AM I ALIVE?? ARE YOU?????
On proof-of-life trends and thinking about popular socks and emerging thoughts.
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At Oval Office, Musk Makes Broad Claims
Fact-checking Musk's claims
Musk brought his 4-year-old to the Oval Office.
Grimes Says X 'Should Not Be in Public Like This'
Musk met with Modi. What does he want from India?
"a meeting between two heads of state"
So dumb for so many reasons, which inspired a left conspiracy tailspin and the right jacking off on JFK pics while the stupidest person you know thinks this is great. I’ve said this before but again: this isn’t “about America” but about dipping fingers everywhere — and it’s working, because people (and countries) feel poor, abandoned.
Russia rejoices at Trump-Putin call
JD Vance stuns Munich conference
Trump Officials Attack a German Consensus
Europe must respond to Trump, says Macron
Which brings us here, which ties to the above and last week’s report, which I assume Macron read. Note that Germany votes next Sunday. Anyway, the Baltics did this “in protest” to Russia. Cool!
Google Calendar removed Pride, BHM
Deloitte: remove gender pronouns from emails
DOE asks to erase records set by trans athletes
US park service erases Stonewall Inn
“#USArmy will no longer allow transgender”
A question I’ve been thinking about, considering the obsession with the wrong 1%: are we going to organize a strike of no longer offering entertainment, sports, and general participation in the things that we — the ethnically, racially, sexually, gender different — are the engines of? I mean this less in “I am not going to work to protest!” and more matters like the Super Bowl or streams of entertainment like social media: yes, “I need to get paid.” — but what if we stopped, cutting off their resources to capital and escapism? That’s one of the simplest power shifts in these tech lord times, which may be what Issa Rae and Shonda Rhimes are getting at with their Kennedy cancellations. This is to say: why not have an economic blackout every day? Why silo activism because of convenience, resulting in signal-heavy checkpoints? This is a growing conversation that has been building for well over a decade that we mention again and again here.
Macron pledges €109B AI investment
At work, a quiet AI revolution is under way
Microsoft: AI Makes Humans “Atrophied and Unprepared”
Please Stop Inviting AI Notetakers to Meetings
"“AI SLOP” MENTIONED BY A POLITICIAN"
Again: Macron trying to lock in. Most of this AI news is more of the same — but the Microsoft item and Trudeau item are great. (Note: turn off Apple Intelligence, as it’s been forced on in the new update.)
The baffling WFH puzzle
The unexpected impacts of ending remote work
JPMorgan CEO derides in-office work pushback
“On fucking Zoom”
Hold on to your job if you want to work remotely
Fascinating how the “work from home” conversation returned via DOGE shit illustrating the desires of the rich to enslave and dehumanize the not-rich.
Are we alive? Of course we are — but “proof of life” behavior seems to be infiltrating culture in some peculiar ways. I’m calling it Amialivecore.
It first clicked with the recent trend of people on TikTok dropping objects on their feet, to rate the pain on a scale of 1 to 10. Then there’s Doechii wearing visible face tape becoming this year's Margiela doll makeup, an act that turns cosmetics into performance. Then we have the cute lil trend of “apartment coffee shop” parties, an expression of economic malaise and kidult/kidification that sees Little Tikes-style cashier/barista playacting. For the past year on Twitter and beyond, a new engagement bait has emerged of sharing strange areas of domestic spaces that inspires a meme threats where people “insert” things into awkward spaces, as some marvel at today’s bizarre, anti-living domestic architecture. Office sirens collide into Severancecore collide into the return of corporate Calvin Klein. Balletcore and Sandy Liang bows evolve into the Puma ballet slipper and the Bad Bunny “ballerina” shoe. Everything-as-activewear and Crocs fit here but the New Balance, Hoka, and general “sneaker loafer” trend directly plays into it. Longing for pre-tech times, yes, but wearing giant headphones all the time more so. “what flavour is it” someone asks of a beige cake that has been over-described on an aesthetic level but not on a taste level. “born to this/forced to that" meme but it’s just the same LA project manager girlie twice. “I can’t talk about personal style anymore,” Nikki Ogunnaike says. “The obsession with finding your personal style rather than just like living a life.”
“Text messages from friends and sentimental brand invites adorn the bedroom shelves,” an interiors account described a home. My friend sent me this post knowing that I’d love/hate it — and she was right, as it serves as the exclamation point of Amialivecore: suggestions of living and life that seek pain or validation or purchased aesthetics to problem solve the question of if you are alive and if your body works and if you are indeed present in the present. The expression “Let him cook!” fits in well too, a saying reflecting the dominance of undercooked lives and minds: girl dinners and pick-me snacks and ready-to-eat foods suggest cooking is simply lifting snacks and artfully arranging food products. The kitchen as a big closet for metal things and decorative plates. Your mouth the site of overly brined and exotically spiced one-bite items that pop and fizz, waking up the mouth as a means to wake up the soul. A slap nested in a snap.
The sequel to (or evolution of) last year’s Vibe Personality Disorder, it’s not difficult to connect the dots: this is a reaction to our ongoing, near-ritualistic dehumanization by industry and broligarch overlords and our inability to reconcile with our innate mediocrity or inability to rise above economically or socially, in a world where you’re forced to work at work and work while out of work all to stay locked into the 99%. Five years into the 2020s, our only means to “undo” this problem is to aesthetic our way out of it, to live in the reference of action because you’ve been priced out of experience. You wear the ballet flats — but do you do ballet? You wear the loafers — but do you work in an office? You lust after life — but are you living? Drop something on your foot and report that it’s an eight on the pain scale which means, yes, you can say you’ve done it all by method acting your way through life.
Our real lives are increasingly make believe which is why so many of us go on main to share how we play act life instead of making meaning, instead of getting offline and actually living. Same old, same old in our faux-influencer Insta world. But the difference is FOMO is out and SFYO — self-flagellate yourself online — is in. This is all deep loser behavior, which we know, proving that a life expressed as content is not a life. It doesn’t matter if the content is spiritual or includes small forms of self-harm: it’s still content, a performance, a gesture that keeps an eye on the camera where the playback means more than lived experience. None of these things legitimate life as one is “hot girl walking” through it: performing for the hypothetical audience of yourself and others to suggest interest or relevance without meaningfully contributing to greater personal meaning. “Validate my existence,” you plead, as you drop your Stanley Cup upon your Sambas, the world burning outside your window. “Let me know I am alive.”
Kendrick’s Super Bowl Halftime Show
“a masterclass in mess and politics”
Will Men Buy Bootcut Jeans?
"would be nice to get a political win"
“closest to Kamala winning”
Kendrick owned the week, eclipsing the game with high-thought delivered to the masses. The bootcut thing is great as he wore the gayest jeans to be the pettiest: real Latina behavior! I have a very distinct memory of myself, in 2005, wearing the most perfect bootcut jeans, which is peak 2000s-era (closeted) twink behavior. Are we approaching a neo-metrosexual moment? Your comment, Jacob Elordi? This jean moment clarifies that the jean debate discourse is over too as this is happening amidst a skinny jean comeback. Fighting over clothing basics is over, people!!
A Great Baby Photo? Ask Anne Geddes
Now that the strike has lifted, read this story about the 1990s baby photographer extraordinaire. It’s great!
Saturday Night Live is bad, actually
‘SNL’ Has Always Been Bad
I have a soft spot for anti-SNL sentiments. As a brilliant Tweet once said, “so sick of this shit….sesame street for adults.”
Dr. Bronner's dropping B Corp
The girls are FIGHTING!!! An organization like B Corp profits by giving companies passes to show that they are “good” when the reality is few forms of modern retail are actually net-neutral as far as impact. Well done, Bronnie!
"this was excessive and rude"
"the whole point is to give opinions?"
"Who are the ones crying?"
There’s a larger essay in here that I’m not writing about (young) Gen Z exceptionalism and behavior that feels Republican. The latest season of Drag Race is a great example, which has been flat and not-great largely due to an almost exclusively Gen Z cast. The queens talk big game but are deeply mid — and then demand praise in their delusion for sub-par expressions of drag. As we talked about this last week, this is a big emerging conversation which, in this case, has fans begging for older, more seasoned queens to be cast as — to the point of the above essay — the cast expects advancement just for wearing pretty outfits.
Tartine co-founder’s project isn’t what you’d expect
Rocky road pudding recipe
“Valentine’s Day Rocky Road”
“5-ingredient rocky road”
A dessert? Made from odds-and-ends sweets? That doesn’t require eggs? This is for sure a recession indicator: “rocky road” sweets have seemingly been trending for the past few months, which may have coalesced with ’s holiday New York Times recipe but clicked in my brain this week via ’s recipe.
"Coralie Fargeat is the matrix."
THE SUBSTANCE LOOKBOOK
To all creatives: bookmark this. It’s a masterclass outlining an idea. Inspiring!! (Unrelated but I had nowhere else to put it: Maya Hawke talking about Instagram numbers and casting is, um, concerning.)
Brat Bowl and Hangover Burgers
“How to write for social media”
My press team worked overtime this week, as I had a lil chat with about Super Bowl commercials and post-Brat media along with a social writing crash course for ’s . Check ‘em out!!
We had friends over for dinner. No one wore shoes as we keep a no-shoe household. I noticed a guest had on red ribbed socks. I had on purple ribbed socks. Another had on gray ribbed socks. They were all the Uniqlo Colorful 50 socks, noted for being all different, all the same. I have a tub of socks that are mostly Uniqlo Colorful 50 socks: I could buy no socks again in my life and be fine. I’ve accumulated them over years, over my time living and working in various cities. Some are holey, some seem brand new, but I keep them all. “They feel good — snug but not too tight — and last for years,” The Strategist notes, calling them the best overall socks for men.
There’s a picture from the recent Tory Burch and Chloé shows where people in the front row wear the same item given to them by the brand, which is a type of brag until you realize they’re all the same. We all wear the same socks — but at least the socks are hidden, personal. At a holiday party at a friend’s house, we were all shoeless, sipping wine and seated on the floor. Myself and the host both had on the Uniqlo Colorful 50 socks on — and we both had holes at the toes. We laughed: so different yet so similar.
A picture of JFK Jr. playing under his father’s desk in the Oval Office went viral because people likened it to Elon Musk’s son playing around Trump’s desk in the Oval Office: these are different though, right? I hold up my pair of Uniqlo 15 Red next to my Uniqlo 17 Red. They look the same and, in low lighting, as I pull them out before bed, I can’t tell the difference. I think I have two of the same pair. In the morning, in the sunlight, it’s obvious: the 15s are bright, vibrant, glowing with an orange undertone while the 17s are subdued, darker, fading toward maroon, the suggestion of purple. They’re not the same at all but, if I knew less or didn’t care to look or saw things in one dimension, these differences wouldn’t matter. Such is the experience of a salute, a t-shirt, an ad, a history of segregation: are these not the same? Or is my mind playing a trick?
In Uniqlo stores, the Colorful 50 socks are displayed on a wall as a rainbow to choose from. It’s sleek and factual, suggesting diversity and difference as asset. I scan Twitter and there are posts that keep popping up about phenotypes and phrenology and physiognomy. The neanderthal man, the conqueror phenotype, the racist and aesthetically exceptionalist: there’s a greasy, disgusting feeling in simplifying the human “by aesthetic.” As expected, this visually obsessed techno-cultural petri dish then enables beliefs like interracial relationships are bad.
Many of my socks have holes in them because I’ve been wearing them for years, which is further complicated by my forgetting to clip my toenails which means my big toe sticks out of my most beloved pairs. 76 Purple, 87 87, 12 Pink, 52 Green: broken but not beyond repair, reinvention. I’ve considered layering them, less for warmth and more for style. Why would I create waste when I could get creative? “Power, when it rebrands itself, is rarely about aesthetics,” Jeremy White explains for Wired. Sometimes, fighting for what you have is the smartest thing to do.
“Tech darling Gigslave”
“It’s a loophole for the ultra-wealthy.”
“Sorry I didn’t respond”
“Ariana Grande is just”
“The old CIA?”
“any trouble with ice this week?”
"cool if you’re a fucking idiot"
Lib slop, to make you laugh/cry.
“Britney if she was giving Kendrick”
“Tate McRae’s wax figure”
“A lady who’s 9 months pregnant”
“don’t want me at Super Bowl party”
“She’s too much”
Best Super Bowl content and, in case you were wondering, this is the best post about Kendrick’s bootcut jeans.
“YOU ARE NOW CEO”
“surely not”
“I’d kill myself”
“guy I hooked up with”
”she’s crying”
Happy post-Valentine’s! I loved the trend of Luigi Valentine’s. If only they actually, um, turned into action.
“She wasn’t lying”
"Cozy to Alien Superstar Im crying"
"she’s reheating the nachos"
"Colombia Has A Problem"
"she clearly respects her as an artist"
Find someone who looks at you like Shakira looks at Beyoncé.
"why is he posing like Janet"
He is posing like Janet and, as alluded to with the bootcut item, the aughts were such an era of little men looking like little ladies. No wonder this birthed the metrosexual!
"like the furniture from Beauty and The Beast"
“thought this was Justin Baldoni”
So Nicholas Galitzine’s He-Man is looking crazy.
“this man with no ass”
As someone said in the comments, “Hank Hill and Bill Dauterive.”
“Can we sing to him?”
Don’t feed your dog lit birthday candles.
And, finally, how I think my mother talks about me.
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👏 nailed it. perfectly articulated the way we’re trying to aesthetic our way out of numbness.
ugh i too am sick of the "personal style" movement. Especially when its the trend like "things I wore before I found my personal style" and they are just nineteen. Everyone looks bad when their nineteen! Its a rule! And its not "bad" personal style its just...not the same because YOU AREN'T THE SAME. YOU ARE FREE TO CHANGE WITH THE WIND.