Subcultures are Wilting. Snakes are Weird
Also in this quickie: Snake explosions, Love is Blind recaps, the awful realities of kidfluencers, Aesthetics Wiki, more Barry Keoghan, and Chicago Rat Hole nails🐍💕🤳💅🩸🐀
Teen Subcultures Are Fading. Pity the Poor Kids. NYT Magazine
The kids are lonely, and all their subcultures are surface-level. They have “cottagecore” and “mob wife aesthetic,” but they’re missing out on the shared experiences that used to define teen groups. No more ultra-underground punk rock shows. No more smoker’s pit shenanigans. No more “this one time at band camp.” No more Twilight book release parties (lol yes I went to those).
As with much of today’s popular culture (say, A.S.M.R. hair-brushing or pimple-popping videos), the level of specificity and intimate itch-scratching here feels a lot like porn — another extension of the internet’s ability to service niche desires. And in terms of their enhancement of human experience, many aesthetics seem to offer about as much as porn does: a fleeting personal pleasure to be had mainly alone.
Hopecore and Kidfluencers, Afterschool
This is all one big “yikes.” Read with caution.
But childhood Disney stardom is very different than posing in a skimpy bikini as a third grader to post on social media and then having your parents sell that bikini to a man on the internet.
Why Are There So Many Snakes? Popular Science
The age-old question posed by Samuel L. Jackson (and a lot of scientists, probably.) I am enthralled by this deep dive on “the snake explosion”- a.k.a. the singular event where all these legless buddies came from. I specifically would love to know where this giant has been. How did we miss that thing?? To sum up the entire article, “Snakes are special and weird.”
This Might Be the Best 'Love Is Blind' Episode of All Time, Hung Up
I’m once again sharing a Hunter Harris post about Love is Blind. She really nailed it with her breakdown of Episode 8. This sentence in particular made me laugh out loud:
Chelsea complains about not getting enough affection, claiming she received none, while acknowledging that maybe she did get between one and three kisses.
Also this:
Everything about presentation and expectation and the “blind” part of the Love Is Blind experiment get bundled together in one woman’s anxious self-image….But it doesn’t matter if Chelsea looks kinda like Megan Fox or that “People say I look like Megan Fox” conjures a very specific image of a very specific pinup — Transformers-Megan Fox, GQ-Megan Fox, aughts male fantasy-Megan Fox — that even the real Megan Fox does not match. But everyone has opinions about it and can react to it. The Megan Fox-of-it-all has ramifications that ripple throughout the season.
🧠 The end is nigh! How to stop catastrophizing
🌈 Wardrobe hack: Outfit formulas based on winning colour combinations
🎀 Need more subcultures? Check out the rabbit hole that is Aesthetics Wiki
💰Yer a collectable, Harry. This proof copy of Harry Potter is auctioning for $20K
🐷 Oink! Cuddle with pigs in this Japanese cafe (pictures included)
This one might be niche, but the picture of Barry Keoghan drinking out of a Buffy mug in a slutty red latex outfit has brought me immense joy. It is perfection. I’ve been thinking about it all week. Possibly too much. Possibly not enough.
The only thing I know for sure is that W Magazine fully understood who they were baiting with this photo series (me) and I am not ashamed to be one of their victims.
I mean come on.
Chicago Rat Hole nails. The internet is a wonderful and scary place.
