fucking around & finding out

Why this current moment is about fucking around and finding out, and why EVERYONE wants a piece of Ice Spice.

Biodegradable Plastic Doesn't Actually Break Down
Who is surprised by this? I am not! 

DeSantis will launch his presidential bid on Twitter
"relive Ron DeSantis’ humiliating failure"
Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network
Musk’s Event With DeSantis Exposes Weaknesses
Takeaways From DeSantis’s 2024 Announcement
VOMIT. As Garbage Day put it, Twitter has reached it’s final form. Welcome to the new Fox!

Californians Deem Dianne Feinstein Unfit to Serve
They are…not wrong. Dianne, you gotta stop working!

Passenger opens plane door midair
"opening the emergency exit door"
Alright! Well, now that someone has indulged this intrusive thought to see what would happen, I no longer can allow the “Open it.” mind demons to inhabit my space while flying. Clearly these people needed the PlanePat3000.

Target giving in to conservative pressure is not great
Designer dumped by Target explains how he got smeared
This week in right-wing-queer-brand-targeting: Target, who they think are trying to queer children and are satanists. Anyway, never forget this icon (who was trending this week as a result, since history seems to be repeating itself).

Over 122K People Are Experiencing Solitary Confinement
Oof.

It’s finally starting to feel like the 2020s are coming into their own. The themes and “personality” of our era are unfolding, with the possibility of realizing what’s actually happening right now. There are arguments to be made about the main character of our time (billionaires, AI and algorithms, pandemic[s], workers’ rights) but the thing that’s uniting all these characters is the feeling that we are fucking around and finding out. Karma, justice, actions and reactions, reaping and sowing, chickens coming home to roost: that is the feeling of this moment, even if the balancing has yet to actually happen. What we’re living in is the teetering, the precarity, the will-we-or-won’t-we, as we fucked around for long enough that we’re due for a reality check.

Many of these are multi-decade storylines drawing to a conclusion: the encroaching “very close” debt ceiling collapse is hiking up interest rates for all of us normies; the ongoing high Gen Z and Millennial (student) loan debt problems are likely why we’ve arrived at lower populations; the “culture wars” of anti-womaness and anti-blackness and anti-queerness seem to be blooming into something, be it a fall into Christian nationalism, an embracing of secular culture, or a national divorce (or a mix of them all, which all started from Nixon’s Southern strategy and Reagan’s racism, homophobia, and economics); all of which is reflected internationally too, with places like Italy and Poland and  more facing their own struggles of the past, present, and future.

Then there’s tech, a field that has shaped the world since the turn of the new millennium – and it finally feels that this world is rising and falling at a rapid clip. Obviously there’s AI, whose lack of regulation is raising red flags as many problems based in this tech (markets dropping due to faked images, a stabbing after AI a security failure, the loss of eating disorder helpline and translation jobs) are crashing into globalizing tech potential while benefiting…who knows!! Certainly not the worker, as the past few years’ wiggly business practices are leading to layoffs and layoffs and layoffs, which are and are not a sign of a recession. Are we in a recession? Stay tuned!! Then there are the social platforms: Montana bans TikTok, TikTok sues Montana; Meta’s ongoing sharing of data means getting sued for $1B+ and reaching a $700M+ user settlement; @Jack’s selling Twitter to a “singular solution” like Elon Musk has ruined the platform (and making @Jack eat his words). Then there’s the ongoing charlatanism, which Musk best represents (as his recently FDA approved Neuralink stinks of blonde lady blood scammer). The biggest finding out? The symbiotic world of social media careers: as I’ve written before, social media as we know it is dead – which means companies that relied on social like Vice and Buzzfeed News and MTV News are going upside down because they built businesses on social networks. We’ll see more “deaths” like this as multiple industries readjust themselves to whatever the hell is going on in the world.

No wonder workers are standing up: shit has been so bad for so long that people are sick of it! The writers are striking, yes, but so are UPS and FedEx, American Airlines and Southwest pilots, The New York Times: strikes and unions are trickling into various industries and generating breakout moments (like heckling the Warner Bros CEO and shutting down various shows). Workers’ rights aren’t the only delayed bill to be paid, as so many other major subjects – social media harming adolescents, how any alcohol is bad for you, collective PTSD from gun violence, solving the “end” of the pandemic, the collapsing teaching landscape, the under-education of American children – seem to be kicked down the line, to be solved another day. And what’s the biggest fucking around subject of our lifetime? The environment.

And yet. Here we are! Yes, life is a constant story of cause-and-effect but everything seems to be reaching its “effect,” both on personal and communal levels. Just ask Target and the Dodgers! If the 2020s are going to do anything, it’s going to break systems, create a rebirth, and yield something new. Last year may have been the season of change, but this year – along with the past few years and most certainly the incoming few years – are about us finding out what all these changes really mean. We fucked around in our gardens long enough. Now it’s time to see what these fruits taste like. Bitter? Sweet? Restorative? Deadly? We shall see.

Tina Turner: legendary singer dies
Tina was…simply the best. Truly! This was one of the saddest very-public-deaths in a while.

Robin Givhan on the State of Criticism
About fashion criticism to be specific, but this is an illuminating review of writing (and creativity) in general right now. Queen Robin never disappoints!!

Hollywood Grapples With Loss of Young Star Power
Would you look at that? Yet another fuck-around-and-find-out thing that the businessificiation of the creative world and Hollywood has killed. (Also: the literal incestuousness of the business is killing it too.)

Puritanism took over online fandom
A very good, very long read on how fandom – and everything online – became puritanical.

Elderly Briton dies after being struck by royal’s motorcade
It’s like this is a metaphor for something. I don’t know but seems symbolic!

Don't Chug Poppers, FDA Warns
Obsessed with this special announcement. This is why you should always have queer friends because you’d know better, you fucking morons!!

US to give away lighthouses as GPS makes them unnecessary
This is bittersweet? Anyway, I would love a lighthouse.

"why are conservative influencers not funny?"
"those liberals and their empathy"
It’s been months in the making but we have to acknowledge the TikTok Conservative Dating App Guy™ because he’s driving us all wild with how unfunny he is.

"time to fry my pickled potatoes"
"worth a try"
Picked fries are having a moment and, yes, I want to try them.

The only hope that we have in this world is Ice Spice.

The 23-year old Bronx rapper, born on the first day of the new millennium, is the closest thing we have to a living savior – at least for a certain sector of entertainment. For the unfamiliar, Ice had a breakout moment late summer last year with her song “Munch,” a statement of confidence and of idiot men that broadcast her calm, carefree flow to the world. (Before this, her technical debut “Bully Freestyle” came out in 2021 a bit after her entry into the Buss It challenge got some attention on Twitter.) Her debut EP only came out this year, the six track Like..?, which featured “Munch” and viral hits “Bikini Bottom” and “In Ha Mood.” These aren’t really what she’s become known for, as her duet/remix with PinkPantheress is one of the year’s biggest tracks along with the extremely viral TikTok remix of “In Ha Mood,” which takes the song and pops it onto Nicki Minaj and will.i.am’s “Check It Out” (which samples “Video Killed The Radio Star”), all placed over sped up video of puppies dancing from an animated Barbie movie (which in turn yielded TikToks like this and this).

That is all well and good because Ice Spice is well and good, the rare performer who everyone seems to love. The thing is, with such a meteoric rise to fame (and such a strong grasp of online culture), it was only a matter of time before the vampires came out to parade her around as they suck her blood. This has always felt strange, since the first (and, in hindsight, early and appropriate) viral moment in March where Kim Kardashian summoned twentysomething Ice Spice to Calabasas to play with her nine year-old daughter North West and make TikToks together (which eventually had North…become Ice Spice??).

Naturally, she went on to land a Skims campaign in April and started getting major press via a Dazed cover and ostensibly the last cover of Paper (before their layoffs). Then the remixes, with Nicki Minaj first guesting on Ice Spice’s “Princess Diana.” This is fairly benign, but it plays into a recent Nicki storyline of vampirism as she guests on any track for attention, from Jesy Nelson to Kim Petras to YoungBoy: that’s what made this a lil bit sus, even if it was one Barb passing the torch to another. After starting May with Vogue tapping her for Met Gala press, Ice’s month ended with this week’s awkward Taylor Swift (??) collab. This pairing of uneven energies turned Ice Spice’s presence direct: while Kim and Nicki were brought out Spice for cool, Taylor’s feels of calculated PR to absolve her boyfriend Matt Healy’s racism (and offensive comments about Ice), a swirling scandal that has Swifties fighting. This was then followed by Katy Perry groveling for a collab and Ice Spice’s inclusion in the Barbie soundtrack, which will feature Ice and Nicki collabing again on a new version of Aqua’s “Barbie Girl.”

Yes, Ice is getting that bag. Obviously! And why shouldn’t she? At any moment, her star could crash and she might as well cash out now, especially since so many weird stars are slobbering for attention. Fans are less skeptical of her but are seeing the system reveal itself so plainly, inspiring their questioning these crossovers via memes: ”Ice Spice is rumored to be feature on…” has become big on Twitter, with Lorde, Black Country New Road, Car Seat Headrest, Mitski, Fiona Apple, and boygenius remixes conjured to articulate this absurdity. Then there are the theories, that Ice is an industry plant or that this represents the social media scramble of entertainment. Ice and her fans win – but everyone else involved seemingly loses. They seem to prove her point, that those pursuing her are munches.

No matter what, Ice Spice is the star of 2023. She’s who everyone is tapping to “reach the kids” which, as we see with the memes and theories, is causing the kids to sour. It’s not that Ice “is bad” but that the industry, the employment of this star is shifting from cool opportunities to a strangely textured willing appropriating. The feeling is all very “Ariana, what are you doing here?” an absurdity, a non-self-aware attempt to get in ha mood too. 

Transcript: Ron DeSantis talks to Elon Musk
"when I played Among Us "
"BuzzFeed exploding the watermelon"
"started/going"
"this horror movie ass music"
“trump posted this in response to the twitter space”
Best reactions to the #DeSaster saga. (Jason O. Gilbert’s coverage of the haunted Relon DeMuskis Twitter Spaces is crucial reading.)

"conservatives aren’t even trying"
In case you missed this right-wing Twitter dude attempting to fake being a chad.

"The slow descent into madness."
"this is disgusting"
”why is your human test so ridiculous”
Just some MAX madness.

Model shares moments with grandma before euthanasia
One of the wildest stories of the week.

"chanel has actually rendered me speechless"
There have been so many thoughts on the awful Chanel resort collection but this one speaks for itself.

"counting my blessings"
Imagine Gal GaBarbie. That would have been hell.

"when barbie and ken break up "
Okay, if Ice Spice is used this way then great.

"what did they think they were gonna do"
Objectively, this veteran breaking down over public health is tragic. But also? These people are so close to understanding. Reality is on the tip of their tongues.

"Here's how I evict people"
Not all landlords are bad!!

"I am losing my mind"
Let him cook? Let him fuck.

"LinkedIn is where the real posting happens"
Adolf Hitler as aspirational business hero? You wild, LinkedIn!!

“didn’t think vlogging”
And the therapist of the year goes to…this closet therapist!!

"this audio changed my life"
"good ol’ dinner table conversation"
Just some posts about poop, the latter of which The Fox Is Black insisted was included.

"à Minnie"
“Part 2”
“Part 3”
"Part 4"
“Part 5”
“Part 6”
“Part 7”
The French Mickey/Minnie Mouse TikTok soap opera (and all their filthy clothes and cracking body paint) is what got me through this week. It’s the worst thing made this year and I love it for that.

And, finally, the true identity of Ice Spice.

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