High Tea, Low Society

About Pop-culture blog run as part of a project for a digital media course. Feedback welcome and appreciated! Appetizers || Entrees || Desserts

[hightealowsociety]

Music Kinda Sucks

I don't wanna be that guy that insists that things just "used to be better!!!" but, in terms of music, I kinda think that's true. I like a lot of popular music -- Taylor Swift is consistently my top artist on Spotify, and I barely even crack her top 5% of listeners. Pop is one of my favorite genres, in fact. 1989, Melodrama, Sawayama, and Magdalene are some of my favorite albums of all time. Pop is popular for a reason, and that's because it's good. But, on TikTok, I've noticed a weird trend with music.

Music isn't made to be listened to.

TikTok's short form video format prevents the playing of a full song, so of course, videos are set to song clips. Because TikTok videos are so short, they don't hold ones attention for more than a minute if you're lucky. I think that the fact that these videos are not made to be paid attention to for any longer than a few seconds at a time means that many of the new songs that are coming up as "TikTok trends" exist in the same way -- they'll have a catchy chorus, but they aren't really meant to be listened to, absorbed, and enjoyed. Not every song has to be some 10-minute long treatise on the human condition or whatever, but short, catchy pop songs should still be good, and not manufactured for a quick dopamine hit and forgotten about immediately after.

I think that it's indicative of a larger, much more concerning trend with TikTok. Videos are being packed with filler to grab kid's fleeting, goldfish attentions and made them stop and click for a second before they doom scroll for the remaining hours of sunlight in their day. Clips of people playing with slime, collecting coins on Subway Surfers, and dancing are spliced together with Family Guy clips and movie scenes. It's depressing to see little kids unable to pay attention to a video, a game, or a toy for more than 60 seconds because their brains have been fried by TikTok and YouTube.

Children, in my opinion, should not have TikTok or YouTube -- or really any social media app. Not only is it terrible for self esteem, it's doing them a lot of harm. Even kids in high school are feeling the effects, as my mom describes her students being more disconnected and unable to focus than ever before. This is, of course, in part due to COVID-19. TikTok exploded because everyone needed a quick dopamine hit while the world was falling apart. This led to kids who were 10 and 11 at the time to spend the hours that they used to play outside on their phones (since when do elementary schoolers have phones?!) and losing their grip on basic study and social skills, stunting their development. I'd like to see how this hopefully improves in the future, but for now it upsets and scares me, honestly -- music is the least important manifestation of it.

[hightealowsociety]

A Passionless Daze

I feel like I haven't been able to write anything for the past few weeks - anything at all. I've been in this funk that I cannot shake no matter what I try. I'm irritable, moody, cranky, sleepless, lethargic, and overall impossible to be around. I gotta say, I hate being around me, too.

I guess I'm in a depressive episode. I don't understand why I still get these so intensely. I've been going through these my whole life. But still, I get them so often, and so brutally. I don't know what to do.

On the surface my life looks great. I go to college for free, I make good money at my job, and I'm involved in quite a few clubs and extracurriculars. But, school is incredibly stressful. Work is even worse. And despite my club involvement, I'm extremely lonely.

I don't know how to fix this, honestly. I'm on medication, I'm in counseling, I have a healthy spiritual life, and I have a strong support system. But still, I feel so horrible.

I'm trying to get better. I'm trying to engage with my interests more, for one. I want to get into soap making. I want to draw again. I want to sit down and watch TV. I want to overanalyze the music I like. I want to go to the craft store, pick something up, and use it. I want to read a book, a single book, front to back. I want to feel right again.

I don't know. I'm trying and it's hard. But at least I'm trying.

[hightealowsociety]

Please, Be Normal

Our culture of celebrity has long reached cult status. So why are we still surprised?

On April 8th, rumors exploded about the potential split between Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn, who've been together for 6 years. The reactions are...sadly, predictable. It's gotten to the point where "Swifties" are begging each other not to end their real-life relationships over it. My only question is: why? Why do we do this? Why is anyone so involved in a celebrity's life that it impacts their interpersonal relationships?

And why am I surprised?

I've seen what fandoms are capable of - I was a One Direction fan in the golden days of airport hackings and 1934492482031 baby rumors and the haunting specter of L*rry. So, the way people are reacting tot his breakup shouldn't shock me. But yet, it does. I feel like we've all lost our collective minds.

Maybe it has to do with quarantine in some way. Famous people have always been famous, but they haven't always been one of our only connections to the outside world. COVID changed that. People became more invested in their imagined relationships with celebrities - called par asocial relationships - and thus, feel like they have the right to comment on these celebrities as people.

Parasocial cult followings of famous people is nothing new. But, in recent years, people seem to have become more aware of it - especially since the pandemic. I guess I thought that people would have "woken up" by now and have seen that, hey, maybe I don't know everything about this person, and maybe I can act normal.

But acting normal is too tall an ask on the internet.

I feel like celebrities are constantly talking about how private they want to be, only showing us what they want us to see. If they want to be messy? They'll let themselves be messy. If they want to be tight lipped? You won't hear a peep. So much of celebrity is manufactured - you will never actually know these people, even if they pretend that you do. You will never see past their mask. You will never see them when they have decided that you won't. They will never "tell-all." They will keep their branding fresh and polished and you won't see a dent.

So, I guess just keep that in mind. You don't know these people. Be normal.

[fayriequeene]

Lazy afternoon reading (and annotating) Wuthering Heights with some Lavender Earl Grey 📚🫖

[lionfloss]

source

[kudriaken]

[mynowherenothing]

@mothercain for HIGHSNOBIETY

[hightealowsociety]

Tom Wambsgans' American Dream

"Angry, and half in love [...], and tremendously sorry, I turned away." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Last Sunday, the fourth and final season of HBO's "Succession" premiered to critical acclaim. Many have waited with bated breath to learn the fate of Tom Wambsgans, the wimpy but cunning social climber, and his wife Siobhan "Shiv" Roy, the stubborn and hypocritical daughter of media magnate Logan Roy - who also happens to be Tom's boss and ally at the beginning of season 4. More specifically, many viewers - myself very much included - have been endlessly speculating about the future of their marriage since before the season even premiered. At the end of season 3, Tom backstabbed Shiv as she (along with her brothers Kendall and Roman) were on her way to stop their father from selling out Waystar Royco, the "family" media corporation that he built and that one of his four children was expected to inherit.

His marriage to Shiv has been fraught from the start, with Shiv cheating on Tom before asking for an open marriage on their wedding night, and Tom gaining control of the conservative news company that has been targeting Shiv's boss, Democratic presidential candidate Gil Eavis, for months. Another point of contention is their unequal footing in life, in part due to their unbelievably different upbringings. Shiv is the daughter of a British noblewoman and a multi-billionaire - Tom is the son of a lawyer from Saint Paul, Minnesota. Tom is a transplant to Shiv's native New York City, having moved there after studying at Cornell. He's spent his entire career trying to impress people and gain social capital, to both significant successes and failures. Tom uses his relationship with the beautiful, intelligent, and most importantly, wealthy, Shiv to gain leverage in the cutthroat upper echelon society that she was raised in. But, ultimately, his love for Shiv runs deep - and her various infidelities (both in the marital sense and in the business world once Shiv throws her unqualified hat in the ring for Waystar's CEO, a position Tom has been grasping for for years) wound him even deeper.

As the series has unfolded, I have been fascinated by Tom. He's not my favorite character, as that title belongs to Greg, the awkward cousin of the Roy family who has been stumbling upward into oblivion with the help of Tom for the past four seasons. He's not even my second or third favorite - that's Shiv and Kendall respectively. He barely makes it into the top five (Gerri, one of Logan's top and most ruthless advisors, cuts him out for fourth). But, he's my favorite to write about. I think the reason for that is how he embodies the prototypical American Dream in the modern age. He is a 21st-century Jay Gatsby without the charm, but with the grit to claw his way into high society.

The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite novels of all time, for precisely the same reason that Tom is my favorite character to write about - I am fascinated with the idea that, with enough determination and work behind you, you can become anything. Jay Gatsby, much like Tom, plays the game of life with a false air of confidence and disposable income trailing behind him like a cheap dupe of an expensive French cologne. Gatsby sees Daisy Buchanan, his longtime love interest, as both the love of his life and as a prize to be won to cement his place in NYC society and gain legitimacy in the Old Money world that Daisy and her husband (also named Tom!) reside. T. Wambsgans' underhanded business practices - namely the covering-up of massive scale corporate crimes - and emotional bribery is also mirrored in Gatsby's illegitimate means of monetary gain. Ultimately, Gatsby cannot overcome his history. He's a puffed-up fraud, as the closest thing he has to a friend (Daisy's cousin and the ultimate unreliable narrator, Nick Carraway) discovers towards the end of Gatsby's life. Gatsby's entire backstory was fabricated, down to his name - he was not Jay Gatsby, born to mysterious luxury; he was James Gatz of North Dakota.

It's easy to see parallels between Wambsgans and Gatsby. Both come from less fortunate circumstances (to varying degrees) than their love interests. Both of their love interests doubly represent their career goals. Both are undaunted in the face of competition, so long as they get what they want out of it. Will both ultimately fail, having spent their lives in pursuit of the women, respect, and social status that they'll never get? Only time will tell when - or whether - Tom Wambsgans will wake up from his own American Dream.

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

[julieterbang]

[julieterbang]

dolce_tally

[hightealowsociety]

Appetizers 3.26.23-4.2.23 : Soothe Your Soul

I've had a rough past few weeks. I rescued a cat who died hours later, my school laptop was broken, and I came down with a vicious cold. So, I decided that the theme of this week's (and the first ever) "appetizer" portion for this blog is Soothe Your Soul.

In times of distress, it's natural for us to look back on what comforted us as children or brought us joy. These can be toys, movies, music, TV shows, so on and so forth. This week, I've been enjoying a childhood favorite franchise, Monster High. Pink is my all-time favorite color (and will always be), so naturally, my favorite ghoul was Draculaura with her pale-pink eyes, black-and-magenta hair, and hot pink silk vest.

I also love her generation 3 iteration (we are pretending generation 2 never happened), who has a cutesier face, a shorter and larger build, and keeps her signature pink-and-black look, but with brighter, lighter pinks. Oh, and she's also a witch, I guess.

I've also been trying to read more. None of the books that I enjoyed as a kid quite hold up anymore (because they are for children), so I've been trying to explore the interests that I have now as an adult. I'm currently reading The Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Avila (translated by Mirabai Starr), the great Christian mystic, Catholic Church doctor, and my own confirmation saint. I have to re-read everything that she writes again and again and again to begin to absorb it. I have to pause and reflect to really resonate with what she's saying. I try to apply her view of the soul and its wonders to my own Bible studies, and I think it's helped me connect with the more mystical and pneumatological (pertaining to the Holy Spirit) aspects of my faith.

Finally, I want to set a goal for this week: avoid conflict and reflect on your own self and beliefs instead. I don't want to compound my stress by letting others cut at me with their words and their anger. I don't want to be constantly thinking about what I could've, would've, or should've said to win that fight. I don't want to prove myself by tearing down someone else. So, I am simply cutting out the noise. I am avoiding. I am reflecting. I am developing my own thoughts rather than polluting my brain with rage and nonsense. I am soothing my soul.

[jenesse]

beetle by iamnotaworm

look! someone painted me!!

[cloth-fabric]

bluetamburin - Fall RTW 2023

[hightealowsociety]

The Serpent, the Lamb, and Ethel Cain

Ethel Cain (the pseudonym of singer-songwriter Hayden Silas Anhedönia) and her debut album "Preacher's Daughter" could not have come at a more perfect time, in a year where the New York Times was predicting a feverous religious revival amongst young hipsters and the teens of TikTok thirsted furiously for the resurrected Louisianan vampires of the late Anne Rice. Though Cain herself is no longer religious, she's said before that she connects to spirituality through music. Cain's music deals heavily with themes of Americana, Christianity, coming-of-age, violence, and trauma, cementing itself into the categorization of "Southern Gothic." On "Preacher's Daughter," these themes are all embedded into the overarching plot of the life and gruesome death of the character Ethel Cain, who runs away from her hometown of Shady Grove, Alabama in search of heaven - but finds nothing short of hell.

Cain's album opens with the haunting "Family Tree (Intro)," a track later reprised, where Ethel Cain likens herself to Jesus in the garden trying to reject his fate. But, as Ethel foreshadows with the lines, "The fate's already fucked me sideways / Swinging by my neck from the family tree," her demise is inevitable, and it all links back to her trauma as a child at the hands of her mysterious, abusive father, a Baptist preacher who died years before the events of the album. Later, in "Ptolemaea," taken from the one of the circles of hell in the Divine Comedy, a deep muffled voice proclaims, "Blessed be the Daughters of Cain, bound to suffering eternal through the sins of their fathers committed long before their conception." This harkens back not only to the actions of her deceased father, but the biblical murderer Cain, whose descendants all died in a great flood as a result of their father's evil, committed long before they ever existed. This line also toys with the concept of Original Sin. The sin of Adam - his rebellion against God's perfect design - was the "fall" of all human creation. According to theological tradition, God created us for a unique purpose - to be in full and loving communion with Him - and Adam, by trying to achieve his own kind of godhood and thus breaking this communion, cursed his descendants to forever toil in labor (both in work and in birth). Ethel was doomed from the start - as were we all, the second that the serpent told Eve to bite.

Ethel is cannibalized by her final lover, the murderous, abusive, pimping Isaiah Abram. Throughout the album, Ethel refers to herself with various symbols of innocence, sacrifice, penance, and Christ's love, such as a "sweet mourning Lamb," a clear reference to the Paschal Mystery. Jesus is called "the Lamb of God," because he let himself be slaughtered in loving penance for every sin ever committed, from the greed in the heart of the last human on the earth to Adam and Eve first tasting the forbidden fruit. Ethel is the murdered "freezer bride" (from the closing track, "Strangers," which never fails to make me sob in the final lines) of Abram, having taken his sins as her own as she questions over and over again if she was ever really good. In the Passover narrative, the flesh of the sacrificial lamb is eaten to give sustenance for the journey out of Egypt. At the Last Supper, Jesus gives his flesh as food from Heaven for the disciples to eat in memory of him. On "Preacher's Daughter," the nature of Ethel's death isn't neatly explained. It leaves the listener guessing why Isaiah is eating her corpse, a sentence that no matter how many times I listen to this album feels so deeply horrible and wrong to type out. Her death isn't given some greater purpose - it just is.