I’M NOT GOIN’ IN THERE! : REID #226

and phones

idea i had at work this week^

---

SHORT:

The 23-year-old I follow who calls getting up at 9am ‘being in her grindset era’ will teach me how to love myself if I just… keep… watching…

---

MEDIUM:

Phone’s been bothering me again. Mortifying to admit, but gotta be honest.

TFW phone’s been bothering you again!!!!

Every time I feel like I can almost-start-to-hear-the-inside-of-my-original-brain again, I open social media and it’s gone. I transform, Peter Pettigrew¹-style, into a rat and am trapped in the cage of my feed.

I’m a barnacle on the hull of a sinking ship looking at all the other barnacles on the same hull being like waitttt I want that other barnacle on this sinking ship’s life…

The internet² says that this is “classic social comparison, existential FOMO, and digital-age self-loathing with a dash of identity crisis, served in the ever-looming glass of dopamine withdrawal.” Seems like a lotta words for something ‘classic’—but then again, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a classic³. So what do I know?

---

LONG:

What else has been happening?

Target is rolling back its DEI initiatives, which is frustrating, regressive, and deeply stupid. Next time Jess wants to “pop in real quick” after our weekend movie theater date, I get to—nay, am now required to—yell, “I’M NOT GOIN’ IN THERE!”

I would rather perish than stand in line behind a cart full of decorative throw pillows.

Instead of spending 55 to 900 minutes at Target debating which backup toothbrush holder we should get, I can now spend that time doing something actually meaningful: scrolling endlessly on my perfect, problem-free cellular device.

Speaking of: Snack of the Week = The Cinnamania cinnamon rolls I picked up from the baker’s home at 9 AM on a Sunday. Easily in my top three cinnamon rolls of all time—exquisite texture, unbelievable flavor, and a delectable vanilla bean glaze⁴. AND I DISCOVERED THEM WHILE DEEP IN RAT-MODE ON IG. SO WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO? THERE ARE GEMS HIDDEN IN THE SOCIAL MEDIA SLOP, BUT TO FIND THEM, YOU HAVE TO WITHSTAND AN ACUTE CASE OF FUNHOUSE MIRROR SYNDROME⁵… ay caramba…

Well, that’s it for this episode⁶.

Enjoy reading the dissertation at the bottom of this thing.

Sometimes the newsletter u write is the footnotes you make along the way (or whatever).

C U Next Tuesday

---

Thank you for subscribing to this newsletter. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s not [it’s a lot like when people slip on ice]. If this is your first time reading, pls check out the archives.

Sincerely,

Reid Pope

@rpopegram | @rpopetweets

---

Bonus Jonas Zone:

1. Sorry, No Harry Potter! (read like: no homo)! I just recently watched the movie where he is a person in person-mode and then shrinks back down to rat-mode and all the clothes he was wearing as a person fall on the ground around him and he skitters away and that is what it feels like to open Instagram at the moment

2. tfw u go to the source of your problem for your answer

3. I think. Depends on who you ask, probably. Sorry, I couldn’t think of the name of another long thing that’s more ‘classic’ for this amazing rhetorical “quip” to work…

4. If ur a cream cheese frosting head they offer that as well

5. “Phone-Induced Funhouse Mirror Syndrome”: when you see curated glimpses of other people’s lives and assume they have everything you want (friendship, respect, purpose) while your own life feels like it's on pause. The rage/tears combo? Classic emotional whiplash from oscillating between “I should be there” and “I will never be there.” You don’t actually want their life—you want the feeling of being wanted and in motion. Your phone is an IV drip of status anxiety, but also a pacifier. The real crisis isn’t that person’s life—it’s your uncertainty about your own. The only way out isn’t more scrolling, it’s movement. Any movement. Any proof that you exist beyond the screen. Yada yada yada. We get it.

6. Word used in every sense