i am monitoring the situation 😊

One the feeling of watching all the bad in the world from your phone, and why subtle foreshadowing is the medium of the decade.

Mar 01, 2026

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🇫🇷 Bonjour, Paris!! 🇫🇷 I will not be hosting an event in the city this week, but I will be at Matter and Shape this Friday, while hanging out and about over the weekend. If you want to meet-up, drop me a line! Merci!!
🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿 features the fabulous Matt Feniger, who joined Ben Dietz and I to talk how an unstable world means young people are seeking safety, how Iron Lung is shifting Hollywood, and why brands are going to try to be “thought leaders” (oy). Listen now on Substack, Spotify, and or YouTube!

Fighting between Pakistan, Afghanistan
US, Israel launch attack on Iran
Iran missiles stun peaceful Gulf cities
Mexico fears more violence

We’ll talk about this in a moment but all this is very bad lol

The hypothetical nuclear attack
Pentagon blacklists Anthropic
OpenAI Is Working on Pentagon Deal

The Anthropic-versus-the-Pentagon drama is so scary, potentially a defining tech “story” as far as modern warfare and government relations. As Jacob Ward goes deep on, this is about unfettered access to tech that very possibly will take human eyes out of decisions to — um — kill people and deploy nukes. Good on Anthropic for not giving in (which won them a culture war), as gay fascist villains like Sam Altman step up and inspire dissent. Utopia! Now!!!!

4 takeaways from Trump’s SOTU
Disappointment of Young Trump Voters
Young Voters Turn Away From Trump
Trump moving US in wrong direction

The SOTU was a rage bait snooze in that neither side kicked up too much dust — but it did highlight how lame Trump’s current political status is, given the various Trump is losing young people/young men/the whole country stories. No amount of tantalizing lies can sell his shit! We also got a sequel to his love affair with Zohran.

Greens win in blow to Labour
UK Green Party Won an Historic Victory

The Manchester-area elections had a surprising — and on trend — conclusion as the Greens took a huge lead, giving Starmer while validating fears of a leftist fracture. What’s missing in the narrative is how Farage’s far right Reform came in second, falling in line with what has happened in Portugal and the Netherlands (and likely Spain). Yes, of-the-people leftism is winning — but also so are Trumpian playbooks: the old parties are dead everywhere. Which way, polarized world?

Japan’s Births Fall for 10th Year
Birthrate Plunges. Some Say That’s Good.

Birthrates-are-down stories are trending again, given new findings in Japan and a new Times feature. What do they have in common, which other stories get at? Supporting mothers — and lackluster economics. This isn’t that hard of a problem to solve: we’re broke! And we ain’t gonna have no kids without cash!!!! Hence why the “Do you know how hard you have to abuse a mammal to make them not want to have children?” line of thought going viral.

Your backyard could be a home
Couples Are Living With Roommates

Yes, you’re right to draw a line from the rise in ADUs and couples-with-roommates to the aforementioned election and birthrate stories.

Photos of a massive snowstorm

NYC and the east coast’s snowstorm was a lot — but did you know the biggest blizzard in the city’s recorded history happened only a decade ago, in 2016? In fact, five of the ten biggest blizzards have happened since 2010. Climate change who?

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I previously wrote about the BAFTA situation for this weekend but, by today, it didn’t feel right: read that essay and analysis here. It’s a good story! It just felt secondary to the vibe we’re in. Enjoy three features this week! I lost my weekend, thanks to your big stupid ass, Donald Trump!!!!!!!!

I am monitoring the situation. Aren’t you? I know some people are in the club, in beautiful rooms, before idyllic views, in robes with coffee: all monitoring. Europe is not monitoring the situation, at least not until Monday. Investors? Monitoring. Polymarket? Monitoring. Me and you, your boyfriend and your girlfriend. Punch the Monkey! Trump! Our lives fall into crisis and here we are: monitoring.

And what is there to monitor? Great question. Obviously the bombings in Iran, sponsored by Israel and the US, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei but also more than a hundred children, as the fight spreads to Dubai, to Doha, a war of unclear reasons building a monument to pride. Then the warring between Afghanistan and Pakistan, a similarly unclear sparring resulting in both Taliban and civilian death, as war opens and unopens. Also: the violence in Mexico following the death of cartel leader El Mencho, as attacks from within spread violence, killing various persons, all as tourists watched. Hmm. What else? Probably Gaza, probably Venezuela. Cuba? Sure! Greenland? Maybe! Minneapolis too, and whatever ICE is doing now. The Epstein files and whatever the fuck evil Larry Ellison is doing, not to mention data centers. The blizzard but also the extreme heat. Shia LaBeouf’s homophobia. Sweetgreen falling out of favor. The whole BAFTAs racism/ableism row! Demna’s Gucci and Mark Zuckerberg at fashion week. Jim Carrey’s face — and Kelly Osbourne’s face! Your own heart, your own mind, the two trying to understand what is really happening and if you really should or shouldn’t care or not care at all. Do you have it in you to monitor all these things at once? That’s what being a modern person is all about.

“Monitoring the situation” is an expression of our helplessness, a meme by and for polycrisis, for the helpless and hopeless 99% of us who stare at screens big and small, refreshing feeds as if laps around the internet is an act of healing, our 2020 muscle memory back in action. Beach balls spin into mandalas we pray to as our computers stall, too many tabs clogging the mind of tech tools as we try and try and try to piece together the fracturing world from hundreds and thousands of miles away but also deeply within said collapse. Why monitor? Is it because prices will go up? Because your friends will go to war? Because someone will show up at your door to attack you? Yes, yes, and yes — but also because your own computer is participating in this too, AI systems in the machine an active participant in warfare, Claude killing children in Tehran as Sama salivates at the chance to kill too. “How can I make this about me?” some of us ask, monitoring in the name of our vacations and our leisure and our Yuppie Dystopia. Others monitor to know more because they know less. Some monitor to spot bombs for the purposes of having a viral reaction. Some just stand, arms-crossed, in unfiltered bald non-joy. The watcher as genius, as vulnerable, as lunatic, as normal. Life increasingly a gamble, where wars are not only monetizable opportunities for world leaders but for you too. Who needs to participate in the human experience when you can bet on it? The future is now.

The memes are funny, no matter if they’re about influencers in Dubai or stranded Americans on Mexican vacations: they too are exercises in monitoring. Astrology and star signs might be right but are a spiritual variety of monitoring too. For almost forty years I have monitored, only to be overstimulated as the days of this year — just like every year since 2020, just like every year since 2000 — pile on me as if a snail shell growing fuller and fuller with all the worst parts of modern history, which most of us are forced to confront on a daily basis. A defining feature of modernity: knowing everything about everywhere, all to your detriment, all without release, all without the ability to do much of anything about it “but vote,” but “hold space.” “if they nuke us can they make sure to do it in the morning,” someone wishes. “i don’t wanna work all fucking day just to come home and get nuked.” A curse to know so much, but a blessing that the most devastating news of your life now comes via Pop Base.

Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus
Would I be happier at the pub?
My 2026 Resolution to Start Drinking

I alluded to this a few weeks back — and it may be a salve for the feelings immediately below — but I’ve been thinking a lot about how the latter end of the 2020s will see a rise to these overly healthy, overly body-focused, and overly anti-good-times conservative culture of Fight! Fight! Fight! that has dominated the last decade, warping it into an eye-crossing landscape demanding being in the real world more. To the essay above: over-wrought killjoyism is out! Giving grace and critical thinking is in! And — in a non-brat way — a turn toward hedonism and intentional do-feel-good-things may emerge. (Which also supposes: this summer is gonna be wild, since we should hopefully be out of the politi-cultural jail we were in last summer.) One thing I’ll be tapping into to get past this? Devices that are more mobile friendly like the Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus. Yes, a lot of us are still out here working not-in-offices, which is why having tools that further our being out and about is key. Let this be our mantra: get out of your house and get a life. LIVE A LIL LARGER BABY!!!!!!!! (KRF NOTE: This is a ~sponsored~ entry, made in partnership with Lenovo. Learn more about advertising here.)

“We couldn’t outdumb the stupid.”
“Does Trump feel funny?”
“the absurdity of the last half decade”
“don’t forget to include esteemed publications”

A storyline that keeps bobbing up that I touched on recently regarding why alien stories don’t pop is that few things — comedy and sci-fi, specifically — work now when compared to the unbelievable truth of the present. This is why posts about how bad everything is continue to thrive. What a time 🫠

Disintegration Loops became a requiem

Every Disintegration Loops story I will read, with this one being particularly good as it serves as an oral history of William Basinski — and Anohni. An iconic duo! To the point of the items immediately above, this Anohni quote nails why this may be the most definitive music (“music”) of the century: “It’s a soundtrack to help us move through these times.”

Hilary Knight calls Trump invite a ‘ joke’
“generational run of losing your female fanbase”
“corny till you die”
“first Mexican American”

In keeping with the flop that is the 2026 Olympics, we got a most fitting end this week with Trump’s embracing of the men’s hockey team — which has been a failure for most of its existence — all as the women athletes dwarf the men by a longshot. This sparked many a great post and is a reminder of why someone like Alysa Liu is the real winner here, speaking to reality instead of fantasy. Thank you Stanley Tucci and Flava Flav for supporting our troops!

Backrooms | Official Teaser
Backrooms teaser is in the right hands
“something shifted in the movies”

A24’s Backrooms teaser dropped this week and…it looks good. A long awaited shift is happening in Hollywood, as both industries — creators (YouTube?) and film — are finally seeing each other as equals instead of one staring down at the other. This is huge, speaking to the Iron Lung thing we spoke about on this week’s HIP REPLACEMENT, but also how creepypastas have infiltrated all of horror. Welcome to a new era! (While we’re here, be sure to watch these horror analysis TikToks as they feel like a college class explaining the importance of the genre on a political level. I’ve been saying this for literal decades!!)

Netflix drops bid for Warner Bros

Congrats to us! Everything’s going down so Hollywood may as well descend to hell too.

Mass-market migration by big-name designers
Jeff, Lauren Bezos Honorary Chairs of Met Gala
Why Was Mark Zuckerberg Front Row at Prada?

These are all related, even if they don’t feel like it, signalling how warped and broken fashion as an industry is, where otherwise stellar designers who should have their own brands are seeking solace within “normal retail” — all as billionaires stink up luxury fashion, sans taste. This continues to tighten the space between fast fashion and luxury fashion too: it’s all money grabbing at this point, as art has left the conversation. No wonder Demna is parodying their asses!

There’s a Vulture story from 2021 I think about a lot about the 25 edits that defined the modern internet. It includes classics like distortion edits (“That’s my OPINION!”) and sound manipulated edits (“Wendy Williams except there’s no talking”), chaos edits (“Stan Twitter Music Video 6 - Unlock It by Charli XCX and Kim Petras”) and fan edits (“Chaeyeon Barbie Tingz”), all a reflection of the different ways different communities see and process the world as expressed by video production. While there are certainly new edits that have emerged since 2021 (the dystopian doc edit, the ironic nostalgia edit, the political meme edit), one feels most like our subconscious speaking: the end-at-the-beginning edit, otherwise known as subtle foreshadowing.

This trend emerged in late 2024, a funny way to share shocking videos where a surprising ending is juxtaposed with the first few seconds of a video to reveal how shocking, antithetical, weird, or hilarious the video will be. It continues to be a very funny format! But if you asked me in 2024 if this would still be a go-to editing style? I would have said no, that it was a momentary obsession we would have moved on from, creating different newer styles and expressions in this way — which is true, we have moved on, but subtle foreshadowing has maintained its grip.

Take the 2020 classic of Grama Sandy vs Mentos vs Pepsi and its transformation into an aesthetic subtle foreshadowing in 2025 which is trending again this week. Why is this video — and so many other videos like it — continuing to appeal? A few reasons —

We know this but such a format speaks to attention spans, that the only way for a video or message to survive is to “get to the good part” as you only have three seconds until someone swipes. This is a big symptom of brain rot made real, that distractions and real-and-assumed ADHD are increasingly requiring all media to make their meaning plainly known. That means Netflix films have characters stating their intent, but also the final act happening within the prologue. Does this also suggest larger media literacy issues and cultural incompetencies? You betcha: see the first essay.
While not exactly joy bait, the function serves as the opposite of rage bait. This technique offers cinematic schadenfreude and feels like a David Lynch produced news blooper, all to assure and reassure viewers that the goods are coming, that you can laugh again and again instead of only at the climax. Why come once in ten seconds when you can come ten times? That’s what this edit posits: a multiplicity of pleasure in pleasureless times, glasses overflowing in this age of deserted indulgence.
To take it downer — or back to reality — this editing style is a salve to global uncertainty, to having to constantly monitor the situation. Consider how terrible the world is. Consider how unreliable our lives are. Consider then that most viewers on TikTok are young, steeped in a life malformed by things going wrong (Covid, economic collapse, AI, war): why would we give our time to things that are going to only make the present worse? Thus, videos that state their intent by revealing their ends at the start. This isn’t some assumption but a larger modality of young people, as we discussed on HIP REPLACEMENT this week with UTA’s Matt Feniger: a study from UCLA’s Center for Scholars & Storytellers found that, for the past two years, “safety” is the core value sought by young people. That is the vibe coming to define this decade too, as Gen Z and Millennials and everyone everywhere seek stability in a world of economic and political decay: the medium is the message.

It’s funny how a little jokey presentation of otherwise normal fails has opened a window into the modern psyche as the long tail of subtle foreshadowing states all our problems while posing some solutions. Speed, satisfaction, safety, and stability are attractive now, all qualities we should seek to give and get from each other considering how our politicians and stock markets and technologies are so clearly opposed to such values. As much as I love them, the twist ending is out: reassurance is in, that you can depend on something from the start.

“What if Elmo”
“The good kind of Tourrette’s”
“If I had Tourrette’s”
“productive things”
“I wouldn’t yell anything”
“Tourrette’s discourse”

As discussed, the Tourrettes thing was a nightmare — but some of the posts were incredible.

“KILLINGGG me”
“wtf is this shit”
“shamans healing”
“It’s over”
“?”
“so cooked”
“Escape The Slime”
“an AI gem”
“Flawless execution.”

Is it just me/my algos or are AI slop videos going crazy? It’s no longer just YouTube Kids or your parent’s TikTok, but all feeds: is this critical mass? Either way, here are the accidentally funny ones that I hate to give a W to. Why is Tung Tung Sahur having a moment within this moment too?