suck it video: pictures rule 📸🌠🌁🎇🏞️
On why video, pivots, and AI are somehow the past and why you might want to log onto LinkedIn.
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Donald Trump found guilty on all counts
How Trump’s guilty verdict will impact the election
Trump raises record $34.8m after verdict
The biggest news of the week, obviously. If you want a selection of all the many, many memes, you’ll have to check the (paid) selection I assembled in Friday’s Report™. Related: continued obvious voter reactions, the potential incoming Trump N-word video, incoming stories about being a Trump target, and the ruling was on covfefe day.
The Race for President Is Still Close
Democrats fear Biden is losing Georgia
How Biden is tackling Black, Latino vote
Given the above, if I were a non-Republican…I would be worried, given how this is how we all feel
Israel Pushes Into Central Rafah
“Zone of”
A truly rotten week and, yet, none of this is bad enough for Biden to fully condemn it.
IRS jabs at TurboTax, free filing permanent
The tiniest w for Joey!!!
Pope Francis used offensive slur
Pope Francis apologizes
Another major story of the week, which inspired a category of meme that we’ll likely see all summer as Americans adopt “frociaggine.” The etymology of the word is interesting. (Related is the deeply unhinged, queerphobic rant of Richard Dreyfuss.)
New Delhi Sweats Through Its Hottest Day Ever Recorded
126º F. Makes me want to vomit.
Heat wave headed for the Western U.S.
Speaking of, the heat dome that caused Mexican monkeys to fall out of trees is drifting to the states.
Hail in Texas was so big Tuesday it required new description
There have been a lot of tornadoes. Here's why.
America could face its most active hurricane season ever
The above also plays into ongoing extreme weather, which all foretells a brutal summer on the horizons.
The Atlantic announces partnership with OpenAI
Vox Media and OpenAI Form Partnership
The drama of the week wasn’t just internal at OpenAI but that so many outlets who are “above” AI welcomed the beast, embracing or enabling a potentially catastrophic shift in media. This largely will mean the model can access their writing, which will help AI but hurt writing.
A decade ago, we were pulling out the nails to construct a coffin for images. We were drafting a eulogy, ready to leave behind the static.
“Photographs are kind of silly and maybe even outdated,” Farhad Manjoo declared in Slate. “Our photos are as good as they’re going to get. But that’s not true of videos.” “If a picture paints 1,000 words then one minute of video is worth 1.8 million,” Chris Trimble wrote in The Guardian, referencing a Forrester report from 2008. Cisco prophesied that video would become 69% of all consumer internet traffic while, in 2018, they predicted video would be 84% of the internet by 2022. Business Insider, CNN, and The New York Times mused upon the power of social video, with the Times proclaiming video as the antithesis of the photograhic fantasy projected by Instagram. Years earlier, NPR was mourned the death of TRL at the hands of digital video as The Atlantic awaited a boom in YouTube advertising. Pew studied the rise of people creating video and photo media in relationship to Instagram and Snapchat.
Then, immediately after , the great pivot to video, resulting in many a media empire sacrificing itself for Facebook metrics that ultimately ruined them. “Pivot to video” is now a doomsday parable to carry with you despite the media’s continued meandering acceleration toward anything that looks like salvation. The current “pivot to AI” extends media’s death rattle, a premature echo, a salivating bending toward such technology that threatens to take down the few employed media persons and institutions (Buzzfeed, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Vox, FT) before coming for the tech industry and the whole of entertainment. This will enable a cross-industry seppuku, as the rise of AI streaming services that let viewers make their own shows occurs only to crash into the settling dust of industries. Today’s enterprise is tomorrow’s Quibi/Go90/Facebook Watch/Seeso/Vessel. We’re entering the high-then-crash that came with pivoting to video.
All this is to highlight a few things that happened this week, which offer a silver bullet of clarity, where we can see the answer(s) right in front of our faces: photos. The (AI-generated) “All Eyes on Rafah” swept Instagram and Twitter and TikTok, shared more than 47 million times on IG alone. An image of Nicki Haley signing an Israeli bomb with “FINISH THEM!” circulated, becoming an immediate historical document defining the American government. (The actor Chris Evans caught a stray of his bomb signing, which he clarified wasn’t a real bomb.) Pictures from a Turkish plastic surgeon ran through our feeds, shocking and surprising (despite similar video media performing less). After a very viral court hearing regarding a suspended license, the image of the dumbfounded defendant collapsed two minutes into a singular reaction meme. We were treated to another crop of increasingly absurd AI Facebook images.
What is lost in conversations about business — in forecasting marketing trends, in trying to think about the tools and technologies that people will use or that will be used on people — is that the simplest things work well for a reason. The most basic of channel of information will always work because we, as people, are somewhat lazy. To create and share and view a video is a lot of work, no matter if people or AI are the “creators.” It’s inefficient, as a medium in that it takes the one-dimensional timelessness of an image and introduces the demands of a runtime, the forcing of the eye to not only gaze but to wait. The world is fast enough — and we think people are going to stop down and watch more videos? Yes, TikTok and YouTube continue to reign — but these have specific functions and specific times of use, as they require a do-nothing-ness of the viewer. As we saw with the “All Eyes On Rafah” post, this idea was taken to a higher degree, as the image spread and was shared in ways videos and posts no longer travel. It’s being AI is important, ethically, but it made clear that a message is really only as powerful as its medium: images remain economic for creator and viewer, speaking to why paintings and realism continue to appeal despite time progressing forward. Images hold place while video and AI are doomed by the tech that makes them, unable to exist without tools and context — but an image printed? Taken offline? It always “works” and will always work. Too many options, too many recommendations, too long runtimes, too long watchlists: they all speak to information glut, enabling a collective “I ain’t reading all that.” Thus, the continued win of the image.
Ties to AI are a concern, as disinformation and bad acting continue, but this is an issue of media literacy considering the same problems were happening before AI, as misattributions and dishonest representations yielded “fake news.” Images are also a counterpoint to the too-much-media phenomena and the dying of (Hollywood) media, which is placed upon our mass exhaustion and collective burnout. You think we want to watch videos? And videos over 90 seconds? Nice try. Gimme dopamine.
Videos aren’t useless — The obvious counterpoints are police videos, documents of history, and even incoming consumer AI video trends. — but nothing will rival the ease of the image and its ability to collapse cultures and conversations into a single gesture, a la memes. Taken with the rise of voice memos, thriving audiobooks, and audio articles and you see what’s happening: audiences want to mono-task media while multi-tasking life. Does this mean video is off the table? No. But there is a context to the desire for video — and a need to do it well. Don’t let buzz trample reality, which is the greatest trick of novel media gestures.
The women to become Mexico's president
File this under Mexico’s continued success. This is cool, but even cooler is that these two presidential front runners are both 61 — a la, not of retirement age.
The New Generation of Culture Curators
An enduring anthem of queer liberation
Pride is already Pride-ing but my favorite read related to queer subjects was this deep dive on Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy”, which turned forty (which is perfectly timed for its TikTok ascent).
Tate reveals its 2025 programme
World’s first queer art biennial in Detroit
Some exciting queer art happenings. I’m hoping to make it to London for the Tate’s Leigh Bowery showcase!
Possible link between tattoos and lymphoma
I’m going to call this homophobia and move on.
Teens invented device to filter microplastics from water
We need more kids like this, please. Open the schools!
Klarna CEO faces backlash
For gushing over hiring “AI” over marketing teams. Related to the above essay, this was maybe one of the stupidest takes of the year. He was rightly pilloried in the comments before deleting the post.
"Lasagna cells!"
Beware Of The "Lasagna Cell"
Did you know that you can turn a lasagna into a battery?
What’s a Banksy Museum Without Banksy?
Like the rise in “immersive” experiences, Bansky museums are an international racket. We have one in Barcelona and it absolutely is all fake shit capitalizing on the mystique of the lone modern art-celebrity crossover.
the TRUTH about time & trends
Paid subscribers got an essay attempting to dissect that persistent feeling of “People at X age looked so old at Y time.” I think it has more to do with the viewer than the view!
“I’ve met a lot of people through LinkedIn,” a friend told me recently. He explained that he used the platform to network and court clients for his business but, where it was most surprisingly useful, was meeting new people — qualified people, in that they had visions of life and were in pursuit of goals. No one on LinkedIn is misrepresenting themself, actually, truly, literally lying, unless they’re an AI profile. After all, he and I knew this from experience: we met on LinkedIn at the end of last year, meeting up in person to chat about writing before becoming friends.
I keep seeing a mix of friends and co-workers post things on LinkedIn that aren’t technically updates related to work. One shared that they’ll be posting more despite hating the platform, via the service’s certificate celebration feature. Another did something similar about having a baby. One shared it was his birthday. Another tagged friends about an event they wanted to go to. There’s a porousness of what is being seen and shared, that not everything is about work anymore — just like life. LinkedIn is getting messy and silly, a philosophy that I embrace and see echoes of with posts and posts and posts that blur life and business through humor.
All this says something — but it wasn’t until I saw an update to the LinkedIn sidebar that confirmed things: now that LinkedIn has games, the platform is finally completing its transition into becoming what Facebook once was. It’s simply Facebook with a bowtie, a place for people to share civil updates without the noise (or an easier way to filter the) AI messes or your one conservative relative’s rantings. As Intelligencer pointed out of the games, this is a big “Why not?” thing that directly lifts from the playbook of what was once a core Facebook mechanic. Pair this with more and more stories that use LinkedIn in novel manners — “I used LinkedIn as my only social media for 3 weeks. Here’s what happened”; “5 telltale signs a CEO is a narcissist. Study finds LinkedIn profiles offer clues”; “Q&A on going viral with a LinkedIn ‘Influencer’” — and you see the picture clearly. People are even using LinkedIn to date now!
LinkedIn is a deeply embarrassing, cringey platform that requires bragging but it’s emerging as Post-Facebook’s New Facebook isn’t surprising. First, we all hate our jobs. Unlike actor Dylan Minnette, we can’t quit our jobs when it feels like a job — but we can search for new jobs and vent about how much we don’t like our jobs, which a community of coworkers, past, present, and future relates to as we all are over rise-and-grind culture. To the point of the previous essay — and to the point that social media as we knew it coming to an end — there’s too much happening and too many social sites. LinkedIn succeeds in that its singular, in that it can only pivot so much from work or getting people creating in new ways: there’s a limit of desire, to “what you can post” (or want to post) which works in the platform and user’s favor. I also see more and more friends and former co-workers who I know hate their work or who are trying to move life forward, helping each other in posts and comments, amplifying each other’s cause as we all try to live lives with fair enough compensation, to enable more balance and autonomy. What’s not to like about that? Add in the inventual, prophesied use of the platform to organize against capitalism, activism, and the undoing of work, and we have a real winner. We are minutes away from this.
I long to escape the day job but, until
and I happen upon a rich third, we work for coins while doing side-gigs like The Trend Report™ and creative works like [Insert My Unpublished Novels] in the hopes that things snap and we’re free. Whichever comes first! We are all in this boat and we want off. Use this as inspiration, that LinkedIn is the agony and ecstasy of online life, of work and social media. Let us scribble all over the walls of our enclosures, if we must be enclosed.
“Mr. Gorbachev”
“Gay people can’t say”
“incredible stuff going on”
“I think about this TikTok”
“June is almost”
“Was having a masc off”
“I can run the numbers”
“I allow people to be who they are”
“Starbucks uses”
Pop on Bobby’s Pride soundtrack and enjoy the first of many gourmet selections of Pride memes. (Also: mom, if you’re reading this, I’ll buy you this shirt.)
“BBC said”
“I’m jorkin late”
“Mom must have bought the tickets”
"I'm scared"
Sabrina Carpenter had a great week! Nothing but love for my summer queen!! (Which reminds me: here’s the best take on why someone like Sabrina kills now as someone like Dua flops.)
“Really good Facebook group”
I encourage you to read the follow ups about this “unschooling” group, especially the one about “learning” to read.
“Inch Resting”
“Mother tongue”
“Like Martin Luther King”
Best misinterpretations of the week.
"Williamsburg"
"happily ever after"
To the point of the first essay, here are two absolutely toxic images that damages my aura. It sums up the state of worldwide cities and their (American) suburbification. Cue the dorms!
“New live laugh love”
This somehow fits into the above perfectly.
“real hater shit”
This brings me so much peace as I just finished Nuclear War and it made me worry for a few days about North Korea’s war capabilities.
“Do you ever wonder”
David Hyde Pierce is Jada Pinkett Smith’s mom.
“Delete this”
Best worst financial advice you’ll see this week.
“Found out what a poop knife was”
Wildest story of the week.
And, finally, how it feels when we share The Trend Report™ together every Sunday.
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Loved this whole report, but particularly your whole section on LinkedIn - really thought-provoking - and a fabulous read about going viral with a LinkedIn 'Influencer'. Thanks Kyle!
That image thing....wow. This is especially true for memes. Literally the only reason I stay on Instagram right now is the memes. Another thing: we cannot ignore that, since most of us spend our lives working, most media consumption is at work. So what travels better: images and podcasts or TikToks that are so OBVIOUSLY a distraction.
What TikTok is doing now is replacing my end-of-day relaxation hole that TV used to fill. TV time has now been shortened to bedtime entertainment to put me to sleep. Or a weekend indulgence.