Hi friends!
Me again! How are we … doing?
So many new faces here from the live I did with
earlier this week. Welcome! For a newsletter writing gal like me, what could be better than a massive influx of nice Australian ladies joining my email list? I’m so happy! Please never leave me.
Now, allow me to properly (re)introduce myself:
Hi! I’m Liz. I’ve worked as a social media strategist and content creator for nearly 15 years, and that means I speak from personal and professional experience when I say that mainlining the internet has made a lot of us direly unhinged.
In 2023, after I emerged from my pandemic bat cave, being outside felt like visiting an open air insane asylum, and I needed something to call our world-gone-mad-screen-addicted-content-goblin zeitgeist. So, I coined this era the Age of Unhingement™, and then I started writing this Substack as an act of catharsis.
Now, I’ve written 80+ dispatches on cultural madness and my various attempts to transcend it. I’m also working on a book; think good thoughts for me because I am trying to sell it. I still earn my living as a freelance meme auteur and by crafting TikTok videos to engage Gen Z. That can’t be good for a brain on the verge of turning 40.
I guess, since this is a newsletter about how insane everything is, that I must address the elephant that stank up internet this past week — the assassination of Charlie Kirk. But I’m not diving into it too deeply, because the last time I tried to make sense of an assassination and the ensuing reaction on social media, tapping into the darkness gave me a migraine that wouldn’t go away for the better part of two weeks.
I just revisited that piece, and in it I wrote:
“This was murder with a social rollout and I fear it won’t be the last.”
Murder with a social rollout is exactly what we all just witnessed again, except this time, the rollout had a multi-pronged approach. It involved user-generated content in the form of a crowd holding up their phones, unknowingly about to capture the gory moment a man was shot and killed. There was an influencer campaign led by Donald Trump, who broke the news of Kirk’s death in a Truth Social post. And about a kajillion organic impressions earned when too many people, of every political persuasion and level of thirst for violence, thought it necessary, for various reasons, to post a dramatic response.
Once again, the shooter inscribed his shell casings, knowing the messages would be deciphered by the extremely online. Two of his references came directly from meme culture, including “Notices bulges, OwO what’s this,” from a meme that is apparently furry-related, and “If you read this you are gay LMAO,” which isn’t a traceable meme so much as the mark of someone experiencing brain rot.
Sometimes, I hate being right.
But I also had to share all of that to maintain my cred because what I’m about to tell you is either Unhingement malpractice or #goals as we would have said in, like, 2013.
On Wednesday, after I talked to Sarah, I immediately got swept into one of those work days that makes me feel like a fucking octopus because I needed all eight tentacles to respond to Slacks and DMs and emails and engage on two different Instagrams, while working on my phone and computer simultaneously. Around 1pm, I took a break and popped out to get a turkey sandwich because I hadn’t eaten yet that day and I deserved a nice lunch.
I have all the breaking news alerts turned off on my phone for the most obvious reason — it’s 2025. But when I sat down to eat my sandwich, my friend Ricky called me with the news that I had yet to hear anything about. Here’s a rough transcript of our conversation:
Ricky: I can’t believe they shot Charlie Kirk.
Me: Who?
Ricky: The right wing influencer. They shot him on a college campus.
Me: Oh no. That doesn’t sound good.
💻 📱 HERE’S A MEMESPLAINER FOR MY BELOVED BOOMER COMMUNITY 📱💻
That beautiful woman is Keke Palmer, a remarkable entertainer and one of the sharpest and most delightful characters the internet has ever known. In 2019, she took a lie detector test for the Vanity Fair YouTube page during which she was asked if Dick Cheney was a better VP than True Jackson, a character she played as a teenager on a Nickelodeon sitcom called True Jackson, VP. Then, they showed her a photo of him and she didn’t know who that man was. You can watch the full moment here.
That moment quickly became a meme for a few great reasons — oblivious to Dick Cheney, no lies detected, and the immaculate delivery of her truthful response.
Anyhoo …
I am about as versed in the characters of “the manosphere” as the men of “the manosphere” are versed in the female orgasm. And I don’t actually care if I sound ridiculous. Until Wednesday afternoon, I had no idea who Charlie Kirk was, and there’s no way I could have picked him out of a white guy lineup.
Keeping up with the horrors just to be in the know is not my chosen homework assignment. I don’t care to pontificate on what to do about these men and their fanboys and their podcasts when plenty of other, more serious people regularly go off on all that. And I definitely don’t want to drink up any manosphere content. Not here in the all-consuming hellscape that patriarchy has bestowed upon us. Even “liberal” cable news pushed a Civil War narrative for ratings instead of considering that two conservative factions of angry, entitled men, who have built a movement around hatred and regression, not hope for equality or progress, might turn on each other in an act of public, political violence.
I can’t get caught up in that nonsense when I need to stay pure in my own heart to energetically anchor in the resurgence of the divine feminine goddess. And saying that better not get me flagged by Pentagon AI when it does its sweep for the great Etsy Witch Trials coming to a phone screen near you in 2026.
For those who have a different algo than me, Jezebel, the feminist blog that I had no idea still existed, had a few witches on Etsy hex Charlie Kirk and then wrote all about it a couple of days before he was shot. Nothing to see there now because they had to put up a disclaimer saying that the article, on the recommendation of their lawyers, was taken down. Fair enough, queens. But just for fun, in these trying times, I think they should give us a new offering and post the transcript of the conversation that they had with legal.
On Friday morning, I was standing in my kitchen, making toast and catching up on my Substack paperwork, when I saw this delightful screed:
There was another very long comment from the same lady before it, about American fascism, that had less to do with me and more to do with her needing to vent, and I, of all people, get that. But when I saw that comment above, it really pissed me off. Even though September is traditionally vendetta season, I stayed strong and didn’t respond because I have been instructed by goddess to stay in the open-hearted vibration of love. I am, however, allowing myself the small indulgence of letting it out right here, right now. And then I will return to being both enlightened and pure.
I actually like that she got her dictionary out to come for me, so it isn’t being called “solipsistically callous” that grinds my gears.
And it isn’t even that her cunty little question about the name of this platform has already been publicly addressed. I guess she didn’t read the hilarious post I wrote in the wake of the fires here in LA that chronicled the saga forever known as Gategate. I sent it while I was still completely out of my mind. Living through the fires was traumatizing and I thought we all needed a laugh. One of my core beliefs is that we can’t let our spirits get burnt to a crisp, especially when terrible things happen, like fire destroying the city we live in.
That’s why, what I really can’t take is her demonization of fun. Yes, I like fun, I’m great at having it, and think we need more of it wherever we can get it. If that’s now a crime: Arrest me, officer. I plead no contest.
A lot of us fun-loving people are actually tortured individuals who learned how to lighten bad moods and shift the energy of a room to survive. We have a real role in times like these since the best of us are emotional alchemists who know how to transmute darkness into light.
I think we can all agree that most of us can do more to engage in social change, that our efforts must be collaborative, and that we need to do this sustainably because there is so much that needs to be fixed. Thank you, kindly, to my troll because her misplaced anger reminded me of The Social Change Map.
Now, I am sharing it with you so that we can all pick a role and get comfortable with the idea of inhabiting it. Or go wild and pick a few! I’m a storyteller and a healer, and when needed, always a willing and compassionate caregiver. You will notice that humorless internet troll is not one of the options for how we can come together and work toward a better future.
I’ve written to you a lot lately, but, in true me fashion, I’m now going to dip out for a couple of weeks. I’m headed to Toronto next weekend to do a little Rosh Hashanah with my mishpocha and take a break from work, so you shan’t be hearing from me again until I return and settle back in. Can’t wait to share the view on all of this from the great nation of Canada, or as my dad calls it, “the apartment above the convenience store.”
Stay strong, stay sane-ish, and keep doing your best to stay in the open-hearted vibration of love with only tiny breaks for pettiness.
Until next time!
Less Lessons More Blessin’s™
Liz