A Long Overdue Max's Most Loved ♥️

Dumb Phones, Holiday Yearning, Anchovy Blunders, & all my favorite things right now

What have you been up to lately? Its been a minute since I forced my current hyper focuses on you! This is what I’ve been fixating on…

♥️ Have you ever seen something on a menu and it sounded so amazing and when they bring it out, you realize you completely misinterpreted what they meant? So I order “Anchovy Frites“ thinking they were fries seasoned with anchovy paste or something. I was imagining this perfectly briny, salty treat…which I technically did get, but in the form of actual deep fried anchovies with a lemon aioli. Not at all what I had my heart set on, but those fishies was so, so good! I had one of the most satisfying, well paired meals in awhile at French Louie in Brooklyn last week. This was a fantastic miscalculation on my part!

♥️ I am enjoying frequenting NYC on a more regular basis these days. I love having such easy access on the east coast. Make sure to refresh my duo’s page soon, as I will be updating it with all the new friends I’ve been making…

♥️ Nosferatu vs Babygirl. Both are Christmas movies in my opinion! I’m not sure which movie out-yearned the other, but I am glad we are making room for absolutely unhinged, rampant female horniness in cinema. That’s the true spirit of the holidays.

Should I leak my Letterboxd account…?

♥️ Eau de Space, the perfume made by NASA I mentioned in an issue last month. I currently have a bottle sitting on my vanity, unopened, calling to me like Count Orlock. One of you answered my call to curiosity and I promised to wait to smell it until we could do it together. But know that I am awfully tempted to spritz it and restraining myself has never been my skillset…

♥️ Reading more. I mentioned how little I read in 2024 and how I felt like that was beneath me. I mean…I’m Maxienne Robey and I’m better than that, goddammit! Well, in 2025, I’m already double-fisting literature. I’m currently in the middle of both Miranda July’s All Fours as well as Y2K: How the 2000’s Became Everything (essays on a future that never was). I think having a balance of fiction and non is good for me right now.

♥️ And perhaps the biggest thing going on right now: I have decided to move to a flip phone. Between the TikTok ban and the recent appearance of Zuckerburg on Rogan, I am so disgusted with the way social media has mangled my brain and attention span over the years, so I am consciously divesting my attention away from the attention economy.

I have carried two iPhones everywhere I go for the past five years, there’s no possible way that hasn’t impacted my cognition greatly. I’m tired of feeling dumb, I’m tired of doom scrolling, I’m tired of these geeks with ulterior motives (and no social skills) deciding for me what reality is. I do not like to be pushed around or told what to do, and while I can’t completely remove these entities from my life, I can make things very difficult for them…

Will I disappear online? Not at all!

I believe in the communication and community social media offers us. I believe in legitimate free speech, not just the way that term is used today to enable awful behavior. I believe that sharing information and experiences is so important right now that it is even worth some of the great risks it presents. But with all that being said, there is no notification so urgent that it cannot wait until I get home.

Its going to be a huge change for me, I have been online since I was 13 years old. I’m a little nervous for the transition, but I think its worth it. I am very much looking forward to being bored again. Those quiet moments of inconvenience are where the brilliance happens and I’m done cutting myself off from that.

(I’ll come back to this topic in a few months with what I’ve learned and its effects on my life. I suspect I am not alone in this particular moment.)