only MY TRUTH matters

On living in a post-truth world and why so many non-American entities are doing American culture better ("better") than America.

Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick

Jan 11, 2026

The Trend Report™ is ran by one lil cute person. Upgrade to paid and learn about ads here 😘

🌴Are you in Los Angeles? I am!! And tonight I’m hosting a Trend Report Live™ in Silver Lake at 7:30PM, if you’re around. It’s free! Details here!! I’m also doing a lil hang in Mid-City on Thursday if you wanna swing by: details here. I’m here through next Friday, in case you want to set a separate meeting, etc.
🗣️ I was in an ABC Australia story! Shout out to Brigid Delaney for asking me about the “vibe shift,” which I am fairly positive about despite the current moment being not-great. Read it here!
🍎 NYC! I’ll be in town next week for two weeks!! I’m doing a meet-up on January 22 in Brooklyn (Details here!!) and will be hosting a live 🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿 podcast on January 27, with details coming soon. Drop a line if you wanna meet up!

Family, neighbors mourn woman shot by ICE
“Another tragedy in Minneapolis”
“We’re a third world country”
2 people shot by Border Patrol in Portland
Two U.S. citizens detained by ICE in Salisbury

It feels like the entire ICE situation is maybe reaching a fever pitch, even if that doesn’t mean Trump and the gestapo will stop “now.” It’s a very sour tempo to maintain in a midterm year — and it’s going to break the movement.

Abduction of Venezuela’s Maduro illegal
Venezuela frees fewer than 1% of prisoners
Why Donald Trump Wants Greenland
“This is amateurish behavior”
“We are already claimed”
“your colonial fantasy just a strip mall”

Then there’s this. What else is there to say? Temu ass Dubya imperialist goon. Two other things: first, the Trump/Maduro thing has launched a fascinating AI slop overlap based in “gangsta” culture, positing a Kirkquel, while the Greenland situation underlines an item directly below, that Europe’s (Waning.) power is a huge latter 2020s concern.

Forecasting the world in 2026
Semafor Tech’s predictions for 2026
The 10 Themes That Will Define Fashion
The World Ahead 2026
Businessweek’s 2026 Prediction Market
2026 Stocks to Watch

We’re in the throes of forecasts, which is such a lovely time of year. Lots of eyes on the AI bubble and European political power! What a time!! (Also: the most fascinating thing is in the “stocks to watch,” no traditional AI company is on there — but Reddit is. That says a lot!)

A perfectly timed bet on Maduro
Polymarket Won’t Pay on Venezuela
“infinite money glitch”
“society is over”

I know I wrote about this a few weeks back but the “predictions” (Gambling.) market is going to have its biggest year ever this year, as the betting-on-everything — Like an invasion of Venezuela! — is raising eyebrows. Place your bets on this culture yesterday.

The world has a new biggest city

It’s Jakarta. This whole story — and list of biggest cities — is an illuminating look at where the most people actually are. This will be the storyline of this century: power shifting from the west to east, from north to south. It also reveals how housing issues are a global issue!!

Flu surges across U.S.
“a ton of influenza right now”

I am very worried about being in NYC amidst all this flu. Please wear masks and always get your vaccines!!!!!!

There’s a story my aunt mentions every so often that came up during the holidays. It’s from almost a decade ago, from Trump 1.0. My octogenarian grandmother had gotten swept up in a Fox hurricane, which meant she was repeating nonsense that was deepened by a now-common but troubling relationship (Addiction.) to Facebook. When my aunt confronted her about a story that was very not-true, she said this in response: “It may not be true, but it’s my truth.”

This is obviously a symptom of the late 2010s hullabaloo around the concept of “fake news” which, at the time, was a cudgely concept intended to kneecap progressive and “Democrat” information. And the tactic worked: a decade later, trust in news is at an all time low due to the reasons Trump believed, due to tech, and due to the general too-much-information nature of culture now. Death by the same typewriter that wrote the first story! No wonder journalists have cited this as a key concern in the past few weeks.

While all this is true and obvious, something that has been on my mind in the weeks away from the internet and experiencing (American) life through few filters is that our relationship to truth has become so very fuzzy: we really are living in a post-truth world for the exact reasons you think and maybe for some reasons you don’t. The thing that has struck me most is that, despite the fires and despite the ICE raids and the fall of Hollywood and the general techno-political malaise of these times, Southern California has been remarkably sunny in spirit, or at least in small interactions. It’s true that this is the region’s resting state but, despite stories of houses burning down and long term unemployment and local loved ones pivoting to MAGA and the weight of this political moment, there is much tension against what the black mirror focuses on, revealing how performative said mirror can trend toward (or how it tends to zoom in, stretch, and toy with reality). This dissonance, that optimism can exist alongside adversity, is a small example of how two truths can be carried and intertwined, making multiple realities true: hyperbole can be realism. Reality television can be life, something we meditated on at the top of December.

This is fed by two items, both of which are poor bedfellows. The first is a very left wing post-truth behavior that isn’t treated as such. A few years back, in the literary world, memoirists and writing teachers championed the idea of “emotional truth,” that something like memoir doesn’t have to be factual as a story has to be most true to one’s feelings. This feds into ideas like autofiction — fiction that blurs an author and the real world’s truth with the unreal, made famous by authors like Sigrid Nunez and Karl Knausberg — which has evolved in recent years to people discussing how much fiction one wants in nonfiction, how to much we want to juggle facts from feelings. This ties into a bigger picture of wider cultural self-reflection that sees self-narration go beyond writing: the prevalence of therapy, therapy speak, and similar “bean soup” concepts. Therapy is good and it’s great that we’re all caring for ourselves and others but, in some ways we’ve all experienced, the therapizing of culture has been weaponized to minimize the feelings of others by titling or classifying or excusing bad acting. “That’s just a lil neurospiciness,” someone says, applying a small truth to wipe away or negate the feelings and actions of another. This invites in conversations around Elon Musk and Kanye West and Gregg Wallace have their bad acting excused due to fuzzy relationships with autism. And who are we to question that? If many of us are journeying to better understand ourselves in similar ways? It’s complicated. Just ask Elizabeth Warren and her Indigenous DNA!

The other obvious is our timeliness. When platforms shifted from follower-based chronological feeds to algorithmic deliveries, time — And truth. — stopped mattering. A post or a song or an idea from one hundred years ago or one day ago is as present as something happening today or tomorrow or never: years into the mix of FYP and “For You” and non-chronology, the “new” is at constant war with the whole of human history. This is my Roman empire! Welcome back, indie sleaze. Cue the conversations about the “death of trends” as just as many trends rose and fell at the same time: every take matters as no take matters. This space hasn’t really been problematic until now, where the AI of it all is priming us for a truthpocalyspe: 20% of videos shown to new YouTube users are AI slop; a third of internet traffic is bots; an AI cover of a Taylor Swift song has entered the Brazilian Top 50; Sora videos have made video platforms a minefield of fake content as Grok has been undressing underage persons. A Reddit post recently went viral for whistleblowing the food delivery app business practices — but it was AI-generated. Two months ago, Fox News broadcast a fake video to prove a racist point on food stamps. “I have had the strangest experience reading this: I assume it’s all fake/bots,” OpenAI’s Sam Altman observed months ago, that there’s a dissonance of digital life as it relates to truth. “Platforms like Instagram will do good work identifying AI content, but they’ll get worse at it over time as Al gets better,” Instagram’s Adam Mosseri confessed at the end of the year. “It will be more practical to fingerprint real media than fake media.” Very reassuring, considering if these dudes are having trouble that most normies don’t stand a chance. This all gets at AI bubbles colliding with taste and ideologies (“Why are women using AI less?”; “do you have the courage to hate slop consumers?”) but ultimately are issues of truth, of who is willing or interested in the real versus who is content to continue surfing the unreal as AI intensifies the collapse of trust.

“How do you know that you’re right?” CNN’s Whitney Wild confronted right wing creator Nick Shirley ten days ago, about his viral racist daycare conspiracy. “How do I know that they’re true?” he replied. “Well, we showed you guys what was happening, and then you guys can go ahead and make your own analysis.” Or, in other words: “It may not be true, but it’s my truth,” as my grandmother said ten years ago. What matters in these times is your truth, even if it’s false: if it feels good to you, that makes it “right” then. Such is the context of the now, where everything is unreal but real, deathly urgent and deeply unimportant. All or nothing yet both.

‘Marty Supreme’ Beats ‘Anaconda,’ ‘Avatar 3’
How Variety Covered Sinners vs. Marty Supreme
“calling out variety for the hit piece they wrote on sinners”
“A Make-A-Wish kid”
“Variety faces backlash over their reporting of Christy”

I am not dumb enough to believe that Marty Supreme was an actual hit, nor that Hollywood as a media empire backed by the tech world and soft power figures like the Kardashians are propping up this narrative. That said, I’m also not foolish enough to think Sinners was all that great. Interesting? Of course! But a perfect film? PSSSH. Beautiful, well acted, but five films in one that was okay when combined as such. But I also will never watch Marty Supreme ever so clearly we have a winner! Take it away, Joyce Carol Oates!! (Not to be missed: the success of The Housemaid, which is the real holiday success story.)

When A.I. Took My Job, I Bought a Chain Saw
I Can’t Afford A House. Why Don’t I Be Gorgeous?

Stories that are very much of-a-kind, which feel like responses to the culture of truth collapse. What do we call it? Cope core? Smileism? Modernity necrosis? You tell me!

Why All My Friends Are Leaving Los Angeles

Stories like this are surely a sign of what the LA vibe is, but it’s also very much New Yorkers — and other anti-LA people, those on the inside and out who have been salivating to cut the city down — exposing their lack of West coast literacy. It’s like Caleb Hearon said of such chatter, lightly abbreviated: “Losers from the rest of the country move out here, project their hopes and dreams, with no talent and work ethic, onto this city and — when it doesn’t work out — they leave here and go, “That place is disgusting.’”

Sprinkles founder mourns company shutdown
America’s Test Kitchen Buying Recipe Site Food52

These aren’t related but they feel of-a-kind, representing the end of a type of food trend and food media era from the 2010s. What’s next though? (Similarly — and of very different circumstances and pressures — is the closing of the Center for Public Broadcasting. That is very sad. What it means for PBS and NPR is to be seen.)

For a Healthy Brain, Don’t Skip Leg Day
“Exercise just might be the best thing for your brain”
“consider resistance training”

There were so many stories about brain health and exercise over the past few weeks. Pick up them weights and not them wigs, ladies!

I have a theory that I do and don’t like, an issue of global economics that is assisted by the whole of the Internet being America’s internet and every city feeling the same: the best of America no longer happens in America, as the world has copied the cultural playbook in ways that should happen in America but no longer seems to happen. This sounds crazy but walk with me through a few examples.

A show like Heated Rivalry could never have happened in America’s Hollywood. Why? There are too many strikes against it: it’s a gay (Strike!) hockey (Strike!) show that no one saw coming as it has no name talent (Strike!) and came from no name creators (Strike!) all tied to a somewhat silly book (Strike!). The rise of Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams — the show’s irresistible and so incredibly normal stars — exist in a Hollywood reality that no longer exists in the American Hollywood system, a system now fed by pay-to-play rich kids and nepo babies that is governed by a technocracy that is increasingly being poisoned by right wing politics. And yet! Such a show and such an “overnight success” from a show no one in America would greenlit is a success for exactly that reason: another country — Canada! — took the risk on it, nurturing it in a siloed environment. Such a show and such a hit used to happen three or four times a year. But now? Two or three times a decade, all because the very American industry of entertainment no longer functions as it should within the country. See also: Traitors, Squid Game, Baby Reindeer, etc.
The “world’s tallest, fastest and longest” coaster opened at a new Six Flags — in Saudi Arabia. The Qiddiya City outpost of the amusement park boasts the world’s tallest pendulum ride, the tallest tilt coaster, the tallest free-standing shot tower, and tallest inverted coaster. Videos of these attractions are gaining some speed but are fascinating as a cultural object considering the first ever Six Flags in Bowie, Maryland closed last year after fifty years (alongside a park in California). The American company is going through myriad challenges and is trying to “distance” itself from the Middle Eastern behemoth by calling it a “theme park” instead of an “amusement park.” Still: the brand’s best and newest Six Flags exists far outside of its home territory. (As we know, this also plays into the problematic and maddening larger American cultural play by a place like Saudi Arabia, which is building the midwest in the Middle East as it hosts comedy shows and film festivals, art fairs and Mr. Beast, while buying up one of the top gaming companies while holding hands with the Trump family.)
This one is a bit tenuous but I think it fits, while not new: an earfeeder post from the summer about the neoperro genre got a lot of attention last week as it tied the genre to Rosalía’s 2022 Motomami. This is true and right, but it kicks up a larger cultural conversation that has dogged the North American latin population: reggaeton is of a specific (Puerto Rican) Caribbean context that has been emulated and “praised” by European purveyors from Rosalía to Bad Gyal. These knotty colonial politics have long been debated, coming to a head in 2023 when the Latin Grammys were held in Spain. None of this technically matters (“Can a white guy rap?”), but it wanders a similar line of freedom and legitimacy in certain types of music and cultures only being “acceptable” when repackaged by Europeans. This directly ties to another large cultural conversation that is the same idea by another name: the rise of Black UK actors playing Black Americans versus Black American actors playing Black Americans.

We could continue (Americans going to see concerts in foreign countries! Americans getting healthcare in foreign countries! Americans raising kids in foreign countries!) but I assume you get what’s going on: so many of the world’s “richest” cultural products are American but Americans themselves are being boxed out of or denied the experience, if not the fruits of the cultural labor they’ve sown. This isn’t to say the answer is go-to-those-places because, as someone who has done that, the grass isn’t always that green once the buzz wears off: this is what kneecapping at an economic and cultural level looks like while accepting that this is just “the way things are.” Are the systems hard to fight? Yes. But is it easier to resign, buying Beyoncé tickets in Mexico versus working to reform Ticketmaster? Of course! Such is the opportunity that foreign entities are seeing, particularly Saudi Arabia: if Americans are so wont to sell themselves and their cultures out due to laziness or an obsession with comfort, why not sell them back their own creations while encouraging an unwillingness to fix their problems? Why not propel the idea that they’re failing? Why not pick at their wounds while offering them solutions that feel real but help no one else but them? That’s what all this says, which is and isn’t political, but makes very real the technological problems of everyone watching Americans on the big and small televisions, wanting the same things, then manufacturing the same creations to sell back to them. It’s a fascinating dynamic, one that will continue to be profitable as long as enough people agree that they live in a shithole that they don’t care to repair.

“every scene in stranger things”
“Will: im gay”
“Will: I’m ghey”
“been laughing at this”
“it’s smelly Willie”
“Ms juicy x stranger things”
“#abbyleemiller”

I do not care about Stranger Things, but these memes were a delicious fitting for the end of this tech-Hollywood whatever.

“Stay happy!”
“first person in the UK”
“first person to cuss out ICE”
“topher’s 2025 haul”
“Micoplastics in your blood?”
“I love my chungus grandkids”
“send gma some drinks”

Best post-holiday content. The last one, of a grandma drinking Monster from a spoon, is maybe one of the greatest posts ever made.

“Glasses that reveal true character”
“oddly racist card trick”
“deepest desire”
“being Chinese”
“Send this to the most Chinese person”

Two fascinating trends that have been growing, the “you met me in a very Chinese point of my life” joke and literal Chinese cultural trend lusting. It’s amazing, and a good stress test for if some 2016 sensitivity police will have a shit fit over this.