u/Bright-Degree-7922

A couple of days ago, I was cooking and accidentally spilled some oil on my phone. Some of it ended up getting into the speakers. I wiped everything down, but afterward the audio was noticeably muffled and I figured I had probably ruined them.

On a whim, I put the hose of my vacuum near the speaker to see if it could pull any of the oil back out. To my surprise, it actually worked. Oil started coming out, I wiped it away, and my speakers immediately sounded normal again.

I don’t want to go into too much detail, but I have a cousin who is the same age as me, and we grew up together. My mom was always really big on hygiene while I was growing up. She taught me how to shower properly, scrub, what soaps to use, which areas need more attention, how often to change towels, the importance of wearing clean clothes, and so on. Basically she taught me all the little things that seem like common sense now but are actually things someone has to learn as a kid.

My cousin, on the other hand, was never really taught any of that. Whenever we would hang out, she had a noticeable smell. It wasn’t overwhelming; she just never really smelled clean,a bit musty/dirty. Whenever I went to her house, it had a similar smell, and that side of the family in general wasn’t very clean. When we were younger, she would take a shower at my house and still come out smelling pretty much the same, which confused me.

As I got older, I realized she probably genuinely didn’t know how to wash herself properly because nobody had taught her. You can tell a kid to take a shower every day, but that doesn’t mean they know what they’re supposed to do once they’re in there. A lot of basic hygiene seems obvious when you’ve been taught it your whole life, but it really isn’t.
Now that we’re both in our early twenties, I don’t want her to go through life feeling self-conscious or having other people notice her smell without telling her. At the same time, I don’t want to embarrass or offend her. I’m not sure how to bring it up kindly, especially because I care about her and don’t want her to feel judged. How can I tell her that she may need to pay more attention to her hygiene/how to scrub in the shower without making her feel ashamed?

Long rant, but I was thinking about this recently, and it’s crazy to me how narcissistic this new generation of content creators has become. You could have the worst thing imaginable happen to you, like losing a child in a preventable accident, and still not be able to put the damn phone down and stop filming every aspect of your life for money and engagement.

There are kids now who aspire to become youtubers and tiktok creators and I think that severely warps what they grow up believing is normal, which I believe is the case with Emilie. Kids are watching adults turn every private moment into entertainment and learning that your value comes from how much of yourself you’re willing to give strangers. I think it’s fundamentally changing the way people experience real life. The older generation generally treated social media as something they did. The newer generation treats it as who they are. Their identity, income, relationships, self worth,etc are all tied to being online.

Jenna Marbles is the first examples that comes to mind of the opposite mindset. She walked away from one of the biggest platforms on the internet over something that, while deserving of criticism, wasn’t even remotely comparable to losing a child due to negligence. She removed herself because she no longer felt comfortable having that platform. Compare that to today, where some influencers are physically incapable of stopping the constant documenting of their lives regardless of what happens. At the same time they insist nobody should comment on their lives even though they’ve spent years monetizing every aspect of them and exploit their children too. They monetize their reality and every experience only has value because they can post and generate money from it. So why bother with basic water safety measures like pool fences, properly installed door locks, alarms, and life vests when you have a massive pool in your backyard or you’re boating in the middle of the ocean, if they ruin the aesthetic of your content?

The motivations are fundamentally different. Most of the original youtubers didn’t start making videos because they wanted to become celebrities. They made content because they enjoyed it and the fame came after. Relationships became content. Children became content. Vacations became content. Eventually even grief and exploiting unimaginable tragedy to pay off your multi-million dollar home became content. I genuinely can’t describe it any other way than disgusting. We’re at a genuinely disturbing place for society to be.

I just paid $1,700 to finish paying off my phones so I could finally unlock them and port my numbers back to a real carrier. From start to finish, I was lied to repeatedly by customer service representatives. It was a struggle just to cancel the service and transfer the lines. The price we were originally quoted is nowhere near what we actually ended up paying. We were not put on the plan that was agreed upon either. It took fighting them for two hours and playing back the recorded phone call for them to apply the plan they offered and was agreed upon. Even then, they said we would only be only that plan for 6 months! The service is extremely unreliable, and the customer service reps will gaslight you and tell you whatever they need to keep you from leaving. I used 100GB in a month at my previous carrier and somehow went through 50GB in two days at optimum mobile and was CONSTANTLY throttled. The service was absolute shit.

Save yourself the stress, wasted time, and frustration. Look elsewhere.