🔮 MEET THE CITIES OF THE FUTURE 🔮

Attempting to predict the cities kids will want to move to when they grow up and meditating on why entertainment has been stagnant for two decades — and what change actually looks like.

A heads up: this Report™ is way longer than usual, due to essays that required more space. Apologies! Or, if you’ve been wanting things to go longer, then…you’ll love this!! Speaking of: grab a paid subscription for more long-form essays like this.

Trump donors fall by 200K
lol Speaking of these two, Biden is getting his fuck on while Trump shitposts about him.

MAGA Republican Pledges “End of Democracy”
Meanwhile at CPAC, which I feel like is every month. Wash this down with the very good Christians Against Christian Nationalism organization.

Inside Aleksei Navalny’s Final Months
There are many great stories on Aleksei Navalny now, but this was the best I read, which is part testament and part look at what it means to be a political prisoner in these times.

Alabama: embryos are ‘extrauterine children’
"Reaction to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling?"
Did I not say a few weeks back that surrogacy and similar items will be the new abortion debate? This also crashes into an essay from last summer about “future humans” and the politics of all this. No wonder children of sperm donations, unregulated behavior, and parentage are having a moment!

Nvidia shares pop 16%
I couldn’t tell you what Nvidia actually does but there’s a lot of noise about “AI being profitable” and how it’s the new “tech boom.”

Google Isn’t Sunsetting Gmail
Google pauses Gemini’s ability to generate images
Google tests removing the News tab
Absolutely rotten week for Google. First, this is what happens when you try to be “woke” without actually doing the work of being woke. Second: if they remove “news,” they’ve really ended their credibility. More on this next week!!

AT&T service restored after widespread outages
“It wasn’t a cyber attack.”
“Everyone complaining”
Of course this fueled a lot, a lot, a lot of theories.

Winds push passenger planes to 800 mph
Seems bad!

Four-day week made permanent for most UK firms
HMMMMMMMMM

Death of Oklahoma teen after fight
This was the big, sad, queer news story of the week as it relates to school bullying and local anti-queer laws. See also: a recent finding that teaching gender identity is split.

A Marketplace of Girl Influencers
Meta Found Instagram Enabled Child Exploitation
YouTuber Sentenced To 60 Years For Child Abuse
Legislation to protect children in 'mommy run accounts'
I will let these related stories speak for themself.

“This is the music I grew up with,” Bobby said as we sipped cocktails. It was a rap song, from the nineties, from Oakland, the “Bay Area.” Thinking about this thirty years after its initial release, it’s funny to think that such vibrant culture could come from the San Francisco area as it’s decidedly not cool now, verging on the tech dystopian. And yet: the city had to start somewhere, the myth had to be made. As we talked, I explained that it was the performance of California in the 1990s via things like Clueless and Full House along with stars like Coolio and No Doubt who made me want to move there. I wanted to be where the palm trees were! I wanted to be in this land of cool. And I did just that: I was influenced as a child to move to California, to Los Angeles. This was a process that started in the 1990s, which happened similarly with Seattle and Chicago, thanks to things like Nirvana and Michael Jordan serving as mascots for the cities.

This is a law of modern life that got me wondering: if we know there is a ten to twenty year echo of cultural sites that kids will want to move to “when they grow up,” then where will the next Los Angeles/California be? What are the places that kids today are consciously or subconsciously dreaming of? Yeah, yeah, NYC, LA, blah blah blah — but what are the new new places? I started making a list of domestic and international locales that have been shaping culture yet haven’t had a proper “boom” yet, who might move from second city into city of the world. Here are four that I’m keeping an eye on.

→ → → Miami

• Why? An abstracted version of west coast cities like Los Angeles and San Diego, this beachy culture hub takes warm weather good vibes and multiplies it by New York City’s robust cultural morphing to the point that there’s a version of English unique to the city. Yes, Scarface (and even The Birdcage) projected the city as an opulent nightlife spot — but we’re only now entering the throes of Miami-as-playground. What San Francisco was fifteen or twenty years ago, Miami is becoming.

• Cultural proof? Jeff Bezos moving there really says it all to me. There’s also Grand Theft Auto 6 being in Miami, which will indoctrinate a new generation to this place. Art Basel’s breakout moments, while cheesy, do enough to keep the city’s momentum going too. Searches for the city are on the up too. Being a main point of entry for immigration keeps international interest as well. (Speaking of, since moving to Europe, Miami followed by Los Angeles are the top places people mention visiting or wanting to visit. Fascinating.)

• “It” factor? Will the city exist in thirty years? Which hurricane will be “the” hurricane? Unsure but I think that’s part of the appeal, this flirting with danger. I specifically see this as a destination for next gen entrepreneurial chads.

→ → → Atlanta

• Why? Atlanta is the sleepiest wide-awake city in the US. Affordable, diverse, vibrant, and a vibe, everyone knows about the A but no one takes it seriously beyond, say, how it benefits them (politics, Hollywood, etc.). When I lived there in the mid-aughts, it was home to fascinating cultural dichotomy that still exists: progressive rap and gutter punk, as exemplified from the swankiness of Buckhead to the crust of Little Five Points. And yet, despite cultural breakthroughs like Ludacris and (adjacent in Athens) Michael Stipe, Atlanta still is ready to move to peer status to it’s coastal siblings. We’re seconds away from this!

• Cultural proof? The obvious rap of it all, which really shaped kids in the 2000s and 2010s: “Yeah!” to “New Atlanta” to “Lean Wit It, Rock Wit It” — there are no shortages of songs that brag on the city, which suggests what happened to California with rap in the 1990s is happening here. There’s also Tyler Perry, the Braves, RHOA, “Hotlanta,” WWE’s Austin Theory, and — Duh! — Atlanta. The city has something crucially important: name recognition. Multiply this by political significance, the new East coast Hollywood, and Black southern migration and we have a shifting center of gravity.

• “It” factor? Pros? Atlanta still has a vibrant counter cultural scene. Take the legit electronic scene, featuring Nikki Nair and Ash Lauryn, the DEEP SOUTH crew, and Geographic North. Cons? Uhh. Racism. Traffic. It’s literally the south. Cops!

→ → → Seoul, Korea

• Why? Sure, China. Sure, sure, Japan. But the long game is being played by Korea, culturally, in a way that neither China or Japan are doing: this country has soft power on lock and has been refining this technique since the nineties. I know this personally, after living in Seoul in the late 1990s as Seoul coalesced an investment in a soft power grab that build the K-culture industries. Then, imagine, if you’re a kid into K-culture and watching Squid Game videos on YouTube: the logical step here is dreaming of going to Seoul. That is the point of all this Korean culture, y’all! 

• Cultural proof? This self-explanatory: BTS are the modern Beatles; BLACKPINK are our Spice Girls (even if NewJeans are far superior); Parasite is one of the winningest movies; the domination of K-dramas; the explosion of K-beauty; interest in cosmetic tourism; the rise in learning Hangul language. The art world is obsessed with Seoul right now. There is rising interest in the fashion world. Korean-American crossovers like Yaeji, R. O. Kwon, and Michelle Zauner are also making connections domestically and abroad. And, of all the cities mentioned, Seoul is in a decade after decade sprint into the future.

• “It” factor? If it means anything, this is the city that is at the top of my I-must-go-there list. I love Korea and Seoul, granted I’m biased having lived there. But, I would be remiss to mention the obvious: the shadow of North Korea, which I think “isn’t anything” but also very much “is something.”

→ → → Mexico City, Mexico

• Why? Like Korea, Mexico is quickly becoming a greater global power because of its relationship to the US. This means focus will likely be pushed to the capital — which is already the backyard of Los Angeles and New York. This change lies in stablizing politics, due to trades shifts with the country while Mexican politics at large feel like they're growing up. Plus? It's poised to be a top global economy. 

• Cultural proof? This is the place for Americans to immigrate too, which means more media about life in Mexico City now. Like Seoul, the art world is going wild for Mexico City and, like Seoul, regional Mexican music is going off as are artists like Peso Pluma and Grupo Frontera. This is colloquial (Just vibes, really.) but Mexico City has been the coastal city person’s vacation destination for a decade. As HuffPost posited in 2016, “Could Mexico City be the new Paris?”: yes, it could be. There is a youth and a vibrancy that most of the other cities mentioned don’t have. There’s also a direct relationship to American life that enables such comfort due to the exporting of food and fashion. This city is overdue to take center stage!

• “It” factor? The chorus of “Is it safe to travel to Mexico?” Also, yeah, the city is sinking. It’s kinda sorta being gentrified like whoa too. But where isn’t experiencing this? There’s the long standing political instability too — but where else doesn’t have that these days?

I honestly could go on (This is already too long!) but as few honorable mentions.

• Houston, home to Beyoncé and Megan Thee Stallion. Like Atlanta, this is a big migration station that is inspiring slow growth with plenty of housing compared to the buzzy-busty-ness of Austin. It’s also the second fastest growing city in the nation.

• Las Vegas, which is growing up from slot machines and showgirls and into a new creative cultural capital. See: the overwhelming rise of Vegas artist residencies, turning this place into a destination where you can see the stars (which, to kids means “become a star”), which pairs with counter cultural arts like vibrant drag and rising visual and land arts. Then there’s the business interests, like CES and the Super Bowl.

• Kansas City, my wild card. This is more “a vibe” as I know a Midwestern city is going to pop thanks to sports (The Chiefs are to KC now as the Bulls were to Chicago in the 1990s!) which is only exacerbated by Taylor Swift making it a point of interest. 

• Dubai, UAE, which I feel like you know. It’s the Vegas of the not-US which influencers have been flocking to for way too long. Dubai is primed to usher in a new generation of people, which is exacerbated by the area’s shifting focus from gas to culture. Smart move! Once there is a pop or movie star from Dubai…it’s over.

Gold Trump Sneakers Are More Than Shoes
“Vote for who?”
“Taps at no additional charge”
The Trump-shoes-for-Black-people thing was just so depraved. Real loser shit, made more wild by his appearance at the Black Conservative Federation Gala.

MLB players miffed at new see-through pants
“real fucking sexy”
Look. If you want more people to watch sports, we’re gonna need more see-through pants.

Wendy Williams diagnosed with dementia
"Touching Moment with Wendy Williams"
:(

Dakota Johnson: Agent of Chaos
"hilarious things Dakota Johnson has said"
Dakota, if you’re reading this, I want you to know that I love you. (The movie ending meme was also a highlight of the week.)

Bay Area librarian resigning for his mental health
"Cooked society."
Beloved TikTok librarian Mychal is taking a step back, which illustrates how ugly the world can be. That said: he says he’ll be organizing, so he won’t be gone-gone.

Voice Notes: Do Your Friends Love Getting Them?
You send me a voice note, I will send a notreplyatall.

“The girlies are the reason the girlies are single.”
This TikTok is the best summation of why people aren’t dating right now.

A. G. Cook - Silver Thread Golden Needle
This new ten minute A. G. Cook song is…an emotional epic. I feel like I need this transcribed on my heart. It very much ties to…

these WOMEN are ROBOTS 👠🎀💄
the aesthetics of 🥹🤔😳
The last two Lifestyle™ essays, both of which get at the overwhelming and at points emotional nature of technology. Cook captures that so well in the new song. (Also: I’ll be sending out a free essay to everyone this week. Stay tuned!)

Rarely do I have news about myself that gets folded into The Trend Report™ but I wanted to take a moment to highlight that

Ben Dietz

of

[SIC] Weekly

invited me onto the [SIC] Talks series where we talked about everything from how the sausage that is this weekly newsletter gets made to the potential for a gender fascist future to how history is always repeating itself. Watch the full conversation here and read a Trend Report™ intervention within [SIC] Weekly here. There wa one thing in the conversation that became a real big bug in my ear, which I continued talking about with

The Fox Is Black

, which we’ll continue onto now: why does Hollywood still exist?

I do not mean this literally but that we are, say, twenty years into a site like YouTube and thirty years into a concept like Netflix existing, which ushered in a series of “disruptions” of but nothing has stuck beyond streaming. No, Go90 wasn’t the future and, no, Quibi wasn’t the future either despite corporations “knowing best.” Why hasn’t entertainment changed? Because there’s no difference between a 30 second phone video and a three hour movie, which has caused a fifteen year holding pattern as we await a meaningful rethinking of these paradigms. This is to say entertainment is suffering from a failure of imagination. We all know this, given the silly putty that are streamers and the landfill that are social sites — and that Hollywood wants to be social media and social media wants to be Hollywood. We’re left with both being neither and all of us losing bigly, which in turns has killed and killed and killed media outlets.

So. How can we undo Hollywood? I don’t mean this in a “Down with the man!” sort of way (Not entirely, at least.) but in a more abstract and box-breaking way, that we have all the tools to make entertainment and to watch entertainment and yet we subscribe to binary, normie, old school, passive, regressive forms of entertainment that insist we compartmentalize who, what, and where we consume. What we’re left with sucks for audiences (The most watched shows are all old!) and sucks for the creatives, as there are no shows to audition for and artists like Normani have to (allegedly) do their own publicity and play into a larger fans-as-PR cannibalism cycle. Then there’s the tension between new and traditional media that malign non-traditional entertainers who seek to be more traditional, resulting in Billie Eilish complaining about them to Kylie Minogue, which isn’t wrong due to their overwhelming public acts of desperation. But who is traditonatl media to judge? Beyoncé is shilling hair products, Kylie Jenner’s doing mobile game ads, Taylor is collabing with Disney, Josh Brolin is shitposting for promo, which all collides with the “Real stars don’t exist anymore!” idea. The ducks think they’re swans and the swans don’t realize they’re ducks: it’s all the same shit — and those watching and making have been foolish to take the bait of corporations to think there is a distinction.

Walk with me, then, as we consider “what’s next.” Sure, the Super Bowl had the highest viewership ever with 123.7 million. But, as some astute (although Elon-pilled) people observed, this number is what Mr. Beast gets with each video and yet people don't take that seriously, not even Beast himself. There has been the sneaking feeling that TikTok is actually being better without the UMG catalogue, which is only heightened by this week’s mega-breakout: the “Who TF did I marry” TikTok series, which went from a viral, one-off storytime to a 50-part epic which will become a movie or get a book deal, yielding TikTok’s Zola moment — but why? The 50-part epic is something that questions the paradigm, something that captures media’s future now. Abbott Elementary is onto something, by dissolving television media and social media, working at the speed of social to take social stars like Casey Frey and Sabrina Brier seriously — and giving them the space to excel. This is due to star and showrunner Quinta Brunson’s new media (and meme) literacy, which is similar to that of Lil Nas X and Doja Cat. Memes are a language, a gesture, and understanding this is a key to understanding entertainment now and the future of an industry being pummelled by Skibidi Toilets: as media shortens and more and more options open, curation as entertainment rises in our seas of tmi. Your performance in a movie is no different than your post to TikTok. What I write in this newsletter is no different than whatever book that will be published. All these things are different but the same, which means SNL and RCDWorld1 are peers, RJ Cutler’s docs and Defunctland’s docs are peers, Bake Off and theTimes’ Mystery Menu and Try This At Home are peers.

The beauty is indifference to the differences. Our phones and the availability of media has flattened all media: media isn’t special anymore — and everyone involved has to stop taking themselves so seriously. The sooner we realize that, yes, Hollywood is no longer a place and that a social star and a movie star are the same thing, the sooner we reach the long-awaited singularity we’ve been craving. The future will see the collapse of the roles of viewer and entertainer — but not in the Tyler Perry-AI-fear-mongering way (although that will contribute to it). The future is the past, as we know, which is why things like sporting events, concerts, and live experiences feel “like the future” because they break the contract of media being one-way. A great answer is live, touring podcasts, or television shows that act like concerts, where touring and filming combine (America’s Got Talent is actually a good-bad example). An answer could be Reading Rhythms and reading parties hosted by celebrity and or creator book club leaders like Kierra Lewis’ irl TikTok book clubs. An answer could be a live Trend Report™, where I show you videos and we have live talks about them (which, if I lived in LA still, this would be so on). The stardoms of Emma Chamberlain and Trixie Mattel offer models. Troye Sivan too, if he still made videos. Vinny Thomas, Jaboukie, Ryan Ken, Alex Consani — if they don’t pick limiting lanes like television.

The future of entertainment is pluralist yet singular, creators and communities supporting each other in ways that dissolve bad-trends like the epidemic of loneliness, the loss of churches, and the corporatization of everything. The future of entertainment means finally dissolving the gates that are kept and the ideas of parasociality that brands-as-people have confused: to push back, we must add in a human multi-dimensionality to the audience-and-viewer relationship, to create a model of supporting your local entertainer. Entertainment and tech companies want you to think the future is shows you create from your favorite IP that is specific to you — but that’s still using an outdated playbook. The future of media requires a breakdown. Now’s the perfect time.

“A new insane agency job”
Millennial leadership is the best around but this has got to stop.

“How I act when I smoke”
This reminds me: I had the overwhelming urge to get stoned and listen to ML Buch this week but, unfortunately, I too act like the above video when I’m stoned (but multiplied by a panic attack).

“Every European election”
Living in Europe, I can tell you that this is actually not a joke but 10000% true.

"MENTION HUSBAND"
While y’all were playing Gaga x Fortnite, I was playing Real Housewives.

"In latin America everything is possible"
Speaking of Gaga!!

“hamster ball”
“newborn pics”
“Never tried a pickle before.”
“110 years ago”
Some posts about kids that I liked! We should consider mailing children again too. That would make them smarter, I think!

“a real work email”
NOT FUNNY.jpg

“thought this was Mariah”
Now this is all I will see when I see Billie Eilish.

“happy birthday ray of light”
This week Madonna’s Ray of Light turned 26 and this video really spoke to me.

“vroom vroom demon”
I am obsessed with this Toad ass 🦅🦅🦅 mfer.

“selected vibrating”
I always new Aphex Twin had that thang in him.

“Can’t wait to experience facelift technology”
There is a high likelihood that this isn’t real but I want to believe this gay fantasy.

“I too have a hole”
Look, the son is handsome.

"Plasma… where were you"
I try not to go too Drag Race fan on main but this read from the past episode is maybe a top five best of the entire series. It’s so good. The replies (and the end of the video) make it even better.

“AI would never give you”
And this person is right! AI cannot do that!!

“Prince VS. unbreakable shot glasses”
God, I wish that were me.

And, finally, what it feels like carrying the weight of all this information.

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