😤🔞 THE END OF CHILDHOOD 🔞😤

On how the space between being a baby and being an adult is disappearing and how creativity is being stolen for profit.

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Self-Immolated Near Trump Trial
Full Jury Is Chosen
“Why were you dismissed?”
Trump’s jury selection started this week, which saw a shocking self-immolation outside the premises. This event was caught live and the person who did it had quite a sad history. (Also of interest, which emphasizes issues of this platform: the person’s manifesto was published on Substack.)

Historic Copenhagen stock exchange in flames
Artworks Rescued as Fire Rips
It was said to be Denmark’s Notre Dame. Very sad! There were remarkable stories about how people were helping to save the art too.

UAE sees its heaviest rains in 75 years
“That wasn’t caused by cloud seeding.”
This week’s top climate (change) story was about the intense flooding in Dubai.

NYT Gaza Memo: Avoid Words “Genocide”
WOO WEE

After arrests, tensions over Israel-Gaza war simmer
The Israel-Palestine debates at Columbia seem to capture a lot about this moment. As one professor said, “American universities have lost the ability to respectfully disagree.”

House Passes Bill That Could Lead To TikTok Ban In The U.S.
While news this weekend largely was framed around an aid package for Ukraine and Israel getting approval, it also included the item that would “ban” TikTok. This would be…so flop and make other efforts (Like holding Live Nation accountable.) effectively meaningless. This TikTok sums the state of things up.

Americans Aren't Sleeping Well, Gallup Finds
Not getting enough sleep? You’re not alone: 57% of Americans say they need more sleep. I feel that, dude.

‘Smoke-free generation’ bill passes in House of Commons
You’re so wild for this, the UK. Smoking is bad but this is, like, anti-European.

The ‘brain waste’ of skilled migrants in Europe
This story seems to capture a lot about the state of the world: unwelcoming, competitive, yet so deeply in need.

They teach kids to be anti-'woke.'
Should the Washington Post be platforming nutty right-wing educators? I’m unsure, but this does offer a good glimpse into the factory of thought (and pursuit of right wing fame) that has gripped people.

NPR suspends journalist
Because he “went public” with a complaint that the broadcaster is too liberal. Naturally, this is a gift to the right. Since the suspension, this person has resigned.

Risk of bird flu spreading to humans is ‘enormous’
(Sabrina Brier) Oh.

Are kids growing up too fast? This has been a cultural conversation for years and years and years, with stories that are nearly as old as I am. A law of life is that people “grow up” — but another type of growing up is of concern.

Example: watch this TikTok about the evolution of Candy Land game designs from 1949 to 2021. The latest board, which is sold at Target and Wal-Mart, shifted from a more illustrative approach to a more true-to-life depiction of this world, featuring more racial, ethnic, and ability diverse characters. This is a great value to share with kids! In contrast, the 1984 version was more playful, more whimsical, and with enough charm to make anyone with a mouth smile: look at previous Queen Frostine, Princess Lolly, and Mr. Mint characters compared to the current ones. The 2021 version swaps ostensibly hand-drawn and cartoon-oriented play for the computer generated and more explicitly human: the game is now based in realism. The beloved chocolate mud puddle Gloppy and the green gingerbread-loving creature Plumpy are not included on the new board while Jolly, a once cherubic alien gumdrop, has transformed into some guy. What’s going on here? This new board feels like an expression of so many adult over-articulations in a post-2020 world: Over-corrected diversity without inclusion! Realism over playfulness! Desaturated colors! These ideas are then placed upon a game about seeing all the sights in a world of candy. There isn’t anything less realistic than Candy Land and yet, as a piece of cultural ephemera, this board seems to say that childhood in the 2020s isn’t about fun. A game like Candy Land should be “rigorous,” a venue for discourse. Gone are poop jokes and snorting Pixy Stix for the 9 year old. In its place is Adulthood Jr.™.

Adulthood Jr.™ is a space of trickling down and mirroring. We see this with a lot of adult (or late teen, big sibling) language and gestures being taken on by children: earlier in the week, a meme was born from a post about a seemingly pretty kid who had posted an IG story with the caption “When yo Roblux mug n yo real life mug tea”; in late March, a post on TikTok went viral after a 10 year old texted someone regarding a dead dog, “Bestie I'm srry what happend to Sadie she is a slay baddie work queen forever”; there’s a massively viral video from earlier this month, where a kid gets a birthday present (of buldak) — and greets it with a very affected “Stop.” before sitting down and fighting back tears; there’s the TikTok Gen A queen of mean, Evelyn, who just turned 13; there are the countless kid-oriented videos about gooning and edging and sigma and rizz, which are echoes of incel language in kid’s content. Naturally, we cannot forget the Sephora kids, adolescent boys buying expensive fragrances, “baby’s first cubicle,” sad beige kids toys, and the general trickle down of brain rot.

None of this is bad or new or wrong but it’s all very markedly weird because it suggests the removal of childhood, that kids must move from baby to Adulthood Jr.™ as the years of play and exploration are replaced with adult facsimile. If a 9 year old can go on TikTok and see what I see, what makes being 9 and 39 different? If a 9 year old can buy Laneige lip masks for the same reasons I do, is that an “adult” thing or a “kid “ thing? Does that matter? What about an expression like “cunt” or “slay”? What about understanding the merits of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Fortune 500 companies? And that something like “diversity” can be used as a cash grab? As kids became “workers” in the past decade, via YouTube turning children like Ryan Kaji, Eva Diana Kidisyuk, Everleigh Rose, shifting from into a mode of domestic servitude entertainment, childhood was a negotiation, a performance — just as adulthood is for adults. It’s not just that parents want their kids to be influencers (Which, you could argue, is an expression of economic systems malfunctioning.) but that the values of adulthood have been exchanged. The obvious culprit here is the smartphone and access to the internet, which has been something Jonathan Haidt has been hammering on the press tour for The Anxious Generation, a book that paints the boogeyman as social media and a lack of child person-to-person interactions.

While I can agree with Haidt to an extent (and while I haven’t read the book but have read the articles and seen the TikToks), the problem feels less about the overuse of technology but that the subjects, gestures, and lifestyles of adulthood are now a child’s too. By me and a 9 year old feeling “like peers” online, something is robbed of them. Pair this with adulthood looking more and more like childhood and children mirroring a lack of reading or critical thinking from adults and you see that there is a flattening of experience. It’s not just that the Candy Land board is now rewritten to befit “the real world” but that girlhood’s favorite toy is now a highly debated Oscar nominated movie about feminism. When kidification came for adults, that meant Adulthood Jr.™ came for children. Wires are crossed.

Kids should understand certain aspects of adulthood, like values of diversity and notions of autonomy, as has been studied again and again and again. A great example of this is in regards to issues like gender expression, which Andrea Long Chu explained so well in the incredible “Freedom of Sex.” But childhood is in a crisis that goes beyond “Save the children!” and school debates because, as we talked about last year, childhood is more symbolic than literal: kids can no longer be “just kids.” They face the same pressures that we all do. Thus, our cultural body has become flabby, with increasingly less definition between zones of life, experience, and behavior. Everything rubs together, which is fine if you’re an adult. But as a kid? Woo wee. You are being robbed of the ease and simplicity and fun that once marked the pre-teen years.

Archie Moore, Australian Artist, Wins
Kapoor slams Venice Biennale ‘Foreigners Everywhere’
Israeli Artist Shuts Biennale Show
Venice Biennale 2024: the worst art
The Venice Biennale is getting going and there has been a lot of drama, more than I recall in the past. The winner was an Indigenous Australian artist (The first to show!) who documented his lineage back 65,000 years in chalk. Also the closure of the Israel pavilion is inspired, if not completely PR convenient.

The Rise of Run Clubs
This feels like an obvious trend, but a flag hasn’t been put in the sand: (Millennial) adults love running, y’all. Good for them!

How UK rap changed the language of the nation
A fascinating story about how rap and related genres in the UK are bringing Multicultural London English to more than just the Afro-Caribbean communities they came from. TikTok plays a big role!

Veja wants to repair your sneakers
I do think we’re approaching high time for the cobbler, like the tailor, to have a renaissance.

The Life and Death of Hollywood
This week’s fall-of-Hollywood must-read.

Remembering John Spence, No Doubt's Co-Founder
Thanks to Coachella, this story about the original No Doubt front-person. I had no idea!

Dog-Powered Machines Were Surprisingly Common
Did you know about all these dog-powered machines? I only knew about a few! These angels 🥹

Too Gringa to set foot on Identity Island
I loved this essay by Nilsa Ada’s Stories about identity.

Introducing Torched
LA’s best urban design and transport writer Alissa Walker’s new newsletter had its first dispatch this week. It’s all about the LA 2028 Olympics. A trendy convo!

All Fours | Miranda July
We are less than a month away from icon Miranda July’s new book coming out. If you’re interested in getting a lil preview, Granta published a few pages. I read the first few paragraphs but stopped, to save the rest for my book reading experience.

Sky Ferreira - Need You Now
"sky ferreira showing up to coachella"
This has been building but I keep hearing Lady A’s “Need You Now” from 2011 popping up in alt electronic spaces, like in Chuquimamani-Condori’s Rayo Mix 2022. Sky performing it at Coachella is a sort of flag in the sand of how this song may continue to “pop” as a reclaimed alt anthem.

Sabrina Carpenter - Espresso (Official Video)
Nail me to the cross of the mainstream but, given that this has been a conversation of the past two weeks, it has to be noted that I am calling Sabrina Carpenter's “Espresso” the song of the summer. Why? It’s basically a PG-13 Kim Petras song, like “XXX” meets “Coconuts” without being explicitly explicit. This is particularly of note given Camila Cabello’s more trendy and non-accessible “I Luv It,” which we’ve discussed. Coming soon on the agenda: the Katy Perry pivot to Katy XCX. Be like Sabrina, Katy! Not Camila! Especially since Sabrina was the breakout of Coachella. Who knew? (Speaking of Coachella, Grimes’ drama from last weekend was something.)

that's life lol 🥹
Paid subscribers got (what I think to be) a cute essay about life and death. Let’s talk about death, angels!!

“I don’t think anyone is looking for shocking works,” the artist Maurizio Cattelan said in a recent interview with The Telegraph. “The market is asking for something safe and easy to buy and sell.” Safe and easy. Palatable. Consumption for the conforming. Something that you can swallow without having to taste. Comedian (2019), perhaps?

“Nowadays people have [a] whole text on their computer,” the poet Anne Caron said in a recent interview with The Paris Review. “They come to a word they don’t know, they hit a button and instantly the word is supplied to them by whatever lexicon has been loaded into the computer.” Easy! No need to do any work, no need to critically think. If the labor of research is folded into the snap of a search, can it still be called “research”? What’s in a name, anyway? “Between us and animals is a namelessness,” Carson wrote in the poem “Between Us And” (2014).

“We started to see that people were being asked to create fake archival materials,” the documentarian Stephanie Jenkins said this week at a meeting of the Archival Producers Alliance (as shared by The Hollywood Reporter). “Such as photorealistic images that are indistinguishable from primary sources.” This collides with news this week that a Netflix documentary may have used AI-enhanced images to “make its case.” Meanwhile, A24 made some AI generated posters for Civil War and Netflix put an AI contestant on The Circle.

I do not think people are more lazy now, particularly because of AI. But looking at this week, at what industry leaders and creative icons have to say, there’s something striking about the laziness of thought today — especially in creative industries. We can and do fight against AI, as was best exemplified by last year’s actor and writer strikes, but I don’t think that has dulled the desire for bosses, for suits and ties, to push harder for the quicker and easier work, to assert authority over those below them, to engrain an attitude of opting for the discount despite stuffed pockets. It’s okay when they do it — it’s bad when you do it.

Example: comedian Youngmi Mayer shared on TikTok how comedian Kareem Rahma pitched a format to the New York Times called “Keep The Meter Running,” where he and local cab drivers eat at their favorite spots. The Times passed on the show but Rahma’s format got millions of views on his TikTok. Cut to a week ago, where a very similar video pops up on New York Times Cooking. “It happens so much,” Mayer says. “I have had things rejected…only to find out later on that someone already working there just completely stole something from me.” She explains the tension here that, a lot of times, this seems to boil down to her and other artists “not looking like” those on the inside, not being “professional” enough or with enough “credibility.” Ostensibly it’s easier for those on the inside to take, to steal, to “be inspired” by things versus hiring those on the outside to make it. I’ve been on the inside and on the outside, experiencing both sides: this is exactly how things go.

All of this the friction of corporate greed and respectability politics. If we in our school, in our work, in our little lives use AI? Attempt to cheat? Dumb down our vision? It’s bad. It’s lazy! It’s unworthy. If we, on the inside, do something as egregious as lift an entire idea from someone and make money off of it? That’s industrious. Revolutionary! It’s something that is trashy if you’re poor and classy if you’re rich. See also: the viral story this week about how an ex-Google recruiter said that using LinkedIn’s “Open To Work” tag is a red flag to recruiters. The absurdity, the respectability of it all, captures contemporary elitism run amok, the desiring of prestige without the complications or labor of truth, of difference. Having worked for major companies on the inside and within agency contexts from the outside, your not-being-within-the-company can have you treated like “the help.” This may not be gatekeeping but it has a similar texture: getting paid to treat people like shit or getting paid to be treated like shit (as your ideas and your creativity is taken away, as internal stakeholders take credit). This is a form of classism and elitism shielded by HR structures.

Safety is the magic word here, as Cattelan observes. It’s ease, as Carson observes. It’s dissolving sources, as Jenkins observes. These aren’t new ideas but they’re becoming increasingly icky as greater tools can be swung around in the name of building profits instead of developing people power: that is a great existential and humanistic concern when it comes to something like AI. But aren’t people on the inside doing this already, without such trendy tech tools? Of course. It’s simply laziness.

"Sent someone's Instagram profile to themselves"
Been crying laughing at this pic for three days.

“Mistress painting Kennedy”
"I can’t stop looking at this"
Happy Drag Race finale weekend, angels.

“I love living in Israel”
OOF.

“Don’t know how to pronounce this word.”
This guy and the tzatziki guy should date.

“people can STILL listen to this”
”so many things wrong”
”…?”
Some really great things happening on the new Taylor album.

“I’m still Jenny from the Black”
Incredible, which also reminds me that my mom sent this TikTok to me which means one thing: J.Lo has lost the Puerto Ricans. And if she ain’t have them? Girl…you in a bad place.

"Paul Mescal at Sweetgreen"
One of my “Send it to me, Rachel.” things very much is Paul Mescal in them shorty shorts. Midriff bared? Oh girl.

“It’s the best dirt.”
I need everyone reading this to watch this TikTok and tell me their theory about what is happening with Martha Stewart’s eyes in this Miracle Grow commercial. My theory is that her eyes are actually closed and what we’re seeing are actually painted pupils on her eyelids.

"John Lennon waking up after butt crack surgery"
I’m no gym rat but I understand the importance of squats. What weirdo dumpers!

“That Michael Jackson says”
You will never believe what Michael Jackson was saying instead of “mamasaymamasamamcusa.”

"Seconds after the card game"
This accurately sums up most meetings within companies.

“I know we’re in a recession”
This is a very good point! No one is in Tulum anymore!

“R plus 7-up”
I will always look at an R Plus 7 meme.

“I scare men.”
"with a handbag?"
The only memes that matter to me right now are the Regirock memes.

"telling people to pee on money"
We need more celebrities like this.

"first person from Kosovo to do a PhD at Harvard"
The Dua Lipa PR machine is working overtime only for people to be like “Eh.” on the new music (which isn’t an incorrect feeling). This sums things up accurately.

“Hailey Beiber as Vladamir Putin”
The most important Tweet of the year. Cast her in the biopic now.

“They will stop the terror”
They will stop the terror

And, finally, what it looks like drafting these Reports™ every week.

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