Yea, I Peeped Vol. 16: Gmail, Community, Jamie Foxx, Keeta Hill, BFTV x Purse First
Quick notes from a trap feminist.
It feels like everyone has beef with the tech giants that are supposed to provide us with essential services, entertainment, and connection, and I’m here to add another opp to your list: Gmail. I’m convinced they created the Promotions and Social folders in 2013 to sell subscriptions to Google One, which launched in 2018. These folders automatically filter marketing email from stores you’ve only ever shopped at once and notification emails from social media apps begging you to log in, but they don’t delete them. When I got an urgent message that I was at 95% of my 15 GB of Gmail storage and wouldn’t be able to receive new messages soon, I first followed their recommendation to delete emails with large attachments. Not only did this barely put a dent in my storage I was deleting personal emails that I would have preferred to have kept. I then checked the promotions folder and found over 80,000 unread emails, most of them from the same 50 or so senders. I dedicated a few hours a day to filtering my inbox by sender (some companies have different email addresses for the different branches of marketing they send) and mass deleting them. A week later, I have 8 GB, more than half of my storage back. I recognize that the bigger problem is the wasteful email practices of major retailers and service providers, but Gmail is counting on us to never check those tabs and be too lazy to delete them ourselves to get a bunch of us to fork over a few bucks a month. But you can’t finesse a finesser! And did we ever confirm if they stole the Gmail logo from Missy Elliott?
On a more serious note, I’ve been sitting with this essay by Marion Teniade about the ineffectiveness of performative corporate boycotts. “Like, at this point in what we keep calling “late-stage capitalism,” we have to accept that consumer citizenship has run its course, no? That market solutions to structural problems are a myth, written for you by the people who run the market and built the structure? Your individual consumer choice will not change how capitalism works, because capitalism designed itself to absorb that choice. That’s why the satisfaction of an imprecise boycott dissipates so quickly, and you go back to telling yourself, helplessly, that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Withholding capital isn’t an act of creation or connection. It’s just a deferred transaction.” She urges to get involved in community activism that serves the needs of those around us and builds collective power and I think she’s on to something.
I can’t stop thinking about Jamie Foxx’s R&B career. He is one of the best male artists in the genre in my opinion. Intuition and Unpredictable are classic albums still in my rotation. Jamie has made some of my favorite Black ass songs, like “Weekend Lover,” “Freakin Me” “Can I Take U Home” and “Slow Jamz.” What I can’t stop thinking about though, is the hilarious fact that all those notes he hit were inspired by his lust for white women. Let this be a reminder that you can’t trust anything that comes out a man’s mouth. Just nod and smile and laugh.
I haven’t watched Netflix’s new ensemble reality show W.A.G.s to Riches, and I probably won’t. But I’ve seen the same clip that many others have of Tyreek Hill’s wife, Keeta, talking about the nine children he had with other women and the 10th that she was carrying in the clip. Apparently four of those ten kids, including Keeta’s, were all born in 2024. I’m wondering if women like this don’t think their men are irresponsible and reckless, or if they just don’t care? Do they really want to be stepmothers to a scattered team of kids or is their love contingent on their relationship the team’s dad? Children are not just evidence of some sex that was had. They are human beings, whose lives are shaped by the relationships they have with their parents. Monetary child support does not replace the time, attention, affection, and guidance that all children require and deserve. At what point is someone who continues to bring children into the world without considering their capacity to give that irresponsible? The concessions that straight women make about the character of the men they choose was already alarmingly dangerous, but the nonchalance about what these choices mean for kids is diabolical.
One of my favorite YouTube channels, Black Femininity TV, just dropped a new video about the female rap renaissance of the 2020s. The included two very special guests, the hosts of Purse First, the only podcast exclusively about female and queer rap. Me and Pierre! Go watch!
This week I attended a networking event put on by Creative Collective NYC, the folks who put on CultureCon. It’s the second “industry” event I’ve been to in as many months. What I learned is that many talented, experienced, creative Black folks are unemployed or struggling to find their footing right now. Everyone is hysterically searching for the pivot, the content strategy, the platform, or the connection that is going to put them in the right position. It was a validating experience, proof that I’m not the only one feeling lost. It’s not just that I’ve aged out or that I stopped posting for too long. Talking to people younger and older than me was a reminder that we can’t outwork a shitty job market where cuts to funding for diverse stories hurt our pockets, AI is running wild, and there are fewer roles to fill. We all have to get in where we fit in and survive. With that being said, if you’d like to support me as I finish a novel and figure out what’s next, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.