#15. The Internet's Most Redeeming Quality
Have you ever met up with a group of strangers you found on the internet?
Have you ever met up with a group of strangers you found on the internet? Not once, but three times just in the last week, I found myself heading out to meet up with people I met online. On Wednesday evening I met with my book club, which I started in December by asking on my Instagram Stories if anyone was interested in forming an in-person group, and on Saturday, I ate pizza and drank rosé from a can with a group of people who met in the comments section of a newsletter I’ve been reading since early 2020. (As I was driving home after three hours of stimulating conversation and A+ company, I realized I also was going home to someone I met on the internet as well, lol.) Then on Monday, Paul and I had dinner and drinks with a friend from book club and her partner at a restaurant with quirky wallpaper and a disco ball. The internet, at least for me lately, has been an absolutely incredible resource for meeting people IRL–the internet’s most redeeming quality.
There is so much to hate about the internet these days. Fake news, anxiety and depression in young people, cancel culture, forums on Reddit/GOMI full of people who just want to shit on other people seemingly “for fun,” eroding mental health due to “doomscrolling,” comments sections full of people yelling at each other, the list goes on. I know a lot of people who would set their relationship status with social media right now to “it’s complicated.” Sure, social media doesn’t encapsulate the entire experience that is “the internet,” but it’s something I find myself thinking about a lot. People who are entirely off of social media and all its various platforms exist, but they are exceedingly rare. To some extent, social media still feels unavoidable: 81% of people between the ages of 30 and 49 are active social media users, and we’re spending an average of two hours and 27 minutes per day on social media.
The first question I always get when people ask me about my book club is: Did you really ask strangers on Instagram to join a book club and invite them over to your house for the first meeting? I always say yes, I really did that, with the caveat that I sent out a Google form to get to know each person better and stalked them all a bit on LinkedIn to make sure they are who they say they are, and not a person only posing as a woman in the Twin Cities area who likes books (yikes, lol). And honestly, the hours of vetting work I put in last December (I had 50 people respond to my Google form which floored me!) was 1000% worth it. My book club, full of people I met on the internet and just a few I know IRL, is fucking incredible. We’ve now met three times, and I think genuine friendships are starting to form. It brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it!
I mentioned in January that I loved a recent issue of
, “The Friend Recession,” that talked about the current state of friendships and how we’ve been hanging out with each other less and less because of mass media, smartphones, and the pandemic. The writers (Haley and her editor, Mallory) encouraged everyone looking to make more local connections to try to connect in the comments, which is now up to an absolutely astonishing 1,670+. I didn’t know if anything would come of it, but I spent a while scouring the comments section for anyone from the Twin Cities, just to see if anyone else was out there looking for new friends after moving from a different city. A few days later, I found myself in an Instagram group chat of 13 women in Minneapolis/ St. Paul, delightfully called “TC Babies.”One of my absolute greatest fears in life is walking into a party alone. I missed the first meetup group in February (ironically, I was in LA), but I made it for the second: a five-person hangout at Mario’s–a low-key pizza place that absolutely slaps–in St. Paul. I tried to be a little late so I could just look around for a group that seemed right, but accidentally got there first (sigh). I stood awkwardly in the entry looking over an incredible array of sandwiches on the menu, and a minute later I was rescued by an unreasonably nice person who walked right up to me, all smiles, and said she recognized me from my profile picture (thank you Lucy!!).
Ranging in age from 29-34, the five of us were really different, but it was also so clear that we definitely had a lot in common. We talked about the hellscape that is online dating, the “Great Resignation,” and our daydreams (opening an ice cream shop, moving to every city we visit on vacation, quitting our jobs). I left feeling so energized in a way that I’ve now come to learn only extroverts feel (haha) but with a genuine sense of gratitude for taking a chance on something kind of socially risky/strange brought to me by the weird place that is the internet.
Putting yourself out there and jumping headfirst into an unknown scenario is a scary character-building exercise that not everyone is willing to try. Is it weird that I formed a book club out of people I found on Instagram? Yes. Is it weird that I went to lunch with people I met in the comments section of a newsletter we all read? Also yes. But I keep thinking about how the internet can sometimes be *so incredible*, even when it is often an immense source of anxiety/pain.
My own relationship with the internet and social media is constantly changing, but one thing is for sure–I am in awe of how much good can still come from the internet, even just as a means of connecting with people in real life. Maybe in 20 years, after Instagram has met its inevitable demise, some of the relationships we made during this time will remain; the enduring legacy of being willing to put ourselves out there and take a risk on something unusual, for better or for worse.
What’s Up This Week
Wine: ????????
MSRP: ????
Color: Red! Lol
Discovered: At Total Wine while Paul was busy with a sales guy trying to find wines from the Wine Spectator Top 100 list, while I was sneakily putting things in my basket that I wanted him to review for “wine of the week” without him seeing. Expect a few more reviews to come from this excursion…
Nose: Peppermint, cinnamon, red current galore. Blackberry, cola. There’s even some kiwi! Not a huge nose, but multifaceted.
Palate: BIG flavor. Slightly flabby, round, soft; like a baby’s bottom. We’re back at the carnival, man; mini donuts right out of the fryer, mixed with the cotton candy you had after the Tilt-A-Whirl. A sweet, doughy, berry confection. A carnival in your mouth; it’s crazy and weird. The tannins are completely hidden, as is the alcohol. Watch out for this one, it could sneak up on you…
Paul’s official blind guess: A 2020 or 2021 Zinfandel or Syrah from a generic California AVA (aka, not Napa, Sonoma, Paso Robles, etc.) for around $14.
The REVEAL…
2020 Michael David Sixth Sense Syrah (from Lodi, CA)
MSRP: $14-$18
Availability: Should be pretty wide, or you can buy it online!
Worth it: We both say yes!
Conclusion: This wine kicks the shit out of Apothic Red for around $3-$6 more. Go ahead and serve this wine against Apothic Red blind to some friends (around 5-8 people is appropriate) if you want to have a really fascinating and fun experience for under $30. If your sweet tooth could get high and have bizarre fantasy dreams about sneaking out and going to the carnival, this wine is what it would come up with. It’s a good time that we totally stand behind for its price, but PLEASE! Either decant this wine an hour before serving, or open the bottle and let it sit for 3+ hours before anyone drinks it. Just trust us. It changes massively as it airs out.
P.S. We’ve also had this winery’s Petite Petit which is just as good!
Whew. Our book club discussion about Babel was fucking incredible, and I finally feel like I can move on from this story that hijacked my mind for a full five days. Our members were all over the place with our ratings–the lowest was a 4/10 that was upgraded to a 5/10, and the highest was “almost a 10”–but I personally have landed at an 8.5/10. My best friend asked me if she should read it, and I found myself saying, “ummmmmm?????”
Directly after finishing I would have said absolutely yes, but now I think it really depends on what you like in a story. Babel hits its themes hard–over and over and over again. My argument is that the entire book is meant to be an in-your-face allegory for how white people in power have stolen (and rely on) so much from other cultures, and how hard it is to exist in predominantly white/male spaces for people of color and other minorities. The author, Rebecca “R.F.” Kuang, is a woman of color who went to Oxford herself, and I think much of the book was informed by her own experiences. I thought the themes were extremely powerful, and reshaped a bit of how I see the world, especially in regards to language. Kuang is a fucking genius (she’s only 26 and is working on her third post-graduate degree at Yale) and I thought Babel was smart, emotional, and intense. I’ll definitely read whatever she writes next.
Paul and I watched all three episodes that have been released so far of Daisy Jones & The Six, and we are definitely in for the rest. Paul was understandably confused at first (i.e. Is this a real band? Wouldn’t a documentary about Fleetwood Mac be more interesting? Did they write all the music just for the show?) but seemed to warm up to it as we got farther in.
Personally I am a fan, but I have some casting notes. I absolutely die for Finnick Odair, err, I mean Sam Claflin. So truly no shade when I say: He is wrong for this role. Sure, you can make singers out of actors (Riley Keough! Bradley Cooper! Reese Witherspoon herself!), but they did not luck out this time with Sam as rock god Billy Dunne. His subpar vocals are distracting. He is also too old for the role–at 36, it is wholly *impossible* to believe that he’s in his mid 20s–and I want to yank the terrible curly wig off of his head in almost every scene. I’m sorry, but it’s a no for me. Why not cast Harry Styles!!!
I am, however, completely dazzled by Riley Keough and Camila Morrone. Elvis’ granddaughter is ready to take her place in the rock and roll hall of fame, and I’ll be waiting for her debut album.
Appropriately, my song of the week is “Honeycomb” from Daisy Jones & The Six, which is the cliffhanger we’re left on at the end of episode three. However, it’s Riley’s vocals on “The River” and “Two Against Three” that have me campaigning for a solo album. Overall, Aurora isn’t actually very good, but I’m enjoying the music as part of the show much more than as an album on its own.
This week’s “home of the week” is not one you’ll find in Architectural Digest, but rather, it’s a real person’s home that I find so refreshing and jaw-droppingly cool. Ashley Hosmer bought her home in Portland a year ago, and the before-and-after photos of her dining room is a transformation for the ages. Her color combinations are FANTASTIC and I can’t stop looking at it. BRB while I figure out where to put a statement wallpaper in my house.
The best thing I read this week was “My Grandmother Liked” by friend-who-I-met-on-the-internet (and book club member!!) Devon Cox. A few weeks ago, she was in a minor car accident–a drunk driver in a $60K Volvo smashed into her 2006 Corolla in a truly fucking bizarre incident. She’s fine, but her grandmother’s car is not.
“Love letter to my grandmother Barbara, the very first powerful and complicated woman I ever knew. Thank you for the car: sometime in the eight and a half years of driving it, I accidentally grew up.”–@devonscox
Well, we’ve got our final four, and I have to say–I’m pleased with this group! I predicted that Zach would meet both Gabi and Charity’s families on night one, but neither Kaity or Ariel were anywhere on my radar until after their respective one-on-one dates. I left last week’s episode feeling a little unclear on whether it would be Ariel or Kat rounding out the final four, but it became VERY obvious about 10 minutes into this episode that Kat was imploding and wouldn’t make it to hometowns. I was really not into her. Sorry Kat…
At this point, I think Kaity walks away engaged to Zach, and one of the other three becomes Bachelorette. Personally I’m hoping it’s Ariel or Gabi; I think they both have a quirky/unique sense of humor that is badly needed for a lead, and either choice would feel fresh and fun.
I don’t have a ton of other thoughts about this last episode, other than listening to Zach stumble through a non-response to Kaity about her past was painful!!!
That’s it! I’ll see some of you on Friday with some thoughts on engagement rings, and everyone else next week.
K bye,
Kelly
Loved this issue and just reading about your book club made me feel emotional. Friendship is beautiful!
Wine confession: As an Ireland resident, by way of Australia, I don’t have literacy in Apothjc Red other than it’s my favourite Tesco wine -- like I froth for it so much that I specifically bought a bottle to drink while watching the Long Pond Sessions. Is it a basic wine? Am I rouge neophyte? I need to know both for the zeitgeist element and the wino element. Either way, I am not ashamed and excited to be enlightened.
Thank you! xx
Oooh and an extra bonus wine-related tidbit, after travelling there in the last year, I highly, highly, highly recommend red wine from: Bosnia i Herzegovina, Georgia, and North Macedonia. I’m not sure if you’ve got an importer or international wine ship in MN that you like but they’re so delicious and worth tracking down!