6 Months of Brain Rot!
what I've learned
Happy Easter to all who celebrate – and very happy long weekend to those who don’t. As of this weekend it’s been six months of Brain Rot, which blows my mind. It simultaneously feels like it’s been five minutes and fifteen years. I’ve learned a couple big lessons in these months, but first there’s some admin I need to get out of the way. The free tier of Brain Rot will now include two free essays every month, released every other Sunday starting from next week. Paid subscribers will continue to receive weekly essays, along with additional works whenever I have them, like the short story I shared last week. Writing these essays weekly and making sure I can be proud of them is a large undertaking, one that takes up a lot of time. Pushing myself to write six pieces for paid subscribers every month has put me in the position of sending out work I just don’t feel is up to my standard of quality, and I hate that – I only want to put out my best.
The paid tier will remain $5 a month or $55/year, and I hope that if you’ve found some value in my work, you’ll consider upgrading to paid. I won’t bore you guys with a laundry list of my obligations, but this is a volume of work that ensures that you’ll only be getting my best and not my creative leftovers. The archive will remain unlocked for your perusal (some of you have told me you revisit your fave essays, and I love that!!)
If you’re unable to or uninterested in upgrading, but still wanna hang out with me elsewhere in these internet streets, you can subscribe to my nascent YouTube, where I’ll be posting the video version of my forthcoming podcast (!) coming in April. It’ll be a big part of the larger Brain Rot rebrand (there’s a new name coming, so enjoy these last couple weeks with Brain Rot branding 🥲).The podcast and YouTube will be an expansion on the work I’ve been doing here, with a little less pop culture and a little more self-growth and clownery. Naturally, you guys will be the first to know once it’s live, since we’re locked in 🤞🏾. Stay tuned!
Okay! Let’s get into it:
6 Months of Brain Rot: What I’ve Learned
When I first started writing Brain Rot, I was scared AF, which I honestly find kind of hilarious now. By then, I’d been making and posting content for years, but writing is different, more intimate and vulnerable, and it makes demands on a different part of my brain that’s already stretched pretty thin tbh. You guys get more of me here than I’d ever show on social (at least, at the moment), since all it takes is one algorithmic push to surface me to white supremacist misogynists (and other losers.)
There was also the matter of the tonal shift. The videos I make sharing my writing are quite different from my usual jokes, and I knew that they’d underperform and make me lose followers who wanted more Rat Girl Summer-adjacent type humor. You guys already know – I get silly here, but things lean more cosmic and academic than Rat Girl. Here’s the thing about going viral: when it happens, you get a boost of followers (and haters), but usually many of them only want to see different versions of the same content over and over. This is why so many social media “coaches” emphasize “finding your niche” to AKA finding new ways to rehash the same information to maximize performance on the apps. (If this sounds dreary and soul-sucking, that’s because it is.) This is one of the reasons so many content creators burn out. Constantly figuring out new ways to say the same shit is exhausting. More pressingly, it’s boring as hell. Like yes, I wanna shake ass and do hoodrat stuff with my friends – but occasionally I want to chat about Jungian philosophy. I contain multitudes, okay?
So I did what I wanted and started this newsletter. As expected, I lost thousands of followers across platforms, and it took months to rebound. But before that, I already knew I’d made the right choice. The new audience I was building was less a following and more a community. These were people who hit me in the DM and emails to talk books and movies and music; these are people who I’ve started to pursue IRL friendships with. And I felt sooo much happier having a space to explore and experiment with my writing, which I will always consider my primary craft, no matter how many other endeavors I pursue.
Starting this newsletter has reminded me what it’s like to actually have fun with writing again; it’s reminded me that I’m actually still just a kid who wants to tell stories, metrics aside. I like to make me a lil bag, don’t get me wrong – there’s still a lot of archive Versace in my future. But I realize now that to do my best work, I have to privilege my creativity above all else, above follower counts and likes and watch time and and and and – there is a bunch of other social media background stuff that I won’t waste your time with. I accepted that it would take time to find the right audience, and it has, and it will continue to, but finding them (finding you) has felt so good. Chasing trends and trying to optimize to please the algo overlords has only ever frustrated and annoyed me. Creating a space to develop my unfiltered voice without input from industry players encouraging changes to “meet the market” has done wonders in reminding me why I love this. That, alone, is invaluable.
And then there’s the freedom that comes with being liberated from perfectionism paralysis, the refusal to make a move until things are “perfect.” Of course, nothing ever is, so this mostly has just resulted in me dragging my feet on things I know I want to do (see: the podcast I ruminated on for months before finally just buying a damn mic.) I procrastinated on starting this newsletter because I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to use this space to share; I just knew I wanted to write and put it out there. And honestly, if you read the earliest posts, it’s abundantly clear I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing lmao. But I kept going, and eventually I found a groove. Even though I switch it up from time to time, I think by now Brain Rot readers have a pretty good idea of what to expect: what I hope is a distinctive mix of pop culture and media analysis, personal essay, and self-growth messaging to encourage you to get the most out of life – because why shouldn’t you? Now, when I want to embark on something new, I tell myself: just start; there’s nothing wrong with getting better over time. And that’s exactly what I’m doing.
Thank you guys for reading and being here. I appreciate it more than you can know.
Lola xx