Spring Vibes Forecast

Someone crack a window and air out the zeitgeist.

Hi friends!

How’s everyone doing? I feel a bit like a cavewoman thawing from a million-year-old block of ice, but there’s nothing like a few beams of March sunshine to restore one’s will to persevere against all odds.

Spring officially begins next week and there are a couple of vibes I can feel blooming alongside whatever is making us all sneeze here in LA. But before we get to that, I would be remiss in not addressing Kate Middleton’s messy facetune fingers and the case of royal relevancy in an era awash with brain rot and institutional disintegration.

Sad to report that after a decade plus of tracking social media trends for a living, the part of me that used to enjoy a good, old-fashioned internet pile on is officially dead (RIP). I haven’t felt a thing since Diplo and Chris Rock found each other in the mud and hitched a ride out of Burning Man. Like, yeah, the royals are being weird and everyone has lost their minds playing detective … wake me up when the aliens finally land.

Palace PR would have been better off to not say a word and let the fire die out as it eventually would have without the fresh oxygen content. Instead, those clowns fed it a doctored photo, a bizarre apology tweet, another paparazzi pic, and here we are still talking about it. I hope Kate gets well soon, I have a feeling her abdominal illness is as serious as her need to hire a new social media manager.

Since the Queen’s death, everything has gone to shit for the royals. When the figurehead was as archaic as the institution, the chasm between its violent past and our modern mores didn’t seem as mortally deep. Charles doesn’t have the same grandmotherly charm or wardrobe of pastel hats to smooth over the reality of what the monarchy represents. Instead, he has cancer.

Will the British monarchy even make it out of an age that has the Duolingo owl fighting for Gen Z engagement one “colonizer” TikTok comment at a time? And now the U.S. government is trying to ban TikTok entirely? Our only gateway to knowing the politics of a language app’s mascot? How dare they.

Aside from Bernie Sanders trying to get us all a four day workweek, not sure what they’re up to over there in Washington, attempting to regain some control over multiple political narratives, perhaps? But when AOC and Marjorie Taylor Greene are on the same page, you know it’s getting weird. And on that note, with all the hope left in my heart and a little glint in my eye, I present spring 2024’s prevailing vibes: delete the internet and a return to fun.

society if we delete the internet but never return to fun.

The idea of ending entire social media apps is actually quite lovely to me, not gonna lie. TikTok’s probably not going anywhere, but I will still save my favorite videos of older women giving the most heartfelt and wise advice and then burn them all to a DVD for posterity because I am so ready to be released from the relentless algorithmic psychosis and never look at any of it ever again. At this point we are way beyond needing to touch grass, we would all be well-off to spend a few months in a forest hugging trees. 

“Delete the internet” is a bit of a conceptual vibe, for sure, since companies simply adore torturing us with Slack and there’s always next month’s rent to be paid. Not a concern for me since on the new internetless timeline I’m going to be a tradwife, but we’re not all ready for such radical change.

In the meantime, let’s make a pact to find the strength within ourselves to fight our dopamine addictions, leave our couches more now that the weather’s nice, stop spending so much time staring at a fucking screen and start spending more time staring at the sky. Imagine the daydreams! We need that, you guys!

If we don’t start plotting a way out, it’s only going to get worse. Let’s be the first little rats to jump off the sinking ship and swim towards shore. Maybe we can call ourselves early deleters? That’s a bit too dorky, so we’ll workshop. But one thing I know for sure is that if we spend less time looking at the internet we will all be in a better mood and that can and will change lives.

This winter felt years long and the first sniff of spring has me feeling like a ‘93 Sheryl Crow — all I wanna do is have some fun and I have a feeling I’m not the only one. All this unyielding despair calls for a smidge of delight before we’re all too far gone to even care.

I’m sorry to say it since my liver has put up with enough, but we may need to bathe our surviving brain cells in Tito’s for a night or two to kick this off. Your microdoses aren’t quite cutting it, these times call for macro, and some of you need to start eating gluten again.

Of course there is good, clean fun to be had. Are people still taking pottery class? But our collective obsession with wellness — while a great shortcut to finding a sense of control in this mind-altering level of chaos — is making us all so fucking boring I could die. Everything in moderation should also include moderation and this spring we are bringing back laughter, mirth, and the loosest kind of amusement we can handle.

Monday is the last day of winter, so get your final moments of hibernation in now if you must, I will be getting a head start on fun this weekend, because I can. If that feels like too much right now, just put it on your vision board, open your chakras and let it all in. I’ll save you a seat on the party bus, no phones allowed, still in bed by 11 (I’m bored, not deluded). 

Less Lessons More Blessin’s™️

Liz