I used flip phone for a month and heres what i learnt
Learning about the dumbphone movement
We live in a world reliant on smart phones. My iPhone is almost always next to me or in my hand and feels like an extension of self. I feel like a cyborg. My iPhone is a part of my hand that is a burden of the self. After watching The Matrix half asleep on vallium on the plane back from Malaysia i redpilled myself. BUT NOT IN THE INCEL WAY. I wish this term didnt get hijacked by incels becauyse its honestly so real. I know i sound like a cooker and everyone watched The Matrix like 20 years ago but i didnt. I always knew that the world we live in relies on us to submit and keep our brains asleep but i puih it down, we all do.
After seeing Kreayshawn and my friend Gemmy (substack @ gemmygotchi) using dumb phones I decided to research. I bought the HMD barbie flipphone on boxing day sales. When i went to click and collect the woman working at JB said over the PA system multiple times CLICK AND COLLECT FOR THE BARBIE PHONE. THE BARBIE PHONE. HYPHENATED LAST NAME FOR THE BARBIE PHONE.
Thanks for exposing me queen!
The HMD Barbie fliphone retails at $199 at JB or $149 at BIG W. i Purchased it from JB for $50.
KEY FEATURES
- Screen: 2.8" internal and 1.77" external screens
- Camera: VGA camera with torch as flash
- Battery: 1450 mAh battery delivering up to 9 hours of talk time
Pros -
Texting became intentional and not a constanty stream of conciousness, typing on a.liphione is hard but i low key have the muscle memory of the keyboard even though i never had one. I remeber playing games on my dads as a kid though
Sometimes iots nice to send messages to people throughout the day but sometimes its nice to have a break. Messenger group chats canm be accessed on a laptop or on my iPhone in a place with wifi
I started paying attention to the world around me. I dont remember the last time i was on a tram or train and actuallhy took in what was around me until i got rid of my iPhone temporarily. You also start to notice how engrossed everyone is on their phones. Feeling morally superior but also bored. I did many 50 minute East Pakenham line train rides withiut ineternet.
Radio - I have a CD Player/radio/casette at home in my room that i don t use oftenm bugt I alkways intend to. The radio is a great way to listen to old men talk abiout sport, young people talk about nothing or find new local music.
Cons -
Typing is hard as fuck when you’re drunk or need to send a long message.
Forcing myself to call someone cant always work. eg its not appropriate/proffesional to call your boss about somethuing that can be a medium length text
E- scripts. The phone juses the opera mini browser and this does not open e-scripts. You can get e scripts emailed or go back to paper but if yiure like me, as soon as a picee of paper comnes into my posessionits lost. When I got texted scripts bnefore I realsied Opera Mini wont open them I I just took a photo of the text message and copied the link into my iPhone when i had WiFi and screenshot the QR code.
No Uber or Didi. I could have called cabs but to be honest a lot of cabs wont use a metre, it feels unreliable and I’m so used top the convenience of Uber.
QR Codes. You can’t scan QR Codes. Boomers are valid for getting mad at QR Code menu ordering because give me my fucking paper menu! QR codes are used almost evrywhere - to sign into tattoo parlours, film labs (some niche examples because i am an #artist)
Music streaming. As I said before it has the radio but ads and talk shows can suck. I’m thinking about trying to use my old iPod.
In conclusion I felt really connected to the world around me, my friends, my family and nature. Hoiwveer this type of phone is hard to use in the digitized world we live in. I want to look into getting a dumb phone that can juse ubver and scan qr codes though. I currently feel super disconnceted from the world around me.
Thoughts on The Manosphere by Louis Theroux
I wasn’t going to watch manosphere but I did. I thought that these men didnt need any more platforming and wondered why he had made this. It seems too late. With the internet and YouTube and video essays etc Louis Theroux’s documentaries are viewed in a different context. TV is a dying art to most people (not me i fucking love my idiot box) I saw comments on TikTok cuts of the doco saying it felt like an introduction and a part one. I agree. It seemed like a superficial analysis of misogyny culture. Louis phrased it in a way calling the brainwashing and lifestyle of these men and boys an ‘Algorithmic’ prison. I think we are all stuck in an algorithmic prison to be honest. Even myself. Sometimes I interact with fuck men get money make him pay for dinner content(cos it’s true) and then sometimes my algorithm starts turning into the same misogynist algorithm that these men probably consume. Men used to go to war. Men should be providers. I’m in my soft girl era. I want a man to lead. Why do you want a man to lead you? They never know what the fuck they’re doing they just speak with an air of authority and conviction cos no one’s ever told them to shut the Fck up
The will to change by Bell Hooks is a book I read a few chapters of and then put down because I couldn’t stop crying cos I just realised how entrenched the patriarchy is into all of us. Even me! And you!
The main guy talks about not having a father and it’s glaringly obvious to everybody but him that he holds these beliefs because of his childhood. It’s not only childhood but environment and when we are in algorithmic prisons and social media addiction what do you expect to happen? Even his mother was telling him off in the documentary and you could see he ALMOST connected the dots but nope.
Censorship online has escalated since the FOSTA/SESTA bill from the US in 2018. This bill was meant to target human trafficking but due to the criminalisatoon of sex work in the USA human trafficking and work have been blended into one thing and peoples work accounts, backpage(ad website) were taken down. This kind of censorship affects everybody not just fssw and if it hasn’t effected you yet it will. Even artists have their work taken down for depicting the human body. Women are so heavily censored and not misogynists. Which is why I have a problem with platforming these men and not really coming to any new conclusion.
When men consistently don’t pull each other up, don’t upstand. Being a bystander is why women get murdered. Rosie battys struggles with police.
Online memes that lead into darkness. The matrix you’re escaping is the ones these criminals have created. Andrew Tate human trafficking.
Andrew Tate “bdsm” video is like my ex beating me and I thought I liked it but I was in domestic violence.
what am i doing with my life low key
some thoughts after 6 years of study (April 2026)
I started writing this in February and picked it back up in March. Now it is April. I have found it hard to write and create without deadlines and the threat of academic failure. It has been 5 months since I finished art school, university, a bachelor’s degree. I’ve felt good not having things to do, but also felt bad not having things to do. I find myself thinking I should be creating while I have the free time. Or I should be relaxing while I have the time. In 2023-2025 I really found myself, made lifelong connections and learned so much. I entered the degree thinking I would stick to myself and I’m here to learn not to make friends. I eventually learnt that collaboration is a pinnacle of art and the opinions of peers are invaluable. I constantly found myself resistant to social interaction and now I miss it. It’s 2026. What the fuck am I doing. I cant get a job. I should just say fuck it and party but then i remember i have little money because i can’t get a job. Also there was the low key year long drug and alcohol addiction in 2024 ish. I thought i would fail my degree. I passed,with decent to surprisingly good grades. Now I feel that I should be making art, stress free. I dont have any deadlines now and I can do whatever I want, especially with how little im working. I just dont feel like it though. Maybe I am depressed. I tried to draw a flower in a bouquet but i didnt finish it. I guess at least I’m writing right now. I have been collaging and writing poetry mostly lately. I miss having a studio. I cant make mess in my lounge room and I dont want to get paint on my parents garden furniture. Hit me up if you wanna studio sesh (yours :p). ANYWAY FIRST ARTICLE
Sam Levinson has a teenage girl vomit fetish
We didn’t need another season of Euphoria
April 2026The drug pellet scene is fetish porn. I saw an interview of Chloe Cherry talking after being asked how she felt after that scene and its like, havent you guys seen her porn? Her porn scenes are hot but like cmon bro this TELEVISION scene is giving fetish porn. After they swallow the pellets when Faye is farting in the car its giving fetish porn too… I feel like regular people who havent seen the depths of weird fetoish porn are not seeing this…
Its shock for the sake of shocking.
Jacob elordi makes me horny in a way that makes me yearn for my second boyfriend to beat me again
Sydney sweeney is a registered republican and thinks the arts isn’t involved in politics
Cassie is shown in a humilating way. Making content and SW can feel like that but who is Sam Levinson to direct and show that? Hasn’t this mf heard nothing about us, without us. Especially when he ends the scene with Elordi and Sweeney about to fuck.
The ridiculousness of it all, we live in a matrix (sorry im a cooker I dont care)
Levinson is seemingly trying to show that all of this is evil but by doing that is contributing and perpetuating it…
Anyway I’ll write something else when i watch the second episode
I’m not writing about Euphoria anymore
Thoughts on episode 2
(May 2026)I wanna go to the strip club!
It never quite felt like it did in high school, too much had happened between us
It trukly never feekls like before and with that quote Euphoria really does hit home.
So desperate for attention she’s willing to humiliate herself - how Levinson views sws.
The Cassie baby scene is only like two seconds but to be honest Sam Levinson probably froths it. Way more guys than they wanna admit froth it.
He’s gettng the attention he wants and making money from this now. That is all x