nosy bitch support club
[kim possible voice] what's the sitch???
as someone with a truly unreasonable amount of mercurial energy in my birth chart (shout out to my gemini rising + virgo sun/mercury), i suffer from a near pathological need to know what’s going on with everyone at all times. i can’t help it!! and honestly, don’t front like you’re not secretly frothing at the mouth whenever your friends offhandedly bring up someone they have some unspoken Lore with. i’m just upfront with my nosiness.
now let me clarify— i don’t like being in the drama. being in the drama’s exhausting and i simply don’t have the stamina required. like my last friendship breakup had me out of commission for an entire Year— who has that kind of time these days?? in This impending societal doom?? no thank you.
so what’s a gossip with poor social constitution to do? tune into THEE most random, ultra-low stakes drama. the more entirely removed from anything i may organically come across, the better. aerithgirl on tiktok has this truly Phenomenal collection she calls Niche Tea where she catalogues discourse/drama/tea from the far corners of the internet that i cannot recommend enough. the way she manages to condense a truly ridiculous amount of information into each video astonishes me. the high of getting these peeks into the wildest internet corners, like the contentious world of sea glass hunting or the gritty underbelly of the Hugo Awards voting committee, is one that’s truly unparalleled. like how do we get her nominated for a Peabody, is there someone i can talk to so we can get the ball rolling on that?
another recommendation for fellow busybodies is the normal gossip podcast by co-creators kelsey mckinney + alex sujong laughlin. basically, kelsey + a cohost (or cohosts) shoot the shit about gossip as a whole, getting into all of its fun anthropological + sociological implications (because in case you didn’t know, gossiping’s actually a feminist form of knowledge production and community care). then, they delve into a story sent in by one of the listeners about someone in THEIR life (aka the friend of the friend of the podcast). kelsey’s a phenomenal storyteller and will have me at the edge of my seat over a competition between feuding dog groomers or the lord of the flies-esque devolution of rich private school moms, both subjects i normally couldn’t give less of a shit about. my one complaint is the fact that each season’s only 10 episodes each and season 6’s finale dropped this past june. (it took me two weeks to finish the last 15 minutes because i’m terrible with endings) and yes, quality work takes time and kelsey + alex + the rest of the team deserve their breaks!!! i’m just going to wilt like a flower until they return to water me with more insignificant drama.
now if you’ll excuse me, i’m going to rewatch reesa teesa’s “who the Fuck did i marry” tiktok series to feel alive again.
over and out!
fun fact: while working on this, i randomly thought about the creator of the panopticon and whether he’d have mercurial placements and after a rigorous 25 second google search, i’m proud to announce that social theorist jeremy bentham Does in fact have a virgo moon!!! take That, astrology deniers!
fun fun fact: being so incredibly brave and admitting i actually Haven’t read my year of rest and relaxation yet. however comma i Am a tried and true ottessa moshfegh enjoyer, i promise (mcglue rewired my brain)
I LOVE NORMAL GOSSIP