the era of shitertainment 💩🚽🧻
Examining the enshittification of media while looking forward, to the most "now" form of media.
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The Day the Riots Stopped
British police prepared for far-right agitators
Elon Musk clashing with the UK government
“The immigrants make our society”
This was a “small” item last week that ballooned into a very concerning item this week, which may be one of the year’s top stories as it bundles up how much hate is on the surface — but also the speed and importance of standing up against fascism. There’s a larger story to be had about how left and progressive governments and movements are continuing to advance despite despots like Elon Musk actively attempting to foment division and difference.
Taylor concerts canceled after foiled terrorist plot
"this is next level scary"
Related to the above, as it relates to the start of these riots: there has been a stabbing at a Taylor Swift dance class and terrorist threats on her shows, all in the past two weeks. This is less about Taylor but seem to fit into, say, growing hate and or attacks on women, girls, etc.
Pelosi on Biden: Not on the path to victory’
Talk about a comeback story! Pelosi became a breakout this week for being revealed as the kingmaker that she is. (a la: Tim Walz) Perfect timing, as her book came out this week. (By the way: this is the biggest misstep the campaign has made so far. What…does it mean??)
"You're not a veteran."
“between abortion and slavery”
“This Entourage reboot”
Vance is such a fucking loser. Worst older brother in America energy. (Also the “Tim Walz is why Americans died in Iraq.” thing really sums up so much of right-leaning nonsense.)
Trump complains about campaign
Fact Checking Trump's Mar-a-Lago Conference
Baby is losing it.
RFK Jr. admits to dumping a dead bear in Central Park
I’m sorry but we’re not talking enough about how literally certifiable RFK Jr. is. And the fact that his sister’s daughter originally covered the story?? Deeply wild.
Inside USA’s Weight-Loss Drug Capital
A fascinating look at where weight loss is the biggest. The top state is Kentucky!
Warner Bros. Discovery signals rapid deterioration
A loss of nine billion. Each of us should get to spit on David Zaslav. What a moron!
US Avocado Demand Drives Deforestation in Mexico
There is a larger story that I keep wanting to write about the “out of sight, out of mind-ness” of modern convenience as you’re wanting guac means leveled land in Mexico. See also: leveled land in Brazil, because you want to buy new clothes every month.
Psychologists tell us that little children are proud of their own shit, and enjoy showing it to other people, until they are informed that their shit is disgusting and should be hidden, and I suddenly wondered whether artists somehow never got this message and kept on being proud of their shit and wanting to show it to people.
Mauro gave a bark of laughter. But isn't that precisely the way they help us? he said. Isn't that why we go and look at their shit, as you call it? Because we have been made ashamed of our own?
This is from Rachel Cusk’s Parade, a moment that made my eyes tumble from the sockets. As is typical of Cusk, such an idea is expected but is also deeply surprising — both in the context of the novel and within the story it's housed in, which is a dinner party with art workers following a tragedy — as it presents such a profound statement about the nature of art that’s somewhat hidden, as if told under the breath.
The passage says so much about these times, in ways that stretch beyond Cusk’s imagination, from fine arts into mass media. To me, as far as popular media and culture go, she is articulating the enshittification of “the arts.” This isn’t to say things are bad or not entertaining but there’s this great feeling of stagnancy or unenthusiasm with media. Call it fatigue on the audience’s behalf, call it too much information: unsure. Can Glen Powell’s grin fix it? Unsure as well.
Actually, Glen Powell represents this too: his blockbuster movie, Twisters, is very obviously a reboot/remake/sequel of a near thirty year old film — which builds on his charm offensive built upon his presence in a forty year old movie — which was bumped out of the top box office spot by an intentional effort for Marvel to jack itself off with Ryan Reynolds' hands, who is now stepping in to pass the dildo baton to his wife and the drama of her Colleen Hoover adaptation. (Meanwhile, Disney’s D23 announced a slew of dizzying remakes and spin-offs, including a photorealistic Stitch, a high-fructose Snow White, and thirty year old toys who are being threatened by an iPad kid.) Replay and self-anilingus entertainment culture doesn’t end there, as the past few years have seen repeated sanctimonious re-releases and Imax treatments for films like Dune: Part One and E.T. and Jaws and the A24 catalog and — coming soon — Interstellar.
None of this is new — Ironically! — as we all know these are symptoms of an industry on life support. But I don’t think it ends there as a very fitting example of “this” bubbled up with the very funny but rightfully zeitgeist-y birthday party of Charli XCX: from the Cobra Snake’s presence to the performed fun, this moment itched because it embodied aging Millennial aesthetics made consumable for Gen Z and mass media. It is specifically for people who have seen smartphones, who are self-made actors awaiting directions from on high. This is to say: we’ve been here before! This is deep follower culture, handed down to followers as if novel. Just like Billie Eilish’s Da Brat-core, we’re looking at pictures of pictures. Not that brat isn’t good (It is very good!) but it’s being taped to such non-contemporary aesthetics is maddening as it pretends that poop is Play-Dough that children should enjoy. (Related and not, as explored before and as came to mind with the aesthetics of the recently announced Rosalía and Lisa collab: the mainstream now is what “alt” looked like a little over half a decade ago.)
Insta baddies pivot to religion, a new water bottle replaces an old water bottle, people ditch Spotify for Apple Music, AI reproduces tech problems of the past (not to mention age-old misogyny), a Google monopoly in the fashion of a Microsoft monopoly, Mr. Beast recreates the need for pre-established labor laws: dead clocks offer the correct time twice a day — Or more! It just depends on how little forward momentum there is for cultural progress. This is the moment when Millennials enter the chorus of Gen X, Boomers, etc. who bemoan that kids are just playing re-runs of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, etc. The difference is many of these people are cribbing their own adulthood, effectively running re-runs of lives already lived. Is it because they were too far ahead? Or because culture is too dense? Either way: it’s lazy.
This is a problem of creativity, the arts, entertainment, etc. becoming “businesses” as algorithms choke and keep cyclical human evolution: we know this. But it’s also a problem of us audiences being too dumb to demand more, to willingly enjoy playing with shit because we have been taught that the stink is good, that paying for old ideas is a form of chaste behavior as a good viewer, a good fan. “It’s community based in consumerism,” DJ and party boy Will Mahony recently told the Throwing Fits podcast. “They try to replace [community] with reservations…It’s not an identity.” Until we accept — or move past — turning consumerized ideas into identities, all of which are based on backwards-glancing gestures, we’re doomed to continue to be dissatisfied with what culture is. Life requires work! Active participation! You cannot copy and paste your way to higher being. Pick up a book! Go to live theater! Sew a patch on your jeans! Walk somewhere! Do the difficult thing.
“I was very touched that people took this because I thought, ‘Oh wow, I’ve tapped into the zeitgeist here,’” the artist Laurie Anderson explained to the BBC about her unexpected TikTok relevance. But what is the zeitgeist that she was able to speak to, to enter, as a result of the inadvertent exhuming of her forty year old “O Superman,” which was a monument constructed to meditate on and through the rising of consumer technologies? “Their messages were a little whiny?” she said. “I have to say…I wish they were a little more original.” Which is to say: we’re proud of our little shits and eager to share.
What Americans knew about climate change
A very good cultural history of how we fumbled avoiding climate change. If you like this piece, you’ll love the book Losing Earth.
Man Sticks 2-Foot Eel up His Butt
…and you’ll never guess what the eel did! Anyway, I had to read about this so you have to too.
“The faces in the fountain”
A great backstory on the people featured in Jaume Plensa’s iconic Chicago spitting water fountain.
"Milo Yiannopoulos filing a court case"
Absolute wildest celebrity gossip of the week is that Kanye’s dentist got him addicted to laughing gas, as if this were the subplot of a 1950s musical.
Producer Says Phoenix Exit Is A “Nightmare"
The “Joaquin Phoenix quits gay movie” story has been big this weekend — but this story is juicy, undoubtedly about to get legal and messy very soon. I want a movie about this drama!!!!!! Can Melania play Rooney Mara?
The machine in the garden.
This week in Substack drama:
NBC Paris Olympics viewership is up
Paris reminded us why we love the Olympics
Expect a lot of post-mortems on the 2024 Olympics this week, but also: being in ground zero of the games, it’s remarkable how few people and places have been “watching” the games. The breakouts — To me! — were the shooting memes and Raygun and Imane Khelif. Yes, Simone and She’carri and muffin man and glasses boy and Snoop but: this proves the point, that the talk about the games and the protagonists superseded literal game watching. Is NBC including “that” (a la, social conversation) within their viewership metric?
Paid subscribers got an explainer on writing for social media, which we’ll be getting a fun sequel or follow up to on Tuesday 👀 Social media managers, copywriters, marketers, people who write captions, etc.: this one’s for you!!
Now, the actual “announcement”: this upcoming week and the following week I will be more or less going on a much needed vacation from work-work. There will still be Reports™, potentially a bit pared back. But we will see how it goes! The week of the 19th may be particularly sparse but I wanted to give a heads up. Please spend some time in the sun! Go put your body in some water!
We’re sliding into the eve of 2025 which means it’s nearly mid-decade which means we’re settling into what “these times” are. This year has been very much about trying to put down sign posts, that these are things “of this time,” as this era is articulating its gestures. Gen A pop culture, fandom as criticism, friendships as relationships, too much information and yap culture and over-consumption, the death of Hollywood, widening gender troubles, “aesthetics,” the ongoing decay of culture and tech and work because of tech: these are the 2020s. These are the recurring stories — The trends. — of these times.
This said, I’d like to submit an item that I think most clearly captures the 2020s: edits, which serve as a rich counterpoint to the problem of stagnating media and culture as explained in the first essay. Yes, yes, the chaos edit. Yes, yes, fan cams. Yes, yes, corecore. I mean all of those and none of those, as these ideas are fusing with brain rot — Another hallmark of the 2020s! — to yield a unique expression of video that I’d argue is the most “of this time” gesture, where the medium is in fact the message. A man prays to a tattooed barista before traveling into the universe, to the Titanic submersible (while set to Oneohtix Point Never’s “Betrayed At The Octagon”); a theory on why the Mormon church should conquer Puerto Rico before traveling to Europe, to school with Joe Pera, to get jazzy with Maya Angelou; “Nothing is more perfect than you being yourself,” Viner Lauren Lavoie says before Alex Consani packs up and leaves and a Zyn rides a bike and a dog is a fish, as a slowed “Eyes Without A Face” by Billy Idol plays; “Gay men no longer exist,” a man says before Noah Miller avoids rainbow crosswalks and drag queen Katya asks “What the sigma?” before Lady Gaga cries with half her makeup on; Willi Ninja vogues and an old man uses nunchucks and flowers die and the girl in the LED Bagel tube top looks at her phone before Model Poetry asks if you are depressed: these are the edits that I am speaking of.
These edits distill contemporary ideas (Too much media! The death of Hollywood! The death of culture! Fans as critics!!) while carrying forth the idea through its production and execution (The pop culture knowledge of the chaos and fan edits combining with the emotions of corecore!). These are fun and silly and say something that I don’t think we’ve allowed ourselves to acknowledge: no streaming movie, no Roblox concert, no AI art, no platform like “TikTok” are the media of this time — but this style of edit is. These edits digest the entirety of visual history into a single minute while balancing deep community humor, the weight of being a working adult, and the ennui that comes with existing on a dying planet. It is the low-brow turned divine, the opposite of shit.
People will say brat, people will say Everything Everywhere All At Once, people will say Squid Game, people will say the entirety of Mr. Beast’s channel: those are not what capture “these times.” It is these little videos, this growing catalog of catalogs by no-name people, who are just like you and me in that they are born to create but forced to work, to consume, to dream of the electric sheep that they will only ever catch glimpses of on their small televisions. These edits — so weighed with the banality and commonality of these times — grow flowers from nothing, creating beauty and emotion in juxtaposition: curation, the edit, becomes actor, director, an entire universe.
These will be footnotes of the decade, buried under the aforementioned media items and news items mentioned week-to-week — but they need to be at the headline. “Audience Becomes Auteur,” the 2020s should read, as media becomes portal, as the link becomes art.
“Convincing your friend to go out”
“a paid ad from RFK”
“Democratic Party”
“last thing Josh Shapiro saw”
“WHO WOULD WIN?”
"OMG OMG my voice"
Best political posts! Did you make that connection with Abby Lee Miller?
“sick of this shit”
"work ethic"
“Iran will end”
“what the hell is this extra”
“YOUR FRIEND GROUP”
”very demuretsy”
A few things I thought about all week. Also calling now that demure will be everywhere starting this week.
"why is my 6 yr old sis able to pick me up???"
We need to talk about Gen A again.
"Tarsis Orogot's socks"
MY CULTURE IS NOT A COSTUME!!!!!! But this is.
“dorm room for adults”
Close enough: welcome back, “Star Spangled Banner,” which we Trend Reported™ on in January 2023.
"scared me half to death"
Wanna feel old? This is literally the Apparently Kid now. (Also want to feel old? Four years later, the TikTok hair-in-the-shower girl has made a braid out of her old hair.)
“Amazing things happening on r/strava”
Every time I see a post like this I go “I should do that.” but then I think about how, logistically, doing any sort of ran-drawing sounds like a complete nightmare and a bad workout.
“Worst part about living in a gentrified neighborhood”
We should ban graffiti in “cool” neighborhoods actually.
"went in this williamsburg coffee shop"
Top ten places to poop.
“this queen”
Speaking of coffee!
And, finally, me every day of the summer.
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So glad I didn't post my piece yet, Prepare to be cited again. Side note: I am slated to publish my "woowoo" piece later this evening
your take on shitertainment reads as a perfect sort of tandem/companion analysis to emily's substack piece. based & enlightening as always. THANKS