I think the first ten minutes or so might be available even if you’re not subscribed. But let’s see, I’ll try to summarize: She basically goes through the timeline of the throuple, ridicules everything about them, calls Joe Severus Snape, talks a little about Mallory’s cunty behavior with substack (taking the money and calling them nazis) and to her family, calls Joe a cult leader, mentions the Farms once. Not necessarily in that order.
So not anything new, I guess, but the venom was fun.
Fundamentally, it seems like Mallory has a pathology about being given a lot by someone.
She's most comfortable when someone is deeply taking advantage, when a relationship is one-sided in the other person's favor. It's why she was in her element with Nicole and why she is still with Joe.
When someone gives her a lot, she can't stand it. It weighs on her. Once someone has given her something, they are more likely to be subjected to her intense scrutiny, and eventually, she must cut them off. I think it's because she knows she doesn't have anything that can actually put her even with something like her parents' love or her Substack deal, and the idea of being the person to whom much was given and much is expected destroys her. Expectations destroy her. Joe expects her to do less and less, become smaller and smaller.
The whole reason she LARPs as a young boy is that young boys have the least responsibility of anyone in our society, and the standards of care for other people are lowest. When Mallory is playing an 8 year old boy, she can be a very kind, caring one. Wow, a lil guy like that just helping out with the baby without complaint, golly, that's a good kid. Better rumple his hair.
She desperately wanted someone to take away from her the responsibility she felt to do something with her mind. Her parents tried to convince her she needed to aspire to something but she ended up at a fifth-rate garbage school. She lucked out with The Toast and people started expecting things again, giving her money, gushing over her. She has run from responsibility every way she can. Oh, so you liked her as a famous female writer with pithy, dry humor, eh? How about now that she's this long-winded dad joker baseball-capped boy?
In some ways, the person Mallory's arc reminds me the most of is Britney Spears.
I genuinely do not think Mallory wanted to be famous.
I think the success she experienced was antithetical to her vision of herself, and made her a worse person.
She has tried over and over to diminish the parts of herself that people might like or reward, holding each trait up to the light and then setting it on fire.
Britney Spears didn't want to be famous. People liked her blonde hair and her skinny bod with good abs and how young and fresh she looked, how unapproachable and teen-goddess like she seemed while maintaining an innocence, so she destroyed every one of those qualities systematically until she was bald and pudgy, with world-weary eyes that aged her and a romantic history that made it clear she was just a desperate dummy.
Mallory was liked for her down-to-earth vibe and the feeling that she could be anyone's bestie with the good joke and fun but wise advice, for the way she perceived women's issues and relationships with men and other women, and for the consistent quantity of at least tepidly humorous content she could be relied on to produce.
So she became a petulant "man" with an advice column that was notoriously bad, and started writing much less consistently while letting quality tank. She went to parties and deliberately behaved like a standoffish boor.
These women have signaled to everyone in the world that they'd be better off left alone and not becoming celebrity cults (microcults in Mal's case, but even so). But you can't just decide not to be famous. You can't ghost fame. You can't fade. Especially when you attach yourself to people who are there to steal your spotlight and humiliate you.
