Flop Era is for the people who didn’t even try to run their high school mile.
This is a newsletter full of underachieving bad choices, and good stories. It’s super good fun.
Liz Henry, who knows some things, and has been around for awhile, is your writer. She’s a former senior editor at Scary Mommy and Bustle Digital Group, a committed napper and chin shaver. Her work has ben featured in The New York Times; Washington Post; Scary Mommy; xoJane; Brain, Child magazine, and the Seal Press anthology, The Good Mother Myth.
Flop Era is for you if:
Your moral compass comes from John Candy in Uncle Buck
You have no problem saying, “I like Ewoks”
You have not watched a single episode of Succession
You consider your cat’s nap schedule—hell, her entire existence really—a protest against late-stage capitalism
You would never say something offensive like, “I’ll have a water”
You should be writing, but it can wait
You might be asking yourself, “What happens if my depression is depressed?”
You think the Oxford comma can go pound sand
You’re an inexhaustible well of sage wisdom and complex inadequacies because your family is sloppy
You’ll mow a bitch down to get into an indie book store
One time David Sedaris wrote “Friendship is a cancer” and you’ve never laughed so hard in your life because isn’t it?
You will top the dumbest thing you ever said at least twice a week
You think the only hologram worth its cost is the one that puts Joan Rivers back on the red carpet
You have bottomed out at least three times in your life because the first two don’t even count
You will absolutely pull up to a conversation about ‘90s R&B with feelings and recs
You are a Dorothy Zbornak type
You deeply identity with this Marc Maron quote: “I just know [this] is a room full of people that had maybe one good parent. Maybe. A big room full of broken toys here. Every day is a fucking challenge and you’re overly sensitive and just battling dread all the time wondering if you’re talented.”
Welcome to the mess, let’s have some super good fun
Be a bit sad. Tell some stories, dive into things that don’t really mean anything except mean something to us while trying to be the best version of our egomaniacal, deeply flawed selves with unhelpful coping mechanisms and irreverent anecdotes that I guess could be a party trick if we were at a terrible party—which is the only kind we’d be invited to.
When in doubt, consider Prince Harry is out there, in these streets, telling stories about his frozen moose knuckle, so, yeah, we’re gonna be just fine.
This is Flop Era 🧜♀️