We may finally lurch into a new era if people feel comfortable wearing the Apple Vision Pro in public. The moment that happens, then the usual dynamics of capitalism will kick in and, before you know it, the headsets will start to be leaner and sleeker to the point that there will be a Before and an After.
But that’s all very speculative at the moment.
A lot could go wrong. It could be that a Second American Civil War / WW3 might break out. It could be that the Apple Vision Pro is all hype and, in the end, no one will want one and, as such, we will punt the dream of a vibe shift down the road another few years.
But the combination of VR / AR, robotics and AI all coming to a head at the same time is definitely the makings of a vibe shift in the near, near future. No one, especially me, can predict the future, so, lulz.
It definitely seems as though we’re in for a significant “vibe shift” caused by technology in the very, very near future. This fact has gotten me thinking about how there might be some unintended political consequences to something akin to a Petite Singularity.
I came to this realization walking around Wal-Mart today. Imagine if instead of struggling to find a human to tell me what I needed to know, the place was crawling with one of those androids that Elon Musk is working on. Put Grok or ChatGTP in them and download the entire floorplans and the stock of the store and they could replace the humans that work at the store.
This might happen at an affordable level by 2030 — if we don’t blow the world up first.
But imagine if there was a sudden tipping point on the android / AI front and a lot of DDD jobs that undocumented people usually fill were done by androids. That might turn off the tap of people coming across the border simply because androids would be doing the jobs they would otherwise be paid to do.
Everything is so dumb
Also, isn’t it at least POSSIBLE that that, unto itself, might unfuck up our politics when it comes to MAGA and abortion? And if Incels can fuck a sex bot instead being idiots thinking women have a responsibility to fuck t hem, then…maybe a lot of the culture war fueled by feminism and a low birth rate….might just vanish?
So, there might be some upside to the rise of coming AI android overlords. Of course, this solution will, in turn cause the rise of an AI / android rights movement that I’m sure MAGA will love to oppose.
And remember, we still have the possibility of absolute chaos at home and abroad starting from right about now until sometime in 2025. It could be that just like how WW2 paused the development of TV that the coming Second American Civil War / WW3 will do the same thing with the Petite Singularity.
It could be that after about 1 billion people die across the globe — specifically and directly because of the actions of MAGA and Trump — and all that is sorted out that it won’t be until about 2030 that all the cool technological goodies that we’re being promised today will actually be rolled out.
Is it possible that, by definition, the advent of the Apple Vision Pro headset could lurch us into a new era? While I have my doubts — the thing is still too big and bulky — just its existence does point to a possible New Era.
Apple Vision Pro
It could be that once Vision Pros are out in the wild, that that will spark a shift in the vibe and people will start to dress and act differently than they have the last 20 years.
Just think how different people in the 1950s dressed as opposed to the 1970s. Now compare that to how…same…things have been since around 2001. It’s all very curious. Other than technological changes, not a lot has changed in America except Reds and Blues hate each other to the point that we may be on the cusp of a civil war / revolution.
But, who knows. Some of why I think this MIGHT be a vibe shift is there is a fashion element to the headsets. But, as I mentioned, they’re still too big and bulky. They need to be a lot less conspicuous on your face for them to really take off, at least in my opinion.
The real issue is what happens when AI generated media gets thrown into the mix. Now THAT is going to be lit.
As I understand it, SNL alum Fred Armisen is into punk bigtime — so much so that he was the drummer in a punk band for a long time — so when I heard So Good today, I instantly thought of him.
The only thing about So Good is the one song I really like “I Hate It Here” is so on-the-nose that it sounds like a song from the fictional punk rocker he created who was the only punk who liked Margaret Thatcher.
But, the I Hate It Here track has a very punk edge to it and it has a beat and you can dance to it. And, yet, it definitely seems I’m the only person in the world who loves it.
Something very curious is going on with Western culture at the moment. And that curious thing is…nothing. There’s just nothing much going on at the moment. There are lot of macro trends that are heading towards something, but there’s just not a lot going on right now.
There are a lot of ways to look at situation.
One is, this is just the usual winter lull in the year. Another is, culture is kind of in a holding pattern until the election. Or, you could say, once the AI generated Toy Story pops out in a few months, and it will be away we go!
But think about it.
For the last 20-odd years, people have dressed pretty much the same. We’ve listened to music that is pretty much the same — with a few notable exceptions. Everything has just been a number of apps maturing in popularity until some — like Facebook — seem like virtual malls. (Not a lot going on and those people who do use them are old people getting their steps in.)
I do think that AI and the Fourth Turning might be two things that upend the rather sedate cultural world we live in at the moment. And it might be that Apple’s Vision Pro is the first thing that REALLY throws everything for a loop. But even that, I think, has a few more years before people will actually want to wear them.
Not until XR glasses are indistinguishable from those wrap around sunglasses that all those angry MAGA chodes wear will they become popular.
It definitely FEELS like we’ve reached the absolute end of one pop culture era and we’re waiting for a new one to arise from the ashes. And, yet, given that we may face a perfect storm of Petite Singularity and The Fourth Turning in late 2024, early 2025, these months leading up that era in time may be nothing more than wasted time.
We may just drift through cultural time without any sort of clear idea of where things stand until we make up our minds about if we’re going to continue to be a democracy or not. And, at the same time, we also have to decide if AI is going to completely and totally take over huge swaths of the human experience or not. I’m very weary about both of these events, given that they’re going to take place at the same time.
So, I don’t know. It could go either way. It could be that we just slide into autocracy and we let AI write and produce all our entertainment and we live in a permanent Black Mirror episode. Or, it could be that we have some sort of sharp, violent political event starting in late 2024, early 2025 and not until that’s settled we make any big decisions about AI.
It just seems like we’re lurching towards Something New in a rather abrupt manner and it will be interesting to see when exactly this happens. I suspect we may continue to be in something of a cultural vacuum for a few more months. We really haven’t reached a tipping point, I don’t think. It’s definitely one of those — you know it when you see it kind of things.
I look forward to what’s next, though. We’ve been suck in the post-911 cultural era for way, way too long.
Pretty much no one reads this blog. Most of the traffic comes from a trickle of people in Red States who have a boner for a civil war looking for how they can start murdering people like me for political reasons.
But, from my obsession with the analyzing the Web traffic of this Website, I can give you some sense of how one might start a new publication. The key take away from my all-consuming obsession with my traffic is there’s a real audience for celebrity news. It’s insatiable. The celebrity topic is one of the few things that people are willing to leave their passive media bubble to search for.
As such, if you wanted to start a new publication of some sort, I would suggest you really lean into covering celebrities, at least at first. So, I suppose if you wanted to get high concept you might say my idea is for TMZ meets BuzzFeed meets Spy Magazine Meets the old Nick Denton version of Gawker.
Or, put another way, I might suggest starting a podcast first that is hyper focused on snarky hot takes on celebrity news then build a Website out from that. Celebrity news definitely seems to be the clit of the infotainment industrial complex at the moment.
If you were to focus — as I’ve long suggested — on Julia Fox’s every public twitch then leverage that into politics and other infotainment elements you would have a hit on your hand.
Julia Fox
But who am I kidding. No one listens to me. Everyone gets all their information passively from Twitter, Facebook and Tik-Tok now. The only way my dream will ever come true is if I somehow managed to win the fucking lottery and do it myself.
We definitely are in a vibe shift, but what are some of the details of the shift? Well, from what I can tell, when it comes to music, people want to dance. So, a a number of major artists are coming out with releases that are in the dance pop rock – disco spectrum.
I really like Halsey’s part of the song “Stay With Me.” Sadly, the rest of the song is rather meh. A remixed version of the song that purged it of all the artists in the song and focused exclusively on Halsey’s interesting part of the song would be a hit.
It’s so bad, that every time I hear the Halsey part of “Stay With Me” I get really excited…then I hear the rest of the song and I get frustrated. It’s like when Rihanna or Skyar Grey would do guest spots in a song and you’re like, “Hey, I want to hear them sing the entire song!”
The other thing is the color pallet for clothing has gone neon for some reason. Everyone is wearing bright pink or bright green these days for some reason. It’s notable because it’s kind of happened overnight. A lot of stars just seemingly all decided to be very NEON in what they go out on the town in.
Movies have yet to be changed by the vibe shift. Though, I suppose the interest in the multiverse when it comes to storytelling might be considered a vibe shift trait. Which makes me sad — I was hoping for the gritty movies of the 1970s making a come back.
But, the vibe shift is still young, maybe that will happen.
I continue to find it very aggravating that we’re experiencing something of a “vibe shift” in pop culture…and yet it’s not really being breathlessly documented by some new podcast, or Website or whatever. I mean, Julia Fox is someone I’m so interested that I’m willing to step outside my passive Twitter media bubble to find out what she’s up to — and there’s no central repository of information about her.
So, again, it seems to me that there is money to be made via say, a podcast that would direct people to a Website. Something like that. Something that would be multimedia in nature.
And, yet, the argument could be made that even podcasting is pretty much mature. The Web is definitely mature. And it would take millions to bootstrap a new print magazine.
So…lulz? I think this is it. No one wants to be cool and make money by documenting Julia Fox’s every twitch in a snarky way. I suppose that something unexpected might pop up at some point, but things are looking kind of bleak when it comes to pop culture coverage at the moment.
The thing about the band The Pretty Reckless is they seem to be stuck musical amber — they’re an exact replica of the type of hard pop rock I was listening to in the general 1985 – 1989 timeframe. They manage to do this without sounding generic. They’ve got spunk and are actually really interesting.
The Pretty Reckless
Now that we’re suppose to be in a downlow “new era” of a vibe shift in pop culture after the end of the Rona Era, it would make a lot of sense if the type of traditional pop rock that The Pretty Reckless performs would, again, become mainstream.
In fact, I would go so far as to say we know we are really in a “vibe shift” if a song from The Pretty Reckless mysteriously and abruptly blows up. Then you would have a whole slew of similar bands get record contracts and we would be awash in good music again.
I’m afraid that’s a huge amount of wishful thinking, however. I think, at best, we’re probably going to get a lot of New Wave inspired pop rock, rather than more traditional hard pop rock that we get from The Pretty Reckless.
Me as a DJ in Seoul.
I like The Pretty Reckless because they’re firing on all of their creative cylinders. When it comes to a lot of other acts trying to, say, bring back New Wave, they seem to not quite know what their vision is. They’re thrashing about, looking for The New Sound, when all they’re doing is trying to recreate New Wave. The Pretty Reckless, meanwhile, have a musical vision — be traditional hard pop rock.
Anyway. I has a sad that there aren’t more bands like The Pretty Reckless for me to discover via Spotify.
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