formalpeacaps

[formalpeacaps]

We Are Gathered Here Today Because A Bitch Really Tried It

You know how people test if their cat is smart by holding them up to the wall? A smart cat will flex their feet so they’re resting against the wall while a dumb cat will refuse to learn that the wall is a flat surface and bonk their paws into the wall over and over and meow? I feel like Paige is a cat who just fucking bonks her paws into the wall every time.

I had retired from doing recaps. Basically, I'd done them for the Paige-specific sub, and I'd gotten used to a certain level of nonsense. Maybe once a month or two Paige would send burners after me, report me to Reddit cares, threaten to dox me, say slurs, etc etc etc. No big. I would report it to the mods and even if they weren't online, someone would eventually get back to me and we'd figure out what needed to be done and who needed to be banned that hadn't already deleted their account or been auto-banned by Reddit for using slurs or something. I was fine with this, because I understood that mods have lives outside of Reddit and that no one could ever truly stop Paige from spiraling, you could only ever make it harder and force her to spend more money if she wanted to do so.

When I moved to the NYC Snarking sub, I first of all asked permission to even begin posting my recaps. When I did that, I warned them that my recaps tended to cause Paige to lash out and told them I respected their decision if they didn't want to deal with that level of drama. They said it was fine and they were excited for me to post there. When Paige started ramping up her burner activity and clearly going into a hate speech/burner tailspin, I messaged them again asking if they were comfortable with me posting a recap because this would inevitably mean more work for them, and they said yes. So I went ahead and posted the recaps, and lo and behold, got a lot of threats and hate speech in my inbox and in comments.

Despite what the mods claimed, I'm not all that upset that that happened. I understand that that's what I signed up for. What I was upset about - and what I'm still upset about, is that when I alerted the mods that this was happening, rather than responding and, you know, moderating, they instead got very defensive and called me entitled and how dare I expect that they'd be online at all times and refused to do anything. This was ridiculous for a few reasons, namely a) they're moderators and if they don't want to moderate or be asked to moderate and then have people upset when they don't, maybe they shouldn't be moderators, and b) one of the mods was online the entire night and could very clearly see that a burner of Paige's was violating the sub rules, using slurs, and replying to herself when no one would reply to her getting increasingly agitated, and they did nothing. If they had simply banned the burner when this was happening, the burner wouldn't have been able to message me later that night while I was asleep with threats of violence. And again, I would have forgiven both of these things if the mods had apologized for them or said "whoops our bad", but instead made a whole post about how people expected too much of them specifically to call me out and gather support. It felt a bit like driving, getting t-boned at an intersection, and then when you give your insurance the information of the person who t-boned you they tell you you still have to pay for all the repairs because you were driving and getting t-boned happens and what did you expect, it's super entitled of you to be out there driving and not get t-boned at least once in your life. They can't be responsible for every driver on the road and prevent that from happening, obviously.

As I have always said, these recaps were a hobby for me, a fun thing I did to hang out with my buddies and have a bit of a tee hee once a week. The mods made clear what their position was and how they'd respond to anything that happened in the future, and as mods, that's their right. But it was also my right to say that, taking all things into consideration, I didn't want to keep metaphorically driving knowing that this would be the response every time there was so much as a metaphorical fender bender. What I was doing wasn't that deep or serious or contributing to the fabric of society or worth it. Was me stopping giving Paige what she wanted? Sure, sort of. But it also meant she was getting less attention and didn't have a place to direct her rage and blame at, and I was fine with the idea that that was, in and of itself, a punishment for her. Like I'm not some avenging angel here to dispense justice to the unworthy via snark, I'm just a little rat at a typewriter. Just a silly little guy trying her best. So I left all the snark pages I was subscribed to. I only talked to my friends in chat and otherwise was completely retired from snark. This was for two or three weeks and it was fine, and if Paige had been able to leave well enough alone I would have kept this up forever and she never would have heard from me ever again.

But we've all met Paige, which means you know she couldn't just leave things alone.

If you've been to the NYC Snark sub (the one not run by Paige), you'll see she's done her favorite technique of copyright claiming everything related to her. Since Reddit has an absolute garbage system that accepts all copyright claims without review and the only way to get it reviewed is to dox yourself and disclose your identity to the person reporting you, as an anonymous (anonymouse in this case) snarker you have no recourse. This would be a foolproof plan for Paige if everyone, like her, was not a clever little rodent who had been on the internet since its dawn (by which I mean ya girl got her start playing Neopets). You know who doesn't have that system? Tumblr. You know who's got two vestigial little thumb gripper things and an internet connection and penchant for sneaky crime and saved all her recaps since the last sub went down?

MEEEEEEEEEE.

Now all the old recaps since she deleted the original PL Snark live on Tumblr where I hope she has so much fun trying to delete them, since Tumblr is at this point is the Wild West and run by entirely by hobgoblins. Even if she's successful at shutting down this Tumblr, who knows where I'll go next? No one can say. I'm just a tiny little guy and rats can fit anywhere that their skull fits in because their ribs are flexible which allows them to contract and squiggle into spaces less than a quarter inch wide. (Google it and have fun sleeping tonight thinking about that, all of you!!!!!) I could be anywhere. Everywhere! If she does anything more egregious in her vlogs that abuse the full font library in one single video, who knows, I may even come out of retirement and post a few new recaps here. No one can say for sure, I’m wily like that.

Anyway, so looking forward to this next chapter,

XOXO Gossip Rat

[formalpeacaps]

2/18/24 Recap

Youuuu guyyyys!!! What a response to my last recap, I was blown away. You’re all so very very lovely, every single one of you, and I missed you all very very much.

Unfortunately while I would LOVE for this to devolve into a sleepover where we all braid each other’s hair and play MASH and pretend we know how to do palmistry, we have an actual job here, which is recapping a Connecticut vlog. I was considering recapping the Dallas vlog, but all you need to know about that is that Paige goes to Dallas, decides she has nothing to wear, goes shopping at Urban Outfitters, and Tommy wins the tournament. It’s nine minutes of pure nothing, while this is a whole 23 minutes of more fonts than substance. Shall we get into it?

I don’t know if it was me or actual copyright threats from YouTube (guessing it was YouTube tbh), but I always make sure to be even-handed and note when Paige does good things, so genuinely glad she learned to use copyright-free music! Yay, learning! She’s still terrible at mindfully pairing music and scene to create an actual vibe, but at least she’s doing that legally. Attagirl! We love character growth!

She immediately follows that up with a title card for “A Cozy Winter Home Vlog by Paige” that’s FOUR, count them FOUR different fonts. They’re different fonts, different weights, different colors, some are italic and some are bold and she’s testing me. I can FEEL her daring me to screencap this so I will get this sub banned, but I won’t fall for it.

Also in the spirit of being nice to Paige, I love the color of dusty sage in her intro Paige is wearing. Both in general and on her. Piling on the nice things because I don’t think I’ll have anything nice to say for the next 20-odd minutes.

It feels important to be making compliment sandwiches right around now because boy can you tell Paige is fragile. She yammers for a bit about how she hasn’t been “home’ and how she “loves” the Florida home (uh huh) but how it’s not the same as Connecticut and how lonely the house feels without Olivia. Miss Girl has gone and flown too close to the sun, and I’m going to just hope that for her sake, the worst outcome of her hubris is that she randomly comes home for a month and makes like four extremely boring vlogs in a row about the importance of mental health and how important it is to take breaks when you’re as hard working as she is and Nance sort of haunts the background, cleaning up Paige’s mess. 

We can tell this is incoming because Paige’s friend from the barn who is vaguely normal looking and normal-shaped is around this ENTIRE VLOG. Like I’m not going to note she’s here because I don’t remember her name and she adds nothing, but Paige is of course never ever alone.

Is my eye twitching when Paige goes on about how she wouldn’t want to have to choose between her work and “all of these things that make me so happy?” Am I holding back a rant about how her idea of work-life balance and her ability to do claim buying fancy cheese and touching fabric samples is hard work is thanks entirely to her very privileged background? Yes. But whenever I do that Paige inevitably in the next few weeks will hollowly say something about how she’s sooooooo aware of her privilege and then have some sort of discussion on how she’s such a role model in spite of it because of her mindful work ethic or whatever and not because of her privilege, since she clearly doesn’t understand what privilege is, she’s just aware it’s a thing she has to verbally note in order to not be completely booed and pelted with tomatoes. I just don’t have the patience to sit through that and break down how contradictory that is. Not again.

“I feel like a lot of young people, working people, wouldn’t necessarily prioritize living in the suburbs” OH NO, nope, never mind, I was just holding my fire. Ma’am. MA’AM. It’s not about PRIORITIZING, it’s that the suburbs are VERY EXPENSIVE. A “cozy house” is PROHIBITIVELY EXPENSIVE. 

“I get it, sometimes it’s a lot easier to live in a high rise” I’m going to scream. I. She really thinks it’s about ease. She really just…… has no clue. She has literally never talked to a normal person or had empathy in her entire life. I’m just gonna take a screaming break. Please hold.

Paige goes to the barn and loves on Navy, then sighs over Louie having Laminitis. I’m not a horse girl so this required some extensive googling, but considering how all her animals seem to get terrible diseases no one could see coming but also everyone could see coming, I have my suspicions.

Paige shows us how organized her closet of sweatshirts is and she literally owns more sweatshirts than I own articles of clothing total.

Oh boy our favorite, PR unboxing ie: undisclosed ads that Paige isn’t grateful for and “donates” (claims she donates everything to a women’s shelter and/or local church, but hasn’t she been caught selling stuff on depop?). The cynic in me bets this is a double dip charity tax write off - she gets the stuff for free and uses it to try and secure brand deals, and then makes money by claiming it as a charitable donation.

Paige also claims the reason shce’s not going to Acapulco out of the goodness of her heart because there was a really bad hurricane and they’re still recovering, but then she drops that she actually has a photoshoot (hah hah oops if only she had people she paid to manage her calendar!). Though in fairness to Paige, when I googled Acapulco to make sure I was spelling it correctly, they did say they were recovering faster than expected and had rebuilt more hotel rooms than they were on target for, but that was before yesterday, when after Paige filmed this they were hit by a magnitude 5.0 earthquake, which isn’t that strong but strong enough to cause minor damage especially to hastily done construction, so. There’s PR from:

Guizio, it’s this set which she somehow thinks will make a great tennis match outfit???? That is for wearing to a Little Bo Peep-themed burlesque performance and nothing else. I don’t currently have time to make suggestions for Paige to wear because she’s only ever going to disappoint me, but this is to just let Paige know that she could win SO MUCH GOODWILL WITH ME if she wore something that was like a SMIDGE of a nod to all the upcoming locations and showed the TINIEST bit of personality.

Stuff from [Editor's note: this list was so long Tumblr refused to post it due to character limits]. part of me was jealous and then I remembered how much anxiety I get when I get a free sample of anything because having too much stuff causes my ADHD to go nuts so actually no, I’m fine not having (gestures) any of that. Call me when Trader Joe’s or L.L. Beans are sending out PR packages and otherwise I’m all good, thank you very much. Anyway at this point I lost track of all the garbage Paige is pretending to be grateful for. Bulgari is in there somewhere. Who knows who cares.

We watch Tommy’s match, we make the same unwashed veggie salad as always. The next day, Paige is wearing a very nice evergreen colored coat or something which is a color I wish she’d wear more because it looks great on her. Unfortunately she wears this as she tries to soften me up for her shipping one of her EXTRA CARS off to LA because it’s soooo difficult to get around LA without one and I just…. Phew. Deep breaths we all understand capitalism is a prison and meritocracy is a myth! Moving on!

Paige is in the car with the unnamed friend and we learn that Paige will not sing which THANK GOD. A fun bit of Pea lore is that I went to a school with a huge theater program (it will shock none of you to know that while I have a good voice and took vocal lessons for fun, I can’t dance and hated being on stage so much that instead of actually performing I always did stage crew instead), and I have said in SO MANY DMs that the only thing that could make Paige more insufferable is if she thought she was a musician. Like imagine if on top of everything about Paige she had Glee Kid Energy. IMAGINE. Think of the bullets we all have dodged.

Navy gets moved to “a little camp” for training. He’s apparently the happiest he’s ever been which like no shit, people are actually taking care of and paying attention to him. I don’t want to shock you all but the trainers said Navy was very poorly trained, so I’m glad Paige has been riding him without a helmet and keeping him for the aesthetic, this all reflects very well on her.

Paige’s parents come over and she makes all the same shit as always, a fifth font is added in the ending card, goodbye until next time.

[formalpeacaps]

2/14/24 Recap, Part Two

Editor's note: For some reason Tumblr REFUSES to post this so I guess we're going to just make this a series of screencaps? Enjoy.

[formalpeacaps]

2/14/24 Recap Part One

Good morning, my beautiful, wonderful chickadees, I’m back! We’re all back! We’ve missed some things, haven’t we? Unfortunately all my old recaps are gone, but don’t worry, I’ve learned my lesson and now am writing all of them in Google Docs, which means that Paige can delete the entire sub, she can delete videos I’m writing about, but I will always, always have receipts, and I will continue to pop up, like a very persistent little fungus. 

Anyway, I refuse to recap Paige being incoherent in the Bahamas as a birthday gift to her, and as soon as I finished this of course Paige posted another vlog, but let’s start with last week’s vlog and work our way into this week’s, shall we?

A “florida for the winter” vlog

I don’t know “why” this title “needed” “quotations”

Nine seconds in, and 1.75 fonts. It’s all one font technically, but she changes the color and if it’s italic or not three times.

Paige is hosting dinner. Paige is wearing all black in Florida because she’s “a cold person”. I think what she means is that she’s always freezing due to a lack of body fat, but I would accept that she’s also kind of cold emotionally speaking. That seems like an accurate statement as well.

Paige complains about getting a blowout because she “never feels like herself” when she gets her hair done like that, which begs the question why she pays money to get her hair done like that. Also I find it funny that as Paige says, “when my hair looks good it just doesn’t feel right”

We’ve seen your $20 Amazon extensions, Paige, we know.

Paige makes sure to let us all know she’s sending PR slippers from Rao’s tomato sauce, because heaven forbid we don’t know she gets free things in the mail as a very important influencer.

Paige makes dinner for Tommy’s - sorry, their friends. (You can tell it’s actually Tommy’s friends because it’s all guys, they refuse to acknowledge Paige or her camera, and several of them aren’t white.) Dinner is the world’s most basic cheese board, spicy rigatoni, grilled meats, and a salad, because our girl is a one trick pony. Oh, and her single dessert (banana pudding) afterwards.

The dressing recipe takes us up to 2.75 fonts and it’s just multiple types of mustard and multiple types of vinegar.

We also get to see a new DB glassware sample and it looks so weird? It’s shaped like an upside down coke bottle, but it has mason jar threading? This makes no sense

Look, okay, hi. I’ve looked into Paige’s demographic and I know that she could release a literal dog turd but put a white hydrangea next to it and her 2,000 die-hard sorority girl fan squad would buy it and they don’t care. I understand that none of these girls whose frontal lobes have not fully developed grew up watching Antiques Roadshow with their mom. But I did and I am bothered because glassware is made into certain shapes for REASONS, design elements like threading for a lid exist for REASONS, also I can tell just by the weight and clarity of it that glass is probably mostly plastic and it would feel wrong if you clicked your nails against it. Again, I understand, I’m not the target demographic. I know no one else cares, this is a nitpick, blah blah blah. But between you and me, as someone who gets very into nerdy minutiae about material design and history, I’m bothered. Had to just throw that out there.

IT HAS LIKE A RUBBERIZED LID WITH A PLASTIC STRAW IN IT BUT THEN WHY DOES IT HAVE THE THREADING THAT LOOKS SO WEIRD AAAAAAAAAAAAH

If you’re also weird about this stuff you can DM me and we can read Bill Bryson’s At Home together and discuss this in further neurodivergent niche interest detail

After dinner is over and everyone’s gone Paige and Tommy pretend that they’re cute and into each other but as always just come across as middle schoolers trying to prove that they’re very cool and like the opposite gender now

Okay I’m calling it, it’s the same font but now it’s in yet ANOTHER color and italicized so we’re officially up to 3 fonts now. 2.99 fonts? 3 fonts.

The next day, Paige “works” (puts on her AirPod Maxes and does Woman Laughing At Salad at her screen on what we’re led to believe are business calls) and then blathers on about all her brand deals. Two things about this. One: her face is so disconcertingly shiny. Like she looks like an overly waxed cafeteria apple, or like if you touched her face it would make the new sneakers on a gym floor squeak. Why is she so shiny? Second of all, maybe because I don’t follow influencers, but I have never found an influencer who talks so much and so inorganically about their brand deals. Paige never misses an opportunity to be like, hello, I have a BRAND DEAL, did I mention there’s an upcoming BRAND DEAL, soon I’m going to have a BRAND DEAL and yet somehow never legally discloses ads in a very Mikayla Nogueira fashion. The result is both technically illegal and yet deeply inauthentic feeling so it’s like not even worth the FEC violation. My memory is faulty because I simply do not care, but considering how bad Paige is at doing the one thing she’s supposed to do, it doesn’t exactly surprise me that I think the only people Paige has worked with repeatedly over a long span of time are brands that will work with literally anyone (Mejuri, Intermissi, Revolve), Revlon makeup, Frankie’s bikinis, PJ Place, and maaaaaaybe Butcher Box and Thrive Market? Speaking of -

Not legally disclosed Thrive Market sponsorship! Paige eats three entire chips with salsa to prove she’s a girl’s girl who totally eats normal amounts. Paige claims she needs to subscribe to this company to get her Poppi fix in the boonies of “not being outside a major city” in Florida but Poppi had an ad during the Super Bowl and is in my local Shaw’s (that’s New England’s big basic regional grocery store chain, like equivalent to a Roche Brothers or Market Basket or Kroegers or whatever) AND Whole Foods, so that doesn’t strike me as… correct.

Tommy decides he wants stir fry so they go to Whole Foods and Paige makes “Asian-inspired peanut sauce stir fry”, I assume to bait me into screaming at her. [NOTE: there used to be now-deleted rant about Asian cooking that I have edited out in post production because Tumblr says it makes this text block too long and lol who cares] I don’t like being this person because the idea of “authentic” cuisine is bullshit and gatekeeping, and so if you, a normal-ass person, like your Americanized Paige style stir-fry, you can keep your Americanized Paige style stir-fry. But if you’re cosplaying as a food influencer and great chef and claiming to make the food of another culture, it’s just basic respect to actually try and understand what the fuck you’re doing and make clear to your audience where you’re adding your own twists.

Love to play my favorite game, Guess Why Paige’s Followers Are 99.99% White Sorority Girls/Former Sorority Girls Challenge

Paige doesn’t vlog for a fascinating day of filming ads and watching Tommy fish (oh no!!!) and then lays out in the sun and philosophizes on how zen and calm she is in Florida because of the weather and because Tommy’s a “super grounding person”. As she says this Tommy screams and hits her with the hose and she adds in font number four “So grounding <3”. Before Paige and Tommy go to the beach for him to surf and her to film people without consent on her drone, she rhapsodizes about citrus season and how oranges are better than candy.

“It’s eighty degrees at the beach and I’m wearing a sweatshirt. I’m probably the only girl in Florida to do this. I don’t know if you can relate to this but if there’s a slight breeze, the hoodie’s going on” - Yeah weird it’s almost like what happens when you don’t eat enough or have a proper amount of fat on your body????? You’re cold??? Even when you shouldn’t be??? Like that’s not a cute little girly thing it’s a symptom you need to be eating more???? ANYWAY.

Paige pretends to care about manatees and them getting hurt by boats but I would also bet she and Tommy go on the exact type of boats that hurt manatees all the time.

Paige body checks herself in a Free People Movement outfit (undisclosed PR from Australia!) and then they play tennis and eat… Mashed potatoes and gravy? Sure.

New font in the end credits (yellow on a puke-y olive background) which brings this video’s font count up to five.

[EDITOR'S NOTE - the second vlog I recapped is in part two, there's a character limit.]