Sarah Ditum

Journalist, the Times. Author of TOXIC. Agent: @littlehardman.

[Sarah Ditum @sarahditum]

Good morning and happy publication day to me, because ☠️TOXIC☠️ is now on sale! It's been called "necessary and incisive" (@CCriadoPerez), "clever" (Adam Curtis) and "a Molotov cocktail hurled at the feet of celebrity culture" (@helenlewis) - and you can buy it today 🔥

[Sarah Ditum @sarahditum]

@Travnat Thank you x

[Sarah Ditum @sarahditum]

Also talked about this on the sky news podcast
https://t.co/7yYSENHgdY

[Sky News @SkyNews]

What’s the balance between ghoulish voyeurism and genuine concern when it comes to public discussion about celebrities?

@MhariAurora and @sarahditum discuss the impact of recent speculation about Ariana Grande's weight and health on #ThisIsWhy.

🔗 https://t.co/JNXyhOjuiz

[Sarah Ditum @sarahditum]

I'm worried about Ariana Grande, but I'm more worried about the girls who idolise her and want to look like her
https://t.co/jjtthpEGmq

[UnHerd @unherd]

Charli xcx’s death drive, by Sarah Ditum (@sarahditum)

It’s completely fitting that, when Rolling Stone magazine asked Charli to suggest a location for an interview, she proposed the Hollywood Forever cemetery.

And by the end of the album, death has become literal. ‘No One Lasts Forever’ is built around a sample from a conversation between Charli and the 83-year-old Canadian horror director David Cronenberg.

It cuts in midway through Cronenberg describing an incident in which he collapsed. ‘As I was lying there on the sidewalk, I did not think about art at all. I thought about people, I thought about life,’ he says.

Read more ⬇️

https://t.co/RtO4iNkvQH

[UnHerd @unherd]

Charli xcx’s death drive, by Sarah Ditum (@sarahditum)

Charli xcx is having a death summer. Music, Fashion, Film — her first album proper since 2024’s season-defining Brat, and her second if you include her soundtrack to Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights from earlier this year — starts with a statement of creative destruction. ‘I think the dance floor is dead,’ she announces on album-opener ‘Rock Music’, a celebration of hanging out with friends and making art.

Maybe you don’t have to take that statement completely seriously. It’s less a manifesto, more a declaration that this record is not going to be a retread of Brat’s ferocious celebration of club culture and ‘365 party girls’.

But the idea of dying recurs again and again in Music, Fashion, Film’s lyrics.

Read more ⬇️

https://t.co/RtO4iNkvQH

[Sarah Ditum @sarahditum]

Charli xcx is having a death summer (and music, fashion, film is great) https://t.co/XngkGgUVRc

[Sarah Ditum @sarahditum]

not accusing Joel here of anything untoward but "some kids are built like 27 year olds" is a line that would really test you in a game of "Epstein emails or woke sports writer?"

[Joel D. Anderson 🆓 @byjoelanderson]

There’s a lot not fair about sports. Some kids are poor & can’t afford proper equipment. Some kids are built like 27 year olds. Some kids get professional-level training while some are goofing around after school. Some teams have more scholarship athletes. Who cares about fair?

[Sarah Ditum @sarahditum]

@McChris85 The homeric Circe is also horny

[Sarah Ditum @sarahditum]

All the takes on The Odyssey are bad apart from my take https://t.co/7fp6e6Jxo3

[Sarah Ditum @sarahditum]

@McChris85 Nope, definitely Circe (the movie Calypso is v much not a 1970s feminist)

[Elaine Miller | Venus Envy @GussieGrips]

Female sexual pleasure is under-researched and under-discussed.
Thanks, @sarahditum

[Sarah Ditum @sarahditum]

I got to talk to the best of the best about how women are looking after their sexual health in midlife and beyond - this was fascinating to write and I hope it helps some people ❤️ https://t.co/ePiDK9OlPy

[Sarah Ditum @sarahditum]

Sedaris is just the best 🙌
https://t.co/EJt8OL22Ls

[Sarah Ditum @sarahditum]

@HendoStix @hellothisisivan That's not what I see. I've written plenty previously about Page looking fragile and unhealthy (the Umbrella Academy red carpet was upsetting), and I wish she'd been given better options than this. But she looks well, and I don't need her to be miserable to justify my politics.

[Sarah Ditum @sarahditum]

@hellothisisivan Hahahaha

[Sarah Ditum @sarahditum]

Katie Price thought that she was playing the media rather than the other way around. Katie Price was wrong: she was the great scapegoat of noughties sexuality https://t.co/E9bSs1qUO4

[Sarah Ditum @sarahditum]

@teaforpterosaur This one drives me nuts. And yet "doodad" is really? Literally die Spelling Bee

[Sarah Ditum @sarahditum]

Starmer's apology to the victims of forced adoption is right - but it's hollow if governments don't act to stop the same harms continuing in international surrogacy
https://t.co/Ej3tUse1eg

[UnHerd @unherd]

Can you stomach creepypasta?, by Sarah Ditum (@sarahditum)

Imagine a portal you can pass through at will. On the other side, there’s a world that resembles this one in many superficial ways, but there’s an uncanny distortion to it. The rules of physical space have been suspended. It’s populated by corrupted facsimiles of people, their humanity doubtful. The longer you spend here, the more you, too, will be corrupted. And though everything in this place is pervaded by a feeling of unreality, the harms you undergo will be very, very real.

This could be a metaphor for the internet; but it’s also the set-up for the horror movie Backrooms. Three things make the film notable. First, it’s phenomenally successful: it has just broken $300 million in global box-office takings. Second, its director is phenomenally young: Kane Parsons was 20 when the film was released in May. And third, Backrooms marks the moment that creepypasta crossed definitively into the entertainment mainstream.

Read more ⬇️

https://t.co/hYx6r79O36