Mary Harrington

Articles

American Hope

5 days ago | maryharrington.co.uk | Mary Harrington

The new Pope is American. Robert Prevost, now Leo XIV, is a Chicago-born Augustinian friar, who spent much of his ministry in Peru. I wish him grace as he takes up the task of leadership in these turbulent times. The immediate online response to his announcement yesterday, across both sides of the culture war, was striking: a frenzied rummaging in rumour, social media, and previous utterances for where the new Pope might stand on political matters, especially immigration and “gender”.
The Female Gaze

1 week ago | maryharrington.co.uk | Mary Harrington

This week in silly internet discourse, the singer Olly Murs got fit, and posted Before and After shots. Then the psychologist William Costello posted the shots, and polled men and women on which looked better. More men chose the After shot, but vastly more women chose the Before. Cue pandemonium, including a lot of mensaying the women who claim to prefer “Before” are lying. But what if they’re not?
Figures from the Post-Place Culture

1 month ago | maryharrington.co.uk | Mary Harrington

At the risk of stating the obvious, what you see online is not always what you get IRL. But enough people have now noticed the internationalisation of “multicultural” street youth / gang culture that it’s worth a few words. A set of TikTok videos from Toronto has been doing the rounds, including this one:Tiktok failed to load.
The Plastic Direwolf Singularity

1 month ago | maryharrington.co.uk | Mary Harrington

This week I was lucky to catch the author Ewan Morrison on one of his rare forays out of the Scottish wilderness, for a conversation with the writer Nicholas Blincoe to mark the publication of Morrison’s ninth book: For Emma. Morrison and Blincoe explored “Accelerationist society”, Covidian paranoia, contemporary ambivalence about technological progress, and the increasingly transhumanist edge everything seems to have these days.
Truth Seeking Is Not A Pathology

1 month ago | maryharrington.co.uk | Mary Harrington

Originally delivered on 2 April at the Family Formation and the Future conference, at the Danube Institute, BudapestOur session theme is “Tech and Human Relationships”. I want to talk about truth, in relation to those two themes. You might think this is a digression; it’s not. For the relation between technology, human relationships, and truth is a critical current battleground.
The Hegemon and the Hegemon

1 month ago | maryharrington.co.uk | Mary Harrington

Should I, a Briton, treat the US as a hostile nation now? That’s the view of some, not least since US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene slapped a British reporter sharply down for attempting to ask questions about that whole Houthi bombing group chat thing. “We don’t give a crap about your opinion and your reporting,” said Greene. “Why don’t you go back to your own country. We have a major migrant problem […] You should care about your own borders.
Britain's Postliberal Nation/State Paradox

1 month ago | maryharrington.co.uk | Mary Harrington

I enjoyed this recent, provocative challenge to “postliberalism” from the always acerbic Pimlico Journal, one of the few Substacks I support financially. The essay is paywalled, but especially if you’re in Britain and interested in the youthful Right the publication is worth your consideration:For those whose subscription budget is maxxed out, a brief summary.
You Can't Make Me

2 months ago | maryharrington.co.uk | Mary Harrington

Way back when my daughter was a toddler, one evening I ran her a lovely, warm, bubbly bath. I got her ready for it; then, with not a stitch on, she announced: “I don’t want a bath”. I said: “But it’s bathtime.”She said: “You can’t make me”. I said: “Well, actually, I can,” and I picked her up and put her in the bath.
The Re-Enchantment of Men

Feb 8, 2025 | maryharrington.co.uk | Mary Harrington |Katherine Dee

If you post a lot, as I do, it’s hard to predict what will follow you around. Some years ago, I said on X that I thought the pseudonymous internet personality Bronze Age Pervert was a genius media artist. It’s true: BAP is among the earliest pioneers of online personae as cultural artefacts, a phenomenon now so pervasive that the internet historian has taken intermittently to publishing reviews of such entities (read her on Nancy Mace’s X account here).
Advice for Young Writers

Jan 11, 2025 | maryharrington.co.uk | Mary Harrington

Recently, a talented young woman asked for advice on beginning a writing career. Implicitly, she meant: opinion journalism, maybe political. Did I have any tips for starting out? I told her the same thing I’ve told others who asked: I’m the worst possible source of such counsel, because I didn’t really set out to do this for a living. But supposing for a moment that I might have something helpful to offer aspiring writers in their twenties, it would go something like this.