ACAB (even you when policing others)
On liberals being conservative and defining the canon of midlife Millennials.
This week's 🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿 features one of my Barcelona bffs , who joined and I to talk how we’re deep in mid times (which, yes, includes Addison Rae), on "using" protein, intergenerational skate culture, and why Millennial culture is d o m i n a t i n g culture right now. Get into it!!! Catch it now on Spotify and YouTube.
LAST CALL: If you’re in London, we’re getting together in Shoreditch for a drink at 5P! More details here. Next up on the agenda: the next Trend Report Live™ is July 6 in Barcelona and I’ll be in Copenhagen early August and Stockholm for late August. If you’re in either city, I’d love to meet you 💫
Trump defends sending troops to L.A.
Texas Gov. to deploy National Guard
US Senator Alex Padilla wrestled to ground
Trump takes migrant children out of their homes
Trump’ immigration leaving children ‘truly alone’
Huge military parade as protesters rally
What else is there to say? This was a huge week in America, specifically as it relates to freedom and standing up, to support the vulnerable — and your rights. There is a lot of bad (the Alex Padilla thing, the foster children thing) but I do want to point out something that doesn’t get said enough: Los Angeles is the blueprint of modern America, that it is fighting for the rights of inclusion while illustrating what the future will be. Yes, all of this is “very bad” but I don’t think it can be understated that, in a drought of Democratic fecklessness, persons like Padilla and Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom are standing up and fighting back. As Alissa Walker wrote this week, “Protests do not make LA dangerous. What makes LA dangerous is the Trump-ordered invasion of our city. We're talking about abducting people, not dismembering a few electric scooters. Over the weekend, LA Mayor Karen Bass was spot-on in calling the situation a ‘chaotic escalation’ — everything was fine, she said, until federal agents got here. Even Rick Caruso agreed!” This is torture and abuse on a regional scale but, unfortunately for Trump, he chose the wrong Americans to fuck with.
Iran launches retaliatory missile attack on Israel
What has Israel hit in Iran?
Israel-Iran: The worst-case scenarios
Despite the haha hehes since Friday, it certainly does feel like this week was a big turning point for a lot — and that the socio-political temperature of the planet nudged up some. Can you believe the Freedom Flotilla was this week too? That feels like a decade ago.
Italy’s citizenship referendum fails
Anti-immigrant violence continues in N. Ireland
Don’t miss the anti-immigration moves in Europe. They’re very bad too!!
Africa's health care challenges
Trump to destroy $12m worth of HIV drug
First link is a tiny part of Semafor’s bi-weekly-ish Africa newsletter, which says something that is taking up more and more space in my mind: an already frail infrastructure of health in the soon-to-be-most-populous continent in the world has been pushed into precarity thanks to a certain racist American president and his removing a huge portion of health care aid. This is a silent genocide, persons needlessly dying so the richest country in the world can “save money.” And the destroying of the HIV drugs that would save people worldwide? Criminal. The seeds for generational unrest are being planted now.
Canada Faces a ‘Challenging’ Wildfire Season
Truth About What Wildfire Smoke Does to Body
Wildfires may be the defining disaster — or disaster gesture — of our lifetime. The Canada wildfires are a reminder of this, which this study reiterates.
Is Sabrina Carpenter an evil jezebel whore whose parading of infidelities are bringing upon an ever widening stain to the apron of womanhood that may never be washed away? Or is she a brilliant satirist?
That was the discourse of the week, as the “Espresso” singer announced a new album coming out in August, which was a shock — not because of its proximity to her last album but because the album artwork features the artist on hands and knees, hair pulled by a faceless suited man, her looking just out of frame, face vacant with the faintest smile. Within a day, she was on the cover of Rolling Stone for a new feature where she was almost completely naked. “your entire artistic identity still revolves around seeking male approval and being desirable to them is… a choice,” went a reply. “not buying these covers, babe,” someone said. “is this the pop girl standard now?? what are we doing…” another said. Then, as if taking a collective breath, people said they couldn’t keep defending her for doing this. Is this all a sociological sexual disaster disrooted from an actual statement? Or does none of this matter? While some of this conversation is rage bait, it sparked what some feared: a never ending debate about women in the public eye. This chatter loops around what we’ve felt for years but see more and more clearly since November: young people (Or all people!) are really quite conservative, or have lost the plot when it comes to subjects like feminism.
Why is this relevant? Why does this matter? It does and it doesn’t matter as technically the art is “not good” but it does signal a larger issue of products and policing within culture. Let’s push in on the phrase “appealing to the male gaze” which has become a new way to slut shame. While Sabrina is not pressed by the matter — She won the week’s discourse decathlon, babes! — this whole situation highlights the hamster that runs and runs and runs on the wheel in my head: the culture of the 2020s is one where conservatism starts at home, in your body, a respectability sickness that forces you to change and police others in the name of conformity, of standing out less, of being more palatable without creating the idea of harm, all of which enables our being boring, safe, and scared all the time. Such a situation is an echo of needless moral and intellectual panics akin to 2019’s Joker and Katie Hill and polyamory. Yes, there may be harms to speak up about but this isn’t without the context of people drinking less, weed being out with young people, the closing of clubs, the lack of people having sex, everyone wearing the same clothes: are these not signs of conservatism, of a life without sauce, of hedonism on mute, of everyone holding a camera that is also a gun that is also a tool of the state?
Yes, obviously, a rise in religion says conservatism is in — but I’m not talking about the obviously conservative: I’m talking about the ostensibly liberal, creative, forward thinking, city dwelling, the people who should be pushing what life could and should be. We have all become prudes that fly to the light of even the faintest controversy to distract ourselves, whether that be expressed as David Lachapelle recycling a set piece or fears of wearing the same outfit twice, as Claire of pointed out in the latest Taste Report™, opining for repeat outfits: these are little ways in which modern respectability politics kneecaps progress, that we over-index on novelty and products and image creation because modern capitalism and techno surveillance demand our being seen in perpetual newness when anything otherwise is seen as “unclean,” that we have sinned against the panopticon for not giving it a good enough show. As I said on this week’s 🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿, what’s the point of all this protein culture and Ozempic and all this other body hacking if we aren’t having wild sex? Why aren’t we all polyamorous sex fiends at this point? What happens when the body isn’t a site of activity but more a construction site? The win of cancel culture is that it cancelled a culture of freedom, of risk taking, of doing something, stunting so many of us to the point that liberals are the conservatives and the conservatives are the liberals. Pick your puritanical poison: one that makes you feel dumb and disrespects you or one that doesn’t give a fuck about anything but is evil.
Which brings us to the protests in Los Angeles and Trump’s terrorizing a city, a population, a way of thinking: this is where we really see this variety of conservatism coming to life. Chuck Schumer doing nothing in the face of violence against Senator Alex Padilla as Cory Booker turns this moment into content, forcing David Hogg out of the DNC because he was too radical, leftists turning (“turning”) on Zohran Mamdani for being too similar to AOC, the “If Kamala were president we’d all be at brunch” thing: these articulate an of-a-kind neo-conservatism, riskless behavior that priotizes comfort and pointing things out without doing much of anything else. It’s what the comedian Ryan Ken calls activism gossip blogging — but these are “gossip bloggers for people who’ve read bell hooks.” People trying to police the performance of protests, going on and on that people are “doing it wrong” are missing the point while taking Trump’s bait that the protests “are violent”: are you joking? Do you know what’s on the line here? And you’re going to sit here and hold up signs that say RESIST? Fuck off. People are assassinating Democratic lawmakers! “Any thread of belief you had in the political system should be shattered,” as someone said this week. “The system is working as intended…You think these people give a fuck about peace?” The sort of smug polite politics of “going high” as it forces niceties over progress plays into the “Cities are dangerous!” conversations while enabling the fetishizing of a bygone Los Angeles over one that speaks up, one that meets the moment: do you want suburbanites flooding cities to wear the same thing and frequent chains, all forcing out local culture? Or do you want a diverse, rich culture that fights to be as inclusive as possible? You cannot have both.
ACAB — even you, when you police others. Yes, prioritize your health but also live a little. Be gay and do crime, honoring the hard work of decades and decades and centuries and centuries of activists who put their lives on the line so you could be a bit more comfortable now. Have a backbone! Fuck a little! Do a drug! Yell at someone! Maybe don’t say a slur — but get in someone’s face when they do. Relax a little if someone misgenders someone but isn’t being malicious. Be a human is what this gets at, being a bit messy and imperfect.
New Yorker's Emily Witt on nightlife culture
To the above, which I was going to tie in but it didn’t quite work: Emily Witt’s thoughts on the state of nightlife really captures liberal conservatism so well, that transgressive and experimental club spaces have been watered down to be more palatable and culturally safer, which forces out real artistry and challenging ideologies. What’s the point then? Why be a childless adult if you’re going to spend your time listening to pop songs instead of overflowing thine cup with pleasure?
Young Cardamom, HAB - #1 Spice
The MC who got a screen icon to swear
I love Zohran Mamdani and the internet is discovering he was once a rapper who went by Young Cardamom. What an icon.
Chefs on the Films That Make Them Hungry
Love this story and love that Daisy Ryan of Bell’s (THE BEST!!) chose The Birdcage as her favorite. That’s why she and Bell’s are iconic!
BTS stars RM and V discharged
K-pop supergroup BTS nears reunion
We are about to get a huge comeback. Also? Everyone outside of V came out of military service looking beat. Granted…I am a V boy so I am biased 🤭
LGBTQ In Movies Hits 3-Year Low, GLAAD Finds
Happy Pride 😞
Disney and Universal sue AI Midjourney
ChatGPT "Absolutely Wrecked" at Chess by Atari
I feel like more and more of these stories are going to emerge, as we discussed last week given the hall of mirrors phenomena of AI becoming more and more true. Want to keep the party going? Read the Times story about how ChatGPT is making people insane by distorting their reality.
Adrien Brody’s Art Is Horrendous
“felt honest might delete”
Speaking of war crimes, somehow the Adrien Brody “artist” story is having a moment and — Again. — he must be stopped.
My Brother’s Keeper
My hate read of the week, in which the flimsiest person in the world opines about how his perfectly normal straight brother — who is an adult, without intellectual or physical difficulties — living with him is somehow a supremely righteous act. Okay? This shit really pmtfo.
The problems back then might have been more urgent, but they also had clearer solutions. Now there were too many choices, with each one leading off on endless branches, preventing any real change.
In Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection (as translated by Sophie Hughes), the protagonists Anna and Tom are listless Italians living in Berlin desperately in search of proof of life as they work digital jobs remotely, migrating from place to place to place in the (European) world only to find everything everywhere is the same. It’s a book where thine cup overflows with ennui, where you feel your face pressed against a mirror to reveal your tapping toe, your real-or-not ADD and ADHD longing for another hit, another buzz, another like, another subscribe. It’s unsurprising that much of the book is a meditation not only on the objects that make a life in this era but the inability to be content with anything: not your success, not your pleasure, not with what you have, not with what you don’t have. Like all of us, Anna and Tom are endlessly empty tummies constantly craving tummy time.
Anna and Tom’s listlessness is a sign of these consumptive times taking place immediately before our dehumanizing now, which we get brief glimpses of in the rearview of the text. But what it also does is solidify a moment we’ve discussed before here and is starting to get more play: the era of Millennial adulthoods and Millennial masterpieces, defining the cultural tastemakers of the moment as their place in the sun sets. This is expected, as a generation ages, but we’re watching the defining of the thirtysomething/fortysomething Millennial canon, entering the era after Lena Dunham and Aziz Ansari, Zooey Deschanel and Chris Pratt, all persons who shaped the image of the 2010s Millennial. The past decade or so in the Millennial world was about being adorkable and twee, stumbling over yourself as you figure out your life and work online and offline, as industries change and you do too. It’s Atlanta and Frances Ha and Shrill and Insecure: these are all 2010 Millennial culture.
What then are the hallmarks of the 2020s Millennial? Perfection offers some clues on: it’s about people who have everything but are struggling to find meaning in a world defined by ease and access, when everything is special but nothing is special at all. There is the feeling of being lost, of disassociating, of being in a place but not from a place. The epicenter for these stories is not in Brooklyn or Silver Lake but are in a city of history and character that is being lost: Berlin, as we’ve seen with Good Girl and Allegro Pastel but also Health and Safety and Fake Accounts. In many ways, these media items are about literal and metaphysical displacement as we see in movies like Watcher and La Chimera and Aftersun and The Lost Daughter and even Marcel the Shell with Shoes On — and Barbie! The soundtrack and feeling of this is a subdued alt-rock or trip-hop-based grooviness that isn’t referential but is more about being in a state of mourning for a time and place that you’ve been divorced from, often incorporating or directly referencing what is longed for, going beyond nostalgia and more a folding of then with now, realizing you’re not only aging but the world is aging too. James K, D. Tiffany, Erika De Casier, Torn Hawk, Klein, Caroline Polachek, yes, but also Steve Julien’s recalling 1990s R&B radio and Loidis reconstructing 2000s minimalism and definitely FKA Twigs’ Ray of Light (2025 edition). The center of the crown, sonically, is ML Buch and her extended universe (Molina, Tirzah, Astrid Sonne, Nourished By Time) of musicians who use abstract language and even more abstract versions of “alt rock” in an attempt to understand this time and place after time and place. Yes, we may be within peak painting as the world is steeped in art confusion, but even painters are doing the job of obscuring and opening up our world (Rachel Jones, Christina Quarles) as others push beyond mediums to dissect our identities in the past, present, future, a la: Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst and Christine Sun Kim, all of whom happen to be Berlin-based. Perhaps this is where Celine Song and Dakota Johnson step into the frame with Materialists, which may not be Berlin-ified but does capture the lost-at-sea quality of Millennial mid-life: yes, the crisis of politics and the climate catastrophe and technocracy — but also the crisis of aging in a way that can feel divorced from not only time but what human life should be. These are all artists and creations that try to reconcile the promises of our lives with the reality of the world today, an age group who were sold the future but given nothing in return for following directions, for doing everything right. The 2020s Millennial media moment seeks to understand what was lost while still trying to be found well into mid-life.
And yet. That thing that heals us eludes us. None of these works offer firm answers, hence dwelling on communication and missed connections, of coming to terms with the gluttony of eating the world by means of access to all information, all things, all dreams, all that we could ever want. Adulthood as a bitter extended childhood. Life is supposed to be full of surprises! And yet here we are, failing to be surprised by anything because we have seen everything. Maybe we can eat less of the world, maybe we will continue to write and hum and paint through this loss, in the backroom of a European club in the middle of the night, longing to be held by your own older self, that adult person who was supposed to have it all figured out, in a world that was supposed to be healed. “The landscape gradually lost its splendour the further they drove from the coast, until it looked like any old countryside, which was what it was,” Latronico writes nearing the end of Perfection. “For whatever reason, they never seemed to find what they were looking for.”
“Anita Baker is Michael McDonald”
“Anita Baker is Michael McDonald Pt 2”
This is the best musical journalism I have seen in a very long time. When Anita’s voice drops? You will lose it.
“MAKE THIS A SOUND”
“Keeping my mouth shut”
“tiny desk to”
The Amerie Tiny Desk saga was a highlight of the week. Who let her do this??
“Coqui!”
"holy shit he really is gay"
“she’s got it”
“i love this duo”
I cannot get enough of the Materialist press tour. It is healing me! And can only happen because of her je nepo sais pas. Need a Dakota queen to my Pedro <3 Also: The Onion’s interview “with” Dakota is great because it very well could be real.
“Tyra Light Banks”
Tyra Banks…no one is wilder than she is. No one more insane.
“New song”
Me listening to Addison Rae.
“she keeps”
“go kylie go”
“10 sets of 8 slices”
“this serious?”
This woman — who is awful at working out — is about to have a big TikTok moment and, yes, I would take a workout class with her. Obviously!
“typical day at my grandparents”
This video? It’s exactly why TikTok was made — and why TikTok is so much better than every other social network. Art. Humor! Life.
“a 100ft cord”
The ancient ones long for corded kitchen phones.
“in sensory deprivation”
“#birthday”
“Magic”
I leave you with a few farty gifts because to poop is to be people, which AI will never be <3
And, finally, what the Sabrina drama really looks like to me.
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So there is something stuck in my craw about this Sabrina Carpenter thing. I thankfully keep my distance from most poptimism discourse these days, and I know the album art HAS attracted negative responses, but I’ve actually seen much more defenses than handwringing. What’s bothering me about the latter is that I haven’t seen a single one of these defenses make a solid argument for why the art is good. Those on the “this cover art is bad” side are making some very strong points: that it IS regressive and objectifying and makes uncomfortable visual references to a time when women were treated like property and didn’t have much agency. I've actually not seen any of the photo's defenders say why it's good, or even that it IS good— the defense, from what I’ve seen, has mostly been “grow up and let the pop star be horny.” But you’re the first defender I’ve seen point to how she looks visibly uncomfortable in the photo, and to wonder if Carpenter is actually a very skilled satirist. This is the beginning of an interesting argument, and I would’ve liked to hear more. But the pivot from almost talking about the art in question to, first, lambasting negative responses to it (that are, in many cases, rooted in negative experiences that can and often do come with existing in a gendered body that is different from yours) and then having the audacity to compare opinions about a pop star's aesthetic choices to bad takes about a massive threat to collective civil rights (in a country you don’t live in) is wild ad hominem at best and genuinely offensive at worst.
It's fair to say some of the responses to Carpenter are slut-shamy, reductive, and unfair, and sometimes they lack nuance. Sure! But pop culture and its representatives don’t exist in a vacuum, and Carpenter is, on paper, doing pretty much exactly what has been expected of conventionally attractive (thin, white) women in the public eye for many decades. It is fair to say it isn’t as simple as just a pop star being horny because she’s very visible and presented as aspirational, and we do take cues from each other on what messages these images are communicating.
For example, you mention “Ozempic and body hacking,” a phenomenon that is popular because people are watching each other do it, and eating disorders are social diseases triggered by repeated exposure to and normalization of unnaturally thin bodies and the increasing pressure to obtain one at any cost. While this pressure is becoming less gendered, it has, for a long time, been a predominantly feminine pressure, and millennial women’s strong reaction to the return of low-rise hemlines comes from how many of them developed eating disorders to fit into the insane standards of the fashion that was sold to them as teenagers. And these bodies may be sold as a sexual ideal, but many women who have recovered from eating disorders describe the embodied experience of that self-denial as completely antithetical to the desire for sex. On a similar note, heterosexual dating is a famously horrible experience for women that can be dehumanizing on a number of levels, from essentially having to commoditize ourselves on apps or—if participation in that marketplace goes where you’re suggesting it’d be healthy for it to go—really porny, uncomfortable, and often at least semi-violent sex. And it doesn’t feel good to participate in, but there’s a pressure to do it anyway because dominant messages from pop culture repeatedly argue that things like being conventionally attractive, sexually available, and appealing to men are what make women valuable.
So what makes the responses to Carpenter’s album art conservative, as opposed to the art itself being conservative? Is there not a palpable trad wifeyness to Carpenter’s Vargas girl image? Because a hellish alternative to the threat of “dying alone as an old maid” could be to buy into the regressive idea of what a woman is “supposed” to be in order to attract a husband, only to end up as a prisoner in the golden cage of a toxic marriage. And to your point, if I think about this and remember the look on Carpenter’s face in that photo, the one you call attention to for a second, NOW I’m interested. Is she doing this on purpose? No one seems to want to investigate this.
I, for one, don’t really care about Carpenter being horny on main, and I think her cover art is a shitty picture that looks like an outtake from a shoot for a liquor ad. But the discourse reducing reactions to this art to moral panic handwringing instead of talking about it on the basis of its creative merits concerns me a lot more than the art itself. When did criticism just become discourse? I read your stuff every week, appreciate your opinions, and often wonder what you’re going to say about whatever topics have come up in the past week. But I find it interesting to notice that while you argue for informed cultural criticism, the need for media literacy and pushing against anti-intellectualism on some topics, others are loudly “not that deep,” and there doesn’t necessarily seem to be a ton of consistency on what subject garners which response. Why is one thing worth further discussion and analysis, but wanting to think about the deeper context of an image that understandably pisses some people off signals “a respectability sickness”? You’ve mentioned concerns about the memory-holing of the pandemic, and keeping tabs on your worries about similar threats to our collective welfare, and yet there’s no consideration for why significant numbers of people might be “having less fun and taking less risks” after we all watched over 25 million people around the world die completely unnecessary deaths for literally just sharing air. It's just not as simple as “lighten up and live a little,” because the choices we make affect each other, and they're often informed by the very purposeful agendas of people in power who are involved in creating the images we absorb, especially when we absorb them without thought. “It’s not that deep” is a very slippery slope that’s absolutely played a role in the rise of a lot of conservative phenomena like Ozempic and tradwives and redpilling. You seem to know and be interested in this!
But to go back to my main point, if this Sabrina Carpenter album cover is worth defending, is it because it’s actually good art, or are its defenders more interested in clarifying their stance on “the right side” of an ongoing moral panic discourse than actually engaging with the art? And why are the art’s detractors not worth hearing out? Is saying it’s bad to think a piece of art is bad without saying why the art is good not its own form of baseless reactionary thinking? And if the defenses are coming from a place of seeing Carpenter as an artist with an interesting point of view, would the take of “just let her be horny” not do something of a disservice to her creative vision? And in what world is a negative response to her output even remotely comparable to bad faith takes on a terrifying, building civil rights crisis? As a regular reader who respects your work, this essay was a real bummer.
"Like all of us, Anna and Tom are endlessly empty tummies constantly craving tummy time." worries the hell out of me. FWIW 'tummy time' is *actually* about getting an infant to exert strength and discover agency.
The implication in the sentence is that we're all hoping to wallow as our main activity. That's concerning. It's opposite of why we seek 'tummy time' for kids, actually, IMO - but acquiescing to its cutest impulse means we're prone to wallow first, ask for catechisms later.