A Note from CHH

Please forgive my evergreen inability to "read the room."

First thing’s first: many of you who read this Substack are probably feeling a lot of feelings right now. Even though I publish mostly apolitical humor and goofy online culture content, I know my readerbase skews liberal (and I’m liberal myself) so I want to acknowledge that many of you are probably feeling pretty bad right now, to varying degrees.

(Update: I heard you guys loud and clear, you want more funny stuff, so I published what I was planning to do tomorrow. Here you go!)

Anyway, like many libs, I was libbing out all week and I thought Harris would win the election. I thought that the latter half of this week would be most of my readers breathing a collective sigh of relief and and wanting something fun now that they could relax. But I realized that many of you might not have wanted to laugh yesterday morning. It’s impossible to correctly understand—for everyone of my readers—at what point it’s appropriate to laugh. Humor is really the only language I know, and I have an awful habit of handling upsetting situations by making jokes that nobody wants to hear (after the 2016 election, my immediate reaction was to post a meme about Flavor Flav’s dating show. It did not go well.)

Anyway, given that I thought most of you would be celebrating this week, this was the headline of the article I had set to go live for yesterday morning:

I realized this was probably not the right time to regale everyone about the Coochie Wars (don’t worry, you’ll hear about them soon enough.) I have loads of stuff in the backlog that I’m kinda sitting on right now—stuff about friendships, marriage, work, trad/modernity, fashion influencers, the depths of Facebook groups, weird interviews, even something about controversial Sims mods. Literally so much stuff. But because I am painfully awkward, yet also very afraid of offending people, while simultaneously afraid of making myself the main character of everything (which I understand I’m completely doing right now) I decided to take a couple days to not be funny.

But at the same time, if you’re reading this, you probably subscribed specifically for funny stuff, or at least lightly humorous stuff. In-depth political analysis is great, but probably not my lane. And you guys know I’m not a big fan of doomposting, even if I’m genuinely anxious or upset. As my longtime friend said, when I asked her for advice:

Anyway, I want your input on the type of stuff you want to see this week and next. Regular programming as usual? More of the absurd online stuff? More real-world stuff with some poignancy and relevance? Or perhaps you guys really want me to post embarrassing excerpts from my terrible young adult novel that I wrote in 2014, The Gilded:

“It seems weird that nightclubs are only for Reproductive Citizens.”

“It makes sense,” said Jaqi. “It’s the same reason that people without Reproductive Citizenship aren’t allowed to have sex or date.  One thing leads to another, and if you fall in love with someone, there’s a chance you’ll try to procreate, even if it’s illegal.”

“Well, why don’t they just make the drugs mandatory?” Ella asked. “The drugs that curb desire.  You aren’t forced to take them.”

Gage Truwell raised his eyebrows.  “You ask the right questions, I’ll give you that,” he said. “But I have the right answers.”

Anyway, please tell me how you are feeling, what you’d like to see, and more. For example, I was going to write something about young people’s anxiety about sex, dating and having children as a direct result of the election- too soon? Or interesting? My promise to you is that no matter what is going on in the world, this Substack can remain a fun sanctuary from the serious stuff, even if there is very much a need for serious stuff too. So I will stick to gooning. If you like the idea of getting daily humor, culture and social dynamics content that will hopefully serve as a break from the serious stuff (because there’s plenty of serious stuff to go around!) consider upgrading your subscription (my 20% off sale is still happening), or subscribing for free so you can get weekly Many Such Takes roundups and other occasional free posts. Either way, I’m happy to have you here!

Please leave a comment and let me know what you’d like to see more of or less of this week—I’ll try my hardest to make it happen.

Thank you,

CHH