culture is V HAUNTED 👻

On the rise of a culture that has little to say and why you should consider embracing your typos.

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• A very special boneless 🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿 this week as Ben Dietz and I are joined by a very special guest: his son!!!! We unpack how the new Justin Bieber and Lena Dunham shape Millennial summer, the Gen Z stare, and if summer jobs actually still exist for kids: catch it on Spotify or YouTube.

• In case you missed it, I made a lil cameo on Herb Sundays’ mid-year music review: take a peek here. What was your 2025 tune so far?

• Trend Report Live™ (TRL) is online this month!! It’s happening August 3 at 7P CEST / 6P GMT / 1PM EST / 10A PST: join us! And add to your calendar and RSVP here.

• Copenhagen and Stockholm: some hang-out details for y’all! Bobby Aaron Solomon and I will be doing office hours in Copenhagen on August 10 and 14 at 5P at Mina’s Kaffebar and in Stockholm on August 21 and 24 at 5PM at Lykke Nytorget (shoutout to Jaan for the rec!!).

Trump Says Obama, Comey ‘Made Up’ Epstein Files
Trump calls Epstein conspiracy a ‘hoax’
House Democrats Push for Hearing on Epstein
GOP blocks second Dem attempt to release Epstein files
Joe Rogan Accuses Trump of Hiding Epstein Files
"Yeah what changed?"
“This entire thing has been a scam.”
Epstein drama recap. While I think the “MAGA implosion” chatter is hyperbolic, this is a turning point — and could be a great opportunity to power grab by the Dems but I have little faith they’ll do anything other than cringe shit like Project 2029.

US to destroy 500 tons of taxpayer funded food
Senate to Strip $1.1 Billion From Public Broadcasting
House approves $9B cut to broadcasting, foreign aid
Wasteful and wrong — but who is surprised? Especially considering this regime’s gluttonous evil by shuttering USAID, which may result in 14 million deaths.

Colbert on Paramount: ‘Big fat bribe’
CBS to Cancel ‘Late Show’
"after Colbert called out CBS parent company"
Writers Guild Demands Investigation
CBS’ likely new owner is in talks to buy The Free Press
Let’s connect the dots here. It’s not just the Colbert cancellation thing but also their courting the fascists over at The Free Press and, just months ago, forcing the 60 Minutes head to step down as the channel bowed to Trump, proving Nathan Fielder's point. (If we want to get big brain here? This ties back to the conservatism at Viacom I wrote about a few weeks back.)

Meta will build data center the size of Manhattan
Evil masquerading as “helpful,” etc.

Coca-Cola will to switch to cane sugar
Sure. Why not? A win for dentists, that’s for sure.

1 in 3 teens have prediabetes, CDC data shows
See above. I’d be curious if there’s a connection to trending food items which almost always trickle downstream to kids.

Voting age to be lowered to 16 in UK
This ties into the whole “I’m old enough to get taxed!” conversation and how the state should correlate taxation with full civic expression.

Graham was one of the first guys I dated. We were inseparable for a lifetime (One month.), doing everything we could together, exploring each other’s lives and histories and bodies as fully as we could: it was one of the best times of my life — until he dumped me without a specific reason other than boredom. A bit more than half a year later, we started seeing each other again — but it wasn’t the same. It was good but something was off, like a suspicion held between us, that we were both unable or potentially uninterested in restarting the fire we had extinguished beyond sexual play: there was still something there but we both knew rubbing ourselves together would never produce that spark. The circumstances were the same but we had changed, likely because of or in spite of each other. I remember the last time we were together, riding the train uptown as he was going to work and I was catching the bus out of the city, our arms and legs rubbing against each other, a tugging at each other to not give up on our chemistry. I got off at Port Authority, watching the doors close on him, a bittersweet recognition setting in that something that was once so perfect was blemished by our naive confusion that lightning could strike twice. The memory of that first love wasn’t ruined but the sequel cheapened it.

This experience is a disappointing fact of modern life, that you experience a very good thing at a specific place in the world and at a specific time in your life — and then you try to recreate it. That road trip with my aunt and uncle to my brother’s wedding, that specific two weeks in Paris during the summer of 2012, that house we rented in Templeton during Covid, that Barefoot Contessa chicken salad I made for my birthday in Palm Springs: all these things that changed my life that, when repeated later in different circumstances, never matched the original. Paris became more homogenous, the chicken salad gave me food poisoning, these retreads on the past stinging of the “You just had to be there.” feeling, that recreating past magic in the present is impossible. Maybe that is a failure of humanity, that we long to recreate past joys, each of us aged jocks hoping to play one more homecoming game. Maybe it’s actually the curse of modernity: I don’t know.

But I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately as I keep having this experience, unwillingly and not. I call it “ghost culture,” the idea that a ship that once sailed through your life with an unmistakable vigor, defining the waves in the sea of your life, now circumnavigates the globe of you as a ghost ship. I can’t claim full ownership of this idea as it has been “in the air,” becaming fully realized in reading Brian Phillips’ recent explanation of “ghost shows” for The Ringer. He explains —

We’re constantly haunted by these quasi-irrelevant specters, the lingering souls of hype cycles past. Take Severance: Season 1 seemed to hold the whole internet in thrall. Season 2? It wasn’t quite as ghostly as Squid Game has been, but it was shockingly quiet considering the noise around Season 1. Yellowjackets? Total ghost show. Fargo? Ghost show, and the later seasons don’t even dip in quality that much. The Last of Us has ghost-show potential, even if it’s not quite there yet. True Detective is a rare example of a series that became a ghost show and then came back from the dead, as if to illustrate that time really is a flat circle. Ted Lasso was inescapable in Season 1; the later seasons dwindled so dramatically that just now I had to check whether the show is still in production. (It is, somehow.)

While Brian ties ghost culture to the disappearance of hype despite the continued existence of a show, I find ghost culture to be the empty feeling that comes with any media or cultural phenomena based in recreating past glories. This is very common for television shows with years between cycles (Take note, streamers.) which has one wondering if anything that was so perfect can be perfect twice — and the answer is almost always a firm no, that you were better off with the memory versus allowing yourself to be haunted by the idea of excellence as you engage with the subpar.

By this metric, the index of ghost culture widens: And Just Like is a ghost show, as best expressed by a recent quote in Washington Post, that it’s a “crazy, topsy-turvy version of something that I love”; Stranger Things is ending soon and we can bet it will continue the path felt last season, where people realized “the nostalgia novelty can only last so long”; the new Sabrina Carpenter feels less like a continuation of Short n' Sweet and more a cheap imitation of herself; the economy of “live action” recreations are profitable but notoriously quite joyless; Chuck E. Cheese “for adults” is a perfect candidate given it won’t serve pizza, will feature newer games, and have a sole animatronic; kidified product culture inserts products from one’s youth into adulthood, hoping for the same connection but mostly making shit that sits on a shelf (and becomes garbage). We talked about this a few weeks back on HIP REPLACEMENT, as so much of media leaves you feeling dissatisfied, hungry and never satiated. “Let’s go around the track just because,” I said. “Why are we here? Why are we doing this?” Yes, I was talking about the new Beetlejuice — but this feeling is just as applicable to everything from Super Bowl commercials to LCD Soundsystem’s endless retirements/comebacks.

Much of this is due to the weight of creative cynicism, as The Guardian’s Larry Ryan suggested much of these ghostly items often feel like “a group of tired-faced older people vainly chasing their shadows to cash a cheque” — and that is exactly it. This is all where nostalgia meets a form of techno-gluttony Airmail considered this week, which is underscored by so much — planes, restaurants, cars — no longer having a vibe as they’ve been “engineered so that you feel nothing,” as interior designer Hans Lorei said. Home design is a perfect example and why interest in 1990s Decorating Cents surged in the past month: before social media, creativity was about unique expression without being commoditized or consumerized. “It’s from the era before venture capital,” art historian Seema Rao explained. “This is not polished…Almost everything they’re doing they’re coming up with themselves.” This naturally invokes AI formats, which cannibalize very real human expressions into hollow repeats of what should be alive: AI is the great ghost maker. From AI movie reviews on YouTube to AI couples on TikTok to AI (inspired) newsletters on this platform (h/t Jaskaran) to AI relatives, ghost culture happened because we gave ourselves away, opting for a life fed off reruns instead of working for a progressive present.

Maybe it’s the Graham of it all but I can’t help think about Before Sunset, one of the greatest films of all time and a personal all timer — and it’s a sequel. The film, like my encounter with Graham, is about reconnecting with a lost love. Sunset takes place ten years after Céline and Jesse’s chance meeting in 1995, one night in Vienna that became a cult classic. Not only was the decade wait for Sunset warranted (and part of the story) but it’s what made it clearly not-a-sequel but a continuation of the story: there was no rehashing, there was no spin of the wheel, repeating what once was. It worked because the characters, actors, director, etc. understood the danger of falling prey to being haunted by an idealized past that forgets how life goes on, that the world changes while memories stay within their context. How we end up with ghost culture is that they aspire only to repeat and repeat and repeat while pretending that you (And them!) have not changed, making you feel nothing other than the mechanics of a business person’s decision that it’s more lucrative to bet on your little brain opting for comfort over intrigue, that you will choose to believe your past self is better than the you of the present. What a cynical, haunting view of ourselves.

Is This Why Sylvanian Drama Disappeared?
“has almost 3 million followers”
“this tik tok alone”
Apparently Calico Critters sued the Sylvanian Drama channel, which was hugely popular. This proves how brands are still out of touch with the internet, casting this whole situation as the 2025 equivalent of Barbie suing Aqua.

No, Huda Isn’t Selling Perfume
"#arabianperfume #hudaloveislandusa "
“AI is acc terrifying”
A story from the frontlines of the future, where a Love Island contestant’s image was used to sell perfume — and it worked. People felt duped! And creeped out.

Is Uno actually coming to a Las Vegas casino?
This was huge this week. Is actual “betting” on Uno happening? No. But is this priming a connection between the game and gambling? Obviously. Just like Edible Arrangements pivoting to edibles, we can see where such games will go as a brands push for new ways to get you to consume.

‘Bluey’ Reign Continues in First Half of 2025
I can’t say I’ve ever actually looked at the streaming Nielsen rankings — but this list is a trip. It’s like staring into a Facebook blackhole of the suburbs, where cable TV thrives online. Young Sheldon breaking the top 20?? There are worlds out there we have no idea about.

"Is gentle parenting too rough on parents?"
Many Parents Believe Gentle Parenting Spoils Kids
Why Kids Need to Hear ‘No’ More
Gentle parenting is too rough for parents
The first item is new while the others map this conversation since last October. This signals a distinctly Millennial expression of parenting potentially ending as it’s too much labor with too diminishing of returns.

“Can you love me if I’m annoying?”
I don’t do podcasts (Ironic, I know.) but these clips of Cole Escola on Amy Poehler’s podcast are so good. The first item, about if it’s worse to be annoying or boring, is one of the better philosophical questions of our time. If you ask Bobby, he can attest that I am infinitely annoying — and that makes me special! (Don’t miss Cole’s impersonation of Martha Stewart either. It’s an all timer.)

Coldplay Fiasco Emblematic of Media Surveillance
The Coldplay cheating couple is so funny — and a techno-political mess. As 404 points out, this represents how social media enables crowdsourced, techno-powered panopticism. The other thing — as people pointed out on LinkedIn — is that brands getting in on this “fun” is unprofessional, at best, and proof that capitalism will push in the knife on anything, cynically laughing to the bank as a life falls apart. The other thing, as I explained on TikTok, is that this isn’t just the “new normal” but an ongoing culture unique to concerts and most public spaces as terms of services and identity releases allow your image to be used by the powers that be. I wouldn’t be surprised if the CEO sues Coldplay and the venue for this, despite the signage.

I had a post on LinkedIn kinda sorta not really go viral last week, which I didn’t notice or care about because I try to post-and-forget, as to not fall into the trap of constantly revisiting posts to marvel at them, indulging in the ridiculous narcissism of self-adoration that social media was designed for. But any hopes of stroking my ego were dashed because — uhh — the post had some egregious typos. I edited the post and, thankfully, no one stopped to throw a rock at me, yelling that I need to be a better proofreader (which is such cop behavior). This is a classic internet happening and, in many ways, proof that I am imperfect. We’re human!

Immediately after correcting the post, I caught a thought from my friend Cris🌸🦦 on the timeline, where she mused that typos and other writing errors signal a new brand of authenticity and humanity “in a sea of AI-generated content.” “The state of things demands a little friction and messiness, something that people can actually connect to,” she wrote. “This isn’t a question about whether AI will continue shaping how we speak — because it will — but whether we’ll actively choose to preserve space for the verbal quirks and emotional messiness that make communication recognizably, irreplaceably human.”

Cristina shared a recent Verge story on the subject, on a rise in human expressions and turns of phrases becoming markers of AI in speech. This is an issue of large language models having surprisingly small vocabularies, where certain words are now red flags for AI speak (“delves,” “meticulous,” “commendable”) as certain grammatical flairs (the em dash) signal a computer is behind the thought. I wrote about this concept two years ago, less in the sense of our language shifting but more that it signals the weak in spirit and mind, that “writing like ChatGPT” is akin to being accused of being an NPC (or, to the point of the above Cole Escola item, being boring). It’s a striping of character that removes learning and living, all so people can parrot unreal word soups. Take airline CEOs giving the same statement when planes crash or global politicians issuing the same calls for support: this strips any humanity out of communication, showing that the speaker simply cannot be bothered to give you their full time or attention, that you are unworthy of their mental energy. You are only worthy of being outsourced versus thought about. (An obvious item to put on the record: if and when typos and grammatical errors come to represent human writing, you can bet brands are going to amp up typos to be more “authentic.” It’s already very much in the water of social media brand speak.)

There was a time when someone learned how to paint just so they could recreate the image of their beloved. Now, someone pops the request into an AI model in exchange for a very mediocre image that has no soul (and used a lot of water). I think about this all the time as, living in a country where I am not fluent in the dominant language, communication is crucial in my existence — and it’s the nuances, los matizes, that help me survive and thrive. And yet: there is such a temptation to pop in that email to my doctor through Google Translate, to write something out in English and have a tech tool do the thinking for me. I quit that years ago. It’s less because it isn’t “helpful” but that it presents a false version of me, both to myself and the world: I want my doctor to understand that Spanish is my second language. I want someone to know I am an immigrant, that I am learning and trying. This inspires different reactions — empathy and help or, as one can imagine, bits of xenophobia — but being truthful about how I write and speak keeps me and those I meet grounded in the real.

The point of technology like any tool is to make life easier. But are we supposed to give ourselves away in the process? Of course not, yet here so many of us are, smoothing out the contours that come with labouring to try as expressed by the typos and mispronunciations that come learning. The fear of being perceived as the scalpel that lobotomizes.

"Imagine his wife"
“Chris Martin”
“no-sell it”
“the other guy”
“Don’t ever cheat”
”What are their picks?”
Problematic, for privacy. But the memes? Delicious. One of the best days to be online this year. (The “Cheating is the ultimate sin!” thing is so cop culture. Let people fuck!)

“A really mean thing you can do”
“Adult-daycare programming”
I did press play on this video and it feels like I experienced something akin to The Ring. This is also the ideal late night content in 2025, an apolitical meditation on a cultural artifact that is over a decade old. This signals that it’s very likely someone like a James Corden is going to take Stephen Colbert’s job! (And reminds: thank god SNL isn’t in-season as their Astronomer CEO bit would have been my thirteenth reason.)

"first to break this story"
Trump has some leg condition that we all hope makes him die. To that: this post about the size of his leg is great. That Coca-Cola tie-in is working out well!

“can’t stop laughing at this books”
This book is also about my relationship with my dog Oliver.

“Steve Buscemi eyes”
“Dr. Earman”
Two great posts about wild facial features.

“girls do not make albums anymore”
The Jet2 Holiday accent trend is great but this Beyoncé one has me fried.

“job lover reacts”
“job lover reacts”
“job lover reacts”
Share if you love your job and hate having to take a weekend!

“Things are so terrible because”
I love this theory and feel like it ties into why the real Annabelle supposedly killed her handler this week.

"What is the Taste of Steak Smoked with Cigarettes"
This TikTok is based on a video from last year, where Uwos Lab smoked a steak with cigarettes. The results are……..wow.

And, finally, the literal reason to the success of this newsletter.

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