let's FART girls 💩💨

On a rising flatulent trend that could be political while exploring what we lose in the loss of process.

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• This week’s 🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿 had Fanbase’s Erin Vail, where Ben Dietz and I chatted about a lot of things that did and didn’t relate to sports, from hallway fits to the WNBA to Gen Z’s personal fashion blindness to Gen X’s hyper-fashion fixations. Get into it on Spotify and on YouTube!

• The next Trend Report Live™ is a week from today, on May 4 in Barcelona! I’d love to see you, if you’re local: RSVP here.

• If you are in Paris literally now, Bobby Aaron Solomon and I are grabbing drinks: learn more here!!

Francis Dies at 88
Maga trying to take back the church
Conclave viewership rose 283%
Kornacki: Pope will be chosen by secret vote.
Online bettors feeling confident about new pontiff
This is huge, going beyond losing an influential (Progressive!) church head. I’ve mentioned this before (Ahem: last week.) but the chat around far right Catholics gunning for the title is definitely on-the-mind. What was unexpected was that, in a post-Conclave world, the new pontiff has become a betting affair. Team Tagle!!!

FBI arrests Wisconsin judge
"Arresting judges. Then deleting the tweet."
RFK Jr.’s autism registry raises red flags
‘Love on the Spectrum’ Stars Slam RFK Jr.
So ICE has officially pivoted to gestapo, huh? Then there’s the, um, eugenics of it all amidst the rising tide of queerphobic, racist, and xenophobic moves. Welcome back, Hitler’s Germany.

Global economic outlook deteriorates
*Aidy Bryant voice* Really cool. At least this means Tesla is down and Elon is (hopefully) going bye bye!

Democrats Just Roasted Pete Hegseth
“whichever firm came up with”
“This is the law.”
"elizabeth warren choking down a laugh"
"best minute of democratic strategy"
“get Pete on that personal trainer cycle”
This was the week that Dark Woke™ broke through. To the latter item…that is literally how we win. If we got a hot, yoked Pete Buttigieg? JD Vance would be toast. People vote with their ape brains! But not if you kneecap their options, dumbass DMC!!

Student loans to be referred to debt collection
"borrowers will have loans sent for collections”
Unnecessary cruelty.

UAE to use AI to write laws in world first
What could go wrong?

Scientists Discovered a New Color
Yeah. Sure. I’ll believe it when I see it!

Gut toxin linked to rising bowel cancer cases
This is definitely a generational trend that may tie to illnesses in childhood.

Lindsay, her partner Martin, Bobby Aaron Solomon, and I were chatting over dinner recently where we somehow started talking about scamming, less in the sense of someone robbing another of money and more in the sense that the scam itself has replaced most modern expressions of being, that the work done to actually achieve a dream or goal is replaced with pretending you’ve already reached it. Why actually develop a life-saving technology when you can just fake it exists? Such is Theranos. Why create a music festival for the elite when you can profit on people’s imagined riches? Such is the Fyre Festival and its stillborn sequel. Pretend you’re rich and become rich (Anna Delvy), pretend you’re a singer and become a singer (Rebecca Black), pretend you’re royalty and become royalty (Queen of Pakistan). From Catfish to Joann The Scammer to Donald Trump to anything involving crypto, this millennium is defined by the con, fakery until makery.

But connery of the non-Sean variety is hardly what we’re talking about when we talk about scamming as that is as a reductive analysis of these times: what’s actually happening is the collapse of process. How does one “become rich”? How does one “become a singer”? How does one “become a royal”? All these things take time and personal investment, some requiring generations upon generations collaborating and negotiating with other families to achieve. It takes studying history and applying what you’ve learned. It takes trial and error. Nothing arrives overnight in life, dreams drop shipped into reality: that’s impossible. As we talk about every few months, consumerism has made it feel like everything in life is available as free two-day shipping. This loss of process is less our wanting things immediately but more a loss of training in the “work” that comes with living, of achieving things. Now! Now! Now! evolved into an allergy to commitment, an amnesia that hard work pays off. We’ve not lost the plot but we’ve lost the process.

The proof is everywhere. “The story doesn’t have to be good anymore: it just has to be formatted right,” Ohmarni explained in a now viral TikTok on the rise of narrated and Lizzie McGuire videos, which isn’t a perfect analysis but gets at the trend of people annotating life without actually living it. “YOU GUYS HAD FOUR FRICKIN’ MONTHS TO READ THIS STUPID EFFIN’ BOOK,” someone yelled into their phone in a TikTok explaining how their book club doesn’t read books and, therefore, doesn’t exist. Khloud Protein Popcorn dropped into the universe of random foods that are pumped with protein, which gets at a few collapses: that people want to get swole overnight, that “good” protein can come in capsule form versus, um, naturally eating natural protein, and that people can export personally balancing their own diet. As has been said before, everyone wants to “skip to the good part,” to arrive at a destination — or project the resemblance of being at a destination — without actually traveling to the place themself. No wonder people complain about their peers being flaky, that no one wants to do anything anymore: everything is faked and everyone has forgotten how to do real work, meaning we all are playacting at doing everything. Duolingo to learn languages, friendship apps to build relationships, LinkedIn to get a job — and none of them ever work because they don’t actually require us to do any work, as opposed to taking a language class, meeting people at an event, or networking with other people. It’s all the same thing, all projections of labor and process without doing much. Our allergies to action! Our craving results.

This got me thinking about skeuomorphs, items that represent the idea of something but aren’t actually that, or weren’t made through the same resources or labor. Think clocks and calculators on your phone which take the place of formerly physical clocks and calculators, representing literal flatting of tools: software made to reference its physical ancestor, a product that arguably “is the same” but made with different efforts, different processes. The sundial and abacus weep at their children, wondering what they did to create such monsters. “Can this teenager use a rotary phone?,” “17 year olds dial a rotary phone,” “KIDS REACT TO ROTARY PHONES”: calls just happen or, better yet, Facetimes or texts just exist. This brings to mind the current debate of weddings without alcohol, less that they signal cheapness or conservatism on all parties but that celebrations aren’t about the celebration anymore, that gathering is less about the act and more the performance: the idea but not the action. Restaurants are another example, which is probably why so many cities feel so spiritually empty and fragmentary, without culture as they’re more suburban venues for people to go from place to place to eat prepared foods versus getting together to prepare foods together, to break literal bread that they made. You can’t replace (or make) community with restaurant reservations!! Then there’s AI which…is there a better example of cutting the process than that? Anyone can “become” a writer because of ChatGPT, anyone can “become” a designer because of Canva, anyone can “become” an editor because of CapCut: AI and its various expressions collapse learning and developed expertise which, in turn, dehumanizes all involved. See the discourse around Cluely, a new app that intends to allow you to “cheat on everything” thanks to AI. “I just didn't fully grasp how many losers there are in the world,” Ryan Broderick mused on the phenomena. Such is the difference between going to Reddit to learn versus ChatGPT, the different between pushing order on Shein versus finding a local alternative in a vintage store: do you engage in a process or do you just import your reality?

We’re deeply spoiled. All of us! The luxury of faking everything and being able to profit, being able to live, is laughable. There was a time not long ago when people respected one’s work and the work of others, when there was a value in taking the time to read and to walk and to do things that require long stretches of dedicated time to a craft. “How, frankly, spoiled we are as Americans, how much we take for granted, how much we think that the institutions and norms that are going to save us will always be there,” Lydia Polgreen said, reflecting on 100 days of Trump. “Languages will disappear, churches will perish, political ideas will evanesce, art forms will vanish, the capacity to read and write and figure mathematically will wither, and the reproduction of the species will fail,” Ross Douthat recently wrote (very dramatically too) about the evolutionary bottleneck forming that is “killing off” so many parts of our culture so fast, as only select items are allowed through. “Except,” he continued, “among people who are deliberate and self-conscious and a little bit fanatical about ensuring that the things they love are carried forward.”

This is less a plea to slow down, to start and commit to processes, but another trail marker into the techno abyss that we’ve become too lazy to extract ourselves from: you don’t realize a part of you has died until you hear the eulogy. The ease of a short video feels good until you don’t have the attention to focus on a book or a movie or anything other 15 second blips. How else are you going to build a community if you can’t concentrate anymore? How will you enact political action? Become unscammable, an anti-con artist. Foster the life of a plant by growing plants, by taking the time to watch something grow in real time, to remind yourself of the work that only you can do alone with a little sun and a little water. Can you do that? Or will you buy one of those planters or plant people to do the job for you?

Tiny climate actions take a few minutes
I have a story on “this” in a few weeks but sustainability as a movement is very much nearing a flatline but I liked this story because it had 1.) novel and 2.) practical ideas for reducing impact. This may seem silly — but then you consider just how insane Trump’s Earth Day response was.

Could Science Revive Clubbing?
Rebekka Karijord on the Sound of Climate Grief
“composed by Low Jack and performed by choir”
These three stories are very different but all the same in their bridging electronic music and technology with reconnecting to people and planet. The last item I caught in Paris and it was sublime. To the essay above, the things that happen when we take the time to stop and really think about each other.

If AI Becomes Conscious, Should They Have Rights?
I could wax on and on about how much I hate AI — but I do think considering such ethical questions are worthwhile, considering, as someone noted in the comments, so many things (like bugs) have consciousness. Why not “teach” what could also be a form of consciousness too?

Kanopy Is Releasing Its First Movie
This is major! It may sound silly, that a library app is releasing a library movie, but the sad reality of Hollywood is everything becomes indie and localized as the main industry collapses, meaning the artform shifts to local and community expressions. A hobby for everyone, where we can make and “sell” these items to each other! Support your local filmmaker!

"nothing can prepare you"
"this is actually very Lynchian"
Identical Twin Sisters Go Viral
“We have tried to talk separately”
“I knew the twinnies”
Lost count of how many times I’ve watched the original video but these mirror twins are an obvious 2025 highlight.

If you’re reading this, you’re a farter. Unless you suffer from trapping or flatulence incontinence, you’ve been farting. You rip and run, letting them cheeks talk about what you’ve been eating and how you’ve been treating yourself. As René Desfartes said: you fart therefore you are.

Farts are funny. They’re a top ten (Maybe even top three!) thing that will put me in hysterics. Your butt? It tries to whisper but fails, resulting in hilarious hidden brown raspberries: what’s not to love? Immediate Mark Twain Prize for American Humor every time. But we should take farts seriously, less for health reasons and more because there has been a sort of subconscious movement around Suzie Tootin’ and telling. While farts are, well, a timeless human trend that is more function than personal expression (but can be both), we could probably pinpoint the start of this cropdustery in mid-2024 when the fart walk went viral courtesy of a TikTok espousing the benefits of walking after you eat to let them bowels loosen up, inspiring hot girls to evolve their walks into fart walks. The subject pops in and out of mainstream culture — fart monster toys, Jenna Bush and a fart gun, cow farts and climate change, a Guardian relationship story on farts — which is the semi-serious image window dressed by commercial expressions of the subject (the era of butthole tech logos, the fart blaster being a 2024 toy breakout), which are nothing compared to the constant stream of anal muttering happening online: “stay fartin’” a viral Tweet offers as dating advice; there are viral songs that sound like farts but also viral songs that literally are made of farts and there is literally Ice Spice; parrots and hippos get attention for their flamboyant flatulence; hostels and professional sports locker rooms become wind breaking rooms; Hello Kitty’s friend Pompompurin constantly showing its cartoon butthole; the extremely graphic and gassy Hole_Next_Door meme on gay twitter; searches for “fart” being their highest in twenty years. “Any old donkey can kick down a barn,” RuPaul says, soberly, to camera. “But it takes a skilled carpenter to build one.” Insert enormous ass rip. The crowd goes wild!

I love all of these benchmarks in the fart arts but, as the friend who is too woke, know that this is not just about giggling at gas: I’d posit that there is an emerging political undercurrent in the air too. Consider that so many of the previous posts, their subjects, and those driving the conversation are women or femmes. From the 5-to-9 fart diva to entering a male dominated sport, these posts feel like a direct push against conservative mindsets, against controlling the body and functions of women. “You gotta pass the gas,” queen of the fart Keke Palmer said last month on LADbible, proudly expressing that she’s constantly trumpeting around. “I just blame it on my baby. He can’t say anything about it.” Mind you, a month before this on Open Thoughts, Keke brought the subject up too, going viral as a result. “Somebody farted. Was it you?” she asked her tablemate, who then asked if she farts. “Of course I fart…You have gas.” “I’m farting, I’m laughing about it,” a recent popular TikTok goes. “Fart a little! You guys are acting like…who said you couldn’t fart? Who said that? So what if it stinks.” #LetBlackGirlsFart, another popular post proclaims. “She is so free,” the woman in the video says. “Not one ‘excuse me’ was uttered. You gotta be an unapologetic ass bitch to do that.” “real baddies will fart together,” someone commented on another recent FartTok post. In the words of Donna Summer: toot toot, beep beep. Bad girls stay bad.

This is all ridiculous, I am aware, but we are in really shitty times where the bodies of the non-majority are being contained and controlled. What better way to show that you will not be caged than farting with glee? Do you know how disgusted and or undone a conservative would be if you were to proudly fart in front of them? Chemical weapons brewed in our bodies that are actually within their bodies. “Fuck your abortion laws,” they say. ”But no one can outlaw aborting our butt breath.” In a world where the tradwife is the feminine ideal, where they remain silent and smelling of roses, the farting woman, the farting queer, the farting uncontrolled liberal is her opposite. Transgressive, sure, but also undeniably human — and these are dehumanizing times.

So let it out! Go fart, girl!! Let the world smelt what you dealt, showing that these brown sounds are very haha hehe but also the throwing of a doo doo dagger at the heart of the political machine. Live long and fart loudly, sisters.

“Vance meets the Pope”
“Leave me alone!”
“De Poopst”
“I’m in heaven now”
“Justkilled”
“You were both a bit tipsy”
”Rest in peace”
Best Pope posts.

“Come on now, dawg.”
“1 year since this diva”
How has it only…been one year since Schwapeepee and Beyoncé all the way??

“The most evil men”
I have a pair of glasses that have even thinner frames. Does that make me more or less evil?

“they skinned the grinch”
Like many, I didn’t “get” Walter Goggins’ sex appeal — until these Cultured mag pics, which were immediately chased away by this Tweet.

“Did I start it?”
”Millennial pause”
Tempted to dedicated an episode of 🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿 to this intergenerational TikTok trend.

“I consider myself a regular guy”
“fruity ah ambulance”
“Did I just waste my money?”
”Tom Hardy looking”
Gay things from this week.

“when the edible finally kicks in”
“what’s happening to hollywood”
“good at using reaction gifs”
Great gifs this week.

And, finally, a look at what I wear even if I do the exact opposite of what it says.

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