It’s not like she didn’t have access to role models. Gwyneth Paltrow dropped out of UC Santa Barbara to act and run her Goop empire.

I’m with you. Maybe I’m just cold and dead inside, but I can’t muster the teensiest bit of sympathy for a rich girl who clearly played along with her parents’ wacky scheme (see, for example, bogus crew photoshoots) and has shown nothing but contempt for all forms of education during her illustrious vlogger career. I…

I know he’s all famous and model worthy, but Leo looks likes one of those drunk sad dads I’d side eye when he’d walk me home from babysitting his kids. I’m old, it was the 80s, no one paid attention.

Because being a college vlogger/influencer opened up new revenue. Her room was outfitted by Amazon, etc. That said — I really don’t get why they had to get her into USC. I get that it’s pretty selective, but it’s really NOT impressive. The girl’s influencer “career” would have netted just as much if she were at less…

Their parents committed several instances of actual fraud to get them accepted. That’s why there’s a scandal. Like, we’re talking about ringers taking their SATs for them, heads being photoshopped onto other people’s bodies in order to make it look like they participated in various school sports, etc. It was genuinely…

These were not novels I could get into, maybe because I’ve known too many difficult, cruel, and needy women in my family, at work, and in friendships. Hardship is one thing but if I’m going to spend time with characters in a book, they have to interest me more than Ferrante’s did.

Am I the only one who cynically things a ton of adult (and high-school age) friendship is about status? And that it’s hard to figure out because no one talks about status?

Sure, it’s gone on for a long time. Sure, we all know the wealthy often bypass the system. But, there’s not a student (or alum) of one of these schools who isn’t a bit concerned about wearing their college sweatshirt off campus right now. 

A lot of what people consider “success” is actually crap, like having lots of followers on social media, curated photos of international vacations, being young and attractive and being able to get dates with other young and attractive people. Just because someone is flaunting their life in front of you doesn’t mean…

As a society, it feels like we are constantly impressed with the importance of female friendship - you must have good deep female friends, you must have besties, a squad, a tribe.

I went through the typical middle-school experience of finding myself suddenly voted off the island of a group of female friends — but in my 30s. Since then, most of my female friendships have had the depth and duration of a casual hookup. I like seeing familiar faces when I go out, but am not interested in putting my…

Nothing deep to say here, but I enjoyed reading this piece. It resonated in a way that was both pleasant and sad. I also lost a friendship over the past few years that had been particularly deep and powerful for me, and in some respects there’s still a bit of grief there.

The wealthy putting those huge tax breaks dollars to good use. See how the trickle down economy works to make lives better for the middle class? It definitely won’t lead to another economic crash like the first two times the Republicans passed similar tax plans.

ALL social media “influencers” should be shamed into obscurity

Shame. Her first and last spring break cut short like that.

Call me old-fashioned, but I find the word ‘influencer’ to be unnecessary when we already had the word ‘shill’, which was a perfectly good word for the exact same thing.

Of course Olivia Jade was on the “official” university yacht. There are so many questions:

Nope. Which is why this scandal will be a plus for her in the long run. When you make money off being famous getting more attention is only a good thing. We’ve seen this path walked before. It was forged by Paris Hilton and then paved with gold by the Kardashians. I wouldn’t be surprised if Olivia Jade gets an E…

Social media participation is the primary identity for many people like Jade. That’s gone now. The nature of the medium will ensure that no matter what she puts out there, a critical mass of replies will disrupt it. In the span of a few hours, a big chunk of her orientation to the world was obliterated and will likely…

I can’t really muster sympathy. I don’t wish, like, death or whatever on her because it sounds like she was kind of a dupe rather than a perpetrator. But, most of us* learn painfully that decisions have consequential outcomes, and that usually happens a lot younger than she is now. She’s just been insulated from the…