throw a BOOK at the WORLD
On the urgent need for fiction in these strange times and how creatives are being defined (and confined) by paperwork.
What do brands on social, Sabrina Carpenter, and Labubus have in common? They’re all on this week’s 🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿 with special guest , who dug in DEEP on advertising and marketing with and I. Listen now, on Spotify and YouTube!
The next Trend Report Live™ is July 6 in Barcelona!!! Hope you can make it!!! There is a lil fee, as there have been too many RSVP no-shows. The fee will go toward ~drinks and snack~ but, if you have trouble paying, send a message and we can figure something out.
and I and the dogs are headed to Copenhagen for early August and Stockholm for late August. Drop a line if you’ll be in either as we’d love to meet you. We’ll likely be doing hangouts there too <3
World on the cusp of a new nuclear arms race
Iran-Israel has rewritten nuclear escalation
US strikes on Iran nuclear
More Americans oppose a U.S. airstrike in Iran
What is life like for Jews in Iran?
"TIME cover from 2003"
"When she’s right she’s right"
I’m begging everyone — Especially Trump and Netanyahu! — to read Nuclear War before Villeneuve’s adaptation drops. This situation ties a concerning, far right, Christian nationalist movement in government to “protect Israel” in case of the rapture, which went very wide this week given Tucker “Sell Out” Carlson questioning Ted Cruz on the subject. There’s a larger piece to write (As I explained on this week’s podcast!) but this all gets at how rage bait as the language of the decade, which we’ll talk more about in Tuesday’s Change Report™. What a terrible decade it’s been! (Related: This got a bit buried but New York’s story on the Israel-Palestine conflict is a story of the year.)
Images of Handcuffed Democrats Are Piling Up
Dodgers say they denied Ice agents
FIFA Club World Cup Ticket Sales TANK
Gestapo watch update, which ties into two interesting culture items: it’s fascinating how masks have been weaponized against activists, as ICE uses them to conceal identities; fascinating that sports has become such an active site of politics (And queer support too!), which proves what Colin Kapernick and others have been saying.
“A more surprising figure”
A great analysis of Judge Amy Coney Barrett and how, while not liberal, she has agreed with Trump the least of the conservative judges.
GCC projects market collapses in first five months
Slowdown looms for Saudi construction
This is so interesting as we just talked about Saudi development in overdrive just weeks ago. This is tied to drops in oil revenues — but doesn’t mention the “trend” of the area’s enabling deaths of (migrant) construction workers. This is an ongoing story given the WWE contract and larger sports movements.
Protests in Europe Target Mass Tourism
The world’s most-visited museum shuts down
We’re going to talk about this in full next week. But! Lots of people ask me “What about the water gun protests?” and I usually say it’s not a concern but it is something to reflect on as the demands against overtourism ladder into larger gentrification and globalization of cities worldwide, which trickles into anti-immigration and anti-tech/nomad attitudes. The recent Barcelona protests represent a large evolution as these marches were 1.) bigger and 2.) in more local spaces, bringing the conflict to the literal city center. The fact that these protests shut down The Lourve say a lot too. This is a defining conversation of the 2020s!!
Everything to Know About the Breast Cancer Vaccine
HIV prevention drug hailed as a 'breakthrough'
Amidst the bad, there is always some good. (I didn’t have anywhere else to put this but: here’s a fascinating story on how bariatric surgeries are more effective than Ozempic.)
AI mermaids emerge from waves. AI Karens snap at AI Black women. AI police step in to arrest anyone they can. AI takes your pictures and guesses what will happen next. AI slices metal and glass that fascinate and confuse. AI butter spreads diamonds and glass over bread. AI food feeds itself pieces of itself. AI mukbangers eat lava and glass for fun. “2018: real or cake,” goes the trending TikTok comment. “2025: real or AI”
The past few weeks have seen a strange — but inevitable — evolution of AI media, raising concerns less about the content itself but more about what reality is and isn’t given the quick spread of these videos on TikTok and Twitter, which is underscored by ideas like AI Blackface emerging, AI companions evolving, and AI parents born of real parents. “You're doing beautifully, my love, just by being here,” ChatGPT messages back a man in a now viral post. “Thanks for taking accountability,” Kim Kardashian writes to ChatGPT. “That's huge in my book.” The crowd at the UCLA graduation goes wild as a student brags and shows off their ChatGPT use to thousands. Rea life increasingly has become imaginary — and what could go wrong? This we wonder as tech companies push for a ten year ban on states regulating the technology. Then there’s the concerning new MIT study that found otherwise competent writers who wrote essays via ChatGPT experience a weakening in “neural connections that help you in accessing information, the memory of facts, and the ability to be resilient.” In these times of empathy droughts and our summer of chaos, there’s no escape from reality no matter how outrageous the media, no matter how hard the dopamine hit, as the digital/media spaces we occupy are suffocating and confusing, inundated not only with slop but by noisy (mis)information. “Trying to access verifiable and accurate information on the internet at the moment is as difficult as it’s ever been,” tech journalist David Gilbert told PBS this week, reflecting on how classic disinformation paired with AI disinformation turned an already muddy landscape regarding current protests and politics into silt. “People just don’t pay that much attention anymore. People want to be the first person to share it.”
If this is one half of the equation (which also includes, um, WWIII), what might the opposite be? It could be Labubus and blind bags, a descent into consumerism, but it could also be nonfiction and true crime. But that seems unlikely given all of the internet has become reality television. I posit that it will be fiction written by people as it offers the now rare brain scratching sensations of learning, discovery, and puzzle solving. If the state of the world is a constant, confusing, noisy gaslighting that leaves us questioning reality then the obvious solution is going beyond do not disturb, stepping away from the streaming world and the flatness of timelines: the future learning from the past. The first blip I got of this was in April during my conversation with , who explained that the self-reflective, reality blurring of autofiction is out. “We need to think out of the box,” Saveria said. “Without fiction, we can’t think much further. If all we do is talk about ourselves, it’s going to be so boring in ten years.” Naturally, she was connecting books to fashion, which is increasingly occupying such a space given Margiela and Robert Wun. “There is fantasy in the brand,” Dries Van Noten’s new creative director Julian Klausner explained yesterday in FT, but there is also “a very complete wardrobe.” Ramdane Touhami’s very 2020s brand Buly is a meditation around fantasy, whimsy, and romance, as best expressed by a work like The Beauty of Time Travel, (which pointed out days ago). “I like playing the villain because, in my day-to-day life…I’m a fucking trans woman,” Jinx Monsoon explained. “When I’m playing the villain, I’m the one in fucking charge.” Embracing imagination, adoring human curiosity: there is a power to that in these powerless times.
Looking over the most recent fiction translation list emphasizes this idea as many of the short and longlisted items are speculative. Over lunch recently with my friend Rafa (), the subject came up regarding editors wanting “literary monster” books, which Rafa connected as selling escapism. No wonder science fiction and fantasy have seen big sales as of late! (Compare that then to a trendy space like memoir which requires you to experience and hold someone else’s trauma, as my friend wisely observed over drinks. That seems increasingly less appealing.) We also know that reading is on the rise in the young girls and gays category which is mirrored in data from Spotify, which I was able to grab while at an audiobook event: since launching in 2023, in fiction and nonfiction, the brand’s catalogue of English-language works has nearly tripled to more than 400,000 titles while listeners and listening hours has increased 30% and 35% year-over-year, respectively, in the US, UK, and Australia.
“The contemporary writer is a little bit overwhelmed by visual culture,” noted of this need for fiction now at a reading I attended recently, when someone asked about this specific subject. “Paper and the privacy of a book and one human being holding a thing and reading it with their mind and with their kind of internal voice is a very different experience than watching something.” Nicola Dinan, at a reading for Spotify I attended this week with (hence being able to get the above stat), spoke on the subject too in revealing that her next novel will be a departure from queer subjects and an entry into the speculative. “We're often reading books about a very specific set of circumstances which often don't mirror our own and yet find something which feels more universal that we can relate to,” Nicola said. “I really hold that in mind when I write, even though I'm looking at these very specific circumstances in my work, that I'm probably asking questions that relate to more universal anxieties that people my age are experiencing, living in the time we're living in now.”
And that’s exactly it: the cure for our techno-political nightmares is using your brain to escape into the universal instead of physically disappearing from these times marked by ever intersectional disasters. AI will ruin so much, should we let it, but we can always imagine a better world by writing and reading through it, by turning to fantasy and romance, participating in this timeless human tradition of quietude and intimacy. In a world where one can have anything and everything, where we are glutted by too much and assaulted by brands demanding our participation, some of the best experiences are to be had in your head — and in your head alone. Fiction as a salve to these unreal times is a beautiful and deeply human solution. Hold tight to that and perhaps meditatie on this snippet from Solvej Balle’s speculative On the Calculation of Volume I —
This is a world I know and I am ready. To leap. To grab hold of a sudden change. Or ready to dive, I think. Why does it have to be a leap? Maybe I should be getting ready to hold my breath.
How I’m Fixing My Broken Attention Span
Looking for more proof of the above phenomena? This recent story by Rebecca Jennings seeks to solve this problem — and much of it has to do with reading.
A White Nationalist Won Him an Award
This story will make you crosseyed, as a University of Florida law student (From LA!!) won a top award for a thesis that was centered on a very racist concept. Insane.
The 100 Best Movies of the 2020s (So Far)
This incredible list made me realize I am way behind on movie watching in the 2020s.
Is Food Really Better in Europe?
New York has been on a tear for a few months dispelling European myths and propaganda that Americans (Like myself!) fall for. The piece dismantles the leftist idea that food in the EU is better while also revealing that this idea is now a right wing, MAHA talking point. Bloop!!
Pompidou moves in as Grand Palais reopens
I didn’t realize the Pompidou was relocating during its five year reconstruction plan. What a collab!
Belgian Nonprofit Helps Home Residents Hit Clubs
Obsessed with this, which dovetails into aging raver culture as we will hear more and more about that this decade. We need a similar nonprofit to get young people into the clubs tho lol
Sabrina Is Under Fire. Tell It to Carly.
I’m exhausted by the Sabrina discourse, which we got into bigly last week. One thing I missed that Rolling Stone so wisely connected was that Carly Simon — the daughter of a feminist civil rights activist — released a similarly taboo album cover in the seventies and got similar backlash. This also points out something obvious: Sabrina is the new Carly. Listen to “Why” (An all timer!!) and then listen to “Espresso” and you’ll hear the sonic connections.
SOPHIE - OOH (Official Stream)
SOPHIE - GET HIGHER (Official Stream)
This may be a theme of our lifetime but SOPHIE (“SOPHIE”) dropped two new songs for PRODUCT’s ten year re-release. “OOH” is perfect and “GET HIGHER” is great — but sharp ears will recall the song from her Boiler Room set in 2014. What’s next? “Take Me To Dubai”? “Friendzone”? One of the countless others?
So much of my career has been spent creating for brands without my name attached, where credit is hidden behind the scrim of business mechanics or under the hood of a larger creative vehicle. All the Tweets I made for brands, all the TV segments I produced, all the whitepapers and scripts and “creative thinking” I’ve given over the years in an economic exchange that converts my ideas and my time and my life into cash that is then packaged and sold worldwide. I’ve signed a lot of my best thinking away to NDAs and other legal agreements because that’s what it means to be a creative creative: survival depends on your interacting with the machine, to allow it to squeeze you so it can sell your juice under its name. Ask Don Draper! As we discussed a year ago, much of the malaise and frustrations about the job market is that everyone’s so creative but only handfuls are able to get paid to be creative. And for those getting paid? Most are locked in via legal paperwork (and scarcity mindset), reflecting a post-2010s creative economy on Ozempic.
I’ve been thinking about this as we hit a century of “big media” at work, which crashes into the larger (tech) culture landscape cannibalizing life for profit, from customers bagging their own groceries to social sites having a stake in your posts. The thought about this so-called Generation NDA first popped up in talking to , when she appeared on 🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿 “So much of my work is confidential,” she explained, noting she doesn’t “really have that much to show” for her career that isn’t via private link or insider access. I sent Anu, a trend strategist in Brooklyn who also runs , a message to get more thoughts on the matter. “There’s a general understanding in these industries that any strategic and creative work produced while working in-house is owned by the employer,” she says. “Unlike art directors or copywriters whose final work ends up in the public sphere, my work as a brand strategist and trend forecaster has always had a behind-the-scenes remit, with nearly everything I produce labeled ‘for internal use only.’” She says some of her best works exist in a “liminal shadow space,” piled atop a decade of “hundreds of strategy decks and trend reports that I cannot share publicly.” “This is why I started my Substack,” she says, “to showcase my thinking independently from my employer,” which brings us to the social-media–as-resumé phenomena, where everyone online is expressing labor — or doing a side-gig as a salve to all the corporate walls that take one’s work or, in ways, are too boring to talk about. Is this NDA approach shifting? In ways, as Anu sees a lot of these conversations happening on LinkedIn and Substack now, which I can attest to too (and perhaps ties to the trend of trend forecasting).
But, as the now iconic New York 2024 feature on the rise of NDAs explained, in 2025 the need for aggressive paperwork is perhaps a needless power play — or an expression of the general precarity of work felt across generations. I asked a former colleague, director and producer Ben Pluimer, for his take on the matter. He’s encountered this while working on ad agency pitches that required signing to get info on specific creative or products or campaigns. “A lot of it is 'You made me sign an NDA for that??' type things,” he says, which does ultimately open the door to specific PR goals, enabling “the client’s true thoughts on the problem and the issue,” a brief piercing of the veil that shows just how imperfect brands really are. , chief creative officer and co-founder of design firm , notes for the individual that “it’s not fair that brands and organizations want to lock in creatives” given the uncertainty of the industry. “I respect NDAs, non-competes, and client confidentiality,” he says. “Over the years, I’ve worked on epic and sensitive projects. That said, when you're known for doing a particular type of work like we do, you need the freedom to collaborate with multiple brands, especially when competitor lists are so broad.” His advice on dealing with this: one brand — okay; two brands — a conflict; multiple brands — you’re a specialist.
As much as creative work seems so settled and polished from the outside, the NDAs of it all reflects just how fragile the creative ecosystem is, that ideas can “be stolen” — and that a creative’s greatest asset isn’t really the expression but the ideas. of HEY SIS WORLD — who I met years ago via her animation work which has since shifted into the general art/creative direction/modeling/hosting/podcasting multi-hyphenate — has been juggling this not only as an artist but as a creative coach too. It’s a constant question of “Am I worth it?” when faced with the question of you versus the machine. “On the surface NDAs are not inherently 'bad' in traditional work-for-pay situations where you're trying to pay the bills regardless of your name being on it, but as soon as you care about your intellectual property it’s time to slow down and read the fine print,” Kristel says. “I worked for big brands that last minute trashed and stashed my ideas only to be reworked by other creatives and I’ve learned to accept that that is the risk you take in sharing your IP with others, so It’s also my bad.” She has since learned to take more ownership, to ensure she has the freedom to sell a concept — and brag about it. “Celeb or not, an NDA is like co-parenting that requires both parties/ parents to feel safe and secure about pouring energy into exploring a new baby project,” she adds. “As a creative coach, I’ve witnessed the most successful artists know when to say NO to an NDA relationship that blatantly states they're keeping their ideas hostage.”
Ultimately the NDA, the non-compete, and the confidentiality structure is a thief of the joy in making: it means creations and ideas are divorced from feeling, from reflecting life, flattened to be business efficient so that a department can hit its Q3 H2 ROI KPIs — or whatever. It’s unsurprising that all the aforementioned creatives (and myself) have taken to some other venue to express themselves because working for “the man” is just only part of the creative equation. Mark Catangui, a former colleague who now does social media marketing for Dropout, put the feeling best: “I remember feeling like, ‘Wow!!!!1 My ideas are on display on an account with over 20M+ followers,’ or like ‘Working with celebrities!!!!!! Very cool.’ But I felt like a cog in the wheel — nothing was really stimulating me as a ‘creative’ when everything hinged on the ask from corporate.” The lesson, as Mark says, is to understand ownership, drawing lines of when to show up as You™ versus Work You™, as the word “creative” is increasingly akin to “corporate.”
“I want my ideas to be out there,” Mark says. “I want things I produce to be perceived, to be loved, to be known. I don’t want my ideas to be diluted by others, I want control over them.” A winning idea that maybe one day we’ll all taste the glory of.
As I got some very thoughtful responses to this prompt on the subject, read select extended responses here.
“when my roommate texts me”
“they were so close”
“Bieber came out as transfem”
“this comment is so”
“straight male slang”
"no attack tonight"
A few gay and queer posts because it is STILL PRIDE MONTH 😤
“it’s not clocking to you”
“You’re not getting it”
“It’s not clocking”
“It’s not clocking”
“IS IT NOT CLOCKING TO YOU”
Justin Bieber’s slang soup really does represent how internet culture is a language that only some can speak — and clearly he cannot. Hence, this great cringe meme and audio thanks to someone will have the nastiest divorce ever. (Speaking of slang soup, the Minionese language trend has finally taken off. Banana blessings!)
“a sweet teenybopper”
The best — and maybe only — take on Addison Rae.
“looks really good”
My dad would see this shity Trump picture on the back of a truck and shed a tear.
“i hate couples that door dash”
This really got me thinking. The little curses we place on each other every day!
“Ozzy Osbourne had 2 bottles of vodka”
This actually made me feel a lot better about my health, especially as I’ve spent the last ten days being quite horrible to my body in London.
“what if he had”
More and more, I feel like I am going to become Willem Dafoe.
“LOOKS HORRENDOUS”
Enjoy the sight of the rare labussy.
“hasn’t held up well”
Stream “Who Let The Dogs Out (Demons From Hell Remix”!!!
And, finally, my thoughts on WWIII.
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What a joy to spend time with you in London! Until next time ☺️