Clem Bastow

Where once religious faith was used as a guide with which to navigate life’s bleak realities, astrology and tarot are today filling a void for many minority groups who feel marginalised by more traditional spirituality.

Library-borrowed copies of Dolly magazine offered a much-loved window to the world of beauty, fashion and budding sexuality. But, beyond the model searches and sealed sections, they were also tinged with feelings of solidarity and shame.

“Through all this, the notion that consent may be withdrawn retroactively looms large as the debate’s most dangerous idea. Beyond the fringes of radical feminism and the nightmares of “men’s rights” activism, however, the concept is less about …”

“While #MeToo may be an organic social media campaign, it carries with it the same expectation to perform trauma as personal narrative, and the same expectation that not doing so is somehow a betrayal. This is a culture of confession as substitute for …”

“This is the sad song of contemporary feminism: burnout for the women who speak up, endless “cookies” for the men who offer little more than lip service. It’s bittersweet to admit that women and other marginalised people don’t seem to be able to …”

The overwhelming negativity of Facebook’s newsfeed did little to assuage my growing suspicion that the 21st century’s great social media experiment is doomed to be remembered as a failure.

Rekindling a passion for competitive jam making at the Royal Melbourne Show.

Punishing bouts of local pro wrestling offer the purity of ordinary – if unusually solid – people entertaining crowds hungry for heroic stories.

“Once the smoke of the false intergenerational spat clears, we’re still left with a policy mix that has engineered the current housing affordability issue.”

“Not only does this cultural ephemera overwhelm the collective consciousness, it is telling the same simple story over and over, and we don’t seem to mind.”

“This first-person feminism maintains a status quo through personal empowerment: ‘I have reached enlightenment, so the fight is over.’”

For the depressed or vulnerable, seeking help can often be a bridge too far.

Instead of pushing governments into policing ISPs, media companies should simply let us pay them for their wares.

Households around the nation face genuine hardship, with terrible consequences.

Favouring observance over protest may be giving up true calls for change.

The radical act that is having faith.

In the world of social media, when a life is ‘lived’ online, how authentic can it really be?