#oh gemma

[villenelle]

KILLING EVE S02E07: "wide awake"

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

"Earnest" really describes Gemma well imo. I also think she wants to do good, but the greenwashing is just making me crazy - like the car ad or the "let's stop buying clothes for one month" (it's not a challenge, but a necessity for most people, Gemma). Still, it must be hell to be Harry Styles' sister and, as she herself says, have psychogical problems. I feel for her, but maybe a job selling stuff (mainly to his fans? Idk) on social media is not the best choice here.

Anon 2: I listen to her podcast sometimes and I actually find it very entertaining

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I really feel for Gemma for a number of reasons. I think she was at a particularly difficult age for her brother to become Harry Styles. Old enough to be fully aware of everything, but not yet built any of the structures and personality.

One of the things that I think is fascinating, if very cruel, about being Harry's sister is that it seems to have opened lots of opportunities for her, but ensured she couldn't actually use them. She's a good writer, but she doesn't often say anything. I think the influencing is a bit of a double bind, particularly if anxiety has got in the way of her doing more regular work, 4 million instagram followers gives real options. But it also makes demands.

Anyway - she's still super young, she has lots of good elements of her life from the look of it, and there's plenty of time to build in other things she might need. (And given that the wisest way for her to build anything woudl be out of our eyes - she might be doing all sorts of things.

Anon 2 - I like her podcast when I like her guests, but some are people who really annoy me. I also find there's something about 'here is someone who would be a good influence' that wants me to tear them limb from limb. But I accept that's just me.

[ellistheelephant]

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is infinitely quotable and applicable to life. 

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

Can you please elaborate on why you don’t like Gemma? I don’t keep up too often with what she’s doing so I don’t understand your tags. I’ve been feeling uncomfortable with her particular branding as an activist but not sure how to articulate it.

I'm not sure I'd say I dislike Gemma. I have a lot of sympathy for her and the very difficult position is in. I just really hate the recent turn she's made to how she makes her money and the impact it has had on the way she presents politics.

She's made a recent turn to greenwashing influencing. That is she's making advertising for companies that do huge harm for the world and presenting them as environmentally friendly. The most extreme 'What the Fuck is wrong with you are you trying to make the world actively worse in the most intense way you can?' is making ads for a car company pretending they're environmentally friendly. But I also thought her beauty influencing kit did exactly the same thing.

What I do find interesting is that her work has already affected her politics. She's out there claiming that "individual action and corporate responsibility" can bring about a sustainable world. It can't the only thing that will bring about a sustainable world is collective organising and forcing companies to change.

Both the idea that individual change will make a significant difference to the climate, and the idea that corporations might act responsibility - is propaganda for the people who are making money from destroying the planet.

I think it's really noticeable that the way she talks about politics has gotten worse as her work has moved more explicitly to greenwashing. I'm not that surprised, my read on her politics as always been 'heart in the right place, but lots of instincts that point in the wrong direction'. In particular, she has values and a worldview that's very similar to her brother - and she can't really imagine a better alternative to change the world than people just being better.

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

So, so disappointed in Gemma, and it's not even about her political stance. After the shallow 'do good by buying the gruesome stuff I'm peddling' thing, her making the Palestinian struggle about herself ('It's sooo hard that I can't say what I want to say") is the last straw for me. Still to me her posts feel frantic and I worry about her mental health. You also made me reflect on my personal bias about women-adjacent-to-1D, so it might be that as well...

There can be something about the way people post mental health affirmations on instagram that suggests exactly the opposite of what they’re saying.  I hope she has support if she is in a bad place.

More than anything else I advocate boundaries when it comes to women adjacent to 1D.  So I am very comfortable saying that I think shilling greenwashed beauty products is worse than ordinary beauty influencing. Or anything I’ve said in response to her posts about Palestine.  But I think things get messy if you talk about being disappointed with Gemma.  She never promised to be anything other than who she is, and if she has some views I disagree with and is making money doing something I think is pretty damaging, well there are 7.5 billion people on this planet, and that description applies to quite a lot of them.

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

Do you have any thoughts on Gemmas podcast? I feel like some of these guests could share a week not get their own.

Anon 2:  Hi, about Gemma’s podcast, why huge yikes to her guests? Are they not interesting?

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Her guests aren’t interesting, but for quite a few of them that’s the least of their problems.  Her latest guess was about money - and she was all about entrepreneurship, property investment and manifestation - ie getting rich off other people and blaming them for being poor. 

She’s had three different life coaches! I have no problem with grift - if people want to call themselves life coaches and charge for their services then whatever. But imagine thinking that such voices needed amplifying! (And some of them were into serious quackery - not just the manifesting, but neuro-linguistic programming, which is a favourite of cults).

As the other anon suggests - most of them have one thing to say and then they talk for three quarters of an hour. And I just assumed that Gemma would have more interesting and on-to-it friends than the people who she’s had on this podcast.

But then I’m not on board with the whole project of the podcast.  Her pitch is ‘things you should know about’ - and in month ten of the pandemic I’m very much against ‘shoulds’.  If I had a microphone right now I’d be using it to tell people that they were doing amazing - not call for more optimisation.  

In terms of actually knowing something the food waste guy was probably the best guest (although he was very unspecific in the podcast and to get any actual information I assume you’d have to go to his instagram).  But imagine at this moment in time thinking ‘I know lets pressure people to use their broccolli stalks’.  

The world is the problem, not the people who follow Gemma Styles who feel shitty about themselves for various reasons.   And I think it’s probably because she really feels like she’s the problem, that she’s delivering up content that says ‘no you’re the problem - here’s how to be better’. And she’s doing it in a way without any charm or sense of fun.

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

Hello ralph, this isn’t about the boys, but an ask about gemma. Did she ever said anything islamophobic? I once saw a tweet saying she said something once but I never saw anyone talking about it, do you know anything regarding that?

In January 2015, after the Charlie Hedbo attacks in France, Gemma retweeted a Richard Dawkins tweet that said: “They shouted ‘we have avenged the prophet Muhammad...Some useful idiot will claim it had nothing to do with religion”.

Afterwards she posted a pretty defensive follow-up note, which she seems to have deleted: 

I think there are lots of places you could point to and go ‘what the fuck?’: having anything to do with Richard Dawkins; feeling a pressing need to talk about the killers’ self stated motivations in that moment, given the envrionment you’re living in.

I think it’s important not to give in to the way she’s trying to construct islamophobia in the response.  You can play into a lot of ideas that do harm to Muslim people without hating them. 

[speakthewordonly]