Hey there! Hello! It’s a slow site day, so we’re bringing you Wednesday Links bright and early.
Some updates here: at SBTB HQ, we gathering together to play some Dungeons & Dragons. Elyse’s wonderful husband has volunteered to DM and I’m so excited to play again. I will be playing a dwarven fighter named Wilhelmina “Willa” Bronzeblade, who is just happy to be here!
As of right now, we don’t have any plans to turn this into content on the site or Twitch, but happy to provide updates on our adventures in future Links posts.
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This profile blew my mind as someone who was once a teen girl who read Go Ask Alice. Did anyone else know this?
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Thanks to Alissa for send this our way! Chuck Tingle has a trade pub deal and will be writing his first horror novel! Congrats to Chuck and all the buckaroos!
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I visited Sweden (namely Stockholm) several years ago and I’m bummed I didn’t think to visit the Museum of Failure. It sounds wild.
There's a "Museum of Failure" in Sweden which highlights 150+ failed products. It's meant to show that innovation requires risk-taking and failure.
Here are 10 gems you may not remember:
— Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan) July 21, 2022
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I loved this Corporate Buzzword Battle bracket. I don’t agree with the winner, though. For me, top spot should be “hop on a call.” Who would you have voted to be the winner?
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I feel like I may have posted this sketch in the past, but oh well! Anyone who is familiar with British actors will recognize many familiar faces.
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Don’t forget to share what cool or interesting things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!
So, I knew GO ASK ALICE was fake, but didn’t know any of the details. I definitely read it (or parts of it) in middle school and I think what mostly struck me about it was that it was anti-drug propaganda/part of the whole “scared straight” shtick that was so prevalent at the time (mid-90s). I also have this vague recollection of finding it very unhelpful in the sense of, “Well, I don’t think it’s very likely that I’m going to end up addicted to drugs, running away, and being a prostitute, so not sure how this is intended to help me…?”
That said, I am now very curious about the other type of moral panic books I read around the same time about Covenant House.
I’m developing a superpower that makes someone put what I want to watch right in front of my eyeballs within 7 to 10 business days. I’ve mostly been using it to manifest obscure movies on Tubi, but I was thinking about “Leading Lady Parts” the other day, so clearly my power is universal. I WILL BE UNSTOPPABLE! Mwauahaha!
I learned about Go Ask Alice a few years ago when writing my MLS Capstone on whether my local consortium had books that are commonly banned. I remember reading a piece similar to the one posted here in utter shock in my boyfriend’s car. It’s amazing how a con can go on for so long and become fact.
I read GAA in the mid 70s. My 12 year old self believed every word of it. It wasn’t till about 15 years ago that I read it again because my daughter was reading it, that I realized it was fiction.
I remember kids pushing (ha) GAA on me, and not understanding what the fuss was all about as a teen. It was so poorly written, despite the sensationalism, I couldn’t get into it. I did, however, love Sybil, which I read and saw far too young. So many of those “true but the names are changed to protect people” books were just utter fictionalized nonsense. Is it just me, or was the 70s just a terrible decade for literature?
My 12-year old daughter and I just inhaled the series Paper Girls on Amazon prime video this week. It looks like “Stranger Things with girls” but is most assuredly so much more than that.
Because it deals with time travel and not monsters, it really opens up the series to be a more contemplative adventure as the girls have to consider their own future selves and how that affects who they think they are as young teens- while also working together to get though the chaos.
I’m 42 and my daughter is 12, so we each got a different message from the show and it opened up a lot of great discussion between us. She’s also exploring her own queer identity and found a lot to root for in the characters here. In this regard the show treats it’s character so much more thoughtfully than Stranger Things. Plus I’m not sure I’ve ever watched a show that dealt with a first period in such a relatable way, it’s funny but not cringey.
My only complaint is the sci-fi world ending stakes are not very well explained so when the weirdness starts I wasn’t really invested in it. But I love the characters, the young actresses really carried the show, and I hope they get a second season.
I remember reading GAA in junior high in the early 80’s and deciding it was a pile of BS. In retrospect, I’m surprised I came to that conclusion at age 12 because a) I was in a very insular and homogeneously white middle-class suburb in a rather [at the time] provincial city, so I had no experience that would lead me to reject GAA as untrue, and b) I hadn’t studied any writing technique or literary criticism that would inform an opinion based on the quality of the writing. Basically, I looked at all these “diary of a real person” scare-you-straight books from the 60s and 70s, and guessed that this was a schtick. I do recall asking the librarian if my suspicion was true, and he said something along the lines of “most likely – maybe a one or two were true-ish, but the rest are probably churned out like Nancy Drew books”. At which point I found out about the Stratemeyer Syndicate and was totally crushed, and I’ve been a cynical and suspicious person ever since. Thanks, GAA!
Also, I will always watch that Leading Lady Parts video, so thanks for re-posting!
I’m sorry but ‘change agent’ is should have won the buzzword list. Followed closely by ‘thought leader.” wTH is even do those things mean?
Like Kris, I read this book not all that long after it was published (probably in the late 70s) and it had a whopping impact on my psyche. I haven’t looked at it since, but I somehow missed the “reveal” about the hoax until today. Wow. My 14-year-old self feels violated and pissed that I wasted tears on a money-grabbing deception.
I just listened to this podcast from the Smithsonian about the Hungerford Deed and the founding of the Smithsonian Institution. It’s a story of love and lawsuits and illegitimate babies that sounds like something from a historical Romance, although without the HEA – unless you count founding a world famous museum/research institution as falling within the definition. I’d no idea that the SI’s founder had such a colorful background or that he’s interred in the Smithsonian Castle (and certainly not that Alexander Graham Bell is the one who brought his body to the US). The whole thing is fascinating.
https://www.si.edu/sidedoor/hungerford-deed?utm_source=OA-OEF&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=2208-OA-Enews-go-si-edu-slash-contentideas