Madeleine Chapman reflects on the week that was.
We had an unlikely hero on The Spinoff this week. The anonymous 23-year-old who featured in Tuesday’s Cost of Being described herself as “broke with expensive taste” and didn’t hold back when describing how she spends her, admittedly, little money.
Savings? Forget about it. “Given that the planet seems like it’s a couple years away from plunging into a full grim dystopia, I’ll be using every dollar I have to assert my vivacity and joie de vivre while I still can.”
Grooming and beauty expenditure? Limited, but “I buy a pair of falsies [lashes] pretty regularly since I’m always crying mine off.”
I love this woman, and evidently so did readers. The comments are lovely, asking for a full column from this anonymous legend (note: she is real, but even we don’t know who she really is, she just filled out the form). I personally received two texts from different friends asking for more entries like hers.
This is all very wholesome but a little surprising to me. In my four years in this role, it has proven impossible to predict how readers will react to other people’s lives. In another year, I would’ve bet safely on Tuesday’s readers scoffing at a young person living at home for free and spending $400 on boots.
What was it that so enchanted readers? We’ve had “spenders” feature in the series before, and plenty of participants have thrown in pithy one-liners about their situation and the world at large. But there was something beautifully hopeful in this young person’s attitude to living her life (despite the dystopian view on saving money). I suspect many readers with full-time jobs and mortgages and responsibilities delighted in knowing that at least one young person was out there making the most of their early 20s.
And most importantly, she was funny. Trust me, you can get away with a lot if it’s decorated with humour.
Nearly 700 New Zealanders have filled out the Cost of Being questionnaire and all are beautifully unique, but the majority inevitably fall into the “doing my best to be responsible” category.
So if you’re someone who is living your best fun life and has a story to tell, I invite you to contribute to the series. Maybe you too could be someone’s hero.
The stories Spinoff readers spent the most time with this week
- Joel MacManus uses 10 graphs to analyse why homelessness Is worse under this government
- The cost of being: A retail assistant who’s ‘broke with expensive taste’
- Alex Casey rounds up all the celebrities* running in local elections around the country this year
- Former race relations commissioner Joris De Bres responds to the renaming of the Rongotai electorate
- Chlöe Swarbrick was barred from the House all week – is that even allowed? Andrew Geddis explains
Feedback of the week
“As a 19 year old, I don’t think education about the internet is enough to prevent harm (because I had internet education). In an ideal world, parents would be able to monitor what their children are doing on the internet, but they can’t and most won’t. It feels like a significant chunk of the internet is designed to make you feel worse, especially now with the polarised political landscape (see Andrew Tate). I personally think a restriction of the internet for youth is in order, but then the hard part becomes actually doing it without privacy concerns (like giving ID to private corporations who might sell or leak it) or the government caring enough to not half-ass it. I do think a ban is too extreme, but I think people need to consult youth more who actually are growing/ grew up with it.”
“It seems like an important point is being missed that Chloe didn’t call anyone spineless, she called for MP’s to have a spine. They are very different things, one is an insult, the other is an invocation to show courage. ”
