Economic Crisis: Little Nihilists - by Tell the Bees

There’s a special measure of the economy called “The Stripper Index”, wherein exotic dancers are able to accurately predict economic downturns due to their cash tips dwindling. As someone who’s been on Twitter since 2007, I’ve used a similar predictor: let’s call it the Date Index. On Black Twitter, successful dates were measured by how much money one spent on said date. (The man always paid back then, there was no discourse about splitting or going Dutch.) Between 2007 and 2016, the expectation was that one would spend $200 on a date. In 2018, this dropped to $100: I raised an eyebrow but said nothing. COVID changed everything. Suddenly, the discourse shifted to: Is walking considered a date? Is getting a smoothie together considered a date? What about nap dates— why don’t people just invite each other over and sleep next to one another? Why go out at all? Netflix and Chill loomed over every relationship, being a guaranteed step on the way to intimacy, but to ask a straight woman to c

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• Ellen Yang