Defend your dignity
Self-respect is possible. Plus Photoshopping motion into your life, weaving the dignity of others into your vocabulary, and other profound thoughts on human worth in cursed times
Today’s post is brought to you by Blackbird Spyplane’s Classified Tier Subscribers, who make this independent reader-powered miracle possible — upgrade your subscription if you haven’t already, and enjoy a better life in the Spyplane Inner Sanctum
— Jonah & Erin
Our interviews with Adam Sandler, Cameron Winter and Geese, Ryota Iwai from Auralee, Nathan Fielder, Sarah Squirm, Evan Kinori, Brendan from Turnstile, MJ Lenderman, Maya Hawke, Camiel Fortgens, Bon Iver, André 3000, Eckhaus Latta, Matty Matheson, Laraaji, SC103, Tyler, The Creator, John C. Reilly, Father John Misty, Clairo, Steven Yeun, Conner O’Malley & more are here.
Mach 3+ city intel for traveling the entire planet is here.
Our brand new Home-Goods Recon Spectacular has intel on shower curtains, dish racks, rugs, ceramics and more.
Check out our monumental new list of the 50 Slappiest Shops across the Spyplane Universe.
We don’t run ads, we refuse gifts, and we don’t use affiliate links when we cover new clothes. We do use them for one-off secondhand gems we find on eBay and Etsy, plus books on the independent bookseller Bookshop. We laid out our position on affiliate links and spon here.
Welcome to Blackbird Spyplane.
Today’s sletter contains 3 Profound Thoughts themed around the topic of Human Worth in Cursed Times.
For instance:
Over the years, Erin and I (Jonah) have been featured in such publications as The New York Times, The Observer, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and The Guardian.
An honor that has eluded me so far, though, is being in a cool Japanese magazine where they collage photos of you looking chill alongside, e.g., a picture of a rare hifi setup, which you can then post to make your life look fire and motion-rich.
The other day I realized that, until the real thing comes, I could just collage my own version (above) in Photoshop, in a combination of fantasy, deception, institutional critique, and a version of Exposure Therapy where you expose yourself not to your irrational fears but to your idiot desires.
It was also more interesting to me to do this than it would have been to just post my thousandth straight-down-the-middle fit pic — a category of image that has obvious utility, and yet has grown stagnant over the past few years.
Where can the fit pic go next, besides oblivion?
In 2024 we suggested what we call the “flung fit” as one solution to the problem.
But what other options are there for the creative capture, documentation and communication of sick ensembles? What else might rise up to rejuvenate this moribund form?
Setting your phone on a windowsill, hitting “record” and doing a lil twirl video on the sidewalk before throwing up a ✌️ for the fellas, though a generous use of your time, is sadly not the answer!
Meanwhile —
I don’t think we’ve ever written about, e.g., how we’re “_____-maxxing.”
If we have, I hope it was a while ago and that we did it no more than ~once. There’s a grace period where using these kinds of stock online locutions can still be excused as ironic, noveltyish deployments, after which point it becomes exponentially clearer that you’re just going on autopilot and outsourcing the work of “being clever” and “having ideas” to the social-media hivemind at its dumbest. (This is different from using suffixes like -cuck and even -pilled, whose current forms originated online but, like the best of slang, can in some usages claim a unique signifying power).
Along closely related lines, I need to say something loud & clear:
You are currently reading a “newsletter,” not a “Substack.”
We call Blackbird Spyplane “the sletter,” a wonderful term that abridges newsletter the same way “blog” abridged weblog. I coined it and invite everyone in the newsletter game to use it, too.
But we have never once called this a “Substack,” and we never will.
Why not?
Because we are writers — seasoned, prophetic, committed, inventive, singularly gifted writers — not “Substackers,” even though this is the place we choose to publish our writing.
If I made a movie, however much I appreciated the work of my distributor, I would never say, “Watch my A24.”
If I wrote a novel, however much I respected the lovely people at my publisher, I would never say, “Check out my new Penguin Random House.”
And more to the point, if I wrote you a long, heartfelt letter and mailed it to you, as much as I love the postal service, I would never say, “Keep an eye out for my USPS.”
Etc.
The root problem here is that people who refer to their sletters as “Substacks” are announcing to the world — consciously or not — that the platform that hosts them is more compelling, on balance, than the work they are doing on that platform.
Much like saying that you are “jeansmaxxing” instead of finding something actually funny or distinct to tell your readers about wearing jeans, saying that you produce a “Substack” suggests you have no actual freestanding vision and are instead trying to capitalize on, and hide your lack of originality behind, the smokescreen of a trend.
You are not moving like a filmmaker, or a novelist, or a writer. You aren’t even moving like a podcaster.
You are moving, rather, like a “TikToker” or a “YouTuber.” And — speaking respectfully and objectively here — that is undignified.
And finally —
For a while early on here at the Plane we used the term “handmade” 1) as a shorthand for clothes that featured hand-work (e,g,., buttonholes sewn by hand as opposed to with a buttonholing machine) and 2) as a descriptor for clothes made top-to-bottom by one person who runs their own lone-operator line where it’s just them at the pattern-cutting table and sewing machine (e.g. Oliver Church, Henry’s, Never Cursed, et al).
However, that all stopped when we got a DM from a Spyfriend who makes cool bags, graciously but firmly checking us on this sloppy practice.
He encouraged us to think about it a second, and knock it off. Because, as he reminded us, all clothes are handmade.
He was 100% correct.
Some people would like for you to imagine that, at apparel factories, semi-autonomous unskilled operators just feed huge bolts of fabric into enormous machines, and finished garments come out the other end.
That is far from the truth, of course, whether the factory is the type that churns out clothes for a fast-fashion behemoth or the kind that carefully crafts them for a smaller, more artisan-coded line. Fabric behaves unpredictably under the needle, and so it requires literal human hands to react to and account for this unpredictability.
Every garment, from $3 poly-blend proto-landfill Shein leggings to €900 recycled-wool heirloom-quality Sono bombers, in other words, was made by at least one pair of human hands.
The real question is whose hands — and whose labor, and whose dignity — we’re taught to value, and whose we’re taught to erase.
P🤝E🤝A🤝C🤝E til next time,
— J&E
Our guide to how to pack for a trip swaggily is here.
Our Cool Mom Style Guide is here.
The Blackbird Spyplane Profound Essay Archive is here.
> (This is different from using suffixes like -cuck and even -pilled, whose current forms originated online but, like the best of slang, can in some usages claim a unique signifying power).
Respectfully, I don't think there's an ontological difference between these slangs. Their position in the zeitgeist is different right now for sure, and I understand choosing which you want to use based on the images and relationships they conjure for readers, but absent your declaration I imagine BBSP would happily deploy "-maxxing" in 6-24 months. "-cuck" and "-pilled" can just as easily be described as cheap shortcuts to someone else's creative prose. Or as I like to call it: using language.
God, this is straight poetry, these sentiments make me feel less alone. Thank you!