💅 the truth about being an influencer

you WON'T believe the ANSWER

Good evening boys, girls, cats, dogs and guys who wear nail polish at the weekend and then take it off on Sunday night but there are still remnants around the cuticle <3

a home job, artfully executed but still with a hint of fitzroy garage party

Please know that my finance bro nail polish jokes are in good faith. If anything, there’s a hint of envy in this digital banter. The business acumen of high-flying financial advisors appeals to me. (As do the Qantas pyjamas.)

I encourage all people to express themselves! But for the love of god, please invest in a base and a quick-dry top coat! You’re making it too easy for me to get at you. I recommend Orly™️.

#gifted

Which brings me to tonight’s agenda. I have a pipping hot Pizza Hut™️ box of FROOMESWORLD recommendations to disseminate! Some of these were delivered to me for free, but let it be known that like Wayne Campbell, I am not beholden to corporations.

Ok, maybe I am a lil bit 🙊 hehe. Who in their right mind can resist a freebie from time to time? If you’ve read this far, I should tell you the title of the email is just clickbait. I have no ‘truths’ to share tonight, apart from the truth of things I have enjoyed consuming of late. I am using my intuition to know that you will like them too.

Shall we, Garth?

WATCHING ONE DAY ON NETFLIX WAS EMOTIONALLY SATISFYING

Jimminy crickets! Talk about a televisual rollercoaster!

Now, I don’t typically watch television. This is a terrible oversight seeing as I’ve always wanted my own show. It will happen.

I do still sometimes indulge in your SBS On Demand™️s (great movies and Alone Australia™️… paid promo last week 😌) and your 10Play™️s. Most recently though, I started watching One Day™️ at a sleepover. I would never have picked it myself because I’ve been burnt all too often by the regurgitated, overcast British limited series that dominate my home page. Why so DRAB? Why so many sordid affairs? PLEASE. Give me LA. Give me space. Give me life.

One Day is a love story that spans over 20 years and has themes of: family, death, work, fame, writing, affairs, 80s, 90s and 2000s. I didn’t think the main characters had any chemistry in the first two eps. I forged ahead anyway and by episode four I was hooked. How good is it when you eagerly await bedtime so you can tuck in with a show?

I think I first shed a tear in episode six. It was a random tear, I wasn’t sure where it came from. Then by the last three episodes, I was sobbing, legit Tears On My Pillow™️. As I said on my Instastory, I try my hardest not to cry when watching TV and movies. It makes me sick to my stomach. If I do cry in a movie, I sink in my seat and pray that my eyes aren’t red when the cinema lights rise. Really, it’s a problem.

I think One Day was a tear-jerker because the music was really good. Plus I really liked the main chick Emma. Sounds creepy but there was just something about her that was so watchable. And when Dexter cried, I cried. Tho he’s totally the kinda guy who would wear nail polish in 2024.

if you cried and didn’t take multiple photos, did you even cry? an investigation

FINALLY, MY ANTICIPATED REVIEW OF THE INFLUENCER FAVOURITE PAN

This newsletter was inspired by the multiple employees who asked for my honest opinion on the pan I was cooking my Nagi meal in last night.

It is from a brand called Our Place™️ that sells high-end cookware. This was #gifted to me a few months ago. It comes with a steaming basket and a wooden spoon that slots atop that circle thing on the handle. It allegedly retails for $275, however, the above colour seems to be on sale for $150 at time of writing.

Is it worth the price tag?

Let’s start with the positives. It is a truly beautiful pan. It’s a pleasure to cook in, too. It’s on the smaller side so it’s probably something you use daily for small meals as opposed to the batch-cooked pasta monstrosities I tend to concoct. I can imagine you cooking a shakshuka in this and placing it on the table in the morning for breakfast with an overnight guest 💙

The downsides? I am nothing if not Frugal Froomes. Prior to this gift, I used a big banged-up fry pan that is probably ten years old with a creaky handle and no lid. The type of thing you’d find on the side of the road. As you know I’m partial to hard rubbish. It worked just fine.

So, I would get this as a lovely special gift for someone. But if you like spending money on lovely things for yourself, you’re worth it!

IF NAGI HAS A MILLION FANS, THEN I’M ONE OF THEM. IF NAGI HAS ONE FAN, THEN I’M THAT ONE. IF NAGI HAS NO FANS, THAT MEANS I’M DEAD

Recipe Tin Eats™️. God, I just read that title and feel a wellspring of gratitude. I predict Nagi will be eligible for an Order of Australia™️ medal in the next ten years, that’s how great her community contribution has been. She recently bought a $7M house in Hunters Hill and I salute her. I want her to have all the riches in the world because she has brought immeasurable delight to my kitchen and beyond.

Here are some of my favourite recipes I’ve made of late that have been an absolute hit with my guests and make for magnificent leftovers:

• One Pot Creamy Tomato Beef Pasta: the term ‘creamy beef’ freaked me out but I persevered and it was like a more nutritious, more delicious alfredo. Budget-friendly too.

• Easy Classic Chinese Beef Stir Fry: my guests said it was as good as a restaurant. I have to agree… I tenderised the beef using her method. I’m so naughty, there were some leftovers so I took it home with me 😳 ok bum…

• Pastitsio: this for when you want to impress people… kinda like lasagna but Greek.

Those are all beef… sorry to vegan subscribers. Years ago I posted a picture of my spaghetti bolognese and someone wrote “are we really still posting meat pictures in 2021?!” Ummmmm …

Once a cow tried to kill me when I was seven so yeh.

I FOUND A YOUTUBE CHANNEL I ACTUALLY WANT TO WATCH

I stopped using YouTube™️ seriously in about 2013, around the time I decided I could cook chicken. I swear that’s when you become an adult… when you are unafraid of preparing and frying chicken. Fuk it’s really not a night for the vegans but it’s true.

I lived on YouTube as a preteen. Judging by the resonance of this post, as did a few of you:

frooomes

A post shared by @frooomes

Yesterday, prior to writing this, I felt like I had a full battery of creativity in the tank but nowhere to deploy it. I recorded a video of myself reading The Female Eunuch™️ by Germaine Greer but every time she wrote ‘female’ I said ‘balegneh’. I fully cried laughing trying to do it. I finished, gratified, only to discover I hadn’t pressed record.

Devastated, I pivoted. In need of inspiration, I went onto my Substack feed to look at what some other newsletters were doing. I read this really good one titled ‘The Socially Conscious Mean Girl’ which was all about Reddit threads dedicated to trashing influencers. It went more broadly into the machinations of online hate (particularly the type that targets powerful/visible women) and how moral outrage can be a cloak for cruelty. It was food for thought and I was lapping it up like a Greek lasanga!

I read the comments and someone suggested watching a video by ContraPoints on YouTube that looked at similar themes, namely envy:

I had heard of the term ‘ContraPoints’ before but honestly had never looked into it.

Going solely off the name, I thought maybe it was a QAnon-style offshoot lol. Instead, it’s a channel of highly stylised video essays by a woman called Natalie Wynn. She explores philosophy and popular internet culture.

This particular video is two hours long (😭) so I was like, I will lose interest after three minutes, especially considering the longest thing I’ve watched on YouTube this decade is Tame Impala’s cover of Say It Right.

I started watching and instantly locked in. Half an hour passed and it felt like those three aforementioned minutes. In the above video she talks about the roots of envy – what the word means and how philosophers have come to define it over time. There is no filler content here. It is excellent, researched, and timed to perfection. She uses Spongebob as one example of envy – how, as kids, many of us watched Spongebob and related to his vibe and then when you watch it as an adult, you feel more like Squidward (bitter, crushed, pretending we are ‘above’ things when we see people just having fun).

This video has replaced my One Day obsession… now I look forward to going to bed to watch Ms Wynn!!!!!!!!!!

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Well off we pop. I hope you liked that one… if you make any of those meals or watch the video or TV show, please do reply and let me know how you found them. That is called ‘closing the circle’ and for us influencers, it is truly the stuff of life. Plus I do just like getting replies hehe I love communicating.

Have a great night.
F