Who’s Who: The Group Text

Do you ever lie awake at night contemplating your own existence, imagining your future and what it will bring, considering the poor choices you’ve made that may prevent that imagined future from becoming a reality when — *ding* — your phone goes off. And then again  — *ding* — and again — *ding ding.* You rub your eyes and resurface here on planet earth, wondering what could be so important that would cause someone to send you multiple messages in a row? And then, you remember… THE GROUP TEXT. There is no first world problem more profound than the group text. It has become a seemingly necessary yet indubitably burdensome aspect of life. Yes, it allows you to address several of your friends in one place about that upcoming plan you’ve made or are trying to make. Indeed, it gives you a safe haven to sound off on The Walking Dead finale in unison. Sure thing, it provides you the platform to create a virtual hang sesh when a few of you are feeling particularly lonely on a Friday night. But at the end of the day, it’s just like the latest Justin Bieber hit song — we know we need it but we’re pretty fucking tired of hearing it after a while. What makes the load of the group text an even more difficult one to carry is that one or more of the people involved in it are pure garbage whose only intention is to make your life a living hell. Or maybe it just feels that way. That being said, here are the 5 worst people on your group text.

The Jokester. There’s always that one friend who thinks it’s their sole right and duty to prove their wit and hipness via group text. They have all of the latest gifs and memes on queue for when their moment is to arise and when that moment does inevitably come, they fire away. Those of us who are truly unlucky have another friend on the chat who likes to spar with the Jokester, thus creating a practically inescapable web of quirky images from which any one of us would be lucky to make it out alive. While the Jokester can sometimes be entertaining and delightful, you will never get anything accomplished as long as they’re on your group text, and you certainly better consider putting your phone on silent until their fingers tire or the subway tunnels cut off their connection.

The Incompetent. It’s safe to say we all have a friend we deeply love and cherish but simultaneously want to strangle, and I’m willing to bet much of that hostility stems from the group text. Because they just so happen to be the friend that wants to be involved in whatever’s happening, but does not want to follow along in order to know what’s happening. They’ll drop a line in every now and then, usually irrelevant to the conversation at hand, and a few hours, days or weeks later will ask for a recap of what they missed. You know, those words on that screen that they can just scroll up to and read themselves? I understand just as well as anyone else that group texts can turn into a hellish mishmash of shit that doesn’t seem worth reading along with, but when it becomes chronic behavior to ignore and ask for CliffsNotes, I simply cannot help your incompetent ass.

The Grumbler. The Incompetent sucks for sure, but equally if not more frustrating is the friend who doesn’t want to be involved so they bitch about being involved when they instead could just as easily leave the chat. You know ’em, you love ’em, the person who can’t just say no to doing something, they have to actually express the offense they feel for having even been asked to join. Why would they want to do that uncool thing you’re going to do? Why would anyone?? It’s the person who has something to say about everything and it’s just about always negative. You imagine them sitting unhappily at their desk eating Cheetos or on their couch swaddled in multiple Snuggies, wondering where life went wrong, unaware that their attitude is their biggest problem and then they remember text messages exist. And they pop open that text bar and go to town on your ass because it’s your fault their existence is meaningless and it’s definitely your fucking fault that you felt the need to include them in a casual conversation about live music. Haven’t you heard of the radio?! Now leave them alone, please, as they sit here and revel in misery instead of pressing two buttons to release them from this private text hell.

The Supersonic. This repeat offender doesn’t exist solely in the group text world, but it’s certainly the worst place for them to be. Don’t you miss the good old days of SMS? I like to think of it as vintage Twitter — you were given 160 characters to say everything you wanted to say, review what you’ve said and then… send! At that point, you would wait for a similarly thought-out response, followed by a rinse-and-repeat-type scenario. It’s too damn easy to text now! We can send so many messages in a row and they’re delivered instantly, and we can see that they’ve been delivered and move on to the next thing we so desperately need to say. As a result, you’re going to have the people that send 5-7 short, pointless messages instead of taking a fucking minute and collecting all of the information they want to share into one succinct paragraph before hitting the send button. I long for simpler times when it would have been more of a burden to the sender to create a new message for each meaningless thought they had than to prepare something complete and whole to say. Now we, the poor recipients, can only sit and wait as they rapid fire away their word vomit in our direction. What a life.

The Phantom. This is by far the most disconcerting of the bunch, but also the most tolerable. That is, because they never speak. It’s that friend who doesn’t want to be involved in whatever’s happening, so they stay on but straight up say nothing. Not a peep. The weird thing about this person is only that they haven’t made the mutually beneficial decision to get the hell out of the group text. They just allow their phone to act as some sort of text dumpster. Are they voyeuristically reading along? Are they just that fucking chill that they’re not bothered by the notifications? Are they not fluent in text functionality? DO THEY EVEN EXIST? It isn’t clear at this moment and by the time this went to press, we received no comment from any known Phantoms. We must now live in wonder.

Yeah, texting is great. It’s a magical land where lulls and awkward silences do not exist. You can pretend to laugh at or care about the futile shit your friends are talking about when in actual fact, you don’t care at all. Like, not even mildly. Your tone of voice would have been a dead giveaway; they’d be onto you. But here, all white liars live in harmony. Please don’t be mistaken, however — it is still a dangerous place. A place where your day can be ruined by the simple sound of a notification. A place where people can be the absolute worst versions of themselves because their idle hands must be busied. There will always be those who joke unnecessarily, who lack reading comprehension skills, who would rather grunt than giggle, who have rapid fire fingers and stagnant minds, who are mysterious in a bewildering way. I see no simple or immediate solution to this problem. But I hope with these tools, you can find some way to accept the darkness that waits behind your locked phone screen, ready to pounce and ruin your day. And I hope you choose to accept that anything, even this, is worth enduring in order to avoid holding a telephone to your ear and engaging in old-fashioned spoken conversation.

The Real Housewives Guide: How to Be the Absolute Worst

There are some things I would just rather not admit. Like that I have the bad habit of yawning without covering my mouth even though I preach about the supreme importance of good manners. Or that I’ve probably seen every episode of MTV’s Catfish. Or that I could do without Anna Kendrick. Or that I eat in bed. But I mean I pretty much eat only in bed. Like, almost nowhere else in my home do I eat. But anyway, nothing pains me more than to admit to another person for the first time that I am an avid watcher of The Real Housewives franchise. Though I keep some small amount of dignity for myself knowing that I only watch on demand rather than tune in each week, and have dropped down from multiple cities to just two (New York City & Beverly Hills), it’s still a difficult lump to swallow and an even more unfortunate truth to speak. In fact, when just this past week I casually dropped a Real Housewives reference into a conversation with a co-worker, she paused, looked hard at me and said, “You watch The Real Housewives? They’re so glamorous and you seem so… dark.” She wasn’t wrong. At first glance, I suppose I don’t exactly appear to fit the Housewives fan mold. (Then again, is there even such a thing?) Still, I’ve learned many a valuable lesson from these women, in terms of what not to do, how not to behave, how not to exist within the bounds of what we like to call human reality. And as I’m now deep in the trenches of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills season six, please allow me to share with you five vital truths I’ve learned from watching all of our favorite and/or least favorite TV wives. Take it as a How To: Be the Absolute Worst.

I. The Art of Admission. Somehow, in Real Housewives land, saying you did something to get a rise out of someone is real enough. All is forgotten the moment you admit you did something fucked up with the sole intention of letting plain old nastiness ensue. Once you admit it, you don’t have to reap the consequences of your original action or own up to the fact that you’re actually just a really shitty person. Recently, new RHOBH Housewife Kathryn told some Housewife that she told some other Housewife something unkind that Housewife had said about the other Housewife just to see how the Housewife who said it would react. I mean, that’s really the best way I can explain it. Just re-read it until it makes sense. (Really, it will never make sense.) But guess what?! It was like witchcraft or some shit. Admitting that she did what she did out of pure malice was her Get out of Jail Free card because almost instantly, all Housewives in dinner party attendance shut the fuck up as if they had never heard someone else come clean about doing something shitty for shitty reasons alone. There was no apology. There was no lesson leading to personal growth. The dinner party ended and all moved on. Abracadabra, baby!

II. Unfortunate Truths. Telling the truth doesn’t matter if you’re an asshole about it. Once upon a time, I was a fan of now defunct Housewife, Brandi Glanville. Not a popular opinion, I know, but I had to appreciate her unique way of “keeping it real.” She said everything — all of the things — she wanted, and the other wifeys did not want to let that shit fly. After accusing one wife of drug addiction, exposing the sham of a marriage of another wife, throwing a drink in yet another wife’s face for reasons unclear to just about everyone including Brandi herself, and threatening to harm and/or kill the majority of the wives among other offenses, this jig was up. Eventually, even I grew tired of my girl B, because it was clear to me that she was an absolute psychopath and it was no longer fun for any of us to watch or be a part of. The good lord Andy Cohen agreed and kicked her off of the show to what I can only imagine must have been Beverly Hills parades even more grand than Vanderpump’s much-promoted Gay Pride. Brandi G, you are gone but not forgotten. The truths you spoke stay with me still, even in spite of your absolute and indisputable insanity.

III. Brand AmbASSador. It’s okay to be a hypocrite if you are also a millionaire. RHONY’s Bethenny Frankel has opinions. Did you know that she has opinions? She does. She has opinions. Opinions about how people live their lives, who they date, how they run their businesses, what they say to other people, what they say about other people… the list goes on. But somehow, Bethenny does not want to hear opinions. She has neither the time nor the attention span for it. She is busy, goddammit! Ya know, running her brand???? How fucking rude are you? And if you tell her how to run her brand?! Forget about it! It’s on. Even though she’s openly critiqued other Housewives business ventures both behind their backs and straight to their faces. Within her own NYC crew last season, she absolutely shat on poor, defenseless Kristen Taekman’s nail color line, Pop of Color, as well as Sonja Morgan’s so-called “international fashion lifestyle brand,” Sonja Morgan New York. But that wasn’t enough for her. During the RHONY off-season, she took her talents to Beverly Hills for a visit. While there, she dared to disgrace the almighty Erika Jayne a.k.a. Erika Girardi a.k.a. ThePrettyMess after she shared a very intimate piece of pop performance art on her iPhone during dinner. Now granted, one of Erika Jayne’s songs includes the now-infamous catchphrase, “Pat the puss,” but how dare you, Bethenny Frankel?! She has eight #1 disco hits, you ingrate!

IV. Who Needs Dignity? Not Lisa Rinna. Lisa Rinna has big, fake lips — she said so! Lisa Rinna’s had the same hairstyle for decades — she said so! Lisa Rinna is wacky — she said so! Lisa Rinna will do anything for a buck — she said so. There’s just about nothing Lisa Rinna won’t cop to and it’s the main reason she’s almost impossible not to love. But it’s also the reason I think of Valerie Cherish pretty much every time she’s on screen. Equally ridiculous, Rinna knows she’s not as classy, intelligent, or sophisticated as some of the other Housewives (not that that’s saying much). Want her to endorse adult diapers? She’ll do it, and to the tune of an apparent $2 million. Want her to say or do something silly? Yeah, she’ll do it, but that shit’s for free. She’s just that kinda gal! She told you… she’s wacky! Rinna’s admitted time and time again that if it gets her money or keeps her relevant, she’s game, and as reasonable people, we can’t hate on that. In fact, maybe we should be taking a few pages from her book. Keep doin’ you, Lisa Rinna. You really are a dream come true.

V. Sane Ain’t the Way. If you’re sane or reasonable, you’re doing it wrong. Poor Eileen Davidson. I first met her as the seductive villainess, Kristen DiMera, on Days of our Lives when I was a child. I admired her both for her moxie and her off-the-charts insanity. When she showed up on the BH streets last season, I thought we were in for it. Unfortunately for all of us, Davidson was nothing like her fictitious counterpart. She was actually — get this — sane. I didn’t let that get to me, though. I was sure that, like many sane new Housewives additions before her, she would be sucked into the drama and that would be the end of that. The old Eileen would be gone forever. But it never happened. Back for her second season, she somehow seems almost more sane, level-headed and real. Too bad for Eileen, she’s not the kind of real these ladies are looking for. They don’t want to have adult conversations, Eileen! They don’t want to confront one another in a level-headed manner and tell the truth, Eileen! They don’t want to take good hard looks at themselves in the mirror, EILEEN! They want to pretend and ignore and divert and argue! That’s the goddamn Real Housewives way! I’ll always be rooting for you, Big E, but if you don’t want to get stomped all over, you’re going to need to change yourself completely for the sake of reality television, just like everybody else.

VI. Queen of the Housewives. Lisa Vanderpump is untouchable. She is unbreakable. She is indestructible. Lisa Vanderpump is the best Real Housewife of all time and she knows it. Consider this your bonus truth. If by some stroke of dreamlike luck, you ever encounter Pumpy, do not dare try to cross her. And if you ever reach the epic rock bottom of becoming a Real Housewife yourself, do not attempt to turn the others against her or slander her good name or reputation. Do not make the fatal error of underestimating her greatness. One by one, you will be defeated. Made into a social outcasts by her hand alone. Banished from the franchise, OR WORSE, denied service at SUR! It’s just the way it is. There has never before been and will never be a greater Housewife than she. And so it is done.

And there you have it, another fifteen minutes of life you’ll never get back. But at least now, you have some insight into the wonderland that is The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. I never promised it would be easy. Never really promised it’d be worth it, either. Quite frankly, it isn’t. Like, not even a little bit. Bottom line is, by the time you know you’re hooked, it’ll be too late. And soon enough, you’ll be posting your own blogs about this mindless trash, wondering where it all went wrong. Now go ponder what your Housewives tagline will be. Make it sassy, fierce, and be sure it makes absolutely no sense. Now, twirl!

Perpetuators of Madness

Things for American twenty-somethings are looking grim, folks. When I look at myself and my friends, when I read news articles about so-called “millennials,” when I turn on the the television or pop open Netflix, there’s one glaring truth I can never avoid: My generation sucks. We’re constantly chastised for wanting it all but being too lazy, carefree (read: careless), entitled and fun-loving to work to get it. So we sit at jobs we hate, or in relationships that don’t add up, or with friends we resent because it’s way fucking easier than buckling down and making the situation better. We’re told this is who we are and we begrudge the generalization but, more often than not, it’s accurate. As I type this, I’m avoiding doing more important things that could get me another step closer to where I want to be. But I don’t dispute that there are people my age absolutely hustling, fighting to simply achieve. Some people astonish me with their drive and passion, the way they so clearly see how short this life will be and how much opportunity we have to make it something great. But the rest of us? At best, the most we can manage is something I warmly refer to as “the side hustle.” We live stale daily lives but do whatever we can to make time for our hobbies and passions, hoping one day we’ll turn them into something tangible. Still, that’s easily lost in the shuffle of everyday life and soon forgotten when the weather is warm and margaritas are five dollars until 7pm. Then, all is lost.

It’s bad enough so many of us balk at the notion of becoming self-starters, talk the talk but would rather lie in bed and switch from Instagram to Twitter back to Instagram again, seek and find so many others of our kind to commiserate with over a Lagunitas IPA or three, but we are only aided by the people and programs around us who perpetuate the madness we’ve become such experts at. That’s why, when I turn on the television to see a 25-year old Hannah Horvath being a generally terrible human being who can’t get her shit together, or an alternate-reality Aziz Ansari whose troublingly unlucky in love, or the thirty-somethings in the newer Netflix original series who actually appear to have their shit even less together than I do in my late twenties, or even Carrie and the gang, who are pushing forty and though they have real jobs and real apartments and real money with which to pay for really nice things, cannot lock down love or even some semblance of a totally grownup life, I get why we don’t get our fucking shit together. Because it’s okay to not have your shit together — TV says so! That is, until it’s too late and we’ve become the fictional characters we’ve relied upon for far too long. But for now, let’s take a quick look at a couple of them, in hopes of recognizing what they’re doing to us and vowing to not be a subject to their shitty examples of lives for another day of ours.

 GIRLS. When I exited college and it became very clear to me that I would not immediately (or maybe ever) have a proper career in journalism, I thought it an opportunity to seek out Lena Dunham’s Hannah as a compatriot in my struggle. That was, of course, until I decided she was a disaster of a sociopath who maybe didn’t deserve love or success… like, ever. And fucking surprise! All of her friends were almost equally as terrible. As I sat in my twin bed at my parents home, I thought, “It’s not just me!,” and I watched the rest of that season from that very bed, feeling somehow better about myself. And as their lives went off in troubling tangents, I felt more and more that mine wasn’t so awful; that we were all in the same boat. Time went on and none of their lives really improved much, so why was I pushing for progress? The thing is, though, these people were not real and I shouldn’t have used them to console my worse-for-wear adult standing. In five seasons, they’d be gone, likely living as happily ever after as you can in Brooklyn because we all want to hope for the best… even for you, Hannah Horvath.

 

LOVE. Netflix’s newest binge series lets us follow one 30-something guy who has lost almost everything chase after one 30-something complete fuck-up until he inevitably lands her because that’s what happens, apparently. All the complete nonsense in between, it turns out, is par for course? Is this what I have to look forward to? Just about the only desirable situation either of these alleged grown-ups finds themselves in is that they know Birdie, the leading lady’s roommate, who is the absolute saving grace of their shams of lives. But even knowing this, I watched along as each of the main characters slowly but surely loses their shit and thought to myself, “Well, if they don’t have it together at this point, maybe I’m okay,” like some kind of completely delusional loser! At this point, I was contemplating writing this piece so I was obviously aware that what I was watching was not real and I should not use these people as the bar to which I hold myself, but still, I gave in. I still took comfort in the story of a young woman so far off her rocker it was hard to believe she was still living a somewhat functional life. And as I sat there, binge-watching with my friend, holding Budweiser tallboys in our hands and shouting, “Oh my god, that’s so you!,” at one another as we so closely related to every other scene, the madness continued.

These are just two of the latest and greatest depictions of what can only be described as “loser adults.” Sex and the City, Master of None, Friends, Happyish, New Girl, and even a favorite of mine, Happy Endings, all featured imperfect adult specimens who, though relatable, have had the ability to confuse school buses full of students of life into thinking that having it all isn’t for the lot of us. Carrie Bradshaw had a pretty cool job and a buttload of expensive shoes, but it took her six freaking seasons to figure love out and put on her big girl pants when it came to navigating both her personal and professional life. She was 37 by then. When Aziz’s Dev Shah discovers that what he’s spent his entire adult life seeking may not be all that, he makes a rash decision in hopes of finding what he needs somewhere else. But you can’t help but look on skeptically, as if everyone — even those involved — is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Chandler Bing was roughly 35 when he took a job as an unpaid intern after years of working a generic office job that gave him absolutely no fulfillment. Thom Payne, in the short-lived dark comedy Happyish, spent his younger years securing a well-paying job at a cool company, a hot wife, a cute (yet unbearably annoying) kid, and a house in the Catskills to get stoned at, but he was very truly old and miserable in spite of all of that. Nick Miller is the saddest among a loft of of sad sacks in New Girl — broke, confused, directionless — and those are some of his better qualities. And Dave in Happy Endings was left at the altar, hates his menial role at a nondescript job, and appears to have very little to live for but, dammit he tries, I guess…in a way. And he somehow comes off looking like a prince compared to his wayward, clueless, ape-like buddy, Max. Obviously, the list of these anti-role-models goes on (Togetherness, Scrubs, It’s Always Sunny…). Knowing all of this, maybe we continue to watch on with extreme caution and self-awareness, or maybe it’s time we get off of our complacent young professional asses and do whatever we can to rise up like phoenixes and remember that the hustle is in all of us, even if we are a little bit fucked up.  

Trends, A Commentary – Part 2: Sneakers

It’s Wednesday, which means it’s time for another edition of “Trends, A Commentary.” Today, I will shame you for wearing one kind of sneaker but praise you for wearing another. Read on to find out whether or not you’re making bad choices on a regular basis…

What is it, exactly, that makes people think they should put in the time and effort dress up and then throw a pair sneakers on? You put together a nice outfit —  good shirt and pants, a pretty dress, whatever — and you get down to the feet and you’re like, “Ya know what would be good now? … Nike Cross-trainers.” It’s a strange thought process to me and yet people across New York City (males and females alike) have been going crazy on this trend for the past several months. First, I saw the guys over the summer donning preppy outfits with high Nike socks and fluorescent-colored running shoes. Then, women started pulling this shit with full designer outfits. And soon enough, it was everywhere. I’ve even seen photos of fashion show-goers rocking this getup. What’s the standard here? When did we start allowing this? I will admit, I do enjoy to sport a fun pair of Sauconys with a nice blazer from time to time, but that is a brunching outfit, my friends. That is Saturday shopping attire; it is not what I wear to New York Fashion Week! I don’t care what anybody says… you’re doing it wrong. But alas! There is an alternative if the thought of going back to stilettos has got you down.

It’s not any of that garbage in the photos above. It’s designer kicks, of course! Some of my favorite fashion bloggers (ref: WeWoreWhat, Man Repeller) have been onto it for some time, and while I have seen them both hit the streets in a Nike or two (and I secretly kinda liked it and thought maybe I should alter the entire opinion I had so unsubtly demonstrated above), they always look better this way. Louboutin, Saint Laurent, even (my favorite brands ruined by white girls across Westchester County) Marc Jacobs and Michael Kors have some great options if you’re willing to drop several hundred dollars more than you would have on those Nikes. Oh, I get it now. I’ll be seeing you.

(photos: thetrendspotter.net, weworewhat.com)