The Weekly Roundup (week of 9.23)
hawk tua girl climbs the charts
1. Hawk Tua Girl Cements Her Status as an American Media Figure
Let’s try to get past the fact that this top four is absolutely cooked. It’s honestly a pretty hilarious overview of what the country is paying attention and listening to. That Hailey Welch was able to parley her viral moment into a podcast that’s (currently) #6 in the USA just goes to show that the American Dream is still alive people. There’s two schools of thought here: that the success of low-brow lobotomy content creators is a sign of our declining empire. And there’s the more optimistic one that I tend to subscribe to which is that the most popular, high engagement content in our media and information networks converge on idiotic low-level thinking. This may sound very elitist, I consider myself to be a moderately intelligent person, but I like to consume low-level slop content from time to time. It’s a guilty pleasure! Look at every Costco Guys video and the top comment is almost always, “why did I watch it till the end”. I don’t think its the pinnacle of content but in essence I would argue that the main reason a lot of these magnetic content creators fill us with so much confusing existential dread is because they make content for the average stupid person. They remind us of our collective stupidity. I say magnetic because that’s what they are, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Hailey Welch, the Costco Guys, you may not love them but they are exceptionally talented at grabbing people’s attention with their electric personalities. They make us angry because we know deep down they make content for idiots, and sometimes…. we like it.
Tim Dillon on the other hand theorizes that the reason we find people like the Costco Guys’ constant content schlep entertaining is because of our fascination with death, we use it as a coping mechanism for declining living standards.
“Why is this kind of entertaining, is it like we just want this civilization to crumble as quickly as possible?” Tim exclaims. I know that he’s obviously joking, but it’s a really fascinating and thought provoking question that he’s poking at. He goes on in his rant to essentially make a Freudian argument about society’s collective death drive being the main reason we love the Costco Guys. Is society’s need for death, destruction and chaos the reason Hawk Tua girl has a blossoming media career? In a time of unparalleled comfort (technologically speaking), is the death drive subsuming under the id of the American people making us gravitate towards the Rizzler’s subtle charms?
2. We're in our slop era
Tangentially related to the above is this article about the vast amount of AI generated crap on the internet.
A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage — and it’s only going to get worse.
3. The Users Who Overtook the Machine
A relatively brief, entirely incomplete history of online fashion fandom.
Read it on SSENSE here.
4. Artist Wes Lang Is Releasing a Monumental New Series of Paintings — And We Brought Them to Life
Extremely jealous of anyone in London who can attend Wes Lang’s exhibition at Heni gallery, owned by none other than Damien Hirst. Read Wes’ GQ interview here.
