Rich Text

Last week, we held a live panel discussion at SaksWorks with the always eloquent Sharleen Joynt of “Dear Shandy” about navigating the parasocial waters we swim in — specifically as podcasters and as reality TV commentators (and, in Sharleen’s case, as a one-time participant on “The Bachelor”), but also as people who live in a society that is increasingly structured by parasocial, rather than social, relationships.

We talked about John Mulaney and how he disappointed us by getting a divorce and also how he must be protected from us. We talked about making fun of people on reality TV and also feeling deep empathy for them. We talked about how almost everyone is now in a position to be watched on social media by people who don’t know them, and how close even a not-at-all-public figure is to going viral and experiencing the crush of mass attention. We talked about Chris Hayes’s wonderful essay in the New Yorker, “On the Internet, We’re Always Famous,” and how it captures the destabilizing nature of fame (whether brief or enduring), and the way in which the surveillance powers of social media have brought on an age of democratized fame. We talked about influencing, and how monetizing a relatable version of your own personality inevitably invites massive, overwhelming feedback on who you are as a person — both positive and negative.

The event was a lot of fun for us, and while we wish you all could have been there in person, we hope you enjoy this taped version.

We were hosted by SaksWorks in Manhattan, which is lovely and full of hydroponic herb gardens. Many thanks to Rachel Sklar for inviting us, all of the wonderful people at SaksWorks for making this happen, and Ron Passaro for recording the conversation for us!

More reading about parasocial relationships:

“On The Internet, We’re Always Famous,” Chris Hayes, The New Yorker

“John Mulaney Was Performing A Role All Along,” Aja Romano, Vox

“John Mulaney And The Great Celebrity-Sympathy Overcorrection,” Lili Loofbourow, Slate

“Podcasters Are People: The Intimacy of Medium vs. Parasocial Relationships,” Wil Williams

We’ve been watching…

“Only Murders in the Building,” which I just finished. It’s so charming and zany, with all the darkness heavily couched in scenery-chewing camp, and while I feared the true crime satire would peter out by the end, the finale was one of the funniest and sharpest episodes yet. Plus, it perfectly sets up a season two, which will reportedly be here next year.

Also, has anyone heard that “Succession” is back? -Claire

GUYS I FINALLY WATCHED THE MARBLES EPISODE OF “SQUID GAME” AND I COULDN’T STOP WEEPING. -Emma

We’ve been reading…

Haley Nahman’s beautiful essay about “feeling like yourself.” -Emma

We’ve been listening to…

“Celebrity Book Club with Steven and Lily,” a podcast in which comedians Lily Marotta and Steven Phillips-Horst read celebrity memoirs, coffee table books, and cookbooks in order to gaily rip them into a tattered pile of clichés, clunky prose tics, faux authenticity and diet tips. I’ve actually had to stop listening to it in public because people are weirded out when I giggle quietly while I shop for groceries. -Claire

“Queen of the Con: The Irish Heiress,” a podcast hosted by a reality TV producer in his 40s who got scammed by a woman who he thought was his best friend — and turned out to be a serial con artist. I’m a sucker for a scam story. I can’t help myself. -Emma

We’ve been buying…

Tartan. -Claire

Velvet. -Emma

On Rich Text Book Club this week, we’re talking about “Carefree Black Girls,” a new book from culture critic Zeba Blay, who also happens to be (full disclosure) our friend and old HuffPost colleague!

In 2013, Zeba tweeted a post with the hashtag #carefreeblackgirl. She was an early popularizer of the term, which reached toward a conception of Black girlhood that could be joyful, relaxed, at ease in the world — carefree in a way that white girls were often shown as being. Almost a decade later, her hashtag has evolved into the title of a book of essays about Black women in pop culture and her own experiences as a Black woman and critic. In “Carefree Black Girls: A Celebration of Black Women in Popular Culture,” Zeba blends the personal and the critical in order to explore how Black women have created our culture, how they’ve been depicted in it and treated by it, and how these narratives affect how Black women and girls experience the world.

As the subtitle suggests, it’s a celebration of women like Josephine Baker, Mel B, Serena Williams, Countess Vaughn, Viola Davis, and Cardi B — but it’s also a searching, tender excavation of the humanity of these women. Zeba examines how societal demands of and cultural tropes about Black women limit them, demand that they appear smaller or flatter or less complex than they truly are; she also, through her own experiences and those of the women she writes about, does an accounting of the suffering this causes.

It’s a beautiful and illuminating book, and we were so thrilled to talk to Zeba about it. This was also a mini-reunion, since we all worked together at HuffPost Culture for years — and getting to talk pop culture on Zoom again was, simply put, a huge treat.

You can buy “Carefree Black Girls” here, or wherever you get your books!

We’ve been watching…

The new “Great British Baking Show” season. It’s not quite like it used to be — I preferred it when the showstopper for Cake Week involved making a nice Victoria sandwich rather than an anti-gravity illusion cake (what is this, “Nailed It”?) — but I’ll accept it. -Claire

I’m still making my way through “Squid Game,” because I am a MASSIVE baby when it comes to violence. But I still am loving it. -Emma

We’ve been reading…

“Carefree Black Girls,” “Crossroads,” and this horrifying deep dive on a series of brutal murders at Woodson Houses, a public housing complex in Brooklyn. -Claire

“Carefree Black Girls,” of course, and our bud Jess Goodman’s great Bustle piece on the perils of being a Very Online author. -Emma

We’ve been listening to…

Michael Hobbes’s goodbye episode of “You’re Wrong About,” which broke my heart (all-time fave pod, changing forever!) but also inspired many thoughts about how we decide where to expend our creative energy and how to keep the joy alive in projects that were once passion projects and became, well, work. -Claire

In the spirit of keeping this Michael Hobbes-themed, I really loved the deep dive his other podcast, “Maintenance Phase,” did on Rachel Hollis. As someone who was only peripherally aware of Hollis before her TikTok/IG scandal, I really loved having Hobbes and his co-host Aubrey Gordon walk me through it all. -Emma

We’ve been buying…

We’ve both been saving up for next week’s Hill House Holiday drop. Yes, we’re extremely predictable.

The question of the bad art friend keeps reemerging, under new auspices and nomenclature — most recently, last week, thanks to a transfixing investigation by Robert Kolker in the New York Times Magazine, which plumbed the sordid depths of a long-running legal conflict between writers Dawn Dorland and Sonya Larson. The site of the battle is an acclaimed work of short fiction by Larson; the grievance is that, Dorland argues, Larson not only based the story on Dorland’s own experience of making an open-ended kidney donation, but plagiarized the letter she wrote to the anonymous recipient of her organ.

It’s a messy saga. If you haven’t read the Kolker piece, maybe you’d like to do so. If not, we do recap in more detail in this week’s episode. It raises a number of juicy questions we couldn’t resist trying to unpack: friendship as mutual surveillance (especially on social media), the ethics of one-sided friendship, what qualifies as plagiarism, what makes for a good work of fiction and, of course, whether and how it’s okay to turn a real person into a fictional character.

When you lay it out so bluntly — “whether it’s okay to turn a real person into a fictional character” — it almost seems ludicrous to me. Of course it’s okay. What other materials do authors have to work with? The question keeps recurring because it’s inevitable that writers will draw from real people they know, real experiences they’ve heard about or had that involve other people, and it’s also inevitable that those people will sometimes recognize themselves and feel confused, uncomfortable, even violated. It’s hard to imagine a set of ethical guidelines that would allow for reasonable artistic freedom but also prevent anyone from ever feeling hurt after reading a story by a friend that seems to have cribbed from their own personal life. In Dorland’s case, for example, she is hurt as soon as she discovers that Larson has written a story about kidney donation without asking or consulting with her — but can we really expect writers to ask permission to write a story about kidney donation simply because they know someone who donated a kidney?

All stories are cobbled together from some combination of the real and the imagined, if only because the real is the language through which they’re told. We all need to recognize what’s on the page enough to grab hold of it — we need to know what the objects are, the kinds of people, the emotions, the behaviors, from seeing something akin to them in our own life. Some stories, like autofiction and memoir, contain far more direct mining from life, but even memoir, technically nonfiction, relies on imaginative work to link together fragmented memories, hazy moments, and transform them into a story. So which parts are real and which are imagined? The mixture is different in each work, and as hard as we try to pin down the exact line between them, we never really can.

In a fantastic episode of “On the Media” (I’m biased because we were in it, but it’s great), Xandra Ellin examines how this exact storytelling dynamic plays out in reality TV: we know that the people are real, and we’re told that their personas and interactions are unscripted and authentic as well. But we also know that what we see is heavily edited, often prompted if not actually scripted, and likely misleading. We know that what we’re watching is both true and not true, and we have to hold both of those realities as we watch the story unfold. We have to accept that the real and the constructed exist side-by-side, in a Schrodinger’s box of narrative, because we can’t know which parts of what we’re seeing to believe.

Or we should! Because more often, we accept what we’re shown and attach TV narratives to real people without much reflection, and even inflict real harassment on them based on an edited storyline. But I love how Ellin approaches the ambiguity of the reality in reality TV, and I think that might be the best model for how we could all approach narratives on the page and on screen: it’s real and it’s made up, it’s impossible to know which part is which, and we should be gentle with any real humans involved.

And to that last point, here’s something we discuss in more detail in the podcast: a short story should not be a “takedown” of a real, normal person you know. It’s not good for the art, and it’s not kind. Some confusion over fiction and reality is unavoidable, but do artists have some ethical responsibility not to use “it’s fiction” as a fig leaf for propagating a harmful narrative about a real, identifiable person? We’d say yes. -Claire

Episode Reading:

Robert Kolker, “Who Is the Bad Art Friend?”

Michael Hobbes, “Identifying the Bad Art Friend Is Easy”

Alexis Nowicki, “Cat Person and Me”

Katy Waldman, “Who Owns a Story?”

Katy Waldman, “The Short Story at the Center of the Bad Art Friend Saga”

We’ve been watching…

Hulu’s “High Fidelity,” belatedly. It’s hard because I’m absolutely driven to distraction by how perfect Zoë Kravitz’s cheekbones are, but I think I’m getting the main gist of the storyline, which is about breakups? Breakups are hard to do? -Claire

I finally started “Squid Game,” and turns out that apparently the most popular Netflix show of all time is in fact good. lol. -Emma

We’ve been reading…

Claire sent me the latest Ask Polly, and it really hit me deeply. It’s been a weird transition time for our careers, and it felt like sweet relief to see Heather Havrilesky’s words: “As dorky as it sometimes feels, we deserve to take ourselves and our work seriously… And it’s hard to savor the work itself when you keep telling yourself that everything you do is stupid and empty. Pay attention to the FEELING that your work is empty, because it will show you what you’d prefer to cover instead, but lose the STORY that everything you’ve made until now is worthless.” -Emma

I got the new Jonathan Franzen novel, “Crossroads,” which is approximately the shape and weight of a Bible, and also, aptly, set amidst the dramas of a progressive church youth group in 1971. So far, about two-thirds of the way through, it’s annoying me less than “Purity” and “Freedom,” which is to say that I’m unable to put it down. His fascination with American idealists and fanatics is beautifully explored and his characters are resolutely flawed, teeming masses of human contradiction. -Claire

We’ve been listening to…

“The Bravo Docket,” a podcast where two attorneys break down Bravo legal drama. (I’ve been especially into the episodes about Jen Shah and Erika Girardi.) -Emma

We’ve been buying…

I’ve been lusting after these Horsebit Lug Sole Gucci loafers. I cannot come close to affording those, so these Zara ones felt like a budget-friendly option for a similar vibe. -Emma

Thanks to everyone who sent me children’s clothing recs! I got my son some very charming leggings and tees from Primary, which he immediately tried to put on himself. -Claire

This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Rich Text is a reader-supported project — no ads or sponsors!

In Christine Pride and Jo Piazza’s new novel, We Are Not Like Them (out tomorrow at your finest book purveyors), lifelong friends Riley and Jen find their bond being tested in the most profound way possible. Riley, a Black TV news reporter recently returned to her hometown of Philadelphia, is assigned to cover a shocking police shooting of an unarmed teenage boy, Justin. Her childhood bestie Jen, a white woman who is late in her longed-for pregnancy, is also caught up in the case — because her husband, Kevin, was one of the two cops who shot the boy.

As Riley is drawn into covering the case, wrecked emotionally by yet another episode of anti-Black police brutality and developing a personal relationship with Justin’s grieving mother and uncle, she also must contend with Jen’s resentment that her best friend isn’t supportive of her husband, as he faces an investigation and public wrath. Both Riley and Jen ultimately have to face the reality of how race plays a role in both their lives, and in their friendship, after years of avoiding tough conversations about racism.

Pride and Piazza drew on their own perspectives as a Black woman and a white woman, as well as their own friendship, to tell Riley and Jen’s story in We Are Not Like Them. In our conversation, the four of us discussed the agony and ecstasy of creative partnership, the importance of Google Docs, how to build three-dimensional characters, storytelling for a cause, and all the tripwires that make interracial conversations about race so difficult (especially if you’re talking to your white friends!).

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What’s up #CircleFam? The big finale of “The Circle” season 3 — which we would describe as “50% filler, but perfectly pleasant to watch” — dropped on Wednesday, so now we’re dropping our subscriber-only recap of the last five episodes. Writer Mychal Denzel Smith joined us to unpack the events of the final third of the season, and to weigh in on the elements of a good catfish, emoji selection, and the eternal question: Is he a strategic genius, or is he just a tall white guy?

This batch of episodes brings to a close a particularly calculated season dominated by gameplay and strategic alliance-building rather than emotional connections. The Circle crew has sorted into two opposing forces battling it out for dominance. Who will triumph, Team Nick or Team Kai? Will one of our stalwart alliance generals take the crown, or will a wily foot soldier sneak into the lead at the opportune moment? Will Nick ever learn how to be friends with a woman who isn’t down to get her flirt on with him? Let’s find out!

We’ve been watching…

The second season of “The Other Two,” on HBO Max, which is that rare sitcom that actually packs in 10 perfectly delivered jokes a minute. The first season follows the attempts of Cary and Brooke, washed-up millennials struggling to establish footholds in the acting world (Cary) and adulthood generally (both of them), to ride the coattails of their Internet-famous teeny-bopper little brother, Chase. Season two is, somehow, funnier. Ken Marino and Molly Shannon are the mom and almost-stepdad I’d rather not have to imagine having, and, like early “Schitt’s Creek,” the show balances a ruthless cynicism about its greedy, mediocre characters with a genuine core of humanity at the center of each.

Also, “Reservation Dogs,” the new FX comedy about four teenagers on an Oklahoma reservation who turn to, uh, extralegal methods to scrounge together the money they need to escape to California. I just started this, and the first episode was masterful. -Claire

The triumphant return of Bravo classic, “Vanderpump Rules.” What can I say? I love some good good trash. -Emma

We’ve been reading…

Yes, I’m still reading “Great Circle.” -Claire

I read and keep re-reading Chris Hayes’ New Yorker essay, “On The Internet, We’re Always Famous.” It hit home on so many levels. This passage in particular has really stayed with me: “Everyone is losing their minds online because the combination of mass fame and mass surveillance increasingly channels our most basic impulses—toward loving and being loved, caring for and being cared for, getting the people we know to laugh at our jokes—into the project of impressing strangers, a project that cannot, by definition, sate our desires but feels close enough to real human connection that we cannot but pursue it in ever more compulsive ways.” -Emma

We’ve been listening to…

“Suspect,” Wondery’s deep dive into the unsolved 2008 murder of 24-year-old Arpana Jinaga. It starts off as a straightforward true crime mini-series and then morphs into a look at policing, race, and the limits of DNA evidence. -Emma

The first episode of “This Is Critical,” a cultural criticism podcast hosted by Virginia Heffernan, the newest project of Producer Harry (of “Love To See It”). He actually appears on it, discussing trash talk (perfect topic), and it would be derelict of us not to suggest everyone go check it out! -Claire

We’ve been buying…

This perfect blazer from the Nili Lotan x Target collection, and these Schutz bright pink mules for an upcoming wedding. -Emma

I saw Michelle Zauner wearing a cropped faux-cardigan from Madewell, so I… refreshed that cropped faux-cardigan page for 36 hours until my size showed up in stock. This is more a humiliating confession than a recommendation.

Also, can anyone tell me where to get cute, reasonably priced, not aggressively-gendered clothes for an almost 2-year-old? I just want some cute sweaters and stretchy pants that don’t have trucks or pink unicorns all over them, thank you! (Neither trucks or unicorns should necessarily be “gendered” but it’s beyond obvious why they’re on the clothes, and also, I hate them.) -Claire

It’s Monday morning! My coffee is hot, but not as hot as my takes on “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.” (I invite you to picture me twirling in a silver cocktail dress as I deliver this line, winking glamorously.)

I firmly believe that my life is only big enough for one extended cinematic universe, and The Bachelor franchise is happily devouring all of that space. We haven’t even done a cast bios episode for Michelle’s season yet and the women from [INSERT MYSTERY BACHELOR HERE]’s season have already been released?! Slow down!!

But Bravo was gonna get me in the end. Emma convinced me to watch the first two episodes of the second season of “RHOSLC” last week, and then she patiently talked me through all of my confused feelings at being flung into the maelstrom of backbiting, statement puffer coats, shady Twitter likes, and shifting alliances.

The show is an unsettling blend of aspirational fantasy and dystopian realism, from the witchy intro package in which the women hold hovering snowflakes in their hands and the literal ice palace which appears in one episode to the exhausting, circular arguments about whether Jen Shah can make peace with assorted other housewives. Everyone appears to live in a gigantic, chilly mansion or ski chalet, where a spread of snacks ever awaits a strategic guest, and they all either hate each other or are dear friends with someone whose other dear friends they hate. Someone possibly leads a cult. Someone else is being hunted down by the FBI. Yet someone else is rebranding her skin oils line in order to be a good role model to her slightly younger stepsons.

The wintry setting and strong religious themes evokes Narnia; the viciousness and murkiness of the feuds evokes high school; the fact that it’s all televised evokes the Hunger Games. Bravo may not be my drug of choice, but I can recognize the potency of this kind of hard-edged fantasia.

In our conversation, we discussed all of this, plus how the show made me think, in a twisted way, about how hard it is to build community when people are flawed and selfish and hurt each other. We hope you enjoy this subscribers-only pod, for which I gave up my Bravo celibacy! -Claire

We’ve been watching…

“The Morning Show,” which my household did not watch when it first came out to tepid reviews. I’ve heard that it gets better, so we decided to give Jen and Reese a chance; the first episode was certainly watchable (with talent like that, you’re at least going to get flawless performances). I hate to say that a #MeToo storyline is tired, but mostly I think the execution, from framing to characterization to dialogue, is fairly rote — the women victimized are thus far off-screen, the main players are stereotypes, the script is hardly revelatory — but we’re going to keep seeing where it goes. -Claire

“Scenes From A Marriage,” the HBO remake of Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 mini-series. It stars Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac as Mira and Jonathan, a married couple whose relationship is bound to go through a long and painful dissolution. The acting is superb and mesmerizing. -Emma

We’ve been reading…

“Image Control” and “Great Circle,” as previously mentioned here, plus Justin Taylor’s barnburner of a rave review for Joy Williams’ new novel “Harrow” that led me to immediately put the book on my TBR (for the next time I’m emotionally ready to read truly grim climate fiction and confront some despair). -Claire

I’ve been reading “We Are Not Like Them,” a novel about interracial friendship written by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza, in preparation for an upcoming Rich Text Book Club pod we’ll be recording! -Emma

We’ve been listening to…

I’ve got nothing this week — just the same old roster of pods! -Claire

“Life After MLM,” a podcast from Roberta Blevins, one of the former LulaRoe retailers featured in “LulaRich.” Literally inject MLM content straight into my bloodstream. -Emma

We’ve been buying…

The new Glossier retinol cream, after The Ordinary’s squalane-based retinol serum gave me some truly heinous cystic breakouts. I’ve only used it a couple of times, but the composition seems much more friendly to my oily skin, and my face feels velvety soft after I massage it in. -Claire

I caved and ordered a few items from Target’s latest designer collection. I’m particularly excited about this Rachel Comey denim jumpsuit and this Sandy Liang gingham shirtdress. -Emma

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Hello lovely subscribers! Welcome to another Monday recap podcast to tide us all over before BIP airs on Tuesday.

Today, we’re diving into the week 2 drop of “The Circle.” And this is the week that things really start to get interesting. Alliances are forming! Twists are coming out of nowhere! Catfishes are being hunted! Sexy selfies are being sent from bed! Weirdly culturally appropriative costumes are being delivered to the doors of the players!

There’s a whole lot to unpack. Hope you enjoy! xo

We’ve been watching…

“Motel Makeover,” a delightful Netflix mini-series about two women, April Brown and Sarah Sklash, who renovate a motel (the title is fairly descriptive!) in Sauble Beach, Ontario during 2020. (Spoiler alert: Covid fucks some shit up.) -Emma

I just started “Only Murders in the Building,” Hulu’s murder mystery comedy starring Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez (who is giving me fall fashion goddess vibes throughout). The three of them play tenants of a big NYC apartment building who are obsessed with true crime podcasts and decide to make their own about a murder in their building. So far, it’s fairly amusing — worth watching especially if you’re familiar with the true crime pod genre, since it comes in for some well-deserved skewering. -Claire

We’ve been reading…

Our old friend Maddie Crum’s lovely and rigorous review of “Inseparable,” a never-before-published novella by Simone de Beauvoir, which delves into the way feminism can be used as a marketing ploy, the various motivations a writer might have for keeping certain work from a public readership, and de Beauvoir’s 1967 (published) novella “The Age of Discretion,” which I now desperately want to read.

Also, Patrick Nathan’s “Image Control: Art, Fascism, and the Right to Resist,” a terrifying look at how the stream of decontextualized images that we now constantly consume undermine our sense of collective understanding and ability to process the threats to freedom and justice that surround us. I am not alone in often reaching for tired complaints about the hell of social media, or cable news, without reaching any useful insights about why they strike me as hellish. This book puts some of those pieces together. -Claire

We’ve been listening to…

I cannot get enough of scammer stories. So when I learned that journalist and author of Bad Blood John Carreyrou was releasing a new podcast, “Bad Blood: The Final Chapter,” during Elizabeth Holmes’ trial, I was legally obligated to subscribe. (And yes, I did sign up on Apple so I could get the bonus content too.) -Emma

So, remember what I was saying before about true crime podcasts and how much they deserve to be skewered? Yeah, I’m still listening to them anyway. I recently started “Suspect,” a podcast about an unsolved murder during a Halloween party years ago, and the man who was wrongly convicted of the crime. I appreciate that the show looks closely at how the police investigation came to focus on a Black party guest instead of other prime suspects, closely examining the revealing and inconsistent statements made by the cops about the suspect, without relegating the murder victim to a sidebar. -Claire

This searing essay in The Washington Post from Dr. Alan Braid, a doctor and abortion care provider, who wrote about his civil disobedience in the face of Texas’ near-total abortion ban. The op-ed is brave and powerful and is basically daring someone to sue him. -Emma

We’ve been buying…

Weddings are apparently back? Which means I need dresses to wear to fall weddings? I took advantage of Reformation’s big end-of-season sale, and got this one-shoulder number. -Emma

The first hints of fall weather threw me into a bit of a panic at the idea of another cold season indoors, cycling through the same handful of pilled, droopy sweatsuits that got me through Winter 2020-21. The result: I’m trying out one of Madewell’s MWL sets for the first time and trying to open my mind to wearing outside pants… inside. -Claire

After Emma and I watched “LuLaRich,” the new Amazon Prime series about the mostly imploded multilevel marketing company LuLaRoe and its oddball founders, DeAnne and Mark Stidham, all we wanted to do was talk about it. Ali Barthwell, the Emmy-nominated “Last Week Tonight” writer and Vulture recapper, felt the same way.

So we did a podcast for our beloved angel subscribers about it! We talked about everything pyramid-shaped (Christianity, racism, capitalism — oh, oops, the foundational principles of our whole society, wonder why things aren’t going so great), the whiteness of LuLaRoe and “LuLaRich,” recklessly bad fabric prints, and more. Please enjoy!

As a non-MLM joiner, LuLaRoe was always emblematic to me of something other than great leggings or an opportunity to get a down payment for a three-bedroom house. It represented the death of Facebook. When I joined Facebook on the cusp of my freshman year in college, social media seemed like a realm of sheer recreation. My peers and I were teenagers with our lives ahead of us; we were all curating our lists of favorite movies and posting albums of party photos and deciding whether to return “pokes” from guys we barely knew. But as I got into my twenties, graduated, moved to NYC and got a job editing dozens of blog posts a day, Facebook changed. It was, like my email and literal inboxes, full of junk mail.

I was still friends on the platform with lots of old high school classmates who still lived in Indiana, and now lots of them were trying to sell me protein shakes. Or something called “nail wraps.” One frequently posted about It Works!, but never in a way that clarified to me what the actual product was; the pitch was that she felt very empowered and happy to be selling whatever that product was. Most of these women were young moms, and they were caught up in multilevel marketing schemes that promised flexible work, high income, and personal fulfillment.

Somehow I don’t recall encountering LuLaRoe, but by 2021, I knew about the leggings, the mold on them, the angry sellers, the lawsuits. LuLaRoe offered a clear target to documentarians seeking to recreate the Fyre Festival docu-farce bonanza (the directors of “LuLaRich” were also behind “Fyre Fraud”): Its rise was meteoric, and so was its fall, amid widespread rumors about wet, stinky and tissue-thin clothes going out to vendors and lawsuits alleging it was a pyramid scheme. The core product, absurdly patterned leggings, were often praised as silky soft, thick, and comfortable, before the quality took an inexplicable nosedive. (If you want an explanation for this quality collapse, don’t hold your breath, as one is not forthcoming in “LuLaRich.”)

The popularity of multilevel marketing companies among a certain demographic — lower- to middle-class millennial women, especially white women — has piqued media interest in the last few years, and fairly so. It’s a space where so many toxic elements of American society make themselves almost comically plain: the obsession with entrepreneurship and unchecked financial growth, the messianic fervor of white evangelical Christianity, the white ideal of the stay-at-home mother who finds complete fulfillment in unpaid care work, the girlboss/empowerment strain of corporate feminism, and the inevitable exploitation and scarcity that leave so many scrounging for a way to survive a society built as a rapacious hierarchy with few winners and many losers.

And “LuLaRich” does not fail to note the comedy of how on the nose LuLaRoe’s story can be. That a company that profits from women going into debt in hopes of contributing financially while still raising their kids full time might have some deeply rooted misogyny at its foundation is to be expected, but that cofounder DeAnne Stidham advised her top sellers to give their husbands blowjobs daily to keep them happy? That I did not see coming. The fatphobia, too, seems expected — it’s everywhere, and a fashion company geared towards blonde Mormon moms would seem particularly prone — but that Stidham pressured her sellers to get weight loss surgery in Tijuana??? Every detail is cartoonish.

The show is so full of truly unhinged touches (two of the Stidham children married EACH OTHER; one former corporate employee very solemnly proclaims that he can’t listen to Kelly Clarkson anymore because she performed at a LuLaRoe conference) that Emma, Ali and I couldn’t even cover them all in our conversation. But what’s even wilder is how many massive, systemic issues are either gestured at or not addressed at all. Maybe a better show, as Meg Conley and Anne Helen Petersen discuss in their vital conversation about “LuLaRich,” would have focused less on the goofy bits and more on the question of what was going on in the factories where these increasingly slapdash garments were being constructed (a guess: probably terrible pay and terrible working conditions).

But what “LuLaRich” depicts, despite all its omissions, is a parody of where the American ethos of capitalism leads. Everything valuable is pillaged for profit, profit that mostly goes to the people who led the pillaging. Places like Facebook that were presented to users as playgrounds were never actually intended to be simply that, but were ransacked for profit still more thoroughly than Mark Zuckerberg could probably have dreamed. MLMs mine their sellers’ actual social networks, chewing up friendships and sucking out whatever money there is to be had. (Several women who appear in “LuLaRich” have gotten divorced and lost friends because of the pressures of the business.) The problem with a pyramid scheme is the same as the problem with the capitalist drive for growth: Eventually, you run out of people to sell to. Eventually, you run out of resources to extract.

It makes sense that the Stidhams chose to appear in “LuLaRich,” amid all the controversy and lawsuits, perfectly groomed and genial and unashamed. What did they do wrong, in the eyes of America? They built a pyramid with themselves at the top, and that’s exactly what we’re all told to do. -Claire

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“Bachelor in Paradise” has moved to Tuesdays for the rest of the season, so let’s make Monday special: Let’s talk about “The Circle.”

Season 3 of the reality show, in which contestants compete to become the most popular player in a closed social media platform called The Circle, began dropping episodes this week. In this week’s recap, we discuss the first batch of four episodes — meeting the new contestants (from Crazy Kai to Mama Michelle), watching flirtations develop and strategies take shape, and, of course, the show’s baffling new twists.

This episode is for subscribers only! We hope it starts your week off right.

We’ve been watching…

No time for anything but “The Circle” and “Bachelor in Paradise,” sadly — except that Greg and I are nearly caught up on “Ted Lasso.” I do think the season is improving as it goes on, and the last episode or two did not leave me utterly cold. Hoping this trend continues, though I stand by my critiques of the first handful of episodes! -Claire

Damn it Claire, I was *also* going to say “Ted Lasso”! I’ve also been catching up on “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” which is a wild fucking ride this year. -Emma

We’ve been reading…

Sally Rooney (see previous newsletter), Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle (it’s long but worth it!).

Also, if you’re into no-holds-barred reviews (and I am!!!!), it’s been a prime week or so in book criticism. Dale Peck’s blistering pan of Andrew Sullivan’s Out on a Limb: Selected Writing 1989–2021 in The Baffler is a treat, and both Andrea Long Chu and Charlotte Shane published bracingly rigorous reviews of Maggie Nelson’s On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint in Vulture and Bookforum, respectively. -Claire

Just started Jill Gutowitz’s forthcoming essay collection, Girls Can Kiss Now, which explores queerness, identity and desire through the lens of pop culture. -Emma

We’ve been buying…

There was a new Hill House drop this week, so… like, are multiple ruffly smocked dresses winging their way to me right this second? No comment. -Claire

Hill House, you say? No no, I definitely didn’t buy a very unnecessary transitional quilt coat and extremely Cher Horowitz-meets-cottagecore dress. Never heard of it. -Emma

We’ve been listening to…

Remember Ryn Weaver? I was algorithmically served “Pierre” by Spotify after another artist’s album ended (apparently this was a TikTok thing months ago but I missed it), and I realized I’d never actually listened to anything of hers after “Octahate” and “Promises.” Turns out her 2015 album “The Fool” has some bangers! -Claire

Kacey! Freaking! Musgraves! I know it’s perhaps an obvious choice, but I’ve had “Star-Crossed” on repeat since it dropped. I’m a sucker for a thoughtful heartbreak album. -Emma

This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter by Claire Fallon and Emma Gray. Rich Text is a space for the indulgent and the incisive, for witty and wistful explorations of the cultural, the personal, and the political in both written and audio formats. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Rich Text is a reader-supported project — no ads or sponsors!

When the pandemic began, there was talk of a baby boom. More than a year later, that never materialized. But know what did? An egg-freezing boom.

Turns out that lots of women, predominantly in their 30s, decided there was no time like the Covid present to explore their options for fertility preservation. (If you peruse Instagram, you’ll even find a number of “Bachelor” ladies who publicly documented their egg-freezing journeys.) It was a perfect storm for women of a certain socioeconomic class: time to reflect on their desires and life choices while not going to the office, paired with the pre-existing trends of delayed parenthood and more employers offering coverage as part of their benefits packages.

Our dear friend — and OG Here To Make Friends producer — Katelyn was one of the many women who chose to undergo egg freezing in the last year and a half. She joined us to discuss fertility preservation, the terror of regret, and the general mindfuck that is being a 30-something woman during Covid.

More resources on egg freezing:

“How Egg Freezing Went Mainstream,” NYTimes

“Everything You’ve Ever Wondered About Egg Freezing, Answered,” Elle

We’ve been reading…

Ghosts by Dolly Alderton, about a 30-something writer in London who gets on dating apps for the first time after ending a long relationship, meets a guy she really likes, and then gets ghosted. It’s wry and well-observed and it broke me wide open. -Emma

A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan, a sly and sardonic novel about two thirty-something servers, Alicia and Remy, whose romantic relationship is sustained by their joint obsession with Remy’s ex-coworker Jen, a microinfluencer he has long fostered a crush on. After the pair runs into Jen in real life and strikes up a new friendship, things rapidly get weirder and darker, even downright supernatural. Instagram addiction, the service economy, woo-woo self-help and the alienation of (what else) life under late-stage capitalism all take on an eerie sheen in this book, which is equally funny, disturbing, and uncomfortably revealing of the world we live in. -Claire

We’ve been listening to…

“A Little Bit Culty,” a podcast by former NXIVM members Sarah Edmonson and Anthony “Nippy” Ames. I would especially recommend their bonus interview with India Oxenberg. -Emma

The recent "Decoder Ring” episode on selling out, which actually offers a new insight on a topic I thought I’d already considered exhaustively: Jonathan Franzen’s selection for Oprah’s Book Club for The Corrections, and his public comments expressing that he didn’t want the Oprah’s Book Club sticker on his book because it would scare away his coveted male readers and diminish his artistic cred. Willa Paskin is a razor-sharp critic and, as always, I learned a lot from her analysis and research. -Claire

We’ve been watching…

Ok so this might be embarrassing but I am low-key obsessed with TLC’s “Welcome To Plathville,” and season 3 just premiered. -Emma

I just finished AMC’s “Kevin Can F*ck Himself,” a high-concept drama built around a traditional multi-camera sitcom featuring a schlubby, prank-pulling, Pats-obsessed, cable-repairing dude named Kevin and his hot, long-suffering wife Allison. When Kevin is offscreen, Allison, played by Annie Murphy (“Schitt’s Creek”), lives in a gritty drama about marital dissatisfaction. Fed up with his endless capers, his narcissism, and his inability to leave space for her to be anything but a tireless servant and comedic foil, Allison decides to kill him. The premise is a neat bit of commentary, if a bit heavy-handed (as is the execution). -Claire

We’ve been buying…

Supergoop! Unseen Sunscreen in SPF 40 so that I can carry it around in my tote and hopefully actually be reminded to put it on every day multiple times a day. -Emma

The Ordinary retinol serum, in hopes that I’ll soon have successfully weaned my son and be allowed to contaminate my breast milk with aggressive skincare products again. Optimism! -Claire

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