as one of the 14-18 year old girls who is now 18-22 i was thinking recently about how i've grown up with your work as such an important part of my life! i found a tweet i made in 2022 about my summer consisting of reading your essays and listening to ethel cain and it was sweet and a little scary to see how much i haven't changed :,)
- i'm kinda still refusing to believe there's so few men. maybe they felt weird or whatever about responding the survey. which it's dumb but you know. as for the difference in audience ig vs substack, well, who doesn't like a beautiful woman
- being a non-rigorous catholic is actually the only true way to be a catholic
- i have never cheated on a partner but often wonder if it has been more due to a lack of the correct circumstances rather than any strongly held moral belief
- i don't remember what i answered to a surprising amount of these. i think i was one of the few to pick despair as my default negative emotion, but after thinking about it, it's probably shame too
I thought the same thing about men not filling out surveys lol. and re: what you said about cheating I think that is true of more people than are willing to admit it! my take on cheating is basically “it’s bad and you shouldn’t do it but it’s also often a human reaction to complex human circumstances and is not always as completely black-and-white evil as people make it out to be”, which seems like it should be uncontroversial but is often extremely controversial
it feels true for me as well. like maybe a combination of women being more likely to take a survey in general and them being more invested in rayne’s work in particular than a man would be
i was filling out the survey right before a job interview, it started before I could finish, ended up getting the job and promptly forgot about the survey until this post. 21 year old nonbinary lesbian in Ethiopia constantly trying and failing and trying again to figure shit out. i love your words and they give me hope! wish I had remembered to fill out the survey!
I wouldn’t say a red flag necessarily but I think by using Rayne’s name as the pull instead of characteristics he admires in Rayne that could be applied to other people it’s a little weird
personally, i think it’s scary to be presented your comparative metric before even meeting, but a man who reads the work of leftist feminists is still better than the one who doesn’t read at all sooo who the fuck knows
it's a red flag!! like it's good that they're looking for someone with some of the same characteristics, but i think betrays a lack of self awareness. or maybe i'm too self conscious to use something that can be read as performative so easily
as a man who subscribes to rayne i would guess that your low levels of guy subscribers would be due to a lot of guys not reading, or not interested in media criticism. like of my guy friends that do read, maybe one guy would be interested in media criticism, and then me.
I’m also so interested to know the sexual orientation of most of your males readers. Most of the people I know in real life that read you are girls, but as a gay 21 yo guy, the only other man I’ve discussed your work with is my best friend’s super cool straight dad. Thanks for your work by the way, I’ve been reading you for about three years now, and your writing never ceases to amaze me, Rayne :-) and pleaaaaaaase come to McGill again
To talk more about the reading question: the reason "to be part of a community that reads similar things" wasn't one that I put down wasn't because I didn't desire it but because it is something that is absent in my life and feels actually surprisingly difficult to achieve! I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case for other people as well (I admittedly have no data to go off for this). It's been an interesting point of reflection for me. I actually do desire a world where I get to talk with my friends very passionately and deeply about the words and ideas that we've read. But I feel like book clubs are actually a unique kind of commitment that is hard to actually consistently do for most people these days if they're really busy with life/work and aren't in the writing/criticism world. And additionally for me I don't really know any people who do a lot of reading of essays/criticism so there's very rarely an opportunity to talk to people about that stuff. My friends have talked about wanting to do a book club for novels (which is what they read pretty much exclusively) but despite the desire to do that it's just very hard to make time for that kind of thing it seems.
What would be some of the literary journals people are reading? As someone not living in New York and one of the few highschoolers (apparently) I’d be curious to start reading some.
love survey breakdowns like these. agree on the NY writers critiques but more so about them complaining about being 'so over' a trend that hasn't even hit middle America yet, and generally thinking their bubble is the world.
I read a mix of fiction and non, leaning towards sci-fi and fantasy lately. my friends aren't really interested in writing so I don't feel the need to keep up with recent works. would love a reading-specific survey but I just love statistics :)
i recently rewatched the barbie movie for the first time since 2023 and… i don’t know if it’s simply dated or if my heart has become so hardened since then, but i didn’t like it nearly as much as i did initially. don’t get me wrong, i still enjoyed it, but it almost felt… depressing? in a way? it’s like a movie from another dimension. i’m not really sure how to articulate it.
I agree. I think when I first watched it most of the reason that I liked it was actually just that it was an excuse to hang out with a big group of girls and wear a pink dress. I think the movie itself ignores so much of women's material reality in favor of expressing a generalized, whitewashed version of women's problems that it ends up with a bit of an uncanny valley feeling.
YES. it was fun but there was no real message. also i feel like the messaging was all over the place and the writers were trying to squeeze as many generalized, so-called “feminist” themes as they could into the runtime of the movie. it came across as lazy and performative upon rewatch. definitely uncanny valley like you said.
pleaseee write about monogamy/(in)fidelity, I think about this all the time. And, while I enjoy monogamy, I find that I am SO much more lenient about cheating than the people surrounding me. I don’t really think that cheating should be seen as so without question immoral….
when i first filled out the survey the most interesting question for me was the "most common “default” negative emotion" i've been asking my friends for their responses. i think it says a lot abt a person and how they see themselves. fun lil party trick to humble ur next dinner party <3
Hi I subscribed in 2021 when you first launched the blog. I was 15 at the time and am now 19⭐️😊 #lovedyousincetheandroid
Also I first did this survey with my ex boyfriend and answered “maybe” and “no” to the questions (1) have you been in love before and (2) have you felt unrequited love and would now like to change my answers to “yes” and “yes”. It’s been a #year but 19 is supposed to be or so I’ve been told.
This is wild. I can't believe your audience has so few regular liberals and so few men. The political breakdown of my audience would be completely different--many more liberals and conservatives and men. Kind of makes me curious to do a survey myself.
as one of the 14-18 year old girls who is now 18-22 i was thinking recently about how i've grown up with your work as such an important part of my life! i found a tweet i made in 2022 about my summer consisting of reading your essays and listening to ethel cain and it was sweet and a little scary to see how much i haven't changed :,)
:’)))) going to cry
a few things:
- i'm kinda still refusing to believe there's so few men. maybe they felt weird or whatever about responding the survey. which it's dumb but you know. as for the difference in audience ig vs substack, well, who doesn't like a beautiful woman
- being a non-rigorous catholic is actually the only true way to be a catholic
- i have never cheated on a partner but often wonder if it has been more due to a lack of the correct circumstances rather than any strongly held moral belief
- i don't remember what i answered to a surprising amount of these. i think i was one of the few to pick despair as my default negative emotion, but after thinking about it, it's probably shame too
I thought the same thing about men not filling out surveys lol. and re: what you said about cheating I think that is true of more people than are willing to admit it! my take on cheating is basically “it’s bad and you shouldn’t do it but it’s also often a human reaction to complex human circumstances and is not always as completely black-and-white evil as people make it out to be”, which seems like it should be uncontroversial but is often extremely controversial
I wonder if women are just more likely to take surveys? I feel like that could be true. I also couldn’t remember how I answered several questions!
it feels true for me as well. like maybe a combination of women being more likely to take a survey in general and them being more invested in rayne’s work in particular than a man would be
That bit about catholicism is so real!!!
I love STATISTICSS
i was filling out the survey right before a job interview, it started before I could finish, ended up getting the job and promptly forgot about the survey until this post. 21 year old nonbinary lesbian in Ethiopia constantly trying and failing and trying again to figure shit out. i love your words and they give me hope! wish I had remembered to fill out the survey!
i saw a man on hinge recently who said “i’m looking for rayne fisher quann”. unsure if this is a green flag or a red flag. everyone please weigh in.
multiple of my friends have also seen this man! unless maybe there are more than one of them which is a terrifying thought
I wouldn’t say a red flag necessarily but I think by using Rayne’s name as the pull instead of characteristics he admires in Rayne that could be applied to other people it’s a little weird
Good point! Because of your comment, I’m gonna say red flag. Seems like he’s clout chasing in a pseudo intellectual way.
Agreed…I couldn’t find a good way to phrase it. It felt like I’m not like other boys instead of a genuine reader of Rayne’s
had he said, "looking for MY rayne fisher quann", he could have avoided (some of) the creepiness
personally, i think it’s scary to be presented your comparative metric before even meeting, but a man who reads the work of leftist feminists is still better than the one who doesn’t read at all sooo who the fuck knows
it's a red flag!! like it's good that they're looking for someone with some of the same characteristics, but i think betrays a lack of self awareness. or maybe i'm too self conscious to use something that can be read as performative so easily
as a man who subscribes to rayne i would guess that your low levels of guy subscribers would be due to a lot of guys not reading, or not interested in media criticism. like of my guy friends that do read, maybe one guy would be interested in media criticism, and then me.
eating up this post like it’s DINNER god I love information..
I’m also so interested to know the sexual orientation of most of your males readers. Most of the people I know in real life that read you are girls, but as a gay 21 yo guy, the only other man I’ve discussed your work with is my best friend’s super cool straight dad. Thanks for your work by the way, I’ve been reading you for about three years now, and your writing never ceases to amaze me, Rayne :-) and pleaaaaaaase come to McGill again
To talk more about the reading question: the reason "to be part of a community that reads similar things" wasn't one that I put down wasn't because I didn't desire it but because it is something that is absent in my life and feels actually surprisingly difficult to achieve! I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case for other people as well (I admittedly have no data to go off for this). It's been an interesting point of reflection for me. I actually do desire a world where I get to talk with my friends very passionately and deeply about the words and ideas that we've read. But I feel like book clubs are actually a unique kind of commitment that is hard to actually consistently do for most people these days if they're really busy with life/work and aren't in the writing/criticism world. And additionally for me I don't really know any people who do a lot of reading of essays/criticism so there's very rarely an opportunity to talk to people about that stuff. My friends have talked about wanting to do a book club for novels (which is what they read pretty much exclusively) but despite the desire to do that it's just very hard to make time for that kind of thing it seems.
What would be some of the literary journals people are reading? As someone not living in New York and one of the few highschoolers (apparently) I’d be curious to start reading some.
I like bookforum, the point, cleveland review of books, n+1 !!!
love survey breakdowns like these. agree on the NY writers critiques but more so about them complaining about being 'so over' a trend that hasn't even hit middle America yet, and generally thinking their bubble is the world.
I read a mix of fiction and non, leaning towards sci-fi and fantasy lately. my friends aren't really interested in writing so I don't feel the need to keep up with recent works. would love a reading-specific survey but I just love statistics :)
first semester physics dropouts unite!
i recently rewatched the barbie movie for the first time since 2023 and… i don’t know if it’s simply dated or if my heart has become so hardened since then, but i didn’t like it nearly as much as i did initially. don’t get me wrong, i still enjoyed it, but it almost felt… depressing? in a way? it’s like a movie from another dimension. i’m not really sure how to articulate it.
I agree. I think when I first watched it most of the reason that I liked it was actually just that it was an excuse to hang out with a big group of girls and wear a pink dress. I think the movie itself ignores so much of women's material reality in favor of expressing a generalized, whitewashed version of women's problems that it ends up with a bit of an uncanny valley feeling.
YES. it was fun but there was no real message. also i feel like the messaging was all over the place and the writers were trying to squeeze as many generalized, so-called “feminist” themes as they could into the runtime of the movie. it came across as lazy and performative upon rewatch. definitely uncanny valley like you said.
pleaseee write about monogamy/(in)fidelity, I think about this all the time. And, while I enjoy monogamy, I find that I am SO much more lenient about cheating than the people surrounding me. I don’t really think that cheating should be seen as so without question immoral….
when i first filled out the survey the most interesting question for me was the "most common “default” negative emotion" i've been asking my friends for their responses. i think it says a lot abt a person and how they see themselves. fun lil party trick to humble ur next dinner party <3
Hi I subscribed in 2021 when you first launched the blog. I was 15 at the time and am now 19⭐️😊 #lovedyousincetheandroid
Also I first did this survey with my ex boyfriend and answered “maybe” and “no” to the questions (1) have you been in love before and (2) have you felt unrequited love and would now like to change my answers to “yes” and “yes”. It’s been a #year but 19 is supposed to be or so I’ve been told.
This is wild. I can't believe your audience has so few regular liberals and so few men. The political breakdown of my audience would be completely different--many more liberals and conservatives and men. Kind of makes me curious to do a survey myself.