Welcome to Hot Beef Summer

My brain worms are alive and well, thanks for asking.

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Hi friends!

I know if I say this it will make me sound like a woman who leads sound baths at her home in a canyon where she lives with three cats, three hundred crystals, and her wide-brimmed hat … but love is the answer. It’s the cool cloth our inflamed culture’s forehead desperately needs. Not this past week, though, this past week was one for us haters. We ate well and we thrived indeed.

Drake vs. Kendrick is a beef born of and for the Age of Unhingement™️ — AI resurrections, SEO warfare, a wild pace of content, Kendrick calling Drake a pedophile, Drake’s response basically being, “lol I expected you to call me a pedophile,” and J. Cole, down by the water, away from the internet, wise enough to protect his peace.

I have a soft spot for Drake because we have so much in common. We’re both Jews from Toronto. We’re a couple of Scorpios who have never gotten over anything. We love to accessorize and be in our feelings. And we require the help of a plastic surgeon to have visible abs.

Drake is, in the words of President Obama who predicted how this would all play out in 2016, an outstanding entertainer. But Kendrick dropped “Euphoria” when I was level 11, code red PMSing, and those bars where he lists all the things he hates about Drake just hit so hard for me, spiritually. I still feel uplifted. Thank you, universe. I really needed this bounty of diabolical pettiness to dance to in my time of need.

Even though we all saw his Ozempic prescription and he may now be under criminal investigation, BBL Drizzy had one major win — officially cementing his status as my hometown’s most unhinged mascot. His biggest competition, crack Mayor Rob Ford, is no longer with us, and Drake dominates the IKEA monkey by a wide margin of fleece.

part of our heritage.

Drake vs. Kendrick is on pause since it was giving cease and desist by midweek. But you don’t need to be a culture witch to predict that this was just the tip of the (melting) iceberg: Summer 2024 will be hot and full of beefs.

Welcome to Hot Beef Summer.

Everyone is so into fighting right now and there’s no way these beefy vibes will calm down when the record-breaking heat hits the streets. It’s not even Memorial Day and we’re already off and running, with major beefs in politics, pop culture, and what version of a shitshow the future will be.

Politics vs. Pacification

There are so many protests. And protests of protests. And protests of protests of protests. Protests outside the Met Gala aka the Hunger Games aka the No Hunger Games (big week for Ozempic). Activism tied to a conflict thousands of miles away that made the pageantry of wealth and celebrity feel more tasteless than ever. There was a huge wave of outrage when one of the most inane nights in pop culture unfolded in the same feed as some of the most devastating shit you have ever seen.

Celebrity culture has been shifting and receding since the pandemic, but this week marked a pivotal moment in the backlash against it. There is now a movement to unfollow and block celebrities on social media as a form of revolutionary, attention-withholding currency. It began with unfollowing those who attended the No Hunger Games and has expanded to become a list of celebrities who haven’t sufficiently posted about Gaza.

I have so many thoughts on this, but here’s just a few since it’s been a big week of beef:

1. The Kardashian social follower to TikTok radical pipeline is so interesting to me. Who are the people that have done a full 180?

2. The absence of a public statement is not complicity in violence or a reflection of anyone’s actual politics — that is a busted, extremely online take.

3. JLo posting an instagram story is not the missing pathway to peace.

You can’t stare down the barrel of darkness all fucking day, you won’t make it out alive. There is room for pacification and distraction in culture. We don’t need to be devastated or challenged by everything we consume — even Shakespeare had a fool.

That said, the No Hunger Games gave us absolutely nothing this year. They’re going to have to do a lot better to keep this nonsense going with wealth inequality eating America alive and the TikTok comrades sharpening their guillotines.

me vs. the machines.

Humanity vs. Technology

Tech companies continue to have no clue how we feel about their brain-breaking products. Tell me why Apple thought it was a good idea to make this ad, a take on the hydraulic press videos that have been a social trend for years, that shows so many beloved tools of creativity and analogue expression being crushed and replaced by one of their flat, little machines.

How has it not reached their market researchers that we’re over it? They need to sell us on more than how thin their device is before we buy into the visual destruction of a culture we once could feel but now seem doomed to swipe through on a screen.

The machines are having such a run. AI is seeping its way into everything right now. The woman who founded Bumble just said the future of online dating is two people’s AI dating butlers meeting each other first. I can’t decide if that’s an improvement over what’s going on now? But who cares. As soon as it feels strong enough, my AI can go on app dates and do my job — let it do the heavy lifting while I do mat pilates and write screeds.

America vs. Itself

Judging by the discourse in America, all our brain worms are alive and well. Unless you’re the Kennedy born for this age, RFK Jr., his brain worm has very notably passed away. I can’t believe we haven’t discussed him yet, shame on me. At 70, he’s marketing himself with sporty videos on on YouTube as the vital young guy of the election gang. He hates vaccines and loves conspiracies. He can’t make up his mind on abortion. That worm ate … a chunk of his brain … and left no crumbs.

We’re now officially less than six months out from the election and President Uncle Joe is fundraising by calling Trump unhinged (duh). Trump has now been held in contempt of court ten times. There is a TikTok trend where people are speculating that something’s going on at the Pentagon because of how much pizza is being ordered at a Papa John’s nearby. And Mitt Romney straight up said the government’s TikTok hysteria is related to Palestine. The politics in this country feel like they’re being held together with chewing gum and twine.

I have, of course, been tracking the space weather forecast and I was hoping this weekend’s solar storm would take out the internet so we could just reboot our weary souls and finally be free. It brought some striking colorways to the sky, great content from our original screen, but the satellites still seem to be functioning. Now I’m beefing with space machines, how classique.

It’s all so much, these flaming hot beefs. I know I’m an adult, but can I just go to sleepaway camp, string some bead bracelets, and get a really good tan? A wet, hot dystopian summer away from the madness is what I truly need.

Less Lessons More Blessin’s™️

Liz

Spread the word.