Is This Even Real? is a newsletter for people who follow culture the same way they follow their group chat: closely, emotionally, and with screenshots.

This is where I bring you culture receipts + emotional weather reports. Every two weeks, I’ll unpack what’s trending, what’s shifting, what’s embarrassing, what’s genuinely moving, and what it all reveals about the world we’re building (and how we’re performing inside it).

Sometimes it’s a deep read. Sometimes it’s a spiral. But it’s always honest. Always specific.

What you’ll get

Four categories to better understand our current world.

• The Idea: the receipts, the analysis, the “follow the money”

• The Emotion: the feelings underneath the takes (and why they’re not random)

• The Cure: recs, rituals, and soft exits from the doomscroll

• The Self: identity, taste, becoming, and what the internet keeps revealing

Who this is for

If you’ve ever:

• been personally attacked by your own screen time

• Make a trend your whole personality for a week

• Sent a wall of text to someone you shouldn’t have sent it to

• tried to be chill online and accidentally wrote an essay
  
  …Welcome. You’re home.

Who I am

Hi, I’m Yara El-Soueidi. I’m a Montreal-based writer and content strategist obsessed with where culture is heading, why it keeps shape-shifting, and why we all keep pretending we’re not affected.

I write as I talk: funny, nosy, emotionally precise, and occasionally willing to ruin the vibe in the name of truth.

Let’s talk

This isn’t a monologue. Reply to any email, send me your receipts, or just say hi.

Subscribe if you want a smart, chaotic, comforting place to think about culture without pretending you’re above it.