My Internet: Cartoons Hate Her
The newsletter writer says nothing ever happens, but also, some things do happen.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
Every other week we quiz a “very online” person for their essential guide to what’s good on the internet.
Today we welcome
, whose eponymous newsletter “represents the vortex that exists in the space between the normie lib mom world and the very online orchestra of delusion and obsession.” CHH has been accused of being a Monsanto sockpuppet, only uses voice notes to send Trump impressions, and thinks the laughing crying emoji is painfully millennial but worries that the skull emoji might be a bad omen. —Nick
EMBEDDED: What’s a recent meme or post that made you laugh?
CARTOONS HATE HER: This is really dumb, but a while ago I saw a tweet that said “I’m too Benson, and I’m too fucking Boone” and my brother and I have been texting it to each other basically every day. I can’t stop singing it in my head. This was the tweet I saw, but I think the original was done a long time ago and nobody can trace it back.
EMBEDDED: Do you tweet? Why?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I do. The reason? Mental illness. Next!
EMBEDDED: Do you post on Bluesky, Threads, or Substack’s Notes? Why?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I post on Bluesky, although I had trouble there when I wrote about how it’s missing Twitter’s notorious assholes. I didn’t mean that in a “Please bring the groypers over here” way, but I just noticed that Bluesky was insufferably wholesome and boring, while on Twitter you get really funny drama every week from all over the political spectrum. Obviously, Twitter has some assholes who I think make it an unambiguously worse place, but I wasn’t talking about them. Anyway, the denizens of Bluesky were really angry at me about this and they swiftly proved to me that Bluesky had enough assholes as it is. I still post there, but mostly just linking to my daily Substack post because every time I’ve tried to make a joke there that went beyond “funny thing my kid said” it hasn’t gone well.
EMBEDDED: What do you use Instagram for?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I don’t! I can only handle being addicted to two social media apps at the same time (Twitter, Substack) so I am completely absent on Instagram. That’s probably for the better, as I don’t need more information about body imperfections I didn’t know I had, or ways I’m traumatizing my children without realizing it. I fear if I spend more than five minutes on Instagram a year, I will be gaslit into thinking I have, or am, an “emotionally immature narcissistic parent.”
EMBEDDED: What types of videos do you watch on YouTube?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I have two young children, so my YouTube algorithm has been taken over by clips of “Mecha Elmo,” which I suppose is some kind of STEM-oriented Elmo cartoon video series where the Sesame Street puppets are also inexplicably robots. I actually despise Mecha Elmo, but it’s technically educational and not “slop” so I put up with it. On the occasion that I deliberately go on YouTube and watch something for myself, it’s usually a sewing tutorial since I sew my family’s clothes.
EMBEDDED: Will you miss TikTok if it is eventually banned, and if so, what will you miss most about it?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I don’t really use TikTok either! Like at all! I don’t think I’d miss it, although I’d probably miss some screenshots of unhinged TikTok videos that make their way to Twitter. On the one hand, I’d like it if an app that encouraged stanning Osama Bin Laden went away, but also, those clips were very funny.
EMBEDDED: Is TikTok a national security threat if it remains under Chinese ownership?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I’ll have to ask my husband or someone who reads about this stuff.
EMBEDDED: Where do you tend to get your news?
CARTOONS HATE HER: This is not a good answer, but it’s the truth: about 50 percent of it comes from Twitter, 30 percent comes from
EMBEDDED: How do you keep up with the online discourse? How important is it to you to do this?
CARTOONS HATE HER: By scrolling Twitter all the time! After all, it’s my “job.” I do it without even thinking, which is a very bad habit, so sometimes I hide my phone and deliberately lose it for a few hours so I don’t feel the urge to constantly check. But it is important that I keep up with it, because the topic du jour usually inspires whatever I choose to write about. I don’t only write about Twitter discourse (that’s actually a weekly segment I do) but if Twitter discourse centers around a particular thing, it might influence which topics I’ll cover (for example, if everyone is freaking out about Sabrina Carpenter “pandering to the male gaze” I might write about accepting the inconveniences of heterosexuality for women.) I did that here and I got yelled at by people who didn’t read it anyway, so I wrote a free explainer here.
EMBEDDED: What’s the last strong opinion you had about a story, topic, or controversy online?
CARTOONS HATE HER: Recently, I responded to some pieces about what folks think is making modern women miserable (I should clarify, I actually don’t think modern women are more miserable than women at any other time in history, which is a separate thing I need to write about) .Anyway, in response to women who say that they are unhappily “forced” to work either because of feminism or capitalism, I wrote about how the problem isn’t feminism or capitalism (women still work in deeply patriarchal societies—just not for their own income, and women still work, if not much more hours per week, under communism.) I postulated that most people would simply prefer to live the life of an independently wealthy aristocrat, and what people think is “feminism” or “capitalism” making life hard is actually just that they aren’t uber-rich.
The article did well, but a lot of leftists on Bluesky responded that I was actually a moron because I was “so close to getting it” and if people are disappointed they aren’t rich, that inherently means they want to abolish capitalism. So I wrote a separate article on why wanting to be rich isn’t the same thing as wanting communism.
On a more fun, topical note, I wrote about why it’s crazy to be surprised that Taylor Swift got engaged.
EMBEDDED: What are your favorite newsletters?
For stuff about family and culture, I really like
’s Family Stuff. For fashion, I like . For a combination of culture, fashion and occasionally British sitcom coverage, I like Close-Reading the Reruns with . For parenting and family stuff, I like Motherhood Until Yesterday by . For sex and gender related culture issues, I like . I’m also just discovering for politics. Other political ones I like are and I Might Be Wrong by .
EMBEDDED: How do you think Substack has changed media, if at all?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I think it’s changed media tremendously already and will continue to do so (Trump voice: the likes of which nobody’s ever seen before). Most of the longer-form content I read all week is from Substack. From the perspective of a Substack writer, it’s changed my life. I worked in tech for almost 15 years and got fired repeatedly, genuinely wondered if I was just not good at anything, and now make a full-time salary writing every day. Substack is more lucrative and flexible for me than a typical book deal. Obviously, Substack rewards prolific and fast writing, which is my strength (I struggle to write books and stay focused). But I think it’s a far better deal for writers than the literary industry has been, for the most part. People will get annoyed that Substack seems like it’s “winner take all” and I suppose that’s sort of true in the sense that some people make millions on Substack and most people make nothing, but unknown writers are far more likely to get a fair shot on Substack than through traditional avenues.
EMBEDDED: What’s one positive media trend? What’s one negative trend?
CARTOONS HATE HER: My answer is the same for both and it’s the fact that lesser-known, non-famous writers and content creators are better able to get their voices out there. Sometimes, it means I can discover a really cool writer who the NYT never would have published. Other times, it means Nazis get platformed.
EMBEDDED: Do you have a take on the “manosphere”? Do you think personalities like Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, and Theo Von have shaped young men’s political leanings?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I actually struggle with this because I write about the manosphere a lot, but I have to wonder how prevalent this type of thinking is in real life. I mean, almost every man I know in real life, including young men, don’t parrot the manosphere talking points. Most of them seem to have girlfriends. I’m wondering if the manosphere tends to resonate better with lower-class (and I don’t say that as a derogatory term) men because the men I see in my daily life are tech workers, lawyers, you know, the type of people who drink matcha. That’s not to say they’re perfect feminist allies (besides, if a man is too much of a feminist it starts to get a little creepy—like, please don’t talk about “decentering,” or “bodies and spaces.”) Anyway, I wrote an article a while back about how I suspect a lot of the “gender wars” we see are actually class wars between upper middle class women and lower middle class men—both of whom believe the other is a privileged oppressor.
EMBEDDED: Do you believe that the “artificial general intelligence” and “superintelligence” that many AI boosters have warned of actually pose a risk to humanity?
CARTOONS HATE HER: This might be a very dumb thing to say, but I’m going to say no, mostly because the burden of proof should be incredibly high for something like that. I mean, what are the odds that of all the time periods I could have been born into, I’m born into the one where humans go extinct? Doubtful. Nothing ever happens. But also, some things do happen and I’m still a little scared, so maybe we should stop right now and just keep AI where it is.
EMBEDDED: Is there an AI bubble? If so, is it popping?
CARTOONS HATE HER: This I can’t say, I have no idea.
EMBEDDED: Are smartphones bad for us? Where do you fall on the Jonathan Haidt-Taylor Lorenz divide?
CARTOONS HATE HER: Smartphones are obviously bad for us. I don’t know how anyone can feel differently. That said, phones lowkey rule so I will be keeping mine and going on it for 12 hours a day.
EMBEDDED: What’s something that you have observed about the online behavior of Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and/or Boomers?
CARTOONS HATE HER: Maybe I’m biased, but I feel like millennials are the only generation with decent media literacy. We were all raised to be very skeptical of random claims we see online, and it’s almost a joke at this point that a millennial will immediately ask you for a “source” every time you share an opinion. Unfortunately, those who did not come of age during the dawn of the Internet seem much more prone to falling for misinformation. This is less of an issue with Gen X, but it’s a major issue for Boomers and Gen Z.
EMBEDDED: How do you find recommendations for what to watch, read, and listen to?
CARTOONS HATE HER: Usually just my husband!
EMBEDDED: Have you had posts go viral? What is that experience like?
CARTOONS HATE HER: All the time, but the most memorable (and stupid) one was when I made a joke about people who travel to Europe who lose weight by walking all day and conclude that American foods (even unprocessed whole foods) have magical chemicals to keep the populace sick for some kind of inexplicably nefarious reason. I even saw one post suggesting that European food companies “weren’t focused on profits.” (lol.) Anyway, my joke went more viral than I expected, and I wasn’t really a “big account” yet and it culminated in people accusing me of being a Monsanto sockpuppet.
EMBEDDED: Who’s the coolest person who follows you?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I feel like this kinda means “most famous” person so I’m gonna go with Matt Yglesias (we even did a podcast episode together!) or Derek Thompson. I am also very starstruck that Jane Coaston follows me on Twitter and was one of the first subscribers to my Substack. Of course, the coolest person to ever follow me on any platform is my wonderful husband of eleven years.
EMBEDDED: Who’s someone more people should follow?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I feel like I already answered this with my recommended Substacks above, but one more I would add (who isn’t big on Substack) is Jenna Overbaugh, a really great OCD therapist and expert who produces fantastic content about OCD and ERP. Sorry, super niche, but I had to mention her. Also, this account on Twitter, but you should probably make sure you have a sense of humor first.
EMBEDDED: Which big celebrity has your favorite internet presence, and why?
CARTOONS HATE HER: Chuck Grassley.
EMBEDDED: Are you into any podcasts right now? How and when do you usually listen?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I’ve always loved The Ezra Klein Show. The Daily is good for when I’m making breakfast for my kids. I like
EMBEDDED: Have you ever been heavily into Snapchat? Do you miss it?
CARTOONS HATE HER: No not really. Briefly I had a snap streak going with my brother (I want to say about 10 years ago?) but it was short-lived.
EMBEDDED: When was the last time you browsed Pinterest? What for?
CARTOONS HATE HER: Gosh, I can’t even remember. Probably trying to find a picture of some dress I was looking to buy.
EMBEDDED: How would you describe Tumblr’s legacy?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I think Tumblr is now synonymous with the “triggered SJW” archetype of the 2010s. This is the kind of person where the people who actually were (or are) like that will quickly say “That type of person never existed” while also saying that type of person, if it did exist, would have been right about everything.
EMBEDDED: Are you in any groups on Reddit, Discord, Slack, or Facebook? What’s the most useful or entertaining one?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I basically don’t go on any of these sites anymore! Sorry to be boring.
EMBEDDED: Do you use Slack or Teams for work? What’s the best thing about Slacking with your co-workers? What’s the worst thing?
CARTOONS HATE HER: My work is my Substack, and it’s just me! I don’t use Slack or Teams but I do have a Discord channel for founding members where we discuss random topics or the article of the day. There’s also the regular Substack chat for paid subscribers.
EMBEDDED: What is your Wordle starting word?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I don’t play Wordle anymore!
EMBEDDED: Do any of your group chats have a name that you’re willing to share? What’s something that recently inspired debate in the chat?
CARTOONS HATE HER: Yes. One of my favorite longest-standing group chats is called “Thhh” and it’s because of this viral 2-second video that was going around Twitter of Trump just hissing “thhh.” It was completely real, but probably clipped from Trump saying a longer word that included the “th” sound. Anyway, Thhhhh.
EMBEDDED: What’s your go-to emoji, and what does it mean to you?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I started using the skull emoji to represent laughing because the laughing crying emoji was painfully millennial, but the skull emoji does feel a bit ominous and my OCD gets triggered every time I use it because I worry it’s a bad omen.
EMBEDDED: Do you text people voice notes? If not, how do you feel about getting them?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I only do this when I am sending Trump impressions to people. I can’t say how I feel about getting them, because nobody ever returns the favor.
EMBEDDED: Do you pay for a music streaming service, and if so, which one? What’s a playlist, song, album, or style of music you’ve listened to a lot lately?
CARTOONS HATE HER: Spotify. Perhaps this is embarrassing but I’ve been listening to a lot of Ed Sheeran (I never claimed to be a music snob) more specifically, Galway Girl and Nancy Mulligan.
EMBEDDED: If you could only keep one streaming service for TV and/or movies, which would it be, and why? What’s a show that you’re really into right now?
CARTOONS HATE HER: Probably Netflix, because every time something crazy happens they have a middling documentary up within the next 12 hours.
EMBEDDED: What’s your favorite non-social media app?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I have this app called Stylebook where I upload product-only images of all my apparel and then plan outfits with it. It’s sort of like the iconic opening scene of Clueless where Cher plans her outfit on that fun dress-up computer program that never actually existed.
EMBEDDED: What’s the most basic internet thing that you love?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I’m still into Sims memes, even though I haven’t played Sims in years. There are some really funny Facebook groups for Sims stuff and it’s basically the only content I consume on Facebook that isn’t about mom stuff. The mom stuff, at this point, I mostly read against my will while trying to get to the Sims stuff.
EMBEDDED: Is there any content you want but can’t seem to find anywhere online?
CARTOONS HATE HER: Sort of. I really want fashion advice that dumbs down the fashion trends of the runway in a way that makes sense to your average person who doesn’t closely follow Fashion Week. Sometimes, I’ll look at Vogue articles online about upcoming trends and it’s all stuff I am 99 percent sure I will never actually see anyone wearing in person. Sometimes, Who What Wear comes close to doing this, but I’ve noticed a lot of their articles center around affiliate deals with particular brands, so I can’t fully trust that those things are in style.
EMBEDDED: Do you regularly use eBay, Depop, or other shopping platforms? What’s a recent thing you’ve bought or sold?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I really love TheRealReal, which is an online (and somewhat in-person) consignment store. I’m not really into the high-end designers, but they have some of the more mid-range designers I love, like Sandro, Maje, STAUD, and other brands that are too expensive for me to buy at retail prices. Recently, I snagged this really gorgeous $87 Alice and Olivia formal dress which I wore for my birthday dinner.
EMBEDDED: Is there a site you like for product recommendations? How do you decide, for example, which air filter to buy?
CARTOONS HATE HER: Wirecutter probably! I’ve tried to use ChatGPT for this and so far it’s been pretty terrible. Reddit has been good for this but it’s mostly useful if you already have a brand in mind and want to hear what people’s experiences have been.
EMBEDDED: What’s the last thing that brought you joy online?
CARTOONS HATE HER: I don’t know if this counts as “online” but my mom sent me a text of a washing bucket she saw in a bathroom that looks like Pikachu.
Thanks CHH! Subscribe to her newsletter and follow her on Twitter.
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The pikachu wash bucket is sending me
Love this feature—such a fun mix of humor, honesty, and internet anthropology. Always fascinating to see how different people navigate the online chaos while making it their own.