It was a quiet Wednesday and I was sitting on the couch watching television. I lived on campus at the time, in a crowded cottage that had eight bedrooms. Most unusually, I had the place to myself.

Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga, where I was studying, was big enough to have its own postcode. Hundreds of students, taking our first uncertain steps into adulthood, lived in a ramshackle collection of houses, apartment blocks, and halls, all a short amble from each other. This proximity led to constant noise and disruption.

I was lying on our couch, flicking absently between channels and enjoying a rare moment of solitude, when someone kicked the front door open.

Two good friends of mine (who I will graciously not name) barged into my house. One of them had an old landline phone receiver, the spiral cord still attached, stuck to his ear. He had achieved this by looping sticky tape around his head, over his hair, several times like a halo.

“I’m Telstra Man,” he bellowed while I sat paralysed with confusion on the couch.

He then stalked, with great purpose, to the home phone that was sitting on the coffee table next to the TV. In one big, sweeping movement, he pulled it out at the wall, and dropped it on the floor.

“And this phone has been disconnected.”

They both left as abruptly as they had arrived, through the back of the cottage this time. I sat, stunned, blinking at the swinging door.

I distantly heard this routine being repeated in the cottage behind me, and then the one behind that. Such was the chaos of campus living. I went back to watching television, and took a mental note to ask them what the hell that was all about next time I saw them.

A few days later, they told me they’d had a few drinks and decided to see what huffing glue was like. Telstra Man, we all discovered, was the result. They pulled at least half a dozen phones out of cottage walls before the glue fumes wore off and they came to their senses.

This was a weird story at the time. It feels even more insane being examined in the rear vision mirror, middle age rapidly approaching from the front. I look at my friends now, still mad, but more settled. It’s amazing some of us made it into adulthood at all.

But amongst the chaos – or perhaps because of the chaos – some serious creative talent grew out of that Wagga Wagga campus.

There are many writers, artists, photographers and filmmakers who I am proud to know.

One of those people is Angus Mordant.

In all truth, I wasn’t very close to Angus at university, but I remember thinking he was a self-possessed young guy, someone who sat a bit above above the bedlam. Angus was studying photography, and I’d rarely see him without a very serious-looking SLR camera slung around his neck.

I only had one year at Wagga with Angus, before he packed up and headed to the more sophisticated university scene of Melbourne. But we stayed friends on Instagram and I watched his career unfold as we both grew up. While I was plugging away in Australia’s news media, Angus was climbing the ranks as a photojournalist in America. I always found his pictures to be utterly compelling – Angus has a gift for capturing the drama of a moment.

Things have quietened down a bit for Angus recently. He got married, had a son and started doing more of the work that’s amenable to family life – weddings, portraits and the like.

But in these more tranquil times, Angus started posting a new series of photos. They are, I think, the perfect antidote to the gloomy news about Artificial Intelligence which I have been recently covering.

They’re a collection of pictures taken by Angus’s two-and-a-half-year-old son, Oliver

The story goes that one day Oliver found an old, broken lomography camera in some boxes and refused to hand it back. He ran around their home, pretending to be a photographer, no doubt inspired by his father.

Angus decided to foster this interest, and bought Oliver a cheap disposable camera – he took to it very quickly.

“I only had to show him which way to point it, where to look, and what button to press a couple of times,” Angus said.

What followed was a series of surprisingly beautiful, perspective-shifting photographs.

It’s funny looking at the world through the eyes of a two-year-old. There are the obvious differences, of course. Because Oliver is low to the ground (due to his toddler-sized height) everyday objects like bins, bikes, and shopping trolleys tower in his pictures.

But then there are the more subtle details. Like the soft smiles of adults who are clearly disarmed by a toddler carrying a camera.

And then there are the people who don’t notice Oliver at all.

It’s also an interesting study in what a child finds worthy of attention. Birds and dogs feature heavily. But I find some of the most interesting pictures are of the nondescript detritus of city-life.

What made him capture this moment, I wonder? Was there something about this scene that he liked, or was it just random?

Angus thinks that most of the time, at least, Oliver is making considered choices. .

“If he’s in his stroller, he’ll say ‘go this way, go that way’, point to what he wants to photograph,” Angus says.

Like a lot of artists, Oliver doesn’t care much for people interfering with process. He’ll ignore Angus’s suggestions on subjects, and is emphatic about when he will (and will not) take his camera out on an excursion. There’s no reasoning with genius.

Angus doesn’t interfere much with the final product, either. There’s no cropping of photos or straightening of horizon lines. He’ll occasionally bring the exposure up or down a bit, but only to make the subject of Oliver’s attention visible.

Because the photos are being taken on a disposable camera, they have a fuzzy dream-like quality. I’d call them nostalgic, but this seems like an ill-fitting emotion to impose on the work of a toddler.

In fact, it seems pretentious to impose any deeper meaning onto these photos at all. Part of what makes them so remarkable is their guilelessness. They’re a very pure form of art, when you think about it. Made in the vacuum of pure experience, not yet impacted by the expectations or pretensions of adulthood.

In the time of artificial perfection, I find them to be life-affirming. Oliver is so young he can barely walk, but already he’s compelled to make.

And in the smallest of ways, his art has managed to alter the world. In writing this story, I’ve spoken with Angus for the first time in over fifteen years. I’ve learnt about his life, his work, and his family. His son’s photos were a bridge to human connection. More than ever, moments like these matter.

Art is our inalienable birthright, intrinsically linked to our humanity.

Thank you, Oliver, for the timely reminder.

Oliver has an Instagram page which I highly, recommend. You can also give his dad Angus a follow here.

It’s like they’re live blogging an old football match that’s being repeated on TV.

Specifically they write: “Christ has risen!” with a jaunty exclamation of surprise. What, really? That bearded socialist who was crucified a couple of thousand years ago? Back from the dead, you say? Well, I didn’t see that coming.

For many people, this is a day of reflection. I certainly find myself wondering whether Jesus would bother performing the same miracle today, were he amongst us now. More likely, I think, he’d wake up, look at the news on his phone for a bit, and decide to stay inside the cave where it’s nice and calm.

Could you blame the guy? It’s so bleak out there. Just look at all the atrocities that are being performed in His name.

I am, of course, referring to the proliferation of weird hot cross bun flavours.

This is a topic which I have unusually strong opinions on.

One time, when I was producing ABC radio at Easter, we were so short on stories the host gave me a whole talk break with him in the studio. I spent that time slagging off people who toasted instead of microwaving their hot cross buns.

I was surprisingly venomous. I was unsurprisingly not invited back into the studio.

But my thoughts on whether microwaving or toasting is the superior bun heating method are moderate compared to how I feel about the novelty flavour crisis. I might not be religious, but I still think it’s ungodly to sell Dorito-flavoured hot cross buns.

And yes. I know their purpose isn’t to be pleasing to taste — they exist to start conversations. To create cheap marketing hype. I’m also aware that, by writing this silly little article, I have fallen into their infuriating trap.

But if someone starts running through the street naked, clucking like a chicken, and lobbing eggs at strangers, am I supposed to just politely ignore them? Say, ‘well, they only want attention’ and walk on unaffected? That seems wholly insufficient. There is no satisfying response to behaviour that’s intentionally socially abhorrent .

So, I think, sometimes it’s better to acknowledge such matters, rather than hoping they blips out of existence through sheer apathy.

Frankly, I am always a bit appalled by food that’s designed, first and foremost, to create social media fuss. That applies to strangely flavoured chips, biscuits, or milk. Food is meant to be eaten and, ideally, enjoyed.

There is something about turning it into a marketing ploy, or one-off novelty purchase, that I find to be a touch dystopian.

But nothing is more horrid in both theory and execution than Dorito and jalapeño flavoured hot cross buns. When the four horsemen of the apocalypse come riding in, this is surely what they’ll have packed in their lunchboxes. What a cursed combination of pastry and ultra-processed junk food.

Appalling. Unforgivable. A sign of the end times.

Yes. Back into your cave, Jesus. Like an unyeasted hot cross bun, it’s best today you do not rise.

Subscribe now

She then takes a sip of her cocktail — it’s extravagantly fancy. Filled to the brim with ice, decorative flowers and luridly-coloured alcohol. I had opted for a martini.

I nod, but I’m not sure I agree. How could men possibly know what they’re in for with Amy?

She is, of course, gorgeous. Young, tanned, blonde, big lips, and an enviable figure. We’re socially conditioned to assume these traits come at the expense of intelligence. But Amy is no fool.

A few years ago, bored by the monotony of her work, Amy decided to make some cash on the side. A friend recommended that she tried using a website called Seeking Arrangement (now just called Seeking). For women, the service is free. Men are the ones who have to pay.

And pay they do.

For $110 a month you’ll get full access to the website.Then if you match with a woman you like, and come to a mutually acceptable agreement, you’ll pay to date her. In almost all instances, that will mean sex. But you might also be up for nice dates, shopping allowances and a weekly upkeep. It depends how deep your infatuation and pockets run.

I ask Amy to let me have a go on the app, she passes her phone across the table.

I hold my drink in one hand and her mobile in the other as I swipe through the profiles of prospective suitors.

An older man, in his 60s perhaps, sits in a garden. He’s wearing a faded blue polo shirt. He isn’t smiling in the photo, and has deep lines etched in his face, like someone who has spent a lifetime working in the sun. It’s obvious that he’s snapped a selfie in his backyard. I swipe no.

The next profile belongs to a young man. I think he could be a tradie, stocky, tanned, and wearing high-vis in a couple of his photos. He also uses unsmiling selfies, but has at least has one group shot with friends. They are an amorphous herd of nuggety men with buzz cuts.

I keep swiping.

“None of these people look like they have money,” I say.

Not that money looks the same for everyone. Custom-made suits, yachts, and trips to the Amalfi Coast is just one expression of wealth – the kind we see in magazines and on television shows. There’s also corporate money, small business money, trust fund money, drug money, new money, dwindling old money – each with their own specific tells.

In my many years of working in the media, and generally courting interesting people, I’ve encountered them all.

But these guys, who I’m flicking through quickly on someone else’s dating app, just look like ordinary men. The kinds of blokes you’d swipe ‘no’ to on Hinge, Tinder or Bumble. Maybe that’s why they’re here.

“There are a lot of time wasters,” Amy says. “You’ve got to spend a lot of time filtering them out.”

That happens in the form of long online conversations. There’s no meeting for coffee or chatting in person — that would come at a cost. Amy is clear with her expectations.

She sends them a list of services, and how much they cost. ‘You can take me out for dinner for this much. You can sleep with me for that much. If you want me to stay the whole night, it will cost you this’.

Clear communication is important in any relationship.

I went on a few dates with a very rich man once. We matched on Tinder and struck up a conversation about cars. In one photo he was sitting in a Porsche — I assumed it was a rental, or belonged to a friend — but I didn’t ask and he didn’t say otherwise. His name was James.

James and I had loose plans for a casual Sunday date, but then both of us got extremely drunk the night before. We texted back and forth, threatening to cancel, laughing about our shared predicament. Eventually, we bravely decided to go for a walk.

We met at the Bondi headland and then ambled south along the ocean path. I was pasty, puffy and sweating last night’s booze through my pores. James didn’t look much better. But the conversation was lively and fun anyway, so we decided to keep things going and get dinner.

“Have you ever been to Mimi’s?” he asked as we arrived at Coogee.

I hadn’t, but said it sounded good. I assumed we would be going to a cheap-and-cheerful local pub. In fact, it was one of Sydney’s more expensive restaurants. It didn’t take me long to realise. The people at the tables around us were well-dressed, and had clearly been preparing for a special meal out.

We were just two supremely hungover pieces of shit.

I expected to be politely but firmly escorted from the premises. The woman at the door immediately recognised who I was with.

“You’ve been here before, haven’t you?” she asked.

“I have,” James replied with a slight smirk. “I’d like a table with a view,”

“That won’t be a problem,” she replied. “We’re just finishing up with lunch service, but let me take you to the bar while you wait. We’ll send the sommelier over.”

Within moments, an elegant young man arrived and presented a different menu to the one that was on the table. James chose a bottle of wine towards the back of the pages and by the time the table was ready, I was once again drunk.

Realising that splitting the bill would leave me destitute, I asked James to choose what we would eat. We ate “caviar bumps” (served on the flesh between my thumb and forefinger as though it were cocaine – a crass bit of Eastern Suburbs food theatre), several plates of exotic entres, and steak that was so expensive it warranted a personal introduction by the head chef.

By the end of the night, we had shared more than two bottles of wine, a large amount of food, and I was seeing double. James — who it transpired had made a fortune from a cyber security company — was openly vaping at the table.

But no one was stopping him. Perhaps, because the bill came out to be over $6,000

I would price the subsequent two-day hangover as around $12,000 of pain.

I only met up with James a few more times after that – I knew it wasn’t going to be a forever thing. He was a busy man preoccupied with his own, complicated life.

But even if it did work out, how could anyone feel comfortable with such a power imbalance?

James was younger than me, in his early 30s, and rich in a way I struggled to comprehend. Meanwhile, by all measures, I am a fairly ordinary person.

I did ask once why he didn’t date beautiful influencers – we both lived in Bondi at the time, where they are a plentiful resource.

“I hate gold diggers,” he’d told me. “They just ask me to buy them designer bags all the time.”

Clearly I was out of my depth. When James had been on a holiday in Japan, he asked if I wanted anything. I requested a stupid souvenir and was thrilled when he gave me a large dumpling-shaped pillow.

I should have asked for a Louis Vuitton handbag.

That was one of my last conversations with James. The momentum stuttered, the text messages slowed, and then eventually stopped altogether. I had been a brief tourist in his life, but wasn’t sad to go home.

When it comes to relationships, I ask very little, expect slightly less, and am still often disappointed. Sometimes I think I prefer it to the horror of truly being known. Cracking open one’s sternum, prying apart the ribs, and revealing your vulnerable inner core and all its desires is surely an act of madness.

Does Amy have such qualms? Certainly not when it comes to asking for material things.

She’s been flown to exotic locations for all-expenses-paid holidays. She’s drunk champagne as old as me on private terraces with ocean views. I suspect at least one of Amy’s men has sent himself broke – or close to it – trying to please her.

We finish our dinner, Amy and I. We then meet another group of friends at a bar. When it’s late enough that the busses aren’t running, I decide to go home and sleep.

Amy gets an offer to see a man – she’ll get a thousand dollars for spending a couple of hours with him.

“My missus is going soon,” he’d texted her. “I’ll send a car when she’s gone.”

We both head outside together to wait – Amy insists on paying for my Uber home. At first I refuse her offer, but she eventually wins by biting me on the arm.

“Let me do something nice for you!” she shouted at me while I laughed.

The next day I wake up with a bruise on my arm and a lingering anxiety. Was Amy okay? I reached for my phone and fire off a text message.

“How did you go?” I ask.

I don’t have to wait long for a response.

“Great. Got a grand for chatting shit for an hour and a half,” she replied. “No sex just kisses.”

Are all relationships transactional? Is love something that can be put on scales, measured and priced? I’d like to think that’s not the case. But if they are, one thing’s certain – some people are better at negotiating terms than others.

Unsurprisingly, he was feeling a bit nervous. It had been almost a decade since they’d spoken. To help himself calm down, he decided to go for a swim in the park’s pond. It was chilly – Amsterdam often is – but he didn’t mind. He’d done this hundreds of times before.

So this man stripped off all his clothes, and jumped into the frigid water completely naked. After doing a few laps he was feeling much more relaxed. His attention then turned to an ornamental fountain spout in the middle of the water.

Now, many times in the past this dude had used the gushing water jets to thoroughly clean his bung hole.

Yes, inside and out. Yes, in public.

Because he had time, he decided he would make use of the fountain and give himself a good pond water clean. So he positioned himself over the nozzle and waited.

What he didn’t know was that the council had recently decided to up the fountain’s water pressure. Quite a bit, actually. You know those videos where people use pressure washers to carve through dirt on old concrete? I imagine what he experienced was similar to putting one of those between your cheeks.

At this point you might think you want to stop reading. I implore you not to. This is leading somewhere, I promise.

So when the fountain went off, the water cut through this fellow’s intestines with little more resistance than a finger poking a hole through a freshly baked muffin.

He was now facing a very serious medical emergency. Bleeding and in tremendous pain, he somehow managed to drag himself to the shore. When his son arrived, his first words to him after almost a decade were: I need to go to a hospital.

So much for making a good impression.

He was taken to the emergency department and quickly received surgery to repair the damage. The risk of infection was incredibly high, but he refused antibiotics. Remarkably, he survived with only a gnarly scar on his stomach.

The name of the madman who positioned his puckered anus over a waterspout in a public fountain and skewered his own intestines?

Wim. Hof.

No, really. I’m serious.

Wim Hoff, for those who don’t know (and sorry if that’s you – that reveal would have really lost its punch) is the man who popularised ice baths and cold water swimming. He believes extreme cold exposure can be used as a treatment for all kinds of ailments from autoimmune diseases to depression.

So is there actually something to this cold exposure malarky?

The science says it’s plausible, but the studies backing it up are patchy. At the very least it probably won’t hurt, assuming you don’t have any kind of heart problems or arrhythmia. Does it at least feel good then? I’m embarrassed to admit I can personally answer this question.

There was a time I would regularly turn up to Coogee Beach a bit before 6am on Sundays, and jump into a tub filled with water and ice bought from a servo. For two minutes I would sit shivering and in agony, trying to ignore the feeling of my hands and feet cramping. This did not feel good.

What I did enjoy was getting out. I’d run into the ocean which then felt comparatively warm, almost like a bath. It was a pleasant rush of endorphins and relief. Akin, I would say, to punching yourself repeatedly in the head and then suddenly stopping.

The other thing Wim Hof is known for is his breathwork technique. He teaches a peculiar method which involves hyperventilating and then holding your breath for a really long time.

Proponents claim it results in a high which rivals drugs and alcohol. I, not a proponent of breath work, would say they’re probably not drinking or taking enough. People also say it boosts mood, mental clarity, and can help with chronic pain.

Wim Hof also uses this technique to swim underwater for long periods of time. If this is something you’d like to learn, you can go to his expensive two-day workshops (they cost around $3,000 AUD, don’t include accommodation and will give you 4-hours of group time with the man himself).

It sounds like a bit of a grift to me, but who knows? Maybe Wim Hof is onto something. No one said the universe will withhold its secrets from people who perforate their own bowels with pond water.

But this I do know for certain: hyperventilating and then holding your breath underwater is a very good way to die. There have been a number of drownings associated with Wim Hof’s practice. Whether you’re in a bath, shower, pool or ocean it’s really best to just breathe normally.

If, given all of the above, you’re still drawn to the Ice Man and his philosophies, that’s fine.

But I do ask this of you: everytime you consider following a suggestion made by Wim Hof, I first want you to imagine his quivering hole positioned above a public fountain’s nozzle. Then I want you to take a few deep breaths (if you are not near a body of water feel free to hyperventilate) and ask yourself, is this the man I want to take health advice from?

What happens next is up to you.

Subscribe now

They were doing the “let your taste decide” blind test. This involves pouring some Coca-Cola into one cup, Pepsi into another, and then having the participant nominate which drink they think tastes better. As an added bonus, the booth they’d set up at my school gave kids who chose Pepsi a free hat.

I was thrilled. Finally, a test I was guaranteed to ace.

As it happened, I was a Coca-Cola sommelier; a child with a sophisticated palate, honed through the consumption of untold litres of soft drink provided by over-indulgent grandparents. Yes, this talent came at a cost. I was a fat child and, were it not for modern dentistry, a few of my teeth would be so hollow they’d whistle in the wind like a flute.

But I didn’t care about those things back then – and why would I? There was a free hat on the line.

So I waited my turn and eventually got my chance to have a go at the taste test. I, a learned expert, was immediately able to identify the inferior, insipid sweetness of Pepsi. The hat was mine.

The Coke versus Pepsi taste test stunt first started in 1975 and has since been well studied as both a marketing phenomenon and an insight into human flavour preferences. People are far more likely to choose Pepsi in a blind test. The trick, it’s been proposed, is that people prefer the sweetest of the two beverages in small samples.

This is where the premise of the experiment is flawed. A small shot of fizzy drink isn’t the same experience as consuming a whole glass.

Which brings me to AI.

Yes, I’m sorry. It’s another article about the AI slop mudslide that’s coming to suffocate us all.

This time I’m hacked off at The New York Times, which last week published the quiz: Who’s a Better Writer: A.I. or Humans?

It’s a smug little article. In it, the author pits contextless human and AI-written paragraphs against each other, and then asks the reader to choose their preferred passage. The ‘gotcha’ moment is that, when averaged out, 54% of people choose AI. More than 86,000 people have taken the quiz.

This is, of course, a flawed test in a billion ways. It’s like asking who the better architect is after showing someone bricks from two different buildings. Or which car is faster from the shape of the door handle.

As one person in the article’s comments observed, this test has many parallels to the Pepsi challenge – AI writing is fine in small doses, but it falls apart over many paragraphs, pages, and (heaven forbid) chapters.

But even with the cards stacked in favour of AI, I could tell in almost every instance which phrases came from human writers.

AI has a number of tells. They’re not foolproof, of course. Perhaps the most annoying part of this new technological world is being forced to feel like Abigail Williams in The Crucible, whipped into a frenzy, shouting hysterical accusations.

Only these days people are openly cavorting with the devil. It leaves its mark, sure enough. For whatever reason, AI currently has an enormous boner for stating what something isn’t in order to frame what it is.

Here are the examples from the New York Times, with the relevant sentences highlighted:

Who knows why this pleases the computer’s programming, but it does. You’ll see it everywhere now that I’ve pointed it out. It’s in Instagram videos, news articles, ad scripts and essays. It comes out all the time, like an involuntary tic.

But having said that, it doesn’t surprise me that people prefer AI in short doses. Above all else, it prioritises clarity. Those short, punchy sentences get you to your chosen destination in the most efficient way possible. It’s a march. Predictable, and boring.

When writing is done right, it’s a dance. But like differentiating between Coke and its inferior cousin Pepsi, you need good taste to tell the difference.

Subscribe now

In all honesty, I didn’t want it to come to this.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll enjoy the show. But I was hoping that market forces would prevail. That the outward hostility of the shopping experience would push people away from the most evil duopoly since those creepy twins in The Shining.

But that’s not the case. So let’s go medieval-style with some public shaming. Say what you will about the ethics of using humiliation as a form of punishment, you can’t deny its efficacy. Probably. I’m no historian, but I am a woman who likes to see sturdy boots in deserving raisins.

And surely there are none more deserving than the slugs running the major supermarkets?

If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, my loathing of Colesworth won’t be new information. Personally, I’d like to see both brands sent to the depths of hell, where they’ll be barbecued like $12 chooks. I hate the self-service machines. I hate their unfounded accusations of theft. I hate being recorded and tracked like a criminal.

I’m not the only one. Upsettingly, I think the increasing rate of retail worker abuse is testament to that.

Of course any from of staff harassment is unacceptable. But I believe it’s also a sign that the shopping experience has become so unpleasant it’s pushing normal people over the edge.

In fact, it’s gotten so bad that last year Victoria introduced retail legislation “that brings serious consequences to those who do harm and assault retail workers.” New South Wales and Western Australia already put similar laws in place a couple of years prior.

While I agree with the principle, I would like to see much tighter legislation for enormous, unavoidable corporations that impinge on the everyday dignity of Australians. Corporations that inflate food prices, replace workers with machines, make shopping an ordeal, and then post billion-dollar profits.

Specifically, I would like to see legislation that says every time Coles or Woolworths do something unconscionable, it’s one boot in the gooch for every person involved.

You’d better start tightening your shoelaces. There are at least two bootable offences I have become aware of this week.

The most alarming story comes from the Coles camp. For a couple of years now, they’ve been using the cartoonishly evil company Palantir Technologies in their stores. These guys are in the business of surveillance. Essentially, they pull data from thousands of sources — government entities, social media, mobile phone networks and the like — to make sophisticated, traceable profiles of civilians. Recently, they won a $30m contract to work with America’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, otherwise known as ICE.

To the credit of Coles, this extremely troubling partnership hasn’t been hidden from the public. It was announced in 2024 and given somewhat cursory coverage by the press. The story is only gaining traction now because GetUp! has decided to run a campaign against Palantir being used in Australian shops.

This reminds me, in a manner, of the dystopian movie Soylent Green. The twist in that film was that the food everyone was eating was made from humans. “Soylent Green is people!” the protagonist Detective Robert Thorn famously shouted in the final scenes.

It’s an absurd premise. If a company wanted to sell Soylent Green today, its ingredients would be listed right there in the press release. There’d be some mild outrage, probably. Maybe a couple of half-arsed think pieces penned on the ethics of eating humans. But soon enough everyone would just move on.

If you see anything enough — preposterous corporate evil included — it eventually becomes passé.

And let’s be clear. These guys are evil. Their name is a riff on evil. If Palantir sounds familiar, it’s likely because you’ve read The Lord of the Rings. Sauron, the bad guy, used an ancient, corrupted “seeing-stone” to view distant events. They were called palantíri.

You might want to take a generous view of this name choice. That an all-seeing orb is a reasonable name for a surveillance company. That the stones themselves weren’t evil, they just fell into the hands of evil. Or that it was a funny coincidence, because obviously no one would want to align themselves with the very unlikeable Sauron.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Peter Thiel — the man who co-founded PayPal and Palantir — hasn’t precisely expressed ideological alignment with the orc-tycoon, but he’s come close. In a 2011 interview Thiel spoke of his admiration for The Last Ringbearer — a Russian book written in the late ’90s that reimagines Tolkien’s universe.

In that novel, “Gandalf’s the crazy person who wants to start a war,” Thiel explained. “And Mordor is this technological civilization based on reason and science. Outside of Mordor, it’s all sort of mystical and environmental and nothing works… it’s really clever.”

Of course a tech bro would enjoy that edgelord contrarian spin on a literary anti-war masterpiece.

Military-grade surveillance technology recording your face and movements while you shop for bog rolls is deeply troubling. But what makes it particularly upsetting is that we aren’t told precisely what they’re doing with this collected data. Are there computers with images of my face and my shopping habits saved on them? Is that information staying in Australia? Being moved offshore? How can I find out?

“Haha, fuck you,” is the answer.

Perhaps you find this situation so enraging that you’re now motivated to shop at the only other viable alternative in town, Woolworths.

Well, get ready for this shitfuckery to greet you at the door:

So now your shopping trip begins with a hazing ritual straight out of the Masonic playbook.

Copping a paddling to my thighs and hips is annoying. But it’s a whole lot worse if you’re very short or, say, in a wheelchair. But Woolworths isn’t in the business of giving a shit about these things, so it’s the turkey-slap gauntlet for them.

We now have two options. Either we accept this escalating behaviour until we’re being cavity searched and chemically deloused before entering stores, or we demand change.

We press for the government to tighten our privacy laws, break up duopolies or — my personal pick — put in place laws that mean guilty executives will get kicked in the gooch.

That, I think, would mean a better world for all.

That’s the tricky thing about the modern world, isn’t it? Living does come at a cost. We can’t just be happy wads of pond scum, chilling out in stagnant water, making food out of light or whatever. No, that’s a privilege reserved for cyanobacteria.

Your stupid ancestors had more complex energy needs, and now we all have to go to offices to purchase time on this increasingly hot, troubled sphere.

It’s tough out there, isn’t it? But I’m here to help. Here are some clever money-saving hacks to help get you through the week.

1: Get a side hustle!

In Les Misérables Fantine found the time to sell her hair while being a prostitute and managing fatal tuberculosis. So what’s your excuse?

These days you don’t even have to wait for your hair to grow a suitable length to satisfy the poxy wigmaker — you can just hop on your phone and start working for Uber or Uber Eats (depending on your level of desperation).

Assuming you don’t get killed on your little scooter while delivering McDonald’s to some hungover fuck in the pouring rain, you could probably make enough extra money to eat out every now and then.

And if you don’t…

2: Stop eating out!

Want a break from whatever bulk-made gray fucking slop you’ve been gobbling up like a depressed little piggy? Tough!

Variety might be the spice of life but you, my friend, are a long way from the Silk Road.

It’s frozen vegetables, some kind of minced meat, and the sense that life isn’t really working out how it’s supposed to.

I mean, weren’t we meant to derive some pleasure from existing? Isn’t enjoying a good meal a fundamental tenet of humanity? What else will we eventually have to sacrifice? When will it be enough?

Don’t despair. Instead, have you instead thought about…

3: Buying stuff in bulk!

Why you can buy all kinds of things in bulk! Toilet paper, washing liquid, hand soap. It turns out all the most boring purchases you make in a week can be bought in quantities much larger than you actually want them.

So Instead of spending $15 on detergent you need to keep your clothes clean and hygienic, you can spend $25 and have it last almost twice as long.

Then, every time you go to use the washing machine and wrestle with the heavy, unwieldy bottle, you can ruminate on how you were forced to buy more detergent than is actually practical in order to save money.

But it’s not really helping, is it?

Bulk detergent won’t help you retire well, or buy a nice house in the suburbs. You’re just nibbling at the crust of an enormous shit sandwich you’re still pretending is a sausage sizzle.

It’s getting harder to keep the pretence up, but even harder to address the problem. You’re scared. If you look at the sandwich, really know the largess of that turd, you might not ever be able to take one more trepidatious bite again.

But, God help us all, the crust is disappearing. The turd is getting ever closer to your lips. What next, you ask?

What next?

Who knows, haha! But I sure hope I’ve given you a few fun tips which will help make the next rent payment to your rich landlord a little easier.

Have fun being thrifty!

Sure, most people would interpret that level of intimacy as a relationship. Sure, that sense of loyalty is what helps fund brand deals. But if you feel connected to a stranger on Instagram or TikTok or whatever flavour online tar pit you prefer, you’re a big weird loser with big weird loser energy.

Or so we’ve been told. I’ve never seen much of a problem with it.

If the hallmark of a parasocial relationship is that the affection is one-sided, there are plenty of things in my life which qualify. I’ve been known to get emotionally attached to book characters, house plants, and particularly nice stationery. I’ve felt tremendously invested in the lives of strangers, real and imagined, and find this a fairly normal facet of humanity.

But even I can admit that the emotions I feel towards a sad baby monkey in a Japanese zoo might be a little… intense.

If you’ve avoided this story, good. Click off now. Go and look at the sky, breathe in the last of the summer air, and live in a naive, but happy world where all baby monkeys are loved by their mothers and embraced by their extended monkey families.

For those of you brave enough to stay, the story goes that a macaque named “Punch” – who lives in Japan’s Ichikawa City Zoo – was abandoned by his mother. It’s impossible to say why. Perhaps she wasn’t ready for the pressures of motherhood, or maybe her son was particularly annoying. I try not to judge mothers – monkey or otherwise – and will speculate no further.

Either way, Punch was left to navigate the intricacies of monkey politics all on his own. Supported by the zoo staff, sure, but not given the love a little baby monkey needs. This might have been a kind of sad, kind of interesting, but otherwise unremarkable story, had the zoo not given Punch a stuffed orangutan toy from Ikea for comfort.

Holy fucking shit it’s so fucking tragic. You have no idea. Oh my God. I could cry thinking about it.

The internet is filled with videos of this sad, abandoned monkey, dragging around its battered maternal substitute, and jumping into its limp arms whenever it’s scared, or chastised by its peers.

That’s something that happens quite a lot. Usually a macaque baby would be protected from the worst of the bullying by its mother, you see. But Punch doesn’t have a mother. It has a toy orangutan. The whole situation is a complete melodrama. It’s like The Notebook, Sophie’s Choice, and The Green Mile had a three-way love child which they then collectively abandoned.

Suddenly, people around the world are incredibly invested in the trials and tribulations of little Punch.

Honestly, the macaque PR team should really step in here. But they seem to be completely unaware of how bad bullying an achingly-cute orphan looks. Give it a few more millennia of evolution, and they’ll likely see the error of their ways. But right now, the greater monkey community are biting and slapping with seemingly no comprehension of the reputational damage they’re causing themselves.

It’s impossible to know about Punch without being invested in his well being. With all the bad news out there at the moment, we need Punch to be happy.

This wonderfully-measured comment from Reddit sums it up nicely: “I’ve only known Punch for a day and a half, but if anything happened to him, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself”.

Fair.

Having the already-tenuous mental health of thousands, perhaps millions, of people is a lot to ask of one motherless monkey. Especially considering that, for all we know, he is inherently unlovable. We can’t speak macaque. Maybe he’s a racist. Maybe he deserves the occasional beating. There’s a chance we should be trusting the monkeys on this one.

But it doesn’t matter. Everyone wants him to find love and acceptance, but in a manner which somehow also heals our abandonment wounds by proxy.

The ferocity of people’s emotions has clearly spooked the zoo staff. They didn’t precisely ask for people to calm their tits – that’s a bit direct for the Japanese style of communication. Instead they released the following statement:

“Punch has been scolded many times and has learned how to socialise. While Punch is scolded, he shows resilience and mental strength. We would like you to support Punch’s effort rather than feel sorry for him.”

Finding ways to celebrate effort in times of adversity, even when it doesn’t yield results, is a nice sentiment. But trying to get the internet to manage their collective emotions?

They’d be better off trying to reason with the macaques.

Subscribe now

My permanent scowl didn’t bother me too much. I thought it went hand-in-hand with being ‘intimidating’ – a common accusation I take as a compliment. Unfortunately, the thing about constantly glaring is that it causes wrinkles. I wasn’t even 30, but that vertical line etched between my eyebrows was becoming quite pronounced.

I learnt nice and early that one of the many joys of being a writer is that it gives a person licence to take part in all kinds of self-indulgent activities under the guise of them being ‘for a story’. So I got the injections and pitched an article to Cosmopolitan titled: ‘Botox Ruined My Resting Bitch Face’.

They accepted the pitch and offered me $600 for 800 words. I excitedly started writing.

I would broadly describe the tone of the subsequent piece I wrote as: ‘ageing is abstract and I’m going to be young FOREVER’.

“The wrinkle between my eyebrows is, at the moment, faint. I’m only 27 after all,” I said. “But when I peer into my crystal ball, I see a face that looks like elbow skin and makeup that’s applied like spackle.”

Hey – young Stephanie – you insufferably smug prick. How about you give your future self a helping hand and wear some fucking sunscreen for once? No? Okay. Keep making jokes about wrinkles and I’ll see you in 9 years.

I continued with two lies in one short sentence.

“I’m not particularly vain, but I am pragmatic.

“I have a problem, Botox is a relatively safe solution. As an added bonus, if you get it early enough, it can prevent more wrinkles from popping up. After all, you can’t crease what you can’t move. So why should I wait for mother nature to ravish my face when I can preemptively spit in hers? Sure, my body’s a temple, but if there are cracks in the walls aren’t I allowed to fix them?”

Ravish. My. Face. Jesus Christ.

I went on to write about how, after the effects of the Botox had settled, I felt as though I’d lost the ability to use make facial expressions. Like the entire emotional range from ‘irked’ to ‘very fucked off’ had suddenly been lost to me. The funniest line in the entire piece couldn’t even be attributed to me.

“I complained about not being able to show my emotions to my mother, who was against the Botox from the outset. She shrugged unsympathetically. “Well, I suppose we’ll just have to get you a tail so we know what you’re feeling.”

I proudly sent the article in, along with some before and after photos I’d taken on my iPhone.

I thought very little of the piece until a couple of months later I was tagged in a Facebook post. A friend had picked up the latest issue of Cosmopolitan at an airport and seen my article.

It turns out the sub editors had decided not to run with my proposed title ‘Botox Ruined My Resting Bitch Face’. Oh no.

They’d chosen something a bit stronger.

‘BOTOX RUINED MY FACE’, it said. The pictures I’d quickly snapped in my bedroom dominated a two-page spread.

I remember seeing the article and being hit with a wave of shock. Was my face RUINED? Did it LOOK ruined? I thought it was okay??

Looking back, I hope this was a deliberate attack by a sub editor in her mid-30s who (like me today) didn’t care much for my tone.

Thankfully, it didn’t take long for me to find the whole thing to be very funny. And hey, $600 is $600. I would have accepted more slanderous things written about me for less.

I finished the article with this:

“Thankfully, Botox does wear off. In a couple of months I’ll be back to scowling with the best of them. But have I learnt my lesson? Absolutely not. I know Botox works. It’s just that right now, the payoff isn’t worth it.”

This at least was honest. Wisely I decided to lay off the fish poison for a few years.

But since my early 30s I’ve been getting Botox injections a couple of times a year. As a result of these visits, I’ve lost that line between my eyebrows – and the ability to glare at all really. If you paralyse the muscle enough, it atrophies entirely.

It’s probably for the best. Through much of my youth, my glare could strip paint off a wall. But these days I look much more mellow. This, I think, is a good thing. After all, the surface of a river is perfectly calm moments before a crocodile launches itself out of the water and tears its prey limb from limb.

Life is full of fun little surprises. I’m happy for my rage to be one of them.

I can’t say, however, that I am unscathed.

For the past few days I’ve been eating like a bin-scavenging rodent, have been surrounded by dozens of unpacked bags and – most pressingly – have lost the capacity to feel any positive emotions whatsoever.

I’m sure the experience of happiness will return to me at some point. In the meantime, though, I am a haggard, resentful crone living in a nest of clothing-filled garbage bags. I have fully turned into the kind of creature villagers once used as a cautionary tale to stop children wandering at night.

Rightfully so. Anyone would do well to be careful around me right now.

On a good day I have a compromised ability to appropriately allocate how much emotional energy to spend on things that do not affect me, but which I find to be annoying. After moving, that faulty gauge has exploded into a million tiny bits of metal and I am a geyser of unchecked crankiness.

Currently in my crosshairs? Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. In fact, I am deeply resentful of any celebrity who has taken part in the most annoying PR campaign strategy of recent years – making your actors embody whatever shitty Hollywood crapfest they’ve been paid an ungodly amount of money to star in.

The first time I noticed this phenomenon was the wildly successful and deeply irksome marketing palaver for the Barbie movie. Don’t get me wrong, the film itself was fine. Certainly not profound or affecting. But palatable in the same manner a well-ish-made salad sandwich from a corner shop can sometimes be.

The marketing of Barbie was an egregious example of Hollywood attempting to remove the line separating movies and reality. Ryan Gosling responded to questions in character as Ken, Margot Robbie did the entire press tour dressed like Barbie. The media slavishly reported on stories about director Greta Gerwig hosting sleepovers with the cast, as though this multimillion-dollar business was just some girlish romp. It was relentless.

Irritatingly, it also worked.

Barbie, a movie with no more depth than a recently-drained cyst, was hailed as a generational masterpiece. But the greatest tragedy of its success was that it inspired many similar media campaigns.

Wicked, another profoundly okay movie, went by the same playbook. This time, the narrative we were all forced to accept was that Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo were really, actually, super best friends for life. Just like – you guessed it – the movie! These two grown women were paraded around the world, clinging to one another like velcro, in an objectively insane spectacle.

Which brings me to the next example of this phenomenon: Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in the current Wuthering Heights marketing campaign.

This time, both actors are having to pretend they’re SUPER DOOPER obsessed with each other. Like, an unhealthy amount. Seriously, guys. Margot said she felt anxious when Jacob wasn’t on set, and that she obsessively stared at photos of him or whatever fucking stupid story that they’re seeding out.

You know another couple who were unhealthily obsessed with one another? HEATHCLIFF AND CATHY FROM WUTHERING HEIGHTS! WOW! What a crazy example of life imitating art!

Hollywood marketing departments serve this unimaginative hot garbage, straight into the trough, hoping we’ll gobble it up like hungry piggies.

But come on. Margot Robbie is a woman in her mid-thirties with a child and a husband. Are we supposed to believe she is owning up to an emotional affair with her co-star because she loves yapping to entertainment reporters so much?

It’s absurd. She knows it, the media knows it, I believe the audience knows it, too.

There is another artform which asks us to suspend disbelief between the actors, the performance, and real life — WWE. They even have a word for it: kayfabe.

I could slave away at an explanation of this term, but New York Times columnist Nick Rogers dissects it so eloquently, I’ll borrow his words:

Although the etymology of the word is a matter of debate, for at least 50 years “kayfabe” has referred to the unspoken contract between wrestlers and spectators: We’ll present you something clearly fake under the insistence that it’s real, and you will experience genuine emotion. Neither party acknowledges the bargain, or else the magic is ruined.

This is fine when all parties agree to the fiction’s construct. But I am not a willing spectator.

What they’re doing is dumb, embarrassing, and I would like them to stop trying to immerse me in their silly little pantomime. Particularly now when, just left of stage, Rome is burning.

Hollywood has never looked more irrelevant and farcical.

Or so says I – a humble crone shouting from my garbage bag house.

For a million reasons I’m sad to be leaving Bondi, but there’s nothing to be done. The diminishing media business has ended up on the same train line as my crippling rent, and a head on collision looks imminent.

Best to get off at the station now, I think.

Either that, or I risk eventually having to sell my teeth for just one more whiff of the Eastern Suburbs air. The real estate agents have been taking a pound of flesh for so long, that’s all I’ll have left soon.

In truth, I should have made this decision months ago, but a lot has kept me in Bondi.

I love it here. All of it. The beach. The noisy, crowded 333 bendy buses. The overpriced cafes. The drunks. The gym-goers. The backpackers. The Locals. Put them all into a blender, add some protein powder, and I’ll happily drink the same concoction for the rest of my life.

But more than my love of Bondi, there has been a greater force that has kept me in this little apartment, paying rent I can barely afford month after month after month.

It’s my deep, dark, utterly depthless hatred of moving.

You could fill the galaxy with how much I hate moving. If you poured the hatred out of my body and into space, it would literally drown out all the stars.

If I was given the choice between ‘world peace forever’ and ‘never move house again’, I’d have to give it a really big think. Never move again ever? You can’t trust a deal that good, there’d have to be a catch.

But alas. No magic solution is going to appear out of nowhere. So I must, once again, pack my life into a series of sturdy cardboard boxes.

I know how this tragedy plays out. It’s the same thing every time. At first I see the move as an opportunity to throw out some possessions, and organise my life a little. I promise myself that I’ll start the job early, and do a couple of boxes a day.

But then I procrastinate. And procrastinate. And procrastinate. Reality usually hits about a day before the trucks arrive, and I find myself in a fugue state cramming whatever item is in front of my hands into whatever box is closest to my feet.

God I can’t do that again. There must be a better way.

Okay wait.

Maybe – and stick with me now – I should take all my earthly possessions, put them into a big pile, and then just set them on fire.

Yes! One big cleansing fire!

I could even make an occasion out of it. I’d ask a few friends over, and get their help throwing bulkier items off the balcony and into the pile. Together, we could enjoy a heartwarming bonfire in the middle of Sydney, watching everything I own get turned to ash.

Then, when nothing is left, I can kick off my shoes, walk into the ocean and join the closest dolphin pod.

Sure, living as a dolphin might not be what “society” wants, but at least I’ll be happy. Happy and free from the burden of moving home ever again.

But no. Instead I’m forced to toil like a Dickensian pauper, doing backbreaking manual labour in a workhouse of my own creation. But even those unlucky sods got a free meal and a place to sleep. Not me! Slaving away at the box-packing factory for nothing! Not a bowl of gruel! Not a flea-infested scrap of fabric to crawl under at night!

Or at least I will be slaving away at the box-packing factory at some point. There hasn’t been a whole lot of anything happening in the last few weeks, if I’ll be honest.

In fact, the only progress I’ve made is that I stopped putting things away some time ago. I figured there’s no point, because everything will have to be packed away soon. Quite soon, actually. I have to be out by Saturday.

I call that progress, anyway. But other, more accurate, people would probably say I’m just living in an untidy home.

Whatever. I don’t need them. I don’t need anything.

Except for maybe a lighter?

“Come to my cottage,” she said. “I’ve got something to show you.”

It’s a long drive from Sydney to Wagga Wagga, especially when you’re a red P plater forced to tootle around at 90km/hr. But it didn’t matter that I was tired, or that I had a lot of unpacking to do. If Becky had something to show you, you followed her.

Suffice to say that Becky was a consistently entertaining agent of chaos.

The year was 2008 and I was studying Television Production at Charles Sturt University. The campus was an enormous, a sprawling plot of agricultural land, big enough to have its own postcode. On one side of the property we had our library, pub, lecture halls and classrooms. On the other was our accommodation where hundred students lived crammed together in little houses, dorms, and residential halls.

At this time, I lived in cottage number 330. Becky was directly next door in 331. We walked through her living room, turned left down the hall, and then stepped into her bedroom. She closed the door behind her. There was an esky sitting in the middle of her floor.

“Check this out,” she said.

I’m not sure what I was expecting to be in that esky. Probably something normal, like alcohol or food. I certainly didn’t think there would be an enormous, dead snake with a very mushy head inside. Becky could barely control her glee.

“My dad saw it on the side of the road and grabbed it,” she said.

According to Becky, her dad was driving around his small, country town of Moulamein when he spotted the roadkill. For reasons known only to himself, he pulled over, grabbed the reptile, and drove off. Did Becky’s dad have the empty esky in the back of his car ready for such fortuitous roadside gifts? Or did he plonk the snake somewhere on the upholstery? If I once knew the answer to this question, alas, it’s lost to time.

When he was back at home, Becky’s dad must have generously asked around if anyone needed a dead snake. And yes, actually, Becky did indeed have use for it. You see, she had a friend who had severe ophidiophobia and this would be the perfect way to torment him.

So the snake was plonked in an esky (without ice) and transported to Wagga Wagga, a four hour dive away.

After this explanation, Becky and I stared down at the dead animal.

“It smells a bit,” she said.

“Yeah,” I replied. “It does”.

But we weren’t going to be rushed by the mere fact that the snake was rapidly decaying in a warm, plastic tub. If we were going to use this roadkill to the full extent of its potential, we’d need to do some planning. But that was a job for the next day. So we unpacked, probably went through a few boxes of wine with our friends, and decided to reconvene the next day.

It’s funny, the mere glimpse of a Fruity Lexia label will have me dry heaving now. But in those days I could sink a bucket of goon, sit in a small space next to a fetid dead snake and feel completely fine. Which is exactly what I, and a small committee of my peers, did. The people who were in that room are now doctors, parents, pharmacists and generally responsible adults. I got in touch with Becky and asked if it was okay to use her name – she was fine with it – but I reckon the rest would probably like to be removed from this whole sordid affair. I’ve given everyone else who was involved a pseudonym.

I often hear people complain about university group assignments being a pain, but we collectively proved that doesn’t need to be the case. It turns out people just need the right motivation. A shared cause. For us, the goal of scaring the shit out of our snake-phobic friend Mark was the incentive we needed to become a supportive and collaborative team.

In a long but productive meeting we workshopped several ideas for the dead snake. We seriously considered hiding it in his room under some clothes, but that meant we wouldn’t have experienced the exquisite joy of seeing Mark find the snake. Were we also worried about his clothes being on top of a rotting animal? I’d like to think so, but I don’t think this factored into our decision making.

Eventually, we agreed on a more theatrical approach. We would attach the dead snake to his door knob using fishing line while Mark was in his room. Someone would then yell ‘snake! snake!’, hopefully prompting him to investigate the commotion. The door swinging open would cause the snake to move towards Mark as though it were alive. He would be terrified, we would laugh, and then live in fear of the inevitable retaliation.

We all had our roles to play, but things quickly ground to a halt after the fishing line was procured. How were we going to attach it to the snake? There wasn’t much of a head left to tie it to. The solution, we collectively decided, was a hook pushed through the goey remains of the skull. No one was willing to touch the dead reptile except for Becky who was nonplussed by the grizzly job. I remember being in awe of her complete lack of squeamishness. Farm kids are made differently, I suppose.

Everything else went mostly to plan. I remember thinking the acting of the people who shouted ‘snake!’ left something to be desired, but Mark was eventually coaxed into opening his door. Recollections of exactly what happened next differ. I recall he had a minor shock, and then immediately slammed his door shut. Others remember Mark, scared out of his nut, kicked the flyscreen out of his window, jumped onto the street, and ran for the hills.

Perhaps our memories are fuzzy because of the horror of what happened next.

Mark, our intended quarry, was out of reach. Alan, one of the boys involved in the prank, must have found this disappointing. Perhaps it was adrenaline, perhaps it was the devil, but he suddenly lost all revulsion to the dead snake. He fearlessly picked it up, detached it from the doorknob and ran indiscriminately into the gathered group of his former conspirators.

This was a moment of pure terror.

The floppy dead snake was a weapon none of us were willing to face. We scattered like he was an active shooter, zig-zagging back to the safety of our lockable rooms. High on power, unwilling to let us escape, Alan pegged the dead snake at our backs. It didn’t matter that we were his comrades – all loyalty had disappeared. I didn’t risk looking back to see if anyone was hit, I ran into my room slammed the door and locked all possible entry points. It was chaos. It was disgusting.

It still makes me laugh.

I think of this whole anecdote as a shamefully amusing, somewhat regrettable university incident that I have firmly put behind me. I’m an adult now, you see. Also, it’s hard to take a moral high ground against the likes of RFK and his dead bear shenanigans when you’ve been involved in at least one roadkill prank yourself.

But this story does have a footnote.

About seven years ago there was as a video that went viral on social media. In it, a man sits in a field, recording his left leg. A snake has slithered up his pants and only the end of its tail is visible, swirling around near the poor bloke’s shoes.

“This is another fine mess I’ve got myself into,” he says. “I was untangling a bit of wire from under the ute, and this fucking great tiger snake the dogs chased up my fucking leg when I wasn’t looking.”

He sounds panicked and a bit out of breath. He says there’s no one he can call for help. There’s only one thing to do – pull the snake out himself.

“Wish me luck,” he says as his shaky hand goes towards the snake.

He counts down from three, grabs the snake by the tail and flings it into the sand a few metres away. He then launches himself up, and dances away from the animal, swearing but – incredibly – unharmed.

That man? It was Becky’s dad. That snake? Also roadkill.

His acting was totally convincing. So convincing, in fact, it was picked up by news outlets in Australia and around the world.

So I know about two dead snake pranks perpetrated by this family. How many others don’t I know about? I reckon many, many more. When most people see a dead snake they see – well – a dead snake. But not Becky’s dad. He sees an opportunity. A chance for mischief. Is there a lesson in that? Honestly, I’m not sure.

But never say that Aussie Larrikinism is dead. It’s just hanging around in Moulamein.

This is no small feat.

I am a woman on the internet who has an opinion on cars. Even worse, sometimes I get paid to write those opinions. To certain people, this is an unacceptable display of liberalism – I’ve experienced all manner of personal attacks online as a result.

Usually I’ll laugh them off or, even better, goad the commenter into a back-and-forth conversation. This wastes their time and improves the engagement on my reels, helping them perform better in the algorithm.

Sure, exploiting the internet’s toxicity to get views on silly little car videos is probably nudging the planet infinitesimally closer to destruction. At the very least, it’s not helping matters. But who am I to question the algorithm? Surely it’s better to ride the wave than fight it, even if that wave is actually an enormous tsunami that will inevitably drown us all? It’s hard to say, really.

But my laissez faire attitude to social media was tested by an incredibly crude comment on a video I posted on Instagram. In the minute-long reel, I had a quick conversation about a hotted-up car with its owner while at Summernats. It was totally inoffensive.

In reply, I got the following comment from an anonymous stranger: “I bet this chick has a hairy bumhole”.

I hate this comment. I hate it on a visceral level. It’s gross, weird, and embarrassing. But the worst thing about it, is that it’s so abhorrent and so left-of-field, it’s a little bit funny.

It also left me – the innocent victim – with no counter manoeuvre.

I couldn’t reply with a defensive or aggressive comment because that is, I think, what someone with a hairy bumhole would do. For the same reason, I struggled to craft a flippant or funny reply.

Without moving a single piece on the chessboard, I was in checkmate. Defeated by some douchebag on the internet. So I did the digital equivalent of chucking a tantrum by deleting the comment and blocking the person who’d posted it.

This was a retreat, absolutely. But I was dealing with a textbook example of an internet troll. Their profile had no followers, and only existed to write the most appalling things imaginable on a seemingly random assortment of videos. The comments they wrote were – all of them – sexist, racist, bullying and derogatory.

Of course, this reflects most poorly on the person behind the account. But does it matter? A chimp throwing its faeces at strangers may have no dignity, but that’s of little consolation when you’re covered in monkey shit.

But honestly, what should I have expected dabbling in the appalling human soup that is social media?

In truth, I have an ideological opposition to short-form videos and their brain-rotting qualities. I hate the type of discourse it encourages, and the manner in which they’re delivered. I myself have become so addicted to Instagram reels that I bought a $100 device which limits my access to some apps.

The absurdity of buying something to make my wildly expensive phone less functional is absolutely not lost on me.

But even given all of the above, I’ve been using my strictly rationed time on Instagram to post reels to feed other people’s addiction. The reward? The heady dopamine rush of new followers and that crude bumhole comment. A fitting prize if ever there was one.

Of course social media is weird and gross – we already knew that to be the case. Things started to go downhill on the internet almost the moment we were able to talk to one another anonymously.

It’s just that participation in this circus didn’t always feel so compulsory. These days your ability to be relevant is directly tied to your online visibility.

On one hand, the democratisation of fame is a good thing. It’s never been easier to find an audience – the fact you’re reading my newsletter now shows that to be true. I am a grateful beneficiary of these new ways of distributing information.

But on the other hand, one’s audience has never been so close. While I welcome many of the people this has brought into my sphere, not every visitation is a pleasant one.

The car had been modified to an absurd degree.

The owner – a lovely young bloke called Jack – installed roll cages, changed the suspension, lowered the body and swapped the engine. Out went the 1.6L 4-cylinder; in went a 6L V8, which puts out a diabolical 700 horsepower. A Lamborghini Aventador has a comparable output, but with a chassis actually designed to take it.

Suffice to say, it is a staggering amount of power for a small car with the aerodynamics of a toaster.

Jack made a few aesthetic improvements, too. The car is painted a bright, lemon yellow, with coloured LEDs under the body, and sponsor names on the side panels.

And then there are the custom plates.

“Your mum rides for free,” they read.

Then a bit below that: “it ain’t weak to speak”.

Of course, this delights me. The dichotomy is sublime.

“I’ll fuck your mum!” The car says. Then, in the next breath: “But seriously. Let’s talk about mental health.”

Inside me right now there are two wolves fighting. The one that wants to be glib, because I think this is funny, and the one which can see the value of such messages being imparted on the back of a Suzuki Swift hot rod.

There are certain conditions which must be met, it seems, before some Australian men feel comfortable talking about their feelings. The vital precursor to any kind of vulnerability appears to be a performative display of masculinity. Hitting on women! Burn outs! Mullets! Pull-ups! Only then, perhaps, a more serious conversation can take place.

I wish it were different for men. In an ideal world, we’d kill the misconception that men must meet adversity with robotic stoicism. That feelings are for women, and a sign of weakness.

If the sexism underpinning this belief system could be abolished, it would greatly benefit both genders. But we have been born into an imperfect world. Sometimes the best we can do is help each other navigate the conditions endemic to us, as best we’re able.

But it’s so easy to be glib. Especially when it comes to an event like Summernats.

After all, this is a festival which has been a public punching bag for many decades. It’s been painted as an embarrassing spectacle, a bogan pilgrimage, a crass gathering with no inherent cultural value.

Admittedly, it’s deserved some criticism and scrutiny.

Summernats is predicated on thousands of car enthusiasts descending on Canberra, camping in the blazing sun, and driving their hot rods. There’s often drinking involved. It’s no wonder things have, once or twice, descended into lawlessness.

Or so I’ve heard. The Summernats I attended over the weekend was relatively tame. Certainly no worse than any supercars race I’ve been to over the years. And you know what? It was fun. Unironic, unapologetic fun.

Sitting in a grandstand, watching a comically overpowered car throwing burnouts until their tyres exploded into rubber confetti was joyful. Seeing people parade their museum-quality rare cars was a privilege. Everyone was approachable, and largely quite respectful.

Of course, it was also ridiculous and crass.

In one of the pavilions, half a dozen tattoo artists were taking walk in appointments. The flashes had phrases like “I love sluts”, “pound town”, or, my personal favourite, “ya dog cunt”. I spoke to one young man who got his first tattoo at that booth. He chose a picture of a woman pulling up her shirt and flashing her boobs. SUMMERNATS was written across her chest.

I asked why he chose that particular picture for his leg.

“I’ll be able to look down and have some memories flash through my head,” he said.

I won’t need a tattoo to remember Summernats. It was an absurdist spectacle from start to finish – a detour out of normal life into something far more loose and eccentric.

But do people genuinely think the attendees aren’t themselves aware of the absurdity? Of the humour? That they’re not leaning into cliches for their own amusement?

Yes, putting a V8 engine into a Suzuki Swift is ridiculous. That’s the joke. Yes, a mullet competition is bogan. That’s the joke. Yes, goading people to do burnouts outside of the (many) designated burnout areas is stupid. That’s the joke.

But Summernats is discussed like the people who don’t understand the humour are the very ones who constructed it. It’s easier, perhaps, to turn the attendees into the punchline.

Every year, like clockwork, television crews seek out the drunkest, loudest, most obnoxious people in the crowd, ask them questions in bad faith, and then allow them to be pilloried by their audience.

This year, the unlucky tribute is some poor woman who made the mistake of talking to Seven News. This lady was overly enthusiastic about her love of Summernats, had her response turned into an Instagram reel, and was then subjected to hundreds of unkind (and at times incredibly defamatory) comments from strangers. The social team eventually stopped people commenting, but kept the video online.

Why are the the people who go to writers festivals not subjected to the same treatment? If you shove microphones in the face of enough people, eventually you’d find someone worthy of ridicule. But we leave these people alone, because some festivals are Important and Worthy and Serious. Unlike car events, which are low rent and, therefore, open season.

Nevermind that underneath the burnouts, and the skids, and the dagwood dogs, there is an established community that genuinely tries to look after its people.

Well, mostly anyway. There is still the occasional punch up.

Personally, I suspect that some people have an aversion to events like Summernats because of a subconscious belief that, in order for pleasure to be worthy, it must also feel a bit like work. That unless you’re a little bored, or a bit challenged, you haven’t spent your time meaningfully.

The best antidote to such views, I think, is watching a tyre explode into a million bits of rubber. Take as needed.

Thank me later.

A side note: the first time this one was published, it attracted the somewhat unwelcome attention of a semi-influential manosphere blogger. But more on that another time.

Hope you’re taking a break and feeling refreshed.

Steph

I was walking along Bondi Beach the other week when a man, in his late 20s or early 30s, stepped in front of me. He did an exaggerated wave, like someone cleaning a car window, as he cut in front of my path.

“Hey, I just wanted to say that I really like your style,” he said gesturing in the direction of my body.

I had just been to the gym and was wearing a stained shirt I’d jaggedly cut into a crop top using blunt scissors, along with an old, faded puffer jacket. There are so many things a person could justifiably accuse me of being. Stylish is not one of them.

But this is not the first time I’d been stopped by a sweaty-looking man offering me an ill-fitting compliment.

“Are you day gaming?” I asked.

He looked shocked – they always do.

“Uh…”

“Are you?”

“....yes” he mumbled.

I nodded.

“Good luck out there,” I said walking off. He stood there for a moment, before scurrying away the opposite direction.

This interaction, in various forms, has been happening to me since I was in my mid-20s.

I’ll be walking by myself, usually in Sydney’s CBD, and out of nowhere a man will appear directly in my path. He’ll say that I look so interesting, so beautiful, so kind, so whatever he thinks will flatter the most. If I continue to engage, he’ll ask for my number. Sometimes, more rarely, he’ll immediately offer to take me for a coffee or a drink.

In isolation, these were strange one-off interactions. Moments you’d chuckle about that afternoon with friends, but forget a few weeks later. It took years until I realised these conversations all followed a pattern. These weren’t happenstance meetings. I was being targeted by different men all using the same formulaic method.

That’s when I did some research and learnt that I was being approached by day gamers.

Day gaming is a subgenre of the murky world of pick-up artists. These are, as the name suggests, men who try to master the art of convincing women to have sex with them. But rather than using boring and time-consuming techniques like finding rapport, building mutual chemistry, and allowing feelings to grow, they prefer shortcuts. Sometimes this means preying on a woman’s insecurities or using tactical insults known as ‘negging’. Other times — and in the case of day gaming — it means pretending love and fate have collided with random women on the street.

These men will set themselves up in busy areas and approach dozens of women with the same, tired compliments. If the chosen quarry engages, and the conversation goes well, they’ll try to get her phone number. The eventual goal for some men is, of course, sex. Others think of it as a viable alternative to dating apps.

It was on a late afternoon walk, a couple of years ago, that I met a day gamer called Jonathan (I’m using a pseudonym). I had been heading towards the supermarket, just as the sun was setting, when I was stopped by a man wearing chinos and a collared shirt.

“Hey, sorry to interrupt you,” he said. “I just wanted to say that I think you’re adorable.”

Jonathan would later tell me that I was the second woman he’d stopped with exactly the same line.

“Jonathan!” I said as though I were greeting an old friend. “Are you day gaming?”

Day gamers are always shocked by this question. Often their mouths will open and close a couple of times, like an actor with stagefright. Some will attempt to regain control of the conversation. Others become defensive, “what if I am?” one man once replied. Most, however, drop the character and are willing to have a frank conversation.

Jonathan sheepishly admitted that, yes, he was day gaming and we had a brief chat. At the time I was considering doing an audio documentary on pickup artists. I asked if he’d be interested in recording an anonymous interview with me after work one day. We both had offices in Macquarie Park at the time, so he agreed.

A couple of weeks later we sat together in my company’s small, dark studio. Jonathan fidgeted in his seat as I set up the equipment and did some sound checks. I asked few gentle questions to ease him into the interview – I quickly realised Jonathan had a stutter which became more pronounced when he was flustered. He was clearly nervous, why had he agreed to the interview? I pressed the record button.

Jonathan told me he found day gaming after reading Neil Strauss’s book The Game – a seminal text for pickup artists and a gateway for many people in the scene. Fascinated by what he’d read, Jonathan wanted to learn more. Luckily there was a wealth of material out there — particularly on YouTube — which expanded and evolved the techniques outlined by Strauss.

“I found it improved my confidence,” Jonathan said. “I’m naturally an introvert, very shy. I had my first girlfriend when I was 23 years old. I use this as a way to build my self confidence.”

Approaching strangers with romantic intent, dead sober and in the harsh light of day, would be hard for anyone. Jonathan seemed more socially ill-at-ease than most.

“Why would you put yourself through that?” I asked.

“People who are overweight force themselves to go through the discomfort of going to the gym,” he replied. “It hurts, it’s painful, but they see the the better outcome on the other side. So it’s a similar thing. I’ll put myself through rejection hoping that it will make my skin thicker.”

By now Jonathan should be one, big callous. Rejection is a constant in his life. A typical day gaming session for Jonathan lasts around three hours, during which time he’ll approach at least 15 women. When Jonathan’s motivated, he’ll do this every Saturday and Sunday. Most women will only talk for a few seconds before finding an excuse to scurry away.

But if you approach enough people? Eventually you’ll have some luck.

“I’m happy to say that most of my long term relationships were from a day game,” Jonathan said.

“Do they know that you were day gaming them?” I asked.

“No, I don’t think that they knew. They might have thought that I was chatty, but I don’t think that they knew that I was doing this every single day.”

“How do you think they would have reacted?”

“Good question,” he said. “I-I think it depends on how open minded that they are, so if they’re more accepting, they’ll probably accept it.”.

Questions which called for self-reflection made Jonathan’s fidget in his seat, like a child waiting for recess. I pushed a bit more.

“Think of one girlfriend you got through day gaming What would she have said if you had told her?”

“Yeah, I-I cannot guess on-on what they’d think. Probably there’s a more chance that they think negative-negatively of it.”

Share

“Day gaming is devoid of romance or chance or fate,” I said. “You’re dating in a really mathematical way.’“

I don’t think of it as mathematical,” Jonathan said after a pause. “You are right. The more I approach, the higher the chances of having success. But if I could have had just one wish that if I just approached one girl, and we got married and lived happy life ever after. Then I would wish for that.”

At the time of the interview, Jonathan was 37 years old. He’d been day gaming on and off for a decade. When would he stop?

“When I find the partner that I can settle down with,” he replied.

I can’t agree with what Jonathan or his day-gaming ilk are doing – it’s cynical and manipulative. But so help me, I’m empathetic to them as well. Dating is hard. It’s a long slog through rejection and bitter disappointment.

These lonely men – probably afflicted with more of those negative experiences than most – have gone in search of another way. Pickup artists have told them that seeing women as just numbers and approaches will make things easier. Less personal. As though the pain of rejection is something a person can be inoculated against.

But love and suffering are so intertwined they may as well be conjoined twins.

To love a person — even in the earliest of stages — you must first accept that they could hurt you. You can’t escape that exquisite vulnerability. But who would want to? All good gambles come with risks. You just have to be brave enough to roll the dice.

I lie in bed for a moment, wondering if I’ll be able to steal another few hours of sleep. But then the image of a man lying on the ground, sheet over his face, pops into my head.

So best to find comfort in routine, I think. Every day I walk down the hill to get a coffee, and today will be no different. So off I go, past the convenience store where the shopkeeper warned me of a gunman, past the traffic lights where a German tourist told me he’d hidden from bullets, past the hill that had been littered with abandoned towels, picnics, and prams. These were just ordinary places yesterday morning.

Bondi is the epicentre of the worst tragedy I’ve witnessed, but it’s also still a holiday town. The tourists booked into our hotels must still eat, and so the cafes are busy with people having breakfast, stoically trying not to let yesterday’s misery spoil their break.

I find this strangely comforting. Whatever happens, the sun will rise, the sun will set, and sunburnt tourists will visit Bondi.

Walking past crowded tables, and people wearing gym gear, I think this could almost be any other day. But of course it isn’t. The air is heavier somehow. The whole area feels like it’s sitting in the pause before a chest-rattling sob.

Or maybe that’s just me.

But I said to myself I would get a coffee, and so I do. I sip at my cappuccino and listen to snippets of conversations from the people walking by.

“...it will do miracles for your gut, I swear. You’ll be less bloated, you’ll feel…”

“...she said the wedding should happen in February, but her family can’t…”

“...he’s going to need a new shoulder. The damage from the bullet exploded…”

So then I am back in last night, thinking of two young men lingering near the media pack.

They said their father had been at the Chanukah festival, and now he wasn’t answering their calls. Both of them looked grey. The only thing I could think to do was bring them water – a gesture I knew to be useless even as I was completing it.

Where are those two now, I wonder? I hope they’re all eating breakfast. That their father’s phone had just been flat, and that’s why he didn’t answer.

As I’m thinking of phones, mine dings. Another person asking if I’m okay.

“Thanks for thinking of me,” I reply in text. “I’m fine.”

I’d received dozens of those messages and sent dozens of my own. My friends are fine. My hairdresser is fine. The poet I talk to in the cafe is fine. We are all fine.

Feeling adrift, I spend the morning aimlessly crisscrossing through the streets of my suburb, not sure what I’m hoping to find. A pang of hunger finally gives me purpose, so I head to the grocery store.

Harris Farm is heaving when I get there. Of course it is. It’s one of only a couple of places in Bondi that sell flowers.

It seems the shop owners had predicted a rush on their cellophane-wrapped bouquets. They sit in an enormous cardboard box that’s been placed outside, next to the Christmas trees and discounted avocados. It’s a bit past midday, but only a few bunches remain at the bottom.

I grab some fruit, and stand in a long line of people holding white peace lilies.

The truth is I didn’t intend to visit the memorial that day. I didn’t think I was ready. But like flotsam pulled by invisible ocean currents, eventually I wash up there anyway.

I lean against a tree, look at the Pavillion’s closed gates, and the growing pile of flowers. They make the air thick and sweet like the perfume section of a department store. Here is a place I’ve been thousands of times, yet I suddenly do not recognise where I am. Where are the shoeless people with salt water hair? The laughing children on scooters? The gangs of teenagers leaving trails of vape smoke in their wake?

Eventually, I suppose, they will be back.

But in the meantime, a different group of strangers have taken their place. One of them moves to stand next to me. She is older, in her 60s, and wears a yellow hat and a yellow t-shirt which both read ‘assistant pastor’.

I brace myself for the inevitable conversation.

“So sad…” she says.

“Yes,” I reply.

“Were you here when it… happened?”

“No,” I say shortly.

But then I feel uncharitable, like I’m closing the door on a conversation she might need to have more than me. “But I was here very soon after. It was really terrible.”

She nods.

“Do you live here?” I ask.

“No, no. I live in Rozelle. I did once, though. About 20 years ago”

There is a long pause. I watch a beautiful woman in a crop top and tights filming her left hand placing flowers on the pile. She stands up, watches the footage back, and then walks away with her face still in her phone. I should be appalled. But the moment is so quintessentially Bondi, I can’t help but be distantly amused.

“Do you know how many people died here?” The assistant pastor asks me.

“Uh, no” I lie

“I read fifteen.”

Many of those fifteen people were shot next to children’s rides and petting zoos. I don’t want to be dragged into a casual conversation about the slaughter of my neighbours. Perhaps sensing there would be no titillating gossip, no gruesome details, and no sobbing forthcoming, she tells me she’s off to meet a friend.

“Before I go, can I have a hug?” she asks.

I oblige, but feel muddled afterwards.

Still, this will not be the strangest interaction I’ll have in the aftermath of the Bondi massacre.

Two days later, when I am back at work, I get a phone call from a number that’s not saved in my phone. It’s my dental clinic.

“We’re just going through our list of clients who live in Bondi and… you know… checking if you’re okay?”

“What really? Well, uh, thank you. I’m fine.”

“Good, good. We’ve only got, like, four people in Bondi, actually. But the Australian Dental Association said we should, you know, call up and see how everyone is going and stuff. It’s just terrible. And so sad.”

I recognise the voice as belonging to a chirpy dental assistant who had been at my last appointment. I’d had two fillings that day. This is much more uncomfortable.

“Yeah, it’s all very surreal,” I reply, because it is. Especially this phone call. “Thanks for checking up on me. I’ll see you at my next appointment.”

“Yes, that’s in…” I hear the clicking of a computer mouse. “...April. Take care,” she says.

Welfare checks on potentially traumatised strangers seems like a big ask for a young woman trained in teeth. But does it matter? No one knows what to do, but that doesn’t stop them from trying.

Or seeing an opportunity.

Not wanting to be dragged into another uncomfortable conversation with a stranger, I walk away from the memorial, crossing the road to put more distance between myself and the misery.

I almost immediately run into more people in matching t-shirts and hats. They’re green this time, and passing out booklets. I noticed they were in the hands of a few mourners at the memorial. I take one as I pass by, even though I am somehow certain I will not like the contents.

“The Way to Happiness – a common sense guide to better living,” the cover says.

On it, there is an illustration of a winding path leading to a sunset on the horizon.

The booklet is inane but harmless. In it, there are 21 principles like ‘take care of yourself’, ‘don’t be promiscuous’, and – most critically – ‘do not murder’. What a shame, I think, that they weren’t handing these booklets out yesterday. Think of the tragedy which could have been avoided.

It’s also a shame that the ‘Way to Happiness ’ is written by L. Ron Hubbard, and this foundation works as a recruitment arm for Scientology. I am incensed. Can the cults of the world give us a few hours before they start trying to pick off the weak, the traumatised, and the sad?

Perhaps a better person would have rolled their eyes and walked on. But I am not a better person.

“Thank you for the Scientology propaganda,” I say loudly, as I hand back the booklet.

All three green-hat-green-shirt people avoid making eye contact.

“Today of all days?” I ask. “Really?”

None of us are at our best. But I suppose we’re all trying, even the Scientologists in their desperately misguided, brainwashed way.

This is an odd time, but it doesn’t last. Before long the bulk of the flowers are cleared away. The assistant pastors and scientologists and camera crews leave as well. It still doesn’t feel normal, but perhaps one day it will.

The living must eventually move on – it is both their privilege and their burden.

It was late in January and the snow was finally clearing. For months the weather had been so bad Angelo’s mail hadn’t been delivered to his remote, isolated cabin.

But then one day the letters arrived in one big pile. It was mostly boring stuff – bills, brochures, and the usual. But there was one letter which had been sent from overseas. There was a name on the back, but it wasn’t one he recognised.

Puzzled, Angelo took the envelope into the cabin, and opened it.

Inside there was a letter, addressed to him again by name, which spoke in detail about this person’s year. It talked about their job, their travels, and their life in a country that Angelo had never visited.

They signed it off with their name, and the message “P.S – hope cabin life is treating you well!”

This put Angelo in a total spin.

Was this AI…? A bizarre marketing stunt? But who would spend that time and money? None of it made sense.

Angelo went to a computer and typed this person’s name into the search engine. There were a few results, but nothing stood out. If this was an attempt at a viral campaign, the company had done a poor job of it.

The whole incident was so bizarre, he enlisted two friends to help sleuth through the internet for some answers.

“If this is AI I’m going to throw my phone into the lake and get a landline,” he told them.

The breakthrough eventually happened when someone reactivated an old Facebook account, and found a person with the same name as the mystery letter sender. Crucially, this stranger had a friend in common with Angelo — a man called Tom.

“Hey, did you sign me up for an Australian Christmas newsletter from someone called Stephanie Coombes?” Angelo asked Tom. “I am absolutely perplexed as to who the fuck this woman is. She just sent me a long letter.”

“Who is Stephanie Coombes?” Tom asked.

“Fuck off,” was his reply. “You’re friends on Facebook.”

This was perhaps my favourite bit of mischief from this year. Tom, knowing I was sending out my annual letter, gave me his friend’s address and a bit of information about his life. Just enough to bamboozle him.

If you’ve followed me for a while you probably know that every December I send a letter – to whoever wants it – about the last year.

Why? Well, it’s a bit of a long story.

Perhaps this was just specific to people in my circle, but there was a time when elderly relatives and family friends would send out long, meandering letters around Christmas and New Years.

My favourite ones would list medical news and tragic deaths of people you’d never heard of alongside incredibly banal family updates. Yes, neighbour Beryl passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack. Very sad. But also, did you hear that my grandkid was a turkey in the school Christmas play?

I found this to be so hilarious, I started to do my own. That was at least five years ago.

If you want a letter, I’ll send you one.

We don’t have to know each other. It won’t cost you anything. You don’t even have to enjoy it.

All I need is your address. You can send it to me using this form linked here.

You’re probably worried that once I’m in possession of your address, I’ll spam you with junk mail from now until one of us dies. Perhaps this would be a valid concern, if it didn’t cost $1.70 to send a letter in Australia these days. I have rent to pay. You’ll be getting one letter, and that’s it. They’ll arrive sometime after Christmas.

Angelo and I became penpals for a while after our unlikely introduction. Perhaps we’ll become friends as well.

There’s only one way to find out.

I was in my apartment, writing an article for this newsletter, when I heard the sirens. There were so many and they went for so long, I eventually decided to see what was happening.

What I saw at the beach was heartbreaking.

Sometimes I work in news, so I helped my colleagues report the story. It is easier, perhaps, to deal with the horror when you assume the role of an observer.

Anyway. It’s 2am now. I am finally back in my apartment.

I’ve lived in a lot of places in Australia, but Bondi has been my favourite. I’ve never lived in a warmer, kinder community. This place embraces you.

It has embraced me.

In the morning, a few hours before guns were fired at my neighbours, I jumped into the ocean and thought: ‘how did I get so lucky’?

Tonight, on my couch and alone, I wonder the same thing. How I am alive when so many are dead?

There are no easy answers to questions like this.

But I am alive, and you are alive, and that is a great privilege.

So be sad, but also be grateful. We get another dawn on this beautiful, terrible planet.

The year was 1999, the internet was new, and the Howard Government wasn’t very keen on all those dirty websites popping up. Their vision for the internet (if they had one at all) was something closer in tone to daytime television.

But how to make the entire internet a bit less like the back room of a video store, and a bit more like reruns of Dad’s Army? The Information Technology Minister at the time, Richard Alston, had a plan.

Borrowing heavily from television broadcast classifications, Alston crafted legislation which targeted online content rated R or above. It made bureaucrats from the now-defunct Australian Broadcasting Authority the prefects of the internet. They had the power to issue take-down notices for websites and content they deemed to be offensive that were hosted in this country.

It was an anachronistic law that arrived just in time for the new millennium – the legislation came into effect January 1, 2000.

One article, written in March of that year, said that in three months of operating, the ABA had just 90 complaints. They led to a total of 27 take-down notices. What a simpler time – these days I’ll see 100 things to complain about on the internet before it’s midday.

All kinds of locally-made smut was affected by the new legislation. Websites hosting pornographic photos, videos and brothel reviews were targeted. It was a devastating time for these small, online businesses. Some of them were down for a whole hour before they simply moved their website hosting offshore.

“The legislation is a little embarrassing - it shows how out of touch with the issue [the Government] are,” one academic said at the time.

But Alston was happy with how things were running. “As far as I am concerned, the system is working pretty well,” he said. Here was a man promising to catch a tsunami with a sieve, unaware, or unwilling to admit, the futility of this endeavour. Either way, he and the Government were adamant they were doing the right thing in order to protect Australian children

Well, I was one of those children.

Did Alston do it? Did he protect me and my peers from smut on the internet?

Unequivocally, he did not.

We millennial children stumbled around the internet, saw some stuff we shouldn’t, and largely survived it. Would we all have been smarter, happier, more empathetic without its intrusion on our collective childhoods? It’s impossible to say. “We shape our tools, and then our tools shape us”, Marshall McLuhan’s maxim states. I am no more able to suppose whether I’d have been better off growing up before the printing press, the radio, television.

But if millennials do have some kind of psychological burden from poking around in the dark nooks and crannies of the internet as children, it is carried equally by all of us. A shared experience which informs how we navigate society, both online and in person.

Is this such a bad thing? We don’t arrive at adulthood suddenly one day, as though it were a train station. It’s incrementally gained through years and experiences. To hermetically seal children from the dangers of the world they will inhabit does them no favours.

In any case, Australians learnt that porn on the internet, and people’s insatiable appetite for it, was more powerful than any mere Government. That battle, at least, was abandoned. But each generation gets to be the centre of its own moral panic, and now the eye of Sauron has turned to the amorphously defined ‘social media’.

From this Wednesday, a social media ban for people under the age of 16 officially comes into effect.

So here we are again. Enacting legislation that we all know will be ineffectual, because seemingly we have no collective memory.

“We don’t argue that its implementation will be perfect, just like the alcohol ban for under 18s doesn’t mean that someone under 18 never has access, but we know that it’s the right thing to do.” Albanese has said on the matter.

So we’re all happy, it seems, that these laws are symbolic rather than effectual? Even if they’re expensive and onerous ? That was the case in 2000 and, even with a quarter century of hindsight and the maturation of the first internet generation, that seems to be the case now.

It’s almost comforting to know that, while technology continues to move at an impossibly fast rate, the Government’s responses to it, at least, will be constant in its short-sightedness.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

But before I get into the drama, I must firstly make it clear that I hate the word ‘creator’. It’s a mushy, boneless term which slimed its way into common usage sometime in the last decade.

‘Creator’ once conjured thoughts of artisans or Gods. Though they might tell you otherwise, the people on TikTok are neither. Really, they are more like modern-day Dickensian factory workers, forced to make staggering amounts of inconsequential videos to appease an unfeeling company’s algorithm.

But while they might be peons, TikTok still needs them to function.

To get steam trains moving, men had to shovel coal into furnaces. For TikTok to sell ads, millions of ‘creators’ must turn their lives into short-form videos.

So how to keep these worker bees happy? In some countries, TikTok will pay approved people a rate, based on the number of views their videos receive. It’s shockingly low. Around two cents for every thousand views. But if your audience is big enough, this can still be lucrative. In Australia, however, there is no such deal. But the biggest names on the platform do get an exclusive invitation to an annual awards ceremony.

This used to be an event you’d want an invite to.

TikTok would book a nice venue, and pay for food and booze. There were photographers, red carpets, and all these online celebrities would get to feel, for one night, that their fame was tangible.

But things didn’t play out that way this year. I know about it because many of the attendees have taken to the platform that so disappointed them, to complain about their treatment.

According to the videos I’ve watched, there were two tiers of attendees: those who were nominated for an award, and those who weren’t. People in the former group seemed to largely have a good time. They walked down the red carpet, had their photos taken, and got interviewed.

No such luck with the second group.

These sorry people lined up for the red carpet, but weren’t allowed on it. No one wanted their photos. No one wanted their interviews. But worst of all? The food and drinks weren’t free.

My God, if ever there was a group to not stiff on freebies, it’s the influencer crowd. To amass a following on social media, is to be sent more food, clothes, and event invites than a sensible person could ever need. People with more than 100,000 followers might not be rich in money, but they will certainly be rich in free shit. To not provide a glass of carbonated wine or two really is unforgivable cheapskatery.

But really, it wasn’t just the expense of buying their own drinks that caused so much angst. On the one night where the TikTok creator’s celebrity was supposed to feel legitimate, they were treated like — shock horror — normal people.

But they all are normal people.

So is the nature of celebrity these days, that anyone is one viral moment away from having thousands, even millions, of followers.. Andy Warhol, of course, predicted this would happen. “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes,” he said.

Has the democratising of fame been a good thing? Honestly, I’m not sure. It’s not like the most deserving people always ended up in the spotlight. Fame has always been a random, fickle beast. But even by modern-day standards, where Kim Kardashian is one of the best-known people on the planet, the calibre of TikTok ‘celebrity’ seems grim.

Take the winner of the “High-Quality Content Creator of the Year” award. This went to Melbourne man Anthony Randello-Jahn, the owner of ‘thedonutdaddy’, one of the most batshit social accounts I’ve ever encountered.

He is, in short, a chef who makes overly complicated food in the most uncomfortably, unappetisingly horny way possible.

In one short video, he fingerbangs a grapefruit for an extended period of time, dry humps his blender, and then makes a complicated cake. He does not provide a recipe, or coherent steps to follow. It was just a video of a man who enjoys cooking way too much.

His whole feed is filled with the same concept, over and over again. I suppose I should be impressed with the endlessly creative ways he simulates sex with pantry items. But is this really what amounts to high quality? A contextless montage of shots without a story? The same banal idea repeated endlessly?

Fame is deserved, I think, only when it is an unintended consequence of worthy output. But TikTok and its ilk doesn’t reward what is good. It mostly favours that which is visually arresting.

When views and audiences are the goal in and of itself, it leads to hollow art and hollow people.