11 Things I'm Thinking About While Breastfeeding Two Babies at Once
thought digest, 07.04.2026
Hello, Deeists. It’s been a while since I’ve done a good aul fashioned thought digest.
Here are some ideas that have been coming to me as my old self1 returns to the fore:
For all the talk of how being right-wing is a viable expression of youth rebellion, and, um, “separation-individuation” — which I believe — buttoned up conservatism is still kinda lame. You still need a frisson of offensiveness. Only olds seem to gravitate towards the stock-standard “Why can’t we just go back to the ‘90s?” crap. Catboys/furries/pagans with authoritarian politics still freak people out “but think of the children!” pearlclutchers, and increasingly, MAGA don’t.2 And so do Orthobros and tradcaths, but that goes without saying.
Relatedly, and I’ve written extensively on this topic before, I think the draw of authoritarianism in the Internet age is just another tool in our toolkit for making sense of a dense, confusing information environment. In my infamous Tumblr piece, I talked about where I believed the language and specific mores of Woke-ism came from. I’ve spoken less about where the orientation might come from. So, I still believe it’s a protective mechanism against shrinking opportunity. But I also think, if we’re going to go the McLuhanite route, it’s downstream of the Internet.
The worst of the Woke Impulse hasn’t gone away. So, you loosen up on what social opinions are okay — there’s always going to be another target. Right now, it’s AI-use. The explanation for this has already been supplied by McLuhan, too. So radio created Hitler and Gandhi, the Internet creates its own demons. I’ll allow you to fill in whatever you’d like in the blank.Idea I’m still workshopping: Stan culture (fandom in its most intensified, fan object-oriented form) is an authoritarian monarchy + capitalism + the Internet. It’s comes from the same emotional place as the adolescent tankie.
There is still something to be said about the long-tail impact of millennial oversharing and exposure to nu-Manosphere ideas. Or, fuck it, even /r/TheRedPill — which I remember reading as a teen and then it completely firebombing the way I saw teen boys, which already wasn’t charitable.
Another clarifying memory: when I would read slash (fan fiction where the romantic pairing is between gay men) — so, this was, I don’t know, until I was 27 and started having sex I enjoyed — I remember thinking it depicted “the purest kind of love” because I had so deeply internalized what pick-up artists and my real-life environment said about women. During this time, I also wondered if I was a lesbian. I have never committed this last fact to writing, let alone to 40,000 people.
Yesterday morning, I read a Forbes article about “accomplishment hallucination” downstream of AI use — like when you think you came up with an idea that AI suggested to you, the precarious question of “is vibe coding still coding?” — and it reminded me of spiritual bypassing, which is when you hide behind ideas like “enlightenment” to avoid taking accountability.3 And really, how different is any of this from “name it and claim it” prosperity gospel? And would we have the prosperity gospel without New Thought?
RFQ published a good piece about the perpetual now of the Internet. I think she’s right that a lot of popular opinion writing frames every issue as new and urgent. I mean, anything that’s sold needs to answer the question, “Why now?” and often we just invent the answer, the way all good marketing creates a problem to solve.
What is going to happen to mommy bloggers and family influencers as the birth rate continues to decline? Is anyone writing about this?
If GLP-1s mute compulsive behaviors/addictions like smoking, gambling, excessive eating — what trends will emerge from that? How will people interact with Internet outrage once GLP-1s become more widespread? Will there be an impact on politics? I firmly believe social media is winding down, so will it matter? Sidebar: did Adderall impact our politics at all?
The Internet was to the mall as AI is to the Internet.
Finally, TWO MYSTERIES FROM MY NOTES APP: I wrote down “infantilization and the literacy crisis.” I wish I remembered what that was about. Seems interesting.
A link to this tweet and the note “MEDIEVAL CATHEDRALS.” Huh???
P.S. Would you mind leaving some anonymous feedback?
For some reason, I always become a different person during my pregnancies. It’s hard to explain but I’m just not all there.
This does not, however, mean that they are anymore liked. They just lost their edge.
I think technically the definition is using spiritual concepts to avoid doing emotional work or healing wounds, but hey, what’s the difference?
It's funny how this whole meme of converting to a high church faith to own the libs has become so mainstream (JD Vance is one, rly) that it's starting to become lame again. There's a lot of talk about the increasing popularity of religion amongst young people but it also seems oddly performative, which I guess also goes for new atheism itself at its peak. Interesting how you get to see these cycles as you age up.
And infantilisation and the literacy crisis I think has to do with Neil Postman’s work and the thought that writing and reading serious amounts of longform as our primary mode of communication encourages deep and serious thought. If we’re not reading and writing as much and relying on shortform video instead we lose the benefits of a written culture and return to a much more infantilised state where we are swayed by bright colours in character, loud noises, whatever we last heard etc.