TWEET IN REVIEW & WEEK IN SHIPPING

Tweet in Review

Read it and tweep is the message from Esther Crawford, this month’s most notorious somniac. Twitter manager Crawford made headlines on November 7 for her surefire strategy to secure a femmeboss image despite mass layoffs at Twitter HQ. “#SleepWhereYouWork,” Esther proudly tweeted, hopefully a true-to-form act of somnambulance that heralds the outsourcing of Twitter labor into the sleeping and waking mind. Celebrated as a “spitfire” by laid-off coworkers in the replies, you’re probably wondering how she got here.

See online a video of Twitter Product Manager and CEO Elon Musk swaggering into San Francisco’s Twitter headquarters on October 26 with a sink. “Let that sink in,” cried the new owner, only to sink Twitter within the coming week. Musk fired half of Twitter’s 7,500-person employee base last week in a layoff operation intended to build the platform back during a lagging economy. Tesla advisors suggested that Musk attend to “diversity and inclusion” during the cuts so as to avoid a precarious legal swamp, a proposition apparently ignored. Musk et al. realized soon after the cull that no one knew how to use particular “money-generating products,” and Twitter execs soon rehired their beta-male, or rather “weak, lazy, and unmotivated” engineers back.

“Bankruptcy isn’t out of the question,” said Musk, implementing new policies such as a pay-to-eat cafeteria at headquarters and the immediately-suspended Twitter Blue feature to scrap back a couple bucks. That “Blue” feature meant that from November 9 to November 11, 2022, you could buy a verified check for a monthly eight dollars. This 48-hour feature enabled the verification of Jesus Christ as well as mass impersonation of politicians during the night of the midterm elections. If I were on Twitter, I would impersonate my College Hill Independent right-hand DJ Kolya Shields but not in order to lie, just so I could publish everything they have restricted to their Circle (<3). His mind sublime, Musk supplemented that any account engaged in parody must now add “parody” to their name.

Many words have been spilled about Musk’s father’s Lake Tanganyika emerald mine, his cuckolding by Chelsea Manning, or his brave claim, “I have no idea how to smoke pot.” My favorite moment in Muskstory came during the unveiling of the Cybertruck. After asking the demonstrator to throw a stone at the purportedly indestructible car window, you watch the glass shatter and feel Musk sweat and quiver through your monitor. Alas, no castration humor will phase Musk, who’s maintained a veritable rotation of partners and a spawnpool now at ten critters.

In his 2014 Commencement Speech at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, Elon wanted to give the young come-uppers some advice.

“When my brother and I were starting our first company, instead of getting an apartment, we just rented a small office, and we slept on the couch. And we showered at the YMCA.”

A moment later:

“I, sort of briefly, had a girlfriend in that period, and, in order to be with me, she had to sleep at the office. So.”

Rather than psychoanalyze the urethral tunnel made for electric vehicles running through Los Angeles or the impetus to perform humanitarian work only when it involves rescuing Thai children from an underwater cave, perhaps we, like Esther Crawford, need to bury our heads in the proverbial office futon, and #EmbracetheDigiYuppies #BrownComputerScience2023

If you can’t code, better find yourself a man’s (or woman’s (or non-binary person’s)) Palo Alto office couch and wait until his/her/their next coding break for some totally protected sex that won’t result in your bearing the next generation of C3^pG72e& babies. If your lover’s office floor belongs to a “diverse and included” software engineer, maybe they’ll even be able to hold a job at Twitter, so get your chase on. To quote a woman and Twitter-employee-at-time-of-writing Ms. Crawford, “‘You’ll never do a whole lot unless you’re brave enough to try.’ —@DollyParton.”

KIAN BRAULIK PARODY B’24

Week in Shipping

In the alienated, individualistic late-capitalist world of the dating app and the pronouns circle, natural, flirtatious sociality has atrophied. We went from classic meet-cutes and the comfort of the nuclear family to an impotent polymorphic autoeroticism—boys prostrate themselves before the crypto-phallus, entranced by the promise of an infinite/infantile online flexibility. A constantly present e-girl blows you in the gaming chair until you come to and realize it’s just you and an icy blue screen announcing GAME OVER.

Luckily, here at the Indy, we understand that opposites attract. Instead of catching your own reflection, your enumerated (false) desires glimmering on a cracked phone screen, we believe in the real of difference. Unplugging from the self-referential spiral of online identity is the only way to truly see and respect the other as other; instead of undifferentiated, networked cyberspace, the brave vulnerability of unmediated interaction shows who you really are. On anatomical, psychological, and social levels, our partners should fill our gaps, make us (a) whole. As the Indy’s premiere autogynephilic binary transsexual dialectical materialist (sorry Kian and Masha), I’ve taken the liberty of laying out some topical examples of bio-psycho-social compatibility. Hopefully this shiplist will prove that organic difference will always triumph over constructed multiplicity.

Binary Trans People and Nonbinary Trans People

She wears short skirts; they wear oversized fishing t-shirts (Fishing is Like Boobs: Even the Small Ones are Fun to Play With). She

liked the “!!!” Hunter Schafer comment; they don’t listen to podcasts like that. She has to prove her transness; they can fall back on feminism.

Skater Boys and Theory Girls

There’s just something about his aloof attitude and greasy hair—and something about her capacity to see the kickflip as a deterritorialization of streets ruled by the Law of the Father (Car). She subsists on bone broth, ketamine, and a modeling deal (with one of those agencies that looks for ugly girls), he’s totally enmeshed in the Providence scene (they bonded over misogyny).

Twitter and Instagram

He has a Circle, she has a close friends. Discourse won’t get you pussy, but a story like might. They think edginess makes up for the lack of emotional vulnerability—probably not.

But, l’ll still click the link in bio (duh).

Neoliberalism and Occupy

Multiculturalism and ‘subversive’ organization might seem to have no common ground—but have you considered that both give white people a radically non-material way out?

Rich Girls and Stoner Boys

What better to dull the blade of misogyny than drugs! Anyways, he’s too fucked up to protest the prenup. His apartment has never looked better than under the sheen of a free eighth.

VISA and RISD

Bonding over the impossibility of registering for the classes they want, they fixate on each other’s constructed alterity—apparently the starving artist has no home in an image-obsessed society? It’s hard enough being a true creative in this homogenized, capitalist world without all these damn posers thinking they can readymade their way out of mediocrity.

Luckily they can browse the TheRealReal together to find frilly tights that accentuate their thigh gaps when daddy’s money runs out.

Maggie Nelson and Chelsea Manning

She’s really into the strap. She has what some might call the ‘bio-strap.’ They both have ravenous non-binary fanbases. What better to deal with the stresses of fame than a back2back Boiler Room set?

Transmisogyny and Good Old Fashioned Misogyny

I’m both too aggressive (man behavior) and too stupid (woman behavior). She’s just a hole. What if we got together and said fuck you!

Earnestness and Irony

There’s something strangely true in a joke… has anyone ever really thought about that?

Financial Aid and the Middle Class

They both constitute themselves against the (true) specter of the nepotism baby…can they find the synthesis of class solidarity? Perhaps the way out is neither McKinsey nor the non-profit but simply the guillotine for the notably named among us.

Past and Future

Have you ever thought about how the spirit of history moves in a progressive, dialectical fashion? One girl’s antithesis is another’s first real orgasm!

KOLYA SHIELDS B’24 thinks the feminine relation to the phallus, and therefore humor (as the unsignifiable real), is grounded in self-hatred.