Hello! This week, sports teens, politics teens, ghosts, trees.

Article: The Mad, Mad World of Niche Sports Among Ivy League–Obsessed Parents by Ruth S. Barrett, published by The Atlantic in October 2020
My otherwise extremely average secondary school had a special strand for teen athletes. This didn’t particularly affect the rest of us – between the age of 16-18 I spent much of our gym time playing half-hearted games of table tennis with the loveable nerds who organised LAN parties. I never figured out what these teen athletes did with their mornings, football, handball, who knows what else. I doubt that any of them played lacrosse or squash or water polo like the American teens of a certain milieu, profiled by Ruth S. Barrett for the Atlantic. Her article exists at the intersection between two of my anthropological interests: teen culture and professional athletes. When combined, they’re pretty unpleasant; when you add a lot of money, it just gets weird. 

Film: Boys State (2020), directed by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss
Speaking of unpleasantness and teens, here’s a documentary about another specifically American institution: making kids play pretend government under the pretense that it will teach them something about democracy. This documentary follows a group of teen boys who take part in an annual week in Texas during which a thousand teens are divided into two groups, assigned to two fictional parties, and charged with building a representative government from the ground up. Some respond with idealism, others… do not. If you like The Hunger Games, you will enjoy this documentary about irl Hunger Games (America).

Book: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (2009)
Yesterday I read a brilliant haunted house story which reminded me of this, one of the few gothic novels I have voluntarily read and enjoyed. In fact, I liked it so much that I left the cinema early to go home and read it (I did *not* enjoy Ex Machina), and was so thoroughly creeped out that I flinched when my bedroom door opened.
Set a couple of years after WW2, a country doctor is called to a local mansion and befriends the family: the adult son and daughter and their mother. Soon, things go wrong. It will not shock you to learn that the place appears to be haunted – possibly by a ghost, possibly by failed ambitions and post-traumatic stress. Whether or not Waters' ghost story is just that or a story about class and money is up to you to decide. 

Learning: Kein Filter für Rechts by Correctiv
This month the German investigative journalism platform Correctiv published a four-part dossier on how the far right uses Instagram to garner more followers and more money; they also showed the connections between right-wing agitators. (Yes, this series is in German.)

Other: ???
To be honest the last months have been a massive drag and I stared into space for five minutes to think of an “other” that I enjoyed. Nature, however, is still good. Or just being outside. I recommend looking at trees for 2-3 hours, paying extra attention to the colours around your neighbourhood, taking pictures of all the details with your bad camera phone. Maybe while listening to this song.

That’s it. Bye!