If you don’t have any connection or awareness of the everyday pop culture going on around you, then you will lose touch with the current generations.

I don’t feel old because I can still understand what "the yoots" are talking about.

Do I like a lot of the stuff that’s going on? No. But at least I’m not going to be blindsided by the surprise of it all.

Like, the current big thing is teenaged "tradwives" and "SAHGFs" trying to push their lifestyle onto younger girls. There’s like 600 of them out there being like "I’m 19 years old with 2 kids and I’m a stay at home wife/girlfriend. My man is 35. He’s great." And I want to be like "Was he your youth pastor?"

And I have to wonder, if they’re really tradwives, why are they on the Internet? They should be in the kitchen alone cooking. They should be barefoot and pregnant with no money of their own. I mean, that’s the lifestyle they’re trying to talk other non-social media content creators into.

I read that book "Yesteryear," and while I didn’t really enjoy it (it wasn’t for me), I totally got the point that it was making: She presented a faux lifestyle ala Ballerina Farms "Everything is made from scratch using my own two hands and muscles" when really she had a full staff of workers in the background doing all the heavy lifting. And she was very smugly annoyed at "the feminists" complaining about her downhome lifestyle, when really they were complaining that everything she presented as being real was simply manufactured content produced by a millionaire/billionaire and the subsequent money a rich person has to cosplay that lifestyle.

And that’s what a lot of the content today is: Manufactured lifestyle content.

You don’t really live like that. You’re renting a set for a few days to film your content. You are using your children as props to either sell products or to be the products that you’re selling to the public. For money, you are presenting a lifestyle you would not choose to live yourself. You are the face of late stage capitalism.

I am glad that people are going "Ugh" about modern influencers. They are not influencing anything, they are simply repackaged QVC hosts selling stuff from their personal channels and peddling their presumed clout in hopes of getting free stuff and money from rich brands. They are insincere, and I’m relieved that people are beginning to turn away from them and their nonsense.

When it reaches the point that an "influencer" walks into a regular grocery store and acts like she’s found herself on an alien planet… They are out of touch, so why are you letting them choose how you live your life? They have no clue what your life is like, so why would you trust them to choose how your lifestyle should be? "Out of touch weirdo" as the new aesthetic? Why?

And I do blame social media companies for giving these people platforms. Why is their content being pushed by the algorithm? Why are they allowed to monetize their clearly harmful content?

I still remember years ago that story of the 9-year old girl using a straw to drink a whole glass of boiling water because she watched a monetized video that gave her the idea. Adults created content they clearly aimed at children, and the content they produced was dangerous.

There’s those squishy ball toys now that have been very popular recently, and warnings had to be given to not put them in the microwave "to soften them up" because the heat would cause the toy to burst and basically lavalike gel could get all over a person and burn them to death. Why? Because idiots on social media were putting them in the microwave and telling people it’s an easy way to make them squishier.

I don’t believe the Internet should be made safe for children. That’s an impossible thing to do. Unless a website or a blog or a video channel says theirs is child safe content, then it is intended for somewhat mature audiences. People with enough commonsense to know not to put a gel-filled toy in the microwave.

You can’t force people to child safe THE ENTIRE INTERNET because children should not be running around free on the Internet. There should be adult supervision in their lives. And if their parents and guardians would rather force strangers to completely go out of their way to protect children, then those parents and guardians should not have those children.

Like, why are you giving your child free run of the Internet? Why aren’t you supervising their Internet usage and asking questions about their lives and what they’re doing all the time on their phones, tablets, and PCs? Why are you letting them wear headphones so you can’t hear what other people are saying in the game chats and then letting them play with adults you don’t know?

Or why are you creating social media channels where you use your children for monetized content when they are too young to give their consent? Because sure, a child is going to say "Yeah, I’m okay with you putting my image on the Internet especially if it means you’re going to buy me the toys, furniture, food I want" and they’re not going to understand what that means. They have no concept of pedophiles and weirdos and child abductions. All they want is to make their parents happy, so they’re going to say Yes even if they don’t understand what is happening.

I don’t believe children should be on social media. I don’t believe that family channels or channels starring children should be monetized.

Just like I don’t think adults should be allowed to interact with children on Roblox.

For reals: If you create a place for children, pedophiles are going to go there, and it is up to the platform to put security in place that prevents pedophiles from interacting with children.

And I understand that we have reached a point where technology allows adults to make fake voices that sound like children, and that they’re going to use those voices to interact with children. Sickos are gonna sicko, it is what it is.

But there should not be content purposefully aimed at children as the audience without it going through some kind of checks. And I get that creators are bypassing parents by creating content that looks kid-friendly–bright colors, quirky outfits, a loud overacted style–on first glance, which they later excuse by saying "My content was never intended for a child audience."

My dude, you clearly targeted children with your content. Your entire thing is to make non-attentive parents think that you are child-safe content.

That little girl that drank boiling water and died got the idea from a channel that appeared to serve child friendly content. It was dangerous stuff wrapped up in wrapping paper intended for children.

It’s the same way Colleen Ballinger wrapped her content up in such a way that parents were taking their children to her shows. Because she made YouTube videos where she dressed in a child friendly way, put out a character that seemed childlike and thus "for children," and inattentive parents didn’t even take the time to realize that she was a weirdo. On the Internet.

It wasn’t until she sent lingerie to A CHILD that people started going "Hey! I don’t think this lady’s content is intended for children. I think she should be on a watch list because she might actually be a child predator!" (Allegedly.)

So even if government agencies tried to make the Internet as a whole "child safe," it would never work. Because predators are going to predator.

They are out there, 24/7 working on ways to bypass supervision so as to get to their targets. And their targets are children.

The only ones being adversely affected by the laws are going to be normal people living normal lives minding their own business. Why? Because having to send a "live" selfie and a copy of your government issued ID to sketchy social media websites is inherently unsafe.

You can’t operate under the assumption that EVERY PERSON has to sacrifice their safety and their freedom to keep children safe on the Internet. It is the job of the parents and guardians to protect their children.

And of course rebellious kids are going to sneak onto the Internet. It’s the same way rebellious kids are going to sneak out of the house, or smoke weed, or drink alcohol, or do a million other things they’re not supposed to do.

But I’m not the parent of those kids. I should not be FORCED to be responsible for their safety when their parents are right there.

Why are you giving a toddler a tablet with a direct connection to the Internet? Why aren’t you monitoring what they’re doing? Why are they able to click on links or enter video chats with strangers?

Do I think it’s the Internet’s fault that Clavicular entered incel forums and grew up to be a weirdo? No. I blame his parents.

They didn’t realize anything was wrong with him until he was smashing his face with a hammer.

He was able to purchase black market steroids, testosterone, peptides WHILE HE WAS A MINOR.

Like, there are parents out there that are like "My kid is so defiant and OUT OF CONTROL that he watches anime!" and they’re able to send their kid to a 6-week rehab camp that turns out to be a torture farm.

That dude’s parents are rich. They had enough money for him to make expensive purchases off the black market. They could have afforded a nanny. They could have sent him to a live-in private school where he wouldn’t have been able to leave campus to access a PO Box. There were so many options available to them as a wealthy family. They just simply didn’t care to try.

And that’s not my fault.

I’m not responsible for children on the Internet because children should not be on the Internet unsupervised. They should not be clicking random links or hanging out on forums with adults. They should not be forcing themselves into adult spaces to the point that the government is like "We have to close down all these adult spaces because children are there."

Nobody wants children there. Other than the children themselves and the pedophiles that prey upon them.

Just like I cringe away from the 50 and 60 year olds going onto the child dancing app to publicly share their sexual content.

"Why are you doing that? It’s disgusting. You are in public!"

And some of them like to pretend that just like children they don’t understand how the Internet works. "What do you mean people can screencap the things I’m putting out and share it other places? What do you mean they can screen record my sex vids and reupload it other places? How is it technologically possible for my image to be fed into an AI generator to create disgusting content I myself wouldn’t choose to share?!?"

I just want to be like "You aren’t fooling anyone. You are 50 years old. You grew up with the Internet. You were using CDs from AOL to go on the Internet and sext with strangers on BBS forums. You used Netscape. You are not a child. Stop it."

If you’re an adult and you go onto social media, you should have enough awareness to realize that you are in a public venue. Children are innocent and they can’t really conceptualize that there are BILLIONS of people out there and that some of them are dangerous and unpleasant. But an adult?

You can choose not to go onto social media platforms.

You can choose not to target your content toward children.

And you should have the freedom to not worry that children are wandering unsupervised on social media. They are not supposed to be there if they’re under 13 years old.

So I can see those 19 year old tradwives/SAHMs/SAHGFs and their propagandist content and I can tsk and shake my head and feel disgust at them and wonder how many of them are going to regret the lifestyle choices they bought into at such a young age. Then I can move on to other content that I prefer to see. And it’s easy for me, because I’m not their target audience.

They are preying on children. Because they are child predators. The tools of the patriarchy and religious cults that like to scream about the depletion of the domestic supply of (white) infants.

I don’t know for sure that they’re paid influencers given a mission to recruit young girls into a submissive lifestyle. But I do know that there are a lot of weirdos out there screaming pretty loudly about how bad it is that teen pregnancies are on the decline. And now all of a sudden there’s a massive amount of "tradlifestyle" influencers pushing the idea that teenagers should marry adults and start popping out babies before their bodies have fully developed.

And I’ve noticed, with all the pregnancy advocates out there, there’s very little public information about how damaging pregnancy is to the body.

I’ve known people that have lost their teeth because of pregnancy and calcium leeching. I’ve known people that have had lifetime bladder issues because of pregnancy. I’ve known people that had to get a vaginal mesh inserted because their parts were permanently loosened due to pregnancy and it got to the point where the parts were literally falling out.

Pregnancy is dangerous. Birthing a baby can be deadly. And even if you have a good birth and survive, there’s a big chance you’re going to be dealing with a lifetime of bodily harm.

Pregnancy is not a joke.

So those influencers trying to get children to buy into a lifestyle that involves multiple births before they’re 20 years old?

Monsters. Demons in human form. Every single one.

~Harper Kingsley

https://paypal.me/harperkingsley.

https://patreon.com/harperkingsley.

https://ko-fi.com/harperwck.

https://www.youtube.com/c/HarperKingsley.

https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0.
https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog.
https://kimichee.com.

https://harperkingsley.bsky.social.
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/HarperKingsley.

https://www.everand.com/author/262822558/Harper-Kingsley.
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/author/harper-kingsley.
https://books.apple.com/us/author/harper-kingsley/id444850597.

And the common consensus seems to be: If your wedding is sponsored, do not expect to receive gifts from the guests.

I fully understand the sentiment. Like, if I’m going to be an unpaid participant in your sponsored content, I’m not going to buy you anything. Give me money, and I’ll give you a gift. Otherwise? I’m here for the "free" experience, don’t expect anything more from me.

There’s also a bride that is BEGGING for like $4,000 for her dream wedding because she prebooked a bunch of stuff when she only has $100 in her bank account. She’s just fully delusional at this point, expecting everyone who comes to her wedding to give her $500 to "pay for the experience."

I hope one of her friends schedules their wedding like two weeks before hers, and then we’ll see if she’s willing to pay $500 for someone else’s wedding. Or if she just thinks she’s somehow wedding special.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Do not focus your entire future on your wedding. There is still a marriage afterward, and it would suck to start your married life with massive amounts of debt you can’t afford to pay back. It’s stupid.

~Harper Kingsley

https://paypal.me/harperkingsley.

https://patreon.com/harperkingsley.

https://ko-fi.com/harperwck.

https://www.youtube.com/c/HarperKingsley.

https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0.
https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog.
https://kimichee.com.

https://harperkingsley.bsky.social.
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/HarperKingsley.

https://www.everand.com/author/262822558/Harper-Kingsley.
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/author/harper-kingsley.
https://books.apple.com/us/author/harper-kingsley/id444850597.

P.S. "Very Bad Things" is a wedding movie classic. It’s about a group of guys experiencing a bachelor party where things go very badly.

One of the guys–not the groom–"accidentally" kills a sex worker in the hotel suite. So then the guys "have" to get rid of the body and the entire situation is just a complete clusterfuck.

Rather than one of them getting in trouble for drunkenly murdering a woman, the entire group other than the groom and one friend end up dead by the time everything’s all said and done.

And the bride?

Oh, the bride. Cameron Diaz. Oh.

She was entirely focused on experiencing her dream wedding. To the point that on finding out all the terrible things that happened, she wasn’t even phased. She was just like "Clean this mess up. We’re getting married."

And she has her wedding. She forces things through. Nothing’s going to stop her special day from happening.

And then there’s the end scene where she’s married and she’s in a little house with her amputee husband, his paralyzed friend, the two godchildren they’re obligated to raise, and she has all this mess around her and everything to take of… and she just walks out into the street with the full bag of garbage and throws her head back and SCREAMS.

Because she got her "perfect" wedding, she now has to deal with her shitty marriage.

All she had to do was brush her hands of the whole situation and move on with her life, glad that she avoided marrying that trainwreck of a dude who was willing to ruin his entire life for his "friend."

I call the movie a "classic" because it’s old, not because it’s good. It’s a very dark movie, largely unenjoyable. But it really sticks with you. I think it’s the first introduction a lot of people had to the trope of "a prostitute murdered by a bachelor party," where a group of friends have to decide how far they’re willing to go for their buddy.

And then I was thinking about Buddy Holly, and that led to thoughts about what does Buddy Holly actually look like, because I think I’ve only "seen" him in like biopics of other musical artists. "La Bamba" was my first introduction to Buddy Holly, and that’s just a guy pretending to be Buddy Holly in a fictionalized reenactment.

And then I thought about "Great Balls of Fire" where Dennis Quaid played Jerry Lee Lewis, who married his 13 year old cousin played by Winona Ryder. Or I guess she was his second cousin? Anyway you look at it, she was THIRTEEN YEARS OLD and married a 24 year old MAN.

And I know biopics are an easy way to whitewash someone’s favorite celebrity years later, because yeah. "Great Balls of Fire" was an entertaining movie right up until he suddenly married Winona Ryder and then they were moving into their "perfect" house. At which point I was like "What is happening here?"

It’s all grooming. That’s what was happening.

That poor girl met a grown man who was working with her dad, and boom.

Don’t try to gaslight me into thinking it’s a romantic story. She was THIRTEEN. He was TWENTY-FOUR. He’d moved into her home with her family when she was twelve. He groomed her.

And the idea that those kinds of relationships didn’t have a backlash on celebrity careers back in the day the way they would now… Jerry Lee Lewis’ career was completely derailed by his marrying a 13 year old that was revealed to be HIS COUSIN.

Same with Elvis. He hooked up with Priscilla and she was only 14, though he at least waited until she was an adult before marrying her. Or maybe they didn’t have a sexual relationship when she was a teenager… but there was some kind of grooming happening there.

It’s like the idea of rock musicians hooking up with their teenaged fans. I think Liv Tyler’s mom was 15?

It has never been all right. It was simply something that happened, and social media wasn’t a thing back then. So there’d be rumors and small scandals would break out in magazines and newspapers, but people would sweep it under the rug and the majority of people would have no idea it was happening.

And then decades later a biopic gets made and people are like "What a romantic love story!" Because the actors are like 20 years old playing young teens, and if you saw a real 13 year old in that role you’d be like "That’s a baby. Why is that man hugging and kissing A BABY?!?"

I remember really loving "Coal Miner’s Daughter," and I was so young that I didn’t realize how weird it was that he was like 24 years old and she was 14 or 15. I was like "Why is her dad so mad about her dating Doo?" because I was a child and it never clicked in my brain that "THAT IS A GROWN MAN AND A LITTLE GIRL GETTING MARRIED AND HAVING BABIES!!!"

Probably because Sissy Spacek was 30 years old when she played the role. I never really saw her as a child. And in real life, yeah, Loretta Lynn was a child when she met and married a grown man after knowing him for one month.

That’s bonkers, is what it is.

But back in the day, there wasn’t social media and the near instantaneous ability to spread news. Everything was relegated to the slowness of newspapers and whether a news reporter was interested enough to share the story with the public. So a lot of things just never got publicized.

It’s like the Jerry Lee Lewis thing… His child bride story got broke to the public because there was a reporter with a video camera and things ended up on TV. Otherwise he would have been able to spin the story that "She’s 16 years old and we’ve only been married for 2 months" when she was actually 13 and they’d been married for 5 months.

Video definitely did destroy that radio star…

And I can’t help but to think of the sad story of Celeste Rivas Hernandez, that poor girl murdered by D4vd.

She was groomed, assaulted, and murdered by an adult man, and news reporters are calling her a woman. No, dudes: She was a CHILD.

He groomed her from the time she was like 11 years old. Started assaulting her when was like 12. And then murdered her when she was 14 and tried to break it off with him. To protect his career and all the money he wanted to make, he murdered a child.

It really makes you wonder how many children were assaulted and murdered by celebrities in the time before the Internet. Like, how far is a pedophile willing to go to protect their career?

It makes me think of all the biopics I’ve watched and wonder why they went so far out of their way to whitewash the stories. I mean, I get that you enjoy their music and you want other people to be fans of your favorite celebrity… But geesh.

~Harper Kingsley

https://paypal.me/harperkingsley.

https://patreon.com/harperkingsley.

https://ko-fi.com/harperwck.

https://www.youtube.com/c/HarperKingsley.

https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0.
https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog.
https://kimichee.com.

https://harperkingsley.bsky.social.
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/HarperKingsley.

https://www.everand.com/author/262822558/Harper-Kingsley.
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/author/harper-kingsley.
https://books.apple.com/us/author/harper-kingsley/id444850597.

I love my immersion blender. I use it all the time to blend up fruit to make popsicles. I do not regret the purchase, as it is a very handy tool that I regularly use.

If you make soups that require ingredients to be blended hot, an immersion blender is the way to go. If you only have a regular blender, you have to wait for the ingredients to cool down before you can pour them into the blender and puree it, while an immersion blender can go right into the hot soup pot. And bam!

So I do not regret getting an immersion blender.

I regret not getting the attachments when I could have, because I’ve searched all over–including the KitchenAid website–and it doesn’t seem possible to get just the attachments by themselves.

I’m not that interested in the chopper cup, but I would like to have the whisk attachment.

I even tried to see if there were third-party versions, and it’s a no-go. I’m very disappointed.

The KitchenAid immersion blender is a great product. I love mine. I use it all the time.

I am simply heartbroken that there’s no way to get the attachments–or replacement attachments–ANYWHERE. I get that companies use "proprietary connection systems," but come on!

What if my blender head breaks? What am I supposed to do then?

So I suggest that if you get yourself an immersion blender, go for one that has a wide range of replacement parts available. Or if it doesn’t, make sure you get the package that includes all the attachments. Otherwise you’re going to be like me, wistfully watching videos of other people using their immersion blender with the whisk attachment, making eggs and whipped cream and meringue and whatever else you would use a whisk for, all supercharged by a powerful motor.

I don’t know what I would use the whisk for. I just feel like I’m missing out. Even though I love the immersion blender by itself. It’s just the idea that it could be better in some way.

FOMO is a plague.

~Harper Kingsley

https://paypal.me/harperkingsley.

https://patreon.com/harperkingsley.

https://ko-fi.com/harperwck.

https://www.youtube.com/c/HarperKingsley.

https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0.
https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog.
https://kimichee.com.

https://harperkingsley.bsky.social.
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/HarperKingsley.

https://www.everand.com/author/262822558/Harper-Kingsley.
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/author/harper-kingsley.
https://books.apple.com/us/author/harper-kingsley/id444850597.

If it was a standard 6-ring, someone could buy the planner for themself or as a gift, and that would be a planner to last a lifetime. When her store goes out of business, people could have gone to the regular store and bought refills for it, but as it is?

Where the hell are you going to get 4-hole planner paper from? Seriously?