A few people would probably wonder why, after years of being ferociously anonymous in my marketing, I would suddenly decide to start making clips with my face out. And the answer is quite simple: it was Stanley cups. Let me explain.
There is a popular meme that my age group, the ever-narcissistic millennial-Gen Z crossover, are obsessed with these stupid Stanley cups. They cost about $45 and they are ugly. I do not own one; I do not want to own one and if I did, I would buy a knock-off from TEMU like a normal person. You can see people going insane for these stupid mugs on Tiktok. Then I saw tweets that summarised the craze quite well: for people in my age group, a shitty $45 Stanley cup is the closest thing you are getting to a status symbol anymore. You are not getting home ownership. You are not getting a car with affordable repayments that are not in the realms of a mortgage repayment. You will get your cup and you will flex with that.
For quite some time, I had an ex who both clearly found Carina vaguely thrilling (I would perhaps stop short of arousing but thrilling on some level) and was comfortable with the fiscal benefit of Carina, but at the same time made it very clear that they were deeply ashamed of Carina. In the same time frames I would be told that my whole side line of Carina was various shades of toxic, I would also have this person show me Tiktoks of someone who engages in sexually explicit content on OnlyFans. I personally could not care less what anyone else does; the point is we are in two very different genres within the industry. This woman’s Tiktok feed was “family friendly” (it was Tiktok) and more comical in nature, but she referred to having bought a house with her income. I was shown this both because of how funny she was, but also how she had bought a house.
Again, Stanley cups. You can have these things, but I cannot. You can work toward these things, but I cannot. I can have a Stanley cup.
After that ended, I had a fling with someone younger than me where it just kind of came out for various reasons that are unrelated to this. The individual in question was fascinated by it. What I found more striking and could not fully get my head around was how they did not care. Not in a fetishistic way, not in a saviour way, but almost like meeting an astronaut I suppose. Or, in my case anyway, a xenomorph is a more appropriate simile.
me: okay, but I don’t think you’ll like it
Just genuine interest and fascination. My main takeaway really was that very few people under the age of thirty actually cared and it wasn’t because of any “woke” or politically correct reason: it was because plenty of them secretly maintained their own side hustles because it was the only way they could pay the rent or pay their way through uni. Why care that you have met a real-life Dominatrix when at least three of your friends are selling pictures of themselves on various formats online? I mean, in the words of this individual, “you are the real thing and you are terrifying as Carina” but – unlike the experience with my ex-partner – but your mentality has shifted where you know some of your friends are secretly selling pictures of their feet or whatever. Even if they didn’t particularly agree with it, what was the point in lecturing you when they also have first hand experience of how hopeless you often feel?
I am extremely well educated. I am, by definition, middle class, although I was not always what can be in the middle class. Everything I have I worked for by myself. I pay tax. I pay tax where I am employed and I pay tax on my earnings here. I can save for that home ownership, but as interest rates continue the way they do, and energy/food costs continue the way they do, there is no incentive. I have no incentive to pursue any success. I am, apparently, wealthy now and should be punished appropriately. All I will ever own is this fucking $45 cup.
What I was told was stick in at school; speak correctly; treat people with respect (yeah, I appreciate the irony); dress appropriately; go to university; get a job and you will get success. Okay, I did all that. Now what. All I have is this stupid fucking cup and if I don’t remember my password for the app of whatever supermarket I am in today I am going to pay 1/3 more on my food shopping because they’ve found out this is a way to scam consumers. Then I will go home and pay £400 pcm a month more in rent than I did pre-COVID and I – unlike many – have a good deal on my rent. Meanwhile I will watch a politician hike my tax up even more treat herself to a ski trip frequented by Hollywood celebrities. Its mad the places that you can find on lastminute dot com these days, I could only find Lanzarote with screaming kids but maybe I’m just not on the super exclusive mailing list politicians clearly are on.
Again, I did what you wanted. Now what.
The submissives who come to see me or buy my content are also apparently wealthy. Most of them are not. Most of them are also middle class. Most of them are stuck with an even more cruel Mistress than me: their mortgage interest rate. Most of them are not earning £100k a year either. They are likely earning similar wages to me. They are likely in similar positions to me and feel a sense of dread if they lock themselves out of the Nectar or Clubcard apps. That is not a normal way to live your life. It is not normal to see your rent or mortgage spiral hundreds of pounds in the space of a year. It is not normal to think I cannot put my heating on. This is Scotland. It is a moderate but often very cold country. Due to how cold we are, I hear Aviemore is very good for skiing but I wouldn’t know as I’ve been having issues with my back and can’t get a GP appointment for 3 weeks.
Its like playing Monopoly but you came to the game late and everyone has already bought up all the properties and utilities. Then they wonder why you think their game is stupid. How exactly do you even want me to get on the board?
I lived through 2008. I have memories of people queuing outside Northern Rock when I was hanging around St Enoch Centre with my friends. This is precisely why I am not stupid enough to go buy a car on a mortgage and repaired my own. This is why I would rather buy a house at auction than be brought to my knees by the Bank of England. I don’t want a mortgage because ultimately you will leave me at the mercy of government stupidity, recessions, and whirlpools of interest rates. I would rather buy outright at auction. Where are you going to take that away from me when you crash the economy again and create another cost-of-living crisis? You can’t. If I could buy a plot of land and build my own house just to spite the government and banks I would. Come and take it.
You can’t even break a Stanley cup by throwing it at the wall in frustration. These ugly, stupid, fuck-ass mugs. It’s the perfect representation of the economy for millennials downhill: here you go, you are a mug.
So why would I care when the Monopoly game is rigged against me? You didn’t keep up your end of the contract when I was told all my life if I just did all the things I have done that I’d get the results I was promised. The economy got crashed twice in my lifetime.
In the space of a year my rent has doubled, give or take £100. And again, I have a good deal on mine. When I moved in here, I had another landlord trying to charge me more for being further away from the centre where the only benefit was a driveway of sorts (even though there was free street parking everywhere). I know people in mortgages where their payments have gone up by hundreds. I have a friend in the US who broke down in floods of tears last week because she was too embarrassed to admit she had been evicted from her apartment, lost everything, and is living with a friend now. She works full time but her landlord would not work with her on missed rent payments but even she said how can people afford to live, pay bills and eat in any of this? If you fall behind by a month or two months your life becomes a disaster where you legitimately face homelessness. I know people who avoided putting on their heating through winter because they were terrified of their energy costs.
I’m not stupid with money, but various personal difficulties that I went through (some of which I haven’t even discussed publicly) would have seen me absolutely wiped out in the current economic climate if I did not have Carina. So what hope does someone else have? This is the world that has been created. You can either complain about it or you can force the game to play in a way that suits you.
Why care? And why settle for a fucking Stanley cup? I told you I want my own home and I get what I want. If you don’t like people leaving the Monopoly board then don’t be such a cunt playing it. Don’t like it? Well, I don’t like my weekly food bill being the cost it is, I don’t like my energy costs, I don’t like the fact that the idea of having a savings account is a funny joke, I don’t like the fact I will likely be working until my 70s. Life is full of things we don’t like. But if I’m meant to just put up with the decisions you make that directly impact my life, then you can put up with mine when they have zero impact on you.
Welcome to the new trickle down economics: its you eating your own ejaculate and paying me for the privilege of telling you to do it.