ARE YOU A ZOMBIE?? 🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟

On the rise of global zombification and Frankensteinisms, along with musings on rawdogging.

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• 👠 I had a fab and fascinating chat with Ilia-Sybil Sdralli with my spiritual newsletter brother Ben Dietz this week where we unpacked fashion month. Read it here!

• 🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿 this week features Melissa Eshaghbeigi, who joins Ben and I to compare One Battle After Another with Eddington, rawdogging these times, and considering the future of AI. Listen now on Spotify and or YouTube!

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France in turmoil after PM resigns
Macron should step down, former PM says
Billionaire Trump supporter wins Czech election

A shocking way to start the week! Which adds to my ongoing macro-EU political jitters. I’m still worrying darling!! (Happening in other corners of the globe: Japan’s rightward creep, which is getting a girl boss makeover, and Burkina Faso ongoing shenanigans.)

Army general named as Madagascar PM

An interesting update to the Gen Z “war”: the president didn’t quite cave but appointed an army leader to fix their protesting by further militarizing the state.

Palestinians displaced a begin journey home
Who Are the Hostages Believed Alive in Gaza?

One way to skip over abducting civilians from other countries is to pull off a ceasefire, which was a bit unexpected and something that Trump obviously is going to expect fellating for. Obviously the Nobel committee said no to that, even if the recipient sang his praises underscoring her own questionable legitimacy.

Officers Called Portland Protests ‘Low Energy’
“Trump’s Version vs. Reality”
“Portland’s protests frogs are multiplying”
“As a person who actually lives in Portland”
What’s going on in Portland?

As the second American civil war sees a battle in Chicago, the attempts to siege Portland are looking increasingly ridiculous. It could all be worse though: Trump could be singing at rock concerts.

OpenAI, Nvidia Fuel $1T Web of Circular Deals
What Some Smart People Are Saying About AI

“Never before has so much money been spent so rapidly on a technology that, for all its potential, remains largely unproven”: ouch. The first story features a now viral diagram that explained the financial circle jerking, which many joked about, noting a infinite money glitch mindset that will nosedive the economy. (Which brings us to the big recession indicator that is the rising gold bubble.)

EU losing 600 football pitches of nature daily
UK fifth-worst country in Europe for loss of green
How Europe is being concreted over

The loss of forests and general greenery in the EU was big this week, another suggestion of the quiet flopping and Americanization of the continent. Then again, so is most of the whole of the world: carcinization, but the US approach to environmentalism instead of crabs.

Wild rice binds Ojibwe in northern Wisconsin

A very good story about a North American tribe’s shifting relationship to rice harvesting, all thanks to pollution, climate change, and perennial creep. (This part made my eyes get big: “The Indigenous people once lived close to the Atlantic Ocean, until a prophecy predicted the arrival of a light-skinned people that would threaten their existence and directed them to move west.”)

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I hope my mother never dies, that I can keep her forever as a small voice in a box, a series of voicemails the architecture of a hypothetical her of my own. I hope that The Addams Family will reboot every decade of my life, that I will grow older as Wednesday remains small and frail, forever 13, a goth in every timelines whose relevance rivals that of Frankenstein. I hope to see Michael Jackson moonwalk once more, not just on Broadway but maybe as a hologram, maybe as a small character I can hold in my hands. I hope to drink Bols forever, tight lipped in the tiniest sips, just as I did in college, just as they did in the 1500s, just as I do now, and — perhaps — just as they will do in the 2500s. I hope the life I have now will always be the life I have. I hope nothing changes. I hope I don’t change. I hope time stops as the hamster wheel of time slips as it sinks into a pool of amber. I hope and I hope and I hope: don’t change.

Of course, I don’t hope for any of that — but such are the articulations of culture now. AI avatars of the deceased, The Addams Family as an unlikely 20th century perennial rivalling the original zombie Frankenstein as far as constant iterations for hundreds of years, public figures like Michael Jackson forever animated and undead by Sora 2, corporate entities like Bols no longer just a niche small old drinks brand but now every industry, multi-generational monopolies that insist that they continue with no end: so much of culture is the old continuing, being rebranded or masquerading as “the new.” Time is cyclical, yet all the props of life increasingly remain the same but with small remixes like reanimated Hitler fighting on talk shows or dead pop stars stealing fried chicken. The dead cannot rest in this era, just as you cannot rest either, which manifests a trend we’ve been discussed all decade: the creep of estate planning for posthumous profit. Herman Cain’s Twitter may have finally gone mute but Charlie Kirk, dead since September 10, has Tweeted almost every day since he died — and no one seems to find that as strange as when Herman Cain was doing it: cultural zombification has been normalized. This is why we’re in a culture recession: nothing dies anymore. Not ideas, not brands, not people: if you can afford to keep something alive, you can — and will — for no other reason but to reinforce bygone infrastructures, to activate agendas of the old, to keep power and wealth for as long as you don’t-live. Just ask Adriana Smith, who became international news this spring after her body was “kept alive” long after her death just so that she could give a coffin birth to a son she will never know, whose life is validation of a far right Christian nationalist ideology.

That is an extreme and disgusting case, but such extremities and disgust is everywhere. Take fashion, a once creative space that is now more corporate than cool, which is eating itself alive due to its own masturbatory zombification dead dance: Matthieu Blazy at Chanel after Bottega Veneta, Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta after Carven and Lacoste, Daniel Lee at Burberry after Bottega Veneta, Demna at Gucci after Balenciaga, Pierpaolo Piccioli at Balenciaga after Valentino, Alessandro Michele at Valentino after Gucci — etc., etc., etc. At this point, these musical chairs and creative director theatrics aren’t as exciting as they are confounding: why do this, why continue propping up these brands and pump them with new blood in the name of some board, some stakeholders, some lineage of rich people unseen who need fatter paydays? Why would Jonathan Anderson — arguably the most exciting designer working now — leave Loewe for Dior? A paycheck, yes, but why not continue to construct his own empire at JW Anderson? If he has to continue in our zombie cultural economy whilst being one of the most successful creatives in the world, good luck to little you and little me thinking we can stop working at any point in our little lives. Perhaps these people are all as greedy as the colonialist systems that prey upon them, but the whole of the “biggest fashion month ever” was less a flexing of new ideas and more a display of the decades of power continuing to grip an industry by its designer balls, yielding recession vibes, anti-woman-ness, and a general blah. “Is fashion stuck in the past?” Laurence Benaïm mused for Business of Fashion. “Everywhere, we see evidence of a more demonstrative relationship with history — but the soul has slipped away.” Or, as I told Ilia-Sybil Sdralli this week during our post-fashion month debrief, “the question isn’t just who won fashion week, but whether the entire system—the endless debuts, the house code recycling, the spectacle without substance—still makes sense.” Zombies 5 coming soon — not just at Disney or Marvel but on runways and at shopping malls too.

Then there’s the nepotism of it all, which has been a 2020s conversation that underscores the need to continue keeping time: by advancing those who uphold power without proven talent — or utility — the zombie world continues to spin. It underscores who has access to success now, who is allowed to be creative or succeed in times of economic and political unrest. It’s not just Hollywood, but politics and fashion and sports and music and acting and tech: the days of rich people as philanthropists who boost culture and pave paths to equality is long gone as their game is colonizing every industry, installing glass ceilings and creating royal families, all to keep everyone below them in the same place. It makes sense then why young people in Nepal raged against nepotism, just as young people did in the Philippines: people are tired of being tired, not just within their lives but within their lineages, of being the present manifestation of generations of poor people being held down by forces from religion to economics, stuck in a holding pattern of poverty, salvation promised by tying your boots tighter. It’s Benedict Cumberbatch being the generational master to almost anyone of color who shares the name, all as he and his family — like entire nations — slink off the payment of reparations so he can playact as a detective or a sorcerer or an architect. It’s “Make American Great Again,” it’s “Japan First,” it’s “Take Back Control,” it’s “Italy and Italian People First,” it’s “Time for Germany,” it’s “Kirchnerism Never Again”: crank out dreams of the past to uphold the present, a mirage to ensure people fear change, fear difference, fear the future. “Stay in the past,” they say. “Don’t think, don’t evolve.” “The mistake that I made,” AOC says, “I thought that fascist takeover attempts were going to be architected by evil geniuses — and I was not expecting how unearned, nepotistic, mediocre, and just dumb so many of the people architecting this were going to be.”

What’s worse: none of this is creative. Beyond fashion and politics putting itself through the copy machine, tech — the so-called “future” that controls so much of our lives — repeatedly reveals itself to lack the will to create positive progress. AI luminaries remaking Her and Terminator 2 while recreating ad-based models and recycling Reddit, robots taking human forms instead of something more sensible, seeking to make flying cars rather than effective mass transport, cryogenic freezing all to continue your reign of terror: it’s not “science fiction predicting the future” if tech leaders are unsubtly copying the ideas of far more creative people, the largely disenfranchised and undervalued writers and filmmakers who “inspired” them, who get no credit or payment for being the development wing of some rich kid’s “master plan.” Just as it’s not novel to reinvent Nazism to “solve” today’s problems, all of this is lazy, dangerous, and what the zombie brain looks like. “Goodbye uptick in vampires movies representing economic collapse and greed,” a seminal 2025 Tweet goes. “Hello uptick in Frankenstein movies representing fear of man’s hubris and the fear of innovation without consideration.” We are dying because of our failure to go back to the future.

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The trendiest TVs are tiny, old and in your kitchen
The retro technology connecting kids to their friends
Young People Are Falling in Love With Old Technology

I gave this a mention in last week’s essay, but noting it again as we’re getting flooded by stories of old tech comebacks, which is what happens when resale is better than new (For quality reasons and cost reasons!) and when tech becomes evil, leaving people longing to disconnect. Get ready for a retro-future movement!

People Are So Tired of Branding
Global Resale Market Set to Grow

To the above and on the flip side of the coin: these are clear signs — but not-new signs — of people unplugging from capitalism while living within it. This is what happens when no one has money and everyone hates being enslaved by “the economy” whilst getting nothing in return!

Does Gen Z Divorce Look Different?
“The NYT is a right-wing psyop”

This story is rage bait, exactly as the second post explains. But I appreciate the scrubbing out of the taboo around life failures!

Video challenges link of Kyren Lacy to crash
“There’s no slithering away”

A huge story that I missed earlier this year was LSU football’s Kyren Lacy being charged with a fatal hit-and-run, which led to his death by suicide. Recent video footage that exonerates Lacy shows he was definitely not involved, meaning the pillorying of him and his character was very much racism in action. Awful. (While we’re here, this near ten minute video from a TV writer on the connections between Travis and Taylor and Beyoncé and Jay-Z is so incredible that it got taken down as the American TikTok censorship machine flexes its muscles again.)

John Maus: “I Thought My Legacy Would Speak”

Not new, but it’s been bugging me that John “January 6” Maus is mounting a comeback — but then I read this story and was actually taken aback by his making amends. Is that enough reconciliation? What does one have to do to be “uncancelled”? I’m not sure, but there has to be a pathway forward.

How Kevin Costner Lost Hollywood

This Hollywood Reporter story is glorified gossip, including a Saudi Arabian twist ending. Typical!

We went to find out if Albania lives up to the hype
Albania’s Timeless Vjosa River
Journalist’s Mistake Booking Trip Home from Albania
“When you say ‘Albany’ wrong”

I feel like I keep hearing about Albania, which I don’t have an interest in but is an expression of the whole of the world (TikTok, for example) looking for new places to consume. Maybe this is my algorithm chasing me, but the final story was reupped this week by the Times. It’s trending!

Jeff Hiller’s profound example of kindness
“I feel very loved.”

This interview with Jeff Hiller is the best inspiration of the week, which is a salve to the above essay. I tried to weave it in but it didn’t work so enjoy it here!

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“I have a new concept,” George Civeris says on StraightioLab. “Okay,” Sam Taggart replies. “It’s called ‘Screen Time Eyes’ and it’s when you can see in someone’s eyes that their screen time is really high.” George laughs, but Sam looks concerned. “Do I have Screen Time Eyes?” he asks. “Obviously no,” George says, cuing Sam’s exhale. For those curious — and as their guest and comedian Julio Torres demonstrated —Screen Time Eyes look as if both eyes are simultaneously opened and closed, one more so than the other. There might even be a twitch, more of a surprised state. You could even call it startled, especially given the quick drifting of the wide irises. “what Mina Le said about being able to tell one’s screen time based on their style,” someone says on Twitter, of an image of two guys who look like they’re cowboys from the Shibuya continent of the Dimes Square planet in the TikTok galaxy. The precum of slop, as expressed by the physical manifestations of the bad good screen.

“Not only is everything dumb and scary but even our jobs are feeling a little dumb and scary,” Matt Buechele said on TikTok. “There’s no respite…Then it’s like — Ping! — and it’s your boss…Then you go back to your phone and it’s the Savannah Bananas.” “I don’t think office work would stop in a zombie apocalypse,” someone observes, referencing Covid and January 6 as tests of how this is already happening. “It would be such an HR thing.” What do we call this? American apathy? Opting out of the revolution? “I don’t want to do this anymore,” a man says in a viral video, ending with his tears. “I don’t want to go to a desk for forty hours and stare at a screen…I can’t do this shit for another forty fucking years.” The comments offer the temperature: we are in the zoochosis phaze; it’s so unnatural how we live; we need nature; we’re the only animal that sees nature as a luxury; this feels so dystopian. “How does one get rid of this feeling of impending doom asking for a friend,” someone asks, SOPHIE’s “VYZEE” playing in the background. Shake it up and make it fizz, if that’s what you wanna do.

“I’ve noticed a huge change in the kind of trolling that I’ve been receiving,” Abby Chatfield explains. “The content changed from ‘Dumb bitch slut skank fuck die whore I’m gonna come and kill you fucking bitch’...to — now — it’s people that actually aren’t in touch with reality and that is making me feel fucking insane. It is making me feel so depressed.” Unsurprisingly, trust in other people is in decline. “Americans’ levels of trust were about average among the 14 high-income countries we surveyed,” Pew reported earlier this year, “lower than in places like Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden but higher than in Spain, France and Italy.” “People in their twenties and thirties in particular report feeling increasingly easily distracted and careless, less tenacious and less likely to make and deliver on commitments,” FT noted in August of plummeting conscientiousness. “Children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism,” RFK Jr. garbled this week, an incredible — and hateful — untruth masquerading as fact. There is a line being drawn now, that tech and religion are interconnected and good while those critical of tech and critical of religion are “bad.” Peter Thiel believes this to be true, intertwining religious delusions with tech support as expressed as antichrist fears. “Thiel argued that critiques of technology and calls for stricter regulation by Thunberg and others appear to echo biblical interpretations of an Antichrist who will win power by offering the world ‘peace and safety’ from apocalyptic destruction,” The Washington Post reported on Peter Thiel’s recent antichrist talks. Rapturetok and martyrdom and resurrection hymns, the devil is here and he is accusing you of being him.

To all of the above: cue the conversations about being offline as a status symbol, which is a conversation that we had a decade ago, which was such a moment that even I got paid to write such a story. Cue the stories about digital detoxes! Which was also a conversation we had a decade ago too! The differences between then and now are that there are microscopic grooves appearing on the surface, a sticky velcro prickling: the AI of it all, the political charging of it all. “The next billion dollar social network will be no AI,” Zauey theorizes. “The pendulum swings back to what’s real.” “Delete any AI apps on your phone: stop your support now,” a man pleads to millions of people on TikTok. “People are making child porn!” he yells. “We can stop feeding them the money.” “Right now, we can clock AI…pretty soon, we won’t be able to tell,” someone muses to hundreds of thousands of likes. “I hope AI ruins the phone. Is that possible?” “I’m going to introduce you to a practice that I think will actually change your life: rawdog walks,” someone says. The rules of a rawdog walk are: no phones, no notifications, no headphones, all while taking in your surroundings with a focus on the journey, on mindfulness, on creating space in the brain, all whilst alone. The point is processing everything you’ve gathered, to think and reflect about everything you’ve scrolled upon, everything you’ve lived.

Thus, the word of the moment: rawdogging, logging off less as luxury and more to live, to be, to embrace the human. Rawdog marathons, rawdogging boredom, rawdogging raves, rawdogging training, rawdogging flights, rawdogging conclaves, rawdogging reality: take the condom off your world and see it for what it is. Shit, why not bareback your commute? Abort your worries, morning after pill your FOMO. Live. “Rawdogging life in this cultural moment is very brave of you,” Melissa Eshaghbeigi told Ben Dietz on this week’s 🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿. “There are a lot of of people who have been encouraged to think in those terms — and I find that odd,” he responded, after untangling the idea. “Optimization culture cannot replace partying,” Antonio Gary Jr. explained. “People still party but, in their own way, they’re becoming the new punk.” “I need the small ‘I’ intimacy of presence,” Jamaal Burkmar explained of how texting fluency extinguished personal connection, the ability to live. There are solutions easily graspable. In fact, be like TikTok’s current “it” girl TierraK: go out and touch something. Smack a tank, flap a truck flap, press a cold pipe, hit a stop sign: do what you can to make contact. Post about it, sure, but share it. Sit outside with your dog on its last day! Give a butterfly new wings. Feel something — feel anything. Be cringe, be free, unsheathing yourself from the lambskin of the log on and live.

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“trump IS”
“It’s okay to leave a dog”
“very long back”
“Richard…”
“I have a theory”

Best Taylor Swift insanity posts, but here’s another one for you: I watched that god damned “Ophelia” video and that song has been chasing me all week. It’s catchy! I give you that, Tay, even if she says “keep it hundred.”

“Susan Boyle reviews Oasis”

Her review for The Face was like taking an anti-depressant. (Also her hair is…fab!)

“hold me back”

I’ve never heard a full Sufjan Stevens song , but I am familiar with his body tea.

“That boy”
“Dung beetle”
“Man, shut the”

Some of the best Halloween costumes so far. While I am likely to be nothing, a cute couples costume I’d like to be is either 6 and 7 or Jersey City tío Minions. But my dream costume? To be Nell from Nell and go out with a group of other iconic Jodie Foster characters. One day.

“poop bread”
“fall-poop core extractor”
“what I meal prepped”

Don’t @ me but I love this creator who is obsessed with helping you poop better. Second best doodie thing this week was shapely farts.

“Let’s pull a Pude card”
“Old man Pude.”
“Let’s do a Pude card”
“A Pude card pull”

A card reading from Puderschmude would heal me.

“Defeat”
“Piss on the world.”
“wish I was as productive”
“most difficult person to sing”

Things I laughed at most this week.

And, finally, how I feel after writing each newsletter.

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TR.BIZ: 10.9.2025

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TR.BIZ: 10.7.2025