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🏙️ This week’s NYC agenda!!! See you there?
Monday I should be swinging by the Broadcast opening, which I’m adding into the suite of #FashionWeek things I’ve been #Blessed to get to participate in.
Tuesday I’m hitting the Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor End Times Fascism chat with Jia Tolentino, as Naomi Klein is my hero and I am so, so excited for the conversation. I feel like my brain is going to expand ten times.
Thursday is the live HIP REPLACEMENT with kate lindsay at Ace Hotel Brooklyn! Join Ben Dietz and I for this live conversation, along with free drinks and plenty of great people. RSVP HERE!!!
👀 Two things I did that came out this week!
A new story I wrote for Dwell is out, about the trend of interior design shows on social media, featuring a fun interview with Ben Mora of Interior Motives.
I was on Slate’s ICYMI again, where Kate and I tried to untangle the appeal of people like Alix Earle and Stella Lefty. If you have no idea who those people are…bless you, but this is exactly why you have to tune in 🤭
🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿 this week features culture writer extraordinaire Meena Alexander, who chats through aura battles, lobotomy chic, and the Met Gala fall out with Ben and I. Lots happening in this episode: listen on Substack, YouTube, and Spotify.
Trump: Every American gets $5K if GOP wins midterms
“Why not do it right now?”
Unsurprisingly, his corruption continues. Desperation, in the face of a flat convention.
Report: Netanyahu ignored warning of Oct 7
“it would enhance his position”
Huge, as Netanyahu was warned of the Oct 7 attack and chose not to do anything, giving himself permission to enact a genocide by sacrificing his own. An orchestrated Trolley Problem!
After 9/11, New Yorkers Were Misled About Air
I hope such a disaster never happens again, but — should it occur — an issue like poisoned air would be more well known. Shame on Giuliani (and Bloomberg too) for withholding this! A few other 9/11 memorials of note: the required “classics” of the Falling Man, the site’s gay history, and the initial Times coverage; the new entries like this honoring of Fr. Mycha Judge and the story of Omar Bin Laden; and takes on medical debts, American disaster exceptionalism, and the human cost of 25 years of US wars.
Reading, math scores plummet worldwide
“School test scores continue to collapse”
A top story of this week, as a global study revealed how poorly kids are doing in education, especially with reading. The illiteracy and lack of concentration stories are all true, it seems. This is all happening as arts education is harder to come by.
The Microplastics Epidemic in Indonesia
One of the more distressing environmental stories, which — again — is all our fault.
Waves, flooding bring destruction to Long Beach
“Waves crashing above rooftops in Long Beach”
“shoreline in Newport”
“more like Miami”
El Niño continues to terrorize the world, exacerbating problems of our own making, which is now taking aim — again — at southern California. It reminds of stories from earlier in the year, like entire neighborhoods in SoCal slipping into the ocean, which pairs well/poorly with wider trends of a place’s climate resilience being a livability factor.
America’s White-Collar Workers Feel Stuck
Has the A.I. Job Apocalypse Been Postponed?
“the ai race”
These are related, as job numbers going up doesn’t hide the vegetative state of work today. As discussed Thursday, the AI scare tactics much ado about nothing as we boil ourselves, placing multiple economies and millions of careers into a tech-based hostage situation that has long arrested progress. Enough!
AI Leaders Call for Slow Down
This Is Really Bad
Can we move on already? It’s funny that these demands to “stop” are coming as profits aren’t delivering. A very convenient out for everyone, huh?
I
I had three similar conversations this week, revealing an itchy idea —
On this week’s HIP REPLACEMENT, journalist and editor Meena Alexander brought up something that’s been bugging her: the rise of lobotomy chic. “There’s this dead-eyed, dissociative pout thing going on,” she explained, pointing to the actor Rachel Sennott and her endorsement of being feelingless. “Numb is in.” were the specific words. “I find this quite worrying but interesting,” Meena said, summing up the idea as, “Even if I do feel things, I don’t want to show that I’m feeling it because it feels silly in the face of the dumpster fire of the world.”
On this week’s ICYMI podcast, kate lindsay and I discussed the rise of creator Alix Earle and musician Stella Lefty, two public figures representing different ends of the influence spectrum: Earle is a proper influencer, whose vacuousness is meant to be filled with brand deals, while Lefty buys credibility without ever having to know failure, thanks to her billionaire status that can buy away critique. Both represent the popularity of nothingness. “I’m just as perplexed by the person upset that Stella Lefty’s concert is sold out as I am the person genuinely tuning in to Earle Meets World,” Kate said. “Who are you? What is the joy you’re getting from this? If it brings you joy, that’s great but I hate that it’s from, as in the case of Alex Earle, the most sanitized nothing of content or to a billionaire’s daughter.”
As you’ll see in a moment, I spoke with Light Phone co-founder and designer Joe Hollier, who lamented how boring and uninspiring phone design — like most tech design — has become. “Why should my mom and my little brother and me all have the same phone when we’re never going to have the same shoes or clothes or any other thing in our life?” he asked.
Taking these items together — ”lobotomy chic,” the rise of celebrities like Alex Earle and Stella Lefty, the lack of design variability — a flat world emerges, one whose homogeny is certainly about race and whiteness but more crucially is about a lack of difference made manifest in facial features, entertainers, and products. This recalls our conversation from April on nihilism breeding permission, which exhumes many ghosts of the 2020s: in 2025, we discussed our being in a culture recession and mid-ness being culture’s de facto state; in 2023, we discussed the mediocre uncanny, of AI enabling our being in a “close but not right” state; in 2021, we discussed “borecore,” how our mass boredom is “a sort of indulgence, even a craving, for the non-critical.” In this latter half 2026, we’re here again, recognizing that a near decade of imbibing the most mediocre has finally fully scooped out what’s inside of our heads.
Think back, to 2020, when Kyle Chayka defined streamable television cranked out by Netflix as “ambient TV,” a state of entertainment that offers a “sympathetic background for staring at your phone, refreshing your own feeds.” Multi-tasking as a rake of knives to drag down your arms as you ingest nothing but everything. In 2026, this ambience has consumed all: our senses are dulled, public figures lack value, and all products “are the same.” This has enabled a mass mediocrity that is a symptom of our ambient cultural suicide, one where an inability to have a point of view not only means culture itself atrophies but that the most factory produced thrive, met with a lack of accountability and binary non-critical thinking, if any thinking at all. Music embodies this best, as the biggest stars in the world — Ariana Grande, Harry Styles, Taylor Swift — have nothing to say yet continue to “over” perform in the zeitgeist with their frictionless, bland lives. Beyoncé maintains her efforts to become endlessly unrelatable to the point of selling empty wooden boxes for hundreds of dollars. Even the edgiest like Charli XCX droll on for a string of records about what being famous is like, as if that state is the only thought in the head of even the most “alt,” which trickles down to the Adelas of the world having nothing to say in their releases but “focus-grouped muck” that proves how the Gen Z musician’s “I love Britney Spears!” fawning via the Addison Raes and Tate McRaes is actually quite a blank contemporary cliché.
This is the context for Katseye and their algorithmic Cocomelon for the TikTok rotted: their artistry is a series of references taped together, designed to fall apart in days, the moment when you realize there wasn’t anything there to begin with, all as they stuff something else into your maw so you can forget this feeling. This is what makes Katseye kind of interesting: they’re a vessel for advertising more than music, be they for Netflix or Takis or HxG or Hershey’s or slime — literally anything. They are culture now, we they and they us, as our great ambience has enabled ads to become entertainment because we no longer care to tell the difference, which is how and why advertising has literally become everything. This is how and why we fall for propaganda too, how we become more illiterate too: everything is “too hard,” every challenge is “too tough.” Make it easy, make it flat, make it edgeless. The C-suite level and above “know” this is a profitable state, which is why they make their kids work hard as they enable you giving yours and yourself an iPad, resulting in “shocking” truths like continued global declines in intelligence, literacy, and the like. And you wonder why so many are critical of AI, particularly as it outsources business and thought? Is AI not a weapon of mass ambience? Think.
Our handwringing upon encountering youthful conservatism online — their assumption any husband is cheater, the rise of the word “lustful,” wellness replacing social activities, pinkpilling, Justin Bieber saying the Bible is his favorite book — is the tension of being confronted with ambience’s end point: ambience is blankness, which is easily confused for purity. When your cultural inputs are nothing, when you think less and do less, you lack a point of view, which feels “good” because you are uncomplicated and “free.” You take orders and repeat talking points because you have lost your own voice, making you the perfect parrot. This is what youth “conservatism” is: the upside down mirror of a decade pissed on by Sephora thus enabling Gen Z wellness and Trump political theatrics vomiting into the empty vessel of us, which has very much poisoned a faction of teens and twentysomethings and beyond. Sameness in products like sameness in entertainment, the lack of color like the lack of DEI flattens everything. “Optimization” may not be religion but it teaches you sameness, it keeps you in line so that you see any difference — in your diet, in your media, in your routine — as impurity. That’s a fascist mindset, is it not?
Culture is in a coma, and most of us are unconcerned that we’re entering a vegetative state. We’ve always known difference and “friction” was crucial for humans to become their best, for our living more interesting lives, yet we have spent almost a decade stuck in the same, the same, the same. Ambience is no longer a comfort but a gangrenous disease, a darkness that is encroaching upon us. Numb yourself not. Do something. Anything.
Labor Day marks the start of ‘fallcations’
This is positioned as a K-economic thing but real ones (City people?) know true holiday time is late September/early October or late March/early April. The reality though, as I’ve been thinking for weeks and mentioned in a recent HIP REPLACEMENT, is that the shoulder seasons of fall and spring are becoming the seasons for recreation in a climate changed world. The comfortability of these bumper seasons are reshaping much of the world and how we operate (which hopefully heals instead of further kills) (but we know the latter will be most true).
Zara Sales Grow, But Profit Disappoints
What is driving Spain’s Inditex’s strong growth?
I am no Zara fan (Sorry, Spain!), and I share this because it ties to something discussed on this week’s HIP REPLACEMENT: the John Galliano Met Gala mess cannot divorce from Zara’s hyper-capitalist growth conquest, which means the brand is banking on John to help them luxurywash themselves further upwards. Galliano being a liability once again in culture would dash Zara and Inditex’s ascent — hence why he pulled out. The richest will do anything to keep getting richer, including letting their mascot fall on his own sword because the PR stunt they banked on wasn’t going as expected. So they cut it off before it got worse, since it was a “poor investment.” This, as Jenna Lyons said, is exactly why all of fashion is suffering: Zara ate everything but luxury — and now is trying to eat that too. The industry has no soul, it seems.
Dior and A24 are joining forces
“will celebrate established and emerging talent”
To the above. Such a move is not made by companies that are doing well. It’s so random? What does Sabrina have to do with Dior? Or A24? How is tied to NYC’s Cherry Lane Theatre? JW: I kinda get, given his film work. But it’s so awkward and desperate and misguided, courting the wrong audiences in the wrong places. This shows a big crack in a 2010s culture that may be breaking.
‘Attribution decay’ complicates AI images
Battle over ‘Italian brainrot’ could shape AI
These two stories get at compensation, the first on how artists likely will never be compensated for AI stealing their art while the latter posits a court case where anyone could profit from AI creations. The moral? Artists lose, profiteers profit. We live in a shitty post-art society, don’t we? It does kick up concepts like the missing author, meaning no one should profit from any of this.
Lindsay Clancy juror provides new details
Lindsay Clancy’s attorney asks Trump for pardon
“terrifying and awful precedent”
I do not care about this, but it’s this OJ for white women must be documented.
They Tried to Make Charlie a Saint. They Made Him a Meme.
“life’s work meant nothing”
“HE LIVES IN THE CIRCUITS LIKE AFTON”
Post-Kirkaversary, in reflecting on the political content creator’s legacy, his becoming a meme seems to “be” what he’ll be remembered from (unless this…politically backfires on us all). The third item made my brain itch, as it gets at a feeling that has been circulating: has all the AI memes of Charlie poisoned this tech to favor his image? Could such a staining ruin the tech? Either idea is a wild real life Black Mirror. (The best 1AK sincere post was an interview with the guy who asked him the final question.)
Drag Race UK: All Stars to Premiere on WOW
“bbc saw this and dropped the show”
Shame that BBC dropped Drag Race! I wonder if it’s connected to larger UK conservative politics? But also? Lucky Roy Singh (and ma_danni_x) was that bad. Big loss for queer culture!
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I long for my phone to be stolen, smashed, disappeared into another dimension as I am cursed to be phone-less. I mean this less in a “I want to log off!” way, because I do not want to log off: I am fatigued by this small rectangular encumbrance forcing itself with me everywhere, requiring itself for my life to work. It’s exhausting! I would quit it if I didn’t have a part-time gig as a social media manager. Alas: like many of you, smartphone I must.
But Light Phone’s newest Flip product offers me what Apple’s Duo doesn’t: a satisfying off. I have never been a flip phone person (I still dream of the possibilities of my Sony Ericsson T610! Or even my Motorola SLVR!) but something about Light’s iteration of a flip phone feels right and so very now. Why is it so appealing? What is its sex appeal in a landscape of “flip phones” being Trojan horses for tablets? It would maybe be my out-of-the-house phone or my weekend phone, the thing I turn to when I need to be on-but-off. This is a state I long for in a way I will never long for when it comes to a new iPhone or even a brand like Nothing: I want to be free of these thinking machines. Make me not dumb, but make my accessories dumber, simpler, less needy.
I wanted to understand the thinking behind making such a product, which got me digging and cold calling which landed me on a call with Light co-founder Joe Hollier. The Brooklyn based designer and I chatted for a half hour about the state of phones now, the draw of the Luddite movement, and why design — like so much of tech — feels stale now. It was a very interesting and very inspiring chat. We need more thinkers in tech like this instead of people who care only about maximizing profits without solving any people’s real world problems. More, please!
Tell me about a trend you’re following that you’re really into.
The thing that comes to mind feels more like a movement than a trend, but movements often share the same fate as trends: I’ve been lucky to witness this Luddite movement happening here in New York City. I just wrapped the Summer of Lud Festival last month. Unlike so many other movements that I’ve participated in or followed along in my life, this one feels not just rooted in anger at something, at its core — which is unsustainable, ultimately — but it revolves around fun and love of the real world, of the tangible and analog. Each other’s presence! The movement feels like an invitation. It’s like: Come join us. Put down your phone for an evening. Get vulnerable. Get curious. Make some friends. Dance! And see how fun life can be without your phones. To feel like you’re not alone, look at all these other people who are also feeling overwhelmed and helpless about the direction of big tech. Protest is a part of this, but in addition to just protesting the thing they’re against, they’re also creating spaces that showcase their vision for the alternative of what they’re actually protesting against. Through meeting all these Gen Z attention activists, as I call them, it’s actually inspired our recent flip phone that we just announced because I think they are so fed up with big tech that they feel the flip phone is the epitome of the biggest middle finger you can put to big tech, that this is not a smartphone — even more than like our Light Phones. It’s just so obviously not a smartphone. That’s a trend I’ve been adjacent to and really enjoying watching and seeing grow.What’s a trend you hope never dies?
I do love single purpose things. Timeless things like records and books and film cameras, but also like there’s some new objects coming out. NTS just came out with this music player that just plays NTS with two live streams and 16 infinite playlists. These objects do one thing well. They’re honest. It’s obvious what they do, and they do that thing well. I’m always saying that an iPad can be a book, a sketchpad, a piano, a camera, a GPS — but it’s not really going to do any of those things particularly well. But, when I have my film camera, there’s a big lens and a viewfinder and a focus ring and it’s around my shoulder. It’s just a drastically different experience, when everything’s held up through a smartphone, at arm’s length, on this flat glass. There’s a magic and a soul to some of these favorite objects, like an emotional connection that gets experienced, which has almost nothing to do with features or specs. It just like the pure joy of using it. It’s a sentimental connection. Without being too romantic about it, I think that’s why these things become cherished. I don’t think anyone has ever cherished their phone in that way.Another trend that comes to mind is DIY culture. I grew up in between skating and music. It encouraged me to dabble with every medium, not really thinking like I’m going to be an artist or a musician. You’re just making shirts, making covers, making videos: everything! It gave me the feeling that I could do anything, and it naively led me to thinking I could make a cell phone. I hope that culture never dies, of just making everything.
What’s a trend you are so over?
To keep it in the phone world: people preferring texting to calling. Even some of my close friends dead my calls immediately and follow up with a “What’s up?” text. How many arguments have likely stemmed from things getting lost in translation of texting? That’s not to say I’m anti-text, as there’s obviously time and place, but calling is just so much more effective and satisfying. If I ask a friend, “Hey, what’s up?” and they say, “Not much. You?” I don’t really get a pulse for how they’re feeling. But if I get them on the phone, I immediately know: Okay, he’s trying to hang out. Okay, he’s not trying to hang out. I’m trying to see people call again. A little bit less texting only! But there’s probably so many trends: I could have listed AI flyers, Cybertrucks, overwhelming amount of hipster beverages, Flock cameras, Meta glasses, self-driving cars — there’s so many things!How would you define the state of phones?
It feels quite frankly pretty boring. Mono, lacking the soul, which is maybe fine for tools like a hammer, but I think for an object like our cell phone — which has become so intimate — to feel so cold feels kind of sad and a missed opportunity. I think a lot of that has to do with the ubiquitousness that naturally, by trying to appeal to the masses, makes them inherently mediocre. I think back to a time when there were all these crazy, car-shaped, weird flip phones. Your phone flipped up, mine went sideways. Yours was pink, mine was red and orange. Now they’ve become these boring big glass objects and, whether you get a Samsung or a Google or an Apple or whatever smartphone, they’re all going to have the same apps. Even just thinking about a time when non-tech nerds got excited for the new iPhone announcement: it’s been many, many years since I’ve heard anyone care. Who cares about some new camera or AI feature on a phone? As a designer, I’ve always felt that we need to design for a human in mind rather than every single human, even if that’s just like you know yourself, which is kind of what we did with the Light Phone. The first creator of the cell phone, this guy Marty Cooper, he said that if you design an object that tries to do everything for everyone, it won’t do anything well. He was talking about the smartphone and I think that really encapsulates how I feel about the state of the smartphone. If I were to flip some optimism, it is really cool to start to see things like our light Flip phone come out, and there’s other people that are starting to enter the space. Hopefully we can start to get fun and have more weird options. Why should my mom and my little brother and me all have the same phone when we’re never going to have the same shoes or clothes or any other thing in our life?What’s motivating design now?
There definitely is this dire feeling in relation to AI, and then the corporations and what work is available. Authenticity and originality are going to become more valuable than ever, basically anything that AI can’t do. I still believe there’s so much AI can’t do. What I think is really empowering — and maybe the Light Phone is an example of — is that designers now have power unlike ever before to self-publish. When I was feeling like I didn’t want to work for any of these brands that existed, using the power of design and the tools of Kickstarter and the internet, I was able to create something that didn’t exist. That is ultimately the most virtuous way a designer can evolve. Whether it’s making phones or any other things, designers are becoming entrepreneurs in self-publishing and creating the work that they want to make, rather than waiting for the dream client to come and give them this brief that may never exist. Creating the world that you want to be designing for, if it doesn’t already exist. That’s not to say every single brand is whatever, but I feel a little bit of hopelessness looking at the design spectrum.
Follow Joe on Instagram and check out the new Light Flip and more Light phones here.
“Brands can’t touch”
“famous last words”
“You can tell a lot”
“I wanna wish you”
“kirkmas”
“gonna shoot it”
“Kirking 9”
“Beyoncé singing”
“Everything’s Charlie”
“He actually did it.”
“searched 911”
“plane was unfortunate”
“WTC drone”
“From the creation”
“They stepped on our heart”
“Sydney Opera House”
Your post-Kirk/11 meme round-up. (If you want a NSFW meme about 9/11, here you go.)
“waaaait”
“no homework”
I love the theory that Ella Langley is Hawk Tuah girl and appreciate that it is becoming a meme. This feels like a Kirkification brain rot extension.
“Gal Gadot’s Worst Line Reads”
“Who greenlit this”
“You have to go”
We talk a lot about Charlie Kirk becoming a meme for the folly of the right but we don’t talk enough about Gal Gadot being a meme for the folly of Israel.
“Joan Didion”
“worried about this”
“a whole other level”
“Tate’s publicist here!”
Apple did indeed drop their folding phone, which inspired many memes. The phone itself is fine. Gimme the Light Flip instead!
“your mum sent this”
Followed by the Lucky Roy Singh talent show performance, this was the video I watched most this week. The accent change in the end? Exceptional. This is an emerging AI trend too (just like the drop-and-blast AI trend).
“How has it been 10 years”
Bringing this stim back as it’s a classic that I’m happy Katya continues to honor.
“missed his 8th grade trip”
If you want to feel ancient, look at this post. If you want to feel young, move along.
“stingray that makes you take your pants off”
Saving a stingray isn’t easy, but surely it does not require taking one’s pants off?
“alright bro”
The literally shittiest comment of the week.
“selling turkey wings”
Gaze upon the Resident Evil turkey wings and contemplate your mortality.
And, finally, how I’m feeling writing this after four weeks in NYC while trying to find an apartment.
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This absolutely rips. I might have to write a quasi-follow up, inspired by Kierkegaard’s The Present Age / Arendt’s The Human Condition.
Gonna guess overall cultural numbness might be a collective response to a decade or so of near-constant catastrophic loss and bad news, more than one huge threat to life on earth, and bare minimum needs becoming wildly inaccessible? Numbing out is a trauma response! We're just enabling it in each other. People who know things are really bad sometimes lose it, which can actually be healthy and lead to positive outcomes if met with support, but in a culture that refuses to make any real space for grief, some form of punishment becomes normalized, probably on purpose. Terrible things can happen to people in this place, at worst losing everything, maybe even getting arrested if they end up homeless and panic about their circumstances in public, and very often exclusion from community. It's pretty normal for people to see someone in this state and dismiss or ignore them, rather than listening with patience and good faith, asking if they're okay, providing them with resources, etc., probably largely because empathy requires trying to understand, hard feelings can be contagious, and they don't wanna end up like all the people on the ground in the Radiohead "Just" video. I think people say they want honesty, but people saying unpopular things are actually only heard out once in a blue moon, often after things have already gotten really bad, met most tamely with "it's not that deep" style anti-intellectualism that, if it builds from there, can lead to a person feeling more frustrated and isolated to the point of no return. On the Naomi Klein note, the big twist of Doppelganger is that Naomi Wolf was openly organizing aid for Palestinians a full 15 years before it became de rigeur leftist praxis, only to get ex-communicated from her largely Jewish academic circle and the rest is history. It took a long time for everyone and their dog to be like "wow Octavia Butler predicted everything" when she was just observing patterns! We say we want big and brave and new but the first performance of Rites of Spring ended with a riot