The Bluestocking, vol 310: Pesky Paul Atreides

as people depart either vertically or horizontally

Happy Friday!

Starting on April 3, I have a new series out on BBC Radio 4, called Helen Lewis Has Left The Chat. It runs weekly at 9.30am on Wednesdays, and the first three episodes will be available on launch day on BBC Sounds.

What’s it about? Well, I thought that while there’s been heavy scrutiny of Facebook, Instagram, X and even TikTok, I’ve heard much less about social effects of private social media—WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Slack and so on. But these are places where you can get fired, get married, fall out with your neighbours or be exposed to enormous vats of propaganda and misinformation.

this is so W1A

So I have dived straight into them, uncovering the story of how Westminster fell in love with WhatsApp; how a videogame chat forum became the venue for the biggest leak of military secrets since Snowden, and why no one looks Gary from Number 19 in the eye any more.

Helen

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Japan’s Toddler Superstar (Financial Times)

In the playground on the western edge of Ichinono, a mother watches fussily over a group of children as steel-grey clouds pause between autumn downpours. Two children are on scooters. One is on a wooden swing. A fourth is pedalling off towards the woods on a pink bicycle. None of them are actually real.

The rain begins again and the five figures — along with the dozens of other life-size stuffed dolls positioned around Ichinono and conceived to populate a depopulating village — remain rooted to their spots. 

The roughly 60 dolls, which locals began crafting a few years ago to fill a psychological gap as people depart either vertically or horizontally, now outnumber the 53 flesh-and-blood residents of this dying village north of Osaka. Some are poised in farm activities. Others are in exercise, play or mid-conversation. Most simply lean or loom, their cloth eyes staring fixedly into space as the world takes its indifferent detour around Ichinono.

Well, this is some Children of Men shit right here. Ichinono is not a particularly isolated Japanese village, but it has hollowed out over the last half-century. Now, there is only one child living there, the first born for two decades—as a consequence, he is treated as a tiny emperor.

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“This is just Weird” (Nieman Reports)

Ellie Hall: Royal press offices hold a fair amount of control because they act as gatekeepers to the members of the royal family. We know that they at least attempt to wield influence behind the scenes. Royal reporters have confirmed that the Palace press offices have tried to kill false — and true — stories before publication. We also know that on at least one occasion the Palace has preemptively reached out to media outlets to warn them off reporting a particular story. We also learned this week that someone from Kensington Palace reached out to an airline to get them to delete a rude tweet about William when a rumor about him was trending on Twitter.

We know that the Palace has actively concealed royal news from the press and reportedly even lied to reporters about issues concerning the health of royal family members — in November 2020, we learned that William had contracted a severe case of COVID-19 in April 2020. At the time, veteran royal reporter Robert Jobson tweeted about Kensington Palace’s “appalling” decision to lie about the prince’s health, writing, “KP were asked several times by the media whether Prince William had contracted the virus and were told categorically ‘no.’”

One of the tricky things about reporting on the royals is that they do broker deals with the mainstream British press about what gets published—which you could call a conspiracy if you were so minded, but is an unavoidable asset of access journalism (the same is true of the political lobby). Here, Buzzfeed’s former royal reporter explains the mechanics of the system, and the rise of a Spanish royal influencer called Concha Calleja, who is behind many of the viral stories.

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Andrea Long Chu

Self Nepotism Corner: I wrote a response to Andrea Long Chu’s New York cover story on childhood transition for The Atlantic. “Chu identifies my fellow militants as an insidious force against the affirmative gender-care model. The queer theorist Judith Butler believes that only fascists—and trans-exclusionary radical feminists, or TERFs, whom Butler sees as fascists in disguise—have questions about the new orthodoxy on gender. But Chu is willing to grant us membership in a third category. We are TARLs, or trans-agnostic reactionary liberals. (To my ears, this doesn’t sound as catchy as TERF, but then, I haven’t yet had the newer term screamed at me through a megaphone by a six-foot figure in a balaclava.)”

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Quick Links

1. Ben Dreyfuss is one of the funniest writers out there. Here are 5,000 words on why he hates one particular episode of The West Wing (Calm Down Ben, paid Substack with preview).

2. I can’t stop watching the Trump Sandworm. Seriously, I have said “Pesky Paul” and “Bene Gesserit—naaasty women” about 10 times a day for the last week.

3. “When she made a TikTok comparing two of her daughters, the younger felt embarrassed because Merritt called her the “weird kid at school” in contrast to her older sister, who was labeled “popular” and “bubbly.” But Merritt says they decided not to take the video down because it was doing well and making money through TikTok’s monetization program, which pays creators for qualified views.” Don’t put your daughter on the TikTok stage, Mrs Worthington (Cosmopolitan).

4. Paul Bloom wants to reassure you that not all psychology studies are unreplicable blather: here are three robust findings on happiness (Small Potatoes, Substack).

5. In the 1980s, feminists tried to argue that incest—sibling/parental abuse, really—was more common than was generally thought. Now, DNA registries are proving them right. And unsurprisingly, it’s pretty hard to discover that your dad is also your uncle or grandfather (The Atlantic).

See you next time!