Visiting my parents in their new town. South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, August 2014
‘Rich Kids of Instagram’: Satyricon and the City
Rich Kids of Instagram is a Tumblr of, well, rich kids posing with their expensive stuff. Whether it’s yachts, sports cars, resorts or dropping $10,000 on cosmetics, the Tumblr recalls late-Roman excesses. It’s hard to tear my eyes away, and while I scrolled, I learned that some rich kids prefer humblebrag captions over their private jets and shopping sprees, while other prefer the more blatant #hatersgonnahate and middle fingers. Also, I learned that pools come in more styles than in-ground or above-ground. Who knew?
The upcoming novel Rich Kids of Instagram is written by the anonymous creator of the RKOI Tumblr and by Mara Sloan. Her previous novel is High Before Homeroom, just in case you’re wondering how curating a submission-based Tumblr will translate into writing a novel.
Rich Kids of Instagram is half Candace Bushnell’s Trading Up, half Petronius’ Dinner With Trimalchio. The characters are mostly unabashed social climbers, with a few old-money heirs and a tech wunderkind for frothy good measure. Their high-stakes, high-budget conflicts lead to a guilty-pleasure page-turner, with plenty of backstabbing, sex, and general excess.
All the characters are tropes, sure, but delightful ones. A tortured royal just wants to design his unique jewelry before heading home to his arranged marriage and more respectable hobbies. A sweet Southern belle deserves to get her way because she’s a good Christian girl — and definitely not because she backstabs her way to the top. Oh and a poor little rich girl wants Daddy’s attention, of course.
I once heard a certain style of New York City or Los Angeles dramatic fiction (Disclosure: I read the hell out of these novels.) as “lifestyle porn”, a tag that fits the almost loving descriptions of purchases and fashions in Rich Kids Of Instagram. One character has a particular strain of affluenza that requires her to touch and price luxury items to calm herself. It’s this unlikable excess that makes the novel impossible to put down.
Rich Kids of Instagram takes some wild turns and telenovela-style reverses of fortune, with loads of dark secrets. It’s difficult to find a relatable or likable character in the book, but that’s almost the point. Dinner With Trimalchio highlights excess, by pairing aspirational riches with classless freedmen, and goes on to describe truly pointless, hilarious waste. And RKOI takes a similar path by beginning with jealousy-inducing luxuries like champagne and jewelry, and then leading readers into a bizarre, over-the-top world of hostess kitty bars and Biblically themed launch parties.
Rich Kids of Instagram is a delightful romp through luxury brands, conspicuous consumption, and blatant social climbing.
I received an eARC of this book from the publisher to review. All opinions and references to chicklit and Roman history are, naturally, my own.
Posted in Chapel Hill, Massachusetts
Tagged Candace Bushnell, chicklit, Dinner With Trimalchio, eARC, fiction, Instagram, Los Angeles, Mara sloan, Netgalley, Petronius, Rich Kids of Instagram, RKOI, Satyricon, Trading Up, Tumblr
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#BBlogger Review: Whiplash Eyelash Curler
So, I tried it. I’ve often seen girls with perfect Disney princess eyelashes, and just assumed it was genetic. Turns out the secret is actually eyelash curling. It magically makes your eyelashes more noticeable and feminine, especially if you have long eyelashes (I do) and wear thick glasses (I do).
Also, it’s fast. Because of my extreme laziness and lack of caring, I am wearing a ponytail and a flannel in 99% of my photos. Fortunately for me, eyelash curling literally takes 1 minute. The package says 10 to 20 seconds, but that number doesn’t account for time spent lining up the eyelash curler so it really doesn’t come anywhere near the eyes. So, a minute. Plus another minute to put on mascara (see previous re: time spent making sure cosmetics don’t actually come anywhere near my eyes), and it’s film-star eyelashes.
Final verdict: I got my new glasses about a week before getting this eyelash curler, and naturally no one noticed that I had slightly different black plastic frames. Then I used this Whiplash eyelash curler, and more than one person at work told me I looked nice and asked me if I’d gotten new glasses.
If you would like to have Disney princess eyelashes too, you can get the 25% off the Whiplash Eyelash Curler
I received this product for review. All opinions and Disney princess lashes are my own
Posted in Chapel Hill
Tagged #bblogger, #bbloggers, Crave bloggers, CraveNaturals, Sponsored
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Is “Cookie Clicker” a Message Game?
Like Cow Clicker, Cookie Clicker is a parody of certain casual game mechanics. Players start by clicking a cookie to earn a couple points to spend on an upgrade to earn extra points. Eventually, you’re earning millions of points per second, and saving up to buy that billion-point upgrade that will increase cookie production even more. Whether it’s hiring your first cooking-baking Grandma or opening a portal to the cookie dimension, the mechanics don’t change. Points, upgrade, more points.
Everything else is window dressing on that mechanic. Players start out buying an extra cursor, for extra clicks, or hiring a grandma to bake more cookies. As the game goes on, all semblance of a consistent gameworld is gone. Grow a cookie farm. Mine for cookies. Open a portal to the cookie dimension. Whatever! Just keep clicking to bake cookies!
Actually, you don’t even have to click. Soon, your extra cursors and cookie farms and cookie mines will start producing click-free cookies. And Cookie Clicker evenrewards you for alt-tabbing over to your work. Finish that email, and you have enough cookies to build a Cookie Farm (Apparently cookies grow from cookie seeds.) Leave it running all night, and you’ll be able to buy a Cookie Lab (or 10) in the morning.
With a casual game like this pared down to its simplest form, the motivators in a lite builder become extra clear. Of course you receive achievements, with funny one-sentence flavortext. Scores are massive, so you can gaze happily on your bajillions of points. There’s no learning curve for new players, either, making it extremely accessible, while the ever-increasing points provide that feeling of improvement, even though the game doesn’t require more skill. Future upgrades are greyed out, and the need to find out what zany improvement will come next is a powerful motivator.
Cookie Clicker is a genius parody of exactly how casual builders work.
Other People Clicking Cookies
Posted in Boston, Chapel Hill, Game Reviews, Gaming Culture
Tagged Cookie Clicker, flavortext, serious games
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Morning
I took full advantage of the break between summer classes and fall classes, and went on a little road trip to Wrightsville Beach with my friend. Lovely place overall, but I think the best part was when I got up early and went to the beach by myself.
I Guess That’s A Thing
During the semester, the rhythm of new students and returning students and recent grads and professors and college staff is a beehive of activity in Chapel Hill.
There are endless warnings that the semester is starting, like a speedtrap behind every bush, and a Help Wanted sign in every restaurant. Balloon clusters advertising move-in specials. Residents moaning about the noise level increasing and the lack of parking. Still, I only remember that I live in a college town when I see hordes of people wearing light blue for sportsball, or when someone asks me if I’m a student (Aww.), and I remember that there’s actually a reason to live here.
It’s buzzing with activity now, getting ready for the semester, and one lone bee kind of wondering “Oh, pollen? Honey? Flowers? Yeah, I guess some people here are into that. Whatever.”
Hello Kitty Curriculum Vitae
My career retrospective, as told through Hello Kitty:
I gave out Chinglish Hello Kitty stickers in class to reward my Beijing students.
The sad evening when I took my Hello Kitty desk toys home, after my last day at Next Island.
But soon I had a new Hello Kitty and a new desk at a new MMO!
Training new teachers at work, so I used Hello Kitty figures. As one does.
Mayflies, Collage, and Music in Super Chop Games’ Ephemerid
Super Chop Games’ new iOs release Ephemerid is a musical game, but fortunately, very little of it involves tapping in time with the background music (Ugh. How is that a genre?). Instead, players explore a paper collage world of flowers, leaves, and snowflakes as a mayfly, using the game’s music as a guide.
Ephemerid has no points, no winning, no failure messages. Actually, almost no messages at all. Except for a little icon of headphones next to a thumbs up, Ephemerid doesn’t directly communicate with the player. Instead, the player is gently encouraged to tap and swipe different parts of the papercut art to explore the world and see what the interactions do.
The best puzzle. Beautiful and simple.
Each scene asks the player to interact with something different, usually in a new way, but always inspired by the music. The music adds to each scene, or hints at what the player might want to try. Taken together, the scenes tell a story of an inquisitive mayfly’s life. Sometimes, you’ll take part in moments of joy and excitement, calling up ancient Chinese dragons or bouncing through the starry sky. Some scenes are puzzles, which can be solved with a little experimentation and exploration. Ephemerid is playful without being childish or cutesy.
There’s no way to screw up in Ephemerid. Not everything you see will help you progress through the world, but there’s no “wrong” thing to tap or touch. This creates an environment for relaxed exploration, allowing plenty of time to enjoy the world, but it prevents players from deviating from the mayfly’s intended path. You might slow down to enjoy the flowers, clouds, leaves, stars, or boombox-bearing dancing spider, but no matter what, your life as a mayfly involves finding a mate, procreating, and then dying.
Turntable Seasons
When you complete the life cycle of a mayfly (that came out sounding very 4th grade science fair), you’ll be back at the beginning on the Ephemerid record, ready to begin again as a new mayfly. Symbolically, as the vinyl circle of life, it works very well, although I don’t know if there’s much replay value in mayfly reincarnation. I only used the record-menu to return to sections in which I’d been too absorbed to take a good screenshot.
Actually, I wanted to screenshot almost everything.
I first checked out a demo of Ephemerid at SXSW, and I loved the childlike exploration and simple elegance of the intro version. (Although I have to admit it was pretty odd playing such a gentle musical game amid the craziness of the SXSW gaming pavilion.)
- If you follow @SuperChopGames right now, it’s entirely likely that a spider somewhere will dance with his boombox.
It didn’t seem even a little odd to have a cardboard spider light up and dance for followers. Other folks at SXSW offered me breakfast tacos, t-shirts and cocktails for @ mentions, and at least a musical cardboard spider related to a musical paper mayfly, right? When I played the full version, though, I laughed to find my funny spider friend as the mayfly’s dangerous enemy.
Ephemerid is available on the App Store and is currently on Steam Greenlight for a computer version as well.
Posted in Austin, Chapel Hill, Game Reviews, Gaming Culture
Tagged Ephemerid, games, indies games, iOs, ios games, Super Chop Games, SxSW
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Purple
Post Purpling
My friend Allison from college lives in Texas now, with her husband and adorable little son, so I don’t get to see her very often. I mean, we talk and Tumblr and tweet at each other, but it’s not the same thing!
This week, we both independently responded to completely different stress by dying our hair purple. We happened to choose the same brand of purple dye and to work from home while the dye was setting, so I imagine it seeping into our hair, while we responded to work messages from our respective tech/edu workplaces, hundred of miles apart.
I’ve only gotten to see Allison twice since she’s moved to Austin, but it’s good to know we’re still the same.
Posted in Austin, Chapel Hill
Tagged allison, athene-numphe, Austin, my friends are awesome, purple hair
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Small Blessings
Small Blessings, by Martha Woodroof, is about a small college town where everyone cares about each other just a little more than usual.
Professor Tom Putnam is planning to live out his life quietly teaching English and quietly caring for his mentally ill wife. But a series of sudden events, beginning with the arrival of a new bookstore clerk and a letter from an ex-lover telling Tom he has a son, change that for him.
I want to tell you about this story, but listing the events just sound like random plot twists. Sure, there’s insanity and alcoholism, and a paternity test, a surprising death, a backpack full of cash, and a kidnapping. But mostly what matters is each character trying to connect with others.
This is, despite all the dramatic events, a really gentle story about fallible humans trying to care for other fallible humans.
