Ride (and write) it out.

Nonsensical internet things, people's faces getting weirder, life getting 'simpler'.

The internet is getting dumber and meaner.

And in turn, I feel I have become dumb and numb, and catch myself thinking mean things (at least when I’m scrolling).

The majority of my Instagram feed is filled with AI captions and videos. I’m constantly receiving emails from people I know so obviously written by ChatGPT. While I don’t think all AI is bad, and while I do use the tools to assist with research, transcription and data sourcing (with a very sceptical, editing eye) I think the way humans are using it is very bad. I can’t handle it for creative execution, nor simple human interactions. AI is the biggest enabler of our inherent laziness, and biggest destroyer of our inherent uniqueness.

I get it, we’re all tired and I’m not saying I haven’t sent an AI automated email before. I also think some brands leaning into AI scripting when it’s intentional and perhaps satirical is actually quite interesting. The promise of a quick fix, to get something done amongst the million other things I need to get done, is so very tempting. But it’s also soul destroying. We’re all becoming LLM puppets conversing with one another. It’s so boring and half the time it just doesn’t make sense.

On the other end of the writing spectrum, the other day I read an article declaring the public commentary surrounding a running brand’s activation as ‘mean girl’ behaviour, only for the author to become a ‘mean girl’ herself in the comments section - towards anyone who challenged her opinion in a way she didn’t like. She seemed to forget the very idea of an opinion piece - it does not have to be held by everyone else. I found it fascinating. It feels like we’re living in a time where appreciating nuance and debate is idealised but rarely practiced. We jump to dramatic defence and assume the worst, instead of curiosity around critique, which only drives the collective dissonance further. We’re all imperfect humans - can we at least agree on that? To be clear - my stance is that everyone should check themselves and their reactions, that being ‘mean’ is something we’re all capable of, and something we can all learn to control - with practice.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.” - Viktor Frankl.

I’ve taken to doubling down on writing short, personal, emotional (read human) emails and long, drawn out essays (like this) because in comparison to the AI slop that’s out there, they feel like honest works of art. Seriously.

The good news is that all this ‘feeling’ (good and bad) has meant I’m spending less time on the internet and less energy on people who don’t have the care, consistency, humility, or grit to put in the actual work, because I just cannot do anything else anymore.

I went to the Sorrento Writer’s festival and I listened to Sarah Wilson, alongside philosopher A C Grayling; the next week I went to see Yann Martel at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival, and for the first time in a long time I felt engaged, inspired, and motivated. I thought, these are my people and these are the things I should be doing: one, talking about the important things with other people. And two, writing about the important things.

It made me think about my upper echelon, the people I spend the most time with, who I actually gain something from when we hang out: even if it’s a big serving of humble pie. What are the conversations you’re having on a walk with a friend, over coffee, at a dinner party?

The other good news is I’m spending more time walking and reading books and if I get to read a book outside after a walk I really feel like I’m winning at life.

I’ve realised that these moments allow me to experience this (positive) existential flux (sometimes crisis), which is basically a thread of curious, open-minded (sometimes dreaded) thoughts that can take place in the shower, on a long plane ride, during an early morning walk, or at night watching the sunset by the water, or later staring at the stars in the sky.

It’s where I think not just about the what I’m doing but the why, and how it’s all going to play out, and with whom, and how it all makes sense in the context of the world today. I like it so much because amongst the chaos of everyday life admin I get to pause and imagine a different experience and decide whether I want to make it a reality.

It’s where I realise that I’ve been filling my days with too much (again), whereby everything only gets a small amount of my attention, so therefore everything feels short-lived. Work, exercising, rest, socialising etc. Everyone is saying time is flying except this time it feels like time is dying.

The answer, I’m remembering, is doing less! Groundbreaking.

Doing less looks different for everyone - and not everyone has the same privileges across time, money, support. All we can do is think about our own experience and if there’s anything we can pull back on, and do less of.

As I mentioned, I’m spending less time on the internet. Not no time but definitely the right amount of time that it feels intentional, like I’ve got a job to do when I’m on, and once it’s done, I’m done. I reset my algorithm care of Alison Rice’s instructions and it’s been pure joy. I’ll soon be releasing an episode of Pretty Hard with Alison, where we go very deep very quickly. I’d love you to listen.

Right now I’m writing from Lakeview, Chicago, a suburb which looks and feels a lot like Pleasantville, going to a cafe every morning that looks and feels a lot like something from the set of Friends. I’m staying with my brother, his wife, and my 3-month-old nephew who is perfect and reminding me to slow the fuck down. I spend a lot of time just staring into his eyes.

Without the distractions of (or should I say timezone availability of people) back home, I’ve found myself with a lot more time… and a willingness to not fill it with things connected to an intellectual sense of achievement or validation. The other day I cleaned a pen for ten minutes. My brother and I pulled apart and reassembled a planter box on his balcony in the late afternoon sun. It took us over an hour - had it been me on my own, I would have thrown the planter box away and bought a new one from Bunnings straight away. But there was something simple and beautiful about the fact that we decided to do this, to figure it out, and repurpose (in a way that my carpenter friends would cry in shame) this thing that I thought was useless an hour before.

And I’ve realised that these kind of things, and these kind of trips are more fulfilling than any business or brand trip could be - how family (biological or other) is everything, and that we need to prioritise them, their interests, their feelings, their mundane requests, their hard conversations, et al. These are the things we’ll remember, at the end of it all.

I was here for a week on my own prior to staying with my brother, where I barely spoke to anyone, aside from a barista, the Wholefoods staff, and my yoga and pilates instructors. It was great. The time difference allows me to get work done without text, email, phone, or slack disruptions - it’s a writer’s dream. I have been using it to dip back into editing my book: my favourite, most tortuous, drawn out relationship I’ve ever had. This time, I don’t feel bad about how long it’s taking me.

As per usual, I get bored of my own writing, very quickly. It’s why so many pieces continue to end up in my drafts and never see the light of day. I often have thoughts in my head, on a walk, in the shower, and then I get home, write a paragraph and think, “Great. That’s enough. The end.” Does it exist if I don’t publish it for someone else to see?

I’ve been thinking about how hard it is to accept that you don’t want something as much as you once did. Or that I do want something, but the world doesn’t operate like it used to, and nor should I expect it to, so perhaps I’m not going to get what I want. Maybe - what I’m going to get is even better.

The truth is, I’m less interested in the work I was once so connected to. Not to be mistaken with being less interested in work in general, it’s just that this period feels rather stagnant, rather superficial, rather dumb, mean and… bland.

I’m trying to remember if I’ve felt this way before, if it’s just a phase, or if it’s because I’ve done most of what I set out to do with Fluff. Maybe it’s the fact that the world is collapsing?

I’m telling myself I need to write longer so I can read longer. And vice versa. So I can sit with things for longer: people, content, food, art, joy, discomfort. I need to stay with it so I can stay with myself. If I don’t I fear I may go insane.

Running a brand feels more like gambling than anything else these days - putting not only our livelihood, but the lives of others, our employees, our suppliers, our creditors, on the line, hoping that either the Meta Gods, Tik Tok’s algorithm, or some celebrity who feels like doing a good deed, will look down favourably on us with each new day.

So I find myself asking other people what they’re doing. What they’d do in my shoes. Some people have answers, other’s don’t have time. Some don’t respond at all.

Since I’ve been about 16, sitting in my career counsellor’s office, all I’ve wanted to do is write. I want to sit in a room day in and day out and write and not have to see very many people or do anything else.

Next, my favourite days are when I get to meet someone new and interesting and discuss new and interesting ideas and then go and write about them. But those are not every day. Most days I just write emails.

On Mondays I feel stressed as I try to complete everything in one day, until I remember that’s what the rest of the week is for. Weekends truly feel like the bookend to my working week. I feel very grateful to be able to go down to the beach and have a slow day where maybe I read or maybe I write or maybe I just potter around or go for a walk or a run and rearrange things in my house. I’m remembering how nice it can be to feel bored, momentarily.

I don’t recognise my friend’s faces anymore.

That’s an over-exaggeration, I’m being dramatic. Because I want to get a point across. But the other night I went to dinner with a bunch of women and when I arrived I thought I had entered the waiting room of a botox clinic, not a restaurant.

I can’t say for sure that these women all had work done and that’s maybe the point. Is it that I didn’t recognise their faces, or that I recognised their faces from ten years ago? It’s all just getting too close and too real that I don’t know what’s real anymore and it’s making me confused, suspicious, and anxious about who I’m hanging around.

The pressure to conform to this weird, immortalised 35-year-old face is relentless. It takes an active form of resistance to wake up each morning and say, “Nope, not today.”

And I’ve been trying to understand what emotion it is that I’m feeling under all of this. And to have the courage to say it aloud. Is it anger at the patriarchy? Or women for upholding it? When these women have children, when these women have daughters, I want to ask them what they think they’re telling them about beauty, about their sense of self-worth, about life.

I think it’s that I feel so much, too much empathy for the fact that women feel like they need to keep up with someone half their age. It makes me sad that women are competing with each other (and younger versions of ourselves) on every stage. The idea that we’ve replaced the male gaze with a more insidious one—our own, torments me.

And I’m struggling with the reality that I can like people and not like their choices. And wondering if I can like people who don’t like mine.

We have few (but not zero) examples of women choosing to age naturally. We talk about them like they’re so brave, when really they’re just so human. We talk about them like they’re going to miss out, instead of talking about what the women who partake in oppressive beauty culture are missing more.

Recently a friend and I discussed the changes we were noticing in our faces and bodies with each year that we get older. Over the last few years we’ve both focussed on slowly but surely burning down the house that is who we thought we were - it’s been hard, boring, painful, confronting, all the things and somehow it all feels like one day we let go of the pressure, the obligations, the self talk and simply surrendered to what is: whatever that is. Ironically, letting go coincided with letting go of skin issues, excess weight, and other beauty issues. It seems we’re prettier now that we don’t care. Go figure.

This year in particular, I’ve been trying to roll with it more than ever. If something feels like it’s moving forward easily, even if I didn’t intend it, I go with it. If it feels hard and like there’s too many roadblocks, I pause, or stop completely.

While there are so many things I want to do, I’m not letting my stubbornness get in the way of what life seemingly wants me to do - which is often the opposite of what I thought. When I had a day worth of work planned and it turns into pottering, when I had a night planned of relaxing and it turns into working, when I thought I’d text someone back and I let it lapse, when I think I have the energy to be all over my boyfriend and instead I just want to be alone. I’m letting it all be.

And it’s felt so free.

The great simplification.

I’ve been thinking about what all this means, and very likely because I’ve just finished Sarah Wilson’s book, I Eat The Stars. I’m thinking this all means, that yes the world is on a pretty clear path to collapse. I have felt it and can see it happening around me in both subtle and explicit ways. So many of us have lost touch, whether intentionally or not. But it’s not to say there isn’t, as Sarah says, ‘a stunning possibility’ ahead of us. We all just have to decide what that means for us, and our day to day.

And that’s what I’m thinking about.

Who are the few people I want to spend my physical time with, who are the other people I want to spend my digital time with?

What are the things in my life I need to get by (so little) and what can I further let go of?

How can Fluff continue to serve our audience and community in a way that is sustainable and enjoyable? And if it can’t, what does that look like next? Have we already achieved our original message, around responsible beauty messaging and consumption - and is there anything left to do? Or is it time to change the vehicle for my message?

Interested:

-My friend Maeva, founder of Bread Beauty Supply, made a recent post that touched on the surface of what so many D2C founders are going through right now, and not just in the beauty industry. It is an intelligent and considered reflection, showing both sides to the story, as opposed to what most founders reveal - that everything is either perfect or catastrophic, when in reality, it’s kind of always a mix. She’s currently writing about her hypothesis that “Brand Babes need eComm Bro's, and Vice Versa”. Being the former, I couldn’t (unfortunately) agree more. For full context on Maeva’s thinking, I suggest you read her post here, and await the full article. I appreciate that Maeva is saying what so many founders are thinking or conversing about behind closed doors. And I wonder if it will open up a different kind of dialogue and maybe, just maybe, be a force for change.

-I watched a long, simple, conversational, kind of boring reel from Violette France getting ready and it was beautiful. She spoke about the difference between you wearing the makeup, versus the makeup wearing you. And I love that.

-Farah Homidi made $278USD sunglasses this week and I think this is a very interesting signal for beauty brands. Where is merch going? How significant is this for brands trying to increase their AOV and LTV? Since when did a beauty brand need to be a fashion brand? Or is it because fashion brands are becoming beauty brands? What does this mean for the future?

Some books I’ve read this year that I have enjoyed:

Einsteins Dreams. I adored this take on different versions and worlds of time and it reignited my love for fiction.

Wuthering Heights. I loved the movie. I devoured the book. I appreciated the differences. I’m not normally one for adaptions or consuming both, however in this instance, if you’ve seen the former I strongly suggest you read the latter.

Elle. It’s been a pleasure to get to know and work with WelleCo and Elle Macpherson over the last few months and reading this book gave me insight into Elle’s journey as well as thinking about the ways to approach memoir writing.

The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari. An oldie but a goodie and perfect for summer at the beach, starting the year with some light-hearted-spirit-ness.

The Wax Child. A very weird, challenging read about witches in the 1600’s but interesting nonetheless.

Famesick. I’ve not seen one episode of Girls but have always known of and been interested in Lena Dunham’s life. This felt like watching a train wreck in real time and I was very happy to see it salvaged.

I Eat The Stars. If you want to try and make sense of the current state of the world, I suggest giving this a go. Be brave.

Eat Bitter. (Currently reading). I’ve been a longtime fan of Lydia Pang and I love the connection to food and identity and this is such a refreshing way to look at a memoir. It gives a whole new, and dare I say it positive interpretation to ‘emotional eating’.

Next up: Son of Nobody - after seeing Yann Martel I couldn’t not buy his latest book, and was genuinely surprised that I would be interested to read a retelling of the epic Trojan War. Also, Good Writing by Anne Lamott (adore) and Neil Allen - I listened to a great podcast about this and thought this would be a great editing companion, alongside a vintage dictionary.

Interesting:

I honestly don’t think we’re doing anything interesting right now at Fluff and maybe that’s the point, we’re just being us, and that’s a reflection of life. We’re not chasing trends or releasing something unnecessary, and maybe this is what the world, brands and humans, need: a little break.

If anything, I’ve been doubling down on our podcast conversations for Pretty Hard - these bring me a lot of joy, and I believe there’s room for more nuanced and harder conversations too. So, if you think you have an interesting story about your relationship to beauty that you’d like to share - please let me know.

I guess all that’s left to do is keep riding (and keep writing) the wave. We gotta grow through what we go through.

If you like this note, please share it with someone else who might too.

As always, feel free to say hi.