WE'LL NEVER BE ROYALS
Sorry, you ain't rich — but our culture of consumption wants you to feel like you are. Plus, new creative (and meme) movements that are protesting AI.
Love this newsletter? Then share it with those you love!
Some housekeeping before we get into things!
If anyone in Paris wants to meet up, I’ll be in town through April 30. Plus! Bobby Aaron Solomon and I are hosting drinks early evening April 27!
This week’s🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿 had Nicolas Cevallos join Ben Dietz and I to talk about lots of fascinating subjects from the loss of children’s digital spaces to “fourth spaces” to anonymous digital spaces. Listen now on Spotify and YouTube!
If you’re in Barcelona on May 4, I’m hosting Trend Report Live™ — and I’d love to see you there! RSVP here.
Now…on with the show!
Trump reversed tariffs
U.S. Market Tumbles, China Tariff at Least 145%
China to Reduce Imports of Hollywood Films
The EU’s response to tariffs could be stinging
EU pauses retaliatory tariffs
Dems call for insider trading investigation
A mess. This chaos isn’t even strategic despite seeing online (And hearing from real people! With my own ears!!) that this is “part of a plan,” that “Trump is smarter than we think.” I hope the insider trading conversation actually amounts to something — but we know it’ll get nuked by the new powers that be. At least consumer sentiment is crashing out!
We asked 500 workers about tariffs
Trump wants manufacturing. That’s not easy
Making Louis Vuitton bags messy in Texas
“What are #tariffs supposed to accomplish?”
To the above: it’s important to understand that jobs “back in America” isn’t an issue of opening factories, as people say, but an issue of 1.) these jobs being automated and 2.) American workers not being worth the money. See the Louis Vuitton story for proof! This ties into what we’ll get into below: we Americans consider ourselves royals — and it will be the death of us/them.
House’s Requirement to Prove US Citizenship
U.S. sent 238 migrants to Salvadoran prison
White House floats deporting U.S. citizens
Judge allows Mahmoud Khalil's deportation
This week in the falling of the courts. A silver lining? The Supreme Court ruled that the legal immigrant wrongfully deported to El Salvador must be returned.
South Korea to hold presidential election
In a real country, you kick the wannabe coup president out.
Dozens Die in Floods Hitting Congo
Dominican Republic Nightclub Roof Collapse
Killing of trans woman sparks outrage in Colombia
A few tragedies that came across my desk. The murder of Sara Millerey González sadly fits into a (fascist) trend of extreme anti-trans hate crimes this year.
Elon Quits Livestream After Being Cyberbullied
Elon Is Annoying, Trump Officials Say
Did everyone see this? Making sure you did. Also: make sure to see James Adomian’s perfect impression and Caleb Hearon’s incredible read of him.
“It's the contemporary malaise, right?” the author C Pam Zhang said, explaining culture’s self-obsession in a recent talk. “I don't know if my grandmother wrestled so much with questions every single day about…Who am I? What is my identity? What do I want? I feel like she lived — Well. — to survive…Those questions weren't offered because you couldn't open up your phone and see one million other ways of living and one million other types of people to define yourself against.”
What Zhang is referring to is this constant self-care quest to “be our best selves” that is very distinctly now, where we’re stuck staring in the mirror trying to become perfect instead of trying to live. I have a theory for why: we’re dehumanizing ourselves. We’re turning ourselves into products. I’m calling this phenomena “bourgeois poisoning,” a side-effect of our getting everything for nothing, of our becoming disconnected from human reality as we eschew a life for commercialism, for consumption. The result is a mental breakdown, a quest for meaning. Overexaggerated human acts, food branding mattering more than taste, meetings paralyzed by analysis, people faking sponsorships, creators doing free labor for businesses, affiliate creators aspiring to be salespeople, misunderstanding advertising and brand creations for art, for love, as for anything other than a receipt: this is what happens when people become sponcon. These are side-effects of a human breakdown as keeping up with the joneses evolved into a manic disorder. It’s like people heard Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” a decade ago and thought she was talking about ad space, filling the void with shopping instead of others. Meanwhile, brands are fighting for audiences, trying to figure out how to court them by creating culture when they’re responsible for our confusing living life with constant advertising. Slogans as self. No wonder we’re going crazy!
This is the conclusion of the “always be optimizing” state of the 2010s evolving into outsourcing your life thanks to a convenience-based lifestyle, one that promises liberation by hiring half-hourly slaves when in fact you’re dehumanizing yourself and succumbing to the technostate. These are expressions of an illusion that “allows us to feel rich,” Tressie McMillan Cottom said recently in a New York Times opinion piece on closing the de minimis exemption loophole, which will see ultra cheap venues like Shein and Temu kneecapped. “It certainly allows us to feel more middle class than we actually are,” she said of current consumption. “A lot of Americans are going to feel much poorer much more quickly than they can handle emotionally.” No wonder, as she points out, that people protested in malls during Covid when they couldn’t shop, they couldn’t spend, they couldn’t be. “What happens to the million-plus people who are embedded deeply in these scam economies?” Jon Repetti asked on Twitter. “The rest of the world is subsidizing the American consumer lifestyle,” Somaya asked on TikTok, showing how our playacting at being rich divorced us from ourselves, that our comfort means the ruins of other cultures, other lands. “This is what you get in the last gasp of an economy,” Richard D. Wolff told Chris Hedges said of this week. “You get crazy stuff.”
Outside of the tariffs, this idea isn’t new but is just another spin of the consumption merry-go-round, where we stop and yell “Capitalism!” and call it a day — but let’s not be so lazy or so quick move on. “We weren't born having to shop this much,” Naomi Klein wrote for The Guardian in 2014, connecting the issue to climate change. “Late capitalism teaches us to create ourselves through our consumer choices: shopping is how we form our identities, find community and express ourselves.” This is the key to where we are: in this era of the (American) world, we see ourselves exclusively as consumers at the expense of normal human actions and interactions. I’m single because the apps don’t work! I have no friends because the apps don’t work! I can’t eat because the apps don’t work! This era of consumption is about becoming less human and seeing one’s ability to spend as a sign of humanity, thus enabling wasted resources and a general distance from the knowledge of how things are made. For example: few know how something like a shirt is made. Where do shirts come from? What resources go into them? How do they cost literally $5? Where will they go once you’re “done” with this item? These are simple questions that are lost on us as the tiny sugar cube of riches means nothing is real, nothing has worth, no one was involved in the making of anything. Things just happen.
As we realize that we have become blank bourgeois spaces, we then start a hunt for truth, for meaning — and that creates a gap for nefarious brands like nationalism and other political brain rots to enter. From self-help seeking turned Trump allyship to religious participation turned cult fanaticism, lost people are found by fascism, corralled into a brand that validates consumption, feeds ideas, offers points of purchase, and generates slot machine-style dopamine hits of intellectual piss. “The head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said he would like the agency to implement a system of trucks that rounds up immigrants for deportation in a system similar to how Amazon delivers packages around the US,” The Guardian shared this week. “If you want relatively nice people to accept and even endorse violence against others, you need to get them to stop seeing other humans as human at all,” misinformation researcher Abbie Richards shared on TikTok, invoking this tactic with dehumanization. Branding and business, the language and tools of consumerism, as the sweet stuff atop the shit of xenophobia, of neo-Nazism.
The revolution doesn’t have two day shipping. Our conveniences, these promises of riches paired with the disposability of everything in our lives, means nothing matters except these little feelings of power. People don’t matter, violence doesn’t matter, the destruction of the world doesn’t matter because your little tummy is full and you have enough things to swipe through: bourgeois poisoning to keep us all locked in place, little royals on our porcelain thrones as we become solipsistic nihilists, robbed of a life, of a culture. Maybe the tariffs will be good in that people will be forced to shop less, to really think about who they are and what they do, to consider that the powers that be will come for you too: people will have to work for what they want and for what they stand for. When you realize you’re not actually a king but a serf, the world changes. When you’re drugged by a fantasy? Nothing changes, nor do you want it to. Yet you are the one responsible for crumbling the world as you stare in the mirror, wondering what you can buy to be more like that one person you wish you were more alike.
Held Captive in His Room for Decades
Did I share this? Either way, it has been on the mind for weeks and we finally have a deeper dive into “what happened.” Awful stuff that Netflix will capitalize on.
We face a looming rice crisis
A fascinating story at the intersection of science, food, and our dying planet.
Dire wolf brought back from extinction
“This is Romulus and Remus”
Is the dire wolf back? Not exactly
They Didn't Make Dire Wolves
This doesn’t mean something until it does — but it does mean the girls are fighting! Call me when they bring dodos back and keep the dinosaur shit to yourself.
HorsegiirL: How She Went from the Farm to Coachella
Ariana, what are you doing here in People magazine??
MrBeast at pyramids? Egyptologists say it’s good
A funny “response” to the Mr. Beast pyramid video. But, as the story shows, Mr. Beast playing “naive” about his access was a lie for his audience. Obvi!!
Will AI become God? Wrong question.
I hate AI and this story is very smart, based in the philosophy and ethics of it all. “They’re going to be falling in love with something from Google or Meta” is a great quote regarding how people are relating to and literally lusting after AI “people.” Don’t fall for this shit!!
Sabrina Carpenter Has Taken Over Fortnite
“I hope she ruins everything”
“the refusal to kill”
“girlhood”
“THIS JUNO POSITION”
I loved every single Sabrina Carpenter in Fortnite post. I hope the gay who thought of this gets a raise but I know they won’t!
Perth label Craigie Knowes shared a reminder this week of a show they have in May: a flyer featuring a tight sans serif font and Craigie’s jazzy snail mascot, who looks like he’s ready to slide into the club. Designed by Guillaume de Ubéda, its smudgy as if letterpressed, marks of the stamping and prints of the printer included in this digital (and potentially digitally printed) art. Meanwhile, in Barcelona, the club-cum-label Maricas has long boasted a style that features sans serif fonts and slightly blurred or hand-drawn art. The art for their recent mix with Kim Ann Foxman is a good example, where Gina Gausch’s designs are pushed to capture a house sound via anthropomorphized boot.
These are cute designs, of a specific culture and of a specific moment, very contemporary yet of-a-kind. What’s interesting is that they’re popping up in these times, in this cultural economy: this style exists in a post-A24 merch, post-Online Ceramics, post-Graza space, making the more 1970s reference of the aforementioned feel more contemporary and definitely more textured. It’s also very offline feeling and, in ways, minimal. In a time of the maximalist digital hand, in a time where you can have everything, these visual expressions (made digitally) are about the hand and the body, representing events that you have-to-be-there for and use your body to participate in. If you miss the Craigie show, you missed out. If you miss the next Maricas show? Too bad. “Put the phone down and get to the club,” they say. Or, as we see with this Louna Humbert design for Buttes Snack Bar, “Close your computer and eat with real people.” Or, as we see with Thomas Euyang’s designs for The Hobbyist, “Use your free time offline instead of on.” Or, as we see with Séptimo’s design for Mesa Lobo, “Carve your initials into a table instead of carving away your life in front of a screen.” These are all saying the same thing.
We’re in a moment where creativity and creative expression is becoming rebellious in ways that aren’t “that” rebellious: the work is pushing against over-technologic means less in form but in ideology. These are works that give a distinct middle finger to AI and other creative mainstreaming forces, things that promise “Anyone can be a creative with technology!” when these tools are robbing creatives of work and non-creatives of creative development: you are allowing part of yourself to become colonized by the black hole that is our great technoshit now. These designs are a part of a conscious-or-not long game push to not only get offline but to reject technology’s dehumanization as coal powered AI and AI lawyers attempt to break through, ruining our lives. Even the memes this week are protesting this too: the very stupid AI starter pack/action figure trend — which Real Simple described as “fun, free, and super easy” (To who? The mentally devoid?) — has taken over Instagram and LinkedIn but also inspired the #StarterPackNoAI trend where creatives share their own starter packs made in their style, by their own hand; on Twitter, because of the constant stream of AI videos and art and general generation, the trend of “Actual Imagination” is starting to take off, where people share things “made with AI” but it’s made by their own means, from photography to jokes/memes to stances by creators. You could say this is weird until you see ads for making AI girlfriends and realize that, yes, some people are being lured by such bait to bate off.
We see this too as AI and digital aesthetics are increasingly becoming a language of fascist forces, illustrating that dehumanizing immigrants and destroying the environment also includes bombing the entire creative universe: AI is anti-human. No wonder it aligns with those trying to exterminate types-of-people! Technology, as we’ve come to know it, is no liberator but an increasingly tighter shackle. “This and yap” was cute but no one wants to yap online anymore. We know where this state of AI and the internet are going — and we don’t want to go any further. This and never opening Microsoft Outlook, we say. This and no job, we say. This and never going back to fucking work, we say. This and no stress, we say.
“is like Drake”
“Tanks the market”
“Hawk Tuah hasn’t said”
“I love tariffs”
“roast the US”
Tariff sillies, which you can get more of here.
“hear me out —”
By far the best White Lotus dreamcast.
“influencer business is over”
This post about Gwenyth Paltrow has been a brain worm.
5 Adults vs 1 Secret Baby
I only watched clips from this YouTube (??) video where people have to guess which voice is a real baby and…y’all I was crying laughing at this. This is so fucking funny.
“me after two plates of Mexican”
“Did I miss”
This week on straight Twitter, there was an orgy where they ate Mexican food. I’m kind of obsessed with the original video by “Evethecuckodress,” which is like a Millennial day in the life at a suburban sex party. It feels like a relic from a 1990s internet. So pure. So filthy. So perfect. See also: realistic furries.
“shit should be illegal”
Me @ anyone who says they like this season of Drag Race — or Suzie Toot!
“Slam Frank”
“Opening number”
“Annie’s embracing of Latinx roots”
I am begging you to watch these songs from a hypothetical-but-maybe-real Anne Frank afro-Latin hip hop musical. I am losing my mind over this.
“Do I have the floor”
I have been dying at this compilation of Detroit Councilman Eric Mays all week, which offered the source of so many iconic audios. I’M NOT PLAYING ON MY PHONE IM TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS 😤
And, finally, the typical response that people have when reading The Trend Report™.
Subscribe to The Fox Is Black and gift a paid subscription today.
Enjoy Europe!!!