hello internet friends I am back to video making and I am sad! I am sad and stressed how are you!!
Beauty is Bad Bookclub link here:
Topic: Beauty is Bad!! The Bookclub
Time: 4pm PST/5pm MST/ 6pm CST/7pm EST
https://uchicago.zoom.us/j/93123534631?pwd=SEtMazhLVTRRMitxRHRhZlNxUzVWUT09
Meeting ID: 931 2353 4631
Passcode: 082399
Here’s the reading for the next couple weeks:
Sunday, December 11th: Chapters Two and Three of Belly of the Beast and finish part one of Beastly.
Sunday, December 18th: Chapters Four and Five of Belly of the Beast and parts two and three of Beastly.
Sunday, December 25th: this is Christmas! lol so I will pop in to say Merry Christmas and i’ll make sure to leave the room open so that anyone who wants to hang out with one another can. Same thing for new year’s day (unless we decide differently while we’re in bookclub).
Content Updates: Overpopulation/Kids Convo, Malcolm X, and Beyoncé
I will be honest with y’all and say straight up that posting the shit I have to say scares me. Not even because I am afraid of hate comments (it really does not affect me like to the depths that I hear hate comments affect other creators). It’s because the larger I grow, the less the average social media user sees me as human. I feel like a democratically-elected cult leader. It’s so weird only seeing “ismatu you’re god’s gift to mankind” (I will leave which god up to you) or “Ismatu Gwendolyn should shut the fuck up forever and ever amen.” it’s fucking weird. is this how you all talk in real life? it fucking can’t be. Every day I open TikTok and am assaulted with notifications (that I cannot turn off if I want to like… look at tiktoks my friends send me). Every day I am like… what is going awn.
It’s not just me. Fame is dehumanizing at any and all scales. I’m now talking in public unabashed about people that have been dehumanized into being deified. Random ass people message me and tell me of Beyoncé’s greatness as if I am some wayward, godless heathen. I still get hate comments on the YouTube videos I posted about Malcom X— and I haven’t even said shit yet. what is going AWN. I am permanently changing my experience of myself on the internet and I have a lot of (valid, reasonable) trepidation about the social media experience I create for myself in making these videos. People see me less and less as a human person and more and more as a hot button content machine. It’s surreal to witness this happen to me so rapidly and it saddens me that I know there’s nothing I can do.
Between you and me, that’s one of the reasons I have loved studying Beyoncé. She has gone out of her way over years to try and document the mundanity of her life and say “see! I am a normal human in extraordinary circumstances.” And people just do not believe her. They deify or villify her anyways, no in betweens, no exceptions. I reject that kind of fame; I wish to be seen as remarkably human for the rest of my days.
I guarantee I speak a little freer than this in the podcast version of this, but I don’t like attention. I never wanted to be in this digital climate. It scares me that people seem to be like… predisposed to agree with me. I feel a lot of responsibility to make sure I don’t do anything disingenuous or harmful to communities I aim to protect, uplift, and cherish. I’m moving forward even though I am quite nervous.
There will be two series coming out for the rest of December: “poor people shouldn’t have kids” is a useless politic, and “*insert witty yet salient claim about the myth of overpopulation here*”. This will be attached to a fundraising effort I’m doing for my family. I am excited! I am nervous. And if I pull this off without inducing any gray hairs I will be incredibly pleased and proud of myself.
tbh— I will be proud of myself anyways.
Finally, I am renaming the substack and the podcast to “threadings.”
This is because I realized that in addition to love studies, I have a positive obsession with love from and for the Black, queer, finite being. I want to get into post humanism and love + science fiction and the ways that Blackness shapes love and love shapes Blackness. The only way I know how to hold love is in this Black ass body, so I will do so badly. Black feminism and the politic of love are flip sides of the same coin for me. In my love studies (which I do still have episodes planned about different types and theories and philosophies and cultures of love across the ages!) I have realized that a crucial piece of my perspective is informed by Black Feminist World-making. Same with my therapeutic praxis. I want the same platform to host content about civil rights leaders and Black legends to hold musings about communal love or childlike love or love as an active politic.
There will be a formal intro email (even though the content isn’t expected much to change)— just wanted to let y’all know!
see you in bookclub this Sunday <3
ismatu g.
14| Fame is the least humanizing kind of love.