The Cultural Danger Of Light-Hearted TV Shows And Influencer Marketing

 

With how crazy the world is, we sometimes just can’t help but crave anything light-hearted—something that will take our mind away from the things happening right now. One of the things that have been on many people’s mouths lately is the new feel-good Netflix series, Emily in Paris. In this episode, Whitney Lauritsen and Jason Wrobel reflect on the reception of these light-hearted shows, their ripple effect, and to an extent, the cultural danger they pose towards people watching. They talk about how mainstream media reinforces an unrealistic idea of happiness and fulfillment, the dark side of influencer marketing, and how social media puts on pressure to people to fit into gender stereotypes and these hierarchical metrics of success. Celebrating the International Day of the Girl, Jason and Whitney then share the six ways you can empower girls today, recognizing the unique challenges girls face around the world and help in our own ways. Plus, they also give a shout-out to Goddess Provisions, which helps women tap into their inner goddess.

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The Cultural Danger Of Light-Hearted TV Shows And Influencer Marketing

We are recording this episode on October 10th, 2020. It happens to be World Mental Health Day, which I thought about going more into depth in an episode that was timelier. It feels everything we do is about mental health. It’s always World Mental Health Day but I thought it would be worth acknowledging it. I wanted to talk about a few things as usual. If you’re new to our show, we tend to start on one subject and it evolves into something else. It’s where we stay linear and on the subject. That’s an important thing that distinguishes our show. It’s more conversational, fluid and true to life. Life isn’t always linear and clear. Life is full of tangents and surprises and you never know where things are going to go. I wanted to start off talking about some of my thoughts on this new Netflix show called Emily in Paris. Is this a show that you’ve heard of, Jason?

I see rumblings about things regarding the show on social media. I’m interested in culture in general, but it seems to me that I get overwhelmed quickly with, “Watch this, read this book, check out this documentary.” In my internal filter, I haven’t checked it out yet but I’ve seen people talking about it.

What do you know about this show based on the rumblings that you’ve heard?

Nothing.

What type of people have been talking about it?

I’ve seen mostly women talking about it. I haven’t seen any dudes chatting about it. It’s been one of those things I see the name keeps popping up but I have done zero investigation. I’m curious to hear more about it because it sounds you have been watching it. Have you dived in?

It’s interesting because it is by or produced by, I don’t know if it was created by. It might have been, I should probably have checked this out. It’s produced by Darren Star, who’s well known for Sex and the City, as well as Younger. I’ve enjoyed both shows. I forget what other roles he’s had in this, but I’m going to look this up as we’re talking. I like Darren Star’s work. He also created Beverly Hills 90210, which I did not know, as well as Melrose Place. How interesting. What a prolific career this man has had. His shows, what they have in common is romance and women exploring themselves and growing. He features a lot of relationships, romantic relationships, as well as friendships. His shows tend to be like shows that you can watch mindlessly. They’re comforting in a lot of ways.

I found myself craving things like that. I like to have them every once in a while. You can watch them in the background or you can watch them with your friends. You can eat ice cream and all of that. It’s like the stereotypical female show that doesn’t have that much conflict in it. A lot of other popular television will have much intensity to it and these shows tend to be light. That’s nice during this time that we’re in, but truth be told, those shows are often nice to have. I turned on the show with my sister and a few minutes in, I thought, “I’m not that into this show,” which surprised me because I liked Younger right off the bat and that show didn’t get a ton of attention.

It was always a little under the radar. They still have new seasons coming out. I enjoyed the actors on that show and the characters and of course, Sex and the City. Once I finally watched that, which was after it had aired, I enjoyed all of Sex and the City. I was a little surprised to not immediately be into Emily in Paris. To be frank, I don’t enjoy the main character much. I don’t know how old she is. Let me see. I want to research a little bit more, but I’m also afraid of seeing spoilers. How old is she? I don’t know. I thought about looking up how old this main character Emily is earlier.

I thought, “Why do I need to know how old she is?” I’m sensitive to ages and things like that. I feel like we compare ourselves to other people based on age, but some of the things I want to say about the show, do you have a bit to do with that? At a quick glance, it says that she’s twenty-something. She’s played by Lily Collins. She herself is 31 years old as an actual person, an actress. She’s playing a younger girl. Jason, for context for you, she is an American. She lives in Chicago. This is not a spoiler at all for anyone who’s interested in it, but the show opens up and she’s working at an ad agency or something like that in Chicago and she gets sent to Paris for a social media strategy job.

I’ve seen two episodes. Maybe I’m on the third one now. It’s establishing her. She goes to Paris. It’s cliché and that was why I wasn’t that into the show right off the bat, but I’m continuing to watch it out of curiosity. The cliché side of it is she’s this stereotypical pretty girl. She’s in her twenties and she’s into social media. A lot of the show so far is about the men she’s dating and there’s a lot of contextualization around her dating life and her being this straight cisgender girl. It feels cliché and I’m not into her.

For me, Emily feels the type of girl that I’m turned off by, in general. She feels more like a Los Angeles type, the stereotypical LA girl, which to me is trying to find her value in the world through being pretty or cute and accepted by others, as well as be knowledgeable about social media. She feels like an influencer, even though she’s working in an ad agency, I think. I’m also not 100% clear on exactly what this business is that she works for, but it’s something related to marketing and she goes in there to help them with social media. The appeal is that shows like this, in general, are nice because they feel lighthearted. They’re sweet. They’re like that formulaic show.

Life isn't always linear and clear. Life is full of tangents and surprises, and you never know where things are going to go. Click To Tweet

A lot of people want to live vicariously through a character like this, especially now because she’s traveling to Paris. A lot of people want to travel in general and then to go to some other place, some romantic city and you see her learning the language. I think that’s the appeal, and then it’s the relate-ability because she’s pretty, but she’s not too pretty. She looks like the girl next door. She’s cute. She doesn’t wear over the top makeup. Sometimes she gets dressed up and sometimes she’s casual and wearing a plaid shirt and whatever. She’s discovering herself and she’s finding her power.

There was this moment in the show where I realized I wanted to talk about this on our show where you see her get to Paris and she’s taking pictures of things and writing cliché captions. I don’t even remember them off the top of my head, but they’re one-liners. They’re not that cliché long, multi-paragraph captions on Instagram. They’re the one-line commentary about whatever she’s taking a picture of. None of the pictures she’s taking are remarkable, but they’re documenting what she’s seen in her travels and what she’s thinking about. You see on the screen this graphic of each photo and the number of followers she has, and then the next photo she takes, she has more followers. The next photo she takes, she has even more and suddenly, all these people are liking her photos. You see this expression in her body of like, “I can’t believe it. I didn’t know I was going to become popular.” That moment was where I thought, “This is what bugs me about this show.”

This girl comes across as, what is she worth more than her appearance and her social media knowledge? They are positioning her as smart but not super smart, and pretty but not super pretty. She’s in a relationship or maybe she won’t be in that relationship and who is she going to date. It’s showing this character that the world seems to be into for women, which is leading with a lot of these superficial things. Leading with the need for physical validation, love validation, social media validation. I haven’t finished watching the show. Maybe the character develops more and has a bigger arc and becomes stronger. The fact that it started off that way rubbed me the wrong way. They’re not positioning her as super intelligent and they’re making her a semi-independent, but also still dependent on approval from her employer and from men or other people.

They’re putting much emphasis on her age and her appearance and her social media following. I feel like that can be detrimental and it’s triggering for me. When I see things like this, I feel like maybe I should be skinnier because she’s tiny. Maybe I should dress the way that she does. Maybe I should do my hair the way that she does. Maybe I should post on social media more like her. Maybe one day I’ll feel approved of on social media. There’s triggering for me too of the work that I do in social media and almost being called out. A lot of the times, the things that we are frustrated or annoyed by other people are reflections on how we feel about ourselves. Anytime I see anything triggering about social media, I try to step back and think like, “What is that saying about me, my relationship with social media, and the work that I do?” I do much work in social media.

It’s bringing up a lot of questions and perhaps some insecurity. The show is influential. You don’t know anything about it aside from what I told you, Jason, but you’re still hearing about it. The show is making such a big splash and yet that’s where maybe the problem is. The show isn’t meant to be taken that seriously, but a lot of girls are watching the show and wishing for this life that this girl Emily has. What is this character’s life beyond her appearance, her romance, her job and her social media following? If we put much emphasis on that, which society is pressuring us to do, especially as women, I worry about women getting older and feeling like, “I don’t feel as valuable anymore because I’m not a cute twenty-something year old.”

I worry about women gaining weight and thinking they’re not as valuable because they’re not tiny like this girl on the TV show. I worry about girls not wanting to spend time on their appearance or money on their appearance. Since they don’t dress this girl on the TV show, that they’re not as valuable. I worry that these examples of girls over and over again, the media is constantly putting this in our face, “Look at this girl. Look how big her social media following is. She is important.” It has a subtle message that if you want to be important, likable, lovable, cool and successful, you need to fall into that pattern. It’s almost surprising to me that there’s a show like that still happening in 2020.

Simultaneously, it’s not surprising because if you pay attention to girls that are teenagers or early twenty-year-olds, they’re all going after this. I wish it wasn’t like that because I don’t think that that’s great for women. I don’t think that’s great for anybody. You too, Jason. We’ve talked about so much how, even for you as a 40-year-old man, you still fall into that pressure that you have to look a certain way, dress a certain way, be a certain age and have a certain social media following. You might not be watching the show, but that message is still there in our culture. It simultaneously concerns me and triggers me because I don’t feel like I fall into a lot of those categories as much as I feel like I should.

It sounds like it’s reinforcing several things to me. Number one, it’s reinforcing the idea that happiness, fulfillment, creative stimulation or the idea that all of these externalities in our life can validate our worth. It’s particularly concerning at this time when there is a ton of isolation and loneliness, and people are being with themselves. People can particularly get sucked into this idea of chasing the happiness carrot. We’ve talked about chasing the carrot as one of our favorite analogies. If I can live vicariously through this character who’s living in a different country, who’s young and beautiful, finding love and finding her path in life. Whether that’s a Millennial watching the show or somebody in that age range or perhaps it’s someone who’s a little bit older may be pining for a different time in their life, “What if I had moved to Paris in my twenties? What if I had done something more creative?”

It seems innocuous on one level but in many ways, television, movies and mainstream media reinforce tropes, stereotypes, and ideals that have a super profound effect on people. This is tangential but also related. There are a lot of examples of this. What comes to my mind and I remember in the mid to late ‘90s when Friends was on and one of the biggest shows ever. When Jennifer Aniston got the “Rachel cut,” I remember many women and young ladies that I knew going out and going to the hair salon and requesting the “Rachel cut.” If anybody remembers that, throw us a comment on social media. We always love hearing from you and getting your feedback on our episodes.

This is certainly not a new paradigm of art, media, and shows reinforcing stereotypes and also influencing culture. If we look at the components of why it influences people so much, it’s that we’re still locked in this tribal mentality of the four dual basic urges that we’ve talked about in previous episodes. We crave acceptance, approval, popularity, and at the same time, we try to avoid disapproval. We try to avoid being ostracized. We want validation. It’s a healthy human drive to want validation. It’s a healthy human drive to want a certain amount of attention.

The point we’re at in society now, especially with social media as a microscope and a magnifying glass is people are addicted to the attention. They want more and more of it. You’re talking about social media being a microcosm of the theme of the show, especially for Millennial women. It’s this idea that your self-worth is tied to your online following. You said for me as a 40-something-year-old man, because this is our business and this has been our business for over a decade, there still is this idea of, “If I don’t get enough likes, comments and shares, then brands won’t want to do brand deals with me. Maybe I won’t get another book deal. Maybe I won’t be in line for another TV series.”

Whatever the case is, there’s an extraordinary amount of pressure that continues to build whether or not you’re an entrepreneur and use social media for entrepreneurship. The danger in what you’re describing, Whitney, is it’s not only reinforcing unhealthy stereotypes potentially around weight, appearance, haircut and style, but it’s also reinforcing an unhealthy stereotype that our self-worth and our social equity is tied to our online following. As an extension of this conversation, if you’ve been paying attention to China and how they have social equity ratings in China now that your value as a citizen is tied to your social rating. There are social ratings based on your contribution, your employership, your credit. There are all these metrics that they’re using in China. I’ll see if I can find an article but we’re being trained.

Let me keep ranting if I may. Grades in school, if you remember, I used to compare my grades to my peers. I’d be like, “What did you get on your test? You got an A-minus. I got a B-plus.” We’ve been trained to place our inherent value on externalized ratings and metrics for a long time. This is nothing new. School ingrained that in us. Credit scores ingrained that in us. The idea of measuring a person’s success and value based on the amount of wealth they have in their bank account is also enforcing this. Social media is another layer on the cake. That we’ve been trained to value ourselves based on externalized metrics our whole life. It’s no wonder we have people suffering from self-worth issues, myself included because it’s decades of conditioning we have to break through.

It’s interesting because the show is seemingly meant to help you step outside of your own life. It’s like reading a book. I used to read a lot of young adult novels growing up and I still enjoy them even though I’m not a young adult anymore. What’s funny is my mom watched all of Emily in Paris on her own. I went to say goodnight to her and she was watching it on her laptop in bed. I was like, “Mom, I didn’t know you were watching that show. I would have watched it with you.” It would have been a fun show to watch with my mom. It’s also funny that she not only watched it a lot faster than I did, but she wanted to watch it on her own.

I asked, “Why?” She’s like, “It’s my little bedtime thing that I do. I enjoy watching it before I go to sleep.” For her, it’s comforting and she loves French culture and all of that stuff. It’s fascinating that it appeals to a lot of different ages for different reasons. That’s a big benefit. It’s nice to have shows like this. It’s nice to have things to do that are distracting. My concern is more when it triggers somebody. If a show like this doesn’t trigger you and you’re watching it purely for fun and you’re not taking it that seriously, you’re not comparing yourself to these people, that’s fine. If you’re like me or perhaps you haven’t examined this, so this is an opportunity to reflect on it. Similar to what you were saying, Jason, I remember shows like Friends or 90210. A lot of these shows that Darren Star made is there based on these relatable and yet aspirational people.

You think like if you get in enough into their world, you can’t help but wonder how you compare to them. Which of these characters are you? The same thing with Saved by the Bell, which I loved that show. It’s common for people to say like, “Are you a Ross and a Rachel type? Are you like Tiffani Amber Thiessen or Kelly Kapowski on the show? Which of these characters are you?” You’re literally being compared to them. You’re starting to think of yourself in that context for better or for worse. What if you are more like one of the characters that you perceive as dorky or unattractive? For Saved by the Bell, I would never want to be Jessie Spano. I wanted to be Kelly Kapowski. You’ve got Lisa Turtle and Screech. For anybody who’s watched these shows, everybody had their different opinions on them like they did with Friends and The Big Bang Theory, the newer version of that. All these shows, you start to compare yourself, your friends, and your relationships to them for better or for worse.

That’s such a natural historical human thing to do. We’ve been telling stories and relating to them. That’s common. My concern is when they get deeper into our psyche and how we start to measure our lives based on these characters or we hear other people around us doing those things. I watched Emily in Paris because like you, Jason, I heard a lot of people talking about it. I saw it pop up a Netflix. I saw it in some articles about new releases. I checked it out. I watched a few minutes of it and thought, “The show is lame,” but then I gave it another try because I heard enough people talking about it. Now it’s going to become steeped in our culture potentially if it’s a big hit. Now suddenly, whoever wants to be an Emily-type is this model for everything that I described, which is not the full spectrum of a woman. The character is not designed to represent all women everywhere. It represents a young, white, cute, social media-focused woman. I take issue with that representing the average Millennial girl or younger.

A lot of women will watch the show and aspire to be that, yearn for that, and wish that they had done those things, getting to travel and work in Paris and all the other things she ends up doing that I haven’t seen on the show yet. My fingers are crossed that there is a character arc. One movie I thought of while we are having this discussion is Under the Tuscan Sun or Eat, Pray, Love even, but that’s the true story. I believe Under the Tuscan Sun is fictional and it’s a movie that made me feel good because this woman travels to Italy and she’s taking an old Italian home that’s falling apart and turning it into this wonderful place.

When I think of that movie, there’s some romance involved. She’s there to discover herself. She’s exploring things and having fun. My memory of that movie was more empowering. Whereas so far with this show, it makes me feel like I’m not good enough or whatever. Even though I’m a white woman who has traveled and studied abroad and done a lot of things. I’ve technically worked in France with a family I was nannying for. I’ve had a lot of these cool experiences that a character like this has. I don’t feel I’m missing out on those experiences, but I feel like she’s being shown as the model of what a desirable woman is.

When you’re getting older, this fear of, “Am I no longer valuable, cool, important because there’s a twenty-year-old girl that’s younger, cuter, savvier and more desirable to men than me?” Those things can come up too when you’re watching content like this. On the other hand, if I were a teenager, I probably would be watching the show. Would I be aspiring to be that type of girl? Probably, because the media paints this picture of social media as being the cool job to have, whether you’re working on the marketing side and consulting, or you’re becoming an influencer. How many girls are going to go into that industry?

Being encouraged to do that and I look at the capitalist side of these things. Darren Star is making a shit ton of money off of these types of shows. Netflix is making a shit ton of money. The actress and all the people involved with the show are banking off the success of this messaging that is desirable. Telling these types of stories reinforces them and makes money off of people. When you get into the world of social media, as we’ve talked about in our episodes on The Social Dilemma and many others, there’s a slippery slope with social media.

The pros are that social media connects you to people and gets you access to people. There’s a lot of money involved with social media. Shows like this are encouraging us. They’re showing us the wonderful parts of social media, but not reminding us of the detrimental sides of social media. They’re encouraging us to place emphasis on our appearance, our validation, our likes, our followers and how social media can help market brands. Is messaging and stories like this leaving out the dark sides of social media and influencer marketing?

That’s true for a lot of things. We’re sold this idea that things are easy, fun, joyful and it’s always amazing, “Look how wonderful things are when my Instagram following is growing.” There are many examples of this idea that popularity, fame, notoriety, validation or the things we’re talking about is only focusing on the upside. We see this too in how we treat people that we hold in any regard to fame or celebrity in our society. In previous episodes, we’ve talked about certain celebrities coming out and talking about their mental health struggles, whether that be professional athletes, singers, artists, musicians or things like that. On the one hand, it encourages me when I see that conversation blossoming, growing, and expanding because it not only humanizes the celebrities and professional people we hold in high regard in our society, but there’s a downside to it.

The downside is that I’ve seen a lot of people on social media responding like Demi Lovato, Kevin Love, Kanye or whoever, why are they struggling? Why do they have mental health issues? They have all this money. They have millions of dollars. They have fame and beautiful houses. They have this amazing relationship. Look who they’re married to. It’s a dehumanizing construct. It’s weird. People get vulnerable and they open up about their struggles. On the one hand, you have people praising them like us saying, “This is amazing that they’re coming out and sharing their mental health struggles or their struggles with fame, their struggles with all of a sudden having all this money they’ve never had before.” The wolves come out too. The wolves are like, “Complain. Big deal.”

A lot of times, the things that we are frustrated or annoyed by other people are reflections of how we feel about ourselves. Click To Tweet

We have to realize that there’s this bizarre expectation of upside. You’re beautiful, pretty, rich, famous and influential. Life must be amazing all the time. We need to deconstruct this myth and this narrative in our society because it’s dangerous in the sense that we keep encouraging people to chase those things. We’ve talked about this. Keep chasing the fame, the numbers, the money, the success, the notoriety, and keep chasing, keep hustling, keep going. Don’t stop. Keep going. Not taking into account maybe this system that we’ve created that on one hand encourages that, when someone achieves it and says, “I’m exhausted, I’m burnt out. My mental health is suffering.” “You have no business suffering. You’re not allowed to suffer.” It’s bad.

I don’t want to use this word flippantly but it’s a schizophrenic message. On one hand, keep chasing this thing, keep going. Society and the world want you to keep chasing success and fame and notoriety. Once you achieve it, you are not allowed to complain. You are not allowed to suffer. You are not allowed to publicly talk about your suffering or we will chastise you. It’s dangerous and it’s fucked up. That’s one of the worst parts of our society where we simultaneously encourage and lift up people to achieve those things. Once they achieve it, it’s like we’ve made them godlike and they’re not allowed to show their humanity. It’s bizarre and it’s bad.

You’re also touching upon the dangers of these types of stories because as we’ve talked about at least once in a previous episode, these stories show the highlight reels. We become used to seeing other people’s highlight reels on social media. When we’re not watching TV and we’re not looking through social media, we’re left on our own to deal with all the other sides of life that aren’t shown in the media. We have the opposite end of the spectrum where certain parts of the media like to talk about the horrific sides of things that happen to some people. The average person is escaping through social media. Social media makes you feel good sometimes. Watching these TV shows make you feel good, but both of them can also trigger you. I enjoy going on TikTok and watching videos, but sometimes I fall into the comparison trap and think, “That person has many more followers than me,” or “This person’s life looks much better than mine.”

We have been encouraged to show all of these things, to show all these nice parts of life. On one level, we do know that these people are like us and they suffer as well. They’re showing their highlights and there’s more to their lives than we don’t see. Some people want to share those harder parts of their lives with others. There’s always that danger of them being ridiculed for sharing and told that who are they to share these things or being rejected or being bullied or whatever else. There’s so much fear around it. There are different types of television out there too. Some of them will show the hard parts of life. There are shows like Girls, which I enjoyed watching because it felt real.

Girls represented a variety of different women. Although they were all white if I remember correctly. They showed the ups and downs of their lives, coming of age, their experiences and it wasn’t always wonderful. That type of programming is nice to watch, but people watch shows like Emily in Paris because they want to escape. It feels good to go live vicariously through these characters. If you don’t have the self-awareness to not fall into the comparison trap when you’re watching or fall into feeling triggered by things because you wish you had something that you don’t. You’re resentful that women are being represented this way or people are being represented in a certain way. It’s tricky. Media, in general, is cognitively challenging.

Some people don’t watch TV for this reason. Some people go off social media for this reason. It’s too hard to see all of these confusing messages and try to go about your life in a good way. This isn’t something that we’ve talked that much about, Jason. I’m curious to hear this about you, but there are two big things I remember in this context about growing up, which is my parents never and to this day, don’t technically have cable television. My parents subscribe to Netflix, Hulu and HBO. We have those all because they’re less expensive than they used to be and more accessible. My parents like to watch TV and movies now, but growing up, we did not have cable. That felt like such a big thing to me.

I loved watching MTV and Nickelodeon. Any chance I got, I would soak it up if I was at a friend’s or a hotel. When I got to college, I was like, “I get to have cable television. This is awesome.” I don’t know how much of that was my parents wanting to save money. Another side of it was that they didn’t think I needed to sit in front of the television all the time. In a way, that was a big gift. This is also truer of my age range and older, you included, Jason. We didn’t have smartphones growing up and we had one computer in the household. I didn’t have a laptop until I had already graduated from college.

I had a shitty old laptop of my dad’s for a little bit, but my first real laptop was outside of college. If I wanted to use the internet, I either had to use my dad’s computer growing up or go to a friend’s home or be at school. When I got to college, I had a computer, but we also had computer labs where you could use them for different purposes. When I was in film school, I went to a computer lab to edit all my films because my PC at home didn’t have the capability to do all of those things. What I have access to now is different. Growing up my big point is that my sister and I did not watch that much television unless we were at a friend’s house or at a hotel, or we rented a movie and we had a special movie night. Now you can watch a movie every single night and you have access to any TV show that you want. You could sit there and watch show after show and movie after movie or scroll through social media, which we also didn’t have growing up.

It’s interesting to think about how that’s impacted me and impacted people that were in similar situations versus now where it’s the opposite. If you don’t have a streaming service, a smartphone, a laptop and the ability to watch things whenever you want, you’re the odd person. It seems most people have those things and allow their children to watch them. It’s weird if you don’t let your kids watch television. I also remember growing up, my best friend who lived across the street from me, her parents had cable, but they would disconnect it and they limited their kid’s access to shows. They had certain times they were able to watch it and access it.

Parents do that now with the internet. I remember thinking that was weird but also cool. My friend grew up never caring about TV and movies to this day. It’s not a big part of her life. It had such a big impact on her because she wasn’t as exposed to these things. How about you, Jason? What was your media exposure growing up? How did your mom relate to that? Did you have restrictions around it? How do you think that shaped you? You’re the opposite of me in a way because you don’t watch as much television and movies as I do. You don’t seem as interested.

No, I’m not. I try to be as mindful and selective about what I’m consuming. If we take it all the way back to my arc of media technology, this is part of an overarching conversation that I want to tie into about the evolution of technology, but also enjoying more analog things, which I do. I am 43 years old. I grew up with a black and white television. My grandparents at their house still had a rotary phone. Back to using a rotary phone and using a black and white TV, colored TVs were out, we happened to have a black and white television.

I remember when I was young getting a color TV for the first time and having the rabbit ears. You had to adjust the rabbit ears on the back of the TV set to get a signal. There weren’t that many channels. It was channels 2, 4, 7, 56, 20. I’m talking about Detroit. Any Detroit readers will remember, especially channel 20, 56, 50 as well, but there were maybe ten channels max. I don’t even know if there were ten channels. Certainly, seeing this evolution of technology in 43 years, it’s engendered some interesting feelings in me because, in a way, I feel there’s a beauty in having fewer options. Here’s what I mean by that. Whether it’s as an artist having fewer options that you’re either limited by your skillset. As a guitar player, I know maybe 25 chords. There are guitar players I know that are vastly more talented than me.

 

One of my favorite guitar players, Eddie van Halen, passed away. I’ve been going back and watching early videos of him when he was in his late teens and early twenties. It’s insane how good he was at that age. He’s one of the greatest guitar players who’s ever lived, maybe the greatest rock guitar player ever, but contextually speaking, there’s a beauty in having that level of skill and that many options. There’s also a beauty in having limited options. In some ways, I appreciated that time of having fewer than ten TV channels versus now. You talk about cable. I remember getting cable for the first time. It was like, “How many channels are there?” It was mind-blowing.

I also think that for me, this might sound a little hipster and it’s totally fine. I’m not saying that as a negative thing, but I like the tactility and the feel of a lot of analog things, non-digital things. Here’s where that shows up in my life. I love the sound and the feel of a vinyl record and it’s cool that vinyl records are experiencing resurgence again. Things like tapes and 8-tracks, but especially vinyl records. There’s a warmth, a vibration and a feeling that I get when I put on a vinyl record versus listening to a super produced, highly digitized track that’s a brand new song that’s come out. It’s a different feel much like when I drive my car, which is by modern standards old-school. It’s a stick shift. It’s a five-speed. There are a few electronics. They call them nannies. There’s no stability control, lane vectoring, and blind-spot monitoring. My car is basic. It’s the same with my motorcycle.

I like analog things because it’s different. As an example, it’s not that I dislike driving your car or a lot of the electric cars that are coming out now. They’re cool in their own way, but it’s a different feel than when you get in a loud, basic analog stick shift car. It’s not that either one is better or worse, but my whole point in this conversation is that as we keep progressing with social media, digital technology, automobile technology, there’s going to be a part of me that always wants that rotary phone experience. I’ll always want to have a stick shift or an older car. I’ll always want to have an acoustic guitar and maybe get a record player. Does any of this ring true for you? Are there any “old-school” things in your life that you want to keep around or that you enjoy even as technology is rapidly accelerating? Is there anything like that for you?

It’s interesting because listening to you, the contrast for me is I love and have always seemed to love technology. When I was a little kid, I was into computers, but that was because my dad was super into them. Growing up, my dad spent a lot of time on the computer and showing me how to use it. It’s amazing how much has changed in our lifetimes because we had that one computer in the house, but since my dad was into them, my sister and I were able to learn how to do a lot of things. Not everybody had a computer that they could access when I was growing up. If you did, which nice computer you had?

I remember one of my friends had a color printer and I was like, “This is cool.” It was slow, yet it was neat. We would draw on the computer and print out pictures that we drew or play games. I remember wanting video game consoles when I was growing up. My parents wouldn’t buy those things, but you would do those at your friend’s homes. I got excited about either thing I didn’t have access to as many kids do, but also things that were new. I’m into that still. I love trying new food. I love it when new products are released. I love it when new software comes out for the computer or the phone or my car. I am drawn to those things.

I haven’t thought about how my childhood shaped that aside from my dad’s interest in technology, but he’s nowhere as into that stuff as I am. In my friend group, I am generally the most on top of new technology than others. Being that early adopter whether it’s getting an electric car when most people I know don’t have an electric car and then having a Tesla, which is one of the most advanced technology-focused cars out there, it excites me. I love it when the new updates come out and the new abilities. You’re talking about, Jason, how you’re doing things manually, and my car does all these things automatically. Those are the things that I love about it.

I don’t think it’s about saving time, looking at them as shortcuts per se, even though there are certain things that I use that are appealing because they are shortcuts, they saved me time or money. I enjoy that stuff too, but I’m drawn to the new things. I like to know the news before most people do. I like to be in the know I suppose. That’s the draw for me. Technology and the more modern versions of things are interesting to me because they’re brand new, but like you, I also have an appreciation for older things and things that are better made. Generally, things that are newer might not last as long. Some things might even be designed to not last as long. What’s that term that they use, planned obsolescence or something like that?

That’s exactly what it is. The life cycle of a product, they limit the amount of longevity that the components have because they want you to be a repeat customer, hence profit.

That stuff bothers me and it could be simple older Pyrex baking or storage containers that you would use in the kitchen and how it’s fun to go to antique stores and find things that are 50 years old and still work well. That stuff appeals to me more from an environmental standpoint. It’s neat to see things that have stood the test of time and having an appreciation for them. Also, going more analog or offline is appealing for the mental health side of things. I took a walk in the woods outside my parents’ house. I was savoring the time and nature but also thinking back to all the years of my childhood when I used to walk those same paths when I didn’t have a cell phone.

In fact, I brought my cell phone with me simply for the camera feature of it. I didn’t put it on do not disturb because in my head I’m like, “What if somebody needs to reach me?” It felt silly because I could have easily have left it at home, but it was that feeling of like, “What if I miss an important phone call or text message or what if there’s an emergency,” and all these things. I didn’t have that growing up. I would go out in the woods and be by myself all day because I didn’t have cable television, a smartphone and my own computer. It was what I would do for fun. I miss those days because I live in a city where I’m not as surrounded by nature. Things tend to feel more complex and chaotic in a big city, but also time and our society has changed so much and we’re adapting to adjust to that all.

That’s an important point of this too. Things are happening at such a rapid rate. We have to be gentle with ourselves as human beings. In fact, a lot of the structure of our societies is young. There may be in the past 100, maybe 200 years that things have been established this way as in terms of the way that we work and in terms of our electricity or electronics, the way that we live as societies. The way that our houses are structured or our homes in general, and the way that our universities work. Much that we experience is new to us as human beings. We need to be gentle on ourselves. Going back to these parts of Emily in Paris that bother me, I suppose it feels like women have come such a long way in a short amount of time, and shows like this that focus on a woman’s superficial attributes are irritating to me. I would love to see more female characters of different skin colors, sexualities, body types, different careers and women that aren’t as focused on their outward appearance and their outward validation.

It would be amazing to see more shows that represent different types of women, different types of men as well. Speaking of women in this case, popular shows that are encouraging women to enjoy life outside of social media and not be focused on what clothes they’re wearing, and which men they’re dating or women they’re dating if they’re choosing that. That’s part of the bigger picture for me with a show like this. We also have evolved a lot in terms of media. We have more variety. Emily in Paris is not the only show you can watch on TV and it’s not meant to be taken that seriously. It brought up a lot of these feelings for me and noticing how I am responding to it.

It's a healthy human drive to want validation. It's a healthy human drive to want a certain amount of attention. Click To Tweet

One thing that brings up for me, and I’m curious about your feelings on this, is the idea of hierarchy and social standing. This ties into what we were talking about in terms of importance, validation, recognition, fame, money, a lot of the things that we tie into not only our perception of our own self-worth but a lot of the metrics and tropes that society and media reinforce about our standing. A couple of years ago, I read a book by Jordan Peterson. It was a big book called 12 Rules for Life. To paraphrase, in one of the chapters of the book, he was talking about this idea that our ancient idea of societal standing and hierarchy continues to become more complex and nuanced, but the basis of it is the same. Whereas in the past or still in many cases, including India, you have the caste system where the standing in society that you are born into is where you will stay.

If you are born in a lower class, poor segment of society, that is generally where you will be regarded the rest of your life. If you are born into a kingdom or wealth or royalty, then that’s where you will also stay. This idea of hierarchy certainly has different permutations and expressions. What this brings up for me is this idea that based on gender or roles, there are still hard and rigid ideas of our standing and our hierarchy. You talk about with this show as a microcosm of this, where if you’re a woman in society, your standing and your hierarchy will be based on your looks and whether or not those looks can conform to society’s norms. Your age and whether or not you have a youthful appearance, your popularity on social media, the kind of man you date or the kind of man you marry, and where his standing is and where his wealth is.

There are a lot of these outdated old-school tropes that are still being reinforced over and over again. For men, for me, one thing that I’m still decoding and still deprogramming for myself is, as a man, your level of success is defined by your material wealth, the numbers in your bank account, the car you drive, the house you have, whether or not you’re a provider. Can you provide for a family and a woman and children? There still are subtle and not subtle ways that these gender stereotypes and these hierarchical metrics of success are continuing to be reinforced over and over again. I’m bringing this idea of Jordan Peterson, his perspective and others that say we’re not going to get away from hierarchies in human society. They’ve been here for thousands of years.

We can look back at the Greeks, the Egyptians, and the Sumerians and a lot of ancient cultures. They had hierarchies, they had royalty, they had class systems. My question is, do you think there’s a way that we as humanity can get away from a hierarchical system of relating to one another? Is this an unavoidable thing that we have to accept if we’re going to be in human society? There’s certainly a lot of danger. We’ve talked about in terms of mental health and the way we regard ourselves and the way we compare ourselves to others. This idea of a hierarchy in society is not a new exploration. This has gone on for a long time. I’m throwing it to you to get your existential take on it. Do you think we can exist and relate to one another as humans without hierarchies?

It’s tough to say. Without being a historian and studying all of these things, I’ve only scratched the surface on it. We benefit in a lot of ways from leadership. Having somebody that’s in charge of a community is helpful and not everybody wants to play that role. Sometimes we naturally fall into these categories or hierarchies, but they certainly have their dangers and drawbacks. Another show that I am almost finished watching is called The Vow and it’s about a cult. It’s interesting to see how that cult came to be. It had many seemingly positive intentions, but at the end of the day, people were being manipulated in order to benefit the people at the top of the pyramid. That’s a common experience.

We see this in a lot of different ways and we have hierarchies in terms of our finances, our businesses, our political system, and our government. I don’t know. It’s a big question to answer. We’re all trying to figure it out, but many of us are going based on what our parents teach us, what the media teaches us, and what our education system is teaching us, along with any laws that we have based on where we live. There are times where we feel free and there are times where we feel we’re slaves to the system. There’s some balance in between. There are certain things that we need to do to operate properly as a society. There are things that we can do to rage against the machine. Whether that’s based on where we live and how we live and being true to ourselves, even if society seems to reject us. You and I, Jason, are big advocates and allies for people of all different genders, sexualities, races, and all of the other sides of life here.

We have to continue to raise their voices. This leads me to something else I wanted to touch upon. October 10th is when we’re recording this. On October 11th, it is the International Day of the Girl. I received this email about girls’ empowerment and human rights. According to the UN, nearly 1 in 4 girls aged 15 to 19 years worldwide are not engaged in education, training or employment compared to 1 in 10 boys of the same age. By 2021, around 435 million women and girls will be living on less than $1.90 a day, which is the official threshold of extreme poverty. That includes 47 million pushed into poverty as a result of COVID-19. On October 11th, the International Day of the Girl is intended to recognize these unique challenges that girls face around the world and promote girl’s empowerment in the fulfillment of their human rights.

If we can support girl’s rights to education and healthcare, it gives them a fair shot of becoming tomorrow’s leaders, workers, entrepreneurs, innovators, and political change-makers. Also in this article, which is this project from World Centric who sent this email. They had a little list of six ways you can empower girls. Number one is to give a girl the opportunity to go to school. Here in the United States, for me and Jason at least, we take for granted that we got to go to school. There are women all around the world, especially in places like Kenya where they’re highlighting in this newsletter, that’s not a given. They need money and resources to not only attend but thrive in school. You can donate to organizations such as the Women’s Global Education Project.

Number two is to help girls stay in school. Around the world, girls miss approximately 10% to 20% of their social days because they lack the proper resources needed to manage their menstrual cycles. Simply making sure that women have access to pads, underwear, soap, education around that is important. The same is true with mental health, which is not the aim of this. As I was reading that, I was thinking about how many girls in my high school, I went to a small town, privileged public school. I remember many girls that here they are, lots of privilege, seemingly loving families. They struggled with their mental health in all sorts of ways. I remember girls skipping school or going to spend the whole day in the nurse’s office, going to therapy sessions with our school counselor. Mental health was something I noticed in my town and having all that privilege. If that’s happening there, it’s happening everywhere. Resources for mental health are important for men as well. If girls are missing school because of their periods, what other things are they missing school for that haven’t been acknowledged?

Number three on this list is to provide a family with clean water, which is another thing we take for granted in areas like Los Angeles and other parts of the United States. Around the world, girls and women collectively spend 200 million hours each day collecting dirty and unsafe water for their families, which is astounding because we don’t talk about that nearly enough. It’s important to donate money when you can to help with water filtration systems. Even in the United States, water is an issue in certain areas. That’s still happening in Flint, Michigan.

This has been years now. Flint is still going through that water crisis with the contaminated water and pollution. It’s not something that is relegated to other nations or third world nations. Flint is an economically depressed community in general in Michigan. That water crisis has not been fully resolved to this day. It’s been years.

 

That’s why it’s important to be aware of what’s happening in communities outside of your own and advocate for them, donate money when you can, and become more educated. Number four on this list is to provide a girl with life-saving care because complications from pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death amongst adolescent girls. This is especially the case in a developing country. Number five is to mentor a girl in your community. If money is not something that you can do, you can certainly get involved and volunteer. There are great organizations like the Big Brothers Big Sisters, and many girls in the United States are limited as a result of poverty, violence and unequal opportunities. Being a mentor is something that I would like to do more. I think you’d be great with that too, Jason, being a mentor.

I’ve thought about it, for sure. I’m not quite sure what avenue I would want to go down with that road if it would be like a Big Brothers Big Sisters type of thing or if there’s a more specialized organization. One thing that I have thought about is wanting to help young men embrace their sensitivity and their emotions, and know that it’s okay to be emotional, sensitive, compassionate, and start to break down that stereotype for men to be cold and emotionally detached and robotic. That still happens in our society. I don’t know what route to go, but it’s interesting you bring that up.

Maybe it’s time to start looking into that more. Number six on this list is to advocate for the rights of women and girls, having a conversation about gender equality like we did. Sharing a post from an organization on social media. You could share this show with somebody if you would like to. Splitting domestic work in your home 50/50. If you are a man or a woman in a relationship with someone of the opposite gender, you can do that. Also, women who are in relationships with women could do the same thing. Men in a relationship with men can do it. It’s important for everybody to feel equal, but it certainly is a bigger issue for the inequality of women. Getting involved with your local government, there’s no better time in the United States than now for that. Especially in our country, there are some pressing issues that are related to women.

Knowing your own rights is key too. There’s a great article from the UN. This is all in a newsletter. They have all sorts of great resources and information for both men and women to be aware of these things. Women need the support of men to rally for them because of inequality. It’s important for us to be allies for each other and do what we can, whether it’s donating time or money, raising your education. I’m noticing how the media plays a role in your perception of yourself and others. A show like Emily in Paris, I’m not boycotting it. I’ll probably finish watching it. It’s something that I enjoy. I’m interested in it. There are a lot of societal messages in there that I’m fascinated by, by bringing this up.

I also enjoy watching shows like that when I want to “turn off” my brain for a little bit. It’s nice to have access to that. I crave that sometimes. I see how it benefits someone like my mom who wants to watch it before bed. A lot of women do enjoy having that type of media, but we do need to stay aware. We do need to pay attention to our feelings. If a show like this doesn’t make us feel good, then don’t watch it to be part of some cultural conversation. If it makes somebody else feel good, there’s no benefit in shaming somebody from watching this or someone for aspiring to be like Emily or yearning for a life they never had.

It’s important to have conversations around this and to diversify the type of media you’re watching. Make sure that you’re spending time offline and with analog things as Jason was talking about, and consuming other types of media, the news and documentaries, and looking at different people. If you’re like me, it’s not beneficial to watch shows with characters that look like you, act like you, or live like you. It’s important for us to be consuming content from other people, whether they differ from us in the way that they look, their age, the way that they live their lives, or even our different political perspectives.

I’ve been trying to pay attention to people who differ in their political opinions and not be judgmental, but simply to see their sides. As we talked about in our episode about The Social Dilemma, we can get stuck in a bubble of people that agree with us and live like us, all these like-minded people. That can be detrimental to us. If you want to watch Emily in Paris like I’m going to continue to do, don’t worry about it. Make sure that you are aware and diversifying. That’s my take on this. How about you, Jason?

In general, exposing ourselves to a variety of perspectives, belief systems, and viewpoints is more important than ever because the algorithms and the AI, particularly in Facebook and Instagram, is skewing toward giving you the same type of thematic content over and over again, which then leads some people to believe that that is reality and that is the only reality. To your point, it’s especially important to open our minds and our hearts, even if we don’t agree fully with it, to at least on a basic level, trying to understand different viewpoints, different theologies, different political perspectives, and not isolate ourselves.

There’s a lot of not only physical isolation but a lot of mental isolation happening. It’s important that we stay open. We don’t have to agree with everything, but staying open is supercritical. To have a respectful discourse in our society, which seems to be becoming more challenging by the day in some facets of society. Whitney, as we are hurdling like a meteor toward the earth that killed the dinosaurs, we are hurtling toward the end of this episode. Do we have shout outs? Do you have any brands you want to shout out? Anything you’ve been loving you want to give a little love to?

I feel like there are more brands. I will say, as a side note, I went to Dunkin Donuts for the first time in a while because they now have oat milk and it was lovely. Social media influenced me because I love watching TikTok and anytime I see somebody drinking coffee on TikTok, I immediately want some. I generally make my own. I usually have Ripple milk and creamer. That’s my favorite brand for milk because it’s also low carb, low in sugar. Every once in a while, I’ll splurge and have oat milk and I will sometimes have it at home. I’ll have Oatly. I tried Chobani oat milk out of curiosity.

I decided to go to Dunkin Donuts because I got influenced by seeing people drinking it on TikTok. It was good. I had low expectations, but I am from Massachusetts and I am in Massachusetts. It’s a Massachusetts thing to do to go to the Dunkin Donuts drive-through. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks. I finally gave in. I went with my sister and got a good oat milk latte. I brought my own Stevia. I don’t remember what brand of Stevia that was, but I brought it in to sprinkle it in there. The oat milk probably had a little sugar. My sister got the pumpkin spice latte with oat milk. It was not dairy-free or vegan, but she said it was fantastic.

I don’t know. That’s the first thing that came to mind, Jason. Beyond that, I’ve been working on a lot of content from all the amazing brands that supported me during my road trip. We talked about most of them in a previous episode. I would encourage the reader to read that cross-country road trip episode in which I detailed all of the brands and I’ve been still enjoying them. Right before we started, I was eating a Grab the Gold snack bar, which hit the spot. I’m still finishing those up. I’ll be traveling back to Los Angeles. I’m sure I’ll have some more brands to mention in that episode. We’re going to do another cross-country episode. Heads up, Jason. What’s the second half of the cross-country trip in November during a pandemic like? Get ready for that one.

At the end of the day, people were being manipulated in order to benefit the people at the top of the pyramid. Click To Tweet

I want to give a shout out on the non-dairy trip to Elmhurst. I’ve done some cool stuff with Elmhurst at the beginning of 2020 and we flew out to their headquarters in the research lab. I don’t think I’ve talked about this before. I got to go to their large laboratory where they do food science, food development, and recipe testing and got to work with their lead food scientists. It was cool and interesting. I got to learn a lot about flavorings and the chemical manipulation of food. Not that they add chemicals in a negative way, but what food scientists do. I’ve never had a chance to hang with a food scientist for an entire day and learn more about the art and the craft of that profession.

What they did was they sent me a package. Apparently, this came out retail-wise. It’s an ice cream soft serve mix that comes in a tetra pack, which is that cardboardy insulated package that you see most non-dairy milk in. They sent me something called a Zoku bowl. The Zoku bowl is a way that if you don’t have an ice cream maker at home, you take the soft serve mix. They have a chocolate and vanilla from Elmhurst and you get the package and its shelf-stable, but in order to activate it, you need to put it in the fridge. You put this Zoku bowl, which is this metal bowl with a gel inside that gets it super cold. You put that in the freezer and then once the bowl is frozen solid and you have the soft serve mix chilling in the fridge, you pour the soft serve mix into the Zoku bowl, and then you whip it fast and it gives you instant soft serve.

It’s the only thing I’ve ever seen as far as an instant vegan soft serve at home and it’s good. It’s super delicious. I’m going to be posting some videos on my social media about it showing how easy it is to make it. Kudos to Elmhurst for innovating crazy. Their food scientists and their development team did an incredible job, but you can order this online. They have a kit where they will send you both flavors of the soft serve mix, the chocolate and vanilla. They’ll give you the Zoku bowl that they can send to your house and you can have instant soft serve ice cream. It’s totally vegan and dairy-free. I don’t know who else is going to imitate this if it takes off but as far as I know, Elmhurst is the first brand to do this and it’s rad.

Once again, I feel envious. It has been hard being away from Los Angeles because there’s a number of things that are happening there that are not happening in Massachusetts. Another one of them is Good Catch. Have you tried the tuna sandwich at Veggie Grill yet, Jason, or is that still on your list? I’m yearning to do that.

It’s still on my list and I may go and try it because I am going to go to an independent bookstore called Vroman’s in Pasadena that has been in danger of closing. Speaking of analog things, I want to make sure that I support the independent bookstores because it’s critical. I’m going to take the motorcycle to Pasadena to go to the bookstore. I think there’s a veggie grill in Pasadena. Is there? Do you know if that’s true?

I don’t recall. There may be one in downtown LA. I could be wrong though. I haven’t been to one around there that I can think of. There’s a Real Food Daily out in Pasadena. I feel like there has to be a veggie grill out there.

I looked it up. There is. I’m going to go. I’m going to make sure they have it. I’m going to treat myself to the Good Catch tuna melt and I’ll report back with my tasting impressions.

One more shout out simply because why not? We haven’t done many, but I love Goddess Provisions. I’ve mentioned them in previous episodes. Jason, I’m going to say this. Maybe we can find a creative way to do this. They sent me their subscription box to my Los Angeles address instead of my Massachusetts address. I was thinking of asking you to pick it up for me and open it up and maybe do a guest post on my Instagram Stories, a takeover or something. I like to post about them within a few days of getting it. It helps spread the word and I’m an affiliate for Goddess Provisions. I may be requesting your services, Jason, and we can talk about what’s in the box in a future episode, but this last box that they sent me in September, it was sweet.

It was a color therapy box and it included all of these color-related things. I got this cool deck of cards that you get to pull and it tells you which crystal is meant for you based on what you pull from the deck of cards. They sent me a purple agate. It’s like a slice of a crystal. It’s beautiful. Purple is one of my favorite colors. That’s for stability. They sent me this neat bracelet and each of them are color-coded. I got a mood ring, which was a blast from the past, and it was comfortable to wear. I wear it a lot. There’s something comforting about it. My favorite thing in the box was one of those where you hang it in your window. It creates little rainbow projections when the sun hits it in a certain direction. I’m completely blanking on what that’s called. It’s a little crystal sphere. Do you know what I mean, Jason?

No, I don’t.

It’s like a clear piece of crystal that you hang in the window and when the light hits, the prisms will light up all those rainbows. I don’t remember what that’s called. I love that. It’s satisfying. I have it in my window in my little office set up in Massachusetts and it’s got a great tactile sensation. Goddess Provisions has been one of my favorite brands for a long time because you get this special box of goodies every month. I’m a little nervous about having you open up the box on my behalf, Jason, because you’re going to want to steal whatever I get.

They always send amazing things, most of which are crystal related or scents. You love the incense they sent me a few times and sometimes they send snacks or teas. It’s great. I feel sad if the box does indeed go to my Los Angeles address because I’ll have to wait a whole month until I get to experience it. They feel a worthy brand to shout out over and over again to remind you, the reader. If you like this show, you’re probably into spiritual things, crystals, self-care and all of these supportive items that you can have around your house that make you feel good. Goddess Provisions always makes me feel amazing.

 

It’s been a minute since we’ve done this. Do we have any frequently asked queries in the queue?

We have a lot, but time does not allow us to do them now because we can go on major tangents with the frequently asked queries.

We will reserve them maybe for the next episode. We will see. We want to make them juicy though because it’s been a hot minute since we’ve done them. Until we get to that next episode, dear reader, thanks for being with us. If you want to dig into this episode, all of the books, the resources, anything that we mentioned for you to go a little deeper down the research rabbit hole, you can find all of those resources on our website, which is Wellevatr.com. That is our brand that is dedicated to wellness, mental health, emotional support, finding our collective humanity and our purpose, and growing here in this often confusing, chaotic, but wonderful life.

We also have some great free resources and you can follow us on social media. We are on all the major platforms @Wellevatr. I’m looking forward to you coming home, Whitney, so we can devise maybe some interesting new content, maybe shoot some new TikTok videos. I’m sure there’s going to be a lot more once you return physically in person. I miss you and it’s going to be great to have you back. I’m looking forward to that. Stay tuned, dear reader, to our social media channels for more content coming soon. We’ll catch you with another episode.

 

Important Links

*We use affiliate links in our show notes. This means we receive a small sales commission if you purchase an item based on our recommendation.

• The Social Dilemma Documentary: A Closer Look at Social Media and Technology – Previous episode
• Jordan Peterson
• 12 Rules for Life
• This Sunday is the International Day of the Girl World Centric – World Centric article
• Women’s Global Education Project
• Big Brothers Big Sisters
• Ripple
• Oatly
• Chobani
• Going on a Cross-country Road Trip & Pandemic Camping? Here’s What to Bring – Previous episode
• Grab the Gold
• Elmhurst New-Fashioned Soft Serve
• Good Catch Foods
• Veggie Grill
• Goddess Provisions
• @Wellevatr – Instagram

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