Welcome back to our weekly round-up of the long reads on the web that are worth the investment. If you want to make sure you don’t miss future Global Comment content, don’t forget to sign up to our newsletter right at the bottom of this post.
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Now, the links you’re here for:
I’m a 37-Year-Old Mom & I Spent Seven Days Online as an 11-Year-Old Girl. Here’s What I Learned (Sloane Ryan, Medium)
By the end of two-and-a-half hours, I’ve had seven video calls, ignored another two dozen of them, text-chatted with 17 men (some who had messaged her before, gearing back up in hopes for more interaction), and seen the genitalia of 11 of those. I’ve also fielded (and subsequently denied) multiple requests for above-the-waist nudity (in spite of being clear that Bailey’s breasts have not yet developed) and below-the-waist nudity.
Skinny Bitch Collective: The unconventional exercise class with a controversial name (Emma Cluley, BBC)
Described as ‘animalistic’ in online comments, the pace was quick. With no equipment besides gravity, your bodyweight, and that of your class-mates, it left participants wondering ‘what’s coming next?’
Just as the name was extreme, so was the content. A former editor of The Cut also attended a class and wrote: “My partner was a girl from Italy who punched me in the stomach on Bateman’s command. As we took turns treating each other’s abs like punching bags, she cheered me on: ‘Don’t worry, you can do it harder!'”
An addict, a nurse, and a Christmas resurrection (Suzanne Ohlmann, Longreads)
This is the danger of trying to look for a silver lining in the realm of intensive care, or deciding your patients look like the Lord. Every connection you make between a patient and something familiar to you, even something ridiculous like a celebrity or a religious figure, makes you more connected to them as a person, and thus an intimacy is born, and thus the sense of loss greater when, as often happens, they die.
Lockdown: Living through the era of school shootings, one drill at a time (Elizabeth Van Brocklin, The Trace)
Some of them are laughing and cracking jokes, some of them are just messing around, and some of them are just standing like robots. It’s very unorganized, the drills. We were talking and then there was a moment of silence for a straight minute, and it was really creepy. I’m thinking: Are we ever going to get up? Is the teacher ever going to say anything?
After the drill at recess I just didn’t do anything, I just sat there and thought about everything. I thought there was going to be more action. We could have done a lot more than just sat there the whole time.
“You’re My Present This Year”: An Oral History of the Folgers Incest Ad (Gabriella Paiella, GQ)
When I first saw the ad, I thought: wait, are they fucking? (Then, every time after that: okay, they’re definitely fucking.) As I would come to learn, I was hardly alone. The reaction to the ad was an example of the internet at its most fun—the phenomenon of collectively realizing that the specific thing that you believed you’ve singularly noticed is actually a widely-held opinion. Memes, articles, and parody videos abounded. It even inspired a genre of vividly-rendered fan fiction known as “Folgerscest.”
Image credit: Tom Lee