I’m kinda tired of everyone on the internet seeing the worst in everything and then treating that interpretation as the standard.

I’m a staunch liberal, but I’ll be the first to say that many liberals grab onto the worst-case scenario and really run with it sometimes. And it’s no different from the way we see conservatives do it and make fun of them for it. Do people abuse government benefits? Yes, but it would be unfair to zero in on the small number of people who abuse something and say that's the defining characteristic of everyone else? No.

The entire discourse around Ray-Ban Meta glasses would have you believe that they can only legally be sold to registered sex offenders. If you’re out of the loop, these glasses record the scenery around the wearer. There’s been widespread public concern about people using the glasses for nefarious purposes, and that fear has dominated the discourse. So much so that anyone promoting the product is often met with intense scrutiny and backlash.

The public response to the Ray-Ban Meta glasses has focused on the potential harm of hypothetical use, instead of how they're actually used. Will some people use them to be creeps? Yeah, probably. But that is not the majority of people. If you look at who is actually buying these glasses, it’s normal everyday people who just want to record their everyday life. The footage I usually see is people riding their horses, going on bike rides, running, etc. There is nothing wrong with recording any of that. Yet if that’s your intended purpose and you got a pair for that, people would still be mad. I don’t get it.

Also, what can someone do with these glasses that they can’t already do with their phone or another recording device? If anything, a phone is worse. You could just stick it under a woman’s skirt and take footage without her realizing. But glasses have to be worn on the face, and people can generally keep better track of a face than a phone.

I’ve seen the argument “people don’t consent to being recorded”. This does not introduce any new issue. The ethical debate of recording people in public has been around since the video camera was invented. We have some rules/laws around that, so this isn’t exactly the wild west of public policy. Also, most people already step outside with an understanding that they may be recorded, whether they’re in the background of someone filming content or a store security camera.

“But the surveillance state!” Have you read the privacy terms of these glasses? Can you say for sure whether user content is being shared with third parties and for what purposes? What is the tangible harm these glasses have caused or will cause that is unique to them?

I know Meta is not a beloved public corporation, but that doesn’t inherently make the glasses evil. Whatever concern people have about these glasses would be better served by educating themselves on privacy laws and pushing their lawmakers to ensure a standard of safety and regulation for these things. Actually, I have an almost finished draft about why we should all care more about privacy law. I’ll get that published and then come back and link it; it’s deadass important, you guys.

But I digress.

Another thing that I think the public has the wrong reaction to is AI. All the criticisms of it stem from lawmakers failing to properly regulate technology. People should be compensated for their work if AI is going to train on it. We should limit what can be done with AI to reduce unnecessary resource use. Like those dumb AI videos you see on Facebook, those have to go first, as they are not worth the water they’re wasting. Limit who can use AI and for what. It should be heavily regulated in what jobs it takes/replaces, and should absolutely be banned from automating important decisions like insurance claims. Especially in the US with private health insurance. But that will only happen if a law requires it.

People need to stop getting mad at things and get mad at gaps in law and policy.

Too many individuals are writing think pieces about Kylie Jenner when they should be writing to their local representative.

It’s not very independant woman of me to admit that I’m scared of loneliness, but here I am.

And it’s weird that I’m scared of that because I love to be alone. I live alone, and it’s the best. I love that my apartment is tempered exactly to my liking. I like that no one asks me to do anything. I love that I can just zone out and write without someone poking their head into my office to ask what’s for dinner.

But I was writing a post about Detroit and another about Aretha Franklin, and it got me thinking about abandonment. Detroit, as you probably know, endured decades of rampant urban decay. Aretha Franklin is from Detroit and buried there. The feeling I get when I see abandoned houses is the same feeling I had when I visited Aretha and paid my respects. And that is a haunting loneliness.

Let me explain.

I have always felt this weird, deep melancholy within me whenever I see an abandoned building. I find them immensely fascinating. Buildings are such an intimate part of our lives. We raise our families in our homes, we build careers in office buildings, we experience monumental life milestones in churches and schools. Most buildings play a huge role in shaping us all, and I find it deeply sad when they’re abandoned. Whenever I see a half-burned home that's sagging badly and clearly beyond repair, I always think about the first homeowners who were so excited to get the keys and move in.

Last week, I saw photos of a high school being demolished in Detroit, and it made me legitimately weep. Granted, I was on my period, but the catalyst still stands.

As for Aretha Franklin, well, she needs no introduction. The Queen of Soul. She is interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in Detroit, just 20 minutes from where I lived in Windsor. I love Aretha, so I went to visit and pay my respects. What struck me about visiting her was how lonely it felt. There was nobody in the room, the building, or even the cemetery as I drove in. When Aretha died, it was a huge deal with lots of fanfare to honor her monumental legacy. But despite all of that, here she was, alone in a shelf in a basement in Detroit, Michigan.

There is something about being treasured and then completely abandoned that I find deeply fascinating. Actually, you know what, now that I am typing all this out, I realize I just don’t like it when things aren't appreciated. Because why did you let a perfectly good home go to waste? Why isn’t one of the biggest names in music getting visited by people who enjoy her work? 🤨

This is why it’s important to get a good strain of cannabis and just type lmao. I solved my interest! Because, yeah, I do feel very strongly about gratitude. I am always going above and beyond to make sure people know I value them and/or greatly appreciate something they’ve done for me. My friend had to tend to my pets in an emergency while I was in Chicago, so I paid her horse’s board for one month. My horse has needed special care over the summer, so for the people helping with his care, I got one a gorgeous bouquet of flowers and sent another money for lunch. My law clerk is really on top of her stuff, so I sent her a Starbucks gift card and will definitely do more over the course of our working relationship.

I take gratitude very seriously. Sometimes I get legitimately stressed if I think someone might not know I appreciate them. A guy let me merge onto the 404 northbound lane in nasty 401 traffic years ago, but I was too overwhelmed to wave thank you, so I didn't. I think about that all the time whenever I get onto that highway at that intersection lmao. I’m so ashamed 😭

Also, because someone will surely wonder: Cancer sun, Cancer moon, Sagittarius rising. Yes, that does explain it*.

*”Whatever that means.” - Nene Leaks

“What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.”

This quote by Sylvia Plath resonates with many people: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and otherwise. A lot of people feel pressure to make a life that “matters.” That means different things to different people. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted out of life until I figured out what it was about death that scared me. Actually, I owe that to Aretha Franklin.

Aretha doesn’t need much of an introduction: she’s the Queen of Soul. When she died, the president issued a statement. Many of the most influential people of our day dropped what they were doing to come to Detroit and pay their respects. There were more than 100 pink Cadillacs to honor Aretha. Streets were closed; it was a big deal.

But now, you can go visit Aretha Franklin, and it’s a completely different vibe. She’s interned at Woodlawn Cemetery in Detroit, just 20 minutes away from where I went to law school. So I went to visit her and pay my respects. And the most haunting thing about that was how absolutely lonely it was. No one was visiting Aretha and no flowers been left for her. No one was in the building she was in, or even the cemetery. This was someone with a monumental legacy, surrounded by thousands of people on the day she was laid to rest. And now here she was: completely alone and isolated in a basement in Detroit, Michigan.

My mom and I have visited many prominent figures from history at their graves, so I think about this a lot. The people we see are always someone who had a massive impact on our society in some way or another. We’ve seen Whitney Houston, Rosa Parks, Shirley Chisholm, Millard Fillmore, Nelly Bly, John Coltrane, John Jacob Astor IV, Jesse Owens, like all kinds of people. And for all they did and accomplished during their lives, they’re largely all alone in a box for eternity.

But at least they all did something that lived on. People listen to Whitney Houston and John Coltrane every day. Rosa Parks and Shirley Chisholm are a fixture in history textbooks across America. Their physical selves, no one really cares about, it seems. But because of their work, they live on.

So I feel pressure to make the most of my life, not just to maximize my potential but also to produce something that “matters”. After all, who wants to be forgotten? But even that is kind of silly. Eventually the earth will implode, and nothing any of us did will exist or matter. I try to keep that in mind when I second-guess putting myself out there. Because why should I care what anyone thinks when we all end up as cosmic dust with no memory of anything anyway?

Regardless. I still don’t want to sit in my deathbed and think that I wasted my life and potential. If anything, I should work to make my life matter to honor how lucky I am. I am very mindful that I have blessings that many others relentlessly pray for. It seems disrespectful to squander that.

So whatever it is, I better R-E-S-P-E-C-T my legacy and get around to it.

I love the city of Detroit.

And I have for years, even back when Michigan Central Station was still abandoned, and the city was synonymous with crime and urban decay. It’s been amazing to see Detroit go through its renaissance and bounce back. I always knew it would.

People always ask me what it is I love about Detroit, and the answer I always give is that the people there have pride in their city in a way no one else does. It's an enduring love that brought a city back from the brink of near-total ruin. Yeah, New Yorkers love their city, but it’s an easy city to love and has been for decades. Detroiters had to stick by their city through 70+ years of economic and social decline and have only recently begun enjoying better press and a shifting global perspective.

Beyond the love and passion people have for Detroit, it’s a place that has everything anybody of taste would appreciate.

It’s extremely walkable. If what you need isn’t on Woodward (the DIA, Little Caesars Arena, the Fist of Joe Louis, the Spirit of Detroit, Martius Park, Wayne State University, hella restaurants), then it’s probably at most two blocks off of Woodward (Ford Field, Comerica Park, Joe King Used Books). And if you don’t feel like walking, the People Mover (takes you around downtown Detroit) and the Q-Line (takes you up and down Woodward) are both completely free.

It’s extremely cultured. It has some of the best architecture. Detroit enjoyed tremendous wealth in the early 1900s, and that wealth is still visible in how beautiful many of the buildings are. My favorite thing to do is get something to drink and just walk around Detroit. I did that all the time, and gosh, do I miss doing that. There’s also the Detroit Institute of Arts. If you can name a mainstream artist, they probably have a piece of their work. There’s also a famous mural by Diego Rivera in one of their halls. I had a yearly membership, so I used to go and study in the Kresge Cafe. It was such a beautiful spot. The Charles H. Wright Museum is also not to be missed; beautifully designed and, as someone who is a Museum Person™, a great museum.

It’s also deeply historical. It’s the home of Motown (I love Motown). I saw The Temptations and The Four Tops at the Fox Theatre before the last surviving member of the former died. It has the oldest bowling alley in the United States. Rosa Parks is buried there, which many people don’t know. Many of the world’s biggest auto companies are/were based in and around the city.

The absolute best part about Detroit, though, is her people. They’re the best, and it truly feels like a city community. My first time visiting the city was in 2009/2010 - the city's lowest point. I was with my family, and we were lost, circling a neighborhood with abandoned and burned-out homes when we drove up to some guy grilling in the middle of the road. He was so nice: he gave us directions, went over them to make sure we understood, and told us to come back if we had trouble. I’ll never forget how nice he was and how happy he was to help. His directions were fantastic, too, because we got to our destination and never saw him again.

In my first year of law school, I used to visit the Indian Village neighborhood quite a bit. I saw this USPS mail carrier more than once; she was so nice and had such a sunny disposition. Hope that diva is doing well. Another time, I was driving over the border after a shitty day. The border guy asked why I was there, and I said I didn't know; I was having a bad day and just wanted to be in my favorite city. I don’t really remember what he said, but I remember feeling so much better after he said it.

I went to Detroit all the time in law school; usually twice a week. I knew where to get free parking for Pistons games. I was the person people came to for recommendations or to borrow my museum pass. I have so many happy memories of going up and down Woodward with friends or huddling around in a group at The Skip. My then boyfriend cheerfully accompanying me to see some historic building before it was knocked down (we went to see the Hannan Memorial YMCA mid-demolition en route to a Valentine’s Day dinner lol). Quiet afternoons spent studying for the bar exam at Cafe Sous Terre or the Wayne State library.

I can get around Detroit without a map, after three years of frequent visits, better than I can in Toronto, where I was raised.

God, I miss that place.

Do I live my life out loud?

No.

I am terrified of being visible. This often surprises people because I have an outgoing and friendly personality. But I’m actually quite inhibited. I do not dance in public (sober). I keep all my social media accounts on lock. In law school, I got numerous nominations to be valedictorian, but didn’t turn in a speech to be considered because I was terrified of being chosen.

Being seen and perceived is something I’ve really struggled with. But I think we all get tests in life, and we have to see them through for growth. My great test is getting over myself. So I started a TikTok account.

I feel assured it is the right path because, with minimal effort and no intention of doing anything but practice putting myself out there, it's been relatively quite successful. Last summer, I posted a random video of my horse drooling, and it got more than 44 million likes. I haven’t posted much since, but over the summer, I gave it a few more tries. Four videos currently boast views in excess of 50,000. One of them got 125,000 in its first 24-hours. So it’s going really well, but I don't know, man; I’m still nervous. Also, people I know are starting to find it.

But I’m tired of living in a bubble and missing out on opportunities because of my fear. If I had gotten over this fear soon, who knows what I could have accomplished on social media. I ran an Instagram account for Black equestrians for a few years and got all kinds of cool opportunities, from being featured in a magazine to being asked to model for the Ontario Equestrian Federation’s new website.

I have only known visibility to be a great thing, so why does this fear persist?

I have an endless internal debate about privacy and vulnerability. On one hand, I'm part of a serious profession with a small, gossipy community. I don’t do or believe anything offensive. I have never seriously wronged anyone in a way I wouldn’t and couldn’t publicly defend. There is nothing I have experienced that I may write or talk about that hasn’t already been experienced by millions of other people. Yet still, I fret. My newest personal project is actually to start thinking less.

I think I fear visibility because, once you’re visible, anything I say and do is up for anyone to interpret, and you can’t defend it. I hate being misunderstood, but I’m slowly getting over it. I’m smart, rational, and deeply empathetic. Anything I say will be understood by anyone who is the same and a mystery to anyone less. Why do I care about what someone less than me has to say?

I’ve been on the Internet a long time, so I know exactly who the inverse of my targeted audience is: low-income and low-IQ white American men. The people I do find myself bonding with are smart and interesting people with great jobs and cool life experiences, mostly women and all kinds of ethnicities. That should be enough to convince myself that I’m in the right line of thinking, but it’s not.

But you know what, it’s a work in progress rather than work not started. And that’s a much better situation to be in.

I am never not thinking.

It’s good, and it’s bad. Good in the sense that it’s probably what got me to law school and what makes me a great lawyer. Bad in the sense that I overthink and second-guess everything to the point of driving myself (and probably those around me) crazy.

No matter how much meditation is recommended to me, I just can’t do it. I cannot stop thinking, and every time I try it, I am just straight up not having a good time. “Well, that’s even more reason to try it.” I know, I know. I’ll get to it.

But in the moments where I am enjoying the benefits of 2018’s Bill C-45, I think about how overthinking and underthinking have affected my life. And, to be honest, I probably have gone way further in life thanks to underthinking.

Law school is definitely one of them. I decided I was going to go, and that was it. I never gave it a second thought. I never even had a backup plan; I simply knew I was going to law school. Becoming a lawyer is one of, if not thee most, correct decisions I have ever made. I didn’t put much thought into which law school either, to be honest. If I wasn’t going to go to the University of Toronto, then I was going to go to the University of Windsor. Reason: the city of Detroit is my favorite, so if I couldn't go to the best law school by reputation, then I would go to the best law school for my personal enjoyment. That was also a correct decision; the three years I spent going to Detroit were some of the happiest of my life. I loved my time at Windsor Law, and some of my best friends came out of that choice.

That’s my grandest example of underthinking going well, but I see it in more mundane things too. For example, I took a video of my horse drooling last year, unceremoniously uploaded it to TikTok, then forgot about it. A few weeks later, I was walking around Sunnybrook Park in Toronto with my friend, Eddie, when I pulled out my phone and realized it had 2 million views and was rapidly increasing. It currently has 44.5 million views (in case you’re wondering, no, not a damn thing came out of it).

Taking a cue from that, I recently started taking random photos of myself, put whatever I was thinking at the time in text, and uploaded them. That also did really well; a random thought I had about Judge Judy got 120,000 views in its first 24 hours (see below). Meanwhile, the videos I made earlier in the year that I put effort and editing into had gotten just a few hundred views.

It just seems the less I think, the better a position I end up in. I asked the same friend from the park, Eddie, what my worst quality is. We dated for 2 years, and second only to my sister, he’s probably the person that knows me best. Almost immediately, he said I overthink too much. At the time, I think we were a month or two into a never-ending debate about what city I should move to, so fair. In the end, my sister sent me a video about how to make difficult decisions. I can’t find the video, but the advice was to make any decision and then make it the right one. So that’s what I did, and now I live in the cutest little town

I want to think less for two reasons. One, it would give me much-needed peace. But, oh, how I love to agonize about decisions. Two, my best work, unfortunately, is produced when I am as minimally involved as one can be in the production of their own creation. I’m allowed to have ideas and post. I’m limiting the amount of review, due diligence, and editing I permit myself.

I should make “think less” a more regular exercise when it comes to my writing too. I love writing, but I overthink it too much and then end up writing nothing at all. “I should have a theme”, I tell myself. Then waste weeks and months trying to figure out a theme that never comes to me. The theme is me.

I’m also not going to overthink how to conclude this post.

I’m done writing now.

To know me well is to know that I loooove Motown.

I’ve been to the Motown Museum. I own a ton of Motown records. I have the Motown coffee table book. I have even gone to…a wake (I guess?) for the last surviving member of the Four Tops. I didn’t know the wake was a wake until I was looking at the guy’s body. ‘Twas not advertised in the Motown Museum Instagram post. I thought everybody was just gathering to honor the Four Tops, but then we all went inside and there he was. To be clear, it was an event open to the public; I didn’t crash some guy’s private family affair.

I digress, but yeah, I love Motown.

And of course, I had the luxury of curating the perfect mix of Motown thanks to Spotify. And I did a fantastic job; just one banger after another.

Unfortunately, I made the playlist on my ex-boyfriend’s account. Right now I’m like, “Why the hell did I do that??” But when we were dating, we were together all. The. Time. Like, we’d spend one night apart each week to catch up on laundry, then be back together first thing in the morning (hard to believe we aren’t even connected on LinkedIn now lol). So we were in and on each other’s Spotify accounts when we’d listen to music together. Plus, I could just invite myself as a collaborator and save the playlist, no big deal.

Fast forward to this past weekend: it’s been almost a year since our breakup. Sunday night, I’m lying outside wrapped in a blanket, wanting to listen to Motown. So I look for the playlist, but I must have at least 100 saved. I scrolled through my long-ass list but couldn’t find it. But then I was like, “[EX-BOYFRIEND] probably doesn’t have a lot of playlists. It will be much easier to find it looking through his Spotify.”

So I unblocked him, and sure enough, it was right there. Except I wasn't a collaborator, and I didn’t have it saved. I thought it was just oversight, but now that I’m typing this out, I realize that I more likely severed any connection I had to the playlist by blocking him. Whoops 😬

But I can’t save the playlist now because, according to my googling, it will alert him.

So I have effectively lost a playlist in a breakup. I am a pioneer in post-breakup asset division.

At the end of the day, it’s not really a big deal. I can just take a screenshot of the playlist and recreate it.

But if I can get sentimental for a moment (my horoscope said I would today): a month into the relationship, we had gone to see The Temptations and The Four Tops (both Motown groups). Months later, he told me that was the night he fell in love with me. Kinda makes the lost playlist feel almost poetic.

Continuing with sentimentality, I’m also thinking about how crazy it is to go from in love to being blocked on Spotify in less than a year. And the crazy thing is: we have never once fought or yelled at each other. Up until the day we broke up, we said it felt like the honeymoon phase had never ended, even after 2 years together. I know hearing that makes the stomachs of people in happy relationships turn. But that is a reality you should be aware of: you can be completely in love, have a great relationship, and still have it go to shit.

Advice: date brave men. You cannot and will not have a successful relationship with someone who can’t summon the strength to have difficult conversations and avoids hard things. It’s essentially why we broke up, and it’s why we aren’t speaking now.

And worst of all, it’s why I can’t just save an existing and perfectly curated Motown playlist!!!

Post-editing note: I have recreated the playlist - please see below.

One thing about me: I will not suffer a bad time. In the wise words of Kim Cattrall, “I don’t want to be in a situation for even an hour where I’m not enjoying myself.”

Building a loved life is everyone's goal. Yet so many people seem unhappy. Often, it’s because they refuse to let go of what clearly isn't working. You see it manifest in your friend who won’t dump her loser boyfriend. The coworker who hates their job but doesn’t look for another one. Someone you know who complains incessantly about the city they live in but never seeks to move. All seemingly unaware that the better option will only become available once they’ve moved on.

I used to work at an accounting firm, and they had this freelancer they’d worked with for years. He would charge obscene amounts of money for super simple fixes to the firm’s WordPress site. There were multiple charges for one hour of work for what would have been a one-minute task. I brought this up to my boss. She was mad this guy was taking advantage of the firm and wasting its money but, ultimately, chose to keep him on because “it’s the devil we know”.

Huh??

That line of thinking never made sense to me. Why suffer with the devil when you can cut him loose and search for heaven? That incident was years ago. Since then, I have realized “the devil you know” is one of the worst yet most steadfast traits in human beings. People will stay in shitty situations forever. Not because they like the life they’re living but because the idea of disrupting the status quo, venturing into something new, and/or giving up something familiar is terrifying to them.

I went through this recently with friends. I decided to end three friendships this summer. Sounds like a lot, but I have never “dumped” a friend, and I had 33 years' worth of catching up to do. There were signs, but I was naively optimistic. Eventually, it got to the point where I could be stupid and ignore it, or face the music and adjust accordingly.

One friend of nearly 10 years forgot my birthday and never reached out to apologize. Another friend of 4 years was needlessly a huge asshole out of the blue. The third was supposed to visit me this weekend, but I brought up longstanding issues, and apparently that was enough to end the friendship. They never responded, addressed it, or apologized. And then they didn't follow my writing page, which is when I decided it was time to cut them out of my life because people who don’t FW your work don’t FW you.

These were all people I cared about deeply. Had they just reached out and apologized, I would have just let it go. But it’s been between 2 and 3 weeks now since all these incidents - ample time to reflect, realize, and repair. All three chose not to. And that’s its own reality to face. Someone who does not care to fix what they broke probably didn’t care about it much to begin with. And I love myself too much to keep people around who don’t love me enough or at all.

So that was hard. And it will be hard (I still have to remove 2/3 of my socials). But it makes room for three better friends. I would much rather have friends with the maturity, bravery, and emotional intelligence to be good friends and repair the relationship when it faces conflict. Further, a willingness to work through conflict is itself a sign of love. People who don’t care are the ones who say nothing and/or walk away.

Change is hard, but so is living a life you are not happy with. You can prolong your suffering and stay comfortable, or you can shake things up and put in the work to create a life that excites you. It’s going to be hard either way. Your choice is whether or not you want to lie on your deathbed with memories or regrets.

It’s hard to move to a new city. It’s hard to change your career. It’s hard to end most relationships, be it romantic, platonic, or familial. And hardest of all, you have no idea whether it will be okay on the other side.

But the hope of joy is better than the assurance of discontent.

I would hate to be a popular public figure. People talking about me and making up their own determinations of me and my character would drive me to…well, let’s just say it ends with my mom and sister bickering about where I said my will was.

People are just…dense. I’m even nervous about defending an influencer while writing this. It does not matter if the claim has merit. So many people are driven by righteous indignation and just seeing “influencer” will set them off. I could go on a whole rant about people who perceive themselves as liberal intellectuals and overestimate their ability to offer thoughtful criticism. A lot of them miss the mark completely and just end up being assholes.

Case in point: Nara Smith.

Her latest controversy is an interview she did recently on Call Her Daddy. She was asked about trad wives and responded by saying that she, Nara, was not a trad wife because she worked. Well, that set people off.

Some people said she promoted the trad wife movement. Is she promoting the trad wife movement or is she just home a lot and has a bunch of kids?

Some people say the proof that she was promoting the trad wife movement was that she added #tradwife to earlier videos. Like…and? I’ve used #catmom on a photo. I am aware I did not give birth to my cat.

There’s also the fact that Nara and the woman who runs Ballerina Farm have spent time together. But they’re both Mormon content creators with large families. There are clearly other things to connect on. Ballerina Farm actually promotes trad wife culture with that whole farm situation she has going on. Nara lives in a wealthy Connecticut suburb and has shown us videos of her going to a grocery store.

The bigger issue here is that 1) most people make assumptions based on as little information as possible and 2) they also have no sense of humor. Nara Smith’s videos show her wearing designer gowns while making things from scratch in the most inefficient way possible. Her whole brand is clearly a joke, rooted in absurdity. So many people miss this. They think she’s serious and all their judgments are based on that misunderstanding. If anything, it’s actually kind of a mockery of trad wives.

People saw the cooking from scratch and the four kids, and projected trad wife. Nara didn’t even want four kids - she’s openly talked about how she wanted to stop at three but then had an oops. One less kid and she’s in an extremely normal range of children. As for the cooking, we’ve seen people wasting huge quantities of food on TikTok, and even that gets less ire than Nara making bread, jam, and peanut butter from scratch. It’s weird.

I’m tired of people being so unnecessarily hard on women.

Also, reminder: she’s 24. That frontal lobe ain’t even developed, yet she’s supposed to apologize for not predicting the rise of a huge cultural phenomenon? Please.

Trad wife culture isn’t even new; it used to be called hobby farming. As for the public interest in trad wife culture, that’s actually people who are tired of their life/jobs reacting to a desire to reconnect with the earth and nature, and live a simple, uncomplicated life. Why are we shifting societal failure onto Nara Smith?

Once again, we are redirecting the failures of capitalism onto women.

Hot take: I think getting mad at people who buy used clothing to resell and make a profit off of it is whack. I’m not talking about corporate resellers like Goodwill, Plato’s Closet, whatever. I mean resellers as individuals and small businesses.

“But it makes clothing more expensive.”

Yeah, that’s a downside; I’ll give you that. But it’s usually not a massive markup. And it’s a markup that is still way under what clothing retailers sell their merchandise for brand new, so it's usually still affordable. What’s worse: a used pair of $7 jeans resold for $15 or a t-shirt manufactured for $1 then sold new for $80?

In this capitalist and propaganda-run world, we all have to be asking ourselves, “Who does this criticism actually affect?” It’s easy to just afford blanket hate to anyone who increases the cost of something, but life is way too damn nuanced to be making snap judgments about anything. Most resellers are not the problem.

So, again, yes, it does marginally drive up the cost of used clothing. But I think there is a massive social benefit that justifies a lil’ price increase. The vast majority of resellers are usually college students, broke young adults, and moms just trying to make some money to afford life’s necessities. In attacking resellers, we’re attacking people who likely aren’t in a super strong economic position.

There are also some people who are able to successfully run it as a small business, and I think that’s fine too - money is better in the hands of everyday people than a massive corporation. Reselling used/vintage clothes is not known to be a huge millionaire generator. At best, it’s paying for a Nissan Rogue and a two-bedroom apartment - not bad but, you know, not enough to buy a yacht or the US government.

My range of reseller acceptance runs from teenagers trying to make pocket money to the well-coiffed middle-aged ladies who run upscale consignment boutiques. Individuals, small business owners, and any charitable initiative. Once someone is doing enough volume to have a direct contact at USPS, then they’re on their own.

Why are we policing people with no real power? Villainizing well-meaning people who aren’t causing any significant harm is weird. Take that energy to your local private equity group - that’s who’s really driving up the cost of everything.

Sharing a beauty regimen is nothing new. What is new is elaborate self-maintenance schedules being passed off as “low maintenance” - even “no maintenance” in more egregious cases.

There was a TikTok trend of women showing off elaborate beauty routines, all while insisting that the colossal effort they’re putting in is actually low-maintenance. Teeth bleaching. Lip staining. Eyebrow dyeing and shaping. All of it framed as the secret to needing less effort, not more.

These are tips for longer-lasting beauty, sure, but it is by no means low-maintenance. Low maintenance is tweezing your eyebrows as hair grows back. One of these gals was applying a stencil to her face to get the perfect eyebrow, then called that low maintenance. It’s not low maintenance because it lasts longer - it still took a lot of work to do, and it has to be done regularly. What the heck is high maintenance if not that??

Just be high maintenance. You are going above and beyond most people’s beauty routine, and putting in a significant amount of time to do so. You are high-maintenance. And there’s nothing wrong with taking care of yourself and looking good. That should be a point of pride. So why are so many women obsessed with being seen as low/no maintenance?

I’ll tell you why: men. Growing up, there were jokes everywhere about how women take forever to get ready, and I always hated that. Good things take time, and that includes putting yourself together. And if you, as a woman, put in the time and effort to look your best going out with a man, that man is also getting the benefit of it: looking at you, and being seen next to you.

A lot of men regularly put women down for the time, energy, and money they invest in their looks. So my safe guess is that a lot of women have absorbed shame around caring for themselves. Stop. Because what are they complaining about? Looking nice and respectable? What’s the fear in being accused of caring about your appearance?

And why even have that fear? Women are relentlessly marketed to by beauty, fashion, and lifestyle companies. It’s completely reasonable to expect that there will be a response to that. And it seems even with the rise in “self-love” and “doing things for yourself”, the shame of caring about our looks is still being felt by women; it’s just expressed differently now. Why do some women feel the need to diminish the work they do on themselves?

I hate seeing women trying to shrink themselves. I have never heard a man get called “high maintenance” for dressing well and seeing a barber regularly. However, a woman with a well-curated wardrobe and regular hair appointments would certainly be classified as such. It doesn’t matter what you do; if you do one nice thing for yourself, someone will find a way to call it too much.

It’s okay to look good and take care of yourself. You are the most important person in your life, and you are responsible for getting you through each day, every day. It’s a worthy investment and doesn't need an explanation or an apology. Pretending otherwise? An actual insecurity.

I’ve been on vacation, so I’ve had time to see what the chronically online are up to.

The new thing is Voice Note Guy. If you aren’t familiar, a voice note was sent by an unidentified Shakesphere to a young lady. The young lady’s friend then posted the video to TikTok. In the video, the man leaves a long, rambling message saying he is not interested in a second date unless she hooks up with him. You can watch the video here or below, but if you can’t watch it at all, here is the text of it:

Alright, I figured I’d send you a voice note because it’s easier than texting all this. Anyway, I had a good time tonight — I definitely think you are lovely. However, if we’re going to go to your place on Thursday, I’d love to have that physical intimacy, to see if I’m sexually compatible with you. So if I’m going to come over, I’d be hoping to hook up, have sex, have a good time, and have that romantic and physical spark there — for my own sake, because it’s hard for me to continue dating someone if I don’t know whether we’re sexually compatible.

I know you said you don’t know about that, so I guess my thing is: what would be the point of me coming over if we’re not going to hook up, cuddle, and be intimate with each other? If that’s not what you want, that’s fine, but I think we should just end it here, respectfully. I’m all about getting to know each other first — that’s totally fine — but I am looking to have that physical aspect there, and I don’t want to keep seeing someone if I don’t know that’s there.

So it’s up to you — let me know. I’m happy to come over if you want me to; I’d love to have a good time, have some wine, hang out and chill. But if you’re not trying to hook up, then I think we should just go our separate ways. Let me know.

Before I say anything else: I think I might know who this guy is. I have been trying to figure out where the woman who posted the original video is from, but it isn’t clear. But if this guy turns out to be from Chicago, I know. Anyway, back to the message.

The only correct take here is that he should not have sent that voice note. Even if you think he was being “upfront” and seeking consent, that was not the way to do it. The voice note he left is inappropriate, unhinged, weird, and coercive; he should not have sent it. Did we really need more discussion than that? And I say this as someone who loves to over-analyze.

Some people said the message was fine because the guy was “honest” in his intentions. Incorrect take, I think, personally. Women should not be subjected to weird, sexually aggressive messages. I’ve also seen people describe the guy’s message as coercive. In the technical sense, yes, this man is trying to be coercive. If this message actually works in practice on someone after one date, I advise whoever it worked on to retire from dating immediately and seek counseling.

The voice note has gotten surprisingly popular - I feel like most women get some weird ass communication from a man at some point, and it doesn’t get much attention when shared online. I didn’t respond to a man once after like two days on a dating app, and he wrote me to say he hoped I got raped and died a violent death. Getting messaged up messages is a common part of dating as a woman, unfortunately, and I’m glad to see that one of them is getting public attention. Anything to make men realize how weird men can be.

Everyone wants to go viral these days, especially on TikTok. And it’s hard to know what will capture the public’s attention because top-performing videos are so random. But here’s my story of having a TikTok hit 44.5+ million views.

This past fall, my horse Ollie was put out to pasture in a new field. This field had clover, which is sometimes covered with a harmless toxin that can cause horses to salivate excessively. I have seen this on horses before, but in those instances, it was only little spit bubbles that formed around the mouth. In Ollie’s case, he turned into a Niagara Falls of spit - horse slobber everywhere. It was gross and interesting, so on September 4th of 2025, I took a video and posted it to TikTok. No overthinking, just pick and post.

From there, it slowly and steadily gained traction. It had gotten a few thousand likes in the first day or so, but I wasn’t checking all that regularly to monitor its progress. I remember when I realized it was actually going viral. My friend and I were walking around the Sunnybrook dog park, and I pulled it up to show him, and then realized it had, like, 2 million views or something at that point.

As of this writing, the video currently has 44.5 million views, 2.7 million likes, 8,851 comments, and 110.5k saves.

How much money did I make? $0. I live in Canada and cannot participate in the TikTok creator fund. Another Canadian content creator had a video go viral, and she did the math on how much it would have made; it came out to around $20,000. I think my sister and I did the math for my video, and mine would have made around the same, maybe a bit more.

Did anyone I know recognize my horse? No. But I did eventually post the video to my personal Instagram, and people reached out to say they had seen it on their FYP and didn’t realize it was my horse.

Did any cool opportunities come out of it? Not really. A bunch of pages DM’d me for the right to repost and share my video, including LADbible. They never offered money or even waited for a “yes”; they would just include a form to fill out, with a link to the video. The link didn't even work, and they never responded to my message telling them so, so I don’t think the video ever made it to their page.

The most annoying part was people telling me my horse was on the brink of certain death. For months. Even though it only lasted for like 2 or 3 days. Even though I and other people were in the comments telling people it’s normal and harmless. Even though I had consulted a vet and they had nothing to say about it beyond making sure Ollie had access to water. And even though time had passed and Ollie was still very much alive. That’s my least favorite part of being on the internet - the people thinking the least are commenting the most.

As for Ollie, he has stayed humble despite his 15 minutes of fame. I posted the same video to Reels, and I think it got 2+ million likes. More recently, I posted photos of him sitting next to me on Reddit, and they got 106,000+ upvotes. He’s a certified Internet darling and star. As he should be, he is such a sweet horse, and he loves attention.

So anyway, that’s the short and boring story of what it was like to have a TikTok go viral. Not very exciting.

It’s important to remember that public relations (PR) drives much of what makes it to the news and what we talk about. So a good indicator of when someone has hired a PR agency to push their story is when many major news outlets are reporting on it, but engagement is super low. No news outlet is going to continue organically pushing content if it's obvious the public doesn’t care.

And, IMO, we’re seeing that now with Taylor Swift’s wedding. Like this post from People Magazine that has less than 7,000 likes on a page with 14.7 million followers:

By comparison, I posted a photo of my horse on Reddit two days ago, and it got 100,000+ upvotes. Not bragging, just illustrating that my pet gets more attention on an animal subreddit than Taylor Swift’s wedding is getting on the top social media website from the leading celebrity news publication.

When she announced her engagement on August 26 of last year, that did have real hype. And you could see it. Posts about it had high engagement. Lots of people were sharing the news or Taylor’s engagement photos on their stories. People were making Reels and TikToks about it. Now that we see the wedding is actually here, it’s a tiny fraction of the interest we had then. It does not seem like people care that much, which tells me: Taylor Swift has officially fallen from public grace.

Stuff has been piling up against Taylor for years, and her public strategy has always been to play it safe and go with whatever the popular opinion is. And only if she must. She was hounded about her politics for years before she finally showed support for Democratic candidates. And even then, people are skeptical about her politics - I posted a TikTok about her once, and people in the comments were calling her “MAGA Barbie”.

I feel Taylor Swift works incredibly hard and diligently to craft a public persona, but that persona clashes with who she actually is, as evidenced by her actions. She promotes this girl’s girl thing, and she wants the credit for being progressive. But then she’s out polluting the environment with excessive private jet use - which she will not scale back on despite enormous public backlash. And now with her wedding, we see that she has ties to some truly awful people. One of her guests is Steven J. Demetriou, a man responsible for running ICE detention centers.

I also find Taylor to be incredibly disingenuous. She had the surrounding block of Madison Square Garden blocked in the name of “privacy”. But then she does weird shit like having Adam Sandler officiate her wedding (a Zionist btw). Why are you always doing things to get your name in the news and then crying about privacy, Taylor? And why did you invite 1,000 people?? I refuse to believe that either Taylor or Travis is a close friend of Hugh Grant, and yet he is at their wedding?

Shutting down busy NYC streets on the Fourth of July, of all days, has New Yorkers rightfully complaining. This tweet from Maria Figuero encapsulates good points and info:

The Hollywood Reporter also published an article calling out the ridiculousness of Taylor’s wedding. And it truly is ridiculous. What is the point of having a wedding where you force all attendees to sign “ironclad NDAs,” only to host it at a major sports arena in one of the world’s most prolific and busiest cities during a holiday weekend? Contradictory behavior.

This wedding just seems like an elaborate display of Taylor's self-importance.

I was born at the perfect time IMO.

I had just the right amount of technology growing up. We worked on our typing skills with MSN Messenger (RIP diva - NEVER forgotten), our social media was MySpace, and Habbo Hotel was big. There was not a whole lot going on, but it was fun; it was simpler; it was independent; it was parent-free.

Cut to today: everyone is online. And with a culture shift comes new problems. And the one I want to get to today is when a parent wants to become an influencer.

Not all of us are lucky to be raised in homes with considerate parents who are thoughtful about their children and how their actions may affect them. In fact, I would say most people do not benefit from such a luxury. And further to that point, many parents have huge egos, low self-esteem, and/or a lack of self-confidence. And they don’t work on it, so some ugly behavior manifests. For many, it’s content creation coupled with an addiction to attention, praise, and the thrill of performing perfection.

There are so many creators who are so hell-bent on this relentless pursuit of perfection and an idyllic family life that I refuse to believe they are happy. Nabela Noor is one example. She posts these heavily curated videos of her girls in matching outfits “playing outside”. Except the outfits are spotless, which tells me the girls are not actually engaging with the outside and nature. They are there to perform for their mother’s viewers.

Another one is Aubree Jones. She has regularly posted videos of herself and her seven children for years. But what we forget is that those videos are not candid moments. They are obviously staged with cues and instructions so that each child performs to their mother’s vision and expectation. That’s not how children are supposed to spend their time, and I would bet that’s not how children want to spend their time. I refuse to believe that seven children all love making dozens upon dozens of these videos.

There is no other instance where forcing your child to fully participate in your job or hobby is acceptable. Imagine I force my child to play on my rec league or come draft separation agreements with me - I’d be considered a bad mom. So, regardless of whether social media is a hobby or a career for these people, why do they feel okay to make their kids do it with them?

It is your right to show off your home. But consider what happens if your kids’ peers find the videos. They can see their home and hear relatively intimate details of their family’s life. Your children have effectively lost control of much of their privacy. And they have no idea who is watching.

When you become a parent in a place where it’s a choice, you forfeit your right to be completely selfish. You have an obligation to consider your child in all their needs; physically, psychologically, emotionally, everything. You also have an obligation not to coerce them into doing something they don’t want to do if it is solely for your benefit. If you ask and they willingly and enthusiastically want to do it, that’s one thing. But I doubt that’s the case when TikTok becomes your parents’ job, and they now rely on you to get those views up.

Something I cannot wait for is future documentaries featuring the children of TikTokers and social media influencers. I bet it will be sad; I have no doubt we will hear some shocking things. But I’m so interested to see and hear about what these influencers are really like behind the scenes and what comes out of parents with relentless social media obsessions.

I recently started listening to Strangers by Belle Burden on audiobook. Consider this a “beginning of the book” review because I already need to get some stuff off my chest.

Strangers is an autobiography in which the author chronicles her separation and divorce from her husband. As a divorcee myself, I feel like divorce is way too common to warrant a whole book about one person’s experience with it. But Strangers is so popular and well-reviewed that I decided to mute my divorce-book bias and try it.

Always trust your gut.

I’m trying to keep an open mind, but it’s hard to feel sorry for someone dealing with a common problem in the easiest way imaginable. Added to my uphill battle is the fact that Burden has zero resilience and unchecked internalized misogyny, which affects her young teenage daughters. I can’t stand weak-willed adults, and I especially can’t stand thoughtless parenting.

I am really trying to be sympathetic to the author; this separation came out of the blue, navigating grief is hard, and then the fact that women have to fight against their own unconscious biases regarding gender and relationships. But still. There were so many times I just found Belle Burden’s handling of the situation frustrating.

For example, her husband, James, abandons the family, then weeks later, comes back to begrudgingly tell his children that he is leaving them forever. During this visit, he has the gall to ask Burden to make him a sandwich, and then she fucking does. And not just any sandwich - she describes this tremendous effort she puts into making him this amazing sandwich. Meanwhile, she has been relying on her teenage daughter to make all the meals in the house since James left because she is too depressed to cook for her children. Tell that man to make his own fucking sandwich. And this comes after she had their house manager drive a jeep over to the airport so James could drive himself home instead of ordering a cab. Why aren't you catering to this shitty, shitty man?

Speaking of her daughters, this woman is a Boy Mom™. She mentions that another mom had to teach her 17-year-old son how to do laundry for the first time. Meanwhile, her 15-year-old daughter is cooking elaborate meals she learns on TikTok for the family. Just to recap and be 100% clear on this: a 15-year-old girl took the initiative to learn a necessary domestic skill and then performed it above and beyond; meanwhile, a 17-year-old boy is learning laundry for the first time ever after being hand-held through the process by another woman.

If you didn't read the book, the son is staying with friends somewhere (Long Island, IIRC), and the author is quarantined with her two daughters in Martha’s Vineyard. Anyway, the mom has this to say about her concern for her son as the divorce news is breaking at home: “I was relieved he wasn’t with us, stuck in a house of girls that felt heavy with sadness without any of his friends. Protected for a time from his father, who’s no longer there.”

I found this so infuriating that I paused the book. Let’s break down her internalized misogyny and how it ultimately hurts her children:

1. You are relieved that your son isn’t “stuck” in a house of girls? Why? What is wrong with being stuck in a house full of girls? Your son is going through the trauma and devastation of his father abandoning his family, and the bullshit you’re writing is essentially, “It could be worse - he could be around women!”

2. In a time of heavy sadness, don’t you think your son would rather be among family so he can process his emotions in a safe familial environment instead of being around friends where he’s probably feeling pressure to keep it together? It’s unfortunate that she lets her weird sexism dictate exiling her son, because studies apparently suggest that having sisters in a home is the most emotionally valuable family dynamic. So her son would likely be better off, emotionally, staying home in a house full of girls, especially since these are his sisters, and they are going through the same thing. Instead, he’s probably stuck repressing his emotions in a house of teenage boys. When we talk about how toxic masculinity ruins everything for men and women, this is what we mean.

3. Also, her husband had been “stuck” in a house with girls, his wife and his daughter. It wasn’t a problem for him. Why is it a problem for your son?

4. Her daughters are living without their friends, and they are fine, but the idea of her son being without his friends is unthinkable. Weird double standard.

5. It’s okay that her son is afforded the ignorance of his father not being around, while the daughters actively endure their father's absence.

It’s this kind of thoughtless, unconscious gender bias that keeps men emotionally unhealthy and women forced to bear hardship and responsibility where men are excused from doing the same. Her daughters are in the house, making dinner, caring for their mom, watching their family dynamic implode, but it’s the son that the mom goes on at length about, worrying, even though he is living in as much blissful ignorance as she can afford him.

Obviously, divorce is hard, especially when it is rooted in cheating. But I can’t help but contrast how she handles this versus how an average middle-class woman would. Burden has the luxury of falling apart in her vacation home on the expensive and exclusive Martha’s Vineyard. There is no mention of having to work a job. She writes about having friends call her every day and then spending hours every day talking about what she is going through. Meanwhile, there are women coping with cheating husbands abandoning their families everywhere, but those women still have to work and raise their kids. Burden has this one single tragic thing happen to her and is dealing with it in easy mode, yet feels entitled to document the whole thing in a book.

But I guess this would be legitimately devastating to her because she hasn’t dealt with anything hard in her life. She has zero resilience. She writes about how she wanted to be a writer and had even received writing awards and admission to an upper-year writing course as a freshman in college. Yet one man offered one unsubstantiated criticism of her writing in the class, and she immediately folded, abandoned her writing dreams, and pursued law school instead.

Belle Burden is wealthy. Her family line includes Old Hollywood and the Vanderbilts. She has been to the most expensive and prestigious schools in the United States. Whenever I read autobiographies by rich white women, it’s a real exercise in patience to take them seriously. Yes, their struggle was real, but it becomes such a defining part of them. I read all kinds of biographies. The ones by rich white women, like Burden, centre around a single incident of hardship that, for anyone else, would be just another incident in a series of events.

I’m not saying she isn’t allowed to be devastated - she absolutely is. But she got a book deal out of what didn’t need to be more than an essay on Substack. In fact, her story was first presented as an article in The New York Times. That was the maximum amount of media this story warranted.

I’m gonna hang in there and finish the book. Maybe something happens that changes my mind, and I come to sympathize with Burden. But I am not hopeful at the time of publishing this post.

The movie, Michael, is out, and people are loving it. I haven’t seen it yet, but I am immensely enjoying the TikToks people are making. With Michael Jackson’s name back in the headlines again, the abuse he endured as a child is also being discussed.

The origin story of Michael Jackson is pretty well known. Born in Gary, Indiana, to a large family, a young Michael and four of his brothers went on to become The Jackson 5. Also part of that legacy is the well-known fact that Joe Jackson, the patriarch of the family, would relentlessly beat his children, especially the members of The Jackson 5.

There has always been a long-standing joke around the idea of “Is it okay to beat your child if they become Michael Jackson?” The idea being that copious amounts of abuse can push your child to greatness and is, therefore, maybe worth the sacrifice. This is a joke we need to stop making because many won’t recognize it as such. Many people will, honest to God, believe that abuse can make a child great and use it to justify hurting their children. I guarantee you there are already people doing this.

A point I always want to stress to people, especially as someone working in family law: never underestimate how much abuse exists around you - it’s everywhere.

And on that point: you cannot beat your child into greatness because, if you could, we would have a lot more Michael Jacksons. But we don’t because Michael is an exception, not the rule. Abuse generally has the opposite effect; it demotivates, it makes it harder to learn, and it can cause long-term psychological trauma. Michael aside, how many of the most talented people of our time also come from a background embedded in abuse? Hm?

If you want a child to succeed at something, it’s going to take support and discipline. That’s why whenever people at the top of their fields are getting accolades - in business, science, film, sports, whatever - they always thank their parents for supporting them.

Support and discipline are what create greatness. Imagine what Michael could have become, what he could have been, if the person who shaped his career had also protected his childhood. We’ll never know. But we do know this: the next Michael Jackson won’t come from a household where a parent raises their fists. They’re going to come from one where a parent is raising their child.

So the next time someone makes that joke - “maybe Joe was onto something” - push back on it. Not because it’s offensive, but because someone in that room might be taking notes. Children don’t need to be broken down to be built up. They need someone in their corner.

Abuse doesn’t make children great; it just makes childhood harder. And we owe kids better than that. Michael was owed better than that.

This post is actually based on a paper I wrote in law school.

While writing another Substack article, I mentioned Never Split the Difference and wanted to cross-reference a claim, so I pulled up the paper. Even as the author, I was truly engrossed in reading it. Not because I’m a great author, but the guy who wrote Never Split the Difference, Chriss Voss, is such a bullshitter. And such a bullshitter to the degree where you can use his own work and words against him. Yet somehow, he has amassed a large following.

Getting to Yes I had read twice; once in my Paralegal program in college, and again for an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) course in law school. I had attempted Never Split the Difference years ago but found the writing to be insufferable. I read it in full when I took the ADR course, thinking I would compare two different negotiation styles. But in reading Never Split the Difference, it quickly became apparent that it offered the exact same methods as Getting to Yes. The only difference was that it had extra pages dedicated to attacking Getting to Yes. Other than that, the methods are nearly identical. So why does one get dismissed while the other has a cult following?

The Books, Briefly

Getting to Yes was published in 1981 by Harvard professors Roger Fisher and William Ury. If you’re at all in the North American ADR space, then you know that this is like our Madonna and Michael Jackson. They more or less invented modern negotiation theory. Their approach, called “principled negotiation”, can be distilled down to four elements:

1. separate the person from the problem

2. focus on interests rather than positions

3. generate a variety of options, and;

4. anchor decisions to objective criteria.

They also introduced BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement), which is widely used in business school curricula and in mediation work.

Fisher and Ury weren’t armchair theorists either; they practiced what they preached. Fisher advised the Ecuador-Peru border dispute, was involved in the Iranian hostage negotiations, assisted with the Camp David Accords, and helped guide South Africa’s post-apartheid constitutional process. Ury helped establish the Nuclear Risk Reduction Centres that led to Reagan and Gorbachev signing the first US-Soviet arms control agreement. There is a reason Getting to Yes has sold 15 million copies.

Never Split the Difference was published in 2016 by Chris Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator. His strategy centres on emotional attunement: mirror what people say back to them, label their feelings, ask open-ended questions, use silence strategically, and demonstrate “tactical empathy.” The book sold 1 million copies and has an intensely loyal following, particularly among “alpha male” type business professionals.

They Say the Same Things

When you lay the two methods side by side, the similarities are, I would argue, fundamentally the fucking same.

Discover interests

Getting to Yes: “As more attention is paid to positions, less attention is devoted to meeting the underlying concerns of the parties. Agreement becomes less likely. Any agreement reached may reflect a mechanical splitting of the difference between final positions rather than a solution carefully crafted to meet the legitimate interests of the parties.”

Never Split the Difference: “The presence of hidden interests isn’t as rare as you might think. Your counterpart will often reject offers for reasons that have nothing to do with their merits.”

Never Split the Difference: “If you can get the other party to reveal their problems, pain, and unmet objectives—if you can get at what people are really buying—then you can sell them a vision of their problem that leaves your proposal as the perfect solution.”

Objective criteria

Getting to Yes: “In short, the approach is to commit yourself to reaching a solution based on principal, not pressure. Concentrate on the merits of the problem, not the mettle of the parties. Be open to reason, but closed to threats.”

Never Split the Difference: “Fair?” you’d respond, pausing to let the word’s power do to them as it was intended to do to you. Follow that with a label: “It seems like you’re ready to provide the evidence that supports that,” which alludes to opening their books or otherwise handing over information that will either contradict their claim to fairness or give you more data to work with than you had previously.”

Variety of options

Getting to Yes: “The third point responds to the difficulty of designing optimal solutions while under pressure. Trying to decide in the presence of an adversary narrows your vision. … You can offset these constraints by setting aside a designated time within which to think up a wide range of possible solutions that advance shared interests and creatively reconcile differing interests.”

Never Split the Difference: “Deadlines regularly make people say and do impulsive things that are against their best interests, because we all have a natural tendency to rush as a deadline approaches.”

Never Split the Difference: “Understanding the “other” is a precondition to be able to speak persuasively and develop options that resonate for them.”

Never Split the Difference: “Great negotiators are able to question the assumptions that the rest of the involved players accept on faith or in arrogance, and thus remain more emotionally open to all possibilities, and more intellectually agile to a fluid situation.”

Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA)

Getting to Yes: “Develop your BATNA. Vigorous exploration of what you will do if you do not reach an agreement can greatly strengthen your hand. Attractive alternatives are not just sitting there waiting for you; you usually have to develop them.”

Never Split the Difference: “I tell my clients that as part of their preparation they should think about the outcome extremes: best and worst. If you’ve got both ends covered, you’ll be ready for anything. So know what you cannot accept and have an idea about the best-case outcome”

When you get around Voss’ fluff and cut down to the core of what he says, he makes the exact same arguments that Getting to Yes is centred around.

And I bet Voss, to varying degrees, knows it’s the same stuff. Because why else would he dedicate so much page space to attacking Getting to Yes and principled negotiation? I think it's a tactic to misdirect the reader into thinking it’s a different book. Likely to save face from accusations of copyright and idea-stealing. And, of course, to build a brand where he monetizes off of both other people’s work and the insecurities of weak men.

What irks me is that Voss admits in his own book that the FBI trained its agents in principled negotiation. Voss himself even attended Harvard after retiring to study principled negotiation- the very same school the writers of Getting to Yes developed principled negotiations, I remind you. He is not hiding the fact that all his ideas in Never Split the Difference are built on the exact same information and principles as in Getting to Yes.

What irks me is that Voss admits in his own book that the FBI trained its agents in principled negotiation. Voss himself even attended Harvard, after retiring, to study principled negotiation- the very same school where the writers of Getting to Yes developed principled negotiations, I remind you. So, to recap, he learned about principled negotiation throughout his FBI career, then went to the school where it was founded to learn more, and now makes a career out of talking shit about it while also promoting it. And again, he says all this in his book. He is not hiding the fact that all his ideas in Never Split the Difference are built on the exact same information and principles as in Getting to Yes.

This makes his repeated criticism of Getting to Yes throughout the book rather awkward.

Voss is Not a Good Negotiator

Voss opens Never Split the Difference with a dramatic claim: everything we’ve been taught about negotiation is wrong, compromise is the worst thing you can do, and his field-tested FBI techniques will get you out of any scenario imaginable.

A few chapters later, he writes: “When individuals feel listened to, they tend to become less defensive and more willing to listen to other points of view, which gets them to the calm and logical place where they can be good Getting to Yes problem solvers.”

So: Getting to Yes doesn’t work. Unless the person has calmed down, at which point it works perfectly.

He also cites the Waco and Ruby Ridge standoffs as proof that Getting to Yes fails in high-stakes negotiations. But a closer look at both events complicates that narrative. In Waco, the FBI had successfully negotiated the release of 21 children before an unexpected gunshot derailed everything. In Ruby Ridge, agents couldn’t reach Randy Weaver because the cabin had no phone — they were literally yelling into a forest at a man who (unbeknownst to them) had already lost his wife. These aren’t failures of principled negotiation. They’re failures of logistics and circumstances that no negotiation framework could fully account for.

As for Voss’s two main hostage cases during his time as chief international negotiator, Jill Carroll and Steve Centanni (both American journalists kidnapped abroad), neither ended because of his negotiation “skills”. Carroll’s captors released her later with no explanation. Centanni was released after converting to Islam at gunpoint.

None of this is to say Voss is a fraud. But the dramatic line “our tools had to work, because if they didn’t, someone died” is a bit of an optimistic spin on a seemingly unsuccessful and complicated track record.

So What’s Actually Different?

If the methods are the same, what explains the wildly different reception?

Look at the packaging.

Never Split the Difference has a bold cover with ripped-page aesthetics and a subtitle, “Negotiate as if Your Life Depended on It”, that frames routine business negotiations as life-or-death situations. The writing throughout is urgent and dramatic. The examples involve kidnappers and terrorists. The whole thing is built to feel dangerous. But it’s written for people who work in sales or who want to be better at haggling over knick-knacks at yard sales.

Getting to Yes has a neutral cover. The examples include men and women negotiating ordinary disputes. The tone is clear and methodical without being theatrical. It presents negotiation as something anyone can and should do. It does not frame salary negotiations as a high-stakes arena for specialists - because it isn’t.

One book markets itself as combat. The other markets itself as a skill.

Back when I was reading these books to compare them, I realized the essay wasn’t workable because the two theories were too similar. But I was intrigued by the difference in presentation. And why Never Split the Difference repeatedly attacked the emotional intelligence that it also advocated for. It was clear that it was written for men, and I guess it felt that it had to lean into toxic masculinity tropes in order to get men to listen and try out being empathetic.

My research for the paper confirmed things I had already suspected. Studies into gender and negotiation find that men typically approach disputes more aggressively, making bold offers, asserting positions confidently, and taking risks. Women tend to use more collaborative, empathy-forward approaches, such as being attentive to others’ perspectives and focusing on relationship preservation and mutual outcomes. Getting to Yes reads like the second woman-approved approach. Never Split the Difference is marketed as the more male-centric way to negotiate, but make no mistake: it’s teaching you how to negotiate like a woman.

“Tactical empathy” is just empathy. Voss added the word “tactical” because empathy is too soft and mushy a concept for some people. But the practice he’s describing, which is genuinely trying to understand what the other person is feeling and reflecting it back to them, is exactly what Getting to Yes advocates. He’s dressed a traditionally feminine negotiation style in masculine clothing, and it worked brilliantly, I will admit. Because it gets rave reviews in the same posts that slam Getting to Yes.

Why Any of This Matters

There’s something worth sitting with here beyond the book drama.

Studies consistently find that men and women are treated differently at the negotiating table, even when they use identical tactics. Women who negotiate assertively face backlash for violating gender expectations. Men who negotiate collaboratively are sometimes seen as weak. The style that both of these books ultimately advocate for (being empathetic, interest-focused, relationship-preserving) is one that women have long been expected to practice, and men have often been discouraged from embracing.

What’s oddly hopeful about Never Split the Difference, despite all its contradictions, is that it gets men to practice that style by convincing them it’s something tougher than it actually is. Anyone who takes Voss’ advice will start genuinely listening to what the other side needs, acknowledging their concerns before they raise them, and resisting the urge to bulldoze toward a predetermined position. These are all things that will help someone negotiate better. It just took a former FBI guy and some fairytale spinning to get them there.

Gender performance is everywhere, but at the end of the day, we are all just trying to be women.

I find the discourse around Emma Grede, her book, her career, and her advice to be fascinating.

A half-Black daughter of a struggling single mom moves to America, marries a wealthy white Swedish man, aligns herself with one of the most visible families in the world and goes on to build a massive empire, all with four kids at home. The discourse is rich with commentary on where we are at with women, race, immigrants, wealth, pop culture, parenthood, and working moms for those who have the eyes to see.

But I just want to address a more elementary element of books in general: no one needs to take all, or even any, of the advice inside one. People responded to Emma’s book, Start With Yourself, as if it were a new act from Congress that they had to abide by. So I guess there is merit in pointing out that this is one woman sharing her advice on how she got to where she is - for those who want to do the same. I am tired of people talking about her advice as if they can’t just choose to ignore it.

That’s my advice for getting advice: remember that it’s optional.

I read Start With Yourself, knowing damn well I would not be implementing all of what Emma Grede had to say. I am loving this book, but I acknowledge that it is not for everyone. But not all advice is. Most of the book’s public discourse has been dominated by low-performance people who get mad at the work ethic and lifestyle required of high-performance people.

I’m a mid-performance person. I‘m a lawyer, I volunteer, I have a great job, I have well-rounded hobbies, and I speak French decently. But I also don’t care to work more than 40-45 hours a week, nor do I care about maximizing my earning potential. I make a salary that covers the life I want to live, and I don’t have an interest in anything more expensive than what I have right now. Maybe I would feel differently if I wanted a yacht, but I don’t. I do not intend to live a high-performance life, so I understand that not all of Emma's advice is something I will listen to. I’m not trying to replicate her level of success.

I didn’t read this book because I want to build a $400 million company. I read this book because I knew there were other things I could learn from Emma Grede. She has been described as a bitch, and, as someone who really admires strong women, that is always the kind of role model I’m interested in. I want to know how strong women handle situations at work and in their relationships. I also read it because, as someone with a demanding career who’s thinking about kids, I wanted to understand the perspective of someone who wasn’t just a working mom but a working mom in a demanding career. Also, even if a life isn’t for you, it doesn’t hurt to learn about how other people live their lives. Expanding your perspectives is always an important learning opportunity.

Speaking of perspective, it’s important to be mindful that advice is often given to address things as they exist. Not how they should be. There is a lot of “as it is” advice in Start With Yourself. I have seen so much pushback from people who take her real-world advice and apply it to what they wish the world were. I think that’s misguided.

Emma Grede advocates for being in the office, and many people said things like, “But I need to work from home because I have a family.” Understandable. But visibility still matters. You’re not going to be top of mind for promotions and new opportunities if the person with the power to give those doesn’t know you. Getting to know people IRL is way different from getting to know people through Zoom and Slack.

Work from home if you want, but understand that you don’t get everything. The comfort of managing your schedule with more flexibility will come at the cost of opportunities. No one said it was fair, but it’s how it is. It’s up to you to decide what is more important.

You can’t stay home and have the opportunities afforded to those who are present. But you can compromise. Go into the office two or three days a week. You still have the benefits of working from home for most of the week, but you’re still building face time with your coworkers. That’s another thing about advice: you can choose what you want and adapt it to your life in your own way.

A Michelle Obama quote to ponder:

“That whole, ‘So you can have it all.’ Nope, not at the same time.”

Some days you stay home. Some days, you suck it up and go to the office because that’s what the reality of getting ahead calls for. Do it or don’t. The choice is yours.

I’m still reading the book, so this isn’t a full review. But as mentioned earlier in this post, I find the discourse surrounding Emma and Start With Yourself fascinating. I think she’s ahead of her time, and she’s presenting new ways of thinking that are forcing many to reconsider how they view being a working woman and/or mom. And people can rarely hear a new idea and simply decide it’s not for them. Instead, they just go on the attack, which is unfortunate. I think Emma has many good ideas and perspectives that would bring peace to many women and working moms across all careers.

TW: brief mention of suicide, abortion, domestic abuse, and drug use

Before I went to law school, I worked at an accounting firm for two years. I handled marketing: redesigned the website, put together marketing materials, coordinated events, etc. It was fine, kind of dull, but I worked with a lot of nice people.

One day, in a meeting, an executive at the firm said something to the effect that accountants hold more public trust than doctors and lawyers. The reason given was that they see a lot of financial information. I always thought that was a terrible take - sorry to the individual who said it.

But it simply isn’t true.

As a lawyer, I would give the distinction to doctors for the following reasons.

1. Exclusivity of Information

That executive based their assessment on access to financial information, but financial information just isn’t that sacred. A lot more people and professions access our financial information than our health information. Think about it: bankers, tellers, mortgage lenders, car salespeople, your H&R free tax software, anyone we’ve submitted a rental application and credit check to, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, financial information is highly sensitive. After all, many companies hire armoured trucks to pick up financial documents for shredding when they’re no longer needed. But still, there is a wider group of people we expose our financial information to than we do with health. Most people’s medical information is limited to a health care provider and pharmacist. Maybe an insurance agent if you’re getting life insurance. A smaller pool of access signifies, in my opinion.

2. Legislation

Medical information has its own legislation, here in Ontario anyway; Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2004. There isn’t really an equivalency for lawyers and accountants. We fall under more general privacy and/or practice-specific laws, guides, and regulations. There is no Legal Information Protection Act. Furthermore, I attended a three-hour privacy law seminar last month that included a section dedicated solely to medical information. If something is important enough to be repeatedly carved out, well, it’s probably important.

3. Privacy in Practice

Most of our financial documents are sent by mail, which, technically, most people can open. A paper envelope is not all that secure, but in it go our tax documents, credit card statements, mortgage information, etc. The most I have ever gotten in terms of medical information is a health card or a letter asking me to please call my healthcare provider.

Also, I would argue that financial information is routinely made more available. In the US, you can look up what people paid in taxes. In the state of Illinois, anyway (if the guy I last dated is to be believed). Also, as someone who took Corporate Finance and Securities Law, I assure you that the importance of complete financial disclosure from public companies was pounded into us unrelentingly. And those records are made available to the public.

Oh, and the Sunshine List: if you earn more than $100,000 in Ontario as a public employee, your salary is listed for all to see.

4. The Contents of Information

Not everyone is in a financially embarrassing position. Not to say everyone, regardless of finances, wouldn’t be upset if their information were leaked. But if your savings account is stacked and/or you’re a high-income earner, you’re not as devastated to have that info out there. But we all have something in our medical records we do not want out there. A suspicious mole on your butt, recorded suicidal tendencies, past drug use, any STDs you may have had, abortions, domestic abuse, etc. I would argue that, for most people, a health information leak would be extremely embarrassing or maybe even legitimately devastating if exposed.

Some lawyers have access to some people’s medical information, but it is not widespread in the profession. They definitely have access to a wider variety of sensitive information than accountants, who are strictly limited to financial information. As a lawyer, the sky is the limit. Depending on what the heck happened, you can theoretically request to look into anything: not just health records and finances but also computer records, a personal journal, text messages, etc.

Sidenote: if you are a nosy individual, I cannot recommend law enough. It is a career that rewards curiosity and investigation, A.K.A. being nosey.

If we were to treat family law as a distinct entry in this contest, then they/we would win the whole thing. Easily.

The unique thing about family law is that it exposes you very intimately to the lives and secrets of ordinary people. And y’all: ordinary people are living lives crazier than you can imagine. And they are all around us. Your barista, your boss, your friends and family - they are all doing stuff out of sight that would make your jaw drop.

I have seen disclosures for criminal records, police reports, medical reports, mental health assessments, financial records, text messages, statements from family and friends, like damn near everything. Family law exposes the worst and craziest things you’ve ever heard of, and it pales in comparison to whatever medical issue you can think of. Nudes, sexual abuse allegations, claims you like cross-dressing, niche porn you like, videos of you doing coke; it all comes out in family law.

If this were a race, family lawyers would win this the same way Secretariat won the 1973 Belmont Stakes.