Episode 22: Ins and Outs for 2024

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INFO:
listen it's too early in the year to jump straight into criticism, we haven't even recovered from last year, so we're kicking off 2024 with a new year's resolutions tirade about learning arabic, fucking off Adidas, staring into space, falling in love with musicals, and cancelling ezcema. There's audio, video and a transcription. enjoy the holy trinity you nice people

(I’m sorry it’s past midnight as I’m uploading and in an ideal world I would make the below look tidier but I just spent all my energy transcribing so please ignore the timestamps and speaker names (unless that’s useful idk it just looks messy to me but bed is calling, you understand))

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00:00:18:06 - 00:00:26:01 Gabrielle Hello and welcome to the latest episode of The White Pube podcast. My name is Gabrielle de la Puente.

00:00:26:05 - 00:00:28:00 Zarina My name is Zarina Muhammad.

00:00:28:02 - 00:00:53:09 Gabrielle And we are here to do a quick ins and outs. I mean, it’s not quick. It’s a podcast about our ins and outs for 2024 and 2023. If you’re not familiar, there’s been a bit of a trend of people like, rather than saying some perfectly succinct, nice resolution, they’re just saying some things that they want to do more of this year and some things that they want to leave in 2023.

00:00:53:14 - 00:01:00:24 Gabrielle And that’s what we’re going to do because we haven’t written a new text this week because we’ve got to do our taxes, so….

00:01:00:24 - 00:01:02:11 Zarina

00:01:02:13 - 00:01:15:20 Gabrielle We’re doing this quickly instead. And then we’ll be back next week with our first review of the year. So on that note, what are you in and outing? Where are you starting with this?

00:01:15:22 - 00:01:36:12 Zarina My list is unwieldy and comprehensive. Some of them are really serious, some of them are arbitrary. So I’m going to start with one I’m actually really proud of that I’ve already kicked out. No more ELF bars. ELF bars are out. We’re done. They’re disposable. Imagine how many ELF bars could be sitting in landfills. They also make my mouth taste weird.

00:01:36:12 - 00:01:59:18 Zarina I don’t know if anyone else also vapes, but they’re not selling me like the fun, fruity, flirty marketing vision. Like, I don’t know if any of our listeners or viewers or readers – if you are also an ELF bar person, please write in and tell me, do they make your mouth taste weird or is it just me?

00:01:59:18 - 00:02:08:16 Zarina Am I just doing it wrong? Because I found that like my mouth just used to taste like mad blue?

00:02:08:18 - 00:02:15:08 Gabrielle It’s like when you tried to do natural deodorant and it just didn’t work, and we had to have a serious conversation.

00:02:15:10 - 00:02:22:24 Zarina That was three years of my life that I was into natural deodorant.

00:02:23:01 - 00:02:30:21 Gabrielle And thank God we pulled you out of it. Like, no offense to people who it works for, but it didn’t work for Zarina.

00:02:30:23 - 00:02:45:20 Zarina And like, I feel like it made me smell. It made me smell. It did. Because I can go a day forgetting to put on deodorant. But natural deoderant made me smell.

00:02:45:22 - 00:02:47:24 Gabrielle What are you doing instead of ELF bars?

00:02:48:01 - 00:03:09:02 Zarina Snus! Snus. I will tell you what Snus is because you’ve not asked, but just because I’m now in the pocket of big Snus. It’s a Scandinavian thing – I think Swedish or Scandinavian thing – like a little pocket, a little pouch, and you put it in between your gum and your lip and it just sits there and you can do it indoors.

00:03:09:04 - 00:03:23:18 Zarina You can do it wherever you like. You can do it on the toilet, you can do it on a plane. That’s enough for me. But and I’m saying this like kind of off list. I don’t want to add this to the in and out this because this is too New Year’s resolution-y: we’re going to be 30 this year.

00:03:23:20 - 00:03:26:01 Gabrielle We are going to be 30 this year.

00:03:26:03 - 00:03:46:01 Zarina Apparently, your lungs stop having the ability to regenerate themselves past 30. I don’t know if this is urban legend, but like smokers who quit before 30, their lungs can, like, grow back. After 30, it’s downhill.

00:03:46:03 - 00:03:48:01 Gabrielle Are you going to quit smoking this year?

00:03:48:03 - 00:03:52:01 Zarina I think halfway through this year, I have to quit smoking.

00:03:52:03 - 00:03:59:14 Gabrielle Oh my God. On a technicality. Oh shit.

00:03:59:16 - 00:04:14:12 Zarina That’s the most New Year’s resolution-y these actually get. I quite like taking things out. Like, my out list is really extensive. I like taking things out of my life. For example, buying new clothes, No more new clothes.

00:04:14:14 - 00:04:21:20 Gabrielle This is big. Don’t you just feel like buying new clothes is cringe?

00:04:21:20 - 00:04:47:19 Zarina Cringe is the word for it, but like also demoralizing when you get the little parcel in the post and it’s all wrapped in plastic and you’re excited to try on your new clothes. I just hate the way that makes me feel vulnerable. (Why?) I just feel vulnerable in that moment of like, excitement. I just feel like I’m being patronised by myself and also by, like, big ASOS, you know?

00:04:47:21 - 00:04:50:11 Gabrielle Yeah, No, I get that. I get that feeling.

00:04:50:14 - 00:05:01:05 Zarina The warehouse overlords have sent me a parcel and it’s plastic wrapped and I’m so excited, even though I’ve given them my little tokens, my little money tokens, it’s too much.

00:05:01:10 - 00:05:35:03 Gabrielle It’s like pacifying or something. That makes sense. For me the cringe is like how much cooler it is to be able to make your own stuff. Like, I watch all these YouTubers – I watch WithWendy and Jenna Phipps – they are these cool people who can like mock something up on a dress form, which is like, you know, those mannequin things and like they just drape things around it and then they pin it and then they put it through a sewing machine and then they wear it.

00:05:35:07 - 00:05:44:19 Gabrielle And I’m like, my God, I want to be you. I actually got a dress form for Christmas that was like the only present I got.

00:05:44:21 - 00:05:47:12 Gabrielle I’m so committed to this.

00:05:47:23 - 00:06:07:10 Gabrielle Also, not even necessarily having to go out and like to do some sewing course like, I just want to do the school of YouTube. I want to pull shit from my wardrobe, lay it out, draw around it so that I can repeat the pattern and like, find what fits and what feels comfortable.

00:06:07:12 - 00:06:14:06 Zarina Yeah, this makes complete sense with who you are as a person because you are a survivalist.

00:06:14:08 - 00:06:15:23 Gabrielle Exactly.

00:06:16:00 - 00:06:27:24 Gabrielle I’m like, like it’s like the teach the person to fish thing. Just teach me how to fish. Just teach me how to fish. But like, I’m never stepping foot in a H&M again.

00:06:28:01 - 00:06:28:17 Gabrielle Fuck all

00:06:28:17 - 00:07:06:24 Gabrielle those places. I don’t remember the last time I was in a clothes shop and like the thought of it is something I don’t miss. I watched an episode of Big Mouth, the last season of Big Mouth, and there was an episode where it kind of focused on the character who is autism-coded and there’s an moment when he’s walking into a shopping mall and he says, like, the shopping mall is where everyone goes to dress like each other, or like this idea that that’s where you go to buy your costume so that you fit in with the rest of society and that’s how he understands it from his very specific

00:07:06:24 - 00:07:28:04 Gabrielle perspective. But I was watching that and I was like, Yeah, I don’t want to do that? I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to be replicable and I don’t want to replicate other people, and I don’t know necessarily what my niche is but it’s not going to be found in the shops.

00:07:28:06 - 00:08:01:06 Zarina Yeah, you’re more likely to figure it out by making clothes yourself. Yeah, I think it’s worth us using this space on the podcast to say that fashion is one of the most polluting industries in the entire world. Can you imagine that? Like, fashion is like up there with oil and gas? Like, that’s fucking crazy. But like, it takes so much water and like, so much available land space that could be used for better things than, like, making a pair of shit jeans that you going to throw away after a season.

00:08:01:08 - 00:08:28:00 Zarina If you’re lucky and you’re really looking to get some wear out of them, like we could literally feed the world with all the space that is used to grow terrible slogan t-shirts. There’s something about the industrial scale of fashion, fast fashion, brand new fashion, that just like the scale of that makes me feel woozy and ill.

00:08:28:02 - 00:08:30:13 Zarina And it’s also uncool.

00:08:30:15 - 00:09:00:01 Gabrielle I’ve got follow ups to this: my other in is to 100% my wardrobe. I want to make sure I wear everything in it. So for the next however long it’s going to take, I’m going to wear a different combination of items every day, even if I don’t leave the house, just to like, feel it on my body and to see whether it’s something that I want to continue to own or whether I want to donate.

00:09:00:03 - 00:09:28:08 Gabrielle And also just to like have a sense of variety and have fun trying to style pieces. It’s like, you know, I remember a few years ago there being this really big push when beauty YouTube was massive to want to buy all these different palettes and like lipsticks and blushes and like this feeling that you needed to own all of the things rather than have one eyeshadow palette and make sure you use every single color on it and hit pan on all of them.

00:09:28:10 - 00:09:39:12 Gabrielle I want to like hit pan on my life. I don’t want to be someone who has things and doesn’t use them. I’m like, I’ve actually found

00:09:39:16 - 00:09:40:16 Zarina

00:09:40:18 - 00:10:06:05 Gabrielle A real danger with getting into knitting where I keep getting recommended all these YouTube videos by people who are like ‘yarn stash tour!’ like they want to just take you through their shelves and shelves and shelves and Look, here’s how I organize my DK and my merino and my blah blah, blah, and I’m like, Good for you that you look like you have a fucking shop in your house.

00:10:06:07 - 00:10:18:19 Gabrielle But like, wouldn’t it be better to use it? Yeah, like, make stuff with it and like, get to a point where you have 100% used it all rather than, like, just accumulating stuff.

00:10:18:21 - 00:10:41:11 Zarina Yeah, I dunno. Every time I hear someone say this, I’m like, fuck off, because it’s so easy to say when you’re like a person that’s got the stuff and then like, moralizing about all the stuff that you don’t want to have but you have anyway. But like so much that it’s like, that’s like the industrial process. Like how do you get away from that without making your own clothes?

00:10:41:11 - 00:11:14:12 Zarina Like, how do you make well-made clothes when they just come from factories now? I hate it. I hate moralizing about that when it’s like, you know, the alternative is deeply inconvenient. But having said that, there is kind of like… I don’t know, if it’s learned, it must be on un-learnable. In collecting yarns, collecting eyeshadow palette, collecting clothes and like bits and bobs and, you know, like just the completionism.

00:11:14:14 - 00:11:22:15 Gabrielle I think it’s fine to moralise on that part of it. Like, I think it is absolutely fine to judge someone.

00:11:22:17 - 00:11:23:01 Gabrielle on how much they accumulate.

00:11:23:03 - 00:11:51:00 Gabrielle Just to be like: I’m the king sat on all of my treasure. I just don’t want to have a house full of shit. I want to like, for example, I’m halfway through making the Jasper Jumper, which is like a scrap yarn jumper. So it’s like a case of just tying together all of your different bits and bobs that you’ve got lying around that felt like, you know, pieces of yarn that felt maybe too long to throw out, but not long enough to use.

00:11:51:00 - 00:11:54:13 Zarina And I just feel like.

00:11:54:15 - 00:12:02:05 Gabrielle like a sense of relief that I’m not letting things go to waste.

00:12:02:06 - 00:12:04:15 Zarina Gabrielle, you’re literally tying up loose ends. Literally.

00:12:04:15 - 00:12:14:12 Gabrielle I am tying up loose ends! Oh my God, That’s so true. I love that. Another in is like, I want to learn Spanish again, properly.

00:12:14:14 - 00:12:17:12 Zarina Tell me about this, cause I’ve got one that corresponds.

00:12:17:14 - 00:12:45:13 Gabrielle Because I just really miss it. Like, deeply miss it. And there’s enough in my brain to understand quite a lot already. But like, I’ve always lacked the confidence to speak. I could sit down and try and read the book and I’ll be like, okay, that is impaired quite a lot by chronic fatigue. I feel like I have an actual timer in my brain when I start trying to read Spanish now, like there’s like 30 minutes in me and then I’m dead.

00:12:45:15 - 00:12:46:22 Gabrielle So it’s just kind of –

00:12:46:24 - 00:12:48:24 Zarina It’s just taken up too much brain juice?

00:12:49:01 - 00:13:14:13 Gabrielle It’s crazy how palpable it is but I want to try and find a way to learn Spanish accessibly. And I was trying to think like, you know, maybe if there were a few languages that I would want to learn it would be like Spanish, Japanese – which I did a GCSE in – and then maybe something like Arabic, like it’d be so cool to learn Arabic – Zarina’s face.

00:13:14:19 - 00:13:47:19 Gabrielle It sounds so nice, but if I had to pick one of them, I think like ultimately I would like to try and get to Chile one day if my health ever improves and then try and find my people. Like my dad is Chilean, but I don’t have a relationship with him. And like when I’ve done 23 and me, my, you know, percentage of Chilean is obviously really big and it like pinpoints exactly where my family is from

00:13:47:21 - 00:13:59:04 Gabrielle In Santiago like it has enough data to be able to tell you the city which is the capital to be fair. But I would just want to go and see if there’s anyone I know.

00:13:59:06 - 00:14:00:23 Zarina And make friends if you don’t.

00:14:01:03 - 00:14:11:04 Gabrielle Make friends. Find out about the art scene. I met a few Chilean painters last year and it was like, I don’t know, it’s that.

00:14:11:06 - 00:14:12:10 Zarina

00:14:12:12 - 00:14:40:06 Gabrielle Diaspora discourse that like I never really think about because I just don’t necessarily think of myself in that way because, like, I don’t have a relationship with the Chilean side of me. But it would be nice to to sus it out a bit more and yeah, and I was speaking to a friend about it, who’s also got long COVID and I was talking to her about like how like I want to do it, but I just feel like physically I can’t.

00:14:40:08 - 00:15:04:09 Gabrielle And she was so encouraging and she was kind of talking about like, well, think about how it’s going to, I don’t know, like make new connections in your brain. Just like learning a new thing, like picking up new vocab and that visual of, like making all these little new connections in your brain felt so exciting to me in the same way that it does when I think, I’m going to learn how to sew and I’m going to learn how to do bias tape.

00:15:04:11 - 00:15:12:21 Zarina You’re gaining skills. Thinking about it as skilling up. EXP.

00:15:13:11 - 00:15:47:12 Gabrielle If I think about life as a game, all of it seems like way more fun and way more manageable and like less about – I don’t feel joy in trying to climb the career ladder and making more money and blah blah, blah. Like I find joy in adding new skills. And like that was one of the greatest things about learning to knit last year is like, I know enough about knitting now to be able to riff on patterns when I’m making them and and last night –

00:15:47:14 - 00:15:50:06 Zarina That’s competency.

00:15:50:08 - 00:16:15:04 Gabrielle Last night I was watching a film, I was watching Enys Man, which I didn’t really enjoy but visually I enjoyed it. I didn’t enjoy the story. Visually, it’s shot on film, so the colors are incredible and like I thought, I want to see this film more than I want to listen to it. And I was knitting as I was watching.

00:16:15:06 - 00:16:27:06 Gabrielle So I ended up – I was like, okay, I’m gonna figure out right now here on the spot how to knit without looking. And I did it. And I was just a case of like moving where my thumb was.

00:16:27:06 - 00:16:28:20 Zarina And feeling it?

00:16:28:20 - 00:16:29:15 Gabrielle Feeling it with my thumb.

00:16:29:16 - 00:16:30:21 Zarina Yeah.

00:16:30:23 - 00:16:33:18 Gabrielle Oh my God. I like, was ecstatic.

00:16:33:18 - 00:16:36:19 Zarina Did you just feel really cool? Did it just feel sick?

00:16:36:21 - 00:16:41:22 Gabrielle So cool. I was like, it felt like.

00:16:41:24 - 00:16:51:01 Gabrielle Yeah, like I’d leveled up in that moment and I’d chosen to level up. It was like in a game when you realize like, I’ve got enough points to cash in. Like I can level up.

00:16:51:03 - 00:17:00:22 Zarina You pressed the button and it fizzled. Yeah. That’s an amazing moment. Skills! Leveling up!

00:17:00:24 - 00:17:03:15 Gabrielle Yeah. Are you going to learn Arabic. Why did you make a face?

00:17:03:20 - 00:17:13:15 Zarina Yeah, because that’s on my list. I spend a lot of time smoking and scrolling Twitter on my phone, and I feel like I’m wasting my own time.

00:17:13:17 - 00:17:14:06 Gabrielle Okay yeah.

00:17:14:09 - 00:17:33:16 Zarina I’m not getting anything out of that. So rather than scrolling mindlessly on my phone, I’m going to use the time to Duolingo Arabic myself. And I say this knowing full well that I haven’t soft-launched my boyfriend yet. Whatever. Fine. Who cares.

00:17:33:18 - 00:17:35:01 Gabrielle Can he speak Arabic?

00:17:35:03 - 00:18:06:07 Zarina No. (I was gonna say). I want to convince him – there’s very little convincing that needs to be done – we’re going to learn Arabic together, and then we will have a language to speak in together that’s not commonly spoken among like the great British public in like East London, the parts of East London that we frequent because I can’t like, I can’t choose like French, Spanish, Italian, because the hipsters speak those, you know, we can learn Arabic and talk about them.

00:18:07:19 - 00:18:49:10 Gabrielle I don’t want to do the Duolingo thing. I want to find like a physical group because like, I mean, we’ve written about this on the website a bit, but in case people haven’t been reading – my brain has kind of been transformed by learning about third places. So this idea that like your home is your first place, your workplace is your second place, and for older generations there was in existence a third place where they would like, socialize and find nourishment in things that didn’t involve being in the home or the workplace.

00:18:49:12 - 00:19:22:20 Gabrielle And part of that meant coming into contact with people that they might not necessarily be friends with, but like they’re in community with. And how like being exposed to those people who you might not necessarily be best mates with, their ideas and their conversations and their way of living, gives you a newness and a variety and like a greater understanding of how people live and how people approach things and politics, all the rest of it.

00:19:22:22 - 00:19:33:06 Gabrielle And, you know, it breaks outside of confirmation bias and all the rest of it. Like the learning about that has so deeply bummed me out.

00:19:33:06 - 00:19:34:22 Zarina

00:19:34:24 - 00:20:11:02 Gabrielle Because I want it and I think I used to get that from traveling, especially with you, to like all these different galleries and like, we would put ourselves in lots of situations with people who, yeah, we might not necessarily be mates with, but we were learning a lot by moving outside of our own routines and like post-2020, post-getting sick, my workplace and my home, as they did for many people, became one overlapping place.

00:20:11:04 - 00:20:24:10 Gabrielle And then that just continued for me because of Long Covid. When I’ve got energy, I want to just use it on getting to the third place. But I think like, what if that third place was also a Spanish group

00:20:24:12 - 00:20:25:01 Gabrielle Full of.

00:20:25:03 - 00:20:27:01 Gabrielle Random people in Liverpool?

00:20:27:03 - 00:20:49:23 Zarina It’s really easy to pick up a language when you’re speaking it aloud to a person, another person that speaks the same language. Like it’s really hard to learn language in isolation, like with just the written thing. You can have friends that you only speak to in Spanish, Spanish-only friends.

00:20:50:00 - 00:20:57:24 Gabrielle And then I can read Spanish art reviews and I can get in on what’s going on in the Spanish speaking art world.

00:20:58:04 - 00:21:00:16 Zarina You can write Spanish art reviews.

00:21:00:18 - 00:21:03:07 Gabrielle I can write Spanish art reviews. Yes.

00:21:03:13 - 00:21:11:18 Zarina The White Pube’s gonna be bilingual. Trilingual when we collectively learn Arabic.

00:21:11:20 - 00:21:26:05 Gabrielle And can I also just pick up on one thing that you said? So when you said like you just feel like you’re wasting your life going on Twitter. Twitter is my first out. I have deleted my personal Twitter account.

00:21:26:07 - 00:21:27:15 Zarina Oh my god – you deleted?

00:21:27:15 - 00:21:40:11 Gabrielle Which was like very quickly – I don’t wanna use the word ‘influence’. I was just convinced when I heard this one sentence said to me.

00:21:40:13 - 00:21:43:11 Zarina Oh god, You’re going to say it to me and convince me.

00:21:43:13 - 00:22:08:06 Gabrielle I’m gonna convince you, and I’m going to convince everyone who’s listening. So I listened to Search Engine, which is a podcast, and they did an episode where the guy who runs that podcast was interviewing Ezra Klein who’s got a lot of history in tech, who basically said your life is the sum total of what you pay attention to.

00:22:08:08 - 00:22:38:08 Gabrielle That made me feel ill. And then he said, he wants to pay more attention to how he pays attention and like where that attention is best spent. And basically it made me realize that, like when I go on Twitter and when I watch short form video content, it goes in one ear and out the other.

00:22:38:13 - 00:23:03:21 Gabrielle I literally don’t remember any of it. I have watched hours of YouTube shorts. I don’t have TikTok, but I’ve watched enough YouTube Shorts and enough Instagram reels to know that I don’t remember a fucking single one of them. And like the fact that I am spending my life watching things that like, don’t make any impression on me. I don’t like that at all.

00:23:03:23 - 00:23:13:12 Zarina And it’s the same feeling like, like the baby being pacified by the warehouse overlords. It’s like the same pacifying effect.

00:23:13:14 - 00:23:14:15 Gabrielle I don’t want that.

00:23:14:17 - 00:23:21:13 Zarina Done with that. That’s out, that feeling warehouse overload pacifying you, infant tyrant. Gone. Out.

00:23:22:06 - 00:23:31:16 Gabrielle I don’t wanna fill my life with these really empty bullshit moments. Like, even if sometimes I think it’s going to feel like a relief. I actually.

00:23:31:16 - 00:23:33:09 Gabrielle Think it might be.

00:23:33:11 - 00:23:35:22 Gabrielle A relief to stare into space.

00:23:36:03 - 00:23:37:18 Zarina

00:23:37:20 - 00:23:47:20 Gabrielle Like, I don’t trust Twitter to add anything to my life. I think it would be better and in a sense more mindful to fucking stare into space.

00:23:47:22 - 00:24:15:01 Zarina Do you know what, you’re just actually too persuasive. Word to the wise, never go shopping with Gabrielle because, like, it’s just like you convince me all the time on things that I have no opinion on. Like, I had a kind of complicit opinion to begin with. But now I really do believe that tomorrow morning, when I have my first cigarette of the day in the dark.

00:24:15:03 - 00:24:16:05 Gabrielle You’re gonna stare into space.

00:24:16:11 - 00:24:19:12 Zarina I’m going to stare into space.

00:24:19:14 - 00:24:59:01 Gabrielle This was the other part of his thesis. It was that we we become more like the platforms we use. So essentially, say so you’re like a Twitter person and you are fucking into it. He was basically saying that like, you end up becoming someone who goes around life, like looking for an argument or someone who goes around life trying to say really snappy like bumper sticker type things because like you trying to reduce complex thoughts into like quick little snappy things that you would get likes on.

00:24:59:03 - 00:25:10:18 Gabrielle And if you’re an Instagram person, you go around life in a visual sense because you’re like, what would be a good place to take a photo? Or Where could I look best?

00:25:10:20 - 00:25:14:05 Zarina You looking for a handsome image in everything you see.

00:25:14:07 - 00:25:19:09 Gabrielle In everything! You want to be in handsome places, you want to travel to like – you know?

00:25:19:11 - 00:25:24:21 Zarina Yeah. Like it just gets absorbed into your value system, right? Because that’s what you’re looking at.

00:25:24:23 - 00:25:50:15 Gabrielle Your behaviour patterns, all of it. And that doesn’t even sound like a stretch to me. That sounds completely realistic too. Yeah. If you’re using this system every day, of course you’re going start to adapt to that system. Yeah, I don’t want that. And in the podcast, Ezra Klein was like,prompting the listener.

00:25:50:17 - 00:26:12:17 Gabrielle If that’s true, what platforms do you even want to be like? Like which ones do you want to use? I don’t want to be like Twitter. I don’t mind being on the more visual side of things, even though I’ve got so many problems with Instagram because like ultimately I think I do care more about art than I do arguments.

00:26:12:19 - 00:26:14:15 Gabrielle So fuck Twitter.

00:26:14:19 - 00:26:15:12 Zarina And I think –

00:26:15:12 - 00:26:16:19 Gabrielle I’m so done with it.

00:26:16:21 - 00:26:38:21 Zarina I think we we said this year on year that that way of reasoning and interacting with the world I think we’ve known between us as people that like Twitter is a busted place to exist. Like even professionally, we’ve not caught much actual value from it. Shall we delete the White Pube Twitter.?

00:26:38:23 - 00:27:05:11 Gabrielle Well, I’ve been meaning to have this conversation with you. Yeah, but like it’s so difficult. You don’t go on it. I go on it occasionally. I feel like it’s an obligation because we have a book deal and like, how mad would our publisher be if we were like, by the way, we don’t have Twitter.

00:27:05:13 - 00:27:18:23 Gabrielle How worth it is it to have the app all year and then to tell people in October, by the way, we’ve got a book and get like 30 likes, like actually who gives a shit? Like, I don’t know.

00:27:19:00 - 00:27:23:06 Zarina Twitter is a place where like authors go to hustle as well. Like it’s not –

00:27:23:06 - 00:27:23:20 Gabrielle It is.

00:27:24:00 - 00:27:27:24 Zarina People are not I mean, people are selling books on Instagram, but like.

00:27:28:01 - 00:27:39:13 Gabrielle I know that there is a book presence on Twitter and at the same time I’m like, I hope it doesn’t even exist come Autumn. I hope the app is gone.

00:27:39:15 - 00:27:50:17 Zarina I will say though, Do you remember The White Pube Twitter is archived on the British Library. In the British Library, online. That’s terrible.

00:27:50:23 - 00:27:51:24 Gabrielle Actually terrible.

00:27:52:04 - 00:27:57:16 Zarina The White Pube website and the White Pube Twitter, not Instagram. Isn’t that interesting?

00:27:57:18 - 00:28:08:04 Gabrielle It is interesting, but yeah, that is my like, horrible feeling. I’m done with it. I’ve made peace with it.

00:28:08:06 - 00:28:13:19 Zarina So like collectively out: Twitter, X.

00:28:13:21 - 00:28:19:08 Gabrielle And short form content I’m not allowed to watch any more. I’ve banned myself.

00:28:19:10 - 00:28:32:18 Zarina I’m not going to put tik-tok in Out this year. I’m saying this knowing full well that I might call it out next year or the year after that. But I just think there’s only so much you can keep taking out of your life.

00:28:32:20 - 00:28:33:08 Gabrielle Well.

00:28:33:09 - 00:28:34:15 Zarina

00:28:34:17 - 00:28:41:03 Gabrielle If you take those things out. This is what I’ve put back in: audiobooks.

00:28:41:05 - 00:28:42:22 Zarina I love an audio book!

00:28:42:24 - 00:29:11:16 Gabrielle Books are great, but like to have audiobooks specifically coming from my phone so that like I’ve diverted that feeling of like: I want entertainment from this device. Yeah, I’m listening to Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow at the moment by Gabrielle Zevin and like, it just feels right, even if it’s like 5 minutes while I’m making me breakfast in the morning and it’s just a quick 5 minutes.

00:29:11:20 - 00:29:13:12 Gabrielle Yeah.

00:29:13:14 - 00:29:39:08 Zarina This makes sense as well with, like, what you’ve said before, because I often find I’m like, I like listening to podcasts and I like listening to podcasts while I’m doing other things, like doing the house clean, and I wash my face in the morning and I often find myself scrolling Twitter and I need something to look at digitally.

00:29:39:10 - 00:29:53:22 Zarina You don’t need to look at things because you can look at your knitting! Yeah, right. Well, you don’t need to look at your knitting, you can do it with your eyes closed, but you should close your eyes and then feel with your hands.

00:29:53:24 - 00:30:17:15 Gabrielle Yeah, I’ve just got this feeling that, like in 30 years we’re going to look back at this time and be like, What the fuck were we doing? Like, trying to fill every moment with screens? And I’m like, the most guilty of that as I look in front of my dual screen set-up, I’ve got my phone and like, you know what I mean?

00:30:17:17 - 00:30:22:08 Gabrielle Yeah, those. I love that but what I’m realising

00:30:22:08 - 00:30:23:17 Zarina

00:30:23:19 - 00:30:35:08 Gabrielle Is like I had a love for the internet when I was 12, where I was like giddy with excitement to go on the Internet and like, I don’t feel that giddiness anymore.

00:30:35:09 - 00:30:41:20 Zarina You want to pare back your use so it feels special again. I understand that.

00:30:41:22 - 00:31:01:02 Gabrielle Exactly. I know. And also find what else makes me feel that specialness like if it’s a – okay, look at this cardigan I’ve knitted from beginning to end and do you like the buttons I’ve chosen. Like that has been a real giddiness. And just also spending time in haberdasheries.

00:31:01:02 - 00:31:03:18 Zarina Yeah.

00:31:03:20 - 00:31:17:07 Gabrielle They’re the fucking best place in the world and like when I was thinking about learning Spanish again, like reading, you know, the labels on things and there’s always, in this country,

00:31:17:12 - 00:31:17:23 Zarina yeah, yes.

00:31:17:23 - 00:31:27:06 Gabrielle The English version, the Spanish, the French, the Italian. Starting to read the Spanish bits out loud just to myself and like, enjoying the way Spanish sounds coming out of my mouth.

00:31:27:08 - 00:31:29:23 Zarina These are all interconnected, these ins and outs.

00:31:30:00 - 00:31:31:09 Gabrielle

00:31:31:09 - 00:31:59:19 Zarina This is great. We’re really telling a complete narrative with this. Like I’m a big fan. I’m very here for this version of Gabrielle that’s like screen-less but also joyful because that giddiness is so I dunno, that’s something that does feel like it’s missing a lot in life, like leisure time and like excitement, like the excitement that comes with like not being at work, like being fully in something that you’re like, fully enjoying.

00:31:59:19 - 00:32:06:10 Zarina It’s like that’s a kind of passion that’s very missing under late capitalism.

00:32:06:12 - 00:32:10:24 Gabrielle Yeah, go ‘ed, give me a quick fire run through of the rest of your ins and outs.

00:32:11:01 - 00:32:44:11 Zarina Okay? Okay. Getting ear wax scooped out of my ears. Checking the weather forecast. This is all in, by the way. Roast dinners. Weird keyrings. Jam, Caesar salad, lime bikes, iced coffee and, yeah, Vinted. Like finding a bargain on Vinted. I think I’m not quite done with the novelty of that being like, Yeah, I’m really lucky. I’ve got an eye. I keep finding bargains.

00:32:44:13 - 00:32:49:15 Zarina I love it. The thrill. It is a rush, but like, it’s a rush I don’t get from shopping.

00:32:49:17 - 00:32:59:12 Gabrielle Can I tell you my one find on Vinted that I can’t get over? So, do you know Lirika Matoshi?

00:32:59:14 - 00:32:59:18 Zarina

00:32:59:22 - 00:33:01:13 Gabrielle Have I showed you this?

00:33:01:15 - 00:33:03:06 Zarina Are you messing? No, go on.

00:33:03:09 - 00:33:06:00 Gabrielle I typed her name in just.

00:33:06:00 - 00:33:07:12 Gabrielle For a laugh.

00:33:07:14 - 00:33:12:13 Gabrielle Just for a laugh because I was like, there’s no way – she’s like a fucking cool designer.

00:33:12:15 - 00:33:12:18 Zarina

00:33:12:24 - 00:33:14:23 Gabrielle

00:33:15:00 - 00:33:15:18 Zarina Yeah.

00:33:15:20 - 00:33:27:11 Gabrielle And also, like, my body – I just never thought that she would even make things in my size because of, you know, fashion, let alone it being on Vinted.

00:33:27:13 - 00:33:31:05 Gabrielle And then I typed her name into Vinted.

00:33:31:07 - 00:34:03:18 Gabrielle And there was like two items. There was a dress, and it was like one of the big kind of poofy dresses that she’s known for. And then there was one knitted jumper in a size 18, and I was like, what the fuck? And it was I think it was like £75. But I offered 40 and the guy countered 50 and I said, Yeah, and it is so good, right?

00:34:03:19 - 00:34:04:13 Zarina Are you gonna whip it out?

00:34:04:13 - 00:34:08:12 Gabrielle If you’re watching the video version, then I’m so happy for you.

00:34:08:14 - 00:34:12:00 Zarina If you’re listening to the audio, shall I do an audio description of the jumper?

00:34:12:05 - 00:34:17:14 Gabrielle You can do an audio description and it’s got a T-shirt underneath, but that’s part of the effect.

00:34:17:16 - 00:34:26:10 Zarina Gabrielle is holding up like a… not navy blue. This is like a blue blue, like a cyan blue on screen.

00:34:26:10 - 00:34:29:24 Gabrielle No, it’s not cyan. It’s like a –

00:34:30:01 - 00:34:35:09 Zarina hyperlink blue. That’s the color.

00:34:35:11 - 00:34:44:23 Zarina Hyperlink, blue jumper. It’s knitted and it like pinches into like a weird knitted vortex cut-out shape of a crescent moon.

00:34:45:00 - 00:34:48:09 Gabrielle And the moon is a hole!

00:34:48:11 - 00:34:49:09 Zarina There’s a hole.

00:34:49:11 - 00:34:57:13 Gabrielle And the sleeves are so long, it’s got thumb holes in the sleeves and it’s got like a merino fluffiness to.

00:34:57:13 - 00:35:05:03 Zarina It is gorgeous I was too busy describing it to appreciate it. That’s beautiful. Good. That’s a beautiful jumper.

00:35:05:05 - 00:35:07:00 Gabrielle Go on. Quick fire Outs.

00:35:07:02 - 00:35:08:23 Zarina Um.

00:35:09:00 - 00:35:09:15 Gabrielle If you’ve got them.

00:35:09:16 - 00:35:19:07 Zarina Quick fire outs. Yes, I have. Snoozing my alarm, claw clips, bun headaches, period poos, tote bags, Adidas sambas and Salomon’s.

00:35:19:09 - 00:35:23:22 Gabrielle Claw clips is such a good one. I’m so sick of them.

00:35:23:24 - 00:35:36:12 Zarina I hate claw clipping. It’s become like my go to lazy hairstyle and I’m fucking done with it. Plaits. Two plaits. I’m going to become a two plaits girl, you’re gonna see me looking like Pippi Longstocking in 2024.

00:35:36:12 - 00:35:41:13 Gabrielle I’m becoming a two bun girl. Because like, as soon as I do it, it makes me feel good.

00:35:41:15 - 00:35:51:19 Zarina So my issue is like I get because bun headaches, as you note, is on my out list – I get really bad bun headaches from one bun.

00:35:52:01 - 00:35:54:07 Gabrielle I do but I just put up with them.

00:35:54:09 - 00:36:17:19 Zarina They’re on my out list. I’m not dealing with it. And it’s just the minor bodily inconvenience of like getting a headache because of your hair – like, the minor bodily inconvenience is like the big overriding feeling of the majority of this quickfire Out list, period poos, hate them. I hate them because I feel like I’m shitting against my will. No more.

00:36:18:00 - 00:36:19:12 Gabrielle How are you going to stop that?

00:36:19:16 - 00:36:25:03 Zarina I’m just over it. I’m just gonna declare myself over it, and then it’s done.

00:36:25:07 - 00:36:26:16 Gabrielle And then hope it doesn’t happen again.

00:36:26:19 - 00:36:34:19 Zarina Yeah. Tote bags, the minor bodily inconvenience of like a little strap sliding down my shoulder. Fuck off.

00:36:34:21 - 00:36:35:06 Gabrielle Yeah.

00:36:35:08 - 00:36:42:07 Zarina Get in the bin. And then also I forgot to mention this one: eczema. Out.

00:36:42:09 - 00:36:46:11 Gabrielle I love this will, this body will to change.

00:36:46:12 - 00:36:47:04 Zarina How you.

00:36:47:06 - 00:36:48:24 Gabrielle Work physiologically.

00:36:48:24 - 00:37:00:12 Zarina I’m going to manifest it. I’m simply choosing to transcend. I declare it out, therefore – eczema generally, but specifically my neck eczema. Neczema.

00:37:00:13 - 00:37:02:20 Gabrielle

00:37:02:22 - 00:37:08:05 Zarina Eczema. Out. I’m over it. I declare myself healed.

00:37:08:07 - 00:37:36:09 Gabrielle Speaking of sickness, very quickly, one of my outs, which is a bit more abstract, is like losing track of time because I spend so much time inside and a lot of time in bed. I am very familiar with crip time and the surrealism of never knowing what happened when. I am sick to death of people saying to me, God, that only happened two weeks ago.

00:37:36:09 - 00:37:45:18 Gabrielle But for me it feels like three months ago or whatever the case is – I don’t want that to happen anymore. So like what I’m trying to do to

00:37:45:18 - 00:37:47:01 Zarina

00:37:47:03 - 00:38:09:09 Gabrielle counter it is, on notion, I found a template for a habit tracker, so I’m just keeping track of like – not necessarily because I want to try and create good habits or lose bad habits. I just want to know what my habits are. So I can see what I did when. I don’t want a detailed diary, I just want some data.

00:38:09:11 - 00:38:12:18 Gabrielle And yes, I think that will help me ground in time.

00:38:12:20 - 00:38:32:16 Zarina Do you know what, I fucking love that. Because unlike my necezma-out where I’m just declaring we’re done with it culturally, you’ve broken this down into like a tangible step you can take. Data.

00:38:32:16 - 00:39:01:15 Gabrielle And one thing I’m really happy with about 2023 is I downloaded the one second every day app and like just took one second of video every day and it meant that come, you know, 31st of December I could export a six minute long video and see my entire year. And even if a lot of it was just me in bed, there was some really good bits and it meant that I could like have a general sense of when things happened, which like I’m sure other people are very good at. I’ve lost the skill.

00:39:01:17 - 00:39:10:24 Zarina Are you going to do a second a day again for 2024 or was that just a one year off?

00:39:11:01 - 00:39:22:14 Gabrielle I’ve started it already. It’s happening. It’s just like ingrained into me now. I have like an alarm set for like 3 p.m. ish and I just have it going. I should take today’s second live on the video actually

00:39:22:17 - 00:39:24:18 Zarina Shall I flash?

00:39:24:18 - 00:39:40:21 Gabrielle Don’t flash. Okay, perfect. Thank you. I really recommend that people downloaded it. The ads are a bit annoying and they’ve gotten more annoying as I got close to the end of the and which I’m really resentful of because –

00:39:40:23 - 00:39:43:02 Zarina Do you have to watch the ad to take the clip?

00:39:43:04 - 00:39:43:23 Gabrielle No, no, no.

00:39:43:23 - 00:39:46:15 Zarina But then you can add that to the Out list. Ads.

00:39:46:17 - 00:40:10:11 Gabrielle Ads are out. Ads have been out for maybe a while. I, I actually don’t have the stomach for them anymore. Like growing up on the Internet and like living through Putlocker and all of the other bullshit. We had to get used to having our time taken away from us with adverts. No more.

00:40:10:13 - 00:40:27:22 Zarina Just before we broke for Christmas I was speaking to a friend of mine in the office. We were talking about like, screen time, like the screen time breakdown on, like all phones. And the second week of December, I spent 13 hours a week on Twitter.

00:40:27:24 - 00:40:30:15 Gabrielle That’s actually like, that’s actually too much time.

00:40:30:15 - 00:40:33:16 Zarina That’s an entire day, a waking day.

00:40:33:18 - 00:40:35:03 Gabrielle That’s a waking day.

00:40:35:05 - 00:40:36:15 Zarina

00:40:36:15 - 00:40:38:13 Gabrielle Do you remember anything from that week?

00:40:38:17 - 00:40:42:22 Zarina No, and that was me consciously cutting back.

00:40:42:24 - 00:40:44:08 Gabrielle You need to delete Twitter. I’m judging you.

00:40:44:10 - 00:41:09:19 Zarina I, I was judging me. This was like the beginning. I mentioned this to be like, to make the point about ads because imagine if screen time tracked the amount of time you had spent looking at an ad not just on your phone, but like on your laptop, on telly. I think we would feel disgusted because it’s nonconsenual.

00:41:09:21 - 00:41:15:06 Gabrielle Do you know what’s in? Pirating.

00:41:15:06 - 00:41:16:24 Zarina Pirating has never been out, quite frankly.

00:41:17:01 - 00:41:21:20 Gabrielle Do you know what’s out? Subscriptions. All subscriptions out. In: pirating.

00:41:21:22 - 00:41:29:02 Zarina And I would like to watch more films. Film clubs are in.

00:41:29:04 - 00:41:37:14 Gabrielle Oh my God, this is what I’ve been waiting to talk about. Okay. Films are in this year for me as well.

00:41:37:20 - 00:41:52:06 Zarina I’ve just decided to lean in. I’ve got Mubi. Better than Netflix. I don’t pay for Netflix anymore. No more Netflix. Yeah, this is my only streaming service, Mubi.. We’re going highbrow. I want to watch good films.

00:41:52:08 - 00:42:09:16 Gabrielle I’m going higher-brow than that. This is my announcement: I have gotten into musicals, not post-millennium musicals. I’m talking 1950s. I’m in love with Gene Kelly.

00:42:09:18 - 00:42:15:06 Gabrielle Have you seen anything he’s been in before?

00:42:15:08 - 00:42:36:20 Gabrielle So me and my boyfriend, I was talking to him about in and out, and this like trend everyone’s doing and he was saying his out is menu screens and like having to decide what to pick. He was like, I don’t want to waste my time going through all of these menu screens on all these different apps because like, it’s just infuriating.

00:42:37:00 - 00:43:00:08 Gabrielle And I agree. I never, ever feel like browsing Netflix because like the mechanism as you go through and the way it flashes and it starts playing like the trailer and it flashes and it flashes like irritates me so much. So we were like, you know what, let’s just watch classics like Let’s only – we didn’t even use the word classics –

00:43:00:08 - 00:43:07:06 Gabrielle We said, Let’s only watch masterpieces, let’s only watch the films everyone thinks is a masterpiece.

00:43:07:08 - 00:43:07:23 Zarina Fuckin yes.

00:43:07:24 - 00:43:08:18 Gabrielle Fuck the rest of it.

00:43:08:18 - 00:43:15:07 Zarina The wording of that: we chose to only watch masterpieces. Yeah, iconic.

00:43:15:09 - 00:43:18:02 Gabrielle Singin in the Rain 1952.

00:43:18:04 - 00:43:19:04 Zarina Yeah.

00:43:19:06 - 00:43:30:19 Gabrielle I’ve watched it. An American in Paris made the year before. We’ve watched it – like films where people tap dance, I will watch.

00:43:30:21 - 00:43:38:22 Zarina When you said that you’re in love with Gene Kelly, I went to Google him. I thought you meantt the guy who played Willy Wonka in the original.

00:43:38:24 - 00:44:02:19 Gabrielle fuck off. That’s Gene Wilder. No, Gene Kelly. I actually don’t even love him to look at. It’s only when he’s moving. I think I just fancy people who tap dance, and who undress well, the clothes, the colours – the fact that so much of the films are like, really well painted sets. Like, it’s obviously before CGI.

00:44:02:19 - 00:44:05:08 Zarina It’s like the same way it would look on stage.

00:44:05:08 - 00:44:27:10 Gabrielle Yeah, it’s so romantic and I know I’ve only seen two of them so far but in both An American in Paris and Singin in the Rain, it’s like, Here’s a story. We’re gonna give you the first act, we’re going to give you the second act and then we’re not going to give you a third act. We’re just going to give you like a kind of dream sequence dance number.

00:44:27:12 - 00:44:45:03 Gabrielle And then at the very end, everything’s fine. And there isn’t really a third act because, trust us. Everything’s worked itself out. It is so surreal as a structure for a film. And we went to see The Boy and the Heron yesterday in the cinema.

00:44:45:05 - 00:44:45:14 Zarina yeah.

00:44:45:15 - 00:44:57:09 Gabrielle And like the fact that the Boy and The Heron, which is a Ghibli film, it sort of follows the same – here’s the first act, here’s the second act. Now it’s Fantasia.

00:44:57:11 - 00:45:04:24 Zarina All I wanna see now: masterpieces.

00:45:05:07 - 00:45:26:12 Zarina I was thinking about this going into like the New Year and thinking about what I wanted to write about, what I, what I wanted to try and reverse engineer in terms of my reviews. Like I wanted to write something about I wanted to write a review about how I was so blown away by like the sheer scale and spectacle of something like mind blowing, mind boggling.

00:45:26:18 - 00:45:43:16 Zarina I’m going to sound like like Henry VIII, like some impetuous Renaissance king because I think I just I just want to experience that Fantasia Act three, unhinged from any sense of reality and plot. Only masterpieces.

00:45:43:20 - 00:45:46:03 Gabrielle You’re gonna get into musicals as well, it’s gonna be so good.

00:45:46:05 - 00:45:58:02 Zarina There’s something psychologically holding me back from being all the way in on that. I think it’s just the sentence” I’ve got into musicals recently.

00:45:58:04 - 00:45:59:00 Gabrielle Yeah, but it’s not the bad ones though.

00:45:59:01 - 00:45:59:21 Zarina No judgments.

00:46:00:02 - 00:46:00:15 Gabrielle It’s not like –

00:46:00:15 - 00:46:00:24 Zarina No shaming.

00:46:00:24 - 00:46:07:15 Gabrielle Theater kid musicals. It’s like, your Nan musicals. Oh my God. It’s so much better.

00:46:07:16 - 00:46:08:17 Zarina Mmm.

00:46:09:15 - 00:46:13:11 Gabrielle I really feel like we’ve regressed generationally in this podcast.

00:46:13:13 - 00:46:19:23 Zarina Do we sound 70 years old because we’ve said:

00:46:19:24 - 00:46:21:14 Gabrielle

00:46:21:16 - 00:46:28:17 Zarina Clothes are not as well-made as they used to be. All these kids and their apps and their scrolling.

00:46:28:17 - 00:46:30:03 Gabrielle And I’m in love with Gene Kelly.

00:46:35:13 - 00:46:44:11 Zarina I think there’s nothing wrong with that. I will say this again, we’re going to be 30 this year. We’ve got no brain plasticity left.

00:46:44:13 - 00:46:48:04 Gabrielle It’s gone. And your lungs are fully developed.

00:46:48:06 - 00:46:49:10 Zarina Exactly.

00:46:49:12 - 00:46:58:08 Gabrielle Thank you so much for listening. We’ll back next week with our first text of the year. And that’s it.

00:46:58:10 - 00:46:59:08 Zarina That’s it.

00:46:59:10 - 00:47:04:10 Gabrielle You’ve got no obligation to do absolutely fucking anything after the end of this podcast.

00:47:04:11 - 00:47:22:06 Zarina No, I would like I actually would like to hear other people’s ins and outs because I’m just nosey. I would like to hear yours dear listener, watcher, viewer, reader. I would like to know yours but address it only to me, not to Gabrielle.

00:47:22:08 - 00:47:29:02 Gabrielle Okay. Thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.