where are the good kids :(
Seeking to understand the culture of Gen Alpha misbehavior and defining a way of dressing that may come to represent
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Trump signs bill ending longest shutdown
The shutdown is over, with no winners
What Democrats say they won
What If the Shutdown Actually Hurt Republicans?
This annoying drama came to an end and many Democrats murmured it was a “win” when it clearly wasn’t. (Ahem, Hakeem and Chuck.) The story about this “hurting” Republicans is interesting though.
Epstein: Trump ‘knew about the girls’
Epstein advised Bannon
“White House is holding a crisis meeting”
“gotta read the emails for yourself”
I mean…this is wild! But again: this doesn’t mean something until it means something. Until that man is out of office or behind bars, until Democrats or politicians in general or we act upon this, it’s noise. But is it entertaining? Absolutely! The drama of it all. (If you want to stare into the leftist brain rot here, enjoy the theory that Trump went down on Clinton, which has inspired a lot of great memes and posts.)
BBC boss resigns over Trump doc
BBC Apologizes to Trump, Declines Compensation
This BBC news drama is interesting, in that it exports 60 Minutes’ woes as Trump helps advance a right wing global media takeover by giving this gift to domestic conservatives. Here’s a side-by-side look at a clip in question, which is an egregious jump cut (but tame compared to — um — Fox using AI slop). Financial Times’ take on this was right on: shame on the BBC board for not standing up to Trump, falling in line to cave to him.
Court Denies to Revisit Same-Sex Marriage
Good things can and do happen!!!
Mexico takes action after president publicly groped
When a president is groped, no woman can feel safe
A lot of the world seemed to miss this — and it’s awful. I refuse to watch the video and, as many have observed, such a situation highlights the ongoing mistreatment of women, in Mexico and worldwide. Despicable. See also: Michelle Obama offering a dose of reality when it comes to an American woman being president 😭
Arctic Blast Is Sweeping East
Why Appalachia is one of the world’s flood hotspots
Solar storms bring colorful northern lights
The first two items are obviously climate related and the third is something that keeps happening and “is cool” but — because it’s caused by solar storms — definitely makes my palm sweaty as it can affect power grids.
Tech Billionaire Mocks Pope’s AI Warning
U.S. Bishops Elect New Leader
“We are disturbed”
“#PopeLeoXIV reveals his four favorite movies”
Is Catholicism entering its #RESIST era? Unsure, but these conversations are certainly interesting. I still got my eye on you, Opus Dei!!
My nephew recently had detention, which was followed by a suspension. He’s eight.
What did he do? While a food fight in the library was what pushed his misdeeds into illegal territories, his first crime was more egregious: he and his friends peed all over the bathroom, not in an “Oh, they missed the toilet :-)” way but in a “They sprayed the bathroom as if they had piss water guns in their pants :-(” way. Mind you: he plays the piano and does martial arts, does fencing and holds a lemonade stand Sundays outside of church. He has a dentalized lisp and had a period where he was obsessed with Michael Jackson. This good boy? He’s bad, or at least that’s the diagnosis I gave as my mother recounted this small family drama. She didn’t find it that strange though, less that he “is bad” but more that he’s of-a-kind. Now a preschool teacher (after the immigration practice she worked for dissolved because of Trump), she connected his behavior to many of the children she works with, kids who are disruptive or who go to great lengths to peacock. All strange, kinda funny, but a sign of something we keep feeling: Gen Alpha are increasingly being defined as “bad kids.” This isn’t their fault: it’s ours.
Over the past half-decade of this newsletter, we’ve revisited this theme — and we’re overdue for a checkup on “the kids”: in 2021, we had a pre-slop conversation about spaces like YouTube enabling a mish-mash content tapestry that gave the context for skibidi; in 2022, we discussed the misnomer of the “woke” child and how much of the child entertainment landscape is based in the genre of horror; in 2023, kids were firmly political pawns sacrificed for the benefit of adults, before exploring the double whammy of red flags being raised around child intelligence and the collapse of literacy; in 2024, we explored how the idea of childhood “was over” given this life stage rebranded as Adulthood Jr™ given their increased parroting of the lives and behaviors of their parents. In 2025, these ideas coalesce to show how asleep at the wheel many of us have been as collective caregivers, role models, and those generationally above little people: we have reaped what we’ve sown, which is not a critique of parenting but of the culture they reflect, the context they’re raised in.
Think about a kid born in 2015. The majority of their life has been dominated by issues like inequality and xenophobia waxing and waning as far as solutions, Black Lives Matters and #MeToo forming and falling as ICE storm troopers emerge, as Charlottesville and January 6 mark time, as school shootings and marches for our lives dominate the narrative. Cancel culture! Woke! Trump! What a mean man, yet also what an entertaining man. Actually? Everything is entertainment, all of life is “for the camera”: iPhone faces, everyone being a reality star, cosmetic obsessions breeding veneers and Ozempic and fillers and BBLs and whatever other nips and tucks we did to feel better about ourselves. Men hate women and women don’t need men. No one has money but everyone wants it, which is why we all live in a gig economy unless you’re a billionaire, hence the lens with which we operate is consumption and consumerism. We all think we’re rich but we’re actually being ground down and disenfranchised. Our kids are your bosses and our spouses are our coworkers. We’re all lonely! We don’t have friends! We are not religious. Our politics are our pop culture — and vice versa. We love to complain and complain and complain about these problems online, seeking out tech solutions sold to us instead of doing something about it. Then we blame our attention! Our various mental items, an “Aw shucks.” as we therapy talk each other down to dust. Oh: the planet is melting and no one seems to care, which is why we’re entering tech-induced psychosis and indulging in ever sloppy and head-empty media, all as art dies because we cared more to squander it than to preserve it. These are deeply, impressively dehumanizing times: that is the context for a ten year old today.
So. Is my nephew doing pee pee on anything but the toilet that weird? Unsure, but I do feel his painting potties yellow is an expression of his disconnection from the world around him, from understanding cause and effect or action and consequences, a loss of respect for not only oneself but for those around you, that covering a place and yourself in piss “just happens” and has no recourse. Why would he — like many kids today — carry such concepts if the world around him doesn’t carrying such care? For the record: I’m not a parent and I don’t have kids, but I spend enough time with kids to understand their literally sponginess. That is how we end up with the deeply mean-spirited “flip the camera” trend and really mean slang like NPC that undercut someone’s personhood. “67” is nonsense but also a sonic missile to drive everyone crazy as the stims pile up as linguistic water boarding — because our mindless psychobabbles coalesced into theirs: a life lived in movie quotes and inside jokes, in performativity and posturing, is no different than skibidi sybau sigma Ohio. Their swiping is our swiping. “What’s happening?” a teacher asked in a viral TikTok this week. “I don’t know, parents…They come into the classroom lacking the basics and it’s a problem.” Sure, sure: we can “blame” gentle parenting, which is always a misdirect as such parental styles seek to solve the problems of the world — which is perhaps where the iPad enters as a generational villain because parents are exhausted and overworked, enabling the “I watched TV as a kid — and I’m okay!” thing while forgetting that the television is a contained device compared to the infinity of an iPad, which can travel with a child from place to place and enable exploration of any conversation imagined. “TV rots your brains,” the babysitter in Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitters Dead scolded the children before she died, which is an idea so pale when compared to unshackling a child from their brain rotted takes, their being steeped in misogyny, their inability to see others as people. I’ve said this before but this is a worldview of everything being swipeable, skippable, disposable, and unreal: it’s not a “nothing matters” world view but one where truth and consequences don’t matter. The president can rape kids and steal the world while bullying everyone with a smile. Why the fuck should they behave? Give them their god damned baby skincare products and face masks so they can audition for YouTube just like you, Parent.
Millennials trafficked in irony, which hardened into Zoomer nihilism, which lands us at Gen Alpha’s meaninglessness as world view, part rejection of everything because nothing matters but also nothing is serious because everything “is a joke.” A generation of little Elon Musks in need of Joyce Carol Oates to step in and shame them. “This is what Mark Zuckerberg took from us” is becoming an ongoing theme, that technological innovation has been a cover for cruelty: same as it ever was. The cruelty goes further, when we consider this as another expression of the 1% abusing the 99%, that such issues aren’t plaguing the very rich, that such thinking and unthinking pieces of our culture are for the broke and the bourgeois: this is another slice of cake they force on us. “Let me tell you what scares me the most,’” Brené Brown said recently on Diary of a CEO. “I wonder if there’s a thinking class that’s emerging where they’re like, ‘We’re gonna read and we’re gonna read the liberal arts…And the rest of you? Just keep scrolling. Don’t worry about the big words.’” And she’s right, pointing out Apple’s Steve Jobs’ disallowing his kids iPads and Google’s Sundar Pichai limiting his kids’ access to TV and tech: this is a common theme among tech elite, “offline” — and “life” as we were promised — truly becoming the ultimate luxury. That not enough? Mark Zuckerberg opening his own school says a lot. Good luck, poor!
Again: this is the context. Mean kids, illiterate kids, kids who care more about how they look on camera is a reflection of culture. This isn’t a novel idea but is something we need to be reminded of again and again: your being locked in the jail of working and scrolling and sadness and madness creates a smaller jail that locks away children away from “human life.” No one is free until we’re all free! That is perhaps most true for children, whose malleable minds are shaped in the process. Sure, ban phones in schools, kick kids off social platforms — but that doesn’t address how distorted the world has become. Those bans don’t fix the wider context, instead only severing a very small head of a much larger hydra: such moves aren’t victories but the start of justice seeking for us all against further techno distortion of humanity. Maybe this is what we’ll devote our lives to once AI robs us all of our work and we have nothing else to do but cut out the tongues from the talking machines that dulled us down.
Getting Killed By AI
“Dream family on ChatGPT”
What Is Gen Z Supposed to Do?
We analyzed 47K ChatGPT conversations
Further we wander into the AI hellscape, from publications being smothered by AI scrapers to people using AI for companionship. This latter item is particularly prickly, given Gen Z workers are getting axed because companies would rather “save money” and opt for AI versus hiring humans — all as Gen Z fawns over the tech: new research from GWI found “one in seven Gen Zers (14%) are now turning to AI for companionship…13% of Gen Z women and 15% of Gen Z men now use AI for companionship.” That’s something! And is creating big and small frictions from FKA Twigs fighting with fans that her artwork isn’t AI to Upstairs Neighbors swearing it off after loving animals eating pho. Alas! Enjoy this Russian robot totally shitting out as your robo-schadenfreude.
Kapoor may sue after border agents pose by sculpture
Olivia Rodrigo condemns Trump’s use of her music
Interesting examples of celebrities using copyright or intellectual property to stiff Trump, et al, from tapping into their work. Compare that to Taylor Swift’s failure to condemn the White House’s repeated use of her music.
James Van Der Beek auctions memorabilia
“You will always be closer to being homeless”
A sad state-of-things: the Dawson’s Creek actor is auctioning off props and costumes from the show to pay for chemo treatment 😢
Hitler’s DNA reveals syndrome can affect genitals
“carried a secret”
Well, yes, Hitler did have a micropenis. Can’t fight science, folks!
Clubbing in California: The Year of Fire and ICE
An incredible read that breaks my heart about how local eco-political problems have shaped and affected the dance scene in LA. My must read of the week!
“retire the backpack”
“looks cooler than a backpack”
Chats about what should adults use instead of backpacks keep swirling, which is a subject I have long wondered about as there is no “great” alternative when you have to carry around a god damned Macbook all day. I want to be able to carry a cute suitcase or purse but NO: need ugly-bag-that-makes-me look-like-child, all so I don’t hurt my back. Send any novel bag recommendations!
Where the Oovoo Javer Guy Is Now
“The oover javer vine is forever ruined”
This random information about this Vine star came across my desk this week, which people said “was wild” but I didn’t think it would be that wild. I’m also legally obligated to share Jack Dorsey is trying to bring back that platform as “diVine,” which is stupid even if the anti-AI bit is smart.
She wore a ribbed vermillion sweater, a style I long coveted in middle school and bought on sale at Ross. Her pants were low-slung but not low-rise. They were neither denim nor chino but a more tech-y black-gray-silver, like suit pants but with more of a bell cut. She looked like she would have been a hostess at a suburban restaurant in 2004. Her large buckled belt suggests a reverence to Y2K ideas, even if it’s technically 1990s grunge: this is and isn’t “the style,” made stranger that she lived through the time period just like me as we’re contemporaries. And yet: the look is so now in a way that distracted from my being able to fully process her performance as I could fully see a style mapped, as I realized that this was the style that will define the 2020s.
The person in question is the singer Erika de Casier, seen during her dreamy set at Mira, which literally brought a tear to my eye. (I mean…can you even?) Erika represents a style that has been talked around and traced for months and years within this decade that I am putting forth as “contemporary,” ending the debates about trending styles and recycled nostalgia. Part grunge nostalgia and part future worship, part minimalism and part technical exercises, the style is an understated synthesis of digital ideas like Y2K and “office siren” via club culture and vintage sensibilities, the answer to the very 2010s dudes-in-warm-up-jackets look. It’s being worked through and shared by mid-thirtysomethings through early-fortysomethings as best expressed by the work of Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo of Sunnei, Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta of Eckhaus Latta, Paloma Lanna of Paloma Wool, and Ryota Iwai of Auralee. This is another example of Millennials defining another moment, which may only affect the Millennial wearer but is also why there’s so much “buzz” about street style in Copenhagen: this is the look the media has been talking around hence why a Danish star like Erika is the face of it.
The look is almost always big on the bottom with something slim on top, non-slim — but not baggy — pants that hit mid-waist with shirts and sweaters falling at the waist. The colors are neutral with “tough” pastels (teen boy blues, golden yellows, worn olives, faded burgundies) and they’re touched by inventive technical charms expressed as a curious and often hidden design flourishes (sideways stitching, under buttoning, skirted panting, wool cargos). There are certain styles that are a definite here — the ribbed knit, the crewneck cardigan, the polo shirt, the quarter-zip sweater, the cropped leather jacket — and almost always play with built-in layers, or an effect there of. Rounding is key in glasses and belt buckles and shoes with silver hardware that is as much an access as it is a design detail. There are no “graphic” tees but there are almost always gauzy, transparent fabrics. The suggestion is of living a better present now, through understated clothing informed by the past but executed with the future in mind. It’s 1994’s Kylie Minogue via Reality Bites via Waiting to Exhale with the edge of Hackers and Strange Days, the idea of the future from the mid-1990s. It’s wearable Bauhaus styled with Puma shoes, a theory of mute as loud, the softening of iPhone face via sweet off-the-shoulder tops and male midriff: you are aware of enshittification but you don’t let it wear you. Your style, the look suggests, one who has seen it all — and is done with it all. “Calm down,” the wearer is saying. “Let’s stop eating the world because everything has sufficiently been consumed.” It’s quiet quitting the trend cycle, a middle finger to the strategist economy.
There are many figures in and out of this space expressing this idea, dipping in and out of artistic and geographic cultures that add nuance to the look: Oklou and Underscores and James K (and maybe Eusexua-era FKA Twigs) push the idea through a softened electronic music sieve; Pink Pantheress and Dexter express the style via a London sensibility while Smerz and ML Buch offer an angle from Copenhagen; Quenlin Blackwell occasionally plays in this space as does Paloma Elsesser — but Rosalía does it best. This style is something that a brand like Miu Miu is eagerly attempting to cannabalize, exposing where and how the style breaks down: when it becomes overly commercialized or in dialogue with mass media, it abandons the style for something more pick me, something more mainstream. It’s parts are over-processed, over-analyzed, over-chewed, which is how we ended up with the “office siren” conversation to begin with: “office siren” was in response to this style emerging and existing outside of capitalism and the algorithm, as celebrities and creators and corporate fashion entities and media try to copy it in their machines only to miss the point, oversimplifying the idea in the process. While the brands defining the look are emerging alongside its associated stars, none are them are “household names” by design: like any era-defining style, it doesn’t come from the top down but from the bottom up, hence certain talent having breakouts, hence why Miu Miu is including figures like Ethel Cain on their mood board.
We’re nearing a moment where we start to self-digest this decade, defining it from within, and this “look” is one I’d argue will dress the characters of this period piece. What do we call it? I suggest “buzzless buzz” as it’s worn by the cool person knowledgeable of everything, a smart creative person and worker who isn’t the most successful, not because they don’t care but because the whole “thing” has become exhausting and evil. This is as much about vintage shopping as it is about people too busy working (or too economically divorced) to engage with and be interested in the so-called mainstream. While the thinkpiece machines and the algorithm enabled a constant self-reflective madness about who we are and what we wore now, some people were actually living — and this is what they wore. “The answer was all inside, not in a stranger,” Erika sings on “Lifetime.” “When the lights out, do you still see me?” she asks as the song fades, as if her appearance — her style — was a mirage in the digital scrum. It was there the whole time, standing still, if you stopped buzzing around to focus on what was underneath.
“Wicked 3”
YouTube circa 2013 still exists if you know where to look! (If you enjoyed this, enjoy this skit too.)
“It gets better”
One of the best time capsules of the 2010s and Woke 1.0.
“I drove all night”
“I did a proposal”
These Nicole Byer clips helped me get through the week, alongside this StratioLab bit.
“A British person planning a meal”
This def got views because of the “it’s opinions based” meme trending.
“auntie sounding more African”
I love accent slippage, which is why I love English-Irish Madonna.
“This is AI right?”
This account has been winning the MAGA discourse machine (See this post!) by slop posting in a way that straddles digital conservative believability. It fits into the genre of “Woof: Buzz’s girlfriend!” posts being made about the poster’s “daughter.”
“When I’m bored”
“More Queen Latifah”
“Latifah edits”
“Some more”
Another thing AI cannot do: insert Queen Latifah into random images. The Latifah bucks and Emo Latifah are the best ones! If you want to keep the fun going, play a round of “deaf woman or lesbian.”
“That one linguistics guy”
I talked about this the week before last, but Charlie Kirk (“Kirkification”) memes are so in now as it intersects internet humor, Gen Zalpha culture, and gamer-rap overlaps. Peek the reposts on his profile here.
“Tell me what’s wrong”
“The friend that makes everything worse”
“No, no. Why?”
Every video of “these friends” I watch.
“Do you like balloon animals?”
The most interesting balloon trick you’ll see, maybe ever. You’ll never guess how it ends!
And, finally, a good analysis of this platform.
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Also thank you for distilling this goblin adjacent mossy retro functional aesthetic I’ve been seeing everywhere (and wearing myself tbh) - I think Laura and Deanna Fanning are the patron saints of the look.
to be an on-the-go 30-something is to be perennially caught between a posture destroying rock and a hard backpack place. I have long thought that the biggest gap in the accessories market is cool, chic backpacks that are functional and don’t cost the earth (and no, RAINS is not it). I recently invested in one from Porter Yoshida as a kind of homage to a Prada nylon (now ludicrously expensive - you’re a fool if you’re paying that much, even if you have the money). The PY was also far more expensive than it should have been (I had some vouchers - how is ANYONE affording new stuff these days?), but it’s simple, stylish, and functional. (And Japanese - essentially a byword for the former 3 attributes). That said, it’s still slightly too small (14in MacBook has to go in sleeveless) and the insulated fabric makes my back extremely hot. So it’s still not perfect!! Anyways yes, that’s the best rec I’ve got (get it cheaper secondhand) but any accessories designers reading this, please accept this challenge.