Well, it had to happen sometime. Good Hang is coming to an end. Apparently funding a newsletter as an obtuse psyop to make people hang out in public more was a zero-interest rate phenomenon for our pals at Palantir Creative LLC. They’ve diverted our funding to building a 3d-printable gun that only targets your soul such that when it hits you it knocks your soul out of your corporal body, murdering the soul instantly but leaving the body to roam the earth for eternity :( (crazy market cap tho tbh)

All jokes aside, we’re ending it because it didn't get us laid enough. We thought we’d be drowning in it. Bicoastal aloof blog about hanging out? How could we not be? Randa said someone had a ‘twitter crush’ on harry but like…that's not gonna cut it. And my salesforce heads know that doesn't quite count as an attribution. Anyway, back to the drawing board.

As a final treat, we’re revealing the results of the Good Hang Reader Questionnaire. Here are the stats:

• 155 of you filled it out, with only 28 of you opting to stay anonymous

• 111 of you revealed your body count

• Median age: 29

Before we show you the actual results… a little study. Some of you with below-average body counts added textual justifications to your responses. Here’s what we’ll say to that: your body count is perfect to us as long as you are not poly <3

AVERAGE BODY COUNT: 23

MEDIAN BODY COUNT: 14

We want to say a huge thank you to everyone who supported us along the way. It really warmed our hearts when people would read and engage with our stuff. All the texts, the conversations at parties, the divulgence of actual body counts… that’s why we kept doing it. Some of you really understood us:

But we weren’t without our haters………………

So what’s next for us?

Randa remains in San Francisco working on some special stuff at Substack. Follow her on Substack Notes, IG, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Harry has a relatively new basketball podcast called Nothing But Respect. He also was recently on the excellent Middlebrow Podcast. Follow him on Notes, Twitter, and IG. He’s also trying to write more (ideally for money) so if you’ve got a publication that needs some writing done, hit him up!

You MIGHT hear from us about other projects in the near future because we are Posters and we can’t help it…

You are strongly encouraged to reach out to us for the following purposes:

• Offers to pay us large sums of money in exchange for our big-brained ideas

• Exclusive party invitations

• Dates, marriage proposals, or professions of love

Lastly, a very special thanks to Annie Turpin for designing our logo, Dave for [redacted], and everyone else behind the scenes who helped make this thing what it was.

Much Love Everyone

Randa and Harry

<3

P.S.

Here are some of our favorite pieces

But we gotta make one thing clear here at good hang. Gift Guides are not about “Gifting.” The holidays are not about “spreading cheer.” No, all of this is about a giant Soviet Style Darwinian taste war. The goal, as we see it, is to completely dominate everyone else by creating a Taste Goon Nexus where these little freaks just click on our shit forever. That is, after all…what Sub Stack is all about.

So we’ve put together what I would call a ‘Hiroshima-style taste nuke’ to finish the culture war once and for all. Like all evil things…we wouldn’t have been able to do this without our secret funder and benefactor Peter ‘da bi petey pablo’ Thiel. So we asked him to throw some recs in the mix. We also hit some friends up for stuff too.

This will likely become incredibly clear soon but we do not give a shit if you buy anything on this list, what we care about is that you read this thing and pay us exorbitant fees to consult on your evil tech projects and or go on your podcasts. The affiliate links, as it were…are the friends we made along the way :)

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TAP IN

TECHNO OPTIMISM

RS: harry won’t admit to being a techno-optimist even though he is (i’ve seen him take a waymo… actions speak louder than words) so i have to do this section alone…

For someone with feet:

Oofos

something about Good Hang… we don’t “follow trends,” we create them. in march 2021 i went to the podiatrist over a bunion scare, and she said “you don’t have a bunion, but, the thing i NEED to tell you about your feet…” (10 second pause) “...is you have BEAUTIFUL feet.” (not to flex, it’s just part of the story). she then took out a pad of paper and scrawled a few words onto it:

i immediately thought to myself… crocs and birkenstocks? played out. oofos though… blue ocean. no oofos wearer had done it like i was about to do it. i ordered a pair on my way home.

fast forward a few months, i’ve spurred a dozen more purchases from my eclectic community (including our very own harry, his mom, and my mom). a reporter from the biggest publication in the world reached out to me about a trend piece. another reputable publication issued an official recommendation of the orthopedic footwear i singlehandedly popularized without so much as a mention (i’m used to it).

anyway - they’re really comfortable. great gift for anybody with feet.

-randa

for your friend who thinks it’s cute to be hungover

guess what? it’s not. thanks to zbiotics, hangovers are obsolete. everyone’s like “does it even work?” and the answer is yes it does. ?$9 pEr bOtTLe? ok that’s the price of a beer. and also this is a gift, you can buy them a 3-pack for $36… and also if you click this link you get $20 off… thank me later.

-randa

for your friend who loves gift guides

Why don’t you tell him to Link with some Affiliates and go talk to some females 😭😭

-Harry

SEX AND LOVE

yeah yeah we’re just including this section bc it’s what you guys always want from us 🙄 we contain multitudes smh…

For the coworker you saw on Feeld who said they like MMFs:

Bespoke Gang Bang Experience (Safe for Work - it’s just a google form don’t worry)

For the girl reading this :)

415-640-2008

-Harry

for the single fellas in SF:

A Date With Randa

that’s right… set it up…

For your friend who has an ex girlfriend…

10 mins of ex girlfriends instagram

Its ok! You get ten minutes. Maybe shower after. Not in like a jacking off sense more just like….sweating it out. Probably don’t text her…but 10 mins could be good.

-harry

For anyone

Getting mildly flirtatious and esoteric while talking to a hot person in downtown New York or San Francisco

Maybe they’re like a poet and you’re like woah what’s being a poet like and they’re like I get grants and stuff and you’re like that’s crazy I wonder what time again will do this winter and they’re like yea I’m not sure or maybe they work in tech and are a consultant and you speculate with them about if burning man is post ironic or post post ironic and u don’t have S with them that night but like another night you see them and then u guys kiss

-Harry, randa and Peter

(Sorry breaking the 4th wall here but speaking of sex and Peter thiel I was talking to this guy who said that a bunch of men he knew were pretending to be bisexual so they could flirt with peter theil and I guess like…get funding? Back to the bit)1

SPIRITUAL

For you friend caught in this strange liminal space in digital culture where we seem to shifting towards more ‘quasi-private’ internet spaces like group chats and discords

A Bit Of The Year (BOTY) Award Ceremony

Everyone's always like…oh my favorite movie of 2024 is Anora…oh im leaving the Kendrick album off my top ten. Completely 100% do not care… i wanna hear some indexing of the cultural detritus you and the boys cooked up over this beautiful year. Go through the group chat. Keyword search some funny stuff. Go back and try to find the best bits. For me I’ve got “Morning Joe humor, SSOH, Al’s Hinge, intricate ways of killing yourself when you see a hot girl…stuff liek that. Use this worksheet to whip urs up.

-harry

For your friend who follows Bryan Johnson

The Game from 1997 Michael Douglass Thriller ‘The Game’

In the 1997 Michael Douglass thriller ‘The Game’ Micahel Douglass is this rich guy whos like bored or something and signs himself up for this mysterious service where they track you and try to kill you but not actually kill you and you go insane but ultimately its fun. I think if more rich people tried to do this instead of freezing their cum we’d be in a better place. Thats just my two cents. If someone did this it would be cool. You’d get written up in ‘intelligencer’ i think. The Game is also a pretty good film. Sneakily a San Francisco movie i think too.

-harry

For your friend who’s worried about aging

Just Let Them Do The Year Over

They’re turning 30 this year and bummed about it? Just agree to be like ‘actually you’re turning 29 again not 30 on their 30th birthday. I’m surprised more people don’t do this. My friend Casey suggested it a while ago and I've thought about it a lot. You could totally do this

MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS

For your friend with absolutely Crazytown ideas

Inject their political project into the Overton window of acceptable discourse

This is one of my favorites. I run in some fairly heavy-hitting circles and people in that cohort think to materialistically….yachts, vacations, pre market amphetamine patches that also make you hard and turn your wang green while oddly turning the rest of ur shit down there purple like those fake lighting toy things you see at the exploratorium…, but its like…we all have access to that stuff. No this try instead to inject one of your friends favorite theories into the zeitgeist! We should be allowed to eat snakes? Language should cost money? Young men aren’t watching enough porn? Whatever it is..who cares! DM us for our PT x GH Loco Crazy Idea Psyop form and just submit your idea and your spend and we’ll make it happen!

-peter

For your friend who gets all their book recommendations from you

A gilded plaque that says “The [Your Name] Library of Ideas”

Install it above their book shelf as a surprise. When they bring someone home from the bar and they start looking at your friend’s books they will know that the real brains behind the operation is you. And that’s what friendship is all about 👍

Community Chest

These gift ideas were donated by members of our generous community

for more good ideas you can read faiq’s new fashion substack

for your favorite avoidant

like “inbox zero” or a “debt jubilee” but for being kind of a shitty friend. get instant forgiveness for all the texts you haven’t responded to but still think about every day. gift to yourself or your favorite avoidant

-Jasmine Sun (“Dwarkesh meets Ezra Klein but a girl”)

For that one homie who Doesn’t Need Much

Most of the apps that come preloaded onto the iPhone are fucking awesome. You can waste time on those instead of twitter or instagram. I’m talking “Utilities.” Scrolling around on Maps is classic stuff; you can sit around with the homies and everyone tries to zoom in on different remote islands in the Pacific Ocean and find various restaurants, convenience stores, high schools, etc. It’s also word-expanding. Also fun to go on the Weather app and check out different parts of Antarctica (Feels Like, what have you). The Measure app is also insane—you can lie in bed and try to measure like from your mirror to your door.

-Nabeel (Low Lift Ask)

The gift of honesty

It’s time to set yourself free. Your friend asks if he’s balding SCREAM IT FROM

THE ROOF TOP! Do I have bad breath YES YOU DO ALWAYS HAVE!! It’s time for them to KNOW and you to drop a load of your shoulders. The truth hurts but holding on to it hurts more. Let it rip

-Rachel Coster

When i was a freshman in high school there was a group of guys two grades above me who called themselves “the octopussy”. There were 8 of them and they had an uncanny grasp of post-ironic swag for a bunch of 16-year-olds in 2011. One guy used to show one of his balls to people on the soccer bus. They all had beautiful girlfriends who would go on to go to Columbia or become doulas or both.

This was my first experience with a scene. Like all good scenes, I wanted to both drone strike this squad, and become a part of it. I can probably list off the entire taxonomy of the Octopussy extended universe.  By the time I was a junior in high school, my friend group too had a nickname.  

Some people hate scenes. 

There's been a lot of super interesting writing about scenes in the last 2 years. My sense is most of this has to do with Dime Square and downtown, but scenes are somewhat universal–comedy scenes, film scenes, frat scenes, etc.. The most informative work on scenes I’ve come across is Brad Troemel’s cloutbombing report. Another interesting piece was Daisy Alioto’s Dirt Piece Against Scenes from last year, and another was Eleanor Stern’s piece Against Sceneyness.

Alioto’s main point as i saw it was that writers are “uniquely susceptible to scenes when we should be skeptical of them”. Stern’s piece put forth the idea that there exists “a literature of sceneyness” with one of the common threads being homogeneity. Finally, Troemel argues that in the case of Dimes Square “anyone looking for the artistic meat of the scene, had to settle for the Beyond Alternative in the form of navel-gazing scene gossip and auto-fiction.” These pieces all had an idea in common: we should be highly dubious of the art, and the conversation around the art, coming out of these scenes.

Now…i basically either agree with all three of these takes or recuse myself from having an opinion. I can’t say if a Sovereign House adjacent book is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, i read 3 books a year, but the logic in favor of being highly skeptical tracks. I also think the sort of real-time hyper-loreification of a scene by scenesters is reserved for the corniest among them. 

But i want to briefly entertain a much sillier prism through which to view scenes. I want to talk about how scenes are cool and fun and horny. 

I think of scenes as very loose organizations of people associated with the creative process with a very loose but omnipotent hierarchy that can sometimes change from minute to minute.1

The thing that makes people most uncomfortable about scenes socially, is how they subject everyone involved to think about their social standing. I’ve got bad news folks, that's what makes them cool. Yes, scenes put us in touch with this weird subterranean energy dominated by who has rizz and a strong jawline and devious eyes and lots of stock options and rich parents but the very fun and dynamic catch is that we get to choose how to engage with that energy. 

In the same way that there is something very thrilling about drinking the 5th beer, going to the 3rd location, and pushing oneself to the edge of toxicity, I think the same thing can be done with engaging in the superficiality of scenes. In other words, they’re fun in moderation…they’re really fun in moderation! Scenes offer the ability to microdose vanity. It is ok to pull up to time again and daydream about how cool it would be if a model who reads features in N+1 recognized you off the strength of your takes, get lost in that…and then just…go home. 

It's fun when socializing has stakes, isn’t it? Surely not all the time, or even most of the time. But 1 Saturday a month? Why not! 

A healthy, moderate dose of sceneyness can be a shot of electricity in the arm. If the goal of a night out is to either find love or riff your heart out (which is it is btw) then a shared language of microcelebrities, twitter speak and predictable david foster wallace takes is actually an awesome jumping off point. If one end of the spectrum is sitting at minute 22 of a first date asking the person across from you what living in East Williamsburg is like, a scene-soaked conversation in a bathroom line might be the other end. Perhaps said even more simply, it is such an incredible privilege to pull up to a party where there are 3 to 4 people you kind of know.

And how about this, I kinda like the idea that scenes have the ability to make you spin out and make mid art. It's fun to be in the presence of something that powerful. And how about THIS: most of the guys in the Octopussy…seem to be doing pretty good….

If there is a Real Point here it is that scenes crop up everywhere and yes we should be skeptical of them. If they are funded by strange dark money… we should be Very Skeptical of that (and honestly laugh because what the hell dude) But you are missing a huge huge huge part of the conversation around them when you forget that having a place in a dialed-in scene is really fun. 

On May 7th, 2015 Lebron James created a medium-sized PR scandal for himself when someone discovered that he had liked a photo on an Instagram account called “perfectbooties”

There's so much about 2015 Instagram UX that now feels dated. The feature that got James in trouble was a feed where you could see the activity of everyone you followed. 

I got thinking about the Pubby Like this week because i noticed somewhat passively that Lawrence from throwing fits likes a high percentage of artist and media theorist Brad Troemel’s Instagram posts.

I think i noticed this because it kind of warms my heart. It is cool to me that Lawrence supports Brad Troemel. I respect what Brad does and i respect was Lawrence does. It is fun to see this little iota of creative exchange between two people whose work I like.

The pubby like has long been a lightning rod for all kinds of internet hijinx. On one end you’ve got Ted Cruz liking tweets from a porn account named SexuallPosts, likely not realizing the likes are public, and on the other you’ve got writers slyly liking tweets from more brazen posters, subtly showing support for the notion that you should or shouldn’t be able to say the R-word at church, or that Jaylen Brown is overrated, or that Tesla’s business model actually does make sense even outside of the carbon tax arbitrage they do. 

In some cases, a like can be completely paradigm-shifting. It can reveal that two people who you thought were not in conversation with each other, may actually be…why is the guy who posts videos of Tobias Harris missing layups liking a tweet about Dasha from Red Scare? The guy who wrote a nuanced piece about bird scooters enjoyed Megalopolis? The teenager who posts videos of Mark Wahlberg fit checks is fucking with mj lendermen like that? Huh…

Elon’s recent decision to make likes on Twitter private marked the death knell of the PL, but the PL has long been trending towards extinction. The IG feed that caught Lebron was sunsetted in 2019. Now all IG shows you are the three most algorithmically reasonable thumbnail images in the bottom left corner of a post. Then of course there is the more macro shift towards an exponentially more complex algorithm, where who you follow or what you like is only one part of a highly complex recommendation system. And you know what folks…that sucks. With the public like going to UX jail, we’re losing a weirdly powerful tool. 

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Digging Through Likes

There was a sweet spot in the evolution of these platforms, where your feed was a mix of who you followed, and what your followers liked. In my early media consumption days I remember finding music, movies recommendations, podcasts, authors etc. all from snooping around the semiprivate browsing habits of other people. 

This specific sweet spot afforded internet culture hounds the ability to parse through piles of data with a light degree of curation, not too dissimilar from digging through crates of music at a record store or combing this Fools Gold discography looking for slappers. There was a really nice balance of active searching and passive curation. Sometimes how you find some information is as important as what you find and that semi-active role in finding shit you like is propulsive. It moves you past a surface-level aesthetic conception and into some second stage. I’m not gonna say it! I’m not gonna say it! Ok fine i’ll say it…its a bit transcendental.

I don’t think i gravitate to internet culture because I like posters, in fact i hate most of you freaks. Nay, I gravitate towards it because the actual process of private curation, of searching through internet detritus for dank memes and good takes and thoughtful analysis is a meaningful and grounding exercise.

Keep Liking My Posts and We Gone End Up Like This 

I once was talking to a friend who told me that she could tell a guy was flirting with her because he “kept liking her tweets about god.” I have never experienced that specific version of flirtatious likes because i keep the god takes in the boys chat but I totally get where she was coming from. Inarguably a public like can be flirty. There’s also something thrilling about how it could also totally not be flirty. A like means almost nothing….almost nothing. It’s important for there to be stakes in flirting. Often, in the atomized contextless world of private DMs and platforms specifically designed for flirting, any risk is neutralized. A public like was a tiny step towards risk. Maybe like flicking a glance at someone on the train. It was a nice Goldilox flirtation zone for quirked up boys like me (never worked once but that's not the point). 

PLAZ (Public Like Autonomous Zone)

Perhaps my most turnt LRT (like related take) is that the like acted as a helpful liminal space between things that happened in real life and things that happened online. Theres a weird human insight you get into someone by seeing what they like. 

I had a boss who combed through my likes before making a final decision to hire me. I talked to another friend who called snooping likes “the last good way of stalking someone online.” Both of these point to the idea that likes are weirdly a good window into who someone is. It's certainly a better window than what they post. 

In a piece for Dirt about scenes, Daisy Alioto smartly remarked that the center of a scene is impossible to find. I suspect one reason that’s true is that the pulsing metadata of discourse, LIKES, are now invisible. Each person in their own allegory of the cave scenario with giant digital platforms showing us shadow puppets of shitposts. The Like Nexus use to be a little easier to see in full.

In sum, there is a reason I get a little warm and fuzzy when I see Lawrence liking Brad's post. The public like occupied this funny zone where the experience of liking something on social media felt private, but was public. Very VERY few things online are like this. When I toss a double tap to a dank meme from like @da_midwestern_p00syzone while half-watching Netflix’ The Starting 5, I’m mostly not thinking about how it will be perceived, even though I know it it is nominally public. I’m not thinking about it because you just can’t. Theres too much data. Almost like the way dancing is easier at a club full of other people dancing, relaxing into the performance of being online is easier when the morsels of data you’re throwing out there are one of 10 billion. A Like, in its very small way, cuts through an online performance. It’s the water we actually do forget we’re swimming in. 

HK: Oh you wanted a little essay on if demure is hang-out coded? You wanted us to figure out where prospect park hinge dates fall in the fuck / doesn’t fuck / has sex / doesn’t have sex nexus? Sorry dog!!! Maybe next week!

No, today we’re going big brain esoteric crazy style mode. We’re running an interview with artist-filmmaker and meme page admin (the devil's multihyphenate) Tomi Faison. 

Tomi caught my eye for two main reasons, the first was her association with (more on this in sec) and the second was the intriguing name of her new documentary “APPLICATION TO BE LARS VON TRIER’S “FEMALE GIRLFRIEND/MUSE.”

I’m like…thats kinda how i’m coming on hinge……

But let me make the case for why you should read this interview, and why it falls within the Good Hang Psyop Beat. 

1. Tomi is one of the founders of Do Not Research. In their words DNR is “a platform for writing, visual art, internet culture research and beyond focusing on “memetic tactics and emergent political trends.” I’ve also heard it described as a “Decentralized MFA program.” My personal experience with DNR is via the occasional interview or via passively perusing the extended DNR digital universe. Just about everything I see in this extended loose DNR universe is extremely fire and thoughtful and intellectual. My only critique honestly is sometimes it's too big-brained for me and I short-circuit a bit. If you happen to be looking for an inroad to what DNR is about I suggest this Art Angle podcast interview with Citarella.

2. Tomi in her own right has put out some very interesting art. You can read this thorough profile if you’d like more info on her work but here are a few things that spoke to your boy:

I should also that Tomi sent me a screener of the doc and I found it very moving. I watched it twice and thought a lot about home videos and my family and Being Yourself.

3. Lastly, this quote – cmon…this is like if our Good Hang handlers actually let us take the Thelian Limitless pill to make our brains big.

HK: So with all of that being said, here is my interview with Tomi, condensed and cleaned up for clarity.

ON DNR and DIGITAL SPACES

HK: One of the things that drew me to your work is the connection to DNR and the super digital space. When I see a really digital online space, I'm usually skeptical. I often think, “Why aren’t these people hanging out in real life?” But I’ve seen a lot of humanity and cool stuff coming out of DNR and that corner of the internet. Can you tell me how you got involved with DNR?

Tomi: That project formed out of a reading group with a bunch of artists, MFA dropouts, and people who had very earnest questions about art and politics. We started hanging out every Sunday, reading books, and discussing them. A lot of people involved in that group have since moved to New York, and there’s even a couple who got engaged. My best friend Margo, who’s in the film, moved to Baltimore after we met online. These spaces can be a conduit to in-person connections.

HK: Sometimes I’ve met people online and later connected with them in real life, and sometimes it works out, but other times it doesn’t. What’s your experience with that? Is it worth it?

Tomi: I think one difference with the DNR reading group is that we were on Zoom video chats for four or five hours weekly. You actually get a sense of the vibe of these people. It’s sort of self-selecting to people who get along well. The secret sauce for that group was that we were all into the same niche art and politics. They’re politically minded, so they’re usually a bit cooler and less stuck up than most art world people. We all met through our friend Josh Citarella’s project. Josh does a lot of research about memes, so everyone also has a sense of humor. It’s rare to find people deep into politics or art who also have a good sense of humor. That was the secret sauce.

The flip side is that in the early days, when we were doing these first in-person events, we had a crowd of the most socially dysfunctional 19-year-old guys you’ve ever met. They’d come up to you and say, “Oh, are you Discord user Dogma? Wow, I’m LoreMaxxing GoblinPill. Nice to meet you!” It can be hit or miss, but I’ve been doing this for a long time. Now, when I travel for art stuff or work, I almost always meet up with some weird anonymous meme page I’ve been making stuff with for years. I always make sure I have a backup plan for the night, but it’s fun. It’s hit or miss, though.

HK: It’s interesting to hear that even within the online community, you guys aren’t necessarily trying to hang out with those people.

Tomi: Yeah, well, there are just some people who are better at posting than they are at hanging out.

ON HER NEW DOC AND ITS MAIN SUBJECT HER NEIGHBOR ROSE

HK: That transitions well into talking about Rose and your new documentary “APPLICATION TO BE LARS VON TRIER’S ‘FEMALE GIRLFRIEND/MUSE.’” It’s funny how you’re part of these decentralized online communities, but on the other hand, you’re hanging out with your neighbor. How did you meet Rose, and how did you become friends?

Tomi: I'll answer this honestly. It’s maybe a bit sappier than I usually share, but I moved next to Rose about four years ago, which was pretty early in my transition. I was in a phase we call "boy-moding." I was on hormones and all that, but I wasn’t fully presenting yet. One day, I was getting ready to go to New York, where I felt more comfortable, and Rose caught me looking a bit more feminine. She started talking to me, and I was like, “Yeah, Rose, you’ve heard about the transsexuals on TV.” We started talking about that, and she timidly came out to me as a lesbian. It was a sweet moment.

A few weeks later, it was Thanksgiving, and things were rough with my family. Rose was a bit distant from her family, too, being the only single one in a large Irish Catholic family. So, Margo and I had Thanksgiving with her because we realized she was home alone. Ever since then, we’ve been good friends. Rose is sort of an icon in our neighborhood, Charles Village. She knows everyone, is incredibly nosy, and even goes through people’s trash to ask questions about it. I see her all the time walking around. Nowadays, our relationship is mostly about drinking Coors Light and Benedictine Brandy, which is this weird sweet dessert liquor she pours in insane amounts. We do that, watch Orioles games, and I help her with stuff on the computer.

HK: That’s awesome. If there is a mission statement of a good hang, it’s that there’s something really beautiful about that style of doing nothing and just hanging out. Why do you think you spend so much time doing that with her?

Tomi: At this point, we’re just good friends. When we first met, my life was messy and confusing, especially early in my transition. I was drawn to Rose as this assertive, gruff, unapologetically herself person. She was someone I could see myself as when I’m older. Now that I know myself and Rose more, there are other options for me besides chugging Benedictine Brandy every night, but we just get each other in a funny way. Even though she’s older, there’s a vitality to her that makes hanging out with her not too different from hanging out with someone my age.

ON MUSES

HK: I want to talk about Muses, which is a big part of the doc.  I hadn’t thought about muses in a long time. It occurred to me that there isn’t much mainstream conversation about muses anymore. Maybe this has fallen out of favor in modern art discourse Do you think it’s good that muses are falling out of favor?

Tomi: A couple of things. I think you’re right that it’s not discussed in those specific terms as much anymore, but there are still conversations in nonfiction doc cinema about the filmmaker’s relationship to the subject. On the extreme end, some people say the subject must be elevated to the position of collaborator to avoid exploitation. On the opposite end, there’s content like man-on-the-street stuff where the goal is to trick the subject into saying something silly. I highly recommend a piece by filmmaker Brett Story called Story and the Property Form where they unpacks how, especially in commercial documentaries, the filmmaker imposes a narrative onto the subject to sell their film in the marketplace. That feels like the contemporary conversation.

The historic one is more gendered, particularly in figurative painting, where the male artist traditionally uses the female muse. Where I land is that in documentary cinema, yes, there’s always some exploitative element, but I don’t get hung up on that. In the case of this film about Rose, I hope it comes through that we earnestly care about each other. Our relationship transcends the dynamic of filmmaker-subject or artist-muse. It’s a two-way street.

PLUGS

Tomi: The film will be in Chicago on September 13th at the Chicago Underground Film Fest. There’s also a screening at Exposures Film Fest in Montreal right after that. Toward the end of the year, I’ll make it public on my Vimeo. If anyone wants to keep track of the film or what I’m doing, they can follow me on whatever social media platform they’re into.

Follow Tomi on IG Here!!

HK

Randa

As you know i’ve been on a secret quest to talk to someone who has successfully gone to a run club and smashed same-day. If that is you, PLEASE hit my line. 

in the meantime though, I've spent a fair amount of time actively perusing the digital run clubs vibe nexus. My algorithm has pulled me in two directions, Austin, Texas, and the West Side highway. 

The run clubs im talking about, the ones seemingly with a certain algorithmic juice, i would describe as having a totally horned-up post-libidinal vibe. They are either explicitly run clubs ‘for single people’ or they are framed as ‘a great place to meet single people.

My initial knee-jerk reaction when i see this kind of thing is “These people are perverts.” 

It’s like somewhere the information superhighway, the pop psychology slop of some tiny man on book tok brandishing Bowling Alone and being like ‘3 nonfiction books you need to read to have a thinking-boi brat summer’ smashed into Posting Ass on Main. The final product was “come with me to Austins hottest sunrise morning run club”. Yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck. 

HOWEVER…removing the aesthetic that is beamed to me in my personal algorithm designed likely by a cabal of sinister cross-fit product managers to make me go insane, I like the idea of running clubs. I even like the idea of running clubs as a way to meet someone and go on a date with them. I also like projects and people putting themselves out there and Not Being a Hater. So im torn! 

What do you think Randa?

RS

I’m SO glad you asked Harry………..

so lemme take our readers back to to february 2022… i’m in new york planning eight days of back-to-back singles parties. these singles parties, on the surface were “successful…” lots of people showed up and they were like poppin and people seemed to have a good time. however - i had to bust my ass to get normal nice straight guys to show up to them. i was tapping the friend of friend network to its last drop. which led me to develop a theory…

guys don’t like taking social risks. like normal guys aren’t going to some experimental party run by “Hot Singles NYC” because most guys aren’t really down to just talk to strangers where they’ll be judged by the conversation without some other activity. and especially not if everyone knows they are there bc they’re single and looking.

This is not bc guys are afraid to hang out with strangers. Au contraire. Because what is every single guy on the planet part of? A pickup basketball group chat. literally every guy i know plays basketball somehow. you guys will walk up to a court and befriend the most ragtag group of fellas for love of the game. but you won't go to a singles party to rizz up some ladies.

I tell you guys this to support my next point, which is that i think Run Clubs are Good. because guys love sports. it’s sort of like how girls went to college to get married before… now it’s like girls should join run clubs (or pickleball leagues, etc.) to get married bc guys like sports. (also i like sports)

@d1aDoes everything have to be a “singles event?” Check out the latest episode of After School with @Casey Lewis at our link in bio 🎙️

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has this worked for me? no. but that’s bc i’ve revealed myself to be totally uncommitted to the cause. i famously quit the softball team after game 1. but if i had stayed on it i would be engaged to be married………….

HK

Ok interesting you think as a guy im sort of specifically primed to not want to go to a singles event, but because I love sports so much I’ll do anything to run around with my pals, even risk the off chance that I have to Talk to Girls? 

I think this is probably right. 

But if I may, I'd like to compliment hot singles and perhaps also make a point about the relationship between clubs and the internet. 

Hot Singles grew because people, actual literal people, shared the newsletter with each other. You did not ‘go viral’. Yes you leveraged the internet to grow your thing, but i think you did so in a way to skirt an algorithm recommendation nexus. (One of the many reasons had you on her podcast this week #you know the vibes)

These TL assrun clubs that are being recommended by the algorithm (which make no mistake is a conscious branding strategy. There are other ways to show that you are going on runs with your run club that doesn’t involve beautiful out-of-breath coeds running on a 9:16 screen). 

If i’m being the most cynical about the run club dating apparatus, i might even say that nobody, not even the hosts of these run clubs, believes that a dating run club is a good idea. Rather, they believe its a good idea for a post

Sex and dating shit bangs on social media. Chompsky said that I believe. I wonder if the tail might be wagging the dog here. Even if Run Clubs broadly are Good.

RS

you bring up an interesting question – is a friend’s recommendation inherently more valuable than an algorithmic one?

before tiktok, people found out about clubs through flyers or radio ads or something. now they find out through their instagram algorithm. i think the primary difference here is that the algorithm isn’t as hyperlocal as say, a flyer on your local posting wall. but it’s still essentially an advertisement.

if you find out about something from an advertisement vs. a friend, you may be less inclined to lean in because there are fewer social consequences. same thing as meeting someone off a dating app who doesn’t know any of your friends. you might try one run club, think the vibe is off, and move onto another run club. whereas if your friend brought you to it, you’d just keep going bc they were going and then eventually you’d feel like you were part of something.

i think we can overcome the cons of algorithmic recs for IRL activities – by inviting our friends along, by actually committing to something despite the aesthetic feeling misaligned. i think you should go to horny run club every week for a month. and then report back to us.

HK

Horny run club is a total nonstarter for me. I just can’t do it. But I would consider going to a regular run club. I was referred to Commonwealth Running Club via the intranet (a friend texting me). They strike me as a valuable foil to this kind of algo-depraved post-horniness. The Instagram does exist but is clearly not branded in the same way as some of these other RCs are. I chatted with Jonathan, the creator of Commonwealth Running Club this week for a piece i hope to finish at some point but we ended up talking about this horny run club phenomenon and he seemed to be approaching the whole thing with a lot of thoughtfulness.

I wonder if the correct growth model for a club is to flit back and forth between thoughtful branding that plays digitally and actual IRL human-to-human recommendations. Hot Singles had great branding, but not in the way that appealed to a nameless algo, it appealed to people. Ironically, a good analogy for this is the tortoise and the hare. A more methodical and organic growth trajectory for a club will always be cooler then one that pops off mad quickly.

RS

i think you just don’t relate to this Type of Guy

rawdawgrunclub

A post shared by @rawdawgrunclub

rawdawg is actually a funny name for a run club. i also dont relate to horned up influencers in austin texas but i dont think it’s THAT DIFFERENT from hot singles. hot singles was just a more intellectual semi-athletic media-adjacent brooklyn coded brand. if you were served the right reel (or substack recommendation) i think u would be down…

HK

I’ll join a run club if i find out about it on TWITTER

RS

ok - what if the Hegelian e-girls started a horny run club

HK

yes I would go to that

plz elaborate in the comments…

I’m one of the only guys brave enough to speak out about a problem secretly tormenting men everywhere – Male Instagram Vibe Missialignment. 

I’m not talking about All men. Of course Not All Men. Some fellas post on Instagram less than once a fiscal year, abruptly announcing they’ve gotten engaged or started a SaaS company or went to Puerto Rico. I’m not talking about these guys. I’m talking broadly, about Taste Boys. 

Taste Boys are everyone else. It's a group that I’ll broadly define as men who extract some real value out of sharing what they are interested in with like-minded people.

Some Taste Boys find a way to have this itch scratched without engaging with social media, but most…maybe 95%...don’t. And those people, the taste boys with any aspiration of a cohesive digital vibe are the victims of a sweeping clandestine epidemic.  

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Three True (Tasteboy) Outcomes

Men with Taste Boy aspirations see three paths for their digital sevles. The first path is the one they want to take. They know they want to be Chris Black for hip hop…or Pastry ThemJeans. Tri-State Blackbird Spyplane. Baltimore Ion Pack. They can look out and run their hands through what it might feel like to interact with microcelebrity the way Jimmy and Larry of do with an endearing and grounding online self-awareness…and yet that path–the specifics–are opaque and confusing and blurry. Where you are and where they are is crystal clear, but there is a deep unswaggy valley between you and them…with no guide on how to traverse. 

Then there are two other options: a tepid demure taste boy performance, or GRWM guy. 

GRWM 

GRWM guys should go to jail, but they should also be given a medal of honor for their bravery. There's a real Nietzchian “Will To Power” going on here. Just being like “ok im an influencer now” goes truly crazy.  

I have to admit, when I see a GRWM guy in the wild (Reel Pull) I am disgusted. I want to jump through my phone and into his living room right as he’s blessed his pleated vinty Ralph with a spritz of Chantal for men, and body-check him into the wall. How Dare You. ‘3 must cops for the summer’ and one of them is a blue ALD button-down? IDK the most famous streetwear brand in the world riffing on a blue Oxford? Thanks dude. 

For most, the path of GRWM-Guy is too dangerous. What would mom think?

So most with TBA take the safer route. Any vibey fit pics they’ve begged their friends or girlfriends to take stay firmly in the camera roll, MAYBE…MAYBE a close friends post. 

(The one strange exception to this is men who grew up LA. They seem to believe it's ok to do stuff like this all the time..but that is a conversation for another time!)

Tepid Taste Boy Woes

I am a TTB. The TTBs are not as embarrassing, but we are tormented. With one side of our digital selves, we gesture towards the idea that we believe we have Good Taste. With the other, we gesture towards how totally lame and uncool it is to proclaim one has good taste. We’ll be subtly prescriptive about what we think is Swaggy, while doubling back on the idea that prescriptive fashion takes is passe. Supreme is cooked, but believing supreme is cooked is also cooked..and so on…

The Tepid Taste Boy path is the sort of proverbial ‘touch grass’ approach. It acknowledges that something that supersedes having Good Taste in Scandinavian button-downs, is knowing how bad, unhealthy, and perhaps most importantly in this case, swagless, beaming oneself online is. Even the most tasteful fit tossed on in the context of that totally fucking CIA-sponsored ‘paging doctor beat’ trend signals 500 things about your relationship with yourself and the internet before it signals one thing about your Personal Style. 

AND YET! AND YET!!!!!!! Sure the Tepid Taste Boy avoids being a GRWM guy, but at the cost of something actually very real and human. We don’t get to fully engage with the most essential part of BEING a taste boy!!

What is fun about fashion, taste etc. is it puts you in a position of constantly playing with shifting mores. There is a three ring circus going on where plates are spinning with shifting fashion trends, ones shifting relationship to those trends, and ones shifting relationship to having a relationship to trends. That's the fun part! And you know what? Just as releasing this blog so it gets perceived and read and engaged with is part of my creative process, blasting a fit into the digitspace and seeing if any beautiful women (or discord boys) fuck with the vision is part of the Taste boy creative process. I feel robbed of that right now not in a i-want-to-be-an-influencer kind of way, just in a garden-variety urge to express myself through what i like! I know there are other TTBs with me.

Plus i hate to use the C word here but there is a community. Kamala Harris was right: willie brown did have unspoken rizz We do exist in a context! Our digital performance, or lack thereof, of course, seeps into how we move through the world IRL… especially when it comes to making friends, lovers, and building a community. 

Mid-pandemic, I had a new colleague hit me with a ‘nice shirt’ as he saw 1/5th of an online ceramics t-shirt popping through the framing of my zoom camera and I instantly felt closer to him in some small way. Years later, post-pandemic, we drank 3 beers at a bar called Floyd and talked about Karl Anthony Towns. If that's not a wholesome argument for Posting Fits on Main Behavior I don’t know what is.

Which Way Western Inspired RRL Boot Cut Denim Man?

So what really is the problem here? I can’t post fits on IG without feeling cringe? I guess yes… that’s the problem.

Mostly i think all of this is probably fine. I’m 29 i don’t need to post fits on Instagram. But it is a teeny tiny bummer to me that we don’t have a way to tell the difference between someone earnestly posting about fashion and culture and art that they like because it makes them feel good and feel a part of something, and someone who posts about fashion and culture and art on because they’re totally lost in the sauce.

I’ll leave you with one final thought, adjacent to all this. At some point, a shift took place as the recommendation taste apparatus completely imploded. Taste, real taste, is displayed more coherently now in what trend (sartorial, intellectual, memetic, or otherwise) someone decides to sit out. Knowing what seems sinister, corny, and cynical is in higher demand than knowing what looks cool. This is good i think, but it does affect the aspiring taste boy uniquely. How do you signal to your squad that you adeptly decided not to post Tim Walz hitting the griddy or whatever? This is why what is ultimately aspirational about the TFs, BBSPs, HLGs of the world and why there are so many keen on imitating them. I don’t think it is the pull of fame and clout but rather the permission to levitate slightly above the rat race recommendation apparatus– enmeshed in it without being dominated by it.

This week Wired released a profile about entrepreneur Avi Schiffman and his new wearable AI product “Friend.” On the same day, Schiffman tweeted out a product trailer, which you can find here. 

Ok blah blah AI friendship is weird but blind techno pessimism is anti-intellectual, how on earth is Good Hang going to thread that needle?! 

I (may) get to that, but I need to start with this insane, borderline cosmic anecdote from the Wired profile. 

Boone Ashworth writes this about Schiffman:

“The feeling came to a head in January this year, as he traveled through Japan and found himself alone in a skyrise hotel in Tokyo, talking at his AI prototype that was supposed to do so much for him. He was going through a lonely spell and wanted somebody to talk to. Why couldn’t the AI assistant just do that?”

🚨This is the exact plot of Sophia Coppola’s movie about loneliness and love Lost in Translation🚨

Fine. Weird that Sofia Coppola made a movie about being lonely and this guy made a talking bolo tie but whatever. There actually more. Coppola’s partial inspiration for the LIT script was the dissolution of her marriage with director Spike Jonze. What’s crazier is that Jonze returned the favor years later, loosely depicting the dissolution of the marriage from his perspective. What sends this into a complete simulation collapsing Danger Zone is the movie Jonze made loosely about Coppola is called “HER” and is literally about a human X Ai companionship. ??!?!?! 

That is all SO crazy. I need Coppola, Jonze and Schiffman on the A24 podcast Pronto!!! 

Now to the topic of the actual service, a wearable pendant that purports to offer companionship. The knee-jerk bad faith interpretation is both vicious and simple.

I’ll briefly outline the case for why it sucks: 

1. Computers are not our friends and will not replace some ineffable human-quality 

2. A for-profit venture-backed company does not have my best interest in mind from a friendship perspective lol

3. The privacy issues of hanging an Amazon Alexa from your neck are immense

4. Insanely swagless

5. This meme

6. this great KRAZAM Sketch

But let me try to move past my knee-jerk hater mode. Welcome to :

So ok what does a good faith reading of Friend.com look like?

I think it starts with the idea that isolating some kind of Friendship support simulacrum is not Brand New. In my initial internal tirade against Friend.com, I found myself outraged at the notion that someone would dare simulate something as sacred as friendship. But there are elements of friendship simulation that already exist.

I listen to podcasts that make me feel a part of a community even though the hosts I listen to have no idea who I am. I’ve gone to therapy where a trained professional has intuited that what I need in that moment is ‘a friend’ and has contorted themselves as such. I’ve done cognitive behavioral therapy worksheets that put me through the literal exercise of hypothesizing what a friend would say to me in this position. I take Effexor every day, a pill made in a lab by a cabal of greedy pharmaceutical freaks, and it’s basically saved my life. This is all broadly ‘modern tech’. So who am I to turn my nose up at Friend.com because its attempting to take the next technological step? 

Unfortunately for Mr. Schiffman, my good faith ends there. And I broadly think this whole project is misguided. HOWEVER, I don’t see Schiffman or Friend.com as this uniquely sinister force. Rather a symptom of a drift in the way we’ve started collectively talking about “loneliness.” 

The Lonliness Epedemic Epedemic

A few years ago I started to hear people talking about Loneliness as a discrete topic. I was in my early to mid 20s struggling with maintaining a sense of closeness to my friends. A global pandemic didn’t help. So it was validating to learn about the dissolution of 3rd spaces, the so-called loneliness epidemic, and the possible theories and solutions people had about what we can and should do about it. I’d never thought so directly about notions of ‘closeness’ and ‘community’.

Recently though, I fear that this type of discrete, almost medical diction, we’re using to talk about loneliness is failing us. Loneliness (in some circles) is now talked about as a categorizable symptom, a fully self-contained Thing. That’s not really how it feels when you’re lonely through right? I guess maybe there’s a line between thinking of loneliness as something that can be noticed and interrogated, and loneliness as something that can be isolated and solved for…and the latter zone doesn’t sit right with me. And that last part ‘solved for’ typically is short for ‘solved for by the amazingly helpful and human free market economy’….

Are we undertaking the project of breaking down big giant ideas like ‘i feel weird and alone sometimes’ or ‘Why does life feel like its passing me by’ into smaller more manageable ideas because that’s a helpful framework to think about them or because its a helpful market framework to sell weird little solutions like fuckin headspace and better help and Hims dick pills?

Is friend.com a useful tool that could help people in some nebulous way? Possibly! There is a very fair interpretation of Schiffman as a young optimistic kid trying to solve a very real, albeit hard to grasp problem of loneliness. And I’m not even necessarily making an overarching argument that ‘the free market’ corrupts and ruins everything, but what I am saying is it seems like there’s a certain intractable uneasiness we all feel about being alive, and that flits between feelings of loneliness and feelings over being totally overwhelmed and feeling nothing and feeling scared and none of those things present in the same way each individual time we feel them, and the great trick friend.com and its ilk is attempting to do pull these flitting feelings, fully isolate them, and efficiently sell us back Solutions. This type of market siloing works wonders when selling SaaS, but i think when dealing with the human condition…making a movie about your ex-husband works better. 

We spend our whole lives looking for something that makes us feel
like the way the drone scene in the first act of Denis Villueves ‘Sicario” makes me feel.

I could watch Emily Blunt rip cigs in El Paso all day. I don’t have a girlfriend but if
I did and if we had a reasonably open 
Sexual line of communication I would ask her if I 
Could just sit and watch her look sad while
Smoking a cigarette like Emily Blunt in Sicario

I love when girls look sad and smoking cigarettes and i love 
When things are sprawling and when
Evil is diffuse and when people shoot other people 

-HK

“End of the tour”

I once watched “End of the Tour”
Naked in my kitchen. Naked with
My penis out and my balls out

I left a woman in bed who had
Brought me a gift on our
First date and was 20 minutes late 
And my stomach hurt so bad and

My stomach hurt so bad and she 
Had said she couldn’t sleep without
ASMR videos faintly playing off a laptop and neither could I

So I stood on my feet in the kitchen
And watched the whole film and laughed
To my self at how funny it is to be sad
And waited for her to leave 

-HK

palatable

what if i scooped my insides out and put them in an ice cream cone?
what if i disguised myself as a cluster of green grapes, easily snackable and bursting?
what if i turned into a chunky batter and sidled up to the parchment lined edges of a baking pan and nearly burned myself in an effort to be perfectly crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside?
what if i hid inside a shiny, crinkly, little bag and posed as a potato chip?
would i be palatable then?

-RS

sometimes 
when i wake up it feels like i’ve walked into a room and forgotten why i’m there
or that i have taken my head off my shoulders and i’m holding it at my side like a basketball looking for the right place to store it where it won’t roll away

-RS

HK

Big Brain Former Good Hang Contributor texted me these two images this week:

His point of course is what strange duo the democratic establishment and an album about being a girl and blasting lines make.

This phenomenon is Not New. Politicians have opportunistically globbed onto artists to curry favor, or broadly seem less like a lizard wearing a human’s skin. Look no further than Trump and Kanye, Obama and Jay Z…Obama and Faye Webster, Obama and Central Cee, Obama and Mitski, Obama and The War on Drugs. O– 

Annnnywayyyy… I am not your guy for “What Kamala’s Brat Summer Means For the 2024 Election.” I’m sure there are interesting and prescient articles about that but not here at Good Hang. 

I want to talk about Evil Partying.

Brat is the soundtrack to a night of Evil Partying. You flit back and forth between adulation and hubris and ego and dying and railing lines having sex and dying and techno and the sum total effect seems to be like one of those memes of a hydraulic press destroying a stack of marbles with the phrase “i bet this feel good asf for the marbles.”

I have great respect for Evil Partying, even as someone who has essentially never EP’d

When I was 14 or 15 I was talking to one of my high school friends who had taken to drinking on the earlier side of high school life. She and a crew of dangerous children were bodying plastic bottles of Royal Gate vodka and glass 40s at Alta Plaza Park nearly every weekend. At this party, she said something I think about all the time. She said “sometimes i just want to test my limits. I wanna see how far I can go.” I remember thinking “I really cannot relate to anything less than what you just said” and I remember saying “totally….yea….totally.” This was Evil Partying and I have spent most of my adult life being repulsed and compelled by Evil Partiers.

Evil Partying is repulsive in some very obvious ways. It's sort of childish right? Surely there has to be a more adaptive solution to the woes of the world than shooting yourself out of a cannon. Yes getting blackout and throwing up is a release…but so is like…talking…

But then on the other hand I sometimes feel that the Evil Partiers in my life are actually a bit more in touch with themselves than I am. Evil Partying is an exercise in running towards feeling insane as much as it is an exercise is using drugs and alcohol to numb it? I’m not sure…

The funniest part about Evil Partying is that from a vibes perspective, it's an incredibly selfless act. Every party is cooler when some percentage of the people are tugging at the thread of their death drive. I’d never wish my friend got trapped in a loop of evil partying but am always happy to see someone out who appears to be chasing something. It's the same reason I wish Future health and happiness in his life…but i also don't….

We’ve got a banger essay from Harry about “Dating Intentions” and “Peak TV” (YKTV) but first…thank you to everyone who filled out our reader survey. We’re still compiling data for another week so if you haven’t filled it out. You can still do it here!!! If you fill it out and give us a contact you will be entered in a raffle to win $69 to spend at a bar of your choice!!!

For those who did fill it out, thank you! did we get a month of premium chat gbt so we could analyze the data…yes…heres a sneak peak of what we’re cooking up

Anyway, here’s an essay from Harry about how Hinge and Dating Intentions and Peak TV

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It is my sense that one of the stipulations of the costal dating social contract is that the most normal (or least offensive) way to describe your “Dating Intentions” on Hinge is by obliquely selecting that you are looking for a “Long Term Relationship, Open To Short.”

Of the 7 possible options, (Life Partner (lol), LTR, LTROTS, STR, STROTL, Figuring out my dating goals, Prefer Not To Say) LTROTS seems to be the one where you can functionally skirt answering the question in any real way. It’s the dating version of doing a demure two-step at Make Out Room while your friends try to ‘get people to dance’. 

The ‘Dating Intentions’ section sits in the ancillary logistical zone on your profile.

When on Hinge, I try my best not to rule people out by the way they’ve populated their ALZ – things like the neighborhood, hometown, college, etc.. I do have a few, say…auburn flags that I look out for.

I rarely will try to match with someone taller than me (don’t like feeling like a baby), I don’t match with people who set their politics as ‘moderate’ (poli-sci dork behavior) and I don’t match with people who answer ‘yes’ for the little prescription pill icon (it’s an ugly and childish icon first of all and second of all what the hell). I feel at peace with these decisions.

“Dating Intentions”…is different.

Let me first start with those brave enough to break free of the 7 pre-set options and take Hinge up on its offer to ‘share more about yourself in your own words’. When you select the option to expound, it shows up as tiny italicized writing under your intention. I would estimate around 5% of women on hinge use this additional sentence feature. 

Last week, in a quasi-meditative swipefest waiting in line to board an Alaska Air flight to Portland something previously in the depths of my subconscious burst into my conscious mind. I really don’t like when girls use the little italicized extra answer. It is almost a dealbreaker. 

Let me first break down the 3 categories that I feel the least conflicted about when I reverse Double McTwist Darkslide them out of my matches. 

Poly people 

Typical addendums: “exploring ethical non-monog right now” “currently poly seeking casual hangs” “solo poly looking for fun in the city”

Poly people use this section. No aesthetic issue, just not for me. Though I can’t like it is still funny to me to see people writing ‘currently solo poly’. Like dog….same!!

People who really don’t want to date poly people 

Typical addendum: “DO NOT MATCH WITH ME IF YOU’RE POLY”

The only thing this signals, i fear, is that you are too online. The notion that bashing polyamory may work as some kind of aesthetic performance (which everything on dating apps are) just means you see a feeeewww to many internet freaks in your day to day for us to work out.

Jokesters

Typical Addendum: ‘let's hold hands on the beach together’  ‘looking for someone to smoke and watch the wire with’

This is a total misunderstanding of where a joke should be. It's like a dick joke at a wake. Even if it works, im pissed at you for making it.

Then there is a 4th category. Hinge Accelerationists (Hinge/acc for short)

Hinge/acc

A teacher of mine for a tv pilot writing class named Matt Starr1 (no DBP relation) once remarked in a class that ‘people are getting really good at watching tv’

He’s right! As TV has evolved, and eventually exploded in the “peak tv” and “streaming eras” audiences got really good at watching a show. Game of Thrones, an unspeakably complex show with dragons and incest and 15 different subclasses of Weird Little Guys, becomes a smash hit. Shows like Atlanta dive into magical realism and are almost purposefully confusing. 

In 1999 the sopranos pilot may have needed to start with a Tony soprano voice-over, explaining who his family was, in 2024 The Game of Thrones spin-off House of The Dragon starts with a set of child actors who are only to get replaced by a second set of child actors the next episode. 

A similar thing has happened for dating apps. People are getting better at using them. In 2017, when I first used a dating app in earnest, the appeal collectively was that it was the bleeding edge of Normal Ways to Meet People. There was a pervasive sense of accepting chaos. It was a win if you looked like your profile let alone represented your values or interests in some coherent way. The expectation was that your preconceived notions about the person on the other end of Tinder 1.0 were, at the very least, not fully formed. 

The pendulum has kerranged back. You hear about people not looking like their profile as an occasional horror story. The apps have more info, but more importantly, we are better at using them. The average hinge user has an intricately dialed-in grip on the beats they should hit to attract the type of person they think they want. A Sopranos screenshot, a red scare reference, a surfing picture, together we could bike to Coney Island.  We even know the aesthetic ramifications of the lack of an answer; the too-beautiful-for-sincerity one word anti-answer registers instantly.  It is almost titrated like bubble tea at Boba Guys. One ironic answer for 25% sweetness, 2 ironic answers for 50%, etc. 

Many have written about the decline of the apps, citing that it's not you, it’s capitalism. Surely this is true. Though it is us too. We’re too good at it. 

In Television, the effect of this increased audience ‘watching skill’ is hard to pin down. In a way, it has made TV more fun. Some of the old rules need not apply anymore. On the other hand, shows not tethered to the goal of ultimately entertaining us on a Thursday evening have started to drift. Westworld happened. The Idol almost felt like a show vaguely annoyed that it would actually be watched. Again…the first season of House of the Dragon has two different time jumps. 

The Golden Age of TV is marked by its propulsiveness. It looked fucking fun to make. Like the overly calibrated era of TV we’re in now, Hinge too is lacking in any propulsive energy. 

All of this is the backdrop to the little italics under ‘Dating Intentions’. My heart sinks when I read ‘friendship first, then more’, ‘looking to take things slow’ or ‘if it clicks we see where it goes’ the entire thing seems like a semi-public attempt to wrap one's arms around what they want out of the experience of being in love. 

While I do believe digitally manifesting a subcategory of love in italics on hinge is a full tier above the other 7 possible options on the cringe continuum, the rest of us hiding behind the performed apathy of a pre-baked answer aren’t really spared. The entire question speaks to how good we’ve gotten at Hinge. Dating Intentions? Who has ‘dating intentions’??? You write poems about dating intentions or watch movies or wordlessly acknowledge them in bed with your girlfriend…you don't click a box!!! And yet I’ve slaved over my dating intentions. I’ve tested out “looking for short” when I was feeling “too mentally ill to be in love”. I’ve done figuring out my dating goals when that didn’t work because nobody, perhaps understandably, wants to go on a date with  a straight guy who’s ‘looking for short’. 

Even now I toil away with looking for long, open to short, an answer that gets more obfuscating and disingenuous the more I feel its true. Sure, i’m looking for a long term relationship… a long term relationship with the love of my life LMAO. 

I have no solution. The toothpaste is out of the tube. I am too good at Hinge. I think we all are.

Maybe I should make one of those italicized addendums…” Looking for the love of my life, ideally for forever…or if you aren’t the love of my life i’d like to have sex…ideally tonight”

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I think this Times list has some hits and some misses. I could totally see meeting someone at a Liberty game being plausible, reenacting the How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days scene but with a Jonquel Jones tween tween pull-up three? Sign me up! Also obviously….Frog Bar.

But here’s the thing…the new york times…famously…is on the wrong continuum. They're talking latitude and longitude…not to mention M’ing C’s for heinous global conflict. They provide answers beholden to the physical world. At Good Hang…we’re on a different type of shit. We’re hitting the griddy in the Elder Level. We’re booty calling hinge matches being like ‘yo come meet me in the liminal space between two worlds.’

Want to meet someone in real life? We know just the…ₚₗₐₙₑ ₒ𝒻 ₑₓᵢₛₜₑₙ𝒸ₑ

The Haphazard Chair Taxi Flirt Zone

My MK ultra trigger would be “sure just pull up a chair.” Except instead of looking for the nearest Kennedy to suplex, the CIA seems to have programmed me to just have sexual tension with my friends friends friend who i end up sitting next to. We’ve all been here though – you pull up to a party that hasn't quite crossed the Rubicon into a ‘standing at a bar party’ and is still a ‘sitting at bar party.’ Inevitably it seems, you end up after the chair amoeba reconfigures, to be sitting next to someone you don’t know that well but now have sexual tension with. This is a good place to meet someone at. 

The Jungian Late Millennial Mutual Brain Rot Zone

Carl Jung once said ‘as men, we’re looking for a woman who knows the same weird stuff about the internet, to kiss us and then hit us with a hammer and kill us.’ I haven’t read a lot of Jung but this is really resonant. You start texting the right person who has the same style of brain damage as you, well…that’s #amore.

(P.S. Luke Winkie wrote an interesting piece on this topic for his substack )

The Dialogical Party Divorcee Numerology Plateau AKA “The 11:45 PM Zone”

On a macro level, a phenomenon whispered about by people approaching their mid 30s is where all the young divorcees become single again and the dating pool suddenly expands. I can’t speak to that, i’m 29. 

I do want to talk about this phenomenon on a micro level. The 11:45 pm Zone. Everyone knows that if you are single you can make it to about 1 am on a night off just the propulsive energy of possibly smooching someone. Everyone also knows it takes 30-45 minutes of riffing and close talking to smooch. That means if a party starts at 10 pm – you’ve got a maximum 6 possible windows for a 30 minute conversation before you run out of juice. 10:00 - 10:30, 10:30-11, 11:00- 11:30 etc.. HOWEVER. We’re not animals, even the most depraved single people when they pull up to a party are doing other things, getting drinks, talking to friends, peeing. When it all shakes out you get 2…MAYBE 3 swings at the close talking > make out pipeline. 

Given all of this – The 11:45 zone becomes the most sexually charged moment of the func. The natural flirtatious rhythms of the night have brought some people together for a 30 minute chat, most of them have failed, and now the singles, much like the 30-something-divorcees, must re-enter the sesh, looking for one final chat, one key bump of rizz to see if they can have the night they sort of loosely wanted to have. You’ve got from 11:45 to abouuuuut 12:15 before you get too sleepy to rizz. It’s a great time to meet someone. 

Vaguely Horny Sensory Deprivation Chamber AKA ‘the cave’

Something you NYC readers don’t appreciate is the literal cave we hang out at in SF. It’s really more of a tunnel than a cave, sandy bottomed, right on the ocean – the tide crashes into it and adds to the acoustics. No ‘frog bar’ could compare (‘surf bar’ tho…)

It’s undeniably more than a physical space; when you’re in the cave and your ears pop from the trapped air, you’re accessing the Trapped Soul Aspect of the Intermediate Plane of the Astral Realm. That’s right. You’re trapped in the cave with 1-5 of your Hinge matches who you’ve left on read. And you can’t even see them. But you can sense their presence.

Bonus Take: Brat is Barter 6 for girls

HK: this is totally unrelated to ocult meeting spots…but I just hear me out!!

Genre-bending pop adjacent ✅

Mercurial artist persona flitting in and out of total performance mastery ✅

Meaghan Garvey Banger Review ✅

People on the internet writing academic essays about lines like “I just spent a bentley on my kidneyyyyyys” and “When you’re in the mirror your just looking at me” ✅

This is quarter quarter-formed take…i’m not totally sure what the vibe implications are yet, or what i mean by ‘for girls’ but one thing I’m certain about is that Brat is The Barter 6 for girls.

HK: Randa –

A few months ago I was at a friend's party in PLG and I accidentally experienced a total Vibe undressing. I was talking to a group of 4 or 5 people, some of whom I knew well, and some who I didn’t really know. A run-of-the-mill Trans-Familitary-Riffing-Node any party attendee has experienced before.  We were talking about dating and I asked one of the women in the TFRN if they “had been ripping hinge lately.” This is where everything went sideways for me. 

Suddenly one of the women who had been straddling two conversations shot up and said “Wait a second….you’ve said that to me before….we’ve met and you’ve said that to me before.” This is a disaster for me. At that moment, I was outed as a serial user of the phrase “ripping hinge.” 

Sort of magically, I look at the woman who outed me and whatever clicked in her brain a second before also clicked in mine. We had met before, and we had been talking about dating…and of course, I had used the phrase “ripping hinge.”

In this moment I can really only describe myself as “Mr. Krabsing”. I’m 3.5 modelos deep experiencing ego death at the progressive seder BBQ. We did all laugh it off, but i’ve found myself returning to this memory a lot with some questions. Is it good to have a schtick? Am I just a little story dispenser, dispassionately using the same bits ad nauseam?  And probably most consistently what the fuck do people talk about at parties? 

What do you think Randa? 

RS: Standup comedians literally get paid to go do their same series of shticks to new audiences over and over. I don’t think there should be any shame in trying to entertain. Doing bits is a public service, and even better, you’re not just doing a bit you’re starting a conversation!

but i get it. sometimes i catch myself telling one of my five crazy little stories and it reminds me of how i prepared for my product manager job interviews. for “behavioral” interviews where they want you to show proof of how you’ve acted in certain situations, i made a little table with story examples for each of the qualities they wanted me to exhibit or situations i needed to prove i had experience with:

but if i’m at a party or on a date it’s more like…

i’m not consciously drawing from a table in my head, it’s more free association stream of consciousness, but i do find myself telling the same stories over and over. and i think that’s ok. like that’s the human experience…

telling ppl funny stories about your own life is just one party convo (i think it’s one of the better ones because it’s connective and relatable and stuff). but i guess you could also talk about like .. kierkegaard? or debate whether AI is gonna kill us? sometimes i like going Intellectual mode at parties but i mostly like soliciting and performing bits… 

HK: Ok yes, we do all probably have a big 5. Handcuffed at J*** J***s, the time my hinge date told me she banged pete davidson at the alexander wang spring Summer 2019 show and then fell off her stool (at my date not with pete davidson), the eyes wide shut praxis party we went to lol. etc.  

Is it possible that in a party setting, some stories are for the teller and some are for the tell-e? When I hit a big 5 story I’m not typically doing it because of some genuine self-expression, I’m trying to, not in a psycho way i hope, influence the vibe. I’m trying to get other stories flowing. Perhaps not necessarily me, but I do think some yappers get miscast as uninterested in other people, or bad listeners. I think some percentage of yappers at parties are doing it to try to coax some stories out of folks, whether they know it or not. 

RS: absolutely. truth be told, i am not that calculated, ripping personal stories to get ppl to believe things about me (i was not very good at those job interviews). i’m just trying to relate and make people laugh, often embarrassing myself in the process… 

HK: ok so final verdict is going around parties in Brooklyn asking women if they’re ‘ripping hinge’ good or bad? 

RS: good! 

HK: Ok so there are of course topics people return to at parties, for me i guess it's dating, for you i suspect it's dating and also waymos…but there's another axis i started to think about, ones Partus Operandi. This is not too dissimilar from how you can sort SSense sales by Price…or by percent of sale. Two ways of looking at the same Dries button-down. 

MOST people have a Partus Operandi of one of the following: Big Idea Discourse, Incoherent Riffing, Work, or Listening (two ears one mouth type beat). I’m usually 2 and 3. With the occasional foray into 1 and 4. (Obviously, this axis is thrown out when you’re flirting or trying to flirt…good pussy/dick have you laid up talking about etc. etc.)

But you know what's sort of tragic and beautiful about parties? If you attempt to actively control your Partus Operandi…everything falls apart. We’ve all been on the receiving end of this, when someone starts foisting kierkegaard or ‘what does it all mean’ or whatever on you at the club, It sucks. We’re not sparring here we're drinking beers near each other. On the other hand sometimes i'm trying to talk about literally anything and i'm in a conversation where everyones just like “what if everything in this brownstone was actually made of tofu”.

Perhaps I return to dating as a topic because it can be somewhat flexible along the sincerity continuum. It allows a certain Partus Operandi fluidness….anyway…where do you stand on PO Theory? 

RS: i think the best parties are probably where there is a high level of PO alignment. sometimes im staring off into space while people talk about kierkegaard, and sometimes *i* am the one bringing up kierkegaard while others stare off into space… that’s why writing a good invitation slash party description is great, it can bring your guests into the correct PO but that’s a topic for another time ;)

CLOWNING

Working Definition:  attempting to elicit a “lmao,” “lmfao,” “LOL,” 🤣, ☠️

forbidden words: none (same as sexting….)

Examples:

Bottom Line

RS: this is why i keep that mf thang (my phone) on me. i want to make my friend across the country spit out their drink bc of something i texted them. perhaps it’s a power thing… I gave up lol for LOL a long time ago because i don’t play about my digital laughter….

HK: nothing…and i mean NOTHING…hits like firing a heater off in the boys chat….speaking of….

RS: These reactions are the lowest effort way to respond. When my mom switched from sending five emojis in a row to simply liking my messages, it created what some might call an “attachment wound.”

Preset iMessage reactions are only acceptable in the following situations:

1. Group chats where it’s cleaner to react vs. everybody giving their own response

2. When your friend goes schizo in the 1:1 chat. You can throw out reactions to the threads you wanna ignore, and then respond in full to the rest

3. When you want to end a 1:1 conversation

There is a completely underutilized feature that bridges the gap between mom-style emoji trains and lackluster reactions. I present you with the emoji sticker:

Emoji stickers allow you to tap into your creativity and communicate so much more without crowding the chat. I recommend them.

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MEME/TWEET/SOMEONE ELSE’S JOKE

Working Definition: LOL outsourcing

Forbidden words: fuckjerry,

Example:

Bottom Line: 

HK Texting a meme to your boy is both the medium’s most thoughtless act, and in a way its most important. It is in many ways the path of least resistance. Memes are made to be shared. It wouldn’t surprise me if most platforms' number one UX principle is to make content sharing as frictionless as possible. Meme sharing fades further into irrelevance when you factor in how ubiquitous recommendation algorithms are. Chances are, you’re seeing the same content as the people you send memes too. In fact, it's almost certainly literally weighted into your recommendation algorithm.  It's why we’re seeing a rise of the heartbreaking “I’ve already seen this” phenomenon. 

AND YET!! AND YET!!! When we all really take stock of why we even bother with these fucked up decaying digital platforms, why we willingly trade our data and our dignity for access to websites, what tilts the scale in favor of staying on is how godly and beautiful it feels to micro curate extremely hyper fire dank content with your best friends. That and money and having sex.

RS: three ppl have sent this to me and i liked it

GH ADVANCED TEXTING TAKE: POLLING THE FELLAS

from Sophie Haigney

One way I like to use texting is for what I call “polling the fellas” (gender neutral). This is basically firing off a question to a bunch of people and generating a broad range of responses. Sometimes these are straightforward basically logistical questions like—should I wear my pink leather miniskirt to the party? (No one is ever going to say, no, don’t do that, but you still want to hear “YES,” “absolutely,” “do it” from a Greek chorus of buddies.) But more interesting and fun is polling the fellas about questions that arise from minor interpersonal dramas or dynamics. Crucially these must be low-stakes, or nothing is gained from sharing them with a big group of people. An interesting recent example was when my boyfriend forgot the first Celtics game was on a night when we had plans to go to a book party. I was not that deeply invested in the outcome (which was, in the end, that we would do both things, since timing allowed for it and I too am invested in the Celtics for the reason that I am from Boston.) But even after this outcome became clear it was the perfect question for polling the fellas, and so I texted: “Is it okay to cancel on your girlfriend to watch the Celtics? Discuss.” 

The answers were swift. “If it’s the nba finals, yes. Absolutely yes.” A friend told a story about choosing between hanging out with his girlfriend the night before she embarked on a long trip and game 7 of a Warriors finals series. (Warriors.) One friend observed that since it was only game one, it didn’t seem totally necessary to watch; another friend said game one was one of the most important games to watch, compared to games two and three, and then we had a discussion about the nature of a basketball series and which games matter in which different ways. A friend observed that the problem at hand wasn’t the Celtics, but the changing of plans—and this led to some discussion on the way different people relate to the fixedness of plans. (I am quite rigid.) A friend’s wise crush, who was polled secondhand, said: “I think if it's someone you’re generally good w/ and the communication is strong, bball wins out because it’s time constrained and unmissable.” Someone told me that I should try to think about this through the lens of my own commitment to the idea of Boston. Someone else observed that this would not be a problem for him because everyone he knows would be watching the Celtics.

What was I gaining from this polling of the fellas? On some level, very obviously, nothing; I was wasting time on my phone and I wasn’t even looking for answers really, as the question had already been resolved in practical terms. But I think there is something to polling the fellas, in part because I like the way these small questions about logistics, plans, priorities, commitments can bring up what really matters to people, and I like learning what those are. Minutia, experienced in realtime, are often a pathway into the philosophical and I think that’s beautiful. Hence: polling the fellas.

CATCHING UP

Working Definition: Going Phone Call Alchemy Mode with your thumbs and your best friend who lives in LA 

Forbidden Words: in this case, the only forbidden move is to stop texting and go back to work 

Bottom Line: When done right, a rapid text convo can have a Goldilocks effect…where the urgency of a conversation gets buffered by the writing process and you get a sweet spot where dangerous ideas and esoteric riffs can emerge. Texting your boy on Amtrak at sunset >>>>>> nothing like it.

GH ADVANCED TEXTING TAKE: VOICE NOTES

from Haley O'Shaughnessy

i would lift the embargo on thinkpieces just to read or write or listen to one on voice notes. i live and die and date by the VN. i wish i was voice notesing this right now. why????? some of us are born talented beautiful gorgeous storytellers. some of us have more rizz talking than typing. some of us have looming carpal tunnel in our thumbs. some of us love podcasts but in mini teensy tiny bite size. some of us would love to chit chat all day in prospect park with our friends but can’t do that like god and You Talking To Me? actor robert dinero intended because of our stinky jobs we have to work all day to pay our stinky rent. (oh nooooo what if we could do something about that.. haha… unless….)

to successfully engage in VN (platonic or romantic) you have to follow a couple rules:

• consent: does this person like receiving voice notes. it’s a guaranteed flop if they don’t 

• acknowledge personal preferences (a simple “you don’t have to VN back” disclaimer the first time you pitch comms via VN)

• patience: you can’t expect someone to listen right away. you’re engaging in Big Corporate hustle culture. the longer the VN the longer the statute of listentations. most should be under 1-2 min. it took me three weeks to listen to these

• must have a cutie pie voice (romantic only): i won’t shame you if you have a freak voice (i have a good heart 🥰🥰🥰 and im single!!) but understand this is a risk. ask the group chat if you hit above the voice note mendoza line

• DON’T save unless it’s sweet. never save gossip or nefariously petty notes. oppy behavior!!!

VN WARNINGS😵‍💫 / VN BLESSINGS🙏🏼: 

generally unsuccessful for you up? texts:

NOT enough to save a relationship: 

IS enough to start a fling:

HK: whenever Al goes to this one bar he sends a long voice note debriefing his night

RS: better than a spotify link i’ll tell u that…

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Here at GHHQ we’ve been talking about TEXTING a lot.

So for the next few weeks (we don’t rly know how many….sort of giving thread 1/? vibes….) we’re going to embark on building out the Good Hang Texting Taxonomy. There are so many kinds of texting…some of them ruin our lives, and some of them make life worth living. Right now, we’re talking about 1 on 1 texting. It would take years to untangle the dynamics of a group chat. This is PART 1

CATEGORY 1: HORNY JAIL

goated category. one of the best ways to be on your phone.

FLIRTING 

Working Definition: digi rizzing someone who makes your stomach hurt

Forbidden Words: primary partner, hehe, 🥵

Examples: wouldn’t you fucking freaks like to know 

Bottom Line:

HK: The norms of text flirting come down to something very simple: have you gone on 1 or more dates with the subject? Pre-corporal-meeting text flirting is for being 12 and getting heart palps telling a girl from the other town you’ve never met that you wanna be her bf. Leave it there.

RS: agreed, if u wanna flirt with someone you’re never gonna meet please just spare them and get an AI bf.

SEXTING

Working Definition: Co-writing a Sarah J. Maas book with someone whose penis/boobs you’ve seen.

Forbidden words: I guess nothing?

Examples:

Bottom Line:

HK: i don't do stuff like this. I try to only have sex “in real life”. Maybe if i had sex with someone 1 hundred times i would then consider sexting with them if they were like…in Europe

HK: A note on the subcategory of sexting photos: I once met a guy who told me he sent a dick pic to someone then became marginally famous and years later someone tweeted at him a picture of his own dick back it him with the comment “hey is this your dick?” and he was just like “no thats not my dick”. Totally changed my perspective on dick pics… could just be like no that's not my dick. What are they gonna do? 

LOGISTICS (HINGE)

Working Definition: saying ‘How 7:30 at Bar Part Time’ to a guy you met on the internet

Forbidden words: Doris, Rick and Morty, Ridgewood, I’m early

Examples:

Bottom Line:

HK: For a brief time in 2019 when i was going on a hinge date with someone for the first time I would jokingly tell them that they’d be able to spot me because I’d be in a “very large rick and morty t shirt.” I ultimately stopped doing this for two reasons. The first is that I heard mention on an episode of Throwing Fits that she used to wear the same type of dress to every first date but then stopped doing that because it was sort of reinforcing the routine of it all rather than the possible magic and wonder of a first date. The second was that I didn’t want to get “West Elm Caleb’d but for rick and morty.”

RS: sometimes when i’m late i use texting to keep ‘em busy while they wait…

Category 2: HOMEWORK

These are the texts we set aside for when we’ve got the headspace for them.

SPOTIFY LINK

Working Definition: a last gasp at post-algorithmic curation that is somehow also annoying

Forbidden words: TikTok, J-Cole, Any Apple Music Link

Bottom Line: 

RS: a spotify link is an imposition. it is far too easy to just thoughtlessly send a link to a 2 hr podcast episode and expect that i’m gonna listen to that shit. most recommendations are selfish without much consideration for the recipient’s personal taste. i didn’t ask for this and now i have to listen and respond to it? smells like school!

IDEATING

Working Definition: Getting in the lab, plotting, non-funny yes anding

Forbidden Words: no, blockchain, 

Example:

Bottom Line:

HK: Good Hang is a product of ideating over text. I’m always shocked by how much of my creative consulting work ends up being just tossing ideas out over imessage lol

RS: imessage is my whiteboard

ASSIGNED READING

Working Definition: Assigning homework to your friend or lover who has also somehow reached their NY Mag article limit for the month.

Forbidden Words: poly, cat person, incels, [14 minute read]

Example:

Bottom Line:

HK: Randa and I are split on this. I’m fucking with an article in the DMs. Make no mistake though, randa reads maybe 5 times as much as me….i just like a little concierge service with my discourse. Also i have something crazy to say *invisible ink* sending an article can be flirting sometimes.  We’ve all been there…3DDF….3rd date discourse flirting. You just get lobbed a think piece at like 2pm the day after you guys met in the biblical sense for the first time. Now you’ve gotta clear your schedule so you can be an off-duty cultural critic. I sound like im complaining but the whole project is completely thrilling. 

RS: do not send me a fucking article. i studied engineering miss me with ur liberal arts DMs*

*unless we’ve been on 1-5 dates with each other**

**or the article is coming with 1-3 lines about why you think i would like it

So concludes part one of the taxonomy. Tune in for categories 3-5 ;)

obviously, we had to add an audio-visual component to the post today, because what could be more MMF than audio, video, and the written word?

enjoy (but not too much),

-harry (M) and randa (F)

P.S. we hit 2000 subscribers :)))))))))

Bo oi oi oi oi oi oing 

I got on Feel’d with the specific goal of having copious, sexually psychotic threesomes, ideally as a couple’s ‘third.’ My threesomesexuality was so particular that I even filtered my results for only couples: no single chicks, dudes, or theys shall pass. 

While I matched quickly with a few couples, nothing was quite the right fit: one couple from Ridgewood seemed like loser nerds as we talked more, another from the UES had an exhibitionist fetish and was hoping to post videos of our encounter online. Also, more importantly, they had wanted me to travel to their apartment on the UES – too long of a commute back to my home in **redacted neighborhood in Brooklyn**, and obviously this wasn’t a sleepover situation.

Finally, I met S+B. These freaks were perfect: located a 15 minute walk from my work, seemed like cute, conventional 30-somethings who seemed to have a little experience inviting another body into their abode. 

S+B took it to text quick – starting with some formalities, verifying that I am not a Catfish or a Bot with a photo of myself, noting that they were excited to have me over, sending me a picture of B wearing some nipple clamps. It came as a surprise when S (male) side-texted me: “Wow, I’m really excited to meet you. Just talking with you and B now is getting me kind of worked up.” I’m someone who likes to stoke a fire, and quickly we began rampantly sexting through his work day. (It’s important to note here that within these texts, he sent me the most legendary dick pic I have ever received: A time-lapse under a desk of his incredibly large penis going from flaccid to erect. This video is warmly referred to as the ‘boi-oi-oi-oi-oing’ video among my close friends.) 

Our rapid fire sexting culminated in me almost going over there at 1pm before I had to be at work later that afternoon. There was just one condition: I had to text B and ask her if it was okay if I fuck her husband. 

Understanding the psycho-sexual cat and mouse game that I had fallen into, I texted B, who told me I was a “bad girl” and a “little slut who needed to be punished”– no one texts S behind her back. Part of my punishment? “Sending a very dirty photo.” I, lost in the sexting sauce, presented B with the most sexually explicit nude video I have ever taken let alone shared with two people I have never met. (These freaks could ruin my fucking life.) 

The rest of the day was spent weaving in between group chats with S+B, B on her own describe how she is going to reprimand me, S begging me to come over, reminding me of his “massive cock,” and explaining to me exactly how he was going to use it. I masturbated twice. Amidst the chaos, we made a date for that Friday when I was done with work.

But Friday came around, and when I was free – they suddenly were too tired. What about Sunday instead? They had plans. They said they would text me next week and never did. I followed up – they couldn’t that night. I got the message.

13 Threesomes Pt 1

I used to date this guy in Boston who loved when we would have threesomes w his friends so in college I had like 13 threesomes cuz he had a lot of friends and one time I got to his house and he put acid on my tongue before I could say hello and his friend came over and we were all fucking and watched sharknado 1-3 tripping balls and then I quit my job at Cheesecake Factory because I didn’t want to go in at 7 am the next day. I sent my boss an I’m sure insane email

13 Threesomes Pt 2 

Another time I went to his house and he was working out and then we started having sex and his friend came over cuz like all his friends knew the door code and he watched us have sex on the workout bench but then we just all had sex and listened to the new frank ocean

Foosball

Met these two random girls at a bar in 2019, we were dancing and vibing. It felt right so I asked for my friends horrible blow so I could invite them back to do some and hang at my place. We all crammed into the back of her orange Honda fit, it was drizzling and the windshield wipers weren’t working well. That combined with cig smoke in the car made it very low visibility. Got to my place, went up to my room and someone put on Fleetwood Mac and we got to it pretty quickly. First threesome, very sweaty, lots of rolling around, not as physically awkward as I thought it would be.

 In the midst of it one girl asked me to hit her with a hammer, I think like a literal hammer. I ignored it and at some point it just ended, although I don’t think any of us finished. As we got dressed that same girl said “that’s showbusiness baby”. We all got dressed and went to the basement to play 2v2 foosball with my roommate for a bit before they left. We made a group chat but never texted to hang out again. Ran into them three more times (at that same beloved bar) over the next few months and went home together every time. Then just never saw them again.

Harry doesn’t know shit

There are three things I can be sure of in this world: when my dog needs to poop, when a girl has broken up with her boyfriend via her instagram presence, and when a girl wants to hook up with me. The third surety is where this story finds its origins. This particular story begins where all great stories begin: with Harry being dead wrong. It is 2010 and the first week of my freshman year of high school (Harry is a sophomore). Over the course of those first couple of weeks I noticed a beautiful blonde princess giving me eyes in the hallway of our school. Let’s call her, Dave. I told Harry that Dave (also a sophomore) wanted to hook up with me but he told me that I was out of my mind. Luckily, he doesn’t know shit about me and when the first school dance of the year comes around Dave and I share a glorious make out. Tongue and all. We even grinded a bit!

Fast forward 3 years to 2013. Barack Obama has just been sworn in for a second term as President of these United States and Dave now has a very serious boyfriend. Let’s call him, Dave. Despite this, I still share a few flirtatious glances with Dave in the hallways of our high school. We had a fire that couldn’t be extinguished. 

The school year is wrapping up and Dave, Dave, and Harry are soon to graduate. The stage is set for the annual weekend overnight party that takes place in Napa Valley, CA. It is the best weekend of the year. This party is kind of a no-rules debaucherous jamboree of sex, drugs, and trying not to get a boner in your swim trunks. You see, if you get a boner in your swim trunks you can’t tuck it up into the waistband of your shorts like normal style. If you do that and you’re not wearing a shirt then everyone will see the tip of your wiener poking out of the elastic. But I digress. Arriving in Napa, almost everyone at the party is a familiar face. Except for one sexy stranger that I haven’t seen before. Let’s call her, Dave. Dave was brought to this function by Dave, a friend of hers from summer camp or something. Dave and I immediately catch a vibe. She really liked my silly antics, usually a telltale sign of pheromones being exchanged. I lock in on the fact that Dave wants to hook up with me. I don’t even run the idea by Harry this time because I know his brains are fucking scrambled. Scrambled. Fucking. Eggs.

Night falls which is the only time that hooking up with someone for the first time isn’t weird. I am drunkenly looking around the party for Dave but I can’t seem to find her anywhere. I open a bedroom door and suddenly there she is. Sitting on the foot of the bed while Dave and Dave are sitting near the pillows. She is elated to see me. I can tell that I’ve walked into something strange because Dave is not happy that I am there. He was in the process of concocting what he thought was a FFM 3-some. My metaphorical cock has just blocked his literal one. Dave on the other hand, seems intrigued and giddy that I’ve walked in the room. Remember our fire the couldn’t be snuffed… 

There is some brief banter and giggling, Dave is trying to get me to leave the room so that he can have his dirty little 3-some but Dave and Dave ask that I stay. Eventually we start to make out. Then we swap. Then we swap again. Tongues are flying, boners are untucked, and Daves are everywhere. It was awesome. I never thought that Dave and I would get to make out again on account of her serious boyfriend and her proximity to graduation. Our lips lingered a few seconds too long. Dave was not happy. I go back to Dave, who I had just met. We make out a bit more and leave the room. The rest is herstory.

Nicks Crispy 3 Sums

In like 2015 I matched on Tinder with a het couple in their mid-20s who seemed reasonably normal and we had a mutual friend so I said fuck it, send it. We met up a few days later at a hotel bar in downtown SF, the vibes are benignly sexy, so we then took a train to the east bay and stopped by their apartment in the Oakland hills for like an hour. Cute and normal A-frame house! Good, private vibes! All good so far. 

Then we inexplicably left and drove 10 minutes to his childhood home and proceeded to get crossfaded there, so then nobody could drive back to the couple’s house— and either I was too dumb and horny to think clearly or this was like kinda pre Uber being ubiquitous in my life, so that’s where the problem-solving ended. 

Instead of doing literally anything else, I then played chess and ripped bong with his little brother and talked to his mom about politics. To get the now sort-of-weird evening back on what is now a slightly weirder track, we all decided to go back into into his Childhood Bedroom to have a threesome. It’s important to note here that this house is one of those open, loft-style houses. Can his mom and brother hear us? Probably? Also of note: he had a massive collection of toys and dolls and action figures on every possible surface; their eyes are all highly unsettling. Whatever, we bone, it’s all fine, her and I give each other some mutually underwhelming head, and I think he’s the only one who finishes (into my mouth; refuses to kiss me after; this is the point at which I decide the vibes are not so good). I sleep over and am the middle spoon (overrated; so sweaty; never again). 

The next day the weirdness continues and they invite me to his work brunch (some tech company; hosted at Nick’s Crispy Tacos; yum). I’m introduced as an old friend, it’s such a boring brunch obviously, and as I say my goodbyes and walk out, he tells his coworkers who I am and everyone cheers, which unfortunately I kind of loved. Never talked to them again. I think I’m FB friends with her?

Here’s an essay from Harry on Bumbles new failed marketing campaign.

HK: For those who don’t know bumble is in a hilariously stupid PR situation right now where they rolled out a new marketing campaign centered around anti-celibacy for women and tons of people on line got really mad at them and then they issued an apology on Instagram. 

Here are some of the pics from the campaign. 

The whole thing is awesome. 

Getting Brain (Drain)

I want to talk for a second about the advertising industry at large because it helps provide some context. Advertising over the last 30 years has experienced extreme brain drain. In 1990, a young creative, and ambitious person would strongly consider trying to get a job on Madison Ave, writing copy for HP, or designing billboards for McDonald's. Of the handshakes with capitalism one could make as someone trying to Make Stuff, at least in advertising there were colored pencils and a culture of week day binge drinking. 

Today, ad agencies have been subsumed by bloated ‘digital marketing’ agencies, who claim to understand how to place thrillingly efficient Google search ads. In 30 years, the job moved from vaguely shiek to incredibly boring. So the smart creative-driven people are elsewhere, becoming influencers or reselling sneakers or making literary magazines funded by Peter Theil.

The sum total of all this is advertisements (perhaps especially ads targeted at millennials, the generation that kicked off this brain drain) are dogshit. 

Trouble in Bumbledise 

Much of the press around Bumble’s marketing gaff seems to center around people being mad on line that the ads are anti-feminist. I’m hesitant to take these critics of Bumble campaign at face value because the majority of them appear to be voicing their criticism in front-facing videos on TikTok, which is frankly something that only stupid or cynical or evil people do (sorry!)

Bumble’s issue is not that it is anti-feminist, it is that its totally stupid and incoherent. 

Many have written about the decline in dating app quality. had a great essay on this recently. This recent Bumble snafu reveals another issue with these apps being giant venture-backed companies with bottom lines to hit– the tightening of aesthetic diversity among them. 

Bumble has always felt to me like a dating app for babies. I’m somewhat sympathetic though because how else can they differentiate? Match.com, which owns Hinge and Tinder has very smartly positioned itself as having the two poles of dating locked down. Criminally horny (tinder) and totally sterile and sexless (hinge). It is no accident that Tinder’s color is red and hinge is black and white. 

Dating apps are, of course, only as good as the amount of hot and cool people they can get on there, so what is Bumble to do if they want to lure people away from Hinge and Tinder? They can’t be hornier than tinder and they can’t be more sterile than Hinge. So they’ve elected, it seems, to be the dating app for hecking doggo puppers. 

Other apps like Muzz and Coffee Meets Bagels are hoping to differentiate by being dating apps for an explicit group of people. These too seem flawed and hopeless and boring but at least they are aesthetically legible. Bumble is in total no man’s land, attempting to wrap its arms around the contours of a digital vibe created by aging millennials who only sort of understand the internet. It's not too dissimilar to the losers of the great streaming wars. Someone's gotta end up as paramount +. 

Plus…once you sift through Bumble chaotic aesthetic, it ends up being what its always wanted to be….hinge. I’ve basically never used it except once I went on a bumble date in Boston, ghosted her, then ran into her at a bar called “Phoenix Landing” at 1 am. Appologized for ghosting her. We started texting again and then I ghosted her again. So clearly bubbles “women message first” does not inoculate you from idiots like 23 year old me.

Anyway…bumble is right about one thing…please baby don’t be celibate your sooooo sexy…..

MMF MAy check-in 

RS: Before we get into it… I wanna start off by saying we LOVE when you guys email us and DM us and stuff. We want more. Sorry sometimes it goes to spam because we keep saying stuff like MMF and “sex” 

Here’s a recent one that got relegated to the spam folder:

Thank you Owen!

HK: We got a lot of folks sending in 3 sum requests. Oddly enough, none of them were specifically about being 2 girls and having sex with me (harry). Here are a few:

Like what ya see? Hit us up ;)

ALSO

📱 MMF May Connections

❤️‍🔥 MMF May 3sum Psy Op Program

🤯 Got a 3 sum story? Wanna write a paragraph about it? Hit us up

Subscribe now

Greetings Good Hangers. 

Since the Good Hang Readership tests in the 99.9 percentile of VQ (vibe intelligence), I suspect most of you have already intuited what I’m about to say…which is that it’s now the official start of MMF May. 

When a Zendaya 3 some love triangle movie comes out…that's gonna usher in MMF may. Same thing happened in March 2002 when Y Tu Mama Tambien debuted (MMF March). It's just one of those things that happens.

We’ll be doing a bit of programming around MMF May but the first thing I want to do is introduce the Good Hang 3 Sum Psy-Op Program. In short, the 3PP is a decentralized blockchain community for having sex with two people at the same time. Or in more lay persons terms. If you fill this form out anonymously saying you want to be in a 3-some or have a 3-some or whatever you freaks do…we’ll post it somewhere and see if we can get some of you people laid. Our KPI: 3somes. Our goal: One (1)

A few big questions we’re thinking about with MMF MAY

Crush A-symmetry, Love Triangles, Are 3 somes even good? Running through the friend group, In Network BFs vs Out of Network Bfs, are 3 somes a poly psy op? Is poly a government psy op? Was the manson family poly? 3somes in business, 3 person group chats, 3 person friend groups, Atypical threesomes, #InboundWeek,  Nonsexual 3somes, what do u do if u like…cum early in a 3 sum? Planned vs unplanned 3 sums, Feeld, wyd if Yi Tu Mama Tambien is in his letterboxd top 4, are more foods yonic or phallic? Rap Beefs as 3 sums, group hinge accounts, tricostal lovers (SF, NY, CDMX?), Spin the bottle, almost having a 3 some, post-3 some cuddling, and of course leveraging top secret proprietary Palantir data analysis to engineer a 3 sum where everyone busts at the same time

Last 3 things 

1. Please send us any MMF-related thoughts, questions, ideas, pitches etc..

2. Please enjoy this MMF May connections we made 

3. If any two women want to have a 3 some with me (harry) hmu (had to try)

Best,

Harry (M) Dave (M) Randa (F)

Huge fan of the ’stack here. I appreciate your balanced coverage of hanging out. Unfortunately, I think you’ve missed something major. I’m writing, of course, about Zyn. 

Back in ’21, I wrote what may have been the first article to identify “yacking” as a potential side-effect of Zyn. In the years since, my own relationship to the drug has gone from dry, cool, and detached, to moist, cool mint, and embodied. Over that period, I’ve watched as Zyn has completely disrupted hanging out. 

Basically, my take is this: By enabling users to safely slurp down their own nicotine-tainted saliva, Zyn has effectively democratized dip. It has scrambled everything we thought we knew about the people who voluntarily ingest nicotine through their gums; with whom they’re liable to share their mouth treats; and where this might seem like a good idea.

Another crazy thing about Zyn is that you can rip it discreetly. You never know anymore when someone is going insane in the mucus membrane. The pros can nurse a pouch for hours, undetected, sipping cocktails and eating Doritos as the wintergreen nicotine dribbles into their bloodstream. Novices might show cheek bulge or start hiccuping uncontrollably. Still, sometimes the only way to tell if someone is Zyning is if they start saying completely out-of-pocket shit.

But these are just hypotheses. Hanging out is literally your job. Give me the download on Zyn and social dynamics. And I’ll respond with quotes from the medical literature.

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HK:

Let me cut through the noise here. The only important hang-out implications of nicotine at parties are the following: 

1) Will it facilitate meeting a potential lover?

2) will it put you in a riffing mindset?

3) Will it boost your overall swag. 

1) Facilitating Love / Lust / S

First of all, cigarettes are like little penises. 

RS: ……

HK: Second of all, I first watched the HBO show Entourage in the back of an RV in 7th grade when my dad was driving me and my brother across the country. There is an episode where “E” one of the main characters is trying to quit smoking cigarettes but then an astronomically hot girl asks if he wants to go smoke a cigarette and he says yes.  I remember being like “i hope that happens to me one day.”  Obviously meeting a lover while using nicotine is the gold standard of being alive. 

2) Getting you in the Zone to Riff: 

I’ve never done Zyn but I heard it makes you feel insane. Stuff that can make you yack does have a tendency of also being fun to do at parties. 

3) Boosting your swag

An anecdote that i return to around this type of stuff is that when I was in college there was one guy who was extremely early to the Juul trend. He was slothing around the pre-game asking if anyone had a spare outlet he could ‘plug his juul into’ months before anyone else. It is no accident, I believe, that he was also the first guy I ever saw with a ‘fidget spinner’. 

There is an undeniable negative S-curve relationship between swag and innovation in the nicotine space.

Thus, my rating:

RS:

Though I don't count myself among them, I can empathize with Zyn users. They are early adopters of new technology. I am a Waymo rider after all. This, like many of our discussions, comes down to techno-optimism.

I believe that new technology can be used for all sorts of shit we haven’t even thought about yet. This means I am frequently in techno optimistic settings where I hear about the newest and latest innovations. I see your cigs, zyns, vapes, and dip. I’ll raise you my OOKA:

The OOKA is the Keurig of smoking. Drop a (nicotine-free) pod in there and you’ve got up to 6 hours of oral fixation that’s a little bit less bad for you. You can even purchase the special backpack and bring it to parties.

HK: Ben, we’ve thrown a lot at you…what's landing? While you answer I’ll try to decide where this bizarre nicotine gizmo fits in my rankings… 

BS:

This is all super helpful. I think what remains to be discussed is, is Zyn fascist? 

When someone whips out the Zyn tin, things could go either way. Is the Zynner irredeemably bro-y or unexpectedly edgy? Is he disgusting or… kinda hot? Is he turning his friends into nicotine addicts or offering them a lifesaving harm reduction device? The literature is inconclusive. 

HK:

You know Ben, this whole week as we’ve been writing this piece i’ve been hitting a wall when it comes to trying to get fired up about Zyn. The packaging isn’t ugly, the name is kinda fun, its not annoying to be around a zyn user. It is complete aesthetic neutrality. I’m starting to wonder if that actually is by design.

Is it possible that the overlords behind zyn saw what happens when a nicotine substitute gets too lit? Did they see the regulatory Icarus arch of mango juul pods, and elf bars, and four loco, and (hopefully) TikTok? Did they note that once 12-year-olds start making their Xbox username stuff like thaJuultheif_GayNineEleven or whatever, the next step is their product gets banned?

If that’s true then 1- zyn is fascist and 2 zyn is fucked

Good Hang Gives Back is our advice / etiquette column. Want to submit a question? Reply to this email!!

Dear Randa and Harry,

I just got out of a long term relationship and I’m not looking to date anyone at the moment but I, a 30 year old sexual being, have needs. And I love a cheeky little fling. Enter: 25 year old boys. 

Having found myself (unintentionally) in the Gen Z dating scene I’ve begun to realize that boys ranging from 23-26 have a certain charm and effervescence which makes for my perfect casual counterpart. For starters, being 5 years their senior creates an unmatched dating dynamic that I just can’t seem to find in men my age. The age gap immediately establishes a coquettish rapport. We both know we’re not going to date which keeps the conversation and vibe fun and casual.

There’s also an exciting unspoken mutual fear of one another for vastly different reasons. I’m scared of their unmade beds and attachment to “the scene” which makes me surprisingly conscious of my clothes and language. And they’re just simply scared of a confident, sexy, established 30 year old woman. Lastly, they’re surprisingly uninhibited in bed. And you just can’t beat a good lay.

While it may seem I’m thrilled with this dating scheme, I’m finding myself questioning if this is all a tad embarrassing. I keep telling myself it’s “in” and ahead of the trend to date younger men. My question is, is it chic or tacky to sleep with 25 year old boys as a 30 year old woman? Is it uncouth to be dating younger men simply for the casualness of it all? Am I leaning old crone when I’m trying for femme fatale? Please, do not call me a cougar, I simply cannot bear that title.

Kisses,

Chic, Casual, and Confused

RS:

Ok C-cubed. First of all, you are not alone. This topic has graced the group chats a number of times recently…

i think something’s happening where like, city-dwelling ladies knocking on the door of our third decade are feeling panic, shame, and fear at the idea of banging a 23-25 year old. but i personally think it’s cool.

whereas men around our age or older may assume we’re trying to trap them, the young boys may assume more pure intentions. the fun part of dating is the possibility, the rush, the connection! once we hit our late 20s/30s it goes into the job interview zone. dating younger can make it fun again…………………..

HOWEVER

i think “Casual Dating” is a sneaky paradox. call me Trad, but i don’t think anyone, deep down, wants to date casually. i’m just not buying it. i bet if you, C-cubed, met a young guy who was everything u wanted and more, and he just happened to be 23, you’d wanna husband him. or at the very least, it would cause you some emotional distress. 

the “older women + younger man = casual” formula just isn’t always true. anybody you deem not viable as a partner could be “casual.” maybe younger guys tend to be lacking in the qualities you’re looking for in a long term partner? like maybe they don’t clean their rooms or something?

i don’t think your antics are uncouth or tacky or old crone. i put them in the same category as attempting ‘friends with benefits’ or ‘being chill about dating a poly guy.’ if you actually like the guy, it's probably gonna cause some chaos in your life but maybe it will also be fun!!! fuck around and find out!!

take this glowing review from an anonymous GH reader who dated a younger man:

one dude would just come over in the middle of the day or text me at like 7am after a coke-fueled (and who knows what else) night. he came over and we drank mimosas and then i had him drive me to my alanon meeting - low point or high point? not sure but it was fun!

HK: Ah yes, the unbearable lightness of being 5 years older than the dude you’re smashing. 

Andy Warhol, known sex haver, has a famous quote ‘art is getting away with it’. The same applies to ‘being chic.’ This is to say that of course it is chic and of course, it is a horrible idea. 

1. At 23-25 I would have really loved to have a fling with a 30-year-old woman. I had the Tinder sliders doing the splits for a while….

2. I can’t imagine a more unsettling and turbulent lay than me or just about any of my friends at that time in our lives. I had this Camilia Paglia quote SAVED TO MY FAVORITES in my camera roll because I sent it so much. Totally 100% not a joke.

   

So no, dating a 24 year old boy is not a ‘good idea.’ However, I think the larger project of chicness and sexiness and chaotic dynamics is extremely worthwhile. 

Bear with me but im going to do a bit of “meme analysis” 

there is a lot of truth across the gender spectrum, in this meme. Whether we like it or not, a part of dating we yearn for is for someone to come into our lives and “fuck our whole shit up.” We want to be broken into a million pieces and stomped on and drop kicked into the hudson by someone we cant stop being like “theyre soooo hot.” 

One of the issues with the sort of ‘anti-dynamic’ of hinge is that we get all the pedantic annoying logistical pain of a casual fling without any of the actual blunt force trauma. Nothing takes hold. So yea, you’re out of a long relationship, hinge is trying to show shareholder value, sure…fuck a 24 year old. Just don’t be mad when he nuts and rolls over and is like 

That's my two cents, but I also asked some people who have actual experience with this kind thing. Here are some findings:

You will get respect from other women

You may need to brush up on ‘rick and morty’ while he may need to brush up on ‘nine eleven’

I’m dying at the idea of a 24 year old dude just like showing you ex-machina or something. Fred Again on the sex playlist. It would all be so funny.

RS

these are the references i was making at 25

HK

What is barefoot contessa

RS

HK

would…..

RS

…

HK

Anyway C-cubed, you’ll be happy to know that we found more support for your lifestyle:

At least one other woman recommends it

10/10: would do again, would recommend, all the trite sayings. Overall it was really fun; it was a time in my life when I wasn't looking to be attached to anything - I had just moved to the city, had a new job with an unpredictable schedule...I wanted to date and be social but I didn't want any pressure. The sex was great and he is very attractive and smart, so I genuinely enjoyed being around him and I always had a good time.

RS

HK: P.S. Look at this meme I made when I was 25 because having sex made me feel so insane