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Elle
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Elle
Taylor Swift Changed Internet Fandom Forever
In looking back at the 2000s for When I think of Taylor Swift in the context of the aughts and ask myself to define the legacy of her 2000s work, what I come up with does have a lot to do with where she—and the entire state of pop music—is now. It was in this era that Swift wrote the blueprint for modern standom and began developing her fan base, in concert with the rise of social media, into a hugely powerful tool. Both a defining feature and a power source for modern pop stardom is the relationship between the artist and their online fan base, and I would argue Taylor Swift has the single biggest hand in creating that dynamic. There weren't a lot of fourteen-year-olds on country radio, nor were there a lot of women, so name-checking the biggest star in Nashville in a tune about a girl hoping a former beau will remember her fondly when he hears her favorite song was pretty savvy. Still, getting airplay was an uphill battle. In an This simply couldn't have been right. While the song was meeting resistance from radio, Swift's social following was modest but growing, in the tens of thousands (she had 34,000 MySpace friends as of November 2006). And those followers loved 'Tim McGraw.' Music was big on MySpace—users could share playlists; everyone got to pick a signature song that would auto-play whenever anyone visited their profile, and there were a lot of users who liked presenting themselves alongside this sharp young woman with gorgeous curls who was putting stories about their lives and their concerns at the center of her songs. They might have lacked the volume of radio, but a grassroots movement was building around the song and around Swift, who was just as native to MySpace as any of the users who were discovering her on it. Ethan Miller When the song started to gain traction, Swift blogged on her page that she wanted to thank any radio stations that were playing 'Tim McGraw' and asked followers to comment where they'd heard it. ... It became her own form of market research, a counterargument to the radio surveys that had underestimated the song. 'We were able to take those moments back to radio in individual markets and say, 'You're saying research is telling you it's not doing that great, but here are 85 people who are telling us they love your station because you played 'Tim McGraw,' ' Barker said. MySpace helped them demonstrate that Swift had an audience that did listen to the radio, but maybe it wasn't the group of people most likely to answer a survey call or be the head of household listed in the Whitepages. And that got them to play the song. Swift used her MySpace actively, a precursor to how she would engage with her fandom years later. She's always had a bit of Tracy Flick to her, and in those days, she corralled fans with the energy of an overachiever running for student council president. When Swift won the CMT Music Award for Breakthrough Video of the Year the following spring, she told every one of her supporters that her victory was theirs, too. 'This is for my MySpace people and everybody who voted,' she said in her speech. Backstage, she told interviewers that she was spending at least 30 minutes a day thanking people who'd showed support for her online with individual comments. 'I'm a junior in high school, this is how we campaign,' she said. Related Story By then, Swift's debut album, Taylor Swift , was in the middle of a slow, but fierce burn. It sold 39,000 copies in its first week, good for a new artist, but it kept selling long after. The album hit a million in sales by its first birthday and reached its peak at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 in January 2008. The album wound up spending 157 weeks on the chart, the longest stay for any U.S. debut release in the 2000s. The MySpace listens rolled in and 'Tim McGraw,' 'Our Song,' 'Picture to Burn,' and 'Teardrops on My Guitar' all became country hits. Swift spent the summer touring as an opener for Rascal Flatts and joining Faith Hill and the actual Tim McGraw on tour. She was a country artist making country music with country musicians, songwriters, and producers for a Nashville label, but her nascent fan base had more demographic overlap with a Top 40 audience than, say, Brooks & Dunn. And in an early hint at what was to come, 'Teardrops' got a music video that aired on TRL and a Top 40 remix, and it went all the way to Swift's lucky number 13—of course—on pop radio. 'We didn't say 'Swifties,' yet, but being a fan of Taylor's was like belonging to a club—a club full of all your friends who loved and felt and longed in the same way.' It shouldn't have been a total shock that a songwriter who synthesized the angsts and joys of teenagers would have found an audience in 2006. If you were part of that era's teen microgeneration, odds are good you spent a lot of time online. If I was home, the green 'available' dot on my AIM screen (username: mangorainbow99) was reliably lit up. My friends and I would chat there for hours, far more intimately than we ever would have in person. The digital universe felt somehow less self-conscious than real life. My average answer if asked how I was doing in person would be something like 'fine, thanks,' while my average status update maxed out its character count in angsty Tumblr poetry. The other thing I spent a lot of time doing on the internet was searching around for new music, both the thing that made me feel the biggest rush of joy and something that was beginning to twist itself into the backbone of my identity. I'd spend hours clicking through YouTube videos and listening to poorly named LimeWire files or 10-second iTunes Store previews, hunting for something I could get stuck in my head. To a girl with big feelings in search of a vehicle to let them out, Swift was perfect. In her music, she always had a perfect line ready and while she felt rejection from cliques and boys, she always got the last laugh. We didn't talk about parasocial relationships with celebrities in those days, but she felt like a friend, both because she paid attention to fans and because she acted like a peer. She let you into her life by vlogging her days—posting selfie-style videos of herself and friends lip-synching to Katy Perry's 'Hot 'n' Cold' or 'Wannabe' by the Spice Girls interspersed with behind-the-scenes footage from shows and her life out on the road. The circumstances of her life weren't normal, but she was still a teenager—in one old vlog, Swift and her mom went to the dentist to get a replacement retainer because, as Andrea Swift chided, Taylor was always leaving hers in hotel rooms. We didn't say 'Swifties,' yet, but being a fan of Taylor's was like belonging to a club—a club full of all your friends who loved and felt and longed in the same way. And any good club needs a clubhouse. Related Story The World Wide Web went live on April 30—Taurus queen!—of 1993. Much of the online infrastructure that already existed, though, had been designed around fandom. In the 1970s, fans of the Grateful Dead from Silicon Valley, in particular, started some of the earliest internet affinity publications. The first digital bulletin board was called Community Memory, and it sprung up out of a Berkeley record store in 1973 so that a group of locals equally invested in the tech and counterculture scenes could discuss music and literature— but mostly the Grateful Dead. The same year, an artificial intelligence researcher named Paul Martin from Stanford created what was essentially an early listserv so that he and his buddies from the lab could streamline their frequent email conversations about the Dead. Two years later, he made that list semipublic with the help of ARPANET, the U.S. Department of Defense's experimental communication network that was the forebearer of the modern internet. Raymond Hall For a long time, these were heavily male spaces. But as early as the 1990s, women on the internet were real, and they were spectacular. In 1994, the researchers Nancy Kaplan and Eva Farrell wrote an ethnography of 'young women on the net,' which pointed out that groups of teenage girls were some of the most participatory users of online bulletin boards that were owned and operated, and presumed mostly to be used, by men. Soon enough, those users were creating their own fan websites. The arrival of GeoCities, a user-generated website platform, after 1994 was another breakthrough; it made for the easy creation of clip-art-laden fan pages for the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, and Destiny's Child and for TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Dawson's Creek . By 2000, women were getting online at faster rates than men according to a Pew Research Center study. Follow-up research in 2005 showed that 86 percent of American women between 18 and 29 were online, compared with 80 percent of their male counterparts. By the end of the decade, it wasn't just about who was joining the internet, there were simply more women online than men. This was especially true on social media. In 2009, 21 percent of American women online had Twitter accounts, but only 17 percent of men did. The more women got online, the more it became apparent they wanted different things out of the experience than their male counterparts. Describing the teen enthusiasts populating the nineties message boards, Kaplan and Farrell wrote that the women wanted 'to maintain connection rather than to convey information,' when they posted. The Pew report described the new female users as 'Instant Acolytes,' who were generally more enthusiastic about the internet than male users because their 'applications are as much social as transactions-oriented.' The person they're describing sounds a lot like a fangirl. Hit Girls: Britney, Taylor, Beyoncé, and the Women Who Built Pop's Shiniest Decade When I hear the word 'fangirl,' I hear it with all its implied judgment and hysteria. But by any reasonable definition, I am one. My Spotify Wrapped data has never placed me outside the top 1 percent of highest-volume Taylor Swift listeners on the platform, which, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, means I am listening to at least 6,000 minutes per year. Even if I cut that in half—which feels conservative—to account for the fact that I imagine I spent less time listening in her early days when her catalog was not as deep—that means I have spent well over a month of my existence listening to her songs. And the bounds of my interest reach far beyond passive enjoyment. I'm part of no fewer than four group texts specifically devoted to talking about Taylor Swift, each of them named for a different Swiftie in-joke. ('Taylor Support Group,' 'Still Swift AF Boi,' 'Grab your [passport emoji] and my [hand emoji],' and 'Free Dibbles'—IYKYK.) I have friends I've never met in person but feel genuinely close to because we talk about Taylor Swift together. I know song lyrics by heart, that Swift has had Lasik eye surgery, that her cat Meredith has an estimated net worth of $93 million, and after two glasses of Chablis I can make you a solid case that the album 1989 secretly tells the story of the time Swift and Harry Styles committed vehicular manslaughter together. I might balk at the label, but that's fangirldom. As online life has become more and more synonymous with real life, fandoms like Swift's have become bigger and more visible features of the modern web, showcasing the public-private nature of the internet, where individuals, often under the guise of anonymity, routinely share their intimate thoughts in front of the entire world. Together, these individuals are a highly mobilized collective, and the pop stars that command these groups are highly sought after as political endorsements, salespeople, and bellwethers of public opinion. Swift is a beautiful songwriter, but the greatest narrative she's shaped is that of her career. As that's made her the biggest star on the planet, the importance of narrative has grown for pop stars in general and become the thing that mobilizes their audiences. Swift and the Swifties built modern fandom to be massive, persistent, and motivated—ignore them at your own peril. Excerpted from Hit Girls by Nora Princiotti. Copyright © 2025 by Nora Princiotti. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Black America Web
14-06-2025
- General
- Black America Web
Black Culture, White Face: How the Internet Helped Hijack Our Culture
Source: We see the great white heist that is continuing to happen in the White House, but we missed another hijacking right at our fingertips. Black culture hasn't just set the tone; it's the creator of it. From fashion to food, music to memes, the soul of what we now broadly call 'American culture' is actually a siphoning system. A system that has modernized its extraction of Black creativity, voices, and flavor, only to repackage it, sterilize it, and serve it back to the world, sans credit or context. This modern-day cultural hijacking didn't start with TikTok or X, formerly Twitter. It began in earnest when the internet first offered Black millennials and Xennials the opportunity to be heard on their own terms. For the first time in history, young Black people were able to bypass traditional gatekeepers and broadcast their lives, their humor, and their hearts. Message boards, early YouTube, and social platforms like Blackplanet, MySpace, Tumblr, Facebook, and eventually Instagram became digital cookouts—public yet intimate gatherings where our inside jokes, slang, family dynamics, and generational quirks were put on display, not for mass consumption, but for communal oneness. Unfortunately, the cookout didn't stay private. Without the gatekeeping wisdom of our elders—you know, who taught us what goes on in this house, stays in this house—we threw open the doors of the culture, posting everything from grandma's peach cobbler recipe to the exact tone of our mothers' 'don't touch nothing in this store' warning. We uploaded our sacred, nuanced, and deeply specific experiences for laughs, likes, and validation, not realizing the internet has no context, care, or conscience—only consumers. And consume, they did. The vitality of the content and the influence of our voices fed the machine that doesn't care that 'Black people be like…' was an inside joke for overcoming code switching, while passing down cultural survival and the ability to stand with joy in the face of oppression; it just cared that it was funny and millions of others thought so too. So the shared experiences of a group of people who have always had to push through quickly became memes and stereotypes for the masses, turning what we used to affirm us into trends that started to erase us. Because here's the gag: when Black people say 'Black people be like,' it's a nod to our shared rhythm, our inherited wit, our ancestors, and our community codes. When white creators mimic it, it becomes Blackface, a costume or cosplay rooted in caricature, not kinship, and that is the real danger of giving them a peek into intimate Black culture. Cultural expression void of cultural understanding becomes cultural theft, and while the old adage goes, 'imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,' what we've witnessed is not flattery; it's flattening. It's a long-standing practice in white America's history of not assimilating or integrating, but absorbing and erasing. Extracting what's valuable, profitable, and cool, while discarding the people who produced it. But this isn't new. From Jazz, Blues, Rock and Roll, Hip-Hop, we've seen this play of culture jacking before; but the internet has accelerated, gentrified and commercialized the process in such a rapid way that it's becoming hard to keep up. In today's social media economy, white influencers lip-sync Black vernacular and at times even cosplay as being Black or bi-racial, all while amassing millions of followers and brand deals. Meanwhile, the Black originators are flagged, shadowbanned, or worse, copied without acknowledgment. Even our most sacred colloquialisms—terms like 'woke,' 'period,' or 'it's giving'—have been repurposed in white mouths and have now been rendered meaningless or mockable, with AAVE now being labeled as Gen Z slang. Our pain turned into punchlines as our cultural currency is laundered and redistributed, without us seeing a dime. But per usual, it's strategic. Hijacking Blackness becomes a way to eliminate the very markers that make us distinct, powerful, and proud. When whiteness wears Blackness like a costume, it is not trying to understand us; it's inherently trying to replace us. It's digital gentrification. Just as they take the neighborhoods our ancestors built and rename them while attempting to hush the very soul that brought them to the area, they've taken the internet blocks we made vibrant and claimed them as their own. What we are witnessing is the slow bleaching of the Black Internet, and it's time we admit our part in it, too. In our quest for visibility, we mistook exposure for equity, confused virality with validation, and uploaded everything under the guise of finally being heard, but it came at the cost of context and control. For those old enough to understand, we have entered an age in society where 'culture' is no longer tethered to the people who created it, and if we're not careful, our stories will be remixed, redacted, and retold by those who were never meant to tell them in the first place. So, where do we go from here? As a community, we have to become better stewards of our cultural inheritance. That means reinvesting in Black platforms, protecting our digital spaces, and not being so quick to make our culture content on their platforms so specific. That means teaching the younger generations that not everything is for everybody while reinforcing that some things still belong in the house. Because if we don't gatekeep, they will. So the next time you see a viral 'Black people be like…' meme or viral Black sound bites used by someone who doesn't look like us, remember this isn't just about jokes. It's about protection, because culture is not just what we create, it's what we preserve. And Black culture deserves to remain ours. SEE ALSO: New African American Dictionary: Homage Or Appropriation? When Outsiders Speak Freely About The Black Community SEE ALSO Black Culture, White Face: How the Internet Helped Hijack Our Culture was originally published on Black America Web Featured Video CLOSE
Forbes
13-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
From Savior To Scapegoat: How IT Can Regain Its Business Hero Status
Elise London is the CTO of Lakeside Software, where she oversees the design and delivery of its digital employee experience platform. Picture this: It's 2004. MySpace had just hit a million users. Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard roommates launched Facebook. The Nintendo DS had just been released with two screens—mindblowing. I was wrapping up college and working part-time at a hospital IT help desk, a job that I loved. Why? Because back then, those of us in IT were seen as saviors. Here's how that story went. When an employee had a problem, an IT person would swoop in, diagnose the issue on the spot and get things up and running again. Whether it was a desktop frozen mid-task or a coffee-soaked keyboard, IT pros were always there with a fix—and a reassuring presence. No one made them feel bad for asking for IT's help. It felt heroic. Fast-forward to today. If anything goes wrong—and I mean anything—it's immediately pinned on IT! Let's look at how this scenario plays out now: • My computer is slow: It's IT. • My application is slow: It's IT. • Google is slow: It's IT. • A security tool is blocking my favorite LLM online: It's IT. • My computer blue-screened: It's IT. • Teams or Zoom freezes: It's IT. • My home Wi-Fi is down: It's IT. • My baseball team lost: It's (still) IT. • I'm out of coffee creamer: You guessed it—IT. Okay, maybe I'm stretching it a bit. But seriously—IT today is under more pressure than ever. IT is expected to deliver seamless, consumer-grade digital experiences and enforce the security and controls needed to combat relentless cyber threats. Add in the complexity of AI, growing ticket volumes, the risk of outages, rising expectations—it's no wonder IT often feels like it can't win. And yet, the stakes have never been higher. More than half of employees say they're more likely to leave a company if the digital tools they rely on don't work well. That makes digital employee experience (DEX) a critical priority—for both productivity and retention—and a powerful way for IT to reclaim its role as a business hero. So, what can enterprise IT leaders do to shift the narrative? How do you create a positive culture around IT? How do you get end users to sing IT's praises again? The answer: proactive IT. IT is one of the few roles where success means nothing goes wrong. It's a bit like software testing or insurance—you only notice when things break. On top of that, IT must always deliver the latest and greatest software, hardware, AI systems and security measures. But by establishing a proactive IT practice—instead of reacting to every issue after the fact—IT teams can step back into the spotlight. Here's how this (revised) story goes: By embracing machine learning models that detect issues before end users even notice, IT ensures endpoints are always available, reliable and usable. I call that "getting the computer out of the way" so employees can focus on their work. Dependable devices unlock peak productivity, enabling people to do their best work. Like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, IT quietly powers the exceptional digital experiences that fuel employees, end users and, ultimately, customers. In this new story of IT, the days of simply running a costly support organization are gone. In 2025 and beyond, IT becomes a strategic enabler, shifting the narrative from constant complaints to the kind of praise usually reserved for true business champions. Let's take another look at how this scenario plays out: • Airport kiosks stay functional for passengers, accommodating long lines of passengers during heavy traffic—even after a bug was detected early: It's IT! • Insurance customers are happy because the rep's computer isn't slow today: It's IT! • The firm's top trader closes a massive deal because her laptop works at just the right moment: It's IT! • The company uncovered $1.4 million after unused software licenses were identified: It's IT! Okay, maybe not everyone's shouting "It's IT!" just yet—but imagine instead of suffering hours or days of downtime, you receive one of these messages: • "Hey, your computer was running slowly because of some unused software. I went ahead and cleaned that up—let me know if you still need that software.' • 'Hey, it looks like you're a power user and need upgraded RAM. I went ahead and shipped it to you and will walk you through the install.' That is proactive IT management. And that, my friends, is how IT stops being the scapegoat—and becomes the hero once again. By shifting from reaction to anticipation, IT empowers the enterprise to focus on creativity, innovation and digital transformation. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
Refinery29
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Refinery29
I'm in My Internet Angel Era. Here's How I Achieve the Look & Lifestyle
The Internet is a place where fools rush in and angels fear to tread. It's a place so infinite that darkness and apathy can often hide in the corners we turn to for comfort. That's why it's vital for an angel to be on the Internet, to illuminate it. I consider myself an angel undercover as a girl in the digital world, creating light for you to consume through my writing, podcast, and videos. I'm this ethereal entity going where I'm needed the most and where, in an almost open secret, I yearn to connect. Before I could spread light online, I had to learn from some of the angels on earth how to nurture it in myself. My parents, two young Puerto Ricans raising me in early 2000s Brooklyn, taught me to find joy in the smallest details of my femininity. Whether it was making sure I had my hair done and a cute outfit on to get groceries with them or supporting me in the moments I'd rather dress in costume gowns and plastic princess slippers than real clothes, I was always allowed to tap into a world of my own creation. ' "I consider myself an angel undercover as a girl in the digital world, creating light for you. ... I'm this ethereal entity going where I'm needed the most and where, in an almost open secret, I yearn to connect." raimi reyes ' My grandmother, one of the most fabulous women I've ever experienced in my life, taught me to tend to myself the way I would a budding flower. The other day, she harvested an aloe leaf from the garden, using its gel and a frozen leaf doubling as a guasha to heal my skin. And my cousin introduced me to the very place where I'd truly be able to offer the world my gifts: the Internet. Through her, I discovered MySpace and Tumblr and, eventually, through a lot of evolving, adapting, and shapeshifting, became the Internet angel I am today. An Internet angel is a transmitter of tenderness in a world that often confuses cruelty with coolness. We don't scroll; we witness. We don't post; we offer. We exist at the intersection of vulnerability and visibility, where a digital presence becomes a form of prayer and personal style an armor of expression. An angel's beauty doesn't just come in its face or form, but in how they curate the visual poetry of their life. Ribbons in our hair, pearls on our ears, gloss on our lips, and jewelry that sparkles when we type. Our outfits are love letters to our inner worlds: soft silks, vintage lace, or earthy knits — each piece chosen not just for fashion, but for feeling. ' "An Internet angel is a transmitter of tenderness in a world that often confuses cruelty with coolness. We don't scroll; we witness. We don't post; we offer. We exist at the intersection of vulnerability and visibility, where a digital presence becomes a form of prayer and personal style an armor of expression." raimi reyes ' I like to play pretend when I get dressed, like I'm a doll. How do I want to present today? Because who I am today is not who I was yesterday. I'm a mixture of all my thoughts and feelings, and my style is that brought to the surface. Every aspect of my life comes back to my emotions. My mother always said I was the most emotionally in-tune child. I guess some things angels are just born with. I'm weird on the inside and I want to show that on the outside. That's what inspires me and my style, not trends or labels, but the ever-changing force of feeling. But even angels aren't immune to darkness. There was a time when I found myself trapped in an abusive relationship, one that slowly took control of everything, even my sacred space online. He isolated me, cut me off from friends, from joy, and from connection. All I had left was YouTube. I turned the camera on and created a portal out of the pain. I'd sit in front of the lens and speak into the void. I told myself, I'm going to go find my friends. They're in the ether. That's when YouTube became my diary, a sanctuary and a stage where my vulnerability could breathe. There were times I stopped posting altogether. I let the illusions of social media convince me I wasn't beautiful enough, but over time, I've come to realize I come in seasons. Some seasons, I bear less fruit than others, but that doesn't make these moments any less special. These offerings, my vulnerability, my voice, my softness, have always been rooted in something deeper within me. Some days, I feel like a waterfall. Other days, a mountain. Sometimes, I'm a cherry blossom in bloom. Others, one wilting and returning to the soil. Every day, though, I'm an Internet angel. If you're tapping into your Internet angel era, these are five ways you can achieve the look and lifestyle. Kindly and bravely be yourself. The world can be mean; people are often judgmental. To be an Internet angel, you should lead with kindness and bravery. To get there, angels need to let go of baggage, set boundaries, and be kind to themselves in order to be kind to others. Stress, negativity, and emotional suppression have real effects on our well-being. The best thing you can do is be kind and brave. Be kind to your body, as it is now. And be brave enough to wear what you want and act how you please, even around those who might not support your energy. Let go of ideas of what you're supposed to do and supposed to be. The most inspiring Internet angels I've come across have something so unique to them, something you can't quite put your finger on. That essence is simply the culmination of all their life experiences and a clear understanding of who they are. No occasion or detail is too small. I exude feminine energy in everything I do, especially how I dress. I always say, if a fairy and a princess had a baby and dropped her into modern life, that would be me. Maybe I can't wear a full-length gown to run errands, but I can capture its spirit in little ways. That's where lace, ruffles, and attention to detail come in. I love brands like My Mum Made It, Kitteny, Petit Moments, Santos by Monica, Aerie, and Motel Rocks, which incorporate these details beautifully. Look for mini skirts, mini and maxi dresses, crop tops, shorts (so you can freely move around in your mini pieces), and matching sets. In the spirit of collecting, I also love thrifting pieces when I'm traveling. It adds to the narrative of every outfit. I gravitate toward neutral tones, ones that mimic the earth, but each Internet angel will define the palette that speaks to their soul. Growing up in Brooklyn with a Puerto Rican mother, there was no such thing as being underdressed. While money was limited, the one thing we could control was how we looked. Whether it was finding cute clothes at the flea market or accessorizing with pieces from the bodega, we always made sure our hair was slicked back and our makeup was presentable. That hasn't changed. These days, I don't go anywhere without my Le ChouChou Lip Balm and Rhode Barrier Butter — for that natural angelic glow. My hair, whether styled in a high pony or worn with my curls down, stays nourished with Bread Beauty Supply's curl cream and hair oil. An Internet angel doesn't match everyone else's casualness. Trinket-ify your life. To embody the Internet angel aesthetic is to have something a little weird on you, or something that makes noise, at all times. Sound is such an underrated style detail. I love wearing bangles, gold and silver, that twinkle and rattle when I walk and talk. It's like musical frequencies signaling to other angels. I also add charms that jingle on my bags, belt loops, and keys. Keep a little trinket on you at all times, like your favorite stone or a strange accessory, that carries meaning you remember every time you hear it. I hang a ballerina slipper charm on my bag that feels so me. Ballerinas suffer so much inside these shoes, yet they remain graceful on the outside. Pearls are my favorite gems so I'll carry them with me, like on my conch piercing for example. They're like something you'd find in an oysters pocket. Bring the earth home with you. I'm inspired by the earth. My room is filled with bamboo and birch because I try to mimic the natural world. Angels need our nests, too. And like birds build their nests, I collect little pieces of the world to build mine: a pressed flower tucked into a vintage frame, vanilla-scented soy candles, an antique silver mirror, and angel wings above my bed. You can't just buy things off a list and expect them to feel right. You have to find them along your journey. I've stacked books along the side of my bed like bricks holding me up. I've chosen each one because I felt its knowledge needed to live inside me, cradling me as I sleep. I assign meaning to everything in my space. And if something loses its meaning, or gains too much, I let it go. I once held a ceremony to burn the dried flowers I'd kept from all my ex-boyfriends. I felt lighter afterward. You can't fly with wet wings. Come back to your body and your surroundings. The phone portal is powerful. It can sink its fingers into the folds of your brain without you even noticing. For sensitive souls like Internet angels, disconnection is a form of survival. Leave your phone behind when you walk, when you cook, and when you eat. If you're going to consume media, make sure it nourishes your soul. I love to watch old runways or black-and-white Betty Boop cartoons. Then go outside. Pack a bag with a blanket, a book, a snack, and headphones, and find a spot near water or trees. Read, write, people-watch, or simply sit there. Say "hello" to animals, trees, and the wind. Do it alone or bring another angel with you. I like to stretch my arms out, heart facing the sun, and ask her to charge me. Because at the end of the day, we're all just little plants who need light and movement to grow. When you make it back home, fill your home with tea candles and do your beauty rituals by their flow. Dance before you shower to release stuck energy from your hips. Come into alignment with yourself. The Internet will try to convince you of who you are, but your angelic truth lives in your body, in your breath, and in your rituals. Return there.
Buzz Feed
31-05-2025
- General
- Buzz Feed
38 Things You Wouldn't Understand Unless You Are A Millennial
As a millennial (I know, shocking,) here are the ones I found especially relatable in the replies: "Getting asked and asking A/S/L." "Calling the radio station to request a song in order to hear it." "Asking a gas station worker directions somewhere." "Literally calling 411 to 'look up' stuff." "Used to check out cinema listings in the newspaper." "Using Photobucket to store photos." "Use a phone on our kitchen wall with no privacy." "Recording a TV show with our VCR!" "Take MacBook photo booth pics with the filters and the rollercoaster backgrounds etc. before going out for the night." "Hang out at a mall." "Wait 3 hours to download one song on limewire just to find out it's a clip of crazy frog." "Waiting for your fav song to come on the radio to record it on your boom box." "Slamming a phone when hanging up." "'Burning' CDs." "Jean skirts and uggs lol." "Calling our parents jobs when we needed them, and asking another coworker if they were there." "Pay for ring back tones." "Rushing home to watch TRL." "Hitting a number key on a flip phone 3 times to get the letter you wanted to type in a text." "Tanning as a teenager literally every day after school, with a lil stick[er] on your hip to show the progress." "Call[ing] people after nine and talk on the phone the whole night." "TV guide channel and spacing out, forgetting to look at a certain channel, and having to rewatch it." "Carrying a digital camera around our wrist to the bar." "Having to wait for a certain day and time to watch your favorite show and its one episode per week. No binge-watching or anything." "Accidentally opening the browser on your cell phone." "Going to blockbuster and renting a movie/video game." "Wearing business casual to the club." "Leave the house without a phone." "We had to just sit and wait for our parents to pick us up, and hope they didn't forget us." "Memorize your friends' phone numbers .... their HOUSE phone." "Having to call a friend's house and talk to their parents first. It was awful." "Print off mapquest to know where to drive." Posting 40 pictures to Facebook from a single night out." "Waiting for your school to scroll across the bottom of the TV to see if you had a snow day or not." "Spend hours coding and creating the perfect MySpace profile." "Recording 20 seconds of a song for your voicemail." "Ranking our friends publicly LOL aka MySpace top 8." And lastly, "Made our own ankle socks by rolling over crew socks." Now that's a look.
