shared language

niche internet subcultures and making friends

Virgo sun, Virgo rising, Aquarius moon. INTJ, though I used to be an ENTJ before the pandemic. A short list of INTJ characters: Nina Sayers (Black Swan), Joe Goldberg (You), Amy Dunne (Gone Girl), Jesus (of, yknow, son of god). Which… oof. Also Lisa Simpson, which I agree with. Enneagram 4 and 2, which according to someone who knows more than me is what a lot of women are.

I’m always looking for myself. It’s human nature: we search for ourselves in everything, using cultural touchstones and media as the connective tissue. Are you a Carrie or a Samantha? A Marnie or a Hannah? No one’s really a Jessa.

So do you know me more now, since we have this shared language of vulnerability? When we meet, at a party or a show or whatever, does this allow you to see down to my real nature?

Astrology is one of my favorite shared languages. I hear someone has an Aquarius moon and I think - oh, I understand. Someone has a lot of Virgo in their chart and we joke about planners or perfectionism, with the undercurrent of “I see you, really.” I love astrology for this reason, the same as I love music and media and personality quizzes. It eases people into conversations about what lies underneath the teen magazine answers. It allows us to access those pieces without giving everything away.

I think back to when I met my best friend the first week of college. She had a line from “Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl” in her Instagram bio. It was my favorite song. We stood in the lobby of this new building, surrounded by new people who would swear to be friends forever and disappear after the first few months of school, and we saw each other. This song, so deeply important to me, was so deeply important to her too. It allowed us to be immediately vulnerable with each other in a way that we otherwise could not. She’s still my best friend.

I do think about the current social media landscape as part of this, too. I’m sure anyone who’s on Tiktok has seen the “vanilla girls,” “clean girls,” “tomato girls,” “y2k girls,” etc. etc. etc. What happens when people form identity through placing those visual signifiers on top of themselves? And this is a genuine question, as someone who just missed the rise of Tiktok and its niche cultures when I was in school: does one tomato girl see another and think, “I know you”? Is there a sense of IRL community and visibility that comes with these aesthetics, or does that only live on the Internet?

If we can only see ourselves in media and predetermined outcomes, quizzes and movies and niche Internet trends, do we lose the ability to really see each other? I hope that we keep the ability to reach that undercurrent, to see past the signifiers and into the self.

This Week

• I’ve been working so much this week on things that will be really exciting when they’re finished, but take up most of my brainpower to complete. I’ve also been consumed by the information coming out of Gaza - It’s easy to fall into complacency, especially as the months pass and rent is due, but it’s our responsibility to continue protesting, calling, and pressuring our government to end its complicity. Here’s a link to donate to Care for Gaza, which is an on-the-ground group fundraising for food packages for displaced families in Palestine. Multiple western countries (including the US) have frozen their humanitarian funding to Palestine, which is abhorrent as 50% of the population is classified as IPC Phase 4 (Emergency) and 23% is classified as IPC Phase 5 (Catastrophic). Donations aren’t the fix, but this is an easy way to get food to Palestinians who need it. https://www.gofundme.com/f/careforgaza

• It was the 3-year anniversary of SOPHIE’s passing, and it had me thinking about her impact. Almost every piece of pop/PC/etc music released in the last three years still has her fingerprints on it.

• I cut my bangs in a very elf-like fashion and have been enjoying it.