Weekly Seeds | May 26, 2024 I When I grow up I want to
Published by Noa Elan on
Thanks for being weird, PDX
Jeremy (Plura's head of engineering) and I just wrapped up a few days in PDX, talking to organizers, meeting members, and eating incredible food.
What we heard from many event organizers that they are experiencing discrimination and censorship on social, ticketing, and payment platforms. With a limited ability to reach their target audience and a love-hate relationship with social media, organizers are moving their content to 'safer' channels (email lists, Patreon, Mighty Networks, Discord, Plura).
The same powers challenge individuals to discover sex-positive events in their city. When the social media shadow-bans the content creator, it simultaneously hides the content from their followers and potential followers. During the sex-positive happy hour, I continually heard conversations along the lines: “What is <event>? and how do I get on the list of the next one?” I'd love to see Plura do more to solve these problems. If you have thoughts on this- send them my way!
If you’re in Portland, here are a handful of amazing PDX organizers to follow:
5 years ago, OnlyFans creator Belle Delphine sold $90K of bathwater to her fans. After selling 600 bottles, Belle discovered that this action was a violation of PayPal’s terms of service, and the revenue from sales was confiscated. 5 years later, an article on Business Insider shifted something, and PayPal reportedly decided to return Delphine’s money.
While in Portland, I was lucky to attend Carvell Wallace’s new book reading. Wallace’s book, Another Word for Love, is a beautiful, authentic, poetic, powerful, and inspiring memoir from the Oakland-based journalist. It’s been less than 2 days since Carvell signed my book and I’ve already highlighted half the book.
One of the chapters, The Touch, describes Wallance’s experience at an Oakland play party. It feels truly magical to have someone poetically capture what makes your culture and community so unique. I was deeply impacted by Carvell's vulnerable insights on how challenging it is to stay attuned to oneself and others while engaging in play. The nugget of wisdom came through just in time for my playful weekend :)
Queering pineapples
Cosmopolitan published a detailed article on the history, future, and how-to of Swinging. The article calls out that the term has perception issues with the younger generation, queer and poly communities. I appreciated Kiley Ann's updated perspective on swinging lifestyle norms and challenges on The Pineapple Express Podcast (ICYMI: An upside-down pineapple is a coded signal swingers use to indicate that they are part of the lifestyle). I haven’t found specific content creators that talk about a more queer style of Swinging, so if you find that, send it over.
What do they call if you do the same thing repeatedly and hope for a different result?
NYC prodom and event producer Venus Cuffs (who I’m obsessed with her social content) posted a story (now highlight) with her fans' horror stories from using dating apps. These two images represent the reality so well: the apps we use disappoint us, but we have no idea what alternative way to meet our needs, so we continue doing the same this.
Note: This newsletter represents my personal opinions and thoughts. I understand I may have unexamined views and I appreciate when people point them out so that I am made aware and can start thinking about them. When I make mistakes I am committed to learning about my impact on others and repairing.
