Over the weekend, there was a run on a bank in London. The panic was confined to only the branches within a small geographic area, not all of Metro Bank’s 67 locations. Why? According to Business Insider, “Dozens of people demanded their cash and jewellery back from Metro Bank in Northwest London on Saturday, after reading false rumors on WhatsApp that the bank was going under.”This is what happens when local gossip is all we have. The episode at Metro Bank is not even the latest example of rumors leading to delusions and then panics among close-knit communities made even more close-knit through the speed of media like WhatsApp, media that let small groups drive each other mad very quickly. Because the only communication that feels real to us anymore is the one that comes from friends, family and word-of-mouth. In a brilliant piece for CR Fashion Book this month, Dean Kissick describes how communication is increasingly being forced underground, with our most honest and most interesting communications happening within group chats and private social media accounts meant only for close friends.
According to Kissick, we've been forced into these smaller groups because the greater public sphere - namely social media - has a tendency to make us conform. If we do not conform our identity and our opinions to fit the "narrowly prescribed range of thought" of public discourse we are shouted down or worse. So we only say what we really think in self-selected small groups. These "gated communities" are where the most exciting ideas are being formed now, where we can be ourselves with the people we know best. He writes: "Today we live in private once more, along interlocking chains of secret societies and micro-cultural enclaves, inside of which we can develop niche ideas and aesthetics among likeminded folk."Living in private groups can be great for ideas, but terrible in other ways. In private, we indulge the parts of ourselves that need to be edited out for public consumption. We bait each other, we dwell on petty grudges and we spread mostly the worst of the media that we're bombarded with every day.
Kissick explains: "We’re left with two distorted perceptions of reality: the public sphere in which everybody is pretending to be something they’re not, and the private in which everybody encourages one another’s worst impulses."As the world moves away from the News Feed and toward small groups, our worst impulses will be encouraged more and faster and lead to weirder panics than just a run on a small local bank. The town gossip - or loudest person in the group chat - will be the new authority. Facebook is shifting their entire platform toward more messaging among small groups that will be completely encrypted - Facebook employees will not be able to control, let alone see, any of it. Small, self-contained groups is how WhatsApp has worked since its inception. Antonio Garcia Martinez describes WhatsApp as "technology that takes us back to a pre-Enlightenment mode of discourse: us vs. them, feeling over reason, the ephemeral and fragmented over the fact-checked and continuous." And WhatsApp's led to much worse than bank runs. We're back to a pre-literate era when we don't have any real authority to believe, only our tribe.
And within our tribe we have our tribal folklore, memes that are passed down among each other but never recorded for posterity or tested by someone with universal trust. It's great when you and your friends explore fun ideas freely, but not great when you and friends spread insane delusions. I have opinions I would never share with people outside of a few of my best long-running group chats. These are opinions that, a lot of people I know wouldn't even understand because those people are in their own bubbles. We would lack the shared language to even begin discussing these opinions. In a way, it's lonely. But in other ways it's extremely liberating. Like you have a secret society, insiders who keep knowledge that outsiders can't touch. It's our own local gossip, our own tribal lore. But I can't believe anyone else because I know their version of events is untrue. All I have is our version.
Bob Lefsetz dedicated an entire letter to a great book that I also loved, Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart. If you like power, status and satire, you will like Lake Success. But the funniest part of Bob's note is when he claims he invented the term "attention economy." Lol. (Lefsetz Letter)
Constance Wu, star of Crazy Rich Asians, had a really bad public reaction to news that her show Fresh Off The Boat was getting renewed. (THR)
WarnerMedia is planning to run new episodes of some of its popular cable shows—such as TNT’s “The Alienist”—first on its upcoming streaming service, before they debut on cable networks. (The Information)
Here's a long list of all the new shows coming in the fall, with trailers. (THR)
I guess you should read one thing about the "Upfronts." (Variety)
The eternal present of gen z music taste
I’m fascinated by how kids growing up right now discover music and what they end up listening to. It’s clear that music to them is a completely flat landscape, in the sense that time, place and genre don't matter or don't seem to be a guide to what they may gravitate to. It’s as if every song is from here and now. Billiie Eilish recently put a mixtape on Apple Music that has hilariously been taken down on that platform but recreated by her fans on Spotify. It’s great! It’s 100 songs, and while some are from herself and her contemporaries, there are some really interesting takeaways. The first thing I noticed is that in addition to an extremely deep knowledge of current hip hop, plus a few harmless pop choices, was that there’s a lot of music from outside the US, like UK grime, reggae, afrobeat, French house and flamenco. Then there’s the blasts from the past. Some of the picks are from decades ago, presented here by Eilish completely stripped of their associations and cliches. Some of those throwback picks are left-field choices, or even album tracks by popular artists plucked from otherwise forgotten late-career albums:
"Hate In Yo Eyes" by Mack 10, the lead single from the West Coast rapper's 2001 album Bang or Ball, his fifth album and only album for Cash Money Records"Revelations" by Mos Def, an album cut off his critically acclaimed but relatively lowkey 2009 album The Ecstatic, an album that came out when she was 8 years old and is nowhere his most famous work"Overcome" by Tricky, which is the lead-off track from the influential 1995 album Maxinquaye, hardly a mainstream song for a 17-year-old today
Then, the other retro picks were ubiquitous in their day but seem like deliberate choices here for such a precocious and aesthetically strict person - like she doesn’t know they were ubiquitous. Or if she did, you’d like to think she approaches the songs still with innocent ears. The once-ubiquitous picks:
"Blame It" by Jamie Foxx ft. T-Pain (2008)
"Give It To Me" by Timbaland ft. Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado (2007)
"Turn Me On" by Kevin Lyttle (2003)
"Pony" by Ginuwine (1996)
"Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh)
" by Lumidee (2003)
Then there's Lil Nas X, who just discovered Nevermind.
The SNKRS app broke due to insane demand for Travis Scott's Jordan 1's. (Complex)
A brief clown-induced panic in Tennessee also happened to coincide with the release of the trailer for “It Chapter Two,” a follow-up to the clown horror movie, set to hit theaters this year. (NYT)
The future of Disney's tent pole movies looks extremely boring. (Twitter)
Further reading: — Silicon Valley makes everything worse: Four industries that Big Tech has ruined
The tech industry sells itself as improving our lives. So why does it seem to always do the opposite?
On Warren Zevon
The "Kurt Vonnegut of Rock Music"
Joni Mitchell: Her Art and Life in 33 Songs
The music that defines an icon
The only way is down
Subterranean survival warning
The Banker Bag Is a Status Symbol Again
Does a pair of A.P.C. sneakers pair well with a vintage Goldman Sachs gym bag?
The Best Record Label in America Doesn’t Release New Music
Numero Group turned into the industry's ultimate tastemaker by throwing the rulebook in the trash