041: the anti-recommendation letter
letting myself be lightly roasted in the name of science
Hello! Bonjour! Salve! I am returning from my unplanned but much needed summer hiatus. I would love to say that I feel refreshed and alive but mostly I feel scrambled from reading Adorno this afternoon.
We return to our regularly scheduled programming with a guest post (remember those sexy things?!) from RAFTM Tony that has been in the works for some time (I think I asked him to do one in June). Tony is one of my most curious and strangest friends, which I think translates in this post.
Despite his loud proclamations that he is ready to leave academia, Tony took this opportunity to write an “anthropological paper” on recommendation culture and how cool it can be to do the unrecommendable. There are some habits that you just can’t let go of.
“Wait how much does this artisanal soap cost?”: Consumptive desire subjectification and the auto-genesis of emergent affective identities amongst online collectives through the mediation of “taste” ontologies in value marginal, non-institutional digital publication platforms
Acknowledgments
Hello Consumption Report consumer. My name is Tony, and I’m very grateful to Akosua for asking me to take the reins with a guest post as she gears up for her first semester at NYU. Coincidentally, I find myself in the process of exiting a Ph.D. program just as she is entering one. With this collegiate spirit in mind, I will be crafting some cutting-edge, research-based analyses this week, rather than going off dome like other grifter guest writers you may have encountered and questioned here before. At every turn, naysayers (e.g. the actual owner of this Substack) attempted to subdue my rigour, telling me to not take this too seriously and “Just talk about things you like, it does not have to be that deep” (Personal communication, 2022). But I am fully dedicated to delivering thoroughly meticulous, quality insights to you, my reader. I will not be silenced.
Introduction
In recent years, a “new literary genre” that I call the “recommendation newsletter” has inundated our inboxes, and personally I have been very down to fuck with it. This format is perhaps best exemplified in Perfectly Imperfect, “a free newsletter featuring curated recommendations from real people.” Other iterations abound, such as the “truly high wire act” of Blackbird Spyplane (shout out to friend Nicholas for this phrasing), Haley Nahman’s “15 things I consumed this week” feature in her Maybe Baby substack, and the elusive club of Opulent Tips (unread). Of course, our own guiding star Akosua isn’t to be forgotten.
You might assume the recommendations purveyed in such newsletters might be, uh, things you can actually buy. But the featured reccos are often actually obtuse/cerebral/bone dry. I started to question whether it was me or the culture that was demented when I recently read two separate people in two separate publications recommend “solitaire on my phone” within 24 hours of each other (I promise Akosua’s insights exist on a higher plane than this absurdity)1.
My research will interrogate this perplexing phenomenon by addressing the questions: (a) Why would I or anybody else ever read anything like this?, and (b) Is it bad for us?. My cursory findings below indicate that the coolest, most tasteful thing you can probably do in this life is actually making your own interesting, irreplicable shit and talking about it with friends (maybe over the internet).
Historical Context & Background
I once assumed newsletters were actually about sharing some kind of news or update, but this is obviously not the case. And that’s okay! Being a journalist is kind of an embarrassing profession anyways. In terms of me doing actual historical research on the shifting contours of the internet newsletter, no. Graduate school has left me exhausted and weak. I’ll leave the demeaning, neurotic, single-minded work that somehow makes you both high-strung and bored to Akosua (good luck!).
Instead, my personal stakes in the matter are as follows: I’m particularly interested in finding significance in the mundane (yes I’m an ex-anthropologist). I like that these newsletters give me a view into people’s stupid little interior lives and the stuff they do when they’re alone. For example, one hot tip I got from a recommendation newsletter was being tuned into the existence of BeReal before it blew up (though I only finally logged on when Akosua pushed the issue, many thanks to the editor). Let me tell you, nothing in this world brings me as much pleasure-in-the-banal as scrolling through the BeReal Discover feed. I’m not quite sure what compels a young guy in Jataí, Brazil to go out of his way to take a 12-hours-late photo of him mopping his kitchen and make it globally public, but I’m indebted to him and others like him for countless minutes of entertainment. Maybe these recommendation newsletters fulfill some voyeuristic impulse in me?
These newsletters also offer me occasional insights. A favourite of mine was Jo Rosenthal (full disclosure, no clue) imploring the Perfectly Imperfect audience to “be romantic.” This has served as an M.O. for me over the summer. Before I knew I was going to roast the format of Akosua’s newsletter in her own newsletter, I thought of using this space to suggest things such as “sitting on church steps” and “practicing your tennis serve alone at dusk with your earphones in.”
Theoretical Framework
My therapist and I agree that “cool” is an aspirational quality for people (me), despite its exact definition being contested. After all, here I am in my La Sportivas, trying. I think these “recommendation newsletters” might be about cultivating taste through consumption. (Duh). Yet maybe we should turn to something decidedly uncool to get a better vantage point on coolness from above, rather than within. So as the Animal Collective lyric from well over a decade ago that my former roommate repeated ad nauseam asks, “Am I really all the things that are outside of me?” My research will build on this line of questioning.
Methods & Findings
Past experiments to demystify the cool shit my friends get up to when they’re alone involved me asking people to narrate their average day to me as it unfolded, with photos. That research resulted in my girlfriend asking me why I’m acting weird online, and whether she can come over because it doesn’t seem like I’m actually that busy.
Although that study provided some critical insights, I realized it focused too much on me trying to suss out, like, skin care products, rather than emphasizing the bizarre things my pals say and do that I can’t steal for myself as a consumer product for clout. This time around, I asked them, “Have you made something useless but interesting recently?”
In terms of ethical considerations for this research, absolutely none. Especially for these losers. I’ve given them enough. Anyways, I present the results below—a list of what some people I know wouldn’t recommend to anyone, under any circumstances. Or couldn’t if they tried:
Pattie: “I have a cootie catcher tower. This isn’t for anyone’s eyes, not even my own. I began writing mantras on the insides every day because of mild TikTok induced spiritual psychosis in order to convince myself that I’m rich and the universe is rigged in my favour. This went on for 3 months. I realized I became someone I don’t respect, and I’ve since ceased this practice”.
Rachel: “I made the Ray Peat salad… Ray Peat is some nutritionist and frankly I heard about it on Red Scare. I was driving from Phoenix to LA, listening to Red Scare to kill the time, and I got totally Peated. I guess the promise of the salad has to do with the anti-microbial properties of the carrots. As a person with a perennially upset stomach, I am a sucker for anything sold to me with the promise of gut health [Author’s note: ditto]. It’s not that it was bad, but rather that it’s a basic slaw with just carrots. I think it would be better with Dijon or something, but no matter what it won’t heal your gut… I’m laughing about how bad this looks. There’s no way to make it look good.”
Kyle: “I write raps in my spare time at work because it’s soul sucking and I need to sharpen my artistic sword somehow. You have to be gay to crack the codes of this rap”:
He calls this bussy Ben,
The way I serve it on a Platt-er
Evan be so Hands-on while I dome
him like Pink MatterDip it in my Ocean Frankie,
dripping like a Shower,
I’m on my Olivia, the way I suck his Sour
Candy like I’m Gaga, let me see
that disco stickYolander and Selener, cause I’m
Sickening – my Schtick.
Iggy and Azealia, I shut it down so quick.
Jonas my Cahones – gag and
Chain me up like Nick
Nick: “I recently started my fifth novelty Instagram account. This time on hedges in Vancouver. It’s a hedge city in two senses: As a place to park money in real estate to hedge against global political instability, and [also as] a city with an overwhelming number of [literal] hedges. I go for walks to find them, and people text me them. What can I say? I love hedges.”
Blake: “How about this painting I did today? I made it because I haven’t had time to paint in a while and I felt bad [about it] so took 30 mins to do it :-) Makes me feel better to do something even if it’s just quickly! I’m trying to get better at sharing.”
Conclusion
This research has extended timely discussions about………However, the results are preliminary and lots more data will be required in order to achieve more workable findings. A lot of big grant money will help me achieve these goals ☺.
Thank you for reading and happy autumn!
Ed. note: Although I would also recommend Solitaire on your phone—incredible mundanity for bruised minds