my live event, notes, updates (2024)

good morning!! currently writing to you from my montreal hotel room where i am hiding out and ordering room service while my boyfriend shops for fancy french cheese. i am very tired — the last few days have been full of strange events and exciting milestones, which is really unimaginably wonderful, but also i usually like to structure my life so that approximately one thing happens to me per month. i am over my quota!!!

i’ve been getting an overwhelming amount of messages and emails and dms about many of this week’s happenings, so i thought i’d write one catch-all post where i filled you all in on a weird couple of nights (at least the parts i’m allowed to share)!!! there are weeks where decades happen or whatever lenin said…

1. the girl online talk (!!!)

i did my first-ever live event at mcgill university this tuesday. i am very sure i’ll remember it for the rest of my life. for the weeks leading up to this lecture, i was wracked with anxiety that absolutely nobody was going to show up, which turned out to be a huge mistake — an estimated 300-400 people lined up to attend our 175-capacity event, which still makes me cry when i think about it (both out of happiness and out of guilt towards the many, many people who were turned away for safety reasons). it was honestly a pretty feral kill-or-be-killed vibe in there for a second. i saw a girl vault a railing to get into a seat!!!

i am told it was the department’s most-attended event in recent history (but this was not fact-checked so take it with a grain of salt).

with so much of my work and my community being exclusively online, it’s been really hard — maybe even impossible — to imagine what it would feel like to translate that into a physical space. as it turns out, it’s nearly impossible to describe, too. all i can say is that standing in a room and talking face-to-face with so many interesting people of all ages and experiences — seeing them crowd the aisles, perch on windowsills, sit cross-legged on the floor, and peer in from outside the lecture hall doors — made me feel certain, in a rare way, that the world has the capacity to be as good as it is difficult. i don’t know what i did to deserve any of this, but i feel so lucky to have shared that experience with all of you, and i hope to do it many times over.

if you’re curious, this substack essay about the talk captures the night better than i could (i basically blacked out from start to finish and used this review to piece it all together like the guy in memento). it also has some really interesting analyses of the talk and of my general position in the culture. very worth a read. over the past few days, i’ve seen tiktoks, twitter threads, and substack essays from audience members reflecting and expanding on the talk, and once again, i am perpetually in awe of how lucky i am to have such an intelligent, reflective, insightful, and sincere audience.

girl online was unfortunately not recorded, but i’m working to translate it into written form — although i’m worried that it might have too much in common with the book i’m working on for it to be publishable at this time. if it doesn’t end up being publicized here, i’ll hopefully just be able to take it to more cities and schools so you can hear it live. <3

on that note — i’ve been receiving literally hundreds of messages from people asking me to speak at their schools, so i wanted to put out some info. at least when it comes to university talks, i don’t have any control at all over where or when i’m asked to speak. if you’re interested in me giving a talk at your school, get in touch with your department, student organization/student union, debate society, etc (i do not know that much about how universities work so i’m not totally sure if all of those are real things but hopefully you get the gist). they’ll hopefully be able to give you next steps from there.

2. the girl online poster

look at this beautiful poster (designed by my genius friend Samiha Meem)! we printed out 100 of these in case anyone wanted to pick one up as a souvenir and they were all gone within (literally) 60 seconds. like i said — kill or be killed.

for this reason, i thought it might be nice to release the file in case anyone wanted to print one themselves. they are super easy and super cheap to print at Staples or any other printing store and they will look exactly like the real ones because that’s how we did it too.

here are the instructions, fresh from a McGill email thread: Print in full color on white 11x17 matte cardstock paper. The dimension of the file is slightly larger than 11x17 so it should be "fit to print" and ensured that no part of the image is cut off. After printing, all of the white borders should be trimmed off.

unfortunately, i cannot sign them if you print them yourselves — but i give you permission, in this specific instance, to make up what you think my signature could look like and tell everyone it’s real if they ask.

3. deftones meme

in other breaking events from this week, this meme featuring high-school me went viral on millennial facebook. that picture is from 2019, and i only kind of like deftones, but it’s always been my dream to be used as a generic egirl stock image so i’ll let the inaccuracies slide.

4. internet princess x emrata

yesterday’s episode of emrata’s podcast quotes a two of my essays and also uses audio from one of my tiktoks (in a positive way i promise). thank you emrata!! you can listen to it here:

6. and finally — we hit 50,000 subscribers!!!

there are over 50,000 people here now, and i cannot wrap my head around what that number looks like but i know it’s big. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again — thank you thank you thank you. i will never totally understand all of this but i will try my best to do something good with it. i have very big and exciting things in the works and i can’t wait to share them with you. lastly: if anyone has any fun ideas for how we can properly celebrate this, please do let me know. <3 <3 <3

ok i think that is all the big updates for now. i am working on 4 essays at the same time and have been kind of a perfectionist about all of them but once i get maybe 5 days of sleep i’m going to dive back in. i hope u all had great weeks. xoxo