Bonnie Tyler's “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” Is About Vampires

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First Up, “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” Is About Vampires

lol so I just learned this this morning and it’s blowing my mind! Tumblr user julankaushibael posted about this earlier this week. I went and checked it out and sure enough, it’s totally true. Here’s Bonnie Tyler’s producer, Jim Steinman, talking about the origins of the song in a Playbill interview from 2002:

Once parties exist again, I absolutely cannot wait to bust this out as a fun anecdote!

Here’s A Good Tweet

An Interesting Question With An Even More Interesting Answer

Earlier this month, A TikToker going by the name theofficialdboy posed an interesting question to his followers: Is it “fucks sake” or “fuck’s sake”. It’s a great question. Is it for the sake of every possible fuck that could exist or is it for the sake one of specific fuck?

Well, a few days later, theofficialdboy got an answer. But it wasn’t just an answer from anyone. It turns out Hank Green is on TikTok and popped up with a very helpful explanation. Here’s a Twitter mirror of Hank’s response.

The TL;DR is it’s “for fuck’s sake” because it’s a play on the phrase “for Christ’s sake.” I actually really like reading about etymology and linguistics so I found this pretty cool. “For Christ’s sake” used to be such a blasphemous curse that people would soften it, saying something like “for crying out loud” instead. That process is called “mincing” and in the case of “for fuck’s sake,” it’s actually reverse-minced. “For Christ’s sake” was no longer a strong enough curse. Thanks Hank Green! This is a second fun fact to bust out at that party you finally get to go to in 2025.

The Jet Grind Radio Composer Discovers Horny On Main

OK, I am really not sure what’s happening here. Hideki Naganuma is a Japanese composer that’s probably most famous for his work on the Jet Grind Radio soundtracks. But he’s also worked on a lot of big games like Persona 3 and Yakuza 5. And then, uh, last night, he posted some tweets…

Not really sure what’s going on here, but I like his attitude. Unshackle yourselves. The world is ending. Be horny on main!

This Doomer Trad Wife Thing Is Big Yikes

I’ve noticed this “doomer trad wife” meme template popping up more and more and it’s definitely worrying. Especially because the design of the meme seems to be based on an actual person who runs a very alarming Instagram account dedicated to it. I’ve been really fascinated with the way Gen Z memes are evolving. I find it all as troubling as I do interesting. They’re part rage comic, part fascist propaganda. It’s also a wave of broader post-4chan culture we’re seeing from kids who were 13 or 14 in 2015 at the start of the online culture wars who are now entering adulthood.

The main theme of all these memes appears to be a very specific generational self-loathing and a desire to remove the internet and achieve some kind of fictional offline purity. You see in it the way they talk about “simps” — or men who either stan or financially support young women online. You also see it in their fetishization of white nationalist cottagecore aesthetics or their embrace Crusades-era Catholic fundamentalism.

I’ve had this feeling as if I had seen this sort of online discourse before and after seeing the “doomer trad wife” meme it finally dawned on me. It reminds me of the early days of the incel community, before it had become a full-on extremist movement. I’m not sure a lot of people remember this, but incels started on a message board called PUA Hate. The board started as a space for frustrated men to vent about how they felt ripped off by the pickup artist industry. These men had bought books or taken classes and tried to become masters of seduction or whatever, failed out, and became radicalized.

I think we’re seeing a similar reactionaryism happening in certain Gen Z online spaces right now, but instead of a pushback against the pickup artist industry and traditional ideas of masculinity, it’s a response to an oppressive and all-consuming attention economy. It’s a growing resentment of the parasocial relationships happening across social media platforms and it seems to be getting worse. Let me know if you’re seeing anything that fits into this. It’s definitely something I intend to keep tracking.

Here’s One Horrible Thing That Won’t Actually Happen This Year

To be honest, the idea of dressing up as Sexy COVID hadn’t even occurred to me. I guess you could like wear a surgical mask and bra made from two of the CGI coronavirus models? I mean, I’m glad that infamously horrible sexy Halloween costume producer Yandy has decided that something things are just not sexy — like a pandemic. Also, I’m not making a joke about that. Pilar Quintana-Williams, the vice president of merchanding for Yandy, literally told Business Insider, "I don't think there's anything sexy about it.”

Apparently, you can buy a Tiger King costume this year though. So, coronavirus = not sexy. Guy who allegedly killed and buried dozens of tigers in his backyard = sexy.

Here’s Another Good Tweet

Finally, An Old Video That I Just Really Love

I have a big list of stuff I come across online that I want to share on Garbage Day. Sometimes things don’t make the newsletter because they’re just too hard to really put into a coherent context. An example of this is Lady Red Cosplay, a lewd Halo Orbital Drop Shock Trooper e-girl Twitter account. I’m not sure what else to say about it except, there’s a girl on Twitter doing sexy videos dressed like Halo.

The video above has also been on my list forever. I came across it a few weeks ago after not seeing it for a very long time and literally laughed so hard I was crying.

And you know what? It’s the end of a really bad week for the world. Things are really weird and scary and exhausting and Twitter is constantly screaming and the president is threatening a coup and the pandemic is still raging and it’s all just shit. But it’s Friday, so close out your tabs, sit back, and watch this guy have to play Guitar Hero to the audio from Auntie Angel’s grapefruit blowjob technique.

P.S. here’s a really amazing cat TikTok.

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***