debrief

I'm back!! (Ish.) Missed my voice? Wondered what's been on my mind ever since I contemplated being a failed influencer? In this episode, I delve into social media's algorithmic imperative towards complete personal annihilation through public consumption and how that has been hindering me creatively. I share one of my biggest regrets from social media and my plan for countering these negatives going forward, including why I'm doubling down on Substack. If you'd like more episodes like this one and to join my inner sanctum, click here for your limited-time welcome offer (40% cheaper than subscribing monthly!!).

Substack: https://cecexie.substack.com/

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TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cecexie

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cecexie.substack.com/subscribe

It's the last day of 2022 and the last episode of Season 1! It's only fitting that we're coming full circle to reflect on how quitting a 9-5 to become an influencer is going--or more accurately, how quitting my 10-10 to become a writer (and almost necessarily by extension, a content creator) is going. To be honest, I'm pretty lost, which is why I spent a few hours this week researching three artists to see how they handled the art vs. money issue, AKA selling out. Did Kurt Cobain really mean it when he said that there's more to life than living out your rock & roll identity? Why did Jonathan Franzen have to write a personal letter of apology to Oprah after his novel was selected as an Oprah's Book Club pick? Did Gaby Dunn ever get rich, or did they die vlogging?

Substack: https://cecexie.substack.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cecexie/

[timestamps]

0:00 - intro

1:51 - kurt cobain

11:10 - the pain of unintentionally selling out

13:21 - jonathan franzen

17:10 - gaby dunn

20:39 - degrees of selling out

[references]

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/jul/26/why-is-selling-out-ok-now

https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/nirvana-inside-the-heart-and-mind-of-kurt-cobain-103770/

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/my-time-with-kurt-cobain

https://slate.com/culture/2013/08/jonathan-franzens-the-corrections-and-oprah-winfreys-book-club.html

https://splinternews.com/get-rich-or-die-vlogging-the-sad-economics-of-internet-1793853578

https://www.gabydunn.com/about

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/21538544/kim-kardashian-private-island-birthday-twitter-tahiti

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You asked for unscripted, you get somewhat unscripted! In this episode, I answer listener-submitted questions in four major domains: law; work; life strategies; and personal questions. Do I regret leaving biglaw? How did I deal with coworkers who got on my nerves? How should one handle racism/sexism/being othered by peers in elite university settings? How did I go from being a libertarian to a progressive? No matter if you're visiting family, traveling, or taking some much-needed alone time for yourself, I hope you enjoy this extra-long holiday episode!

You can find me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/cecexie/ and subscribe to my Substack at https://cecexie.substack.com/

[timestamps]

intro - 0:00

law - 1:55

work - 11:39

life strategies - 19:33

personal questions - 25:28

[references]

https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/03/01/144958/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance/

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cecexie.substack.com/subscribe

How do you get a book published? What does an agent do? Which publisher is the best home for your book? I answer all of these questions and more in this week's episode, informed by the crash course in publishing that I've gotten in the past nine months and my own publishing journey (which is still ongoing!). I talk about the most challenging parts of trying to pitch a book, how novels differ from nonfiction books when it comes to the publishing process, and answer questions from listeners about book covers, how I outlined, and whether you even need to be a "good" writer in order to get published. Enjoy!

[timestamps]

0:00 - intro

2:41 - fiction vs. nonfiction

5:00 - "be more famous"

6:08 - finding an agent

11:50 - submitting to publishers

17:12 - book advances

19:14 - writing and editing

20:44 - post-manuscript delivery, pre-publication

22:12 - q&a

[references]

https://nybookeditors.com/blog/

https://nybookeditors.com/2019/11/9-donts-when-querying-agents/

https://stephaniewrobel.com/for-writers/

https://stepheniemeyer.com/the-story-of-twilight-getting-published/

https://www.thebinderyagency.com/blog/2018/5/30/what-kind-of-advance-should-i-expect

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I'm gonna be honest: I regret lifestyle vlogging. It's so easy, other creators IRL and through screens told me, All you have to do is record your life as you're living it. It's the same logic and vocabulary surrounding MLM recruitment, and the fact that I purchased vlogging equipment from their affiliate links makes me all the more aware of the pyramid-like structure of the endeavor. In this episode, I lean into the personal and reflect on my lifelong penchant for mimicry and the unintended consequences that have flowed from living life by trying to be other people. I discuss this weird impulse in light of mimetic theory and wonder whether copying others has inadvertently led me to commodify my own life... which is a bad thing, right?

[timestamps]

0:00 - intro

1:40 - humans are natural mimics

6:19 - mimetic theory

8:48 - life commodification

10:49 - problem #1: precession of the simulacrum

15:12 - problem #2: "you're no longer relatable"

17:46 - problem #3: self-identity threat

22:32 - lifestyle vlogging is the MLM of digital content

[references]

https://mimetictheory.com/what-it-is-2/

https://mashable.com/article/youtube-influencers-quit-jobs-brooke-miccio-natalie-barbu

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09589236.2017.1288611

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Like most other recovering prestige addicts, I evaluated where to go to law school primarily based on one thing and one thing only: the U.S. News and World Report (USNWR) law school rankings. The USNWR law school rankings has had legal education in a chokehold for over thirty years now, so it was a shock to everyone when law schools--including Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, and Georgetown--began ceremoniously announcing that they were leaving the rankings (whatever that even means). In this episode, I wonder why a for-profit magazine's rankings has had such power and influence in legal education, dive into the methodology used by the USNWR, and contemplate whether these explosive mic drops from (let's admit it, the top-ranked) law schools will have a lasting impact on the legal industry at all.

[timestamps]

0:00 - intro

1:52 - how we're conditioned to love rankings

12:05 - USNWR history & methodology

17:53 - but will it even matter?

[references]

https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/dean-gerken-why-yale-law-school-leaving-us-news-world-report-rankings

https://www.law.com/2022/11/22/with-duke-law-there-are-now-9-t14-law-schools-boycotting-us-news-rankings/

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/articles/law-schools-methodology

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2022-11-18/us-news-will-still-rank-law-schools-as-georgetown-joins-boycott

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/18/us/law-school-rankings-test-scores.html

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We're doing something a little different this week! This episode, I'm joined by Shannon of FluentlyForward to talk about all things celebrity gossip and blind items. We talk about how blind items have exploded in the past few years, how we think their rising popularity is related to societal distrust of mainstream media (and whether that's a good thing), and ponder why we as humans love talking about other people so damn much. We share our own pieces of fave celeb gossip and how we feel about occasionally being in the crosshairs of online gossip ourselves--and how we would respectively dispose of a dead body, if we had to (strictly a hypothetical, we swear!).

[timestamps]

intro - 0:00

what is a blind item? - 3:38

mainstream media - 6:20

the rise of blinds during the pandemic - 9:40

blinds vs. conspiracy theories - 15:35

selena and lindsay - 21:57

researching blinds - 26:30

the risk of defamation lawsuits - 28:02

what we can learn from blinds - 34:35

too big to be trusted - 37:38

gossip is the weapon of the powerless - 45:28

when the perceivers become the perceived - 51:01

[references]

https://centennialbeauty.com/deuxmoi-anonymous-user-submitted-gossip/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/style/deuxmoi-gossip.html

https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/anon-pls-review-new-novel-by-celebrity-gossip-blogger-deuxmoi-is-as-bad-as-her-posts

---

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This week, I dive into a thoughtful question posed on one of my TikToks: is it anti-feminist to get married? I shuffle through my Family Law notes to give an overview of the legal history of marriage, which is unsurprisingly pretty sexist. (Yes, the Supreme Court really did rule that women couldn't be practicing lawyers.) I unpack my complicated feelings about my pending nuptials in light of the patriarchal and sexist foundations of marriage before going on to question even further what "family" means in our society. Marx and Engels made early arguments for abolishing the family, and even David Brooks wrote an article in March 2020 suggesting the evolution of the nuclear family. "Family abolition" sounds terrible, but is it really as bad as it sounds?

[timestamps]

intro - 0:00

legal history of marriage - 3:00

is marriage anti-feminist? - 5:47

should we abolish the family? - 11:17

[references]

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/98/145/

https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/83us130

https://twitter.com/nonbinarybooty/status/1590825946181144577

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjdzwb/sophie-lewis-feminist-abolishing-the-family-full-surrogacy-now

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/09/why-we-should-abolish-the-family

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-nuclear-family-was-a-mistake/605536/

---

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On Halloween, the Supreme Court held oral arguments for two affirmative action cases, one against Harvard and one against UNC. The verdict? Well, there isn't a verdict in appellate proceedings, and we don't know yet (and probably won't for a while), but the Supreme Court does seem poised to strike down affirmative action. Being Asian American is a weird position to occupy in this debate--on the one hand, the educational benefits of diversity are very real to me, but on the other hand, how would I have felt if I had gotten rejected from Yale despite stellar scores and doing everything "right?" In this episode, I unpack my own experiences with affirmative action in the context of affirmative action's history in California and the United States and try to enumerate why affirmative action makes so many Asian Americans angry. Which side should we be on?

[timestamps]

intro - 0:00

Harvard and UNC - 0:54

a brief history of affirmative action - 6:55

my college experience - 12:27

final thoughts - 21:25

[additional references]

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-10-31/california-banned-affirmative-action-uc-struggles-for-diversity

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/08/improved-race-ethnicity-measures-reveal-united-states-population-much-more-multiracial.html

https://blog.press.umich.edu/2010/01/sandra-day-oconnor-revisits-revives-affirmative-action-controversy-new-release-next-25-ye/

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I have been endlessly comparing myself to others lately--namely, conventionally attractive, skinny white girls--but even hearing, "Comparison is the thief of joy," doesn't make me feel any better. (That's a Theodore Roosevelt quote, btw.) When in a spiral of self-loathing, there's really only one source for me to turn to: my old Feminist Legal Theory readings. What is woman? How can we think of being alive as a woman? How does one woman relate to other women? From Professor Angela P. Harris' musings on gender essentialism to Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw's unfairly maligned and oft misinterpreted intersectionality, I contemplate how these prisms for viewing legal systems can be used to view our own emotional systems. I also discuss my strange and intense friendships with other women and confront the possibility that I may never have emotionally matured from being 16 years old myself.

[timestamps]

intro - 0:00

research turned me into a jealous monster - 1:15

my early female friendships - 5:25

why feminist theory as a lens? - 9:01

gender essentialism - 10:33

intersectionality - 13:55

applying legal theory to my emotional systems - 15:50

going even deeper - 17:19

You can check out Cece's other projects at www.cecexie.com/links.

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cecexie.substack.com/subscribe