| Rebecca Jennings is a senior correspondent covering social platforms and the creator economy, with a focus on how social media is changing the nature of fame, fashion, money, and human relationships. |
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| Rebecca Jennings is a senior correspondent covering social platforms and the creator economy, with a focus on how social media is changing the nature of fame, fashion, money, and human relationships. |
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How "Divorce him, sis!" became the internet's go-to relationship advice |
Last summer, Lindsay Donnelly had a squabble with her husband that any partner, family member, or roommate knows all too well: He felt like he was doing all the housework, and she wasn't doing any of it. So she decided to prove otherwise. For two days, Donnelly did nothing. Then she posted the evidence on TikTok of what a two-parent, two-kid household looks like when the mother refuses to clean up — laundry unfolded, toys on the floor, dirty dishes on the counter — set to Taylor Swift's "Karma." Within a day, her video had a million views, many from women who found it funny or felt seen. "Overwhelmingly, it was a lot of, 'You go queen!'" Donnelly says. And then there were the others. A year and 20 million views later, nearly all of the most-liked comments on Donnelly's video are people telling her to divorce her husband. "I'd get divorce papers honestly. That's unacceptable that he can't pick up as well," wrote one. "Don't let your husband stop you from finding your soulmate, honey," said another. "Having people comment on my relationship and say something like 'get divorced,' — I felt unhappy about it," says Donnelly, the founder of the social media management firm Authentic Community Marketing, adding that she's still happily married. "It can feel disproportionately painful, because even though a hundred people tell you you're beautiful, you're gonna hear the one person that tells you you've got spinach in your teeth." Twenty years after Britney Spears famously wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "DUMP HIM" following her breakup with Justin Timberlake, that sentiment has become the internet's go-to piece of advice for women in heterosexual relationships. On any TikTok or Instagram Reel posted by a woman that includes a male partner who looks anything less than ecstatic to be there, the comments can be flooded with some variation of "divorce him" or a string of red flag emojis. The growing "divorce him" chorus might have to do with the fraught relations between the sexes at the moment, both online and off. There's a growing sense that men and women are drifting away from one another, politically and culturally. Women have become more progressive in recent years, and in the wake of Roe v. Wade's demise, they've doubled down on their support of abortion rights; some men (and some women, too), meanwhile, are preaching the return of regressive gender roles amid a backlash to Me Too. "I'll take the bear" is a sentiment you're likely to see in the comments of videos on social media, referring to the question of whether a woman would rather be left alone in the woods with a bear or a man. Fewer people are also marrying, and those who do are marrying later. There's less emphasis on monogamous romance in general and a wider acceptance and interest in nonmonogamy, platonic partnerships, and "decentering" men. But the blanket advice for women to ditch men entirely has not been without its own criticism. "'Dump Him' Feminism Isn't Revolutionary. It's Callous," wrote the leftist journalist Ash Sarkar in 2022. "The recognition that the weight of emotional baggage is unevenly distributed has, amongst some contemporary feminists, morphed into the idea that any sense of obligation is itself the enemy," she wrote. Yet it's caused some women to turn to social media to see whether they should, in fact, dump him. Over the past year, one of the most popular trends to emerge was the "orange peel test," wherein a person hands their partner an orange and asks them to peel it for them. If they do so without question, they're a keeper. If they ask something to the effect of, "Why can't you peel it yourself?" — run. There are dozens more, including the "bird test" (point out something tiny, like a bird, and see if they respond enthusiastically), the "Beckham test" (start dancing to a song and see if they join you), and "name a woman," in which you ask them to name a woman and hope they say you. As psychologist and author Alexandra Solomon told my coworker Alex Abad-Santos about the orange peel "theory," "An entire intimate relationship can't be boiled down to what a partner does or doesn't do with an orange. "The worry that I have is that I prefer us to talk directly to our partners about our needs rather than setting up a test." The hunger for clear-cut pronouncements on other people's marriages and relationships is so insatiable that Dustin Poynter earns his living by making them. Also known as "the red flag guy," Poynter has spent the last year reposting videos of couples in relationships on TikTok and Instagram and splices them with videos of himself holding (or sometimes running with) a giant red or green flag. A green flag communicates that the partners are behaving well, like surprising their significant other with a gift, while a red flag portends doom (like, say, when a partner acts like a maniac during a gender reveal). The Arkansas-based 32-year-old having sifted through many, many TikTok videos posted by couples hoping to go viral, I wondered about the vast majority of instances where people's behaviors can't be boiled down to a single color. What of the "beige flags," as they're called online, the kinds that don't really fit into the categories of "good" or "bad"? "I think red flags are not permanent," Poynter says. "It requires the person to acknowledge it and want to change, but I do believe that people can change. I'm not out here trying to break anybody up." |
Poynter stresses that he's not an expert; he's just a normal guy running with a flag through a public park who stumbled upon a bizarre niche that allows him to live the life he's always dreamed. But his — which is to say, the entire internet's — brand of advice-giving and morality policing is remarkably black-and-white. This, obviously, is the reason why TikTok trends are so popular. They allow us to fit complex situations into neat and comfortable boxes. Boyfriend won't cut up your fruit? Break up! Husband says you don't do enough housework? Divorce him, sis! But while the practice of "decentering" men from one's life can be hugely positive for many women, the idea that all men are trash is loaded with essentialist rhetoric that harms people of all genders. Similarly, the idea that all heterosexual marriages are (or should be) irrevocably doomed is, as the Atlantic's Lily Meyer pointed out, a failure of imagination, a failure to imagine a better world in which two people who ostensibly love each other can create an equal and mutually positive relationship. Expecting nuance from a TikTok comment (character limit: 150) is a futile exercise. Perhaps the world would be a simpler place if the future could be determined by a test that goes viral on social media — if you could truly determine whether you should marry a man by bringing him an orange and waiting, hopefully, for him to peel it. Marriage doesn't work like that, though. Because if it did, nobody would ever have to get divorced in the first place. |
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| Ten states have an initiative on the ballot that would protect access to abortion. KJZZ's Camryn Sanchez explains how Arizona's Proposition 139 could swing the presidential election. |
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| Brian Stukes/Getty Images for Community Change Action |
The future of child care policy: Advocates are pushing politicians to recommit to investing in "care economy" policies: legislation for paid family leave, an expanded child tax credit, affordable child care, universal preschool, elder care, and higher wages for care workers. These are big issues for many voters, who have already seen care policies excluded from the $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act Democrats passed in 2021. The US Forest Agency is quietly gutting its workforce: The agency relies on seasonal and temporary workers to clean bathrooms and campgrounds, maintain trails, welcome visitors, and to do critical research work. But due to budget cuts, the agency will not be hiring seasonal staff for the next fiscal year, leaving thousands of people out of work and putting important conservation and biodiversity work at risk. You may never have to pick out seeds from your fruit again: In June, an agritech company called Pairwise created a seedless blackberry using CRISPR technology, a "programmable DNA scissors" capable of adding, removing, or altering parts of a genome. Scientists are excited for a future filled with stone-free and seedless fruits that could improve global diets, alleviate pressure on the environment, and enhance shelf life. However, skeptics warn that there could be unintended consequences. The Supreme Court on "ghost guns": Garland v. VanDerStok concerns "ghost guns," ready-to-assemble kits that can be used to build a firearm. These kits appear to exist to evade federal law, as the parts are "incomplete" and only become functional after the user modifies the parts. The question remains if they should be subject to the same rules as any other guns, but on Tuesday a majority of the justices appeared to feel they should. The plight of the parrotfish: Parrotfish are essentially janitors of the sea, scraping colonies of bacteria and algae off rocks using their beaks. If left unchecked, algae can grow out of control, preventing new corals from growing. The problem is that the number of parrotfish has plummeted, leaving some reefs struggling to recover following climate-related impacts like bleaching and superstorms. |
Swift stock just went up: At an estimated net worth of $1.6 billion, pop star Taylor Swift is officially the richest female musician in the world. The title was last held by Rihanna, who has an estimated net worth of $1.4 billion. [Variety] Are you registered to vote? Many deadlines to register to vote are rapidly approaching. There's only four weeks until the election, and it doesn't hurt to doublecheck. Check out the deadline info for your state ASAP. [Axios]
Mass evacuations ahead of Hurricane Milton: Florida government officials have stated that evacuations from Hurricane Milton could be the biggest since Hurricane Irma in 2017, in which 6.5 million people fled their homes. Those who have already left ahead of the storm, which is expected to make landfall Wednesday, have encountered heavy traffic patterns and gas stations without fuel. [New York Times]
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Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo /AFP |
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How did sexual choking became so popular? |
"A lot of young men will talk about pornography as the place where they learned about it, but they also talk about friends and partners, and sometimes about media directed at young men. … For young women and gender-diverse folks, fanfiction comes up a lot. "Sexual choking is also all over social media, especially on TikTok and in memes. We published a paper called #ChokeMeDaddy where we analyzed more than 300 memes that we found within a minute of searching. And it's referenced in so many mainstream media shows: The Idol, Euphoria, Love Island, Love Is Blind, Lovesick. The No. 1 song in the country for six non-consecutive weeks was Jack Harlow's 'Lovin' on Me,' which talks about choking as vanilla."
—Debby Herbenick, a leading sexuality researcher at Indiana University, speaking to Vox senior reporter Keren Landman, MD, about what parents, partners, and educators should know about the popular sex trend and its possible dangers. |
Paige Vickers/Vox; Getty Images |
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Today's edition was produced and edited by senior editor Lavanya Ramanathan, with contributions from staff editor Melinda Fakuade. We'll see you tomorrow! |
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