NO MORE SECOND JOBS!!!! 🤬

Why everything now does double duty and revisiting the subject of suffocation by shit.

How was your week? I hope good! Why not share the goodness, by passing along The Trend Report™ with your friends? 😇

Dems fracture in government shutdown fight
Musk’s cuts fail to stop US federal spending
Trump posted symbol for gay men in camps
House Republican misgenders Rep. McBride
Trump official filmed fashion influencer videos
Congress Is Falling Apart — But 5 Guys Look Good
"This is an amazing video."
“I love Tesler”
“Charlie Kirk’s biggest fan”
America, etc. The “Tesler” thing is psychotic but, as The New Republic sagely noted, much of this salesmanship is because Tesla’s going down means Elon’s value plummets a la: there goes Trump's bankroll. Keep going down, Tesla stock! Keep the kneecapping going! Cry, big Elon baby! The looming recession is bad but, if it sacrifices the oligarchy, that would be quite a silver lining.

Expel a Green-Card Holder Over Student Protests
Former Columbia University to remain detained
"Only 14 congresspeople signed this letter"
What’s happening to Mahmoud Khalil (and now Fabian Schmidt) is a frightening barometer of personal freedoms and protest. Should be concerning to everyone.

Trump Creating a International ‘Mafia Code'
I love

Naomi Klein

and her latest

Team Zeteo

episode raises a crucial point: we’re seeing a rise in “Canada first” vibes which means a rise in nationalism everywhere. Again: 1930score. Her thoughts on the planet are great too, which the dust bowl/fire storms/tornados seem to underline. (Naomi, if you’re reading this, I would love to interview you, queen.)

Russia doesn’t want a temporary ceasefire
Putin sets out conditions for Ukraine ceasefire
🙃

Portugal's government loses confidence vote
Add to the pile of international governments to stress about.

Discovery Might Have Helped Woman Live to 117
Due to her “particularly unusual gut microbiome.” Also, for anyone reading this in Barcelona: she lived down the street from us!

Measles in European reach highest in 25 years
Morocco scrambles to contain measles outbreak
Fuck you, Jenny McCarthy.

A Los Angeles Times story about martinis redefining LA cocktails is going around and I was intrigued to look because, sometimes, I enjoy mutilating myself, reminding myself that I don’t live in such a center of culture with all my friends and family. This story did not fail in delivering that pain — but it also did something else. First? We gotta stop with the trend of ridiculous restaurant and drink names. “A Tini at A Tí”? “Saltie martini at Saltie Girl”?? I feel like I’m being waterboarded by Zooey Deschanel. Second? Everything has a second job, a side hustle, a two-for-one quality: nothing “is what it is” anymore. It’s not just that olive brine is getting used — a quality that puts the dirty in dirty martini — but that things like pasta water are being reused for drinks. “This polarizing cocktail puts pasta in the glass,” the story explains of the Pasta Water Martini at Ospi, where the chef “perfected the salt-water-pasta ratio” in a drink that features “salted water that’s already cooked his house-made semolina pasta.” Intriguing? Yes. Recession indicator? Perhaps.

I’ve been thinking about this all week, less the repurposed pasta water cocktail but the idea that even inanimate objects and non-human animate objects now have side-hustles. A dog that is a pet and a TikTok star isn’t new — but Coperni’s purse that is also a Tamogotchi? A great example. The use of belts in Hodakova’s runways? Functional and decorative. Sneaker loafers! The Cecilie Bahnsen and The North Face rainproof “mountain dress”! Designer Nik Bentel made a bag that’s remote controlled. The “bandana scarf” trend, where a scarf is a bandana and vice versa. You get the idea. This was something I wrote about earlier this week, as it was all over the art exhibited at Madrid art fairs: a lot of the art wasn’t “just art” but worked as functional aesthetic devices such as lamps. See also: the rising genre of fine art as video game, a la the works of Alex Mackin Dolan. These objects, these goods, all do double duty just like us because they have to become more valuable or more interesting in a too crowded market as they — like us — feel the pressure of things like AI. They too are making the case for relevance, for individual, human-based value. We shouldn’t be surprised that so much of media — Mickey 17 and A Different Man and The Substance and Severance and even Wicked — are about the same person twice, about splitting yourself in half. “The videos for ‘Abracadabra’ and its predecessor ‘Disease’ both feature Gaga squaring off against other versions of herself,” Pitchfork mused in a review of the second single. “Gaga’s expressed trepidation to return to pop is all over MAYHEM,” they wrote of the album. “One of its prominent themes is inner conflict.”

Clearly, we’re all distracted, we’re all having to play multiple roles just to survive in this world. Yes, these are all obvious and “flip” examples from fashion, art, and culture — but much of this decade has been defined by part-time-job-ness as defining gesture: Trump turning the nation’s capital into an auto mall; politicians becoming podcast hosts and media stars; talk shows where guests do “work” like riding trains while giving a take, eating fried chicken whilst on a date, and suffering spices and bland questions; musician as celebrity as beauty mogul as pariah; viral TikTok audios doubling as a platform to talk about unrelated things; pictures from shows becoming memes to express separate ideas that then are used as advertising for said shows; celebrities getting cancelled but then getting adopted as meme; the dominance of slang that mean not one but two or three different things. A phone that is a camera that is a computer. A refrigerator that is a television that is a meal planner. A speaker that is a light that is an “assistant.” Everything is pulling double, triple, etc. duty just like you and me as a third of Americans have side hustles, as the amount of Americans with a second job is as high as it was during the Recession.

I write this during the weekend because I have two jobs and this newsletter baby threatens to become a real job but isn’t, an experience we all have on the fringes of techno-capitalism: like polyworking, part-time-job-ness has gone from niche and cute to a crushing economic reality and aesthetic gesture that represents “now.” You can’t have it all! So you have to work, work, work to break even, cleaving yourself to pieces to be interesting enough to deserve attention in the face of political collapse and technologic threats to livelihoods. As a new hyphen is sold to us as fun, we move further into the fields of technofeudal serfdom. Double consciousness triples, energy drink demands skyrocket, no one has time for friends or family — but this is the future of convenience we have supposedly been dreaming of. Naturally, the dream is also a nightmare: even our imagination has to do double duty.

Quick round of personal news for y’all!!!

• First,

  Ben Dietz
  and I’s podcast has officially launched!!! EEEEEEE!!! Called Hip Replacement, it’s a space where we chat weekly with people across generations about generational subjects. The first episode is out too!! Our guests are the angel queens,
  Selleb Sisters
  , and we chat everything from the death of trends to AI chaotics to “alt media” (where we shout out to
  Mo_Diggs
  ). Check it out!

• BARCELONA: MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR MARCH 30 at 6PM!! The next Trend Report Live™ is happening, which I’d love for you to attend: full details in this Eventbrite page. It should be cute! Would love to meet you all and talk trends 🤭

• Paris and London: something for you!

  Bobby Aaron Solomon
  and I are planning to visit soon!! Paris should be late April/early May and London should be in June, likely mid-to-late in the month. We’re planning to do some meet-ups because I know a lot of you reading this are there — and I would love to meet you angels!!

Now…back to regular programming 🕊️

Does Mel Robbins’ ‘Let Them Theory’ Work?
“Mel Robbins…dark energy”
“who doesn’t understand Let Them”
The inevitable Mel Robbins pivot is happening. Having worked with Mel in 2009 on a reality pilot that became this show, she is great — but her jobs as life coach guru type isn’t to grift but to hustle. She, like Tim Ferris, et al, are the final bosses of faux therapy self-help empowerment.

Therapists on sessions in new Trump era
Speaking of therapists: politics and self-help have been circling each other for years and this story turns the ideas direct. Interesting industry insights, if unsurprising.

Donatella Versace steps off the runway
Demna Is the New Creative Director of Gucci
Jonathan Anderson’s Uplifting Legacy At Loewe
End of eras! We’re going to talk about this in a moment but this is a sign of the time. I’ll also use this fashion moment to share this brilliant video about Michèle Lamy.

Is the Giant Sneaker Trend Over?
Max and I were talking about about his Times story and…this indicates something — but what? Unsure. Maybe we’ll find out in Demna’s Gooch oeuvre or that fucking stupid movie about sneakers.

Paris Jackson Shuts Down Everyone
HAIM - Relationships (Official Video)
I thought this last week when the Haim single cover dropped but this week confirmed we are at peak sheer-top-with-underwear style, popularized by Paloma Wool/Gimaguas and Prada/Miu Miu. Stock is about to crash, at least for “insiders.” Wrap it up!!

Is ‘Severance’ making your dog freak out?
Obsessed with dogs hating Severance because of hidden noises.

RA.979 Lyra Pramuk
Experimental artist Lyra Pramuk has new work incoming and, if it’s anything like her new RA mix, woooooo weeeeee: we are in for a banger. Her work never really “clicked” for me but, in hearing this mix that is as philosophically heady (“Remember when we were dust? Remember when we were stars?”) as it is booty banging, I revisited and am a convert. The mix is very much of her new, glitch style like the single “Vega” which is the bite I was lacking from the beautiful and baroque Fountain. This mix got me through a very sleepy week.

“Numb is in,” a New York reporter said to Rachel Sennott on the Oscars red carpet. “Numb is in,” the actress repeated, eyes glazed, directed at the lens, proud of her endorsement of beta blockers. Models at the Coperni show walk down runways lined with people at computer screens, playing video games, ignoring the world around them as they’re seated with backs to models, celebrities and other front row guests by their side. “Who wants dinner?” Everyone raises their hands. “Who knows what they want for dinner?” Everyone puts their hands down.

I’ve been having this problem where picking music to listen to as I work is now a more and more complicated question as I get overwhelmed by my library of twenty five years of mp3 hunting. Then there’s Benson Boone and Tate McRae and Addison Rae and Madison Beer and Rebecca Black and Teddy Swims and Alabama Barker: who is listening to these random music industry Sims? Remember Eusexua? No one does. New York City influencers? There are too many and they all look the same. Fragrances? We don’t need any more. Apps? Please don’t make me download another one. We’re in the eleventh week of the year and eight of those weeks have been fashion weeks. I had to change my password for one website seven times this week because all the passwords I submitted were previously used or compromised. “The 50 Best TV Shows and Movies to Watch on Disney+ Right Now” and “The 50 Best Movies on Netflix Right Now” and “The Best Movies on Amazon Prime Video Right Now” and “The 50 Best Movies on Max Right Now” and “The Best Movies and Shows on Hulu Right Now” but also Pitchfork’s Out This Week and Sterogum’s 5 Best Songs of the Week and NPR’s All Songs Considered and r/listentothis and The Guardian’s Best podcasts of the week as well as New York’s The Strategist and New York Times’ Wirecutter and The Wall Street Journal’s Buy Side and Financial Times’ How To Spend It and CNN Underscored and Consumer Reports’ Expert Advice: if you need help making a decision, you have to make a decision about which decision making site will help you make a decision. “Casually scrolling social media to relax for bed at the end of a long day,” a recent TikTok goes, before someone interrupts, declaring, “I don’t wipe my ass so I do get yeast infections more often than most people.” Cue the atom bomb. “We should know less about each other,” someone comments, a common refrain onTikTok as we’re steeped in TMI, of too much information about people we will never know. Just ask my socks.

Two years later, it has to be re-said of these suffocating times: there is too much stuff, which is birthing economies and personal labor based around making more shit to deal with the fact that there’s too much shit. If I had a nickel for the amount of times I talked about the “too many trends” trend this week, I would have well over a dollar: it’s not that trends are any different but that this is the age of too much, of indulgence rotting our brains and our cultures as people have stopped saying no, adopting a life of yes that shaves off the soul, dulling individuality and personality. It’s not just being unable to pick out what you want for dinner: it’s that you want everything and noting because we have everything and nothing. “Have humans passed peak brain power?” the genius John Burn-Murdoch asked in a now-viral FT story that reveals that too much information from technology has collapsed literacy, collapsed general intelligence. But will anyone listen? Will anyone care? The art market and Hollywood and fashion and every other industry is collapsing and yet they team up to “make things better”: more as the solution. Life as a stack of side-hustles.

These are the illusions of choice, which we are more than well aware of. A time is approaching after the glutted present, where we’ll want to make people and their children smarter, healthier — but that isn’t now. Something — or someone(s) — will have to die off between now and then. Instead, we suffocate as we anticipate a new wave to arrive, a new deal is made. We all know this and more and more people are muttering about this besides me. “What are you willing to give up?” Monocle’s Tyler Brûlé wondered in late February, flavored by his lib-conservo schtick. “Would you trade everyday freedoms for more surveillance and less interesting films at the cinema?” “Choice serves as both a privilege and burden,”

Mouthwash Studio

declared around the same time. "I find most days to be exhausting.” “It can best be understood as a regulative ideal,” Ingrid Robeyns muses at the start of her 2024 book Limitarianism, defining the concept. Ideally, we will push back against consumption and capitalism and other forces in our personal lives and in our collective experience of the now to prioritize less, both for the body and brain and the world around us. Downsize. Underconsume. Liberate. We could all win. We’ve gotten too lost in the sauce and, increasingly, we’ve forgotten how to swim, how to self control.

Sandy explains toward the end of Annie Baker’s 2018 The Antipodes —

I think maybe there are no more stories. Not that we've told all the stories or that there are only six types of stories or something but I think maybe it's the end of an era. Or maybe it should be the end of an era. Like maybe this is actually the worst possible time in the history of the world to be telling stories.

“tl has been cursed”
“a store brand Pop Base”
“obama last name”
“have you thought about a Peter Thiel”
“Eric Adams and Che Diaz”
“they weren’t transing the mice”
“why is Zelensky”
“STOP IT”
“how jd Vance gets ready in the morning”
Silly political posts, etc. Also: the store brand Pop Base wouldn’t post this. Clearly no sauce! If you get the last one, please reply so I can throw you in jail.

“had to”
"conservatives look like this now"
“a bitchless ideology”
"wasn't able to get"
I don’t want to talk about the Jubilee, new conservative “aesthetic” but this was everywhere this week and is surprising to me that people had so much to say, considering young people don’t know about metrosexuals. That last item we’ll talk about at length next week 🤭

“girl TUCK”
“it’s giving”
“????”
Can’t stop thinking about Carly Rae Jepsen’s massive dong. (Also: two other great gay posts, the second being for my Hawk Tuah fans. MAYHEM was decent too!)

“pleek”
“this guy crying”
Two great videos about crying.

“Welcome back poop”
Most delightful post of the week, which all goes to say that it should be illegal to have a mustache but no chest hair.

"Purple."
Thinking about gag reflexes and only going down so much, to save your life <3

“she ain’t got no arms”
Speaking of gag reflexes, Danny Brown for the cursed Pulitzer.

And, finally, how people described me when I was in college (and maybe now too).

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