One of my favorite things about the social media age is how platforms like Youtube, TikTok, and podcasts give people a chance to turn their special and sometimes very specific niche interests into an entire dream career.

Like Angela Trimbur (not pictured in this video), who runs her own BalletCore Dance Class in NYC where she literally just makes up hilarious and super fun dance routines to her favorite ballet or ballet-like music:

Or Caroline Stern, who started doing fun, approachable content about the Niche Luxury Hot Girl aesthetic. She then began channelling that into her favorite obsession, which is perfume, and now she has this whole career in the scent space:

Or my faves, Dakota and Jackson, who have legit become social media stars JUST from telling us what they ordered at a restaurant:

I just really dig that stuff. Sometimes I try to think of what really weird, niche-y, specific thing I love that I could talk about for hours and therefore turn into career-making content, and honestly the only real answer I’ve been able to come up with so far is myself 🤗

So…this newsletter is it, I guess. Just gotta keep talking about myself on every available platform and wait to hit the big time!!!

And like…I’m joking, but also…I have this project that I’ve been playing around with for a while now. Some of you might remember the amberl.carter project on IG and Facebook, where I started posting a sort of “life story” series:

I HATE when memoirs start with being born, then slowly ramble through childhood. I don’t CARE what someone was like as a kid! Could they date? Could they rent their own penthouse apartment? Climb ruthlessly to the top of the most glamorous agency in the city? Attend glittering balls with men who resembled Ken dolls? No? Then I don’t wanna hear about it!! Just skip to the bits where they start having illicit affairs with troubled heiresses and spare me the tedious details of the long, boring, powerless waiting period known as “childhood.”⠀⠀⠀

This is also how I feel about my own childhood, tbh. I hated being a kid. Thus, it’s logical to assume that I also hated being a baby. Probably the only thing I even remotely liked about babyhood was getting lots of undeserved attention, and I can only surmise this because it’s something I still enjoy as an adult. But I can’t tell you that for sure, because babies don’t know anything! They also can’t do anything - especially not anything exciting, like heroically saving someone from a fire or beating the odds by winning the Olympic gold - and they can’t be anything except a mewling, helpless, boring old baby. They have no imagination, no skills, and no interesting hobbies.⠀

In short, babies are losers.

So why would anyone wanna waste time on baby and kid stories when they could jump ahead instead to hot hallway make-outs and sweet, cold revenge? Beats me! I’m definitely not keen to hear about yours, and you probably won’t be all that interested in mine.

And yet...the thing is...for something like this, we truly must begin at the start. The very very start. Even the born’ing part.⠀⠀⠀⠀

And so.

Let's begin.

🎷🎷Song: The Logical Song by Supertramp 🎷🎷

I stopped because…well, I don’t remember. I think I started the TEoTB project, which had to come first because it had an actual deadline, and so I just didn’t have time to do both.

But since then, I keep thinking of this idea I have, where I wipe out my whole Instagram, start from scratch, and use the platform to basically document my life story and the culture that made me say “culture is for me” (#lasculturistas). And not necessarily because I think my life story is particularly important, but because I think it could be a really interesting use of that particular platform.

Also, when I was posting the above project to that particular IG account and my Facebook Page (OMG, did you want to Like and Follow? That’s so nice of you!!), one of the unintended but really fantastic outcomes was having a bunch of relatives and people I didn’t even know comment on the photos and share their own memories. For one instance in particular, I posted photos of my two sets of grandparents and talked about how I barely knew my dad’s parents, since my Grandma Gladys passed away before I was born, and we didn’t really spend a lot of time with Grandpa Jim. I was so moved by the stories and memories my extended family shared:

Like, imagine never really knowing your grandparents and then you get to read all of this gorgeously detailed stuff about them from family members, distant relatives, and friends of theirs??? That is fuckin’ BEAUTIFUL.

We talk a lot about the dangers and downsides of social media, and those negative aspects are real and they exist, but every once in a while, social media proves that it can be a masterful tool for building connection, establishing legacy, and preserving memory.

And…I don’t know. We’ve talked a lot these past handful of months about mortality and legacy and making the mark you want to leave on the world, and how that’s become increasingly important to me. I think the true crux at the bottom of it all, though, is that I truly believe with every cell in my body that it’s our experiences (and how we interpreted them) that are the real gift we give to the humankind and the collective consciousness, if we are only brave enough to share them. There are so many people I know whose stories are so valuable and brave and entertaining and beautiful, and I am DYING for them to start writing everything down so that one day they can be turned into something that can be shared with the greater world. It drives me crazy to think that one day they might pass without ever getting around to it, and then those stories will be lost forever to the ether.

And so maybe I go first.

I don’t know exactly when I’ll start rolling out this little project - I’ve started archiving my IG posts, and I’ve already gotten some stuff written and ready to go thanks to the previously-existing amberl.carter IG account. The whole thing is a massive undertaking, though, that fills me with overwhelm every time I think about it, and I’ve got all these other writing projects that I committed to completing this year, as well, so while I’m anxious to get started, I’m also trying to just take it bit by bit.

So that’s a thing that’s coming up.

Legacy, y’all. I’m so freaking horny for it right now!

A Return to Blogging

Also in the spirit of informing and keeping you up to speed on what I’m into, I think this will be the last big long-form newsletter that I send out (not including the Bach recaps).

I have been struggling a lot with the newsletter format lately…I hate trying to stuff everything into a newsletter once a week, and sometimes it feels like my life and brain moves so fast that by the time I update you on the doings of the past week, it’s so old news that it feels like there’s no point in even talking about it anymore.

I kept thinking about how much I missed the old days of blogging, and how I could write five posts a day and it wouldn’t bug anyone because I wasn’t invading their email inbox with each post; people could just read them at their leisure whenever they wanted, and if they signed up for RSS alerts, well, then…that was on them. Like, I know it’s a real actual thing that people unsubscribe every single time you send out a newsletter (and also I have a STELLAR open rate which is way better than a sub count, so thank you to everyone who opens these…I love you so much and tenderly appreciate every single one of you reading this), but I have to work really hard to not take that personally because one of my big shadows is being annoying, and so when someone unsubs from this newsletter I automatically am like, “oh of course, because I am the most annoying person in the world and this person has finally had enough which is yet another confirmation that people only want to stick around if I pretend to be super cool by staying super quiet.” Like, right? So then that makes me not want to write and send out newsletters, even though every single thing inside of me literally thrives on connection through writing and sharing and laughing.

And ALSO. I am not a “niche down” person…there are so many different things that I love to talk and write about. And while I embrace and stand behind all the parts of me, I struggle with sending out a newsletter that’s primarily about my life one week and then a newsletter that’s about pop culture or spirituality the next week. Sometimes I’m like, “Fucking deal with it - we contain multitudes!!!” and other times I’m like, “Yeah, it’s also pretty annoying to me when I signed up for a person’s newsletter to hear about this one thing and yet this person keeps writing me about this other thing.” Because I DO actually really care about the fact that you’re essentially inviting me into your email inbox every week, and so it’s important to me that I pay you back for that precious time and space with something of value to you.

So this week I decided that I wanted to start doing things differently. I’m gonna write all the things I wanna write about on my little website, and then every week I’ll write you a lil’ life update via this newsletter that includes links to all the other stuff I’ve been thinking + writing about, and you can decide to read or not read those things at your leisure! Cute, right?

Also incredibly revolutionary. I don’t know anyone else ever who has done something like this, except maybe 50% of all the people whose newsletters I read on a regular basis!

I’m a late bloomer, guys, okay? Gimme a break!

Speaking of, let’s start right here right now:

Just a casual 3 min slide show of all my mom's most precious family moments to celebrate her on Mother's Day, no big deal!!!

Passing on the Savings of Being Chronically Online

One of my fav roles in my friend group is being the chronically online person that pals can turn to when they wanna get a full run-down of pop culture current events…why are Kendrick and Drake beefing, why does everyone hate JLo right now, what’s the deal with the Man vs Bear thing, where did the “I’m looking for a guy in finance” Sound come from, etc. And I’ll be honest with you - I LOVE this role, because not only do I get to gossip about stuff, I get to be a know-it-all, which is basically one of my favorite things to be!

This week, after I posted about a movement to block celebrities who are not using their platform to help raise awareness or funds for families caught in the genocide currently taking place in Gaza*, I had more than a few people slide into my DMs, asking for the backstory. One suggested I start writing about this stuff in my newsletter, a la How To Be Less Old…except instead of educating readers on the new Gen Z/Gen A slang, I could talk about what everyone else is talking about on TikTok/IG/Reddit, and why.

And I’ve sort of already been doing that with the short bullet-point reality TV shows and pop culture run-downs I sometimes post on here, but I’m totally down to take it in a more “Hey, you’re going to be seeing this sound/trend/topic all over the internet this week, and this is the TikTok where it first came from” direction, too.

Next week I’ll start posting a rundown of what you need to know in order to intelligently converse about TikTok topics, but in the meantime, are there any pop culture topics, trends, memes, or inside jokes you want to make sure I cover? It doesn’t have to be new - it could be about why everyone hate Hailey Bieber, or why it’s hilarious that Nick Viall thinks he’s qualified to give dating advice, or why Jerry Seinfeld should keep his trap shut about what a drag “woke culture” is when he used to be a 30-something dating a LITERAL HIGH SCHOOLER.

Lemme know in the comments what you’re curious about and I’ll do my best to give the backstory in next week’s newsletter!

*which started as a response to the tone-deaf extravagance on display at the Met Gala, and the notable absence of genocide dissenters like Bella Hadid and Nicola Coughlan…Nicola in particular stayed home and posted constantly about Israel bombing Rafah on her social media because she knew people would be checking her socials to see why she wasn’t at the Met. So this kicked off a movement of blocking celebrities and their businesses as a way to both divest attention away from them and compel celebs + influencers to use their huge platforms for mutual aid funds like Operation Olive Branch and Pass The Hat, which raises $$ for families trying to get out of Gaza.

Speaking of Legacy and Life Stories…

My friend Kari Tribble is the daughter and niece of two famous treaty rights activists who are perhaps most well-known for winning the famous case known as The Voight Decision back in 1983.

Kari is currently fighting a legal case to get her father and uncle’s life rights back from a predatory family friend who convinced them to sign a life rights agreement that one lawyer has said is basically a case of elder abuse.

Bouzou, my name is Kari Tribble, and I'm the daughter of Mike Tribble and the niece of Fred Tribble. The Tribble Brothers are treaty rights activists known for winning a famous case called The Voigt Decision in 1983. This win secured hunting and fishing rights in ceded territories on tribal lands that were supposed to be protected under the 1837 and 1842 treaties signed in Wisconsin. This case, often cited in other similar cases to this day, inspired a movement across the nation with other tribes enforcing that their treaties be recognized and honored. Mike Tribble was also an American Indian Movement (AIM) Leader for the LCO chapter along with Eddie Benton. Many good things came from their work; and now the brothers need our help.

The Tribble Brothers need help in two ways:

* Legal Funds

* Telling Their Story

LEGAL ISSUE

It has been a dream and wish of the brothers to tell the whole story of their activism work before they pass away. In 2017, the two brothers were approached by a "family friend" to do just that. This person had the brothers sign a life rights agreement. A life rights agreement, also called a life story agreement, is a contract that grants a person or company the right to purchase and develop someone else's life story into some type of media. With no legal representation, these two elders trusted this individual and signed this contract without looking it over. They had signed ones before and figured it was a standard contract.

Two years ago, when my nephew attending film school wanted to do a project with them, we discovered that they signed a predatory life rights agreement that many lawyers we showed it to said was absolutely appalling. One lawyer, in particular, said it looks like a form of elder abuse for them to sign. We were devastated and shocked.

SOME OF WHAT THE AGREEMENT SAYS

1. Tribble Brothers were not paid for their story rights.

2. There is no time limit for the project to be completed by this person.

3. This person is trying to keep their life story rights forever (typical life story agreements expire after five years and/or can be renewed).

4. This person can change the brothers' names, story, and likeness however they want.

5. It is one-sided and only benefits one party, theirs, and not the brothers.

6. All in all, it lacks consideration.

This person has not completed this project that was started six years ago. They have knowingly withheld the brothers from doing the one thing they have always wanted to do: tell their story.

My siblings and cousins do not believe a person outside the family or our tribe should have this power over their story. We tried several routes to resolve this matter with this person before pursuing the legal route. Some of these attempts included having the old contract voided and a new standard one signed so this person could still pursue their project while the Tribble Brothers could have their story told elsewhere in different media forms. We tried offering some payment for the current state of filmed footage (we don't know the quality of it or how much was done). We have received no resolution or consistent responses.

It has been a dream and wish of these two brothers to tell the whole story of their experiences, and at the ages of 84 and 85 - we don't have much time left to help them fulfill this wish.

THIS IS HOW YOU CAN HELP:

1. Please support their legal fund. This fund is essential to help them fight for this to be resolved. We are asking for $20,000 now, although we may need more depending on what happens. At one point, the responding party asked for $11,000 to absolve the contract, but we also need to cover their upcoming lawyer fees. If we reach any financial support beyond this amount not spent on legal fees, the total amount will be split evenly between the two brothers to help them with their care and well-being. One brother was recently diagnosed with dementia and parkinson's; we believe the other brother will soon follow. So, any support beyond this will help support their care and needs.

2. If you know anyone willing to film and share their story, please get in touch with us ASAP. You can email me directly at thetribblebrothers at gmail dot com.

And that, unbelievably, is IT for this week!

We made it, guys. We did it!

AC