CANCEL CULTURE is CANCELLED 🕊️

The agony and ecstasy of living in a post-cancel culture world and a little story about living in the shadow of the 2016 election.

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Trump fills Madison Square Garden with anger
The thing that wasn’t said enough about the Madison Square Garden hell rally was that it happened in New York and not some place in the south. And why aren’t there protestors never showing up to MAGA events? Anyway, no one cares about the Trump/Epstein thing.​

U.S. Election Matters for the Rest of the World
Does the EU have anyone who can talk Trump?
We talked about this last week but a reminder that the rest of the world is in our echo.

STRESS READS: ACCESS AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!
Facebook Is Auto-Generating Militia Pages
“Little Secret” Between Trump and Johnson
Workers Say They Were Tricked as Part of Musk’s PAC
Hundreds of damaged ballots saved
Pro-Trump conservative banned from CNN
Trump’s ‘grab them’ is showing on TikTok
An excess of billionaires is destabilising politics
Kamala chained up during PA Halloween parade
“Based on math, one of these things have to happen.”

Some schadenfreude news!!!!!!
McDonald’s posts biggest decline in global sales in four years
BP reports lowest quarterly profit since pandemic on weak oil prices
'Washington Post' flooded by cancellations
European Greens ask Jill Stein to stand down

Things that made me sigh and will make you sigh too.
"incredibly hard to afford a car"
What to Know About Walking Pneumonia
Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula
Restricting sugar in children helps prevent diabetes

God awful climate change round-up.
Valencia death toll mounts
Mount Fuji has yet to see snow, breaking 130-year record
Deaths of older people from climate extremes soar
”anyone else scared”

Deaths in Spain Aren’t Just a Natural Disaster
A great story on how right wing leaders played a big hand in the disaster. Hope you and your grandma are prepared for the next Trump presidency! (And, to put this flood in perspective, it’s likely that as many people died from this flood as people died in Hurricane Helene. Sit with that.)

A few weeks back,

Ada Hutch

left a comment on a post that turned a gear. “I have a theory,” Ada wrote, explaining that Charli XCX and Taylor Swift are both ambitious, hard-working, similarly aged and influenced persons who came into the industry around the same time: they’re two sides of the same coin. This “Sympathy Is A Knife” via “Girl, So Confusing” view poses a question to culture: are you a Charli? Or a Taylor? Your answer says a lot, that you go to bars and show up to shows late or are a good tipper who likes sports. Stanning is more a lifestyle now than support system, a series of philosophical gestures made as you move through the world.

This triggered a That’s So Raven-style vision in my corroded mind as such allegiances — Are you a Carrie or a Samantha? Are you a Coke or a Pepsi? NBC or ABC? Hot dog or hamburger? — are embedded within the American psyche, perhaps an original sin we created at the country’s genesis: Are you a loyalist or a revolutionary? Union or Confederate? For abolition or slavery? This is likely a general people-everywhere-thing but an interesting aspect of American culture is how exaggerated this has become, making us quick to compartmentalize, forming cliques to place everything into buckets of ideas. Movies, music, food, politics, even people: we like to pick and choose, divide and conquer, mapping the personal/cultural divide of endorsements without allowing overlaps. As I told Ada, the days of combination Pizza Hut/Taco Bell culture is over as you’re either this or that. There is obviously overlap for many things but, in a post 2010s, post-cancel culture time, you’re either for or against something: you can’t have it both ways. Just ask the Barbz, the final form of stans.

Claire Dederer’s 2023 book Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma offers insight —

Despite the fan being necessarily part of a multi-unit organism, she believes herself to be uniquely intense in her fandom. An audience member is a consumer of a piece of art; the audience member is not defined by that piece of art. A fan, on the other hand, is a consumer plus, a consumer beyond, a consumer who is also being consumed. She steals part of her identity from the art, even as it steals its importance from her. She becomes defined by the art. A fan has a special role and bestows upon herself a special status. (A status that culture producers are happy to co-opt, distribute, sell, monetize.)

In so many ways, the gestures and ideas of being American have collapsed into fandoms, categories, which is the point: when you cannot live without consuming, when your love of something eclipses your sense of self, you lose free thinking abilities. You become part of the hive mind, a drone.

This has been a silver thread of the 2020s which turned direct this year with the election, as we’ve seen

Taylor Lorenz

muse on the Pop Craveification of news, KQED’s ongoing monitoring of The Fandom Vote, Washington Post‘s reflection on the podcast election, and even

Liz Plank

‘s dissection of the election’s gender performances, all of which captures the this-or-that-ness of today. We know social media is a contributor to this culture, as we saw with the first wave of digital chatter around support for Palestinians. Unsurprisingly, our eleventh hour election narrative has become this standom narrative in different forms: “No other major democracy in the world […] is as consistently deadlocked,” FT explained of the lost art of moderation, before noting in another story that “more Americans [believe] that supporters of other parties are more closed-minded, dishonest, immoral and unintelligent”; the “enemy from within” further zooms in, as WaPo summarizes that “the question of whether a vote for Trump would risk letting the country slide into autocracy has been thrust into the center”; the continued (albeit annoying) rise of a channel like Jubilee is couched within the now false-premise of both sides agreeing.

The 2020s have been about cancelling cancel culture and moving onto the next act: the constant boil of polarization. Like the consumption required of fandom, polarization requires a constant monstering, which social media thrives off. Whether strategists fighting over politics or literary girlies fighting over elitism, we’re doing exactly what we spent the 2000s and 2010s training for, as our entire lives — like the entire history of this nation — has been boiling up to this point. Now, we only know how to turn the heat up — and on each other. Everything is do or die. Everything is the end of the world. No wonder Charli and Taylor have been sidelined by Chappell Roan: her constant outrages are ours too. She may be the last boss of pop stars to stan for because she hates us as much as we hate each other, ourselves. Isn’t that our American love language? Hate of each other? We stan most what we cannot stand.

€5 to enter Notre-Dame could ‘save churches in France’
Unpopular opinion but all churches should charge people to enter unless they’re attending mass/a service. But also: we should be taxing them too! Not that the Notre-Dame is an American entity but you know what I mean.

The Vatican Just Dropped an Anime Mascot
"Luce saving souls”
I have been screaming all week about the Vatican Funko Pop, less because of how ridiculous it is but that it really does sum up how far the church has strayed from itself. At least Luce has filtered into the anime canon! When does she drop an f-slur?

Meet the New Home Kitchen Business
This is a long time coming and will be such a game changer. I literally wrote about how Michelin is dead in August 2023, speculating that the future of dining is in people’s grandmother’s house. This pushes us closer to that reality!

The Banality of Recommendation Culture
I am getting exhausted by the recommendation universe but I do agree that taste is what this content gets at (and fails to do), whether we want that or not. This is also to say: unfortunately I’m likely to be launching an interview series next year 🤭

"Designer of the Year Award winner"
“Dreams are expensive”
While I can’t say this about all the winners, Daniel Rosenberry used his CFDA win to say, “Y’all need to get a offline and get a gd life.”

How bubble hem skirts won seasonal fashion
“has me screaming”
I first noticed bubble skirts in August and…I guess they really are a trend!!

"Kim Kardashian dresses up as an albino alligator"
"Quen Blackwell as Naomi Campbell"
"Kerry Washington unveils ‘Challengers’ Halloween costume"
Besides “gay Halloween,” the other big trends was pose-for-camera costumes like these, meaning: so many celebrities and non-celebrities are equating photoshoots in costume with “celebrating Halloween.” That defeats the purpose of dressing up! The point is to be seen in public as not-yourself. File this next to “stop putting sex in movies,” a la “I don’t want to experience anything!” culture which is another tail of neo-con practices.

"10 Year Anniversary of Too Many Cooks"
FEEL OLD YET?

There was a feeling in 2016 that most of us are old enough to remember, that election night was delicious and exciting until you realized that you had spiritual food poisoning, that had you excuse yourself from wherever you were to be alone, to die like a dog in darkness. The day after was hazy, a shift so strong you felt stupid, like you only just realized that people were laughing at you for months. That was my experience, as I was working in a newsroom where we’d been covering the election for months. Election day was joyous, so said the sparkling wine chilling in our refrigerator. Our first woman president! After our first Black president! How progressive were we? The day after was the exact opposite feeling, all of us looking at our feet, half-listening at the all-hands where founders spoke of rebuilding. Each of us felt the weight of what it felt like to single handedly misinform the world on the state of politics, the election, the United States. In the immediate aftermath, we all wondered what we missed. Who hadn’t we talked to? What bubble were we in? How could we pop it? Were we “doing the work”? Would we ever stop thinking about this?

The thing about elections in America is that they come right after Halloween, before Thanksgiving, before Christmas, before a new year delivers a new set of leading politics. The 2016 limbo was fascinating because it felt like a season of pilgrimages, a generation returning home from the college that is adulthood for the first time, to really see our hometowns and families for what they were: very different from the worlds that we lived in. It was our job to bring our tools home, to build bridges, to try to understand “the other side.” That was the moment, both in fact and fiction, which led to a historically awkward holiday.

I went back to Georgia for the penultimate time, before my parents moved after twenty years in the state following my father’s army retirement. They were two years into empty nesting and, despite jobs, the question of moving was simmering — or at least that was the assumption as none of us lived in the same city or were in the same place. There was a non-objective idea of “family home” which meant this place was and wasn’t ours, as is the case for many a military family. Besides handling cooking the sides and leftovers along with generally being responsible for familial entertainment, I was looking for opportunities to “see the other side.” I had to burst my bubble. I had to be a good young American and see what the other side saw. “Do you want to go to the gun range?” my father asked, less an invitation and more polite narration of what he and my older brother were planning to do. “Umm,” I started. “Actually? Yes. That sounds like fun.” Bridges, I thought. Build bridges.

The shooting range was called Shooters, an indoor range that (Somehow!) was — and still is — within a scope’s view of my high school. It was a railroad-style building with poured concrete floors and low paneled ceiling. There was an unkept tan reception area featuring posters and flags that said “LIGHTER. STRONGER. BETTER.” and “CONFIDENCE TO LIVE YOUR LIFE” and “#GUNVOTE” and “NO STEP ON SNEK.” There was a window to watch the gun range and a viewing area for a safety video on range safety, which we diligently sat and watched. A man cleaned a giant rifle next to me, not once looking up at the screen. Another person scrolled on their phone. I tried to memorize everything but retained nothing. We donned plastic earmuffs and went in.

The gun range itself was like any other range, be it ax or archery or riflery, all of which I had been on before. But the weapons were different: there were semi-automatic rifles with bullets as long as fingers; there were the shiny revolvers of cowboy fantasies; there were many, many smart pistols, which is what we were shooting. I hadn’t paid attention but I realized in the moment that the weapon we were shooting wasn’t borrowed and that we had two of them. Some people shot at bright orange bodies, others shot at people shooting at them. Some were set close, others at the far wall. We had a target of four discreet orange bullseyes set mid-range.

It’s hard to describe the noise. The earmuffs forced your breathing and any spoke thoughts to rattle around your skull. But the shooting — that wasn’t a sound: it was a feeling, each shot a corporal punishment, like someone was inside your body hammering your bones. My brother shot his shots, my father shot his shots. My father put the gun down and turned to me. Would I like to shoot? I said yes. He explained how it worked. I believed it would be fun! Something would open up within me. I would be learning a new language to communicate, to bridge build, to better understand them. I held the gun up, looking over the sleek black sights to the intended target. I pulled the trigger, which I assumed would be easy to do but it demanded more of the finger than anticipated. The shot was like the sounds I had heard but instead of a hammering inside of my body it was more like a shattering, a sort of atomic breakdown that slammed joint against joint. I put the gun down. That was enough, thank you.

They kept shooting for one or two more rounds, bullet shells piling up on the floor below us. We summoned our targets, the paper littered and confused with shots — but there was a direct bullseye that just took out the center right of the X. The thought of keeping the target entered my mind but I think we threw it away. We left, somewhat invigorated. I took a card for the place, to verify that I had been to this place: “SHOOTERS” it read, the Os targets, with a line written in script that read, “Cheapest Therapy In Town.” I crammed myself into the back of my father’s truck behind my brother, sitting sideways on a seat one could pull down from the wall. I don’t remember what was said on the ride home but I realized that no bridge would be built because I simply didn’t have the tools, nor was I particularly interested in acquiring them.

A big part of adulthood is realizing your place, less as far as limitations but more a matter of context. Contexts, like languages, are a communication — and some contexts simply are impossible to translate: the queer son who works in Hollywood descended upon the South, bringing with him the family’s memories of the years he didn’t eat meat, his time as a star altar boy, all the various girlfriends he had. What could he possibly bring to the holiday outside of his boyfriend, his dog, and his unnecessary drama? What could we learn from him? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

"best post of all time"
“if Kamala wins”
“Trump pronouncing Puerto Rico”
“Puerto Rico is trash”
“The median American voter”
“not even American”
“medieval people”
“Susan B. Anthony would be proud”
“when I find that 48%”
“witerawe”
"what political discourse will be"
“his bronzer use amps up”
“here’s mine:”
Best election posts. We’re so close to the finish.

“police horses ain’t afraid”
“Asking trick-or-treaters”
“Ghostface wearing Rick”
“I love gay Halloween”
“going all out”
“if i was ruth bader ginsburg”
“I don’t get scared in haunted houses”
“Mundane Halloween returns!”
“See you at the polls”
"anyone else scared that its"
"used to have to wear a jacket"
Best Halloween posts. For anyone wondering, Patti Harrison as Michael Jackson was the best costume. (Another thing: the Heidi / Janelle thing is such a fiasco. When I saw Janelle, I had a sick feeling that Heidi was maybe doing something similar and that it would be a spiritual disaster — and it was because Janelle ate her up. Heidi’s crown…snatched. And the eyes in the neck? CURSED.) (Also: best use of Halloween social was Billy the puppet playing himself in Fortnite.)

“New York’s reaction to Pumpkin”
A Peabody for New York, for achievements in shade.

“how much american GDP”
"cant believe how messed up that was"
These are making me depressed.

“incredible phrase”
“Coworker beliefs” is a goated phrase.

“friend that’s not woke”
No one else is doing it like Michele OK.

“I’ve seen pickles walk backwards”
I could watch Johnny Pemberton go on for hours like this. “Tacos don’t make themselves but people do.”

“When I have a disagreement now”
If you are reading this and work in AI, please do me a favor and unplug that gd machine.

“Fart Tube”
I’d like cars more if they all had fart tubes.

“single greatest photograph”
Brings a tear to the eye.

And, finally, how I’ll be feeling once this damn election is over.

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