Welcome to Gaytiquette

A week ago, I had 200 subscribers on Substack, and most of them were my mom’s friends.

Then, I wrote an essay about an uncomfortable situation on Nantucket that resonated with, and annoyed, quite a few people — and suddenly I have eight-fold the subscribers.

Welcome, everyone!

Since I write about my life experiences and ponderings, I thought I should take the opportunity to introduce myself and tell you a bit about my life. This context might explain the various ridiculous situations I find myself in in the year ahead — the dramatic, the awkward, the tea-full worlds I shall inhabit. There will be many, and with God as my witness, I will seek them out as entertainment for you all.

To begin with the basics:

My name is Ariel Ehrlich, but my friends call me Ari (and my hate commenters call me a Narcissistic Psycho Bitch). I am 20 years old. I grew up in New York City and go to the University of Southern California, where my dream-day consists of tanning and Erewhon. But I do manage to go to class. I’m studying Journalism because I love the making narratives about the lives and experiences of others through the process of reporting. It’s not terribly different from what I do here; of course, journalism requires complete impartiality and vigorous fact-checking, and on Substack, I’m partial to my version of the facts which I check with myself.

I’m going to be real with you: Sometimes, I find myself in sticky situations. Maybe more than sometimes. Often. I’m not sure why. I would like to pretend that I stumble upon these situations by mere chance, and to an extent I think that’s true — the Universe wants me to have content. But I am also self-aware enough to know that my crave for the drama, my attraction to friends who toe the line between normal adolescence and sheer moral depravity, and my excessive screen-time might play a role. This will give you commenters something to yell at me about. As it has my mother, for years.

These sort of dramas I happen to find myself in are exactly the reasons I am drawn to write about etiquette, which is just a fancy word (my favorite kind) for “how to behave.” With all due respect to Emily Post – who grew up in my beloved Tuxedo Park – someone who wrote “Whether in a private carriage, a car or a taxi, a lady must never sit on a gentleman’s left; because according to European etiquette, a lady ‘on the left’ is not a ‘lady’” is not the sort of person I can turn to for advice. I mean, how can anyone keep track of who is sitting where when you’re stumbling drunk into the back seat of an Uber?

Simply speaking, traditional etiquette is outdated and isn’t designed for modern life. Even if the laws of the old guard prove themselves to be correct when I am fully grown-up, there is little relevance to a college student about which fork to use when most of my silverware usage consists of the plastic kinda found at the bottom of an UberEats bag. Still, so many people my age find it so easy to suck completely in ways that astonish me — how can anyone act like this?!

So, next. Why me? I do not claim to be the voice of my generation, as I am not Hannah Horvath — I am much more of a Marnie.

The better question is, Why not me? I have a Substack, after all, and 1400 followers who have already shown themselves to be those who are voyeurs to a messy spectacle. Get in, let’s do this!

This summer, I worked for Dear Annabelle, a gorgeous stationery company located on the Upper East Side, and I realized that a massive portion of their business is convincing people to be polite. One doesn’t need to spend $80 on a set of notecards to jot down their thoughts during therapy, but it is a nice and worth-the-money touch if you’ve got it. Trying to figure out ways to expand the business into the marketplace of younger Millennials and even Gen Z got me thinking: why has our generation lost the art of etiquette? Why is etiquette something archaic, belonging to people with 401(k)s and gastrointestinal issues? It shouldn’t.

I’m not here to tell people not to black out at frat parties or to sleep with their friends’ boyfriends, because they’re going to anyway.

But the question I pose to you today: How can we do it with class?

Many of us turn to parents for advice or things of that nature, but back in the day, all of our parents were doing shitty cocaine in bar bathrooms and stumbling around wasted in high heels without a Snapchat picture to be threatened. Now, we might wake up with no memory and find a video of ourselves doing a strip tease at 2 a.m.

It happens to the best of us!
Photographed May 3, 2026, at 2:11 a.m., by my friend Mallory.

These elderlies didn’t grow up with the internet. They didn’t really grow up with any kind of consequences for their actions beyond what they or others manually transmitted through gossip; I believe it was carrier pigeon that shared who hooked up with who. Today, it can simply be blasted on a group chat or a private story with the same effort of putting on a pair of socks.

With that in mind, I want to be a voice, even if not the, of how to retain decorum while also enjoying being young like God intended.

Now, I want to give you guys a quick cast of characters you might meet during your time here.

For my family, we have my mom, who is by far my biggest opp at the time of my writing, but also my absolute bestest friend and someone whom I “share all [my] mental diseases with,” as my sister said today. She’s the inspo. We also have my Dad, who is essential in talking through my work with. He comes from a far WASPier background than my mother’s Midwest-roots — he is all suburban New York City, New England boarding school, Columbia, Saint Anthony Hall.

It’s like Donna Tartt wrote my dad, Nora Ephron wrote my mom, and Bret Easton Ellis wrote me.

Then, my baby sister, of course. Ella was my best friend growing up and still is; we share a similar creativity from growing up in our very creative and sometimes eccentric family. She devours books and movies — or literature and films, as she insufferably calls them — and keeps me sane as well as inspired. We kind of bounce off each other.

I have many friends – and even more “best friends.” You will meet them in due time, and you will in turn love them as I do, despite their sometimes loathsome antics (let the one who is never a sloppy drunk cast the first stone, amirite?).

Well, you’ve met me now. I’m still trying to figure out how I should be using Substack. Just long pieces, or should I be doing some Tweet-y updates? I haven’t the faintest clue. Please write in the comments if you have any thoughts or ideas on how I can make the most of Substack and my 1,400 new friends!

I don’t expect that you all are going to agree with my takes, opinions or behavior, but it would be great if we could keep the comments civil. In my last essay, the one that bought most of you here, there were some wonderfully thoughtful and thought-provoking comments, but there was a lot of rudeness and outright nastiness.

I applaud and marvel at the willingness of grown adults to take the time to read a long essay and then take even more time to insult the writer. (Though, the economy might be better if working-age adults spent less time screaming at each other at 4 a.m. in comment sections.) I’m open to criticism and love to hash it out, but let’s be civil to each other! That’s etiquette.

Thank you kindly for reading! I can’t wait to share what comes next.

And if you have any etiquette questions, put them in the comments! I am happy to answer any questions. :)