the foreword
This has been a difficult week. This has been a difficult term. The past few weeks have totally burnt me out. I have been loving university, as lonely as it is, however my brain has longed for a break for far too long. This entry has taken far too long to come together and it’s only two real parts, as long as they may be. I have tried not to let my mind wander too much the past few months as to not go down a spiral, so my creativity and ability to write long think pieces is limited. Hopefully that will come back soon. The following parts have been written over the last couple weeks and edited minimally. I want to someday make an accompanying zine/small printing of some longer, better essays that I have half-planned to write that will also be posted alongside the entries. I don’t have free time at the moment though, so that may be far in the future. Anyways, enjoy my ramblings, dear reader.
I. disillusionment & the old internet
As an ’06 baby, I can’t exactly remember a time before the internet. In fact, I can’t really remember a time before social media either. My primary school was already abuzz with gossip about Instagram and Facebook, and everyone knew that the secret to finding nice, aesthetic-looking images on google was to add the word “Tumblr” at the end of the search bar. At the time, my internet access was limited to hour-long, once a week sessions in the school computer room, looking for cute kitten photos to print out on my cousin’s PC, and watching old survival show clips on YouTube with my Dad. As I got a little older, at around eight years old, I started my first ever social media account- on PicCollage. I wish with my whole heart that I could somehow recover my account, to see the awful, garish looking collages and pages I used to share with my friends from school. It’s where I discovered my first ever editing, photography, and web-weaving skills, and I was so darn proud of my collages at the time.
Around the age of nine or ten my parents finally gave into my begging and let me sign up for my very own Pinterest account- spicy. Before then, I had been collecting all my chevron-inspired room designs and guinea pig cage setups on a single board on my mum’s account, but my very account on the family iPad opened up an entire new world of possibilities. I still use the same Pinterest account all these years later and cringe so heavily when a notification pops up indicating to me that someone, somehow, found and liked one of my comments on a piece of Wings of Fire fanart where I am arguing with other eleven-year-olds about the canon inaccuracies in the artwork. My first real dive into the world of social media was when I started high school, and I was allowed to download Instagram. I was officially obsessed. I would spend hours pouring over my feed, curating my account, choosing the filters for my photos, and making a whole load of cringe stories that would come back to haunt me for years to come. After downloading Instagram, it was as though the floodgates opened. Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, I had them all (minus SnapChat, as my parents held fast that that was the Real Bad Place. In hindsight, I have to agree).
I truly was the average thirteen-year-old; sporty, social, and totally addicted to social media.
By the time I was fifteen my personal life was already becoming a total hellscape. Social media and the online landscape was my escape. Covid was in full-swing, TikTok had exploded in popularity, and there was something so powerful in being an anonymous presence online, away from the judgement of the girls from my high school. I downloaded Twitter behind my parents back and started my first fan account and spent hours online making online friends, joining watch-alongs on Discord, chatting on the phone to those on the other side of the world from me. I made some of my best friends in the world from Twitter, and it was one of the best eras of my life. But, those months I spent staying up until five or six in the morning also slightly ruined social media for me, and I became entirely disillusioned with the modern internet sphere.
The current social media space is almost unrecognisable from that of the internet’s first conception. The Online World was a new, decentralised location full of possibility, innovation, and creative freedom. There were no preconceived ideas of what the internet was, how you should use it, or what you should make with it. As long as you knew a little HTML, you could literally build the internet. Geocities and other hosting sites allowed for normal individuals and small companies to broadcast their thoughts to the world for the first time, and the access to information totally revolutionised the way people learnt and interacted with one another. Myspace, LiveJournal, and Tumblr allowed for a text-prevalent internet, where short-form media didn’t yet exist in the form of tweets and five-second long brainrot, and while the lack of rules meant that a lot of weird shit went on online back then, it didn’t yet feel like the total trash-fire that we associate with the social media space today. Pretty soon after become entrenched within social media I attempted my escape, and yet the addiction and reliance on social norms kept me online and in these toxic spaces for far longer than I would like to admit.
The past six months or so I have attempted to make my internet usage a lot more intentional- instead of simply doomscrolling for hours whenever I am bored, I’ve been trying to seek out specific reasons to use the internet, and not simply spend hours looking at things I will forget in two seconds to pass the time. I redownloaded Tumblr and went back to writing up Metas and making collages for my favourite media pieces, I found Substack writers and online communities who make long blog posts and writings about the world and politics and music. I unsubscribed to click-bait YouTubers and returned to the long-form, documentary-style vlogs and video essays with hours-long runtimes as a way to engage with the media I love in a way that actually stimulates my brain. I found Neocities and the Indie Web, groups of people dedicated to creating websites and pages and forums to encourage others to create their own spaces online, instead of simply adhering to the formats and websites owned and dictated by billionaire conglomerates. They are trying to make social media actually fun and interesting again, instead of the soul-sucking and brain-rotting nature of Youtube Reels and FaceBooks reels and Instagram reels and whatever corporate short-form media spin-off comes out next.
That’s another reason I think that social media has become so boring- everything online looks the same. The same three or four companies seem to own and design every popular social media app, and they all look the same. Corporate, monochrome, and boring. Profile customisation, which was such a prolific drawing point to sites such as MySpace or Tumblr, is practically non-existent, with individuals being stuck with word limits and pre-selected profile pictures. Gone are the days of hand-crafting your home-page with HTML, tirelessly linking images back to their hosting sites, scouring the internet for custom fonts and designs. Instead, the most creative thing left to do online is copy some forbidden emoticons into your TikTok handle, pray your account doesn’t get deleted for spam, and call it a day. The corporatization has totally sucked the fun out of creating your own website or blog or account, leaving the posting aspect of social media to the brands, the corporations, and the influencers. Everything is profit driven, ads are inescapable, and the internet has turned into somewhere we go to escape, and yet wish we could escape from.
That’s another one of the parts of the issue with modern social media, it’s literally inescapable. Technology and the internet is totally embedded in our society, being literate and up-to-date with social media is necessary in majority of professions and hobbies, and it’s almost expected that you have an online present across multiple platforms that you regularly update. The internet is no longer a place you go, the PC in the corner of the living room or the computer lab in the basement of a university, but instead something that travels with you at all times, that is all-consuming and interwoven in every part of your life. There’s no such thing as an “away” status or a button to signal you are offline anymore, rather your are expected to always be reachable, to always respond to a text message or an email or being tagged in a post the second it occurred, regardless of the actual importance of the correspondence. Not responding for a few hours because you are engaging with your real life is labelled as ghosting, leaving someone “on seen” is rude or callous, and having a blank social media account means your life must be totally uninteresting. A whole new set of social norms and expectations are now placed on the population, especially the youth, and the pressure has to reach a boiling point one way or another. It just so happens that my disillusionment with the online sphere is happening now, and it’s as though the true depths of my addiction and loathing towards social media has completely come to light.
By the way, don’t take this as me hating on the internet entirely. Social media and the online space has been able to do so many incredible things for humanity; connect people all over the world to learn about one another and their experiences, keep family and friends in contact regardless of distance or time, and most importantly, make information available to everyone, everywhere. The accessibility of books, news, scientific papers, and is having a profound impact on human history, and only twenty or thirty years on are we seeing the influence of this. Similar to how the invention of the printing press revolutionised the way the poor and middle-class engaged with religious documents and medical information, the average person can now access up-to-date news stories and research from the other side of the world in seconds, and no longer relies on libraries, archives, and research institutions such as universities for sourcing information. More text is suddenly available at our finger-tips than we could ever dream of consuming in our lifetime, and this has caused so much benefit to people everywhere. Women are able to access resources and information about their reproductive health and abortion rights, which can be life-saving in communities where these topics are otherwise forbidden and stigmatised. People of colour and other marginalised individuals can find one another and organise more easily without having to rely on being in proximity to one another or taking part in pre-existing communities. Texts which would have been redacted or censored in the past are now able to be viewed freely, de-classifying critical information about historical events, scientific research, and politics, allowing for people to become educated in things that may be taboo to discuss in their day-to-day. The internet has created so much good in the world, and in light of all the darkness going on online these days, I think that it’s important to remember that.
So, what’s the solution?
I think being aware of the way we as people choose to interact with social media and the online space is more important now than it ever has been before. Our generation was the first to grow up with social media, and the following generations will grow up entrenched in it. iPad babies, child influencers, and family vloggers have been steadily growing in popularity since the mid 2010’s, and the legislation to protect children online is only in early conception in certain parts of the world. We are all addicted to our phones, that much is for sure, and the idea of living in a world without social media seems entirely foreign to us. However, I do believe that using the internet in a healthy way is possible, and that the path to this positive interaction is mindfulness. Choosing what content we consume instead of relying on algorithms to feed us garbage is one example of mindfully using social media, only using certain apps or websites at pre-determined times of the day is another. At the end of the day, everyone’s unique needs and lifestyles will dictate how much they need to interact with social media in their day-to-day, and there’s no one-size-fits-all policy for fixing our addictions to the screen. It’s about being conscious of the way social media affects us, and choosing to change the way we use it.
This realisation has led to me making a few changes in the way I use the internet. Instead of automatically reaching for my phone, I aim to access social media on my laptop, as the time it takes to complete those couple extra steps of walking to my desk, opening my laptop, logging-in, and loading up Instagram forces me to think about the action instead of finding myself doom-scrolling on reels in auto-pilot because my phone was already in my hand. I have books or web-comics downloaded on my phone for when I do want to scroll, but have it be a productive and stimulating experience instead of simply consuming TikTok slop. I have all my notifications turned off, and instead check my messages sporadically, when I’m not pre-occupied, instead of refreshing my DM’s every few seconds for a response. I spend time clicking through hand-crafted websites and blogs, and prioritise text-based pages over image and video-based apps. Although I still consider myself addicted to my phone, and lord knows I will probably always be, I think that my relationship with the internet is already doing better. I don’t loathe opening my phone anymore, social media is an activity rather than a lifestyle, and my attention span already feels longer than five seconds.
I encourage you to reflect on your internet usage, and whether social media adds to your life or makes you dread opening your phone. I urge you to reconnect with the old internet, in whatever way that may be, and experience the beauty of having endless information at your finger-tips. Use the internet for good, and be creative. It’s what the online world was created for.
And please, for the love of god, delete X.
interlude one - websites
In the spirit of that piece, I have collected a number of my favourite websites & old internet-esque pages I have discovered throughout the online world. There is a number of blogs, adventure pages, informational websites, and so much more. I encourage you to check them all out, and check out their links pages, and then check out those pages links pages- the world is your oyster, and there are some pretty damn cool websites out there at the bottom of those rabbit-holes.
Ribose is one of the first websites I fell in love with on Neocities! There’s a whole bunch of cool microbiology resources, bug facts & images, mini-games, & so much more.
IndieNews is a collaborative archive of articles, metas, tutorials & more, created by IndieWeb community members who prioritise owning your domain and identity online.
Dumpling.Love is a very cool adventure game-style website featuring a capybara, forests, waterparks, angels, and so much more.
Sweetfish is a personal site with a layout I absolutely adore, a whole bunch of media recommendations, and some gorgeous art pieces.
Bus-Stop is an old-school text forum which is re-set every 24 hours.
Songs of Insects is exactly as it sounds.
Bedr00mz is a Neocities page filled with poetry, artwork, animations, short films, and original music, and has an incredibly nostalgic design.
HorrorGifs is also exactly as it sounds.
Monastery of St. Blamensir is a super awesome monastery-themed adventure site featuring cats, churches, and the lore of old gods.
InkCaps is a personal blog which invokes such nostalgia for me, the fairy and fairytale imagery really takes me back to a simpler time.
Blob Garden is a garden of blobs.
There are so, so many other amazing websites out there so I encourage you to do your own web-scouring! It is so easy to find some incredible hidden gems, and I can’t possibly list them all here, so go and find some more!
II. concept albums
Concept Album - An album whose tracks hold a larger purpose or meaning collectively than they do individually. This is typically achieved through a single central narrative or theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, or lyrical (Wikipedia)
preacher’s daughter
I first fell in love with Ethel Cain in late 2023, and as a result Preacher’s Daughter has been on repeat the past two years of my life. From the upbeat, indie-pop sound of American Teenager to the haunting, droning sound of Ptolemaea, to the ethereal, heavenly piano of Televangelism, this album is a masterpiece. However, my favourite aspect of this record is easily the hidden storyline and extensive lore surrounding the fictional character of Ethel Cain and the tragic narrative of her life.
The first two tracks of the album, Family Tree (Intro) and American Teenager take us back to the year of 1991, where a teenage Ethel Cain resides in a sleepy baptist town in Alabama, wrestling with religious turmoil and the shadow of her preacher father’s death hanging over her as she attempts to keep his memory alive. She reflects on the passing of a neighbour and the mythology of the American dream, and curses herself for putting so much heart and faith into her beliefs.
A House in Nebraska introduces Ethel’s first lover, Willoughby Tucker. The pair met at school and fell in love before the events of the album, spending extended time together in a large abandoned house out in Nebraska. However, their time together was cut short when Willoughby left town, leaving Ethel alone and mourning his presence. While his presence was short, Willoughby haunts the narrative of the album continuously, and the house in Nebraska is mentioned in the final track of the album. It has also since been announced that another album that is cohesive with the Ethel Cain lore will be released later this year, Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You, which will likely expand on the story of these past lovers.
The next two tracks feature Ethel Cain falling for her next lover, Logan Phelps, as she describes his bad boy ways and handsome charm in Western Nights. She travels with him on his motorbike, sleeping naked in motel rooms and watching him get into bar fights, and eventually he winds up in a police shoot-out that leaves Ethel running from the cops and fearing for her life. After Logan dies in the fight, Ethel discovers a horrific family secret in Family Tree, and then is forced to confront the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father as a child and her complicated relationship with him in Hard Times. This closes out the first act of the album, and leaves Ethel to contemplate what is next for her in her life.
The second half of the album opens with Thoroughfare, as Ethel runs away from home and meets Isaiah on the side of the road in Texas. He offers her a ride, and they drive through the West out to California together, and Ethel falls for him along the way. However, once they reach Los Angeles the song Gibson Girl details how Isaiah gets Ethel addicted to drugs and forces her into sex work as a way to pay for their lifestyle. Ultimately, Ethel’s life concludes in the following three tracks as she begins to hallucinate, and is then murdered by Isaiah in an abandoned house in California. Ethel reflects on her life, religion, and her relationship with Willoughby Tucker, with the instrumental track Televangelism detailing her ascension to Heaven. The closing track, Strangers, features Ethel’s body being cannibalised by Isiah, and Ethel’s final goodbye to her mother after she has passed on.
“Blessed be the Daughters of Cain, bound to suffering eternal through the sins of their fathers committed long before their conception. Blessed be their whore mothers, tired and angry waiting with bated breath in a ferry that will never move again.
Blessed be the children, each and every one come to know their god through some senseless act of violence. Blessed be you, girl, promised to me by a man who can only feel hatred and contempt towards you.”
- Ptolemaea by Ethel Cain
Preacher’s Daughter is a stunningly tragic concept album about love, religion, abuse, and family. It’s a true Southern Gothic tale that touches on the issues of sexuality and the false American dream, and the way men can consume women whole without a second thought. My favourite song differs day-to-do, and yet I always find myself coming back to the terrifying, nearly seven minute long piece that is Ptolemaea. I encourage everyone to give this album a listen, from start to finish, and I can’t wait to finally hear Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You.
twin fantasy (mirror-to-mirror)
Car Seat Headrest has become somewhat of a cult classic amongst modern rock fans nowadays. But before it was the international sensation that it is today, Car Seat Headrest was the brainchild of online indie-darling Will Toledo. In 2011 Will Toledo released his seventh (sixth? eighth? it’s hard to tell) album, the renowned Twin Fantasy as, as an eighteen-year-old freshly done with high school. The confusion about the album chronology comes from Toledo’s long history with releasing and deleting and remixing endless musical works during and after high school, and then remastering and changing some of those works once again when Car Seat Headrest signed to Matador Records. However, it’s pretty safe to say that Twin Fantasy was Toledo’s most successful album as of 2011, and the 2018 remastered version Mirror-to-Mirror would sky-rocket Car Seat Headrest out of the indie scene and straight into the mainstream.
Twin Fantasy is a concept album which explores a codependent, ambiguous relationship between teenagers who are discovering what love is. The lyrics discuss the narrator’s feelings of yearning for this person that they desire so deeply, the conflicting feelings about their drug abuse, the betrayal of their feelings not being returned by their lover, and the mortifying ordeal of being known. The length of each song varies wildly, with tracks such as Stop Smoking (We Love You) being less than two minutes long, and the epic anthem that is Famous Prophets (Stars) lasting for over sixteen minutes. Although the album is only ten songs long, it has a run-time of over an hour, and the lyricism composed by a teenage Will Toledo never ceases to amaze me in every repeat listen of this record.
“It should be called anti-depression
As a friend of mine suggested,
Because it's not the sadness that hurts you
It's the brain's reaction against it.”
- Beach Life-In-Death by Car Seat Headrest
A joke amongst Car Seat Headrest fans states that Will Toledo wrote every released by the band when he was seventeen, a reference to how often his lyrics and musical elements tend to call back to other pieces of his work in the past- Twin Fantasy is no exception. Even though this record was released early into Toledo’s musical journey there is already a large catalogue of references to his previously released numbered albums and his high school band (which was also most likely just him releasing music under another name). Songs from Twin Fantasy would also go on to be referenced in many other Car Seat Headrest albums, both pre and post Matador records alike.
After the release of the highly successful Teens of Denial in 2016, fans were shocked and delighted to hear of the re-recording and release of Twin Fantasy. The original album, also known as Face-to-Face, is almost identical to the remaster in construction, with only slight changes in the lyrics to represent Toledo’s journey through growing up and reflecting on this relationship which defined his early adulthood. Many of his other songs featured on 2012’s Monomania also explored this relationship, however the remastered version of Twin Fantasy is both the perfect representation of teenage angst leading to broken hearts, and adult recognition that these relationships do not need to dictate the rest of our lives.
Car Seat Headrest, and Twin Fantasy in particular have connected with me in such a profound way since I was thirteen years-old, and the sound of this album is tied to my teenage-hood in such an inextricable way. Maybe that’s lame, but I don’t care, and after five years without a new Car Seat Headrest album I am practically jumping at the announcement of The Scholars being released next month.
danger days: the true lives of the fabulous killjoys
My Chemical Romance’s fourth album, often shortened to simply Danger Days, was a brightly-coloured, comic book-style rebellion anthem exploding into the lives of emo kids everywhere. This album totally rocked 2010, and fifteen years on and the messages about fighting back against a mind-controlling organisation feels as fitting as ever given the 2025 political climate. I was late to the My Chem thing, a good twenty years late, and yet I absolutely adore everything there is to do with Danger Days and the world created to surround this incredible narrative.
Danger Days, like most things to do with My Chemical Romance, was the brainchild of lead singer Gerard Way. His life-long obsession with comic books, both the writing and reading of, inspired him to create an alter-ego for himself and each of his band-mates and put them into the ultra-futuristic year of 2019, where the Californian desert has deteriorated into a radioactive wasteland after the world went to war over Helium. Better Living Industries, shortened to BL/ind, is an evil corporation drugging and mind-controlling the citizens of Battery City, and the rebels out in the desert are tasked with taking down them down and bringing freedom to the city inhabitants. These rebels are known as the Fabulous Killjoys, and they are unapologetically loud, neon, and electric in the face of the monochrome and the corporate.
“They sell presentable, young, and so ingestible,
Sterile and collectible, safe, and I can't stand it,
This is a letter, my word is the Beretta,
The sound of my vendetta against the ones that planned it.”
- Planetary (GO!) by My Chemical Romance
With the rise of conservatism and republican rhetoric online as a result of the incoming American recession and the alt-wing pipeline taking ahold of a younger demographic via the internet, I think that it’s important for us to fight against a step backwards in progress. Many members of Gen-Z tend to cringe at their "2020 eras”, when we were all chronically online pre-teens experimenting with bright coloured makeup and highly saturated filters, bunny hats and fishnets, eyeliner and hair-dye, but that level of self-expression and “alt-ness” is something that feels like a breath of fresh air in this period where “clean girl” and “office siren” dominate the TikTok hashtags. It feels as though this return to gender norms and heteronormativity renaissance is coming at a time where the young people of the online space are vulnerable to falling down these rabbit holes and falling victim to this rhetoric, and frankly, it’s scary.
While there may not literally be an organisation using mind-control just yet (though I wouldn’t put it past some of the current politicians), the messages embedded in the lyrics, imagery, and marketing of Danger Days feel more apt than ever. Looking after one another, standing tall against oppression, refusing to give up- while they may have meant something different in 2010, in 2025 it means dying your hair and piercing your face and participating in democracy, funding charities and supporting queer youth and taking care of your friends. It means looking after members of our community who can’t put food on the table, calling out transphobia and standing up for our trans siblings, and standing by people of colour and marginalised groups as conservatives attempt to beat them into the ground.
In a time of corporatisation, conservatism, and conventionalism, music which highlights rebellion, radicalness, and restitution is what I need to listen to now, more than ever.
interlude two - autumn flowers
As a junior florist, I spend many mornings of my week surrounded by flowers, arguing with suppliers, cutting stems, and carrying buckets. Autumn isn’t the typical time for flowers to be in bloom, however there are some gorgeous species that go into bloom late in the summer and are aplenty during March and April. Here’s a few of my favourite autumnal blooms of the moment, plus a couple of flowers which I feel fit the vibe.
We have so many dahlias being delivered to the florist at the moment, we are practically drowning in them! Fortunately they are one of my favourite flowers, and are super versatile to use in bouquets. Gypsophila is also known as Baby’s Breath and usually comes in white, however we special ordered in a gorgeous red colour for a wedding a couple of weeks ago.
Throughout the summer we had a wide range of cosmos ordered in for the store, although I am yet to see the dark burgundy colour of chocolate cosmos amongst the blooms. However, I do plan to try and grow some of my own in the spring-time, as I continue to be plagued with videos of other people’s gorgeous backyard cut flower gardens. Snapdragons are a staple of the majority of our bouquets, and the range of peach and maroon colours we have been receiving this autumn have made me fall in love with the flower all over again.
the postscript
I accidentally made this entry far too long for an email to be sent properly and I take full accountability for my inability to stop yapping. Honestly, just trying to get this entry done and finished and posted has taken a lot out of me. Between work and university and trying to balance my mental health and keep up with my hobbies, something had to give. I have university break for the next two weeks, so I will hopefully get to do some proper writing and musical experimentation and work on my quilt and upcycle some old clothes. I’m tempted to make a new Instagram account to keep up with my various endeavours rather than always waiting to make a long entry. Too many ideas too much time. Big band moves happening at the moment, and so many ideas for crafty projects. Maybe I’ll do a full part on that in the next entry.
In the mean time, take care of your friends and love yourself. Water your plants and eat something sweet and leave glitter at the door for the pixies. Or whatever people say.
all my love,
lucy x