The reason why I like Charli XCX is she’s sex positive in a way that reminds me of Madonna (etc) way back when. It used to be that female vocalists would run around without any clothes on. I’m old now and I miss that vibe. Charli XCX reminds me of that.
LONDON, ENGLAND – FEBRUARY 18: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY) Charli XcX attends The BRIT Awards 2020 at The O2 Arena on February 18, 2020 in London, England. (Photo by Joe Maher/Getty Images for Bauer Media)
I like her music, too, but she wears her sexuality on her sleeve in such a matter that it’s like, “Finally, a pop singer who’s willing to not be a prude.” It’s weird — at least to me — how all the major female vocalists these days a extremely modest compared to what they used to be.
Madonna, for one, made a whole career out of exploiting — and exploring — her sexuality in a very public fashion. I mean, the woman did come out with a book called “Erotica,” for Christ’s sake.
Anyway, it’s all moot. It’s not like the good old days of my youth are ever coming back — with female vocalists or anything else. But I do enjoy Charli XCX being something of a throwback.
Feeling rather sheepish about this. Rather than talking about this change, I should keep it to myself. But, alas, I have no friends and no one likes me — and I’m 100% extroverted! — so, lulz, here we are.
So, the newest version of this first novel in what I hope will be a five novel series has me go back to what I had before — a female protagonist who in my imagination looks a lot like Olivia Munn. I really need to stop doing this. I really need to, like, finish the first novel so I can, if nothing else, try to get to the next step in the process — have beta readers.
But here I am, starting all over again.
And, yet, at least I’m starting from scratch for a reason. I hope to do some reading — and development — before I start writing again so when I do I’m going to knock what I do write out of the park.
That, at least is the vision.
And, yada, yada, yada, I sell the novel or novels, the series a huge success and Olivia Munn plays the heroine of these first few novels in the series. You gotta dream, man. Dreaming is free.
Everything is so fucking dumb politically in the United States right now that should Justice Clarence Thomas unexpectedly leave SCOTUS for some reason, it could very well be the catalyst for a Second American Civil War.
Ok, maybe not that.
But it would suck. Republicans are already chomping at the bit to establish a fascist autocracy in the United States, the idea that the drift in that direction that seems inevitable at this point, that or a civil war, might see a little bit of a hiccup would just be too much for them.
The first thing they would think, of course, is that the Deep State was responsible and, as such, they might feel obliged to strike back at major “Deep State” figures. That, in turn, could potentially turn into round after round of more and more escalation until the fucking Second American Civil War happens — or at least, something that is marketed as that by the press.
Or, put another way, the vitral on the part of the MAGA New Right at the prospect of an African American taking the Thomas seat who wasn’t a toady to the MAGA New Right itself would just be too much for them. They would explode in rage and hate and would might potentially at least attempt to burn everything to the ground rather than have it happen.
At a minimum, a vacant Thomas seat would be another bolt popping off Engine America. We’re careening towards a very dark fucking future. The only question at this point is if we peacefully slip into autocracy or we bomb ourselves into fucking oblivion as part of a civil war.
It’s really annoying to me that it’s pretty obvious there is a media niche that’s not being filled at the moment — a successor to Spy Magazine or Gawker. Now, some context.
Twitter has pretty much so absorbed the snark of Gawker that, lulz, it’s kind of pointless to try to start something that would be a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. As I keep saying, blogs are dead. Apps are dead. I get all my news passively from my Twitter feed. If I wan’t snark, I got to Twitter.
So, lulz, this is all moot.
And, yet, come to think of it, it would be nice as an Old to have a blog that was completely obsessed with Tik-Tok pop culture. It would be something of a companion piece to it. With that in mind, here’s what I would with Julia Fox.
Julia Fox is “the moment” as they say, and it would be fun to run around New York City with her. Have her wear a GoPro or something. Something, anything to be weird and different and NOT BORING. And, in that context, do a really up close and personal personality profile of Ms. Fox.
Anyway, absolutely no one listens to me. No one cares. It’s just irritating that I can see there’s a need for a new media outlet and yet I am, in real terms, powerless to do anything about it.
The Tik-Tok generation doesn’t really have a blog of its own. I’m old enough to see the progression from Late Night With David Letterman to Spy Magazine to Gawker to….uh…..nothing? And I use Tik-Tok a lot even though I’m an Old and it seem pretty obvious that Tik-Tok is Ground Zero for modern pop culture.
Julia Fox — Tik-Tok icon.
If you believe we’re in the midst of a “vibe shift” then it makes a lot of sense that the new vibe would have its own publication. It’s kind of sad that Gawker is now an undead husk of itself — even though the original version was fucking hateful and nasty before its demise.
Anyway, here’s what I would do. I would start a site that was ostensibly obsessed with Tik-Tok and the pop culture it flings off at an astonishing rate each day. But, I would also produce a lot of really interesting, serious commentary about other topics — politics, what have you. You get The Youngs hooked on this new blog by taking Tik-Tok deadly seriously, then prepare them for the Adult World by presenting them with hot takes on what’s going on in the broader world.
And, if I was involved, I would occasionally throw curve balls involving doing something silly with Julia Fox around New York City or whatever. Or maybe the occasional sexxy snap of this or that celebrity simply to be ornery. The issue is — do anything not to be meh. Not to be boring. The whole reason the blog would exist would be to provoke a response of some sort.
As best I can tell, Generation Tik-Tok doesn’t have its own Gawker at the moment. Of course, there is a risk that, lulz, by definition Generation Tik-Tok doesn’t want it’s own Gawker-like blog and fuck you.
Now, I’m not saying that I would be involved in this in any way, but just doing a back-of-the-envelope study of what I see in my Webstats and here’s my suggestion for how to start a successful new blog.
The first thing you would have to do is realize to manage your expectations. Blogs are dead. Apps are dead. We’re all in a holding pattern while we wait for the kinks to get worked out of the Metaverse.
And, yet, I think if you flipped the script some on your traditional blog that maybe, maybe you could pull it off. But you would need a wealthy patron to help you with the backend and marketing. Here goes, though.
My magazine in Seoul.
If you were actually going to try to start a new Gawker-like blog now, you would really have to focus on celebrity news. But here’s the catch — you would need two or three people on staff who would simply use Tik-Tok all day and then turn around and write stories about what trends they saw. Tik-Tok would set the blog’s editorial agenda.
As such, right now, such a blog would be doing profiles of Julia Fox — or, hell, even turn her into the blog’s de facto mascot like Julia Allison was with the original Gawker way back when.
The point is — the reason why the undead Gawker is so meh right now is it has no spunk, no snark and it’s not laser focused on what Generation Tik-Tok is interested in. That’s the thing I’ve noticed about the new, undead Gawker. It just seems kind of indifferent to what’s really going on with pop culture.
If you want to be a pop culture media outlet, you have to be on the cutting edge of what people are talking about, and by definition, that means you have to be obsessed with Tik-Tok.
Anyway, the point is — you use the pop culture element of the blog to hang all the rest of the blog’s content on it. Come for the Tik-Tok meme talk, stay for a snarky feminist polemic or maybe a sexxxy snap of Julia Fox doing whatever it is that Julia Fox is doing at any particular moment.
This is just me mentally masturbating on a Sunday morning. I have no money and, hell, I don’t have any friends. I guess I occasionally get frustrated because I know, given the opportunity — and resources — I could probably bring back the spirit of the old Gawker with a new blog.
I saw something rather alarming on Twitter today –apparently, there is a growing belief that the Belarusians are going to attack Ukraine in the west. This is a “not great, Bob” moment because one might make the assumption that such an attack would be directed against the city of Lviv.
What the what?
Add to this that such an attack would hug the border between Ukraine and NATO, holy shit, it makes you think that Putin through his Bealrusian proxies really is in his fuck around and find out phase of the Russo-Ukrainian Winter War. (Which, if it last much longer, I’m going to have to get rid of the “winter” part of its designation.)
It makes you wonder. Is it possible WW3 has started and we just don’t know it yet? Does Putin want a direct war with NATO? Such an idea, on paper, makes absolutely no sense. In fact, it only makes any sense in the context of Russia forming some sort of Axis with China, the DPRK and Iran.
Otherwise, what the what?
We’re reaching a point where we’re sort of in a make or break moment in recent modern world history. Either Putin escalates in a rather dramatic fashion and we see the end of the WW2 liberal order and something akin to WW3, or we punt the structural problems of the modern geopolitical world down the road until the United States answers its autocracy or civil war question in the 2024 – 2025 timeframe.
Thankfully — I guess — we’re probably going to get our answer as to what’s going to happen next with a matter of days or weeks. Things are too unstable. Either Putin loses, or in a desperate effort to win he destroys everything.
Ahhh, Julia Fox. While it’s my impression that she’s well known among the costal blue check elites, for us poors, she sort of came out of nowhere when Ye made her his momentary muse.
Julia Fox / Image — the Internet
As such, there are a lot of people online — especially women — who have grown to fucking hate her guts.
I find this silly. It’s not like she’s a talentless hack like, say, Kim Kardashian. Ms. Fox actually appears to have some innate talents. She’s an actress, “muse” and, if nothing else, interesting.
And not in the manufactured fashion of so many pop up celebrities who come out of nowhere — Bella Poarch anyone? I can see why someone might think of her as a muse. She’s a legitimately interesting person who does interesting things.
I remember when I was creatively on fire in Seoul back in the day. That took a lot out of me mentally. So, I’m empathetic to what’s going on with her these days.
After decades of being half-away awake, history is now wide awake and ready to boogie. As part of that suddenly being awake, we face the prospect of the Russians and the Chinese making common cause against Pax Americana. This new Axis might also, along the way recruit Iran and the DPRK.
For the moment, this is rather fanciful.
China has a vested interest — for the time being — in Pax Americana existing so it can slowly rise peacefully within its context. The Chinese are very smart. They know they’re not quite ready to strike in a big away against, say Taiwan, so, lulz, let the Americans have a circle jerk over cancel culture without any major regional war in Asia to worry about.
And, yet, the case could be made that China might see what’s going on between Russia and Ukraine and think NOW is the time to strike. The United States is historically weakened by internal division and the careening existential choice of autocracy or civil war in the 2024 – 2025 time frame.
It’s possible that at some point in the near future all of us will be surprised when there’s a geopolitical tet-a-tet between Putin and Xi and the entire world’s post-WW2 liberal order collapses. China will send Russia arms for its war against Ukraine and Russia will sell China oil. Meanwhile, Xi could lean on the DPRK to attack the South Koreans as some sort of geopolitical distraction for the Americans so China can attack Taiwan.
The Iranians attack Israel and or Iraq to get in on the fun.
Remember, there are no assurances the Good Guys — us — would win such a new series of regional wars, or something that the press would call WW3. It could be that the United States either becomes a MAGA Fortress America or has a civil war and, as such, a new Age of Autocracies is established.
Or, it’s possible that a few billion people during a WW3 for various reasons and when we come out the other side with something akin to United Earth. The process of getting to that point would suck royally, but in the end humanity might find the wherewithal to save itself from itself.
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