Coping With Vulnerability Hangovers

Have you ever hit post and instantly fantasised about faking your own death and starting a new life on a remote island with no wifi? No, same.

This week, we’re diving into vulnerability hangovers – why we’re all out here narrating our inner worlds to the internet, and what Future Us (20 years older, hopefully wiser) will think of the digital breadcrumbs we’ve left behind.

Join Alice Griffin and Jannah Anderson as we track our culture of self-disclosure from the personal‑essay boom, Substack confessionals, TikTok trauma‑dumping, all the way to Lena Dunham’s Famesick – the decade‑long case study in what happens when radical transparency becomes your brand. Because if confession has become a commodity, is there a secret we won’t eventually turn into content?

And because the wellness zeitgeist never sleeps, we’re also talking: the fever dream that is run club at Coachella and the Notion templates rabbithole where good intentions go to die.

Read: Daring Greatly for Brene Brown’s definition of vulnerability hangovers

Alice’s (vulnerable!) interview on Little Things podcast

Disclosing information on the self is intrinsically rewarding by Diana Tamir and Jason Mitchell 

On Falling In and Out of Love with My Dad by Natasha Rose Chenier, Jezebel

My Gynecologist Found a Ball of Cat Hair in My Vagina by Michelle Barrow, XOJane

The First Person Industrial Complex by Laura Bennett, Slate

The Personal Essay Boom Is Over by Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker

I Am Not Your Therapist by Sophie DiBenedetto, De Paulia 

Watch: TikTok storytime example

Watch: TikTok trauma candy salad example

Read: Famesick by Lena Dunham

Lena Dunham Returns To The Confessional by Scaachi Koul, Slate

Why Did Bad Things Happen to Lena Dunham? She's Still Trying To Figure It Out, New York Times

Can AI Bring the Dead Back to Life? (2024) by Areesha Lodhi, Al Jazeera 

How Social Media Data Are Being Used to Research Mourning by Julia Muller Spiti, Ellen Davies, Paul McLiesh, and Janet Kelly

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