lol millennials be doing that 😂

The first in a series of generational deep dives, and thoughts on an iconic pee pee meme.

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Trump defeats Haley in New Hampshire
"70% of Haley voters"
I am rooting for Nikki, but she is so bad. If she wins the nomination, she could actually defeat Biden as she’s sweeping the never-Trumps and independents. And, icymi, Trump has to pay E. Jean Carroll $80+ million for defamation.

DeSantis drops out, endorses Trump
"Ron Desanctimonious or Meatball Ron"
Fucking loser lol

UN court: Israel to prevent genocide
Circling back on the Israel-Gaza genocide court thing.

Alleged Columbia Chemical Attack
Big TikTok story, as the attack was (allegedly) by a former IDF soldier. Is that not terrorism?

Are we heading for World War Three?
"a new 'pre-war' era"
“possibility of conscription”
“starting civil war ii”
Biden Can Take Over National Guard
Big conversations about our being in a pre-war era, World War III, and conscriptions. Obviously people are talking about preparing for war — and I’m listening! I don’t think they’re right but they definitely aren’t wrong…neither are the conscription memes. (Related and not: searches for “world war three” have been trending upward.)

Doomsday Clock “close” to catastrophe.
Cool!

Europe Faces a Measles Outbreak
Cool!

A new global gender divide
“YouTube turning men into sociopaths”
”HUGE reason dating is so rough”
A major story this week is how, worldwide, men and women are finding it harder to connect. We’ve talked about in so many different ways before which is to say: this is a storyline of this era!

The COVID strategies scientists are using
I share this as 1.) Covid is very much around and 2.) TikTok has been talking about what will be the thing that “silent killer” of this generation. The theories so far are colon cancer and, duh, Covid.

Billions of Plastic Bags Avoided
This is a win! I don’t think we’ve realized how much plastic we’ve diverted since not-using plastic bags!

Salmonella Linked to Charcuterie
Be careful out there, Millennials and Girl Diners!!

"MrBeast's campaign to destroy this website"
"amount of information to trigger DEFCON-1"
Obsessed with Mr. Beast accidentally killing Twitter’s creator program.

Los Angeles Times plunges into ‘chaos’
Tencent’s Riot Games Cuts 530 Jobs
TikTok cuts jobs as tech layoffs
More layoffs, with the Los Angeles Times being particularly brutal.

Taylor Swift Medicare Scam
“check in on your grandmas”
“We’re doomed.”
A great talking to Meemaw and Peepaw about AI scams is coming.

Millennials. Poor, poor Millennials.

The middle child generation, this is a group who has “seen it all” as the ceiling of the world lowers further and further. They’re of an age where they “get” life and work and, like many, they understand that this shit sucks. They’re evolving the idea of a mid-life into abandoning the workforce, or shifting life so radically that it’s difficult to believe what their life once was. Coffee shops and dog rescues, having a farm and starting a commune: they are ready to escape.

Shat on by the adults (Boomers and Gen X), for supposedly ruining and killing everything for a period of time, only to get shat on by children (Gen Z and Gen A), for attempting adulthood, they’re squeezed on both ends. They feel the call of being young but know intellectually that they’re no longer that: they’ve been at the rodeo long enough to understand how the bulls buck, but haven’t quite located the exits. So where does that leave them? In the middle — and they’re tired.

Millennials as a generation are a smart and scrappy group but, after terrorist attacks and economic collapses and disease, they now have blinders on, lighting a path toward unplugging or disconnecting from the systems that wronged them. When we talk about creator burnout, we’re talking about Millennials. When we talk about resetting retirement to middle age, we’re talking about Millennials. When we talk about urban flight and secondary cities, we’re talking about Millennials. When we talk about working three jobs to survive, we’re talking about Millennials. When we talk about being shattered and disillusioned by the promises of college and corporate life, we’re talking about Millennials. When we talk about people who don’t have time or money to parent, we’re talking about Millennials. When we talk about adults who have to rely on their parents because they have too much debt, we’re talking about Millennials.

And yet: it’s not all thorns. Millennials are the generation to finally change the curse of the modern American generational system. Millennials are a deeply nice generation, who are concerned about the wellbeing of others. Millennials know how to balance the corporate world with the world of people. Millennials have watched as the adulthood that was promised disappeared, which is why they’re interested in reformatting life to work not just for them but for everyone. Millennials are optimistic but realistic. Millennials know how to fit into a room and please everyone while also prioritizing themselves. This is all classic middle child (maybe even only child) behavior, in that they know how to tap into community while knowing that they can only rely on themself. They aren’t interested in tearing down institutions as much as they’re interested in building something different, something elsewhere. No wonder we had so many startups from young people in the 2010s: these were Millennials trying to build utopias, only to get swallowed by the trap of corporate greed. Now, we’re all leaving. There’s nothing here for us anymore.

So how do you reach Millennials? How do you “deal” with these lost middle children? Like all people, they need to feel seen. This doesn’t necessarily mean helping them (Although that is helpful!) but you very much need to validate their experience, to make them feel genuinely seen and heard. Give them space to flush out thoughts versus trying to one-up or relate in a sort of “I had it like X!” or “But Y happened to me.”: that only makes you look thoughtless and calloused and, at worst, mean. You have to do the work: if you listen earnestly to a Millennial and then do nothing? They’re out. Millennials don’t respond kindly to being mean or being taken advantage of. Why? Look up and down in the generations and that’s how those worlds have treated them, not to mention the structures of the world that has screwed them. You’re talking about the generation that came up with Mean Girls: being mean, being hateful, being ugly sucks. The world is hard enough.

But Millennials also have to overcome being “on the bottom” because…who cares? Everyone’s life is hard! Everyone has a difficult world right now. Like the middle children that they are, they feel like they’re more-special than others (We are!) but we truly are completely, tragically normal (We are!). Millennials are eager to escape and “do me” but we’re failing to organize, build community, and deal with our issues: we would rather run away than confront or reimagine the structural issues at work, in our cities, in our own lives. Somewhere else is always better in the Millennial mind — but that’s just the escapism talking. To succeed, to be better, we gotta do the work together. Yes, we’re tired of this modern life, but life isn’t anything without hardship: their challenge is to work together, to think outward instead of inward. Learn to trust. Wear this weathering of this young life, become philosophically and culturally wabi sabi, together. If not, they will continue to indulge in the running away, which helps no one but the corporations who profit from their doom spending and endless viewership and binge drinking. We may have failed to launch, but there’s still time to go somewhere.

Nicki Minaj Is Hella Pressed
”a scholar fr”
”The silence is loud”
Nicki Minaj fans have had the worst weekend, ever since queen MOTHER Megan Thee Stallion dropped an incredible, intelligent diss track that shouted out how Nicki has long associated with sex offenders and pedophiles. Nicki has since spiraled all weekend. Megan…you will always be famous and you will win a Pulitzer for this.

Ben Shapiro Disses Nicki Minaj
“the worst thing I have ever seen”
I regret to inform you that you must watch the Ben Shapiro “rap.” I’m sorry but you are legally obligated to. Related to the above: Nicki is so desperate that she congratulated him. I think we may be witnessing Nicki’s Kanye style pivot to the right in real time…

Why the U.S. Media Industry Is in Meltdown
Coachella Festival sees slowest ticket sales
A new global gender divide is emerging
I was going to write an essay on this, but I couldn’t fully connect them but…I feel like these things are all connected. I can’t explain it! But I know it’s something to do with capitalism and connection, or lack thereof.

We Owe Pitchfork
re: the above, I am legally obligated to share this viral essay of the week.

Anne Hathaway walks out of Vanity Fair
re: re: the above, this is true motherly behavior.

Whitney Names Artists for 2024 Biennial
Some familiar faces! One of the best shows, every time!

“Margiela made magic”
"porcelain doll-like skin"
Jean Paul Gaultier Spring 2024
I was going to write an essay about how sheer is going to be so in because of the Margiela show and Simone Rocha-Gaultier show and how we crave connection. These shows ere just gorgeous! The dolls faces are just…true fashion. It’s become a mega viral makeup look too.

Why Did the Internet Say He Was Murdered?
Another essay I almost wrote, about obituaries and death online in light of the tragic Silent Servant cause of death. I’m sharing this instead as it captures something that the essay would have gotten at: our intense curiosity to understand why and how people die, to the point of a clickbait industry profiting off of this curiosity.

Stanley, other drink cups contain lead
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

“echoes of childhood trauma”
"heal the part of me"
Something is happening on TikTok with people recognizing adult behavior that stemmed from certain ways parent(s) treated them.

3 Ingredients for Fun
“Having fun is serious business”
I want to have more fun!!!!!! I just need local friends!!!!

Millennial-Gen Z Get Together
Speaking of: if you know any Americans in the Barcelona area, I’m hosting a lil social event (plus, you can register to vote from abroad).

Very few things on the internet in the past, present, or future will rival “go piss girl.” This meme broke out of a very unique early Covid moment, where the internet was briefly full of word scrambles from the Gossip Girl title. It was a(n increasingly rare) online period that was divorced from the surrounding context, while folding past pop culture with future pop culture to now become an contemporary expression. 

Very few things have this power. I say this — and it may sound ridiculous — but, every few weeks or months, a post goes viral about “go piss girl” and what comes with saying that. There was one this week, two in October, one in September, one in May, and many, many more since its 2020 debut. (If we look at the trend on a technical level, interest in this phrase has increased every year since the meme’s debut.) It captures a not-new — but perhaps newly universal — feeling: of being too online in the good way. This isn’t brain rotted behavior, this isn’t chronically online behavior, but this is the behavior of someone who is well-versed in memes, someone who gets online culture and pop culture, someone who understands what it means to walk in between the digital and the real. This exists in different ways in different degrees for different generations and cultures but, for Gen Z and Millennials, “go piss girl” captures an accessible cool that we rarely see anymore due to the fast-forward nature of media via social media. Other examples of this include Arnold from Hey Arnold!’s bedroom discourse, the “perfect texture for running” blooper, the farting ghost “I’m scared” girl, donatella VERSACE 💜, and almost anything related to Spongebob.

Why is this? It may have to do with the increasingly rare communal experiences, of childhood and beyond, these moments that we can share with close friends and strangers alike because we all experienced them no matter where we were. Gossip Girl maybe wasn’t the most popular show (I’ve never seen an episode!), but it dominated culture in a unique, pre-streaming way in the late aughts and early 2010s, hitting many Millennial and Gen Z lives in the process. The same can be said of Spongebob and Hey Arnold! and, while Vine was a social platform, the culture of knowing Vines and their references has a similar texture: these are relics of arrested youth, of communal stopping down to enjoy. That happens every so often with viral TikToks, but the nature of “this” has changed to being more competitive, more niche, and more consumptive. News bloopers and other fails (Grape Lady, I Like Turtles, “Dede Megadoodoo”) once had this power, to cut through internet and cultural conversations similarly with the sole purpose of making people laugh. Now, such media gets absorbed into clickbait and Facebook industries like Fail Army and digital culture pits.

This is what makes “go piss girl” special: it’s about absurdity, nostalgia, and shared experience which…seems to happen less and less, placing us in more and more isolated spaces. Yes, being that one friend who knows all internet references will always be a thing, but being able to say “Did you see X big thing?” feels more and more impossible because…what platform was it on? Was it in the morning or night? Did X public figure talk about it? I don’t follow X. What is that? I don’t understand. I wasn’t online then. Why did X do that? I actually was offline. Blah blah blah: like the loneliness that we all talk about, it feels more and more like communal experiences online are disappearing too. There are less and less shared spaces to share in non-noisy contexts or not hyper-private contexts. The algorithms, as great (“great”) as they are, are catered to the individual. Thus, me-me-me-ism is reinforced as you sit on your island, enjoying the spoil of riches that are plate after plate after plate of videos for you. But when it’s time to share? No one else gets it, or it doesn’t hit as hard. The watching of all the things you sent becomes a form of labor, a phenomenon which itself has become a shared experience.

Entertainment in all forms — not just memes, but television and movies and theater and art — are becoming more individual. This is good and bad, obviously, but there are increasingly less things to talk about. Or everything is becoming that “You had to be there.” feeling which, yes, having been there is fun but having been there is also exclusive, momentary, and unpredictable. I’m thinking about the NPR “We forgot how to have fun!” story and how the art of connection is so lost now. Our challenge, should we choose to accept it, is to do more things together, to pop out of your isolation. Maybe show your phone to someone instead of DM-ing them the video: save the share to show someone together. Could that help? I’m unsure, as we live in a “go piss girl” or “get pissed girl” world.

“my 10 yo”
“your mother”
“it gets worse”
"funnier than SNL"
“Greta & Margot”
“Emerald & Barry & Jacob”
“keep up with these conversations”
The Barbie Oscar discourse is a textbook example of lonely people living their non-lives online. Which then baited white feminist final boss Hillary Clinton to post about it as a non-joke. Exhausting! Y’all getting heated over TWO HOUR LONG COMMERCIAL!! I HATE IT HERE!!!

"Congratulations Annette Benning"
"You think the rules of Oscar voting"
The best Oscar post, followed by the second best Oscar post.

“Corporate Erin on the news”
"8 miles every morning"
Anyway, give Corporate Erin an OSCAR.

"core of every issue"
"Consider yourself #blocked"
"thought that was Trump"
Just some silly GOP things.

Trixie Mattel & Tammie Brown
For you, Drag Race fans: an absolutely unhinged, incredible collab.

“work island”
I think this is exactly why I don’t like the vibes of NYC!!

"the phrase"
“iron water”
Two things that made me almost have a stroke.

“ARE YOU A”
”I feel so bad”
Some updates on Gen A, including that they’re co-opting (Baltimore??) slang “jittleyang” and “​​fuckalatoogan.”

"Rihanna has a female bodyguard"
I am obsessed. I need lesbian fan fiction.

"last four words of Connections"
This is literally what it’s like to play Connections.

"2 dumb bitches"
I love these dumb bitches. Ted Chiang hive let’s GOOOOO.

“me and bro”
Just Bobby and I things 🥰

“reduce, reuse”
I been saying that.

“Isa, Mara, Tere”
These dancing Mexican women are having a moment on TikTok — and rightfully so! I need two besties who can come over and do this with me every week.

"imagine farting"
Sweaty ass mf

“the shittiest lyrics”
In honor of the new farty Ice Spice song, a survey of rap songs about poop. It’s a thing!

And, finally, I’m the friend and you are welcome.

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