The Bluestocking, vol 319: Screen teens and TikTok therapists

a bout of hyperfixation with romantasy novels so intense it led her to forgo showering

Happy Friday!

. . . and a forewarning the normal newsletter service may be bumpy for the next few weeks, as on Wednesday Rishi Sunak announced that the next British election will be held on July 4. Did I already have quite a busy June planned? Yes I did. Are those plans now a smoking ruin? Yes they are.

For the Atlantic, I wrote a snap response on why Sunak did this ostensibly suicidal thing, including the fact that the major threat on his right flank, Reform, does not yet have a proper ground organization or a healthy list of vetted candidates. And sure enough, Big Patriotic Nigel has decided that he would rather be in America, dodging confetti cannons and standing next to Donald Trump, than trailing round half-full provincial leisure centres and trying to find somewhere that serves food after 9pm.

The biggest problem for the Tories in this election is summed up by this goose meme, which I think I stole from Tom Hamilton:

A few recommendations for interesting politics people to follow on Substack:

Rob Ford

— professor of political science, purveyor of deep dives into polling and results data

Comment is Freed

— the nerdiest commentary on policy challenges that you could ask for

Hard Thinking on the Soft Left

by Emma Burnell, whose podcasts are also enjoyable

Ben Ansell

— another academic, who has dubbed this the Leeroy Jenkins election, for readers of a certain age and gamerness

Tom Hamilton

— former Labour operative who writes about which “attack lines” work and which don’t

Alex Massie

— who seems giddy with excitement already, judging by his latest post, and will be covering Scotland (a key part of this election, since the once all-conquering SNP face a real threat, and winning back Scottish seats is vital to Labour’s hopes of a landslide)

I will also be listening to Politics At Jack and Sam’s, which sets up the week nicely, and reading Stephen Bush’s morning email at the FT, which always has details you can’t find anywhere else.

I’ll be writing about the election for the Atlantic, but if there’s anything too niche and parochial for them, which you nonetheless think someone should look into, leave a comment below and I’ll see what I can do right here. You can also read my two special editions on Keir Starmer:

• Keir Starmer is Ruthless (December 2022)

• What Does Keir Starmer Believe (September 2023), which is the political nerd version of Avengers Assemble

Helen

PS. The second episode of The History of Bad Ideas I just did with David Runciman is legitimately insane: we start off talking about Anton Mesmer, an 18th century German healer who claimed all illness was caused by misaligned fluid in the body but could be cured by “animal magnetism”, and then veer into Rasputin, Tony Blair’s rationale for the war in Iraq, Bismarck, Darwin’s effect on clergymen, the possible genius of Dominic Cummings, mass psychogenic illnesses and whether you can catch Tourettes from the internet, the true cause of IBS, and the effect of the French Revolution. It’s a terrifying insight into the cluttered cupboard that is my brain.

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Being 13 (New York Times, £)

Anna’s friend posted a photo of another friend at an arcade with an astronaut helmet on — “really embarrassing” — and then wouldn’t take it down, which caused an argument between the three friends. Or when another friend sent unflattering photos of Anna to the “popular people” on Snapchat, which made her feel like “people were looking at me kind of weird.”

“It’s drama central,” a counselor at Anna’s school said, about the phone conflicts that make their way into her office.

She has seen fights escalate in group messages (“It’s scary what they say to each other on text”); feelings get hurt when photos reveal who wasn’t included in a social event. Recently, she said, a girl came into her office “shaking” with anxiety, after saying in a group chat that she was “feeling bipolar” — which caused her friends to pounce on her, calling her “insensitive” to people with mental illness. Boys come into her office with this type of stuff too, the counselor said, but not as much as the girls at this age.

This in-depth New York Times article, which followed three 13-year-old girls over a year of their phone and social media use, made me want to scream into a pillow. Let no one slag off teenagers today! They must be ninjas to deal with this level of catfishing, flirting, doomscrolling, petty bullying and general exposure to weird shit. And then there is stuff like nearly breaking up with your best friend over “an incident in the cafeteria about the smell of Anna’s cheese.”

(This recommendation came via Caitlin Dewey’s excellent newsletter, Things I Would GChat You If We Were Friends, which has been going so long it has outlasted the concept of communicating by GChat, that’s how you know it’s good.)

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How Therapists Make Money From TikTok (The Cut)

Though he still sees about eight to ten clients on Mondays and Tuesdays (a full-time therapist would see about 20 to 25 clients a week, he says), [Jeff] Guenther is best known for his straight-talking TikToks about dating and relationships where he’ll refer to his audience as ‘anxiously attached babes’ or ‘relationship girlies’ who are ‘still in their healing phase but horny AF.’ With 2.8 million followers and a dating-advice book coming out this summer, he is perhaps the best example of how to become a therapist influencer by making people feel as though he’s on their side.

[. . .] Like many therapists on TikTok, Guenther is also extremely forthcoming about his own personal struggles in a way that previous generations of therapists might look down upon. He speaks about going no-contact with his mother, also a therapist, and his experience as the “scapegoat of the family.” (His tips for fellow scapegoats: Wear a T-shirt with the words “Official Family Scapegoat” on it; tell your mother she’s “constantly hijacked by shame” before asking her to pass the potatoes.) Elsewhere, the counselor KC Davis of “Struggle Care” recently confessed to a bout of hyperfixation with romantasy novels so intense it led her to forgo showering and basic care tasks; Therapy Jessa has filmed herself crying, while Courtney Tracy, better known as Courtney the Truth Doctor, makes intimate “get ready with me” videos and speaks about what it’s like to have borderline-personality disorder and autism as a therapist.

Why be a therapist and have to listen to people wang on about their boring problems when you could make ten times as much money on TikTok posting unscientific drivel designed to flatter your audience into thinking they are special and unique?

Also, I am no therapist, but everything about this article makes me think I wouldn’t trust these people to sit the right way on a toilet seat, never mind give me advice. The minute my therapist told me that she had stopped showering because she got too obsessed with novels where someone falls in love with a centaur, I’d be like… sorry, should I be giving you the therapy? Your problems seem bigger than mine.

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Quick Links

1. I am balancing my scepticism about some of the AI hype against the disturbing fact that people in the industry do keep quitting over safety concerns (Vox).

2. Regular readers will know that I’m interested in “pretenders,” not least because many cases seem to be driven by trauma or other psychological factors rather than obvious financial gain. New research has turned up a surprising number of people falsely claiming to be intersex (Archives of Sexual Behaviour).

3. An oral history of Four Weddings And A Funeral (Airmail, £).

4. The latest study that Zoe is using to promote its business (personalised nutrition for slightly overweight rich people) used subjects who had an average BMI of 34. Hmm. (The Observer)

5. “Winning where it counts, hitting the Conservatives most where it hurts most, rallying support where it counts - this is what efficient voting looks like. If Labour can repeat these tricks at the general election, they will be on course for a big win even if the polls narrow somewhat, and a massive win if their poll lead holds up.” Were the local election results as bad for the Tories as we first thought? Yes, says Rob Ford (Substack).

6. When I was in Austin, I saw Shane Gillis do stand-up, and he struck me as one of those people whose… I dunno, aura, is just naturally funny. (You know them when you meet them, and it’s rarer among comics than you’d think.) That inspired me to go back to this 2022 New Yorker profile about his cancellation, and rebirth— I particularly like his lack of self-pity. ‘“I don’t want to be a victim—I want to be a comedian,” he told Joe Rogan, the comic and podcast host, last year. “So I don’t want to come on and do stuff where I’m, like, ‘Yeah, it was unfair how I was treated.’ It’s like, no, I get it—I understand why I was treated that way. I said wild shit. I’m going to keep saying wild shit.”’

7. “Towards the end of the session, a sonorously voiced male admirer seemed to encapsulate the general mood of histrionic unreality by imploring the politician: “‘Will you promise us, whatever the result of the Police Scotland investigation, that you will find a continuing role to speak out?’” Kathleen Stock watches the Nicola Sturgeon image rehab tour, as the former SNP leader appears in conversation with Juno Dawson at the Charleston Festival (Unherd).

See you next time! Wish me luck trying not to fall face first into several bags of eg pork scratchings, scampi fries, Twixes etc on the campaign trail.