I'll have what she's having
FMK: Hanson Brothers, Jonas Brothers, Lawrence Brothers 🐍
Good morning and happy Year of the Snake!
On today’s agenda:
🚜 Content destroying and the concept of “cringe” as a cognitive distortion
🧠 The Diffusion of Innovations: ADHD discourse edition
🏋🏻♀️ February fitness class themes
📲 I’ll have what she’s having, Charlie’s Angels reunion, an invite to Sean Kingston’s birthday party, the best tattoo I’ve seen in recent history, and of course, more!!!!!
Huge thank you to Nicstalgia supporters who I will love forever: Janine, Marie, Liv, Mitra, CY, Chet, and Jack! 💐💐💐
🚜 Oh boy, I love to play destroy
Just when I think I have cleared out every square foot of my digital footprint, I find more to destroy! A random account liked one of my Instagram Reels from 2021, which prompted me to archive probably about 30 or 40 videos I’d made from 2020-2024. People often say how lovely it is to see how far you’ve come, but beyond this newsletter, I’m not that sentimental about it! I was there the first time, I don’t need to be reminded of whatever video I made 5 years ago. It made me think about the rapidly-evolving online rhetoric about being “cringe”, referring to the self-consciousness someone feels as their persona, personal brand, or identity shifts online.
The two main points of internet advice I’ve seen about being cringe:
1. Love the cringe parts of yourself, even if it feels weird
2. If you don’t think previous versions of you are cringe, you’re not growing
The first point, once said to me by a podcast guest, is a chicken-or-egg sitch to me. The fear of feeling cringe and the initial contrivance of self-love go hand-in-hand. Working through that weirdness and discomfort with parts of yourself that you don’t like is what ultimately leads to self-acceptance and self-actualization. When you get allllllll the way to the core of who you are – and accept yourself for whomever that is – it’s the only way to not feel cringe anymore. What “loving” yourself really means is that you’ve fundamentally altered your belief system to live in alignment with your own self-image versus the perception of others. Go you!!
I think the second point, said by a famous TikToker and regurgitated by numerous others, is a very emotionally immature take. So what if you were cringe? (Important distinction: I mean naive or unaware, not hateful or hurtful.) The only thing worse than acknowledging that you’ve outgrown past versions of yourself is having no compassion for them. It’s very difficult to deal with any identity shift, especially publicly, and people often pass judgment online under the guise of accountability. Instead of holding, ya know, people who perpetuate systems of oppression accountable, netizens turn on each other because – whether or not the status quo technically supports them – they feel powerless against massive societal constructs.
My take: The concept of cringe is a cognitive distortion caused by the democratization of social media content creation and ubiquity of social media content consumption. We are not supposed to be constantly looking our own faces or dissecting the faces of others through a screen! As Jemima Kirke aptly said:
🧠 Now That’s What I Call ADHD
Boing, boing, boing, boing: My story
In 2023, post-layoff, I was struggling with what I now recognize as executive function. Then, I thought my brain was fundamentally broken as opposed to the [expletive] job hunting market. One random afternoon, I found emails I’d sent my mom in 2011 that were soooo unhinged, I immediately deleted them out of sheer embarrassment. It was a turning point, when it became crystal clear that I’d struggled with focusing my attention for much longer than I realized.
I was inspired to seek a formal diagnosis after my therapist (and TikTok, of course) said I displayed “very common behaviors” of ADHD, and I’d had several conversations where friends and acquaintances assumed I “had it too”. I told a doctor my life story over the course of ten minutes, and I tried not to assume that he would be impersonal and dismissive. I could barely focus on what I was saying because he was clacking the keys on his keyboard at a decibel louder than I ever thought possible by a standard American computer keyboard. The fervor with which he typed was so distracting and seemingly unnecessary. It was comically loud. (And I’m someone who genuinely loves clacking btw.) Once I stopped talking, he snapped, “Okay, so a diagnosis doesn’t actually matter here. Do you want meds or not?” For several reasons, I actually didn’t. I went back to my car, cried for a few minutes, and realized that no one needed to spell out for me or validate what I already knew.
A week later, I formally began My Digital Archiving Project and paused it after coming across a video I’d left for friends on Facebook (hopefully privately?!) where I describe how difficult focusing, completing schoolwork, and paying attention were for me. I was absolutely crushed, although now I give myself a lot more grace than I did then. From that point, I decided to make a conscious effort to work with my brain – which feels like what Nelly Furtado has described as “Boing, boing, boing, boing” – instead of against it. I’m very grateful to have Nicstalgia as my safe space to write as many run-on, fragmented sentences – complete with extremely liberally-used em dashes – as my heart desires.
ADHD Diffusion of Innovations
The other day, I saw a video where someone jokingly asks for a diagnosis by internet spectators and then recites a verbose and extraordinarily detailed – not to mention, an eerily familiar – thought pattern:
Having Enrique Iglesias’s “Hero” in your head ➡️ having to listen to it ➡️ thinking “This was on a NOW CD” and not knowing which one ➡️ having to look it up ➡️ going through every single track list ➡️ finding “Hero” but it’s Chad Kroeger’s from the Spiderman 2 soundtrack (Author’s tangent: He says it’s from 2001, but Spiderman didn’t come out til 2002, and the sequel didn’t come out til 2004, although I suppose that’s not the point) ➡️ listening to the original NOW and hearing “Mmmbop” ➡️ thinking okay FMK: Hanson Brothers, Jonas Brothers, Lawrence Brothers ➡️ knowing the only correct answer is marrying the Lawrence brothers ➡️ remembering the 1999 coming of age drama/DCOM Horse Sense and its 2001 action/adventure sequel Jumping Ship ➡️ having to watch them on Disney+.
One of the top comments reads, “Now That’s What I Call ADHD 😂” and I believe that we as a society have reached the Early Majority stage of ADHD discourse:
The Innovator stage started in the early 2000s, with Spinner from Degrassi being one of the first publicly-diagnosed TV characters with what was then-called ADD. Ty Pennington from HGTV’s Trading Spaces then Extreme Makeover: Home Edition opened up to Oprah in 2004 about his ADHD. The most decorated Olympian of all time, former competitive swimmer Michael Phelps, openly discussed his ADHD diagnosis. Justin Timberlake disclosed his OCD[/ADHD] in a 2008 Collider.com interview when promoting the film The Love Guru. (Lol.)
We entered the Early Adopter stage in the early 2010s, when pharmaceutical companies’ marketing focus shifted from children to adults. The Early Adopter phase opens the door to commodification, aka. big pharma psyops using celebrities to promote drugs that help people make corporations money. Business Insider released an article in 2013 addressing the phenomenon that now “everyone” has ADHD, or is at least convinced as so, in order to sell medication. The tipping point was when Adam Levine appearing in the now-infamous It’s Your ADHD – Own It! commercials and print ads created by [the since-acquired] pharmaceutical company Shire.²
You may not have heard of Shire, but you’ve heard of its golden child: Adderall XR. This amphetamine and its recreational [ab]use was in full-swing by the early 2010s, particularly among Peak Millennial college students, striving to excel in pursuit of the meritocratic American Dream their Baby Boomer parents were sold. Kreayshawn’s “Gucci Gucci” stated you could “see me at your college campus, baggie full of Adderalls”, and at that point, you really did. Mind you, this was before we all lived in a perpetual state of ADHD-like psychosis caused by being on our phones 24/7! Life really imitates art, doesn’t it?³
The Early Majority stage began in 2020, when everyone’s screen time approached 24 hours daily, mental health (or rather, mental illness) became normalized, therapy speak entered the lexicon, mental illness medication became mass-commodified, and every content creator claimed that you – yes you – have ADHD. (Perfect example of what I call the ‘Not Like That’ phenomenon of cultural recognition. Like, mental health awareness is great, but not like that.) “Adderall (Corvette Corvette)” by Popp Hunna went viral on TikTok. Not to mention, a global pandemic forever changed society’s perception of health. In 2022, The Disruptors documentary, featuring an “ADHD A-List”, was released. In 2024, the ADHD TikTok hashtag had 3.8M videos. Many celebrities spoke out publicly, providing content for several mainstream news outlets’ listicles. Paris Hilton wrote an op ed for Teen Vogue and released a music video for her song “ADHD”, to which culture writer E.J. Dickson responded in The Cut, “[ADHD is not] a mind-bending skill that helps you sell your own trademarked fragrances”. Ooop!!!
They say awareness is the first step, but destigmatization, mitigation, and prevention – rather than commodification – should be what follows. It’s not a perfect world though, so in the meantime, people will just have to call ADHD, as Paris Hilton refers to it, their superpower.
🏋🏻♀️ Workin on my fitness
February fitness class themes are LIVE on my site!!!! My favorite recent playlists have been Nic’s Picks, aka. a mix of my favorite workout songs, 2015 Throwbacks, and Our Lips Are Sealed featuring The Go-Go’s, Bananarama, Rick Astley, and Pat Benetar.
📲 I’m just a simple girl in a high-tech digital world
Does everything need to have a reboot, reenactment, reunion, rehash, revisit, etc.? No, but I’m okay with this one. Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan reunited for a Hellman’s Mayonnaise Super Bowl commercial reenacting the famous When Harry Met Sally fake orgasm bit in Katz’s Deli. Two things gave the scene a modern take: 1. Billy Crystal wore a black, blue, brown, and white patterned sweater in the original film. In the new commercial, he wore the internet-viral “Billy Crystal-core” sweater. 2. In the movie, the iconic line, “I’ll have what she’s having” is performed by director Rob Reiner’s mother Estelle, who was credited as “Older Woman Customer”. In contrast, the commercial ironically cast Sydney Sweeney in this role, who is not only not an “Older Woman Customer”, but arguably the most sexualized actress of this entire decade. Intrigued by this on so many levels, but we don’t have time for that today. Either way, we can all agree that they never actually need to show the mayo on the sandwich ew!!
Charlie’s Angels, aka. Lucy Liu, with my girl Drew, Cameron D and Destiny Demi, reunited for a 25 minute video to talk about Demi’s performance in The Substance for Vanity Fair. I still haven’t seen The Substance, but as an aesthetic labor researcher, I would like to.⁴
Wake up babe, RSVP link to the Childhood Delusions Film Festival just dropped!!!!!!
Wavey Goods Co. asks the important, age-old, nichecore question: Why is “Save Tonight” by Eagle Eye Cherry always playing when you are in a CVS?
Sean Kingston is celebrating his 35th birthday with a mini concert and party – where he is allegedly performing six (??) of his top hits – at the Madd Hatter in Hoboken, New Jersey. “Isn’t he in jail?” you might ask. He actually bonded out of jail last summer after he and his mother were charged with wire fraud in $1M scheme. Either way, you cannot deny “Eenie Meenie” still goes hard.
“POV: If Chappell Roan was emo friendly” is sonic catnip to me. Yes I will be playing this song in class soon!!!!!
Charli XCX’s Brat album but as Spanish pharmacy signs is so important to me all of a sudden.
🦋 Social butterfly
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¹ I really hope the Year of the Snake is the Year of Britney Spears once again. It’s the 25th anniversary of Oops!, and even though Jonathan Chu (who just directed Wicked) didn’t even write a script yet, let alone cast a Britney biopic, it will allegedly have extensive Brit involvement.
² Adam Levine wasn’t the first famous or fame-adjacent person to shill big pharma. In 2008, Michael Phelps’s mom was paid by Ortho-McNeil-Janssen, manufacturer of ADHD medication Concerta, despite the fact that Michael had never taken Concerta and also had a strong aversion to taking medication for his ADHD at all.
³ This is driving me crazy – there was a TV show or movie, probably from the late 00s or early 2010s, or maybe earlier idk, where a mom goes to buy pills and is sent to a school. It turns out that the trenchcoat-clad drug dealer is actually a preppy, young, apparently entrepreneurial student? Could be a high schooler but could also be laughably young? I could also be confusing this with a kid whose dad is a physician, so he forges prescriptions? Was it The OC? Desperate Housewives? Maybe even Weeds? Help!!!
⁴ I have been watching a bunch of movies recently – not sure why or even how – and I personally believe that *almost* every single movie in existence is too long and should be cut by 20-30 minutes. I may dive into this more later, as I watched an early 2000s teen movie that was somehow even worse than that Rachael Leigh Cook one where the guy pretended to be a priest in order to try to sleep with her. And that one was bad.