The User is Content

Ladies and People Who Came Out of Ladies, this article features a trigger warning: Contains discussion of sexual assault, violence, murder, and gratuitous sexual imagery. When Puff Daddy’s house was raided in 2024, they found thousands of bottles of Baby Oil, enough to fill a pallet. It wasn’t until a year or so later, during the trial, that it was made clear what the oil was for. They were suppli...

When I was 12 years old, I was browsing through Borders and found a book called Jokes Women Won’t Laugh At . I still remember an embarrassing amount of those jokes by heart. I read it like The Bible. Indoctrinated into the hilarious world of misogyny. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theuseriscontent.substack....

I’ve been watching the Kevin Spacey documentary , and it’s grotesque in a way I hadn’t imagined. He is at once abusive and sexually exploitative, with decades worth of mistreatment and grooming under his belt, and also simply a deeply traumatized young boy. While watching Spacey Unmasked , memories of my own semi-troubling ‘fling’ with a famous gay man came rushing back, and I felt a whole assortm...

For many born-and-bred Zionists like myself, the massacre of October 7th marked an awakening that immediately put every person on Earth in one of two categories. Half of my Jewish brothers and sisters were defending Hamas, an organization that we had only, until then, known as a terrorist organization in Palestine. And the other half were suddenly stanning for Israel as they ruthlessly murdered Pa...

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. - Jiddu Krishnamurti It’s been supremely hard to put a post together. There’s nothing to say but free Palestine. End wars. Stop fascism. Never in my life has this Krishnamurti quote been more accurate. At every turn, well intentioned people are telling me that my political stances are affecting my mental health, that I sh...

Hey y’all. As much as my Substack articles represent what’s on my mind, the music I’m making is also what’s on my mind, just in a different way. I will try to release a song alongside my posts when I find the time and space. Here’s a little ditty for today’s post. It also plays throughout the podcast/audio version of the article. “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill the Buddha.” This means th...

I started this post before Hamas’ massacre of Israelis on October 7th 2023. Just days before the most recent flare-up in this decades-old war, I was taking Yom Kippur seriously for the first time in twenty years. I started dabbling in Judaism again in late 2022. A friend and his wife would make challah and bring over candles and wine and we’d celebrate Shabbat. I was rusty. I forgot the prayers an...

It's been a wild ride, this move from California to Oregon. A tangle of tendons and nerves getting massaged out. Arriving just in time for Pacific Northwest Winter. Chasing the sunlight and feeling the desire to sun my a*****e just to soak up every ounce. I’m discovering that people-pleasing is just a different angle of narcissism. Here are some thoughts that have been percolating. Click play if y...

Rumor has it that when you take magic mushrooms, ayahuasca, or LSD, you hallucinate. You see walls moving, you smell sounds, you imagine things that aren’t present, your mind becomes non-linear, and you might even think you can fly. Have you ever experienced this? Pretty cool right? Maybe you were scared. Maybe you couldn’t get enough. But, what if they weren’t hallucinations? In The Doors of Perc...

PART I: I remember finding out you don’t exist. In the back seat of my mom's car, my hand in my pants, the empty space of a ball I didn't know I had been missing. I remember the story: "You had a bacterial infection." "It inflated to the size of a grapefuit." "A softball." "A Bucca di Beppo meatball!" "Then it died and receded." Numerous urologists glancing back and forth between my records and my...

The binary is so tempting. Black. White. Us. Them. Boy. Girl. Big. Small. Loud. Quiet. Good. Bad. Positive. Negative. More than just an efficient way to organize the world, the binary is perhaps a vital tool in maintaining consciousness. In his book In the Blink of An Eye , Zoologist Andrew Parker explores The Cambrian explosion. This ten-million-year period hosted the dramatic and rapid evolution...

I used to love Tom Arnold’s stupid 1996 movie The Stupids . The premise was that the whole family was. . . stupid. The plot revolves around Tom Arnold’s character, Stanley Stupid. He’s a sort of neo-conspiracy theorist who is perplexed about who keeps stealing his trash every morning. He is determined to track the thieves down. One day, he takes out the trash and then hides in the bushes to see wh...

Hi Friends, First off, thanks for your patience. It’s been a bit since I posted, but I plan to start a more regular posting schedule now. Two big updates for you before this week’s post. (1) While I may not have written much in the past few months, I did contribute to the making of this child: So, that’s pretty cool and better than any article I could write. (2) My goal with The User is Content is...

Against my gut, I went to a men’s group a few weekends ago. I was under the impression that, because the idea of going made me nauseous, there was something worth exploring. I was right, and I was wrong. A men’s group: you know, men get together and are honest about their anger and their insecurity, and they support one another and hug one another and cry. It’s beautiful and it’s stupid. I felt ca...

The term “awakening” is super loaded these days. New age people use it to signal they have elevated above the sheep, religious zealots use it to signal some sort of process of enlightenment in regards to their God, and conspiracy theorists use it to delineate between those who see the truth and those who don’t. It often contains within it a harsh judgment of others, which always makes it land as k...

Note: Kindly please don’t respond to my emails personally unless it’s with praise and adoration. I’m not looking to have debates, though I welcome counterpoints in the comment section. A new study came out that confirmed something many of us have known for a while: the idea that depression is caused by a “chemical imbalance” is absurdly vague and unscientific. The study basically shows that over a...

Until recently, I don’t feel like i ever learned how to truly grieve. after relatives died, when wars began, when terrorism struck, when someone in the family was sad or struggling with feeling contentment, when someone was sick, i felt as if there was no outlet. while there was space to be sad, it always felt like something had to be done about it—distraction, cheering up, “perspective”. My dad o...

It kind of feels like the world is falling apart. Just the other day I was feeling pretty down and so I put on Brené Brown’s podcast for some white-lady positivity vibes. She started by saying, “I’m losing my mind, I’m in such deep struggle, and I can’t access any joy.” And then I turned it off. Regardless of your political affiliations, the last six years—starting with Trump and continuing now wi...

I recorded this article podcast-style (I even made a song) if you’d rather listen to my sweet voice. Just click the play button above. I know Earth Day is the 22nd but I am posting today because think I’m going to sit out of this year’s festivities. As you have probably read about in countless memes and tweets, the IPCC released another damning report saying that the next few years are critical if...