The Trend Report™: Post Cringe
A look at beefs between generation and why elitism quietly trended this week.
Hi!
Welcome to The Trend Report™ where you get a capturing of what happened this week.
This week, we’re winter weather and elitism, a historical spy and generational wars, and ending with a Catholic furry.
xxoo,
krf
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Extreme Winter Havoc Across U.S.
This week was a weather disaster, exposing many an infrastructure issue in America and amplified why climate change is to be taken seriously. Texas was at the center of this news at it was colder than Alaska, inspired lots of disinformation, along with many viral, shocking images of freezing disaster. There’s a lot of bad, from carbon monoxide related deaths to the long-lasting infrastructural effects. Donate anything you can to help, if able, because their Senator is literally on vacation.
Let the Cows Stomp
A fascinating story about how grazing cows enable the growth of plants and “sequestering carbon” into the ground. It’s almost as if…………….letting nature be nature helps the planet? A working theory!
Exercise for Better Heart Health
We’re all aging and we all need to take better care of our bodies. This story – which seems to emerge in some form once or twice a year – suggests even daily moderate exercise makes the heart healthier. What could this mean? Get moving.
Fake Meat Prints Steaks
Just so everyone knows, we now have fake steaks that are made with a printer. Love the future!
New York to allow large venues
Um. This seems like a bad idea, particularly since one has to have tested negative “within 72 hours of the event” and...anything can happen in a three day span! This seems like a very shitty non-equivalent to Spain’s very concerted same-day testing concert study.
Cop Plays Copyrighted Music To Block Content
This is a very concerning, very future-leaning story, via a local incident: a police officer in Beverly Hills played music while an activist filmed him, a tactic intended to violate music copyrights and force the activist’s video to be blocked by social networks. This is a dirty tactic to prevent accountability. If only things like the police and technology were more regulated. Hmm.
YouTube Settings That Help
Most of my work is literally related to YouTube and some of these pointers I didn’t know. If you use YouTube with any regularity, give this a peep.
What Every Heart Emoji Really Means
Emojis trended big time this week, thanks to a new emoji release preview. But it was a story about the use of emoji hearts that seemed quite interesting, paired with a stupid-ish story about “beef” between Zoomers and Millennials. More on that in a moment.
FBI Wants Insurrectionists To Go Viral
The FBI – a government agency not known for their, uh, forwardness – is trying to meme-ify photos of Capitol insurrectionist in the hopes of arresting more of them.
A gross trend for you, which is simultaneously timeless and 2021: left-leaning, non-Southerners condescending to Southerners. This too cool chatter was everywhere in relation to the Texas winter storm.
As the right pushed their New Green Deal strawman, the left saw figures like Stephen King, Chris Cillizza, and many others going out of their way to make “Gotcha!” dunks related GOP leadership, climate change awareness, and general Southern ways of life. Yes, the GOP is bad and composed of climate change deniers – but Southern states and the citizens are not a monolith and, as with any disaster, now isn’t the time to point fingers or seek political burns. That doesn’t help anyone.
This behavior exhumes a classic American tiff that seems to have been waiting in the wings for the right post-Trump moment: North versus South, which has evolved into general urban and elite groups versus the rural and “common.” The difference is that, in 2021, such behavior and grandstanding reveals so many assumptions about race, class, and education as it relates to participation in society. There’s a connection between this behavior and Joe Biden saying, “not everybody in the Hispanic and African American community...know how to get online.”
Thankfully, many, many, many people are pointing out this bad acting. As my friend Obehi said, acting this way reflects a selective memory of when such storms hit the North – and people flee. The moral here is obvious: this is how you sew division, making it less and less appealing for people to consider left-leaning ideologies. You make people feel dumb and they lose their respect for you. Deplorable.
Printed Matter’s Virtual Art Book Fair
In the real world, this would have been a localized event that people talked about in a particular city. Given our online nature, this city-focused art book fair is going virtual and international and should be interesting. If there’s an online art experience to check out in 2021, this is definitely it – and it’s happening February 24 through 28.
Harriet Tubman was also a brilliant spy
I feel like a lot of people probably assumed this about Harriet Tubman but, officially-officially, she was a spy who helped union troops during the Civil War.
"My post covid prediction"
"Remember how in the mid 2000s"
Mark my words: post-Covid will be the pre-recession 2000s all over again instead of the “Roaring Twenties.” I’ve said this to a few people but our pre-recession culture was the Roaring Twenties. We’re in the midst of ongoing depressions and have been circling the drain of international “problems” for some time and are, uh, in that now.
The Soothing, Digital Rooms of YouTube
Bobby has been into rooms like these for some time, marking an evolution of the lo-fi beats culture. I trend toward live animal live streams but the connection here is: we’ve found a way to reinvent screen savers that offer something more dynamic than simply saving our screens.
Deep Space Nine Predicted the 2020s
I watched a lot of DS9 as a child and I vaguely remember this episode. As they say, science fiction predicts the future, foretelling a problem that might happen in the hopes that they won’t happen. Clearly we don’t take these premonitions seriously.
Dolly Parton asks not to put her statue at Capitol
Literal saintly move here.
Bigoted King Of Talk Radio Dies At 70
Turned Talk Radio Into a Right-Wing Attack Machine
Rush Limbaugh was a monster. A monster on the national scale, a monster in my own childhood, he tainted many a heart and mind. While I am not one to dance on a grave, this nightmare person got a lot of attention for getting piss to trend and meme, for reminding us of how aggressive racism and homophobia can be, and that hell is waiting. (This was my favorite reaction to the news.)
After weeks and months and years in the making, it’s time to talk about the Zoomer-Millennial tiff.
This week saw a lot of talk about the younger generation declaring side parts “over” and skinny jeans “unflattering” and certain emoji use “cancelled.” This recalls that of the previous Harry Potter and coffee screeds and points out a unique quality of the Millennial generation: growing up offline but coming of age online, making them the first generation to experience aging and life choices logged in the digital public. This has made it very well known to Zoomers that Millennials have a counter-cultural disposition and love irony in excess – and this is rightfully cringey.
In the micro, for the individual, liking skinny jeans and coffee isn’t problematic. The ripple effect of Millennial counter-cultural irony is a movie like Cruella, which casts the dog-killing villain as a “girlboss,” someone whose “I don’t give a fuck!” Millennial tendencies yielded a trying-too-hard femalejoker. The Millennial culture of earnestness has now been placed in contrast to younger people who are even more earnest, making an effort like this feel fake and disingenuous. Related is the renewed hate for that Instagram balloon gay guy, who saw songs and viral dunks dedicated to his brand of ironic liberal ideologies (a la, virtue signaling) that Millennials best exemplify. Millennials created the playbook for digital secondhand embarrassment.
As we celebrate proto-Internet and Millennial cultural anniversaries like twenty years of “All Your Base Belong To Us,” it’s high time to realize that this generation is now old – and not “The Olds” because calling anything “The Olds” is exactly the sort of cringey, embarrassing behavior endemic to the age group. This is why calling someone a “girlboss” doesn’t excuse her war crimes – and Gen Z is pointing that out. To Gen Z, Millennial counter-cultural and ironic ways aren’t just flip but deeply careless. Like pointing out liberal shallowness, holding an age group accountable in this way has a value as it reminds that our actions, our history have an impact on this world. Gen Z is saying the side part itself isn’t stupid but that irony is dead – or evolving – and that the real joke is reality itself.
Food for thought, from a generation who are spending their twenties indoors.
"how I end every Zoom call with friends."
I look really good in this video.
"BOOK COVERS AS ADAM SANDLER FITS"
Vital poetry-adjacent thread.
This tweet went very viral this week because it is extremely, very, truly correct.
"El corrido de lomito"
My new favorite song, via my new favorite Twitter account: Perfectly Cut Screams.
"I am looking to CHEAT TODAY"
The only Valentine’s post that matters, thanks to Patti Harrison’s filthy glory.
Scammers are doing it.
“The grifter: My 8 year old niece”
If you think Zoomers are bad? Get ready for the next generation.
“YALL!”
Case in point, regarding next gen genius.
An easy Lent to you all!
"why do people buy expensive ass TVs”
A very smooth, HD version of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” is creeping people out.
"Excited to finally release this play I wrote"
All these women will be played by Jennifer Lawrence in the film adaptation.
And, finally, me trying to get myself to get offline.