The Trend Report™: Sound Stuck
Horrifying Facts From Facebook Whistleblower
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp Are All Down
Zuckerberg's Wealth Dips Amid Outage
"No news publisher has more to lose"
Big week for Facebook! Not in a good way (for them).
Raising Cane’s Corporate Staff Work in Restaurants
Workers at Kellogg cereal plants on strike
"here's a list of some strikes happening now"
"farm workers fighting for legalization"
What a week for workers and workers’ rights!
Pandora papers: biggest leak of data
Another huge story! I am not well versed in this but it shows what many of us already know: the very rich from all the world are hiding their money in tax shelters that fuck over so many.
Tesla to Pay $137M Over Racism
If you like Tesla or Elon Musk, you may have brain damage.
Idaho Lt. Governor deploys National Guard
Idaho Lt. Governor bans vaccine mandates
This lieutenant governor is WILDING. Short story is: the governor went out of town to help at the border, she thought she was in charge, resulting in many absurdist Republican executive orders and actions to “restore” society.
scientists made woman's depression disappear
Fascinating. Maybe brain chips can make us happier!
'Extreme Numbers' Of Spiders In GA May Be Good
No ❤️
immunity weakens faster in men than women
Related to the Pfizer second dose but wouldn’t be surprised if this extends to other vaccines. Good to know though!
For much of this year, the trends have been bad. That’s the world right now and, y’all, it sucks. I’m sorry to have to report it again and again but here we are. One thing, though, is that I noticed a lot of climate items this week – and they weren’t all bad! Dystopian in some ways, sure, but it’s not all fatalistic. Sure, the New York Times is trying to get you to curl up into a ball over things but I am here to counter program. Not with fluffy stuff but with real things that I’ve been tracking.
First, some electrical items. We’ve got more than three-quarters of cars in Norway being electric and cities around the world rethinking transit via electricity. No, those are not in the US – but GM sees electric as a route to double their sales as other brands are hoping to change the world through non-gas cars. Also! Google unrolled a new “eco-friendly routes” option to help you get places with lower impact. I love that! I also love that the rise of biking in Paris has made walking frustrating. I can’t wait for that trend to hit America! Truly. Anyway, some bad news, which is old news that I discovered via this terrible Millennial wannabe “funny” TikTok: the US military pollutes as much as 140 countries. That’s very bad! Let that radicalize you (and make you hate that anti-TikToker TikTok).
Onto the animal! Or, at least, animalistic in a certain way since we’re talking about not-eating-meat because there has been a recent upswing in stories about lab grown meat and meat alternatives that are made from animals. From The New Republic to The Economist, you have plenty of opportunities to dive into the future of food – and it sounds pretty cool! Sign me the fuck up for that fake meat. I want that swollen antibiotic oversized chicken breast – but I want it made in a lab. Anyway, take a detour away from lab meat, we got cows learning to be house broken as an effort to help with methane gas control. Sure! Why not! Now for a downer dose: apparently climate change is making some animals shape shift. This is more interesting than sad but I can’t imagine this is good by any means.
Lastly, we enter the world of the all-bad: chemicals. Currently, just south of where I write this, an oil spill is killing lots of wildlife in Orange County, creating a mess in the water and on land and for all sorts of sea life and non-sea-life. Sad! It gets worse though as reportedly babies are full of microplastics, which is a big step forward from the other recent story that babies are pooping out microplastics. This ain’t good! This is very bad. It doesn’t end there either, as fast-fashion retailers like Shein have been found to have an incredible amount of chemicals in their clothes. The kicker? A lot of these are in kids clothes! Not just a chill amount but literally “hazardous waste” levels of lead are in these clothes. Stop shopping fast fashion! I shouldn’t have to tell you this. We shall close with a palate cleanser: a climate protester crashed the Louis Vuitton show with a great message. Sure, one got tackled but the job was done. Bless them.
More Adults Living Without a Partner
Single adults make less money than partnered
Yeah, no shit. This reminds me of that normalize same sex friend co-habitation story. Literally make a domestic partnership with a friend and share resources! This goes back to the commune story: use society’s way of working to unwork society. Revolution now!
Harris Reed's Gender-Fluid Fashion
This is an inspiring story about creativity and gender! (...until you get to the part where you learn that his father is an agent at ICM, which got him early editorial work, and that family friend Kelly Cutrone had him interning at fashion week as a teenager. Literally he slept on Kelly’s couch! Not some “work friend” but a friend-friend!!)
study calls Host the scariest movie ever made
This is fascinating! And it inspired me to watch this Zoom-based movie from last year. And you know what? It’s quite good. It’s less than an hour long, it’s actually scary, and it uses the video call format to great effect. It’s like a visual short story: taut, fun, and over before you know it. Highly recommend!
Gen Z made Hispanic Heritage Month a meme
The HHM meme is one of 2021’s highlights.
a mother, devout Catholic plans to die by euthanasia
An interesting human interest story about religion, illness, and euthanasia.
COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates: Hollywood Battle Lines Emerge
Anti-Vaxx Celebrities Are Coming Out of the Woodwork
Y’all so dumb!!! I hate you, Hollywood!!!!!
EL SEGUNDO BLUE, PENTTI MONKKONEN
I came across this show and the work by this LA artist is incredible. Paintings critiquing climate change created with and through space. Quite breathtaking and bummed I won’t be in Paris to see it. The installation looks perfect.
‘The L Word’’s Jamie Clayton Pinhead in New Hellraiser
This is incredible casting. I can’t wait!! A queer franchise got even queerer.
Something is happening with a specific texture of retro-ness. Not Y2K, not 1990s, not 2014, but there’s something about specific bygone ephemera that keep recurring in very slight gestures that are less about a specific time or place but more about a feeling of the past used to conjure present pastime playfulness. I have two examples.
First, the Samsung “Skyline” notification. You may not recall the sound at first but you know the sound, a pleasant upward pinging to let you know that you got a message. This is a ubiquitous non-Apple sound, one tied to some Androids (and Whatsapp), the sound has come to signify what I assume to be a childhood nostalgia for a (non-American) parent’s phone, a statement of anti-tech opulence, a glamorization of the hyper-common, the ever present, the sort of dinging that goes off while everyone eats dinner because tio likes to text mom seventeen messages in ten minutes instead of one long note. The sound has slipped into a variety of funny videos with children and the otherwise disconnected as subjects, a la, funny transformation videos, jokes about kids on tech, and parodies of Trump people. Because of TikTok, the sound has multiplied, serving as the background for tens of thousands of videos (a la, a la, a la) conjuring a backwards-leaning comedic chaos based in your mom’s fondness for Whatsapps. Now, the sound has begun a digital decay via “earrape” videos, that see the sound repeated, placed through hyper pop filters, turned into joke versions, landing in eventual degradation. Where will this go? I’m unsure. But it’s secondhand for a specific form of funny, couched with chaos culture and the extremely accessible.
Next, a graphic design trend that is neither new nor old but seems to be suffocating visual sensibilities: avant stickers. I’ve been talking to Bobby about this for weeks, as you see avant stickers used by major brands as a secondhand for tactile approachability, that a 2D advertisement online or on a billboard can be slightly 3D by offering the feeling of peeling a sticker. Recalling both supermarket special stickers and album art stickers, this visual gesture is popping up everywhere: Stacey Abrams has used them, brands like Postmates and Shopify have used them, high-design minded types have used them again and again and again. This is not really that old as AIGA wrote about the phenomena last year but is coming to a head now. Why are they used? Stickers connote approval and clarity, which speaks to our subconscious during uncertain and precarious times like these.
The thing about both of these things is that they’re nostalgic but not saccharine: the “Skyline” sound recalls a time and place in a similar playful manner to avant stickers, both about sliding into something comfortable, warm, forms and formats that you are at ease with. These aren’t about breaking new ground (even if they do, at points) but appeal to a sensibility and collective consciousness. Unlike other retro trends like, say, “grandmillennial,” these are about a living past, things that still exist and thrive and still happen today – but we already seem to be detached from them, acknowledging their ridiculousness in the present. Whether the chime of someone’s phone or the sticker you peel off a banana, there’s a mundane commonality to these ephemeral things, a simplicity that make these gestures stand out. They are little things in our day that we forget to stop and marvel at, to find the beauty in, because we no longer have time to. Thus, they appeal to our “no thoughts, just vibes” and “head empty” sensibilities, seving as chicken soup for the soul in hard, foul, terrible times.
“imagine dropping this at [YOUNG AGE]”
“my villain origin story.”
emoji pumpkin
A few text trends from this week, the last one being an emoji-pumpkin-based something pumped out by accounts like @ghostfacetalks and @realmichaelmyers78, which are clearly marketing-via-virality efforts.
“You the one with all the money”
"something about taylor swift that i don't like"
New red flag text meme happening. (And, curiously, is taking form as a Notes App meme too.)
“We want Nut Game @netflix”
“In my nut era”
"Lowkey wanna a BNL"
Every week, we fly closer and closer to the sun of brands sharing dick pics.
20 Unethical (& Brilliant) Reddit Life Hacks
These are incredible, likely created by sociopaths, and I love every one of them.
"his best friend (?) trying to tell everyone"
"captioning those photos with “ZODIAC?”"
"this makes so much sense now"
I appreciate the news that the Zodiac Killer’s BFF has been outing him for years but no one cared.
"restless anal syndrome"
Yes, this is a Covid symptom. Yes, it’s real.
@snlhostsintro
It was only a matter of time before an SNL-hosts-intro-account was born. Here was my favorite use of it.
"just killed another career it’s a mild day"
My queen, Dakota, up to her old tricks.
"meet Salma Hayek's pet owl"
Yes, this is the same owl that vomited on Harry Styles.
"the surreal life"
Been meaning to share this for weeks now.
"the history of live, laugh, love"
Learn something new every day!
"bees let out a whoop"
Listen to these bees WHOOOOOP!!!!
"a bag of #brachsturkeydinnercandycorn"
Incredible dive into...Thanksgiving candy corn. It’s more disgusting than you’d think! A must-read thread.
"she meant bonnie & clyde"
Oh ~ moms ~
And, finally, what I plan to eat all weekend.
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