How to have fun at press events alone
How to have fun at press events alonePlus: The Cut x Meta Glasses, a Reply All retrospective, and media's most notorious softball team.
Welcome to media_gossip, Embedded’s special weekly edition of … media gossip, sent every Friday. You’re getting this because you subscribe to Embedded, but you can opt out here. Nick’s Riff This WeekOn the bad writing that long dominated the internet: “We shouldn’t be nostalgic for the years spent pandering to Google Search and Facebook or big-name editors presiding over virtue-signaling print publications underpinned by clickbait websites.”
My Lyft dropped me off 30 blocks from Wednesday night’s Made By Google event because, as about 25% of attendees now know, there are two 127 12th Aves. The other 75% must have figured this out earlier, or chose not to blithely exit their vehicle directly into a major on-ramp in the middle of nowhere. But I’m someone who tends to go gentle into that good night, and so I gave my driver a hearty “thanks!” and then panicked alone on the sidewalk. Luckily, another straggler spotted me, having just experienced the same thing, and we took a new car the remaining distance. One of my goals this year has been to go to more industry events, and starting this side newsletter has become another incentive. When I was in my early 20s, full weeks of dinners were sustained by press events. I’d go with my Refinery29 coworkers and drink wine until I got home and threw up into my own sink, and then still go into the office the next day—tired, but not flattened in the way I am now after two glasses. When I went freelance, however, my relationship with these happy hours and presentations and special dinners changed. Almost always, I was going to the events alone. They became necessary if I ever hoped to interact with a single human who wasn’t my husband during the workweek. And while I’m now at Slate, I don’t often overlap with my coworkers at events. Once I finally made it to Made By Google, I knew no one. I’ve found there’s only one trick to actually enjoying these kinds of events. No, I’m not about to tell you to mingle. “What’s the worst that could happen?” The worst that could happen is you have too many cocktails and interrupt Stephanie Danler’s conversation to tell her you went to the same college, talk at length about being cheated on without her once contributing anything but but polite nods, wake up horrified, comfort yourself with the fact that she was probably drunk too, and then open Instagram and see that she’s just announced she’s pregnant. So no. No mingling. Instead, you have to go full-send selfish. It’s just you, and so there’s no reason not to do the night exactly how you want. This is what it looks like for me:... Keep reading with a 7-day free trialSubscribe to Embedded to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives. A subscription gets you:
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