Many Such Takes: Everything is Computer, BookTok GoonSlop, Dr. Smell Book Deal
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.
Everything is Computer
If there’s one thing I know to be true about Donald John Trump, it’s that he’s still got it. At least when it comes to inventing unintentionally funny quips that immediately solidify themselves in the cultural lexicon. I mean, just check the title of this newsletter! While I’m at it, I might as well plug my own article, He Died Like a Dog: How Trump Created a New American Dialect.
Recently, Trump test-drove a Tesla, courtesy of Elon Musk. Clearly having no familiarity with Tesla vehicles, he peered into the car and remarked, “Wow. Everything is computer.” Instant classic.
To sum it up:
What many people might not know is that Trump reportedly said something similar to this, but not caught on videotape. During his first term, he referred to his iPad as “the flat one.” The Flat One lives rent-free in my mind. Not only do I call iPads “flat ones” but I use this turn of phrase to apply to basically everything. My husband and I call money “the green ones.” You’re welcome!
BookTok GoonSlop
This week, I was introduced to the “Curvy Girls Can’t” series, where the same story about a plus-size romantic protagonist is repurposed with various versions of a hot guy she isn’t supposed to date. Obsessed!
Everyone else joined in on the fun:
Some people got angry at OP for misleading everyone into thinking the author was just being lazy instead of actually writing parody, but she cleared it up that by “literally parody” she meant “literally parody.” Is it parody if the readers can’t tell though? Like…why would you read twenty identical parody books? The plot thickens (no pun intended.)
Dr. Smell Book Deal
Do any of you remember recurring main character Dr. Smell, previously featured on Many Such Takes for her seemingly-pretentious PhD in English literature about the “ethics of smell in contemporary prose?” (Her government name: Dr. Ally Louks.) She’s basically Menswear Guy, but for odors. Anyway, she’s living the life most main characters can only dream of: she pissed off Twitter so much that she got famous, not for the standard twenty-four hours but to the point that she scored a book deal.
Funny Tweets/Other Happenings
This one doesn’t get its own section because I already covered Trump and Elon earlier, so I’ll include it here. Trump was seen wandering around with Elon’s frolicking child on the White House lawn, begging the question, does Trump like…take care of this kid now? Some people found it odd, some people found it cute, but I call it like I see it: nobody ever talks about the emotional labor of being the President and being the unpaid nanny for a guy who sleeps in your office. #meninwomensfields
Now, unrelated funny tweet:
Not sure why I’m including this but it feels somehow noteworthy that Richard Hanania was blocked by Chess.com:
A good summary of what being on Twitter is like these days:
In case you missed it…
DOGE is About Sex
Earlier this week, I wrote Average Men Don’t Have the Cards, about how many (albeit not all) single women would prefer to stay single than to date or marry someone they don’t find attractive, and that usually, their standards are high in the area of mental chemistry, not looks or income.
Re: Dr. Smell:
Why do people write English Literature PhD theses on topics that most non-academics would consider obscure and useless? To demonstrate to their PhD committees that they possess sufficient analysis, synthesis, and contextualization skills to obtain a doctorate. Most literature PhD's then go on to get jobs teaching Freshman Seminar.
Why do kids in college take Freshman Seminar and other literature courses? For that matter, why do kids who never go to college study literature in high school? Is it so that they can go out and lecture others about the Christian symbolism of food imagery in Ulysses? Mostly, no. A handful of those kids will go on to get weird PhDs so that they can teach Freshman Seminar themselves, but most of them will go on to get regular jobs. Why might some kid who is destined to work at a bank benefit from spending a few semesters in college trying to bang out ten pages about the portrayal of Patriarchy in the Brontes and Jane Austen? That is because it is generally good for adults in a literate society to possess reading comprehension and writing skills.
Reading comprehension is the ability to look at a work of literature, journalism, or other writing and to understand not only what literally happens in the story, but also extract broader themes, put the writing in its proper social context, and put forth a well reasoned argument about it. These skills are useful in many vocations, but also help the broader population avoid such pitfalls as freaking out about an incendiary headline that obscures the content of the article beneath it, or declaring that a book is "racist" based on reports that, at various points in a narrative about main character overcoming prejudice in an unjust society, some racist antagonists do and say some racist things.
In short, teaching literature to students is designed to help the general population be more astute consumers of the written word. So when a bunch of randos online read the title of this woman's thesis, and, with no other context, declare her life's work to be useless and irrelevant, and certainly nothing they could benefit from learning, well, Alanis Morrisette could write her PhD dissertation about that.
Edit to add: What she is doing in her thesis is similar to a session musician making a demo of himself playing "Mary had a Little Lamb" in 20 different musical styles. The original content doesn't matter. It could be anything. It's about demonstrating that she has the skills needed to obtain this degree.
Dr. Ally rode her hate all the way to the bank . . .too perfect😆