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no-cable · 8 years

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A Holiday Season Playlist

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By Allie McHugh

I love Christmas. Or at least I used to.

photo via pastorhobbins.files.wordpress.com

I still want to love Christmas…it’s just that the all-consuming Christmas spirit that I used to have, effortlessly, yuletide after yuletide, has been a bit absent – or a the very least, more work. The past couple have years have been markedly less festive, though not necessarily less merry. I still love Christmas…it’s just in a different way, and it makes me a little sad.

But this is not a rumination on what does and does not account for Christmas spirit. The point is that any old holiday playlist from me would have been relentlessly festive. Like the Disney version of Love Actually with a Family Stone-esq third act, capped off by someone making it home unexpectedly on Christmas eve, kind of festive. This is not that. This is the 2015 Christmas list that is reflective of the holiday season, but also a more tempered Christmas perspective. So in no particular order, I give you the holiday playlist:

1 or 1 -11 for complete listening) Hello – Adele (or all of Adele’s new album):

Let’s not pretend that this, in addition to many other things, is not a great Christmas album. Christmas – with all of it’s mandatory reflection and visits to hometowns and childhood rooms, begs for nostalgia at every turn. Plus, no matter how bad your holidays have been, December is a perfect time to wistfully recall that one year, when some perfect confluence of events, food, music, and people, resulted in the best Christmas ever. Which, of course, will never be replicated. But you can keep trying.

2) All I want for Christmas – Mariah Carey:

I mean, obviously. Christmas belongs to MC. Also MC = Merry Christmas, also = Mariah Carey. I don’t even think this needs an annotation, because, are you new?

3) Don’t forget about us – Mariah Carey:

See Adele re: nostalgic, see MC re: Christmas.

4) Mistletoe - Justin Bieber:

!) This is a great tune. 2) He was still so young – pre douchebag peeing in a bucket, pre apology year tour. The girl in the video looks like Selena and they enjoy PG festive fun. Someone please call me shawty this year. As in, “shawty with you”….”with you-ooo.”

5) Sexy can I – Ray J:

I love Christmas in all of it’s commercial excess. I am not in this for the magic feels, I am in this for the tinsel, garlands, and not small amounts of camp. So, yeah Sexy Can I wins on that level. Also clear win for a gathering of people that are just passing from the “polite drinking” phase and getting a lot more sauced as the evening goes on. Sweater party becomes dance party – put this on at your Christmas party and be happy.

6) What Christmas Means to Me – Hanson:

See above re: camp. But also, I will defend Hanson to the ground on their artistic merit, both past and present. If you want to tell me you hate Hanson, I will listen to the words that come out of your mouth but I will not believe a single one of them. They were legitimately talented child musicians, are legitimately talented adults, have never been in your face with their fame, and they now own a brewery in Oklahoma called Mmmhops, “from the guys that invented Mmmbop.”

7) Blue Christmas – Elvis Presley:

I grew up with Elvis. This is in my top 5 favourite Christmas songs of all time. From the “ah-ah-ah-I’ll have a…” which begs for an impersonation to make your Elvis fan girl mother laugh, it is perfect. First off, it is very Elvis. Second, it is both upbeat and sad, in melody and content. Which is essentially what Christmas is.

8) All My Friends – Snakehips feat. Tinashe, Chance the Rapper:

There are a lot of Christmas parties this time of year, which is great for free food and booze, but also can have the effect of making you feel lonely in a crowd. Also, December is a good time of year to be a functioning human being on the weekends, rather than wallowing in your overindulgence and pooling in you peppermint vodka-scented sweat. Tis the season of giving. Tis the season of regrets. But you know, upbeat ones.

9) I’ll Be Home for Christmas – N*Sync:

Since 18, I have had to fly home for Christmas and having theme music is always more ideal than less.

10) Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) – Darlene Love:

Pretty much every variation of this song is a winner but this one is the classic and best. Also, watch the excellent documentary 20 Feet From Stardom to learn more about Darlene Love and her integral role in the criminally undervalued profession of back-up singing.

11) FourFiveSeconds – Rihanna, Kanye, Paul McCartney:

This time of year can be trying. Sometimes you can feel a little unappreciated during the hullaballoo. Something about the chords make this seem like this could feature in a modern Christmas movie that boasts diversity and an honest look at family dynamics. The frazzled daughter goes home to see her aging parents and misanthrope brother after years of being away from home. This is the scene where she is in the house, staring sadly at her family and thinking about how they got to where they are…before she goes the local bar to get drunk and run into either her childhood best friend or high school ex.

12) I Have Nothing – Whitney Houston:

My family has a very eclectic mix of what would be considered our family soundtrack – i.e. music that we all listened to when my sister and I were kids. One of them is the soundtrack to The Body Guard. Whitney Houston is 100% an anytime listen, but for some reason we had a tendency to always throw this one on at Christmas. Our family soundtrack also includes Dirty Dancing, but that one was for camping and roadtrips. Anything with Whitney kind of drama can be included in your holiday listens.

13) Suffer – Charlie Puth:

Soulful jams always seem appropriate during the holiday season. If your life is in fact a holiday movie, this particular jam is yours if you’re trying to hook up with someone this year and you both keep cruising the same party circuit. Feel tortured, but in a fun way, looking at them suggestively across the eggnog (Note: the consensus seems to be that tortured hookup longing is all good fun and playfully festive right up until New Year’s Eve, and then it verges sharply into depressed and lonely territory, so you know, get that in now). It has a kind of snappy beat going on that complements horrible innuendo about having a big present waiting for someone.

14) Giving Him Something He Can Feel – En Vogue:

This has always sounded like it could be a Christmas song to me. It has all the trappings: group harmony, horns, and very 90s. You can picture yourself slow dancing (although I have never actually been to an event where this happens) in a non-mopey way. “Nothing’s wrong, it’s all right” is as good a holiday message as any other. It has a kind of mellow swing that would fit perfectly in the happy denouement of any Christmas movie. Songs such as this one seem to be very appropriate for the 2015 holidays because today’s new Christmas songs seem to be painfully lacking in harmonies and, of course, choirs, both of which were staples during the 90s. Which brings us to…

15) Go tell it on the Mountain – Vanessa Williams:

I will leave you with this one. This outdoes other Christmas songs in many ways. First, this is not just Go tell it on the Mountain. This is Go tell it on the Mountain/Mary Had a Baby. There is more than one Christmas song going on here. There is a full choir. The build in this song is beyond textbook good. It was on David Foster’s 1993 Christmas album, which is David Foster’s best (only?) Christmas album. I used to sing this song into my Talkboy and listen to my own voice to determine if I was a good singer (clearly, no). This is a top 3 Christmas song of all time.

AND THIS. This is the production that happened in 1993 when televised Christmas specials were still watched by a large audience:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G45ktb9JiBs

#christmas #scrooge #playlists

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no-cable · 8 years

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Jocelyn Jenny Joan Jeaneen

Part Two

By Allie McHugh

The reasons were as vague and fictional of many of the company’s grand plans for success. The firing focused on feelings rather than actual incidents of incompetence.

While it was all happening, I imagined if I had gotten drunk on career-oriented affirmations and on, at least the idea if not the reality, that my work mattered on more than a daily scale. I wondered if I would have done the same. And understandably, Jenny Joan’s confidence took a bit of a hit. We say she got fired, even though, specifically, her contract just ended and was not extended. But, it felt like being fired. And as anyone whose confidence takes it straight to the chest, she needed to build it back up again. What followed was like the fallout from a bad breakup. First there was sadness. There was frustration. Then there was a flood of embarrassment as angst segued into epiphany after epiphany of exactly how she had been spending her time.

It was a slow road back – as is expected with a return to normalcy – but it was achieved with some careful self-care. She took some time off. She hung out with people who had suspected the burnout was inevitable and who were ready to offer some support and clarity – like the fact that her intelligence did not rise and fall on the success of this random company. That there is a long run, and through it, things would be fine. Keep in mind that none of us could actually promise these things from experience, but were going off of what knew in general and were hoping was true for ourselves.

Her realizations were not that different from the way you realize that you look back with embarrassment on say, the aforementioned Ayn Rand, and the Macklemore. It’s also not dissimilar to remembering how you acted that summer after your first year of university, when you spouted off psych 101 or political science theory to people like you had just discovered the inner workings of all humanity. And while it sucks to relive the instances where you were insufferable, it’s also key to no longer being so unbearable. We generally like to believe that shame is a bad feeling, but I’m of the opinion that it’s a pretty necessary step to learning from your past behavior. The kind of experience Jenny Joan had rooted from some pretty standard early-twenties anxiety about her career and she was looking for a way to channel inexperienced ambition. The only difference was that she found other people experiencing the exact same angst and they wrapped themselves in an insular world that revolved around each other. This enabled them to help one another make pretty big mountains out of molehills.

And so here we are. Post crisis, but not post friendship. The dynamic of this story is that it wouldn’t have happened to me, but we can only say that because I was nowhere near it. My job made no such promises. Maybe it wouldn’t have been me, but that particular need – to have someone to pay that much damn attention, even damaging attention – that need breathes in many of the bodies and is housed in many of the hearts of aspirational and ambitious youth. Work and relationships aren’t so different; it is nice to feel you matter outside of your own existence. People try to matter in different ways. I might not have gone fully Jenny Joan, but I did go to grad school. There is more than one way to be adrift.

So yes, Jenny Joan fell for the young leader who spoke of digital revolutions and introduced her to the term “ping.” I forked over thousands of dollars to get a piece of paper and learn how to say “interdisciplinary” in seventeen different ways. Everyone has their own stupid moments and trying, overwrought, coming-of-age crises. Today, she jokingly says thanks for sticking with her through the cult experience, and I can tell her thanks for seeing me through my most impoverished (so far) days. We are all Jennys and Joans to some degree with something, but with any luck we make it back. Hopefully a little bit better, and dare I say, this includes being a little bit jaded. Minus some shine, but also minus some naiveté, we all get back to being…let’s go with Jeaneens. To protect the initiated and now, appropriately cynical.

#cult #journalism

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no-cable · 8 years

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The Best Ways To Ring in The Holidays

By Bryn Wiebe

Using Allie’s non-conventional Christmas playlist as inspiration, I have created a short list of the best ways to use your holidays. Here are my top five suggestions for making the best use, and getting the most of your holidays this festive season.

(see number two on this list)

1. Revisit the library

The library is an excellent place to spend the morning after an embarrassing holiday party hiding from the person whose purse you accidentally stole last night. No one will suspect a drunk at a place of reading that early, especially if you head to the philosophy section. In the dark alleyways of dense literature, lay down on the ground and think about the world, once you are prodded awake by a timid library attendant, you’ll remember that life is worth living, because Anne, the 80 year old librarian is only asking you to keep your snoring to a whisper. She’s just happy someone’s holding a Plato book not opened since it was written.

2. Drop a rotting October pumpkin onto a friend’s head

(see photo above for equipment)

An excellent way to pass the weekends instead of shopping, find the oldest pumpkin still outside from Halloween. Then, strap a helmet on a friend’s head, put a trash bag over their clothes, and position them underneath a garage rooftop or condo balcony. Let er rip.

3. Throw on Michael Buble’s Christmas hits and host a séance

There is no better way to welcome a spirit into your home, than during the holidays, and to the soothing sound of a modern day crooning legend. Buble has more than one Christmas album, in case whomever you conjure overstays their welcome.

4. Crank call unsuspecting friends as Santa’s scorned wife

There is no better call to receive than an angry misdirected one. So, open up your contacts list, and get ready. Pretend you’re Santa’s scorned wife, looking for Santa’s mistress and when you find her you’re going to set shit on fire on her doorstep. Then you’ll kill her.

(photo via Stefan Lytwyn)

5. Buy a holiday candle.

This is a treacherous task, but worth the blood, sweat, and tears. I recommend ones that smell like they’ve been ripped from a tree, been sprinkled with a dash of spice, or give off the smell that something, somewhere is burning down. Careful, because while your apartment is circling in fire around you, you might think it’s just your candle. Pick a wick safely.

(photo via bitterwallet.com)

#seasonal #starbucks

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no-cable · 9 years

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Relieving Psychic Pressure By Purging Your Phone

by Stefanie Jesney

I’ve kind of felt like lately I've been living in my own personal, irl version of the TimeHop app. You know that app that tells you what you posted on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram on this day last year? Or even 2,3,4,7 (shudder) years ago?

At this time last year I had just met somebody I would go on to date for a few months, so all of my memories of this season, the traditions my friends and I were taking part in (dinners, parties) are coloured by that new, exciting relationship. When I think of my annual Christmas girl's dinner at a cozy french bistro eating mussels and drinking bottles of wine with my 5 closest girlfriends, I think of being prodded for information about this guy and shyly deflecting further questions for fear I might jinx things. When I remember the holiday house party my roommates and I threw in early December, I remember him meeting all my friends for the first time, and I remember hanging mistletoe half-jokingly above my bedroom doorway.

I imagine my brain will keep time-hopping until I reach the year mark since we ended things and I've run out of memory rope. I look forward to this. But in the meantime, I've found something that helps relieve the psychic pressure of remembering something you'd probably rather forget. It seems new-agey, it's not grounded in science or anything palpable, but it helps. Here it is: taking pictures off of my phone.

I discovered this relief method two weeks ago when I tried to download the new Grimes album to my phone and didn't have enough space. I hadn't unloaded pictures from my phone since October of last year, so there were a lot. The photos (memories) were taking up a lot of space (on my phone, but also in my brain), do you see? Haha :(. So I plugged my phone into my computer and highlighted a few months worth of pictures, then dragged them and dropped them into a folder on my laptop.

I didn’t notice it right away, but the following week I felt lighter and I thought about last year a lot less. You might be thinking it was because I didn’t have the ability to look at old pictures anymore on my phone, but here's the irony: I didn't ever used to look at them in the first place! I had avoided looking at pictures of him, even avoided looking at any of his social media profiles since we ended things, but by having the photos physically off of my phone, space was freed up in my Self (since phone obviously = extension of self, let’s be honest about our 21st century state of being) and I was able to move through my days and nights with less and less reasons to time-hop.

#timehop #psychic

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no-cable · 9 years

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LIAM NEESON PEE CONSPIRACY - DEBUNKED

by Bryn Wiebe

I was in the middle of writing something serious when this urgent conspiratorial matter was brought to my attention. At first I wasn’t sure if this was worth looking into, the pictures were most likely fake, but then my community reached out to me:

Let’s back up a second: I’m something of a conspiracy theorist, with the life goal of infiltrating Area 51 to give the world what they deserve: the truth.

Back to Liam: The writing was now set in stone, and I couldn't turn my back on this story. Not when it involved my main man, and certainly not when pee was in the mix. So I embarked on a conspiracy quest, beginning with some of the wildest assumptions I could think of.

Could this be an inside job? Would someone be so cruel as to doctor these photos to humiliate Bryan Mills from the Taken trilogy?

Did Liam have IBS? If so, why wasn’t he a spokesperson for the condition? It’s very common, and he is the perfect person to instill confidence in those suffering. "I have a special set of skills!” to combat the shame of soiled underwear, wet crotches, and smelly rides home on the subway.

Was it water? Unlikely.

I went into the archives on the dark web and found articles dating all the way back to 2008, with headlines such as Liam Neeson Pees Himself? Liam Neeson Pissed Himself Again… This Time in Istanbul. Upon further reading, it turns out it was likely a combination of too much booze and being in the unfortunate position of being photographed a lot. However, it was a highly covered moment in pop culture history. At one point, there was even a Facebook page dedicated to his urine soaked trousers that took a dark turn after its’ 38 members realized the photos would not be a consistent source of conversation. The group, well past its expiry date, would move on to post crass photography depicting humans drinking animal urine straight from the source.

After debunking the Liam Neeson Pee Conspiracy, I kicked off my Zara mules, put my feet up and dove into popular 21st century conspiracy theories starting with the 11th season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, investigating the theory that Kourtney and Scott are in fact not broken up. After many tears, I can confirm in fact they are not together, and my heart is broken.

Case closed, till next time.

#liam #liam neeson #conspiracy #kim kardashian

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no-cable · 9 years

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MADE IN THE A.M. review

Photo sourced from J-14.com

by Jocelyn McLean & Bryn Wiebe

Overall, we couldn’t have asked for anything better. Goodbye One Direction, hello the upcoming hot mess of the next five years when the boys figure out what to do with themselves. PS: IF you are even the tiniest bit curious, titles are linked to Spotify.

~ Hey Angel

Bryn: Finally Harry’s tweets make sense. (Thanks Joss for pointing that out) I like the energy, though it reminds me of Coldplay or Oasis. (Good? Bad? I can’t decide yet)

Jocelyn: Thanks for stealing my joke, Bryn. I really like this track. Though I disagree completely on the Coldplay, and agree completely on the Oasis.

~ Drag Me Down

Bryn: This song has been out for a while now, no surprises here. On first listen I hated this song, but after I saw them live last tour, it hooked me (I will admit emotionally because how can you not love it when Harry’s singing to you).

Jocelyn: This is for sure one of my favourite songs on the album, though that wasn't the case until they performed it live for the first time. USE THOSE PIPES HARRY

~ Perfect

Bryn: A Perfect song all around, maybe? This song was written by Louis about Harry. Taylor is Harry’s beard and nothing more. I picture Louis peering out of his hotel door, looking down the hall seeing Harry carrying on the party when he had previously told him he’d come home to bed. Then Louis slowly closes the door, stands against it, and a single tear rolls down his cheek.

Jocelyn: I didn't realize Bryn was going to come out as a Larry so strongly right out of the gate. I don't know that I'm ready to admit that part of myself yet. This is the best song in the album, there's no question. Even Allie likes it, and she had banned any conversation of One Direction from our apartment.

~ Infinity

Bryn: FIX YOU much? Coldplay strikes again. But like every classic Coldplay song, they dig deep into your heart and stay there.

Jocelyn: @Bryn have you actually heard Fix You? But yes on the Coldplay. And like Coldplay, I hated this song at the start, but now I reluctantly feel my heart swell whenever it comes on.

~ End of the Day

Bryn: This could be the tune to an Apple or Facebook commercial. It’s super cute and fun but then you remember it’s still about a product that’s out to take your money and ruin your sanity.

Jocelyn: This song freaks the shit out of me. It keeps switching beats and vibes. I might love it. I might hate it. Just give me some goddamn time!!!

~ If I Could Fly

Bryn: Not really interested, I don’t like the chopsticks piano chords in the background. Louis comes in way too strong after Harry, we get it Lou… you’re hurt.

Jocelyn: This song is the worst on the album. Also, it clearly should have been called "For Your Eyes Only". That's all.

~ Long Way Down

Bryn: I wouldn't be mad if this came on while I was reading at a coffee shop, looking out a rainy window, cuddled in a wool scarf.

Jocelyn: I LOVE THIS SONG. I think I dig it so hard because it gives me vibes from The OC??

~ Never Enough

Bryn: This gives me some Midnight Memories vibes I think because of Liam’s rhythm. God Liam is hot. This video is the perfect chance for another five foot something in the skinny jeans wink. I can’t wait.

Jocelyn: Bryn is so right. It's a tragedy we won't see this performed live on tour because you can just picture all the microphone flips Liam would do on stage. I loved this song within the first 2 seconds of its doo-wops.

~ Olivia

Bryn: I want Liam to sing this to me while taking me on a tour around Notting Hill, then the tour culminates with him showing me the bookstore from the movie, and him admitting he bought it for me!!!!!

Jocelyn: @Bryn when did you become such a Liam girl? This song so clearly has Harry written all over it. It's the kind of song he'd skip around the house singing it to you, and/or one of the other 5 men or women he'd be seeing at the time. And you wouldn't even be mad.

~ What a Feeling

Bryn: Reminds me of a Blue Jean committee parody song of the seventies. I could see Harry in a leather fringed vest and handlebar mustache.

Jocelyn: This song is so good. Like I truly think I could sneak it into a playlist for a friend with super snobby music taste and they would like it. 70s vibes for sure but no parodies - only sexy, swaying feels.

~ Love You Goodbye

Bryn: An emotional track. Clearly, this is Louis talking to Harry. It’s tragic and heartbreaking, and when you read into it; this was the beginning of the end.

Jocelyn: Do I agree with Bryn? Maybe. Maybe I'm not ready to admit it yet (just like 2 boy-band members we know). Great break-up song though.

~ I Want to Write You a Song

Bryn: I probably have 15 downloads of this exact song from my friends in highschool who wrote someone a love song. It’s perfect marketing to teens, it really hit that ugly-pimpled heartstring when I first heard it. Love it.

Jocelyn: This is cute and seems very much like it was written by Niall. I'll also probably... never listen to it again.

~ History

Bryn: Almost as good as Perfect. It’s like Act My Age in terms of emotional impact on the album for me. It’s what they’ll play during their Behind the Music special for the real fans. Could also be about Harry and Louis.

Jocelyn: Agreed with Bryn - second best song on the album. If this isn't their final video, with footage of them throughout the years, they're making the second biggest mistake of their career (first being giving Liam big hats).

~ Temporary Fix

Bryn: Sounds very old One Direction/British. The vocals are weird! They all sound fake, and the yeah-yeahs are too much. A swing and a miss for me.

Jocelyn: Agreed with Bryn. I had high hopes for this one. I thought it would grow on me a la No Control but after listening to them back-to-back... there's no comparison.

~ Walking in the Wind

Bryn: Cute! Inspired by Paul Simon so says Harry. I’d listen to this on a bright sunny day walking through Kensington Market, accidentally smiling at people I’d rather not have look at me.

Jocelyn: Bryn stole that Paul Simon fact from me for the record. This song is fun. Graceland is one of my favourite albums, and this is my favourite boyband trying really really really hard to be even a little bit like Paul, with absolutely none of his lyrical prowess!!!! Cute.

~ Wolves

Bryn: Also very British sounding. This could be in the trailer for Love Actually 2.

Jocelyn: This is one of my favourite songs on the album for sure. Throw this jam on when I leave the apartment and ready for the ~day~.

~ A.M.

Bryn: This might be my favorite song, the lyrics speak to me, Liam and Harry sound amazing, and I imagine one day we will all be at a party together and me and Joss will be asked to stay to the a.m.. This is the only way the saga can end for us.

Jocelyn: Amen, Bryn.

#one direction #made in the am #larry is real

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no-cable · 9 years

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JOCELYN JENNY JOAN JEANEEN

(or that time my friend joined a cult…fine, a startup.)

Poe-tay-toe, poe-tah-toe.

PART ONE

by Allie McHugh

First of all a few disclaimers: this is not an objective tale. This is a highly suspect account of a highly suspect event. Also, this is not my story. However, as this story involves the displacement of rationality and sense of self, it is better if someone who did not jump down the rabbit hole does the telling. Once you’ve leapt, you lose sense of which way is up. You misremember things. You downplay. Although the particular subject of this tale has since seen the light and run in the opposite direction of “thought leaders,” “disrupters,” and other self-aggrandizing tags, the experience has left lingering effects. Once drunk, the Kool-Aid stains your insides with that particular blue tinge for a while afterwards. To make it clear, she asked me to tell this story. Listen, none of us are above making mistakes. We all engage in the wrong activities with the wrong people from time to time. I was once close enough to a particular boy for him to give me an Ayn Rand book, and I also continued to see someone even after he told me he loved Macklemore. We are none of us clean. There is no judgment here…except for some very obvious judgments that, I think we will all agree, are perfectly appropriate.

It started with a phone call. An anxious, excited phone call.

The year was 2012. The party in question, who we shall refer to as “Jenny Joan” for privacy reasons, was and is my very close friend. We had gone through our formative years together, bonding in the first year of university, quickly becoming the kind of obnoxious friends that other people tire of being around. This was mostly because we insisted on communicating through inside jokes and feeding off of one another to produce increasingly obscure pop culture references. We had, thankfully, moved passed this stage by the time of the phone call. At the time, we were actually living in separate cities.

Jenny Joan was working at a job that was fine, but not entirely fulfilling. She suffered from the typical plight of a new grad. Smart and capable but inexperienced, she was underutilized by her superiors but lacked the age and specific CV requirements her bosses needed to justify upping her role or her pay. Frustrated and feeling unappreciated, she was in a word, vulnerable. Vulnerable to what you may ask? Well, dear reader, as with any tale of cultish indoctrination, there is always a seduction: the promise of a better life, something more exciting, something more promising, but above all else, something more you. Ah, that right there is the kicker, is it not? The underlying thread that is never made explicit, but surrounds the entire initial attraction – that someone, something, gets the real you. It’s what leads us to make poor romantic choices, buy unnecessary kitchen appliances, or sign up for timeshares. And, evidently, it’s what makes us leap headfirst into the roaring rapids of “authenticity,” “passion,” and the “authentically passionate,” in the hopes of being washed clean to reveal our true selves. We never suspect that we’ll actually just get caught in the undertow.

As fate would have it, Jenny Joan’s office shared space with that magical panacea for all frustrated millennials who have just graduated into a mess of professional and economic crap: a tech startup. Now there are some very valid reasons why these organizations are appealing, not the least of which is that many of these companies are in fact, great. Things were not looking good around 2012. After a global economic crisis, promises that our generation would never rebound, limited job openings and even fewer opportunities for advancement, the idea of creating your own career was undeniably sexy. The Social Network made computers and social media seem dramatic and important. As a generation, we were looking at narrowing career paths, being told we wouldn’t stay in jobs for more than two years anyways, and we were being pulled along by whispers of a new way forward. The technologically savvy, the social media adept, anyone who was thinking in terms of apps and smartphones: if you didn’t know what your future was going to look like, you should probably try to make something for yourself. You could stumble into wealth and unbelievable happiness by pursuing your dreams, if only you knew how to program. If you didn’t, there seemed to be a growing consensus that you should attach yourself to someone who did. Everyone spoke of a distant friend or relation, or knew some lucky asshole that saw the future, created a simple game, and discovered that humans are inexplicably drawn to digital farm animals. This, my friends, was one part of the Kool-Aid. And with this part came a slew of organizations itching to be the next game-changers. The other part was a mix of timing, early-twenties feeling-y feelings, and just general cult stuff.

So came the phone call. I had been hearing about this startup on and off for a little while now. I knew the gist of what they did, knew that they had a young and bright CEO, and I knew that they were planning on moving office spaces. What I didn’t know was that as the date of the move loomed nearer, Jenny Joan saw her opportunities shrinking. Here, beside her nice, stable bosses – who spoke in the boring lingo of incremental change and traditional work structures – was a young visionary all-aglow in sparkly promises of vague and sweeping growth, exciting and indistinct opportunities, with a very personal management style. If the company left her office space, that bright light of hope would leave and she would be left to languish in the dingy world of conventionality. But what was worse was that she would be left to suffocate in the parochial air of unrealized potential.

The phone call might have gone more along the lines of a panicky and anxious discussion of “happiness,” you-only-get-one-shot and need-to-take-your-opportunities dialogue, but knowing Jenny Joan the way I did, and still do, I read between the lines. She said she needed to make a choice, but it was clear she had already made one. This was her personal red pill or blue pill moment, and having been promised some kind of new “truth” with this some kind of new company, she wasn’t seeing much of an option. Down the rabbit hole we – and I say we, because if you have a friend who is addicted to Kool-Aid you know, dear reader, that it affects all elements of your life, including your relationships – went. She dove headfirst and I trailed, reluctantly, behind.

In terms of how it affected “us”, it started with a series of increasingly bizarre correspondences. These took place over email, over phone calls, over text messages that rivaled the Iliad and Ulysses in length. Jenny Joan was always busy. She was the busiest person I knew. I often heard about her 80-hour workweeks and the sheer busy-ness of pursuing passion and change. What it was that was getting done was unclear, but it involved many long one-on-one chats at work, for this busy-ness was captained by that enigmatic figure, the aforementioned young visionary, that game changer and dealer of red and blue pills.

He was young. Some might say very young. He was also smart. Some might also say very smart. For legal reasons, I can’t tell you just how young or how smart. Let’s just say he had a high school diploma and leave it at that. It seemed to me that his age was an important factor for Jenny Joan: to a certain degree, how young he was reinforced the idea that he was very smart. It also made it seem like everything was innovative, even just his age was a knock against some kind of clunky old guard. It played into the very popular myth that if you had not achieved anything before the age of 25, you weren’t much of a go-getter or you weren’t all that special. Life in the tech startup industry lives by the clock by design, but also by employees. This makes it very exciting and can mean great new ideas. It can also mean it’s more like a bunch of twenty-somethings getting together to play grownups.

That playing meant that work policies attempted to establish some sort of serious and legitimate veneer for a fledgling business. They were also giant flashing signs to GTFO. For one, there was the suggestion that Jenny Joan perform an eight-hour psychoanalytic and IQ test – a detail that she told me casually over the phone. And when I say casually, I mean I said something along the lines of “how was your week”, and she squeezed it in somewhere between telling me she had to buy toilet paper and that she was thinking of going to a new place to get lunch the next day. When I balked, she replied that “everyone had to do it,” as if that justified the test’s existence in itself. Neon flashing signs. For another, there was the expectation that she participated in something called “Financial Fridays.” The alliteration was probably supposed to make it sound fun and casual, and not like the round robin of over sharing and prying that it really was. Under the guise of helping his employees to “budget,” the tween CEO pressured everyone on his team to share his or her finances with everyone else. This all seemed to make general sense to everyone. It should be said, however, that Jenny Joan did draw the line at sharing around her bank account details. She did keep some fences intact.

Others, she let completely crumble. Jenny Joan is smart and ambitious. She cares about her job and her career, and at this place, that caring encouraged work to bleed into the personal. Now, it’s natural for your job and your social life to overlap to varying degrees…yet probably not to the extent that boundaries are obliterated. Have you seen Whiplash? Okay that is an exaggeration. This was not J.K. Simmons-level of psychological warfare, and making the “good job is the most damaging word in the English language” argument is giving an organization whose sole purpose was to help people follow their innermost, most, most driving passion is giving them a bit too much credit. But there was certainly the element of a figurehead, coupled with personalized attention, which proved to be seductive. Seriously, everyone who worked at this place fawned over this CEO like he was the childlike empress (take a moment to Google that if you don’t know who the childlike empress is, please). He doled out little golden nuggets of praise and bought fun things like board games and a Ping-Pong table. You know, the kind of things that take the edge off an eight-hour psych eval. And Jenny Joan? Jenny Joan thought that she loved her job. Jenny Joan was on a contract and wanted that contract to turn into a permanent position.

But her family and friends were starting to get worried. Like anyone drunk off the Koolaid – whether it’s a job, a new exercise routine (cough cough, crossfit), or a new partner – she was defensive of her work, the company, and all the baggage that came with it. There was an edge to the phone calls and texts, and even the most commonplace incidents were communicated in a hyper manner that belied her reassurances that everything was great. Jenny Joan felt misunderstood in her commitment, which only worked to reinforce the unhealthy mix of personal and professional that she had developed. It pushed her further into the arms of the people she felt understood her particular predicament– those at the organization itself. But in truth, the cracks were beginning to show. There was something not quite right.

And then Jenny Joan got fired.

PART TWO... next time

#cult #truth #investigativejournalism

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