll on him.

Man: Yeah, it was messing me up so I was like becoming a very angry different person at that point in time. I’m running out of money. She wants to go on a double date with one of her colleagues or one of her classmates. I’m like, no, like let’s eat this Jimmy John’s this weekend. I’m just chilling. She’s like no, her boyfriend’s coming to town. We’re going. And if you ever met this woman before she can be very much decisive and you don’t have much say in it. So we go out. I’m just seeing them order up the menu, you know, getting drinks [mimics excited chatter]. I’ll have water with lemon, please. And I’m just like counting up because I’m like what are we going to do when this bill comes. That’s all I can think about the entire time. I look down and I see that I had a text from her that was like, “Check your account.” And I saw that she had quick paid me money to cover the meal so I could pull out my card as opposed to her, you know, pulling out hers and I just like, that’s crazy, bro. Like, that right there I said when I get my life together I’m marrying you because you frickin’ get it, bro. You were with me at what was the most humiliating moments of my life. She wouldn’t let me lose hope.

Now, y’all heard that clip. That grown ass man said being able to LOOK LIKE he was covering the tab for their night out in front of other people was so important to him that it was that moment, in particular that he decided she should be his wife. So my comment on that video was this: This man said he became an “angry, different person” when he wasn’t in a comfortable financial situation and instead of working thru that himself, it became her job to overcompensate and preserve his ego. To each their own but it is truly not worth it to me.

I tweeted that and people started to REACT. I had some follow up tweets in the thread but it was mostly the first tweet that people responded to. I think some of them thought I was saying she shouldn’t have paid during the one period of time that he couldn’t provide when I was really pointing out how much ego was involved in him needing to look like he paid and how that’s not something I elect to do in my relationships. But regardless of how they took it I had thousands of people telling me I must be miserable, I need to heal, that’s why I’m single and will be forever, I don’t deserve love, I’m a bird. Got called a few bitches and hoes. One guy said I don’t have a real bed, which was probably the funniest comment to come out of it. Another one called me a Wighead, which I think nigcels made up for Black women they think are wearing wigs and weaves. That was another funny one. All these people doing fucking Olympian pole vault level leaps over the fact that this man said he became a very angry, different person when he was broke. And I didn’t even fault him for that. Being broke can make you angry and it can change you. But like, why would it be her responsibility to sit in the house with him and do nothing (when she obviously had the funds to go out) or regulate his emotions for him by helping him to keep up a performance that he was temporarily unable to live up to? Like, why would it not be a better idea to address why you feel angry and unlike yourself when can’t provide, especially when you clearly have a partner who’s willing to hold you down in the meantime? That’s the part that was problematic for me. If I’m with a man who has difficult feelings come up for him involving how he thinks of himself as a man, I do not want to have to be the one doing the heavy lifting to think of ways to get him back to himself. I want him to do the introspection and the work to figure out the root of it and he can let me know how I can be supportive along his journey. But I won’t do the work for you and I can’t do the work that is going to enable you not to have to any work at all. Like he didn’t have to process anything. He chose a woman who was going to anticipate how he would feel and adjust herself accordingly.

And something else interesting came of this. Somebody replied to the tweet about how people get on twitter and write a whole thesis about stuff. So I responded that my actual thesis is 135 pages and for my research I did focus groups with Black men and women about how masculinity is constructed in the context of male/female relationships, if she was interested. People like getting on there being smart and shit “You on here writing a whole thesis.” No, bitch, but I wrote an actual thesis. Then someone else said they actually would be interested in reading my thesis. This was a woman and I believed she was genuinely interested so I shared that I published part of it in an academic journal and gave her the title of the article if she wanted to download it because it’s available on the internet if you know where to look. Then somehow Black Male Studies twitter found the tweet and got ahold of my journal article. And Black Male Studies is about as legitimate as white people saying they need a white history month because we have black history month or they need white entertainment television because we have BET. Everything in our communities centers cishet Black men. Like, how much more space do you think you need to take up? Anyway, one of them tweeted me saying that they read and appreciated how well-structured, nuanced and empathetic toward Black men the article was in pointing out Black men’s identities are constructed over time as a fluid, ongoing process. So how, then, could I write that article but tweet something so callous and grossly assumptive. And what the article was saying was that men’s conception of their identities is not static. It can change with time and with experiences and be based on different things, which contrasts a lot of research that just says Black men are racially oppressed in society and their masculinity is based mostly or only on their oppressed status. He went on to misrepresent the article on some mission to prove a contradiction that didn’t exist and I deleted the tweet with the article name in it because I felt like it gave more and more weirdos access to information about me like my institutional affiliations. But over time as more men from Black Male Studies Twitter started responding it became clear that they seemed legitimately confused.

A lot of Black men rely on being able to say you are bitter, angry and hate men as a reason why you may hold certain beliefs about them or things that involve them. They think they’re downtrodden and discouraged from accessing a full range of human emotions by women and it’s women alone who expect them to live up to capitalism and patriarchy and produce, produce, produce. And if you can’t you’re useless. Instead of challenging the institutions that are actually responsible for them feeling that way, they’d rather aim their disdain at Black women. So it threw them for a fuckin’ loop to read something from a woman that treated and talked about them with compassion and understanding for the pressures they face and the negative light that often gets cast on them. For that woman to then go on social media and proclaim she’s not dealing with your ego and a relationship that requires her to is not for her, well, that basically short-circuited their wiring. The confusion comes from their own denial about who they are. They want to be seen as victims of their circumstances so badly that they deny the parts they have control over. The things they can fix. So it’s an affront to them that you would choose to act toward them based on the latter identity, based on the things they have the power to control but deny, rather than the former. “I thought you understood us. What you mean you won’t pretend we’re providers? What do you mean you don’t want a relationship where my ego is your priority?” One of them suggested I was either faking for twitter so I wouldn’t look like a pick me or I was faking in academia. Like, wrote a whole as thesis trying to be fake-empathetic to Black men. I cannot fucking make this up.

And I think the through line between this viral situation and the one with Lip Gloss is the pretending and the denial. In the natural hair debacle, the men were mad that a young woman wasn’t keeping up appearances that Black men love and support their own image, because make no mistake, a dark-skinned Black woman with tightly coiled natural hair is their image, too. In my viral situation they were mad that I would even suggest it’s not worth it to pretend and keep up a façade that they’re providers. I had a few men in my mentions telling me that they hate me. And hate women like me. I think one deleted be he was like, I hate you so much and I don’t even know you. Now let’s think about that for a minute. Why can a random person on the internet who simply gave their opinion on a situation that did not directly pertain to you, evoke hatred. How could you possible hate them? No baby, you hate yourself. You can probably relate to the man falling on hard times, which I’m not knocking because like I said, inflation is a bitch. Rent prices are up, gas prices are up, grocery prices are up. Everybody is out here gouging. But to fall short of the “masculine burden of performance” and see a woman who won’t pretend to still uphold the image and tens of thousands of likes in agreement, that probably rattled them.

And that’s the issue. Their self-image and sense of self are so shaky that even the slightest brush up against something that does not reflect how they want or even need to view themselves is enough for it to shatter and for them to react. Start removing that veneer out of place juuuuuuust a little bit and that hatred starts peeking through. And it’s why some of them react so violently.

So I said all that to say, having a podcast kinda requires you to use social media if you want people to find it. And while I don’t consider this podcast to be about men (and I hope you don’t either), I do think parts of it are devoted to taking off the veneer, which can be enough to draw some potentially dangerous attention. And it’s scary. I will say that going viral met my expectations but also didn’t. It did in that I was flooded with people making up things about me that they couldn’t possibly know and arguing against points that I never made. But it didn’t because I expected them to go further than the single “insults.” I actually only got called ugly like 3 times (that I saw). Only one person dug into my media and that was the guy who came to the conclusion that I don’t have a real bed. Nobody dug through my tweets to find shit to argue about or maybe they did and just couldn’t find anything. As far as I know, it all stayed above board with the declarations that I don’t deserve love and will never be loved. I guess I consider it a win having a tweet with over 9 million impressions and that much negative attention without getting doxed, (lemme knock on wood cause the notifications are still coming in as a record this). It did take a little bit of the fear away from me. Not all of it. But at least it showed me I could survive a mild dragging. I don’t feel like I was getting dragged because I know I was right but I’m sure the people tweeting me thought they were dragging me.

Now. For the reasons why I decided to come back. This whole social media thing is a great example of why I decided to come back. Because in preparation for talking about it I really got to work through my ideas about what was happening and why. I don’t ever get on here and just shoot from the hip because that’s not my strength so any time I say something I’ve tried to be thorough in my consideration of it. Even though it didn’t get too ugly it’s still rough to have thousands of people telling you how dumb and wrong and unlovable you are but preparing for the show helped me process that what they were saying ain’t got shit to do with me. And I could’ve muted the tweet but I preferred not to so I could block a lot of those people because I don’t ever want them in my mentions again. I don’t know if that was the “right” way to handle it but and maybe if anything ever gets that much traction again I’ll handle it differently but that’s what I chose this time around. And in general this show helps me to think through a lot of things and I miss that. I’ve probably said it before on here but I really believe we come to understand ourselves better through community and through discussion and discourse with other people. And even though this isn’t technically a real-time conversation with you all, trying to break down information in ways that will help other people helps me to understand better what I need help with. And then the conversations with guests I’m being exposed to new things and ideas just like you all are. So I did miss that. Not that I never think through anything else when I’m not podcasting, because I’m a chronic overthinker, but the added element of having to articulate it instead of just thinking about it.

Another reason for coming back is that I’ve invested a lot into this show. Part of it is money and I’ve invested several thousand dollars. Like there are subscription fees associated with running a podcast. Hosting platform, recording software that isn’t crappy like Zoom, audio cleaning software, etc. starts adding up. I have been playing with the idea of starting a Patreon so I invested in a new camera for behind the scenes content and quality cameras are not cheap. I want to introduce merchandise but I didn’t want to slap “Not The Wifey Type” on a shirt and charge $50 for it so I actually commissioned a graphic designer to create a couple of unique designs to put on the merch. That wasn’t cheap. I went to a podcast conference in May that was several hundred dollars to attend because I want to continue improving the content and the quality of the content that I put out. I’ve put my money into something that I have not yet leveraged to make money back from because that’s how much I believe in my message.

Apart from monetary investments in the show, I have recorded like 6 or 7 interviews for this season already. I recorded them in like, April and have just been sitting on them. This has actually been the easiest season for me in terms of scheduling and booking guests ahead of time so it’s not even that I don’t have the content. It’s that I really haven’t felt up to putting it out. But it’s important that I do because the people that I’ve interviewed have invested time and contributed their thoughts so I know if it were me who’d done an interview and it just never came out I would be like…okay? Did you just waste my time, hoe? So I owe it to them to make good on their investments.

The last reason is that I feel like I haven’t yet achieved what I’ve come here to do yet and if I give up now, I don’t want to feel like I played small out of fear of what could come if my audience continues growing. Fear plays a big role in that because especially now there is a lot of backlash toward the progress women have made. The Me, Too Movement got ‘em mad, the growing number of women opting out of marriage and having the means to do so, got ‘em mad and got ‘em trying to convince as many as they can that being miserable with them is the only option vs. being peaceful by yourself. I don’t think it’s completely safe to have a platform that offers a counter-narrative but I do feel led to keep doing this unless or until it starts to become materially unsafe for me.

As for what you can expect on this season! We’re talking sex work, trap feminism, living and thriving abroad (because that’s on every season), we’ve got a therapist talking about her experiences doing couples therapy and how she sees women overcompensate for their partners, I’ll be throwing a couple more solo episodes in there. I did a light episode about nigcels but I really want to take a deep dive into the connections between what’s going on with reproductive rights and trans rights and the strengthening online presence of incels because it is genuinely all connected.

So stay tuned for that. Welcome if you’re new and thank you for coming back if you’re not.