Khye: Hi, thank you for sharing your brilliance with me, yes!

CN: Hi again. Oh, stop. Don’t make me blush.

Khye: You’re brilliant. That’s why I was like “CN would be the perfect person for this.” I know we was already talking a little bit. We can just jump into it. We talking about radical amory, 2026. What's today? February something I don't know 20 something 22nd um 2026, we're talking about radical amory and just relationships and queerness and all the things. It's gonna be all over the place but also perfectly coherent. I'm excited.

All right, so how about we just start with like what is radical amory and like how did you come to that as a position?

CN: Sure. So to me, Radical Amory was just a play on what was already a popular term. RA, relationship anarchy, is what people were calling it. Not to say that's what people were calling it. They do call it. And I just felt like, upon observation, like initially, out of all of the exploring polyamory and like, oh, there might be some different ways to, you know, commune with people, that one had the most... realism to me in the sense that um… it initially was supposed to be about, you know, there's no hierarchy in relationships. It's just about like and everyone's–your

situation where each person could be different. It's not like a cookie cutter way to do it or certain things you're supposed to do or not do. I did feel like the anarchy, though… Not to drag the whole community, but I wasn't seeing a lot of good examples of people taking care of each other in that way. And really, you know, anarchy is a separate conversation. If you want to have that conversation, and I thought that the radical amory was just getting to what the polyamory was even trying to talk about, which was like the amory and like different ways to love people, unlocking yourself from scripts. Certain people only do stuff for certain titles that people carry in their life or they wait. Like, oh, I only do that for my wife. You're not even married. You know what I'm saying? You're just pre-deciding. And that could go… It was a long range of what people would consider something to hold on to or to keep from other people. I feel like even recently, having taken care of my friend for such an extended period of their grief, I was actually receiving grief and misery elsewhere in my family. Because they wasn't understanding that this person is also a part of my family.

Khye: Yeah.

CN: And if this had happened to one of y'all, I would have spent the three months taking care of you.

Khye: Right.

CN: You didn't see me at times when you had hoped to. It's like the holidays had come, you know, and it was rough. So I was like, well, this is my family too. And to me, that's kind of like what Radical Amory even opens up the space for. It's not for people to expect more or less for you to do for other people off different titles. Like, okay, yes, y'all are my bio family. This is my family too, this is my friend. In some ways even some of the stuff that y'all consider you only do for your partner, like maybe you only take care of your partner in this way… if we just go off the definition of like someone who's really taking on life with me, they'd be my partner! In crime, okay? All the time!

Khye: period!

CN: So, you know, like, I had that situation. And so that just kind of re... That was like an in-real-time situation. I know I'm jumping into it and not really getting a lot of details here. But it was like an in-real-time situation. I'm like, okay, so see how you could be a radically amorous person and still encounter resistance from people who just feel like you should care less about whoever they decide. Usually it's people who not your family. People who not your spouse. And I'm like, well, that leaves, especially amongst Black folk, first of all, are we all not cousins or what? Are we all cousins or not?

Khye: Pick one. Pick one! Is you my cousin or nah?

CN: And then also, I'm like, we have a lot of community that's not necessarily blood related. That's not invaluable. You know, like, when I went through my surgery and y'all came to visit, y'all came to see how I was doing, and, you know, everybody understood why I was walking around with my arms.

Khye: Little T-Rex.

CN: My little T-Rex arms. And, you know, just being there for me at a time when, like, I live in the city. We've been here now about 17 years, yet it doesn't always feel like that when you just count the number of people you actually have in your circle.

Khye: Yeah, right.

CN: For how long we've been here. You know, this neighborhood, I know maybe one neighbor whose house I've been in, who I grew up around. And I don't know any of these other

people. So really, to me… did I even describe what radical amory is? I don't know. [laughs]

Khye: You did, you did. I think so. It's like... I feel like what I heard, as far as the definition of radical amory, I have other thoughts, but the definition of radical amory, like, yeah, the basis kind of is relationship anarchy, but like...

CN: But honestly, the anarchy, let me even say, maybe for me, there are some rules. There is an order. And it's an order by energy exchange. Someone who's been there for me, they need me. I'm going to be there for them. It doesn't really matter even what we calling that, you know?

Khye: Right. And people get so caught up in the labels. And I think that's where they were trying to get at, what they were trying to get at with relationship anarchy was like the label doesn't matter. But like you said, anarchy, personally...

CN: It just gave a lot of running around.

Khye: It gave a lot of running around, but personally, anarchy is always going to give white people. It's always going to give whiteness. It's always going to give...

CN: I felt like the people who invented that term were white.

Khye: Oh, it was like some Swedish dude on Tumblr.

CN: So I'm not just going to enter myself into a white space and claim that this works for me.

Khye: Right. Because it don't.

CN: Especially when a part of Radical Amory, I practice, actually, you know, with black women and femmes being my priority, is perhaps in the vein of like.... Audre Lorde and some of our ancestors, you know, we’re making sure we're good. Making sure we're okay, we're safe.

Khye: Yeah and investing in each other and I feel like that's not anarchy, that's not anarchy. But it's also not… I don't know, I feel like polyamory still has this, like, focus on romance and sex.

CN: it does. it really still turned out to be that. So I was like...

Khye: right! so then i just…

CN: Y’all want y'all three girlfriends and you're like…

Khye: and that's fine!

CN: I don’t have time for that!

Khye: Right, I don't have the energy for all of that. But if you like it, I love it. Like, you have your three girlfriends, but like, when I'm talking about decentralizing romance and sex, you look at me like I got three heads. And I'm like, I ain't even worried about all of that. And I think it, honestly, so when we were roommates, you know, a thousand years ago, there was a point, I remember me and… I'll leave the name out, me and a person were dating. And we had, come up with like okay if I'm at your house you cook dinner. You're in my house, I cook dinner. And then I told you that and you looked at me you were like well what about me? And like that gutted me at the time I was like damn…

CN: I don't remember this!

Khye: you don't? that was maybe like when we had first maybe like the first year that you lived there. Which, I think you was there for like a year and a half so the first year is like most of the time. But I feel like it was closer to when you first moved in. And like looking back there's a lot that I wish I would have done different when we lived together. Like, I think we could have had a lot more, I don't want to say organization but just like coordination, maybe.

CN: in the home.

Khye: of just, yeah, how we could take care of each other not just like roommate, basic roommate. Like things that I then turned around to use on this new roommate who… didn't deserve it, but different conversation. But yeah, just like, I was like well damn because we could have coordinated something and we just… I think both of us were just like, or I can't speak for you. I'll speak for me. I was in a particular place where I was like, this relationship is running me ragged. Which, after that relationship, I was like, I think I'm done with relationships. Because this is exhausting. And, like, the expectations of a romantic relationship, sexual relationship, to take up all your free time. As a neurodivergent baddie, all my free time needs to go to me to recover from living in this world.

CN: It does.

Khye: Especially... if I'm working outside the home and whatever else. And so then it's just

like, I feel like I literally was masking in that relationship. I was like having, I was trying to perform romance and perform sexuality, perform whatever this person wanted me to perform, what I thought they wanted me to perform. And I needed to be pouring that back into

myself. So then I'm like, oh, solo poly, that's cute. But like, after the breakup, but then I was like, I don't even want to date. The precious free time I have.

CN: And just, you know, shout out to not wanting to date for any period of time ever. And never feeling, like, guilty about that.

Khye: Indefinitely. I was like, you know what? And like, yeah, I don't. And maybe if the perfect unicorn person comes along who understands, like, I want to see you like twice a month. And you not spending the night in my house and I'm not spending the night at your house. We're not merging our lives together. We can just hang out here and there.

CN: And I will say. To segue, actually, I think that the radical amory invites those type of conversations. And some of the poly people in general, I give y'all that credit, you know.

Khye: They be talking.

CN: It's a lot more talking involved. Because first of all, when you bring other people into it, it actually doesn't just multiply, it exponentiates.

Khye: It is exponential.

CN: It's exponential. However, even just keeping it to, you know, just you and somebody else,

I feel like it really, you know, wanting to make sure, like, y'all are on these same pages. That words mean the same thing.

Khye: Right. That we have a shared definition. That we have the same values.

CN: I had a relationship I was in as a young joint back in the day, where I realized that girlfriend meant two different things to us. We was already girlfriends when I learned this. And, like, that's too late to be learning something so fundamental, you know. And for someone to say, well, if you're my girlfriend, then you should do X, Y, Z. And you just, like, don't agree with it. Let alone, huh? You know what I'm saying?

Khye: Let's rewind, huh?

CN: Actually, yes.

Khye: Yes. And, like, we need that shared definition before we agree to any particular relationship structure.

CN: You know? And and just… it's okay to talk about stuff and it's okay to have to restructure. And it's okay to check back in on the structure.

Khye: right or it's okay to be like you know what we're not in the same… we're not on the same page we're not in the same book.

CN: and it's better to find that out early on when there's no hard feelings.

Khye: exactly, and when you're not–there's no weird attachment. Because that just makes it harder to make a decision or to do the thing that you need to do. “Oh, but I love her.” Okay, but at the end of the day, she's asking for something you can't give or vice versa. And that's going to end bad.

CN: Especially, I started to feel this way, as you said… as a neurodivergent person, all of your time, your free time, to really go back to you. I also started to feel like I'm navigating this town, this city, Atlanta, this world, as someone with medical issues. So I'm not even available as often as our social scripts say a person should be. So I'm just having those conversations just because that's already deviating from what we–what everyone's been promised out here. And whether or not people accept that.

Khye: right, especially if they're invisible or if there's something that people can't immediately look at you and say “oh you're gonna have a disability,” but that don't even mean nothing because if it's a visible disability people make assumptions about your capacity…

CN: people just be assuming!

Khye: in general! in general!

CN: I think this whole thing is based on a lot of assumptions when really it's all just a social experiment! Like, all of these, even in the 1950s… because we're jumping into the recording but we were talking about… McCarthyism, dun dun dun! Even in the 1950s, the world that they were trying to say how it should be, they didn't have it. It was fake. It was propaganda back then. So repeating the propaganda now, talking about the good old days of the time when.

Khye: Never existed.

CN: That wasn't a time even then. They were making it up. And the experiment has shown it's only took this past 70 years for the experiment to feel so ubiquitous while also failing. And that's on several levels. That's between people. That's like with our infrastructure.

Khye: Economically.

CN: Economically. Everything. Even the teenager herself was just invented back then.

Khye: Not even 100 years old.

CN: It's not–

Khye: The concept of a teenager. Which, I think that's a whole other can of worms.

CN: It is. And all of these things, to me, they really play into, okay, in your day-to-day, like, people still need each other as creatures. We just, like, do. And we should be making sure that we're being for real with each other. If that's what's best for us than to just try and do what some people made up they feel like people should do. A hypothesis they then tested on us.

Khye: And it didn't even work.

CN: And our parents and our grandparents.

Khye: But instead of them saying, hey, this isn't working. Let's do something else. They say, no, it's on you. It's your fault.

CN: Just run it into the ground.

Khye: It’s like it doesn't even make sense. Like the way that they want life to go. I'm like…

CN: Did you hear about, because I know we talk about this all the time, as two child-free people. There was some type of incentive that the president was trying to give mothers to have children, like, a discount on something. But it was only, like, a couple thousand dollars. And it was, like, that's a joke.

Khye: First off.

CN: Children are so expensive.

Khye: Yeah. And it was only for married people on top of that. Of course.

CN: Just let that rest. Like, I didn't even know that.

Khye: Yeah. And then just, like, who is, like, we were talking about marriage equality earlier, but, like, who is, who has access to marriage? And, like, yeah, the queers have access to marriage. Some of the queers. But disabled people, if you on disability, you don't have access to marriage. You know, if you have certain, just life. If you're poor, shit, you don't have access to marriage.

Like, there's a lot of reasons.

CN: And then what is it that people want? Like I said, the institution of marriage. They want the benefits that come from being married versus democratizing the benefits that come with being married, such as being able to put somebody on your health insurance or um you know not having to testify in court.

Khye: period! we ain't snitching! I–like, I… I don't know. Yeah. You remember that movie, what is it, Chuck and Larry or We Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry or something like that?

CN: I've heard that title before.

Khye: It was like, it came out in like, it was like 2005 or 2006 or something. Like, true lawlessness. But it was these two, I think it was like Adam Sandler and that dude from King of Queens. And they were like firefighters or something and they decided to get married for some benefits. I don't know. I hadn't seen the movie in a long time. I don't remember why they decided to get married, but they were straight. And they decided to get married for some benefits. And so they had to pretend to be gay and it was hilarious and it was a comedy and whatever. But honestly, I'm surprised more people aren't doing that, and if they are, they're just not saying nothing… But I'm surprised more people aren't getting married just for the legal benefits, even if, you know, it's not a romantic relationship. Get married to your best friend or whoever. Like yeah okay lavender marriages, that's not even quite that. But like just me and my best friend, they want to make sure that if anything happens to them, they kids are taken care of so we get married on paper, like…

CN: You bring up a good point.

Khye: But also, we shouldn't have to. The democratization of the benefits...

CN: That's where the fork in the road was.

Khye: Right.

CN: Between fighting for marriage equality and just fighting for those rights.

Khye: Right. Outside of marriage.

CN: Like the things that came from, the benefits that came from being married. Should they just be only for people who are married? And then we turned around in society then and we tried. It's portrayed to us that marriage is all about love when there's so much business going on.

Khye: It's so much business. And really, rich people have always married as a business transaction. It just so happens that, like, it was accessible to them.

CN: and planning a family.

Khye: Yeah. And having kids was also a business transaction for a lot of them.

CN: Not for fun.

Khye: Right. To secure their generational wealth. So, yeah, it's just like, if... rich people, they're really good at playing the game, whether that's economics, you know, stock market, whatever, marriage, whatever. Like, they're playing the game, but, like, why does it have to be a game in general? Why can't it just be whoever lives together or whoever, you know, has some type of commitment to each other? Or it doesn't even have to be that, because there's some people who are truly 100% alone, isolated, don't have anybody.

CN: And so they have nothing.

Khye: Right. Or they end up being institutionalized or, you know, they like they end up just,

yeah, being out on the streets or being in prison or being, you know, I think of like disabled

people who need caregivers and their caregivers are just like people that get paid to work for

them. But it's like by the government. So, you know, it's a shitty job. And like so much abuse

happens and so much just like, I don't know, it's just trash. And like, you know, people get thrown to the wolves when they don't have people.

CN: They do. And, yeah. And it brings us back to, you know, how you even invited me to have this conversation, which is expanding the ideas of family and community and love and care. Especially because in this, here in Atlanta, it's strict out here.

Khye: It ain't no safety net.

CN: And so I think we were still all outside when I was starting to feel like, okay, there needs to be more of an actual push, at least in my personal life, for like a real community. Because trying

to get everything you need from someone you're dating, first of all, means you're always trying to find someone to date. And that's not…

Khye: that’s a full-time job!

CN: okay? And it's not an equal playing field for everybody involved. because now we get– because then if that's the case, though, we also have issues about dateability and attractiveness…

Khye: desirability, yep.

CN: like um especially, especially here. yeah especially here.

Khye: Atlanta’s big on the aesthetic.

CN: It's big on the aesthetic.

Khye: As opposed to what's actually real.

CN: So that can't be the only way you get love and care by fitting the beauty standard.

Khye: Or possibly having a good relationship with your mama.

CN: So up in the air.

Khye: It's like you got your family of origin or your dateability, fuckability in society.

CN: Which don't even translate into care because you'll find that people are actually withholding

care until you get to a certain point.

Khye: or like they'll withhold care once you're not able to give them what they want anymore even if you can perform dateability and whatever else like the… the the person that i was dating we break up and decide like “hey, let's still be there for each other” but then this person starts treating me poorly and my first thought is like “wow, i don't, i don't get xyz treatment unless i'm fucking you? That's wild. That's disrespectful. That's not what I signed up for.” Going back to like shared definitions and stuff. We needed to have way more conversations about “what does this actually mean to you” but it's just like okay so…

CN: how do you move without that layer?

Khye: right, how do you move without that layer? how do you– what are your values when it comes to people that you aren't– because like friendship, I remember hearing like a definition of friendship and it was like friends are people that you just want to hang out with. You just want to be around without expecting something from them or needing or getting something from them. It's literally just their company. You're not having sex. I mean, sometimes folks have sex with their friends. Live your life. But in general, you're not having sex. You're not dating. They're not your kid. You're not their kid. You're not their parent or a sibling. You don't have a blood tie. You're literally just connected to them because you want to be. But, like, everybody sees friendship differently. And so then it's just like, okay, what does friendship mean to you? And how do you prioritize friendship in your life? Even if you're dating somebody. Or multiple people or, you know, whatever.

CN: I think a lot of conflicts come from finding out these things in real time.

Khye: Yeah. When a conflict comes up.

CN: Yeah. You know, girls know. I'm sure, you know, I'm not the only girl in the world who's had the experience of, like, you kind of find out where your friend really is at when they start dating. And, like, what they consider to be, you know, unlocked at these certain levels. And find that that's always been worse to find out. And I can't say there's a time when, you just have to sort of make the time to have a conversation. Like, it's not sexy.

Khye: Mm-mm. It's not fun. It's not cute.

CN: You know, it could be cool.

Khye: Yeah. It could be.

CN: It could be cool. And I think a lot of the stuff gets avoided because it's, like, it's uncomfortable to even consider the ideas might be different. But wouldn't it be nice to know? Wouldn't it be nice to know? Radical honesty.

Khye: Mm. And I think part of it, too, like you were saying, the social script of just, like, people don't know... There's not a social script for that, so people just don't know how to have the conversation, so they just don't have the conversation.

CN: But it's needed.

Khye: It's really needed.

CN: Like, you know, and the people may not know this, but Khye and I have talked a long time about when people in your circle decide to have children. You can tell when– who's running on the social script of like the women in their life will be able to just pick that up with them.

Khye: The village is always the women. You said that and my whole life shook. I said “you know what? Got damn it, you right. The village is always…” like every so often you might have a solid dad, grandpa who come through. But for the most part, 90% of your village, unless you really are putting that effort in to be different, 90% of your village is going to be women and femmes.

CN: And these days, you know, everybody going through so much. I just, you know, you guys should really check and make sure that these people you assume are going to be available are going to be. Because it's hard to have that conversation on either side after the fact. The baby already here. The baby need sitting.

Khye: Right. And now you mad that grandma on her third cruise of the year when her goal was always to be a hot girl. So like…

CN: She finished. You didn't ask her. Y'all don't ask nobody can you have the baby or “should I have this baby?” But then you want to ask them everything else, always want to ask so many questions after. I wasn't there.

Khye: I wasn't there when you made it.

CN: I didn’t put the vote in.

Khye: I didn't have a say. But then if I, as your friend or your sibling, I'm like “hey maybe this

ain't the right time for you.” Then I'm the bad guy.

CN: Or all of us.

Khye: Right. “This ain't the right time for us.” Yeah, then I'm the bad guy because, oh, you need to be supportive. Like, you know, like, I just feel like, I get frustrated when people pretend...

CN: ...my freedom.

Khye: Give us free, please. I get frustrated when people get pregnant and they're just like,

“welp, guess I'm having a baby.” And it's like, “shouldn't we put more thought into it than that?”

First off. First off.

CN: I think we, like, yes, they should. Because the days of just figuring stuff out are long past.

Khye: Not in late-stage capitalism.

CN: You know, like, stuff costed less back then. And the wages were less. But the ratio has only gone up between your wages and the cost of living.

Khye: Housing, food, medical stuff, all of it.

CN: There was a time, and I don't have the research in front of me, but if y'all can imagine if

housing used to be maybe only 5-10% of your income versus the 70, 80, 90 percent it is for people now.

Khye: my goodness, yeah.

CN: it did… there were different times.

Khye: when rent was two dollars a week and you was making eight dollars a week.

CN: it’s covered!

Khye: like that's 25 percent!

CN: it's covered.

Khye: 25 percent is still you can do something with that, or maybe you're making ten dollars a week, you know? You've got multiple incomes in the household or you living with extended family. So then you got, you know, $15, $20 a week coming in. And it's $2 a week for rent. Like.

CN: The $2 just made me mad.

Khye: Every time I read an old book, they'd be like, rent's $2 this week.

CN: Dang.

Khye: But yeah, like, it's just not. It's not the same. And, like, people, it's, like, this increased isolation costs more, first off. It costs more to be isolated. But we have this, like, illusion of safety, this illusion of privacy that we wanted so bad. And it's, like, one, it's not real safety or real privacy because, like, the phones, the Alexas, the everything are constantly listening to us. So we don't have, we have less privacy than when your nosy neighbor was telling your mama what you was doing. Which granted, that's not fun either. But also, your nosy neighbor cared about you. It might have been a little twisted. Maybe she needed to mind her business.

CN: She wasn't trying to sell you anything about her. About knowing what you was up to.

Khye: Right. She wasn't trying to sell you nothing. She wasn't trying to make you feel bad about yourself. I mean, maybe sometimes. But she was just like, hey, Perlene. I saw Bernadette up at so-and-so at midnight with that little boy. She was just concerned that Bernadette was going to come home pregnant. She wasn't trying to sell you something or trying to make you feel a certain way about yourself so that they could sell you something. It's a different vibe. Yeah, we want privacy from the people around us, but it's just like, well, maybe we should have better people around us if we don't feel... And I think that's loaded because it's easy to say, like, find new people, find better people, pick better.

CN: And so that's why I encourage everyone to just have the conversation. Because some situations are not going to be able to be turned over tomorrow.

Khye: Right. But also people can surprise you.

CN: And at the very least, you can know it was said versus going off of the unsaid. The vast. Assuming. Unsaid. The vast unsaid.

Khye: That's a book, right? Or something. The vast unsaid. That is the name of something.

I'm going to look it up. But, yeah, like, it just feels like, and I think, too, for a lot of people, the ignorance of, “well, I don't see where my data goes.” I don't see Jeff Bezos, you know, Birdman hand rubbing, taking my data and like using it to sell me things so I can pretend like it doesn't exist, whereas the nosy neighbor is right there in your face, and there's a real like, maybe not consequence, but there's a real, like, reaction to like, oh “she told my mama what I was doing. Now I'm stuck in the house,” you know? And so then it's just like… but that's so much more insidious that we don't see what Google and Amazon and–and Apple and all these different companies are doing and then we're just like… we don't even realize the extent of it. But we could have just had our close tight-knit networks of you know a few dozen people and not have to worry about all of this.

CN: It just, it feels like 10, 20 years later 50, 100, a thousand years later, we're still talking about community and the power of community.

Khye: yeah, and it's just… I had a realization a couple years ago like everybody talks about community, “it takes a village” blah blah, but nobody talks about the effort that you have to put in to build that community. People still expect…

CN: and to keep it!

Khye: and to keep it, ooh Lord. People still expect to pop out a baby… it just–I feel like

comes up mostly around having kids because you're not supposed to be doing this by yourself, or even with one other person, but I feel like it just comes up a lot where it's just like you expect this baby to be popped out you expect people to be knocking down your door offering to babysit and stuff. Knowing good and well, people talk a good game and they don't follow through.

So you can't just rely on two, three people. You've got to have a robust network of people. And,

like, if you've got money, you can pay for a nanny, a doula, a nurse, a whoever. But if you don't

got money, it comes down to relationships. Even if you do got money, it still comes down to

relationships. Because if you treat them people you're paying poorly, they're not going to stay

around too long.

CN: It's spreading everybody thin. I think that… it's just… I don’t know. I know, but I don't know.

Khye: we're exhausted! Like late-stage capitalism already has us exhausted and then like social media just like… like you said was exponentiated earlier. Like when you have more

and more kids, social media has exponentiated this loneliness epidemic. It's exponentiated like all of the, like, ways that capitalism makes us hate ourselves, it's just made it all worse. And so then it's like all the things that we were struggling with in society before social media, social media just blew it all up. And now we're really isolated. Now we're really not okay. Now we're really mentally messed up. And it's just like, community was at least attainable before. And now it's like between all the third spaces shutting down, like there's nowhere in the world for

teens to just, maybe not the world, but there's nowhere in society for teens to just exist.

CN: yeah…

Khye: or kids that just exist so of course they're addicted to their phones! They can't just go to the mall.

CN: …adults!

Khye: well… if you don't–and if you don't got money, yeah, if you're an adult without money or a kid without money, then yeah you can't go nowhere because at least the mall, you could sit in the food court wasn't nobody gonna kick you out for not ordering nothing, you know? You could go walk around window shopping. But then they just kicked all the teenagers out and now it's like, yeah, like, between the ones that are, like, addicted to the computer, addicted to their phone, addicted to the games, and the ones who are hotwiring Kias, it's like, what do you expect? You know?

CN: I know that's funny.

Khye: I'm like, what they doing outside? Hotwiring cars? At least Pokemon Go, even, you know, that was outside for fun. You know, that was like a little blip.

CN: It was. The folks really had come together. I hadn't played it, but I have really seen people having…

Khye: Same.

CN: A good time.

Khye: It was a moment.

CN: It was a moment.

Khye: It was a moment, and I love that for folks. Because it's like, go outside and just meander. Don't spend no money. I don't know if the app costs anything, but you don't got to go spend no money. Like, I just feel like, yeah, it could have been, I just feel like it, social media made everything worse. And now we're really, like, paddling uphill, trying to get people to take this stuff seriously.

CN: yeah yeah.

Khye: i'm tired

CN: like we said before we started recording, that's not a real platform. It's not your platform.

Khye: No!

CN: It’s someone else's.

Khye: so then yeah, you–you even if you're a content creator, you got 10 million followers or something, like as soon as you upload it to Instagram, TikTok, whatever, you don't own it anymore. So these platforms could decide you're too radical, you're too pro-Palestine, you're too anti-government, whatever. And they snatch your stuff. They shadow ban you. They block, or not block you. They ban you from the platform. Like, even like Cash App can just decide to close your account and keep the money that’s in it. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's in there. All this is, it's the wild west. There's no regulation. So they can do whatever they want. And then, you're really stuck like Chuck.

CN: Sorry to Chuck. I think, you know, as millennials, we grew up truly in that bridge era.

Khye: Yeah. We're the last generation that played outside.

CN: And we had internet. But we didn't have social media yet. No. Especially not in this way it is now. There weren't algorithms. You know. It was just.

Khye: Code your little MySpace page.

CN: I always encourage just a healthy dose of media skepticism. Yes. Like. Because media is really powerful. If it wasn't, then Mr. Hayes wouldn't have tried to control what you see.

Khye: Well, at the Hayes Code, it's still a thing now.

CN: Everything is, it's not, you know, in a vacuum. It actually truly is kind of like one after the other. And I feel like that has saved me from a lot of pain, having a healthy dose of media skepticism. Yeah. Considering the source of any opinion that you hear.

Khye: Reading the whole article.

CN: You know, deciding if this is a trustworthy site. You know, checking the bias. Some stuff, it's just going to be biased and you can just know that when you're reading it and then you'll just know versus not knowing.

Khye: Right. Taking it at face value.

CN: Yeah.

Khye: It's just media literacy in general. Excuse me. And just like... critical thinking in general really like…

CN: literacies.

Khye: all the literacies, all the thinking. I'm like you can't, we can't live in a world where somebody tells you something, you just take it as truth and you don't scrutinize it. That's scary. But I keep seeing these videos of teachers who are like, y'all, this next generation, they can't read. They can't follow instructions. They can't think.

CN: I have seen that. I was like, is this real, y'all? I can't take this!

Khye: I can't wrap my head around it, like, on a mass scale. But I know that it's true because their education has been interrupted by COVID. It was, like, so many, like, apparently, even in kindergarten, the kids are on Chromebooks all day. And I'm like, what?

CN: In kindergarten?

Khye: Yeah, they were like, unless you go to a Montessori school or maybe some kind of private school that, like, specializes in not doing that…

CN: Yeah.

Khye: just regular degular public kindergarten, them kids are on Chromebooks all day. And it's not like, I think about this a lot, it's not like when we were in school and they were like, RAM, motherboard, monitor. Like, they weren't breaking down, these are the parts of the computer. This is how it works. This is what the internet means.

CN: They’re just using it.

Khye: Right, and they don't have any context of what it actually means or what it is.

CN: Plus, these kids getting laptops at home. We had a computer room. Now I'm sounding like an old lady. Back in my day.

Khye: No, but really, the internet was a place.

CN: We had a computer room at school. Like, there was a room with the computers in it. Right. It wasn't, like, having computers in every classroom was, like, a big thing back then, y'all.

Khye: We had, like, one computer in every classroom. It was so important. and we would use the computer to take like our AR test, the accelerated reader test or like if you got done with your work early you could play Math Blaster or something but like it wasn't five, six, seven hours a day.

CN: Math Blaster!

Khye: Right! Math Blaster, that was that was that was peak entertainment that or like Oregon Trail.

CN: What they know about Oregon Trail?

Khye: Nothing! You don't even know what dysentery is! Like, no! So yeah it's just like, it's different. It's very different. And it's a little scary because it's like, we know that kids' fine motor skills are not like they used to be. Their gross motor skills are not like they used to be. Their attention spans are done. They're addicted to the internet. Like, there's just so many things where it's like, literally, you ever saw Wall-E?

CN: Yeah.

Khye: And you know how, like, I always think about that scene where like, they were in the hallway or whatever and it was like a picture of all the different generations, all the people that lived on the… And they just kept getting more and more gelatinous.

CN: Yeah. I do remember that.

Khye: And I think there's a fatphobia in there. That I'm not going to touch on. But it's the gelatinous piece of like... They eventually could not even walk.

CN: Yeah. They had kind of off-sourced walking.

Khye: Right. And like their bodies had evolved to not be able to move. And I feel like that's where we're going. No hyperbole.

CN: It's funny you say that because as someone who, you know, I quit tech. It's been a couple years now since I had exited the industry.

Khye: Your eyesight thanks you.

CN: It really does. First of all, everything that they constantly think people are going to adopt en masse, that actually turns out to not be true at all.

Khye: Yeah.

CN: And that's why I keep encouraging people to just think for themselves.

Khye: Yeah.

CN: Maybe the radical amory is about just like, thinking for yourself, feeling for yourself. Mm-hmm. Like they thought everyone was going to be in virtual worlds forever after COVID. Like, girl, no. People went outside the whole time, first of all, but especially like as soon as they could.

Khye: Right. As soon as the vaccines came out.

CN: They didn't want to see their computer. So they have put all this money into, and they still, to me, are trying to push products and things in the tech industry on people, and the people resist.

Khye: Yeah.

CN: Just naturally. Like, of course, after everyone's been cooped up in their house, they wouldn't want to go outside. Did you think they were just going to be in the house forever?

Khye: Yes. And I think because us and older generations remember a life outside, we were crawling out of our skin to get outside. But these kids now, they don't really know outside

like that. You know? So then that might work in 20, 30 years. But I don't think–it didn't work now because we weren't that attached, I guess.

CN: That’s interesting. That's interesting. I guess I don't know what's going on with the kids these days.

Khye: Listen, the little snippets I pick up, I'm... Flabbergasted. My flabbers be fully gasted.

CN: Maybe because I had decided so long ago that this wasn't a safe place for anyone coming from my womb, which was once considered property in this country. I'm like the last person.

Khye: still is.

CN: There would be so much I have to do before anything that's happened since for me to feel safe. It pre-didn't feel safe to have kids. So the new issues that are cropping up do gag me because I'm like, it wasn't even safe then.

Khye: No, now it's even worse.

CN: So now you have kids and then you're like, oh.

Khye: Right. I gotta homeschool. I got to get a garden going because what y'all trying to feed my child?

CN: You know, like all these…

Khye: So much.

CN: Yeah. I don't know how we got here.

Khye: I knew the conversation was gonna meander. I knew that. Because i feel like that's–if I'm involved, that's how the conversation is gonna go. And i feel like our

conversations be bouncing and so like i'm fine with it and i think looking back it'll somehow all

tie in together. But I think just like you were saying like, thinking for yourself and like… Not

necessarily outright rejecting the cultural scripts, but just like considering what do I want,

consciously considering what do I want to take on and what do I want to leave. And I feel like with parenting, it's so easy to just go with whatever's happening. Well, if the school got Chromebooks, okay. Instead of like, well, wait a minute. How much time are they spending outside? How much time are they spending learning handwriting and doing art and interacting with each other? Like, no, actually, I don't want this. And, like, it's like if you're, for a lot of people, if you don't have money, your option is, like, get a scholarship to a private school that hopefully doesn't have so much tech or homeschool.

CN: Yeah.

Khye: Like, if you have money, you can opt out. Like, the people, the people in tech who created all this stuff, they don't let their kids use it.

CN: They don't let their kids use it.

Khye: They don't let their kids use it.

CN: That's what let me know, okay. The guy who was at the helm of introducing ads on Facebook. He's not with them anymore. He left the company. But he was like, oh, I don't let my kids use Facebook or Instagram.

Khye: Right. That's how you know.

CN: Just throw everyone else to the wolves.

Khye: Right. Everybody else is 14-year-olds. Like, fuck them, huh? And I think that, like, when you're rich, you have options. Like, I was thinking about this a few months ago. Like, privilege, you know, people have lots of definitions of privilege. But I think, ultimately, privilege is the opportunity to have options. Like, we always talk about choice feminism and whatever. Choice feminism is the assumption that everybody has the same choices. But the privilege is the choice. And so, like, it doesn't matter if you're talking about white privilege, able-bodied, whatever. Like, privilege is having options. And if you're rich... if you're white or if you're in the right part of the country, the right part of town, you have the option to say, actually, I don't want my kid behind a computer screen for eight hours a day. I don't want my kid to just be, you know, shuffled from activity to activity. I want to be a free-range parent. I have the option because I'm rich or because I'm white and I'm not surveilled as much or because I have the ability to work less or whatever so I can do these things. But the poor people and the people who don't have access… those are the ones who are subjected to all of that. And I was reading some book I don't remember which one it was, but it was about tech, or at least this section of it was, and they were like a lot of the new tech is we think that like oh rich people adopt them first, and like yeah when it's like marketed to individuals, but a lot of this new tech is tried out on poor people first. Like um what is it? Like identity based tech or you know whatever else like facial recognition, there we go, will be used to like, unlock the front door of the apartment building in the hood. And then if you didn't pay your rent, guess what? You know? Like so it's like that's how tech usually… like tech is used as colonization because they–I mean for a lot of reasons, but like one of the reasons being that they use it to try out on poor people first, to surveil poor people first. And then, of course, all that tech is racist, and the facial recognition don't work on brown skin, or, like, it doesn't recognize us as separate people, and the motion detection don't work on brown skin and shit. So then, it's like, it's just layers of it. It's just layers.

CN: We can have a whole conversation. I'm not even being funny. Like, we literally can have a whole conversation about tech, even my decision to exit the sector. You know just like as just like, a regular black grrrrl. Yeah I'm not even a genius.

Khye: *smacks lips in disbelief*

CN: I just mean that in the tech way, like I feel you, and just trying to like, have a job, like…

Khye: And then how predatory it is…

CN: So like I literally say that could be and could be a separate conversation. Stay tuned.

Khye: But like going back to choice, you have the choice or the ability to not. What's the verb of predator? I would say predated, but I feel like that's not the word.

CN: What is the word?

Khye: Like there's probably a word for it, but like for people to not prey on you. I guess prey. Yeah. But like, you know, if you have money, then you don't have to worry about predatory student loans or predatory car loans, just predatory banking products in general.

CN: Predators.

Khye: Predators. Like if you have money or you have access to things or you just know how the system works, then you can avoid the scams and the predators. But if you don't have money, you're desperate. You need a car tomorrow to get to work. Then you might sign up for the Uber sharecropping.

CN: Screaming!

Khye: That's what it is. Uber sharecropping. I'm sorry to scream in your house. I'm so sorry.

CN: It's okay.

Khye: But Uber sharecropping, when it's like the car is like $250 a week, and you have to drive however many hours to cover that $250 before you can even make money, what else is it?

CN: You got to figure out where you're going to get your gas money in the meantime.

Khye: Not even the gas. Do you got to pay for the insurance separately? Probably.

CN: No.

Khye: Oh, you don't? Well, that's nice.

CN: I've done the–I've done it before. So yeah, I'm a little bit acquainted with that whole deal.

Khye: and then if you get the phone on top of that, the phone be like 80 a week, so it's just like… uber sharecropping. Lyft sharecropping, like…

CN: And I was doing it back then. I'm like, I'm sure it's more people who turn to it now in this time of economic uncertainty.

Khye: yeah I have a soapbox, and I won't jump on it, but I have a soapbox that higher education thrives in a recession. And continuing education, you know, that whole, all of it. Because what do you do when you can't find a job?

CN: Cuz even, remember, when COVID happened and I was laid off, and you remember I had went to that boot camp for data science?

Khye: Mm-hmm. That's what I was talking about, the predatory. That whole thing was predatory.

CN: It was so, it was so, that the more I look back, the more I'm like, y'all literally knew in 2020 how desperate people were.

Khye: Yeah.

CN: Even still signing up for the idea of having skills in the job market and desperate to matter and not be one of the people who's just laid off.

Khye: Right.

CN: But that didn't work because, first of all, people in tech are still getting laid off. But just the fact that it wasn't a vacuum that in 2020 they was like oh definitely come and do this school, you know, so that you can be more valuable to employers. That was just like a joke. I learned stuff that's, I think, useful for me to know. But so far, everything I've learned has helped me. It has not helped a single employer. So whomp to y'all.

Khye: It's just, yeah. I just feel like there's so much predatory stuff. And I think to tie it all back.

Like… community building and radical amory. If we have more people to rely on, we have more incomes coming in to whether it's a household or a multi household community type system. Like we have more incomes to rely on. We have more people to run an idea past. You know, we have more…. It's not just me. I got to survive. I got laid off. So now I'm scrambling to find a new job tomorrow. Then we are less susceptible to all the scams and all the things that inevitably pop up in late-stage capitalism to prey on our desperation. And I feel like that's a lot of how capitalism works, right? So, yeah. I just feel like we're so much more susceptible to these scams if you're any kind of poor, if you're any kind of unstable. If you're disabled and you can't work, whatever, it makes us so much more susceptible because we don't have a robust community that we've had hard conversations with to be able to say, I got you if you lose your job. I got you if you have a flare-up for two months or you burn out for a year.

CN: You know, it's real stuff going on. It really is real stuff going on. So this intra-personal stuff, try to have that on lock so that when the world comes at you from the outside, that stuff can be handled and not leaning on an already shaky foundation of not knowing what each other really think or feel about what y'all are doing.

Khye: And leaning on capitalism who don't give a shit about you.

CN: And on that note...

Khye: Ashe.

Khye Blue (they/them) is an unapologetic southern queer Black femme who enjoys yoga, building community, laughing, subverting the gender binary, and reminding people that they can fire their doctors. Khye is a full spectrum sacred transition guide, entrepreneur, healer, consultant, and educator working toward a world in which Black queer and trans people, women, and femmes can live, thrive, and raise sovereign families freely within a healthy community.

CN (Chaniqua Nicole, she/her) is a multi-faceted multimedia artist, digital and analog experience designer, and coiner of the term Radical Amory. She enjoys creating various forms of art such as felt work, metal jewelry making, digital art, graphic design and the art of event planning. In her free time, she also enjoys exploring culinary arts. CN is from Washington DC and currently resides in Atlanta, GA.