Many Such Takes: Dr. Smell, Artisanal Spotify, DoorDash Liars, Hot Assassin
The most unhinged discourse of the week, always free
Welcome to Many Such Takes! For those unfamiliar, this is a free weekly segment (I also do lots of other stuff!) For Many Such Takes, I stay up to date with the latest and most chaotic Twitter (and now BlueSky) discourse so you don’t have to. If you see yourself featured here and you don’t like it, simply send me a Substack message and I will happily remove, no matter who you are or what you said. For previous issues of Many Such Takes, see this tab on my main page. Many Such Takes will always be free, so please become a free or paid subscriber to see more every Sunday!
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Dr. Smell
This discourse, which I’m just calling “Dr. Smell” for now, somehow remained viral for almost a full week, thanks to the Main Character in question, Dr. Ally Louks, posting through the drama relentlessly, even after being sent a variety of harassment and threats. I don’t know whether to be amazed or concerned for her.
Basically, it all started when this image hit Twitter, which was basically guaranteed to piss off a certain segment of men—you know the types. These are the guys who get upset when women age, work, or talk, but perhaps the worst thing a woman can do to irritate these guys is to get a PhD, especially one that appears pretentious and useless.
Presenting, Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose
Meme is OC. The various levels of triggering the rightoid men:
(Certain) men didn’t react well to this (there was also at least one sexually violent threat sent to her, but I’m not going to post it.)
Dr. Louks handled it surprisingly well. I’ll admit—when I saw that title of the dissertation I was skeptical that she would be able to hang with the degenerates of Twitter, but she did!
Some sanity:
In a fun crossover moment, Twitter legend Aella (whose work I enjoy, just to be clear) criticized the PhD, which many people pointed out was especially relevant since Aella is famous for not showering very often.
Another famed Twitter personality, Richard Hanania, chimed in to offer support. This started to feel a bit like a Twitter celebrity edition of We are the World:
The rest of Twitter was largely a mix of chuckling and supportive. One person brought up an old tweet (which I unfortunately had to see a second time) from a guy who famously self-deleted after describing the “buttery” scent of underage girls:
Dr. Louks continued to post through it, despite harassment and threats. Eventually, the master of her college put out a statement defending her.
Look, think what you want, but none of us would be thinking about “olfactory ethics” if it weren’t for this drama and Dr. Louk’s ability to be an amazingly good sport.
Artisanal Spotify
It’s that time of year—Spotify Wrapped time! For parents, this means seeing their normal pop and hip hop music interspersed with the “Brushy Brush” Elmo song. For many others, Spotify Wrapped is a fair assessment of what you listened to that year. But some have noticed that it’s just not hitting this year.
I was confused about what he meant—isn’t it just…songs you liked this year? How can it be objectively better or worse than you expected? Well, apparently, it’s AI’s fault:
This tweet led a bunch of people to satirize the idea that prior to the use of this AI, Spotify Wrapped was being artisanally curated by humans:
I think this is basically a misunderstanding. I don’t think the person who blamed AI believed that humans were in charge of selecting Spotify Wrapped playlists, but did feel that the graphics and features were cooler in previous years. So while I do want to make fun of the tweet, I can’t really…it might kinda make sense, in a weird way. Let him cook!
And speaking of cooking…(or not cooking)…
DoorDash Liars
Whoever invented DoorDash probably didn’t anticipate that it would be a bottomless pit of discourse on leftist/liberal Twitter. It kind of makes sense, because DoorDash appeals to people who don’t want to leave their houses, but it also involves labor, perhaps from marginalized bodies (going into marginalized spaces, no less.)
It all started with this tweet, with a whopping 270K+ likes and 13K+ retweets (at the point of me writing this issue.)
At first, I agreed with her (and I still don’t think she’s entirely wrong.) I’ve heard of women who had scary interactions with male gig economy workers who harassed them, and it stands to reason that a man falsely using a woman’s identity on such an app might have bad reasons for it!
But there was a piece to the puzzle that I wasn’t considering, which is that some men doing this have no evil plans at all, and they’re simply using the accounts of their wives/girlfriends/mothers/sisters because they can’t get approved to use DoorDash, presumably for immigration status reasons. Once this argument was made, I felt completely split on the issue. But of course, this was Twitter, so people started fighting from two camps: all men who use female profiles on DoorDash are rapists, and all women who don’t feel comfortable with men using female profiles on DoorDash want to deport all the migrants.
The below tweet was referencing a woman whose rapist used a delivery app to stalk her:
Oh, just classic Twitter:
One user said this:
Only to be presented with the classic “this you?” for previously posting this:
Then, one guy gave his story as an example for why it’s not always nefarious when a man uses a woman’s profile. He used his mother’s profile, in fact, because his criminal record prevented him from passing a background check. His crime? Killing someone in a hit and run. Oh, okay, it’s not like this job involves lots of driving, that makes me feel much better!
In conclusion:
Hot Assassin
As most people know by now, the CEO of United Healthcare was shot by a masked assassin earlier this week. Once surveillance footage of the shooter was released, denizens of Twitter noticed one thing: he’s uh…maybe kinda hot.
Oh no. *Squidward voice* he’s hot.
But hold up!! Maybe he’s not just hot…maybe he’s a pretty boy. Maybe his features are suspiciously refined. Maybe…maybe he’s trans!!!
I like the below reaction meme, although I have to say this also applies to “any girl who’s kinda hot.” Many such cases.
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any more unhinged (seriously, this is like…peak Many Such Takes) someone posted a satirical tweet likening the shooter’s surveillance image to conservative Twitter personality Joey Mannarino. The tweet was debunked with a community note, but Mr. Mannarino was not happy.
He quickly changed courses once it was clear that the worst thing coming out of this would be inundation with leftist pussy:
However, I found it particularly hilarious that Joey Mannarino was the target of this prank, because he’s no stranger to mistaken identities. Way back in July, I featured him on a different edition of Many Such Takes after he impersonated a Black woman, then claimed she was his friend and there was a login mistake after they used the same device (the woman in question is a real person, but it sounds like he got caught running her account, as he was also caught admitting to running other Black people’s accounts. Long story, check out the previous edition here.)
Well, we started with the CEO shooter and ended up with Joey Mannarino saying “My daddy Black.” You never know where Many Such Takes will go!
Other Happenings
Whatever this is:
Lookalike contests getting completely out of hand:
Rep Nancy Mace outing herself as a true eater:
In case you missed it…
"Not Wanting to be Alone" is Okay
One of the first tweets that ever got me in trouble (and by “in trouble” I mean “getting yelled at by the maladjusted weirdos of Twitter”) was a tweet where I said that the acceptable options for young men who want to find partners have shrunk to basically “be at a party with your big, vivid network of close friends who all happen to know single women” (a situation in which almost no young man in 2024 finds himself regularly.) People will tell young single men to “get off the apps” (apps aren’t stacked in their favor anyway,) but in the same breath, tell them it’s creepy to cold-approach women in public. And trying to escalate a friendship into romance? Well, that’s neckbeard behavior—clearly, you didn’t value the friendship at all if you want to take it in that direction. And what about joining a social club to meet women? Well, that’s dishonest. You should be joining a pickleball league for the pure love of the sport. If you flirt with a woman there, you’re making it an “unsafe space.”
(Paywall removed on newly-FREE article below)
Why I'm Obsessed with Lonely Young People
If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll likely notice that I post a lot about one particular thing: lonely, single, young people. Not only do I want them to be happier, I want them to find partners and get married and start families, if they want. You might also notice that I post quite a bit about my own life as a married woman in her thirties with kids, w…
I recently deleted my Twitter account so I'm now extra grateful for your Many Such Takes roundups because they allow me to indulge in my guilty pleasure (stupid internet drama) while still maintaining my lib cred. 🙏
Re the first part, there aren't any mountain lions in Britain so her ancestors were safe. But they all think it's oppressive to keep pet cats inside (something like 90% of UK cats are outdoor cats) so watch out if you're a bird.
Also, the assassin was Timothee Chalamet.