why can't we be kids again?? 😭

On the rising gesture of Gen Z throwback posts and when freak matching turns into void-making.

Jun 09, 2024

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A scientist, a leftist, a former Mexico City mayor
Claudia Sheinbaum, the new president of Mexico, was on the International Panel on Climate Change and was on the team who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. I am salivating for similar leadership. Related and not: did you know that there were 37 political assassinations leading up to the election in Mexico?

Modi and the myth of the strongman
Meanwhile, Narendra Modi barely won in India. This gives me hope for change!

Mexican peso, stocks tumble
Elections Just Delivered First Big Stock Shocks
"rein in finance capital"
"Average Javier Milei moment"
The last one I threw in for giggles but the first three are certainly a sign of the times.

Europe on alert after Moscow arson, sabotage
“The mind games.”
Not to stress you (Me.) out but some things are afoot in Europe.

Border turning back migrants under Biden restrictions
Who needs Trump when we have Biden?

Students face challenges after Gaza protests
Many right wing people will happily cheer this on, but this goes back to things like Google, Meta, colleges, and more firing people for taking a stand.

The New Dominionism Tries to Rule
Move over Project 2025, meet the New Apostolic Reformation, a far right religious movement whose goal “is to disrupt religion and politics, and in the wake of that disruption, fill the void with Christian supremacy.” See also: billions of tax dollars funding religious schools.

Facebook, Instagram posts to train AI
Can I Opt Out of Meta’s A.I. Scraping?
This will likely be challenged, legally, but letting you know that being on Meta items is feeding AI.

Mexico Death Linked to Bird Flu
Are y’all worried about this? I’m undecided but I am watching very closely, along with the potential Covid FLiRT-y summer (and myriad long Covid stories).

Alcohol on Long Flights Could Be Dangerous
Reminder to not drink too much on long flights. Real bad for your heart!

New Ringworm Are Spreading Sexually
A concern, and also likely why people like Chris Olsen are sharing ringworm woes.

Are your hair and nails in regs?
Few will care but me (because I grew up in a military family) but the Air Force recently added new regulations on grooming. The results? More nail polish colors and neck tattoos.

I’ve been tracking a few digital gestures that are all of-a-kind. Perhaps the fault of a school year’s end, perhaps pre-summer buzz. Regardless: all these things have something in common.

When I look at these, I see nostalgia. I see longing. I see generations wishing they were at a different time and different place in their life. Yes, Facebook and Buzzfeed once houses such posts daily but there feels to have been a gap of “this” type of content in the past few years, as nostalgia-baiting content is a phenomena of the Millennial and ties back to kidified adulthood. But these past few weeks have shown that this is no longer a “cringe” generation’s practice: it’s now what Gen Z does too. Why is that? Some ideas.

First — and most obviously, as this subject has become bigger and bigger in recent months — is Gen Z are feeling Gen Alpha’s heat. The past four years were a very crucial time for Gen Z, as they watched the spotlight drift while Gen Alpha pushed them out of the way, repaving the digital landscape with skibidi toilet rizz in a way that makes “ok boomer” look glacial. Gen Z are seeing in real time the tools of marketing and media used against them: this is what it looks like to fall out of the spotlight, to become a culture’s middle child. Is the Alpha threat real? Yes and no, as the youngest of Gen Z is 12 — but these Zalpha kid on the cusp are sucking up all the air. They are the “threat,” which isn’t technically real but “are” real because you as a person are only worth as much as your potential sales numbers and, given that both YouTube and Instagram allow ages 13 and up, the Zalpha kid is a key demographic. I’ve already been in meetings with a few different “businesses” have seen the start of strategies shifting to the younger: this isn’t a generational suspicion or a paranoia but a fact. People in their twenties longing for their teens is a pleading to brands, to media, to anyone that they are still worth the attention.

Second, is the world is unkind — and Gen Z is unkind too. We see this in so many small ways, from the poor person who was ghosted in the middle of a date all the way up to Gen Z not knowing how to have fun. When we zoom out, we can attribute this to all the apps to help you make friends, the “friendship application” trend, and the “fringe friend” crisis. (Of course, this also ties to the dating world nightmares of the present.) Then there is the “work sucks” of it all, which everyone under 50 is feeling, if not everyone who works regardless. These backward facing posts are an expression of wanting to go back, to when life wasn’t as complicated. Wasn’t it nice to only dream of wanting to marry Danny Phantom? To lie about having diabetes because you wanted attention? To love someone so much that you would be willing to attempt to become completely consumed by their culture to be more appealing? These things do and don’t happen in adulthood — but the stakes are different. These things exist in the context of also doing your taxes, paying rent, etc.

These trends may seem simplistic, little throwaway throwbacks, but what lies underneath is grief: the world we’re in sucks and there’s no way out. This is not new either, as this is the same thing that Millennial nostalgia was getting at. The difference is the wallowing — of Gen Z combined with Millennials — seems to be sadder, a quarter-life looking back at what could have been despite what still could be. I can see a market emerging to appeal to this, in the way that 2010s media capitalized on this with reboots and sequels. What will happen now will be a bit more tear-jerking, in that we have to go beyond media and beyond therapy and into actually feeling these feelings in more open ways. The answer is experienced together and not as an individual.

Here’s proof of this, as expressed by our greatest philosopher, Charli XCX: her 2018 song “1999” was in line with the 2010s nostalgia, of wanting to be a kid again because it was a cute time of culture. Pair this with 2024’s “Rewind” (STREAM BRAT!!!) and you see how the 2020s version of nostalgia is melancholic. "I just wanna rewind / I'd go back in time to when I wasn't insecure / To when I didn't over analyze my face shape,” she sings. “I hate these doubts that keep running through my mind / Sometimes I really think it would be cool to rewind.” That, truly, is how we’re feeling now.

Vincent Honoré's Suicide Labeled a 'Work Accident'
This feels like a big deal, even if it will pass in the sea of information: the suicide of a French curator has been deemed a “work accident” as his mental health deterioration was tied to his job. That’s huge! And feels revolutionary, in a world where work and the state cares so little for our lives. (Granted, the employer disagrees. Either way: major.)

Virginie Viard Is Leaving Chanel
"Her final collection"
“Chanel ambassadors”
Are fashion brands finally listening? Are we going to enter an era of the interesting now? I am doubtful but, hey, this is a step in a direction. I for one believe the Jeremy Scott Chanel rumors and think, post-Moschino, that he would inject some life and fun into the brand. Luxury has gotten too self-serious. The future is much more silly, as you’ll see with the Loewe tomato in a moment.

Explicit queer female pop topping the charts
A win. I feel like “Espresso” is spiritually in conversation with these.

“Give Chloe the Oscar”
"Kim Gordon being messy"
"The difference between New York and LA"
“In a world of Kardashians”
The Kim-Kardashian-Actors-On-Actors thing was interesting in that I feel like it very obviously Kim trying to buy her way into entertainment legitimacy — and failing. Just ask North West! She will prevail, sadly, and is another example of how the Kardashian brand is quickly slipping and they are trying anything to maintain relevance.

Maya Hawke: A life I don’t deserve due to nepotism
See above. But Maya Hawke at least has been studying Dakota Johnson’s playbook. Smart! However, this pales in comparison to Angelina Jolie doing this a decade ago.

#452: Conner O'Malley
Not every

Perfectly Imperfect

slaps but of course Conner O’Malley did his interview in character. Perhaps the best entry into the series.

“outdated tech at Urban Outfitters”
“WHAT IS HAPPENING”
Did you know that Urban Outfitters is now selling old electronics? This is great, given that there is so much waste in the world (not that they are solving it with this — but I’d like to see more of this!).

“The brand-new trailer for #AlienRomulus”
As you’ll see in the next essay, I hate this shit — but I will go on record and say that the Alien franchise is the only franchise that matters. Get behind me Prometheus!!!!!

As a wise woman once said “Is somebody gonna match my freak?” Judging from how culture is going, that will happen — for better and worse.

For better? Because there is a value of holding a high bar, of wanting — Demanding! — better of yourself and from the world. To aspire, to have the confidence to achieve, is a superpower that you have to surround yourself with. Being picky about our jobs and our friends and our situations is to take a path to higher being. Cheers to that!

Where this gets concerning is that it breeds a strange homogeneity based in over-consumption and monotony. Navel-gazing, showy, and self-referential, this creates cultural mud that mucks up so many parts of our world. A great place to look for symptoms of this is reality television: as Vulture pointed out this week about Survivor, the show has become the idea of Survivor without the actual stakes, a repeating of ideas by both casts and production that mine the past without forward momentum. You can say the same thing about Drag Race, in that you have queens like (the fabulous) Luxx Noir London and her mile-a-minute regurgitating of 15 seasons of Drag Race one-liners. Even The Traitors is a reality show of reality show stars, is built upon layers upon layers of other reality universes that pile upon themselves like dense sedimentary rock, which crumbles at points and becomes sibling shows like The GOAT and House of Villains. This isn’t to mention, say, the entire scripted and linear entertainment universes of reboots, sequels, and the like: everything is now in conversation with itself. Freak matched, history mirrored.

In fashion, we see this in the very 2020s evolution of label whoring into a strange parade of proud excess that turns everything into merch. It’s not even the elegant and in-the-know “If you have to ask, you wouldn’t understand.” of what high fashion typically is but instead the intentional logo boasting in the manner of the Kardashians, of the sneakerhead, of “drop” culture. It’s all merch. “Merch is always a physical object and a symbol,” Ana Andjelic and Eugene Rabkin explain in a recent story for HighSnobiety, connecting this behavior to culture makers like Balenciaga, A24, MSCHF, and various cross-industry collabs. “Status-signaling luxury items today also act as merch, as they carry connotations of social and economic standing…Anything can be turned into merch if infused with enough symbolic value and cultural capital.” See also: Michael Keaton talking about how complicated it was to even consider a new Beetlejuice given that the titular character has been stripped for parts, turned into a copy of a copy of a copy thanks to merch machines.

These are benign in the sense that they have been our background noise since the early aughts, if not the 1990s. It sends a similar signal that nothing is new, yet there is too much being produced. We exist in a hall of mirrors, waving back and forth to catch someone’s attention only for the other person to copy the wave itself. This too has come to capture the “aesthetic” culture of the 2020s, where the gestures of fashion and culture are reduced down to a signal instead of a way of being (or “earned,” in that such an aesthetic ties to a lived experience). This subject keeps repeating itself — call it vibe personality disorder, call it simple inexperience — which is a signal to me that something is off. I think Akili Moree put it best in a recent TikTok: “People fully take up hobbies now for the aesthetic of having that hobby or go to restaurants because of the aesthetic of being at that restaurant. It seems like right now, in the era that we are in in the world, our lives are more about how they can be captured and reproduced than how they actually feel to live that specific life.”

So much of what’s around us is just signal matching — and not much else. To “match one’s freak” is more to find someone to yap with, which is good in the sense that you find someone with whom to endlessly share the things you love. But, when used as a means to signal surface association instead of legitimate interest, experience, or activity, something starts to collapse as the inside is hollowed out: it’s just two brain dead people mumbling “exactlyyyy” back and forth, forever.

“Dating a trans man”
“Mad Men is so funny”
“From Man-Hattan to We-Hattan”
“Did you just out”
“Happy Pride”
“No good, Caca”
“Thank you for doing this interview”
“then became a twink”
“LMFAOOOO”
This week’s best Pride posts.

“so Loewe”
“wtf is happening”
"✨Loewe✨ tomato is REAL. "
“Already made it”
Somehow, unexpectedly, fashion brands became the best at social listening and shitposting. The “Loewe Tomato” saga this week is proof of that, regardless of the chicken/egg situation of it all.

“June 4, 2015”
“An absolute journey”
“QUEEN”
Three things with twist endings. That Kathie Lee and Hoda account is having a moment too.

“THIS WONDERFUL SONG”
The only cover of “Nasty” that matters.

“Tonibler is a given name”
Some world history for you.

“accidentally sent shirtless pic to family”
I live in fear of this, that I accidentally send one of these unhinged memes to someone that I don’t mean to. This is maybe worse.

"Kafka describes how it feels to live"
Some things never change :(

"prolly felt good for a second"
This will make you uncomfortable. Don’t wear butt plugs to MRIs!

“what is Tokyo Toni’s problem”
This is aspirationally unhinged. This is performance art. This is a singular post.

“I’ve watched this 100 times”
A Tina tumbling begets another Tina’s tumble. That’s physics.

"I AM SCREAMING"
Finally, someone’s freak is matched.

“She asked for a nude”
Love is love!

“Shenanigans. Tomfoolery, even.”
This is

The Fox Is Black

and I as we celebrated our fourteenth anniversary this week <3

And, finally, how I hope you all talk about The Trend Report™ to other people.

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