BRAINWORMS: CODA, 2024

Your End of Year Vibe Check

The days are short and gloomy and the vibes they are a-shifting. Rather than ending the year on another cultural roundup I’ve decided to experiment with the macro. Pay no attention to the moldering corpse of the health insurance CEO or the pearly whites and bushy eyebrows of the modern Pretty Boy Floyd that sent him to meet his maker. A new year, hell, a whole new Presidential administration is set to encompass you and it is vitally important that you match its freak. Luckily I am here to do the tastemaking for you. Fuck a gift guide. This is your holiday vibe guide.

This will be scattershot and autofellatory. Apologies for any confusion. This is all based on vibes. Don’t take it so seriously. Don’t yell at me.

Chart for the past twelve months courtesy of tapmusic dot net

OUT / IN:

OUT: NOSTALGIA / IN: NEW FUTURISM

In retrospect I didn’t commit hard enough to a critique of curated nostalgic aesthetics in my “Cool Jacket Decades” essay. The issue isn’t just one of artifice versus authenticity (this is actually a pointless distinction, I’ve decided, the past is a blobfish, bringing it up to a modern vantage point so it can be perceived and consumed at our convenience inherently distorts it). I am so sick and tired of hearing about how cool the 70s and 80s were. It’s an indictment of our great “modern” writers that so many of them seem terrified to actually tell stories set in modernity. Make a movie with a cellphone. Quit looking backwards and wondering why the present is decaying and the future is disappearing.

Even the future is a nostalgic curation. We’ve been living in the hollowed out corpse of cyberpunk, packaged for ready consumption by Instagram content aggregators, furnished with the expectations of stoned Gen-Xers who vaguely remember liking Star Trek: The Next Generation, for going on thirty years now. Enough. We must look forward, unblinking at whatever horrors await, finding wonder in the shape of things to come. A new futurism, informed by the challenges and problems of modernity, is essential to rescuing our ability to believe in a future of any kind.

OUT: LIFE AS PERFORMANCE ART FOR CLOUT / IN: KEEPING IT TO YOURSELF

Observe the following.

washingtonianprobs

A post shared by @washingtonianprobs

It costs nothing to not post. You should keep that in mind. “Oh but I wanna be the next rags to riches viral sensation like Hawk Tuah.” Shut up. You won’t be. You’ll disrupt your mental and spiritual well being via attention overload and return to anonymity none the richer within a week. Most of us will not even be that “lucky.” It’s always “eat the rich” with people online until they’re the ones getting a bag for nothing and then they all turn grabby. To quote Llewyn Davis: It’s careerist, it’s square, and it’s a bit sad.

“Oooooh my haters are trying to sabotage me. I’m being repressed, I’m being silenced.” Fine whatever. Dance for pennies on IG live with your genitals concealed by a wet loincloth. Then turn around and tell me how much you feel your privacy was violated. Tell me how you’re doing self-care. Tell me you’re quitting the internet. Then come back two weeks later to do a reaction video. Go with God.

OUT: AAA VIDEO GAME PUBLISHING / IN: LUNATIC FRINGE AUTEUR GAME DEVS

Another essay topic where I should have been more emphatic. I wrote my essay declaring a dark age for corporate games publishing before the Year of the Flop even really began in earnest. Between the nine-figure tire fire that was Sony’s Concord and Ubisoft sleepwalking their way to the brink of insolvency it’s been a bad year to be a game dev with health insurance.

This is a situation set to decay, as I see it. The rift between the people who make games, the people who fund games, the people who sell games (both in retail and media), and the people who buy games is ever-widening. All parties are unsympathetic to some degree. The name brand dev houses are covered in aging barnacles of mediocrity who smother the enthusiasm of a new generation of creatives. The publishers are looking more and more like red-eyed, flop-sweating gamblers stuck on tilt, chasing losses. GameStop (the only remaining physical games outlet) is propped up by a Redditor stock market cult and succumbing to Funko Pop cancer. Games media is now so dead people are starting to sell off parts of the corpse to make rent (my condolences to those affected by the recent layoffs at IGN) and the publishers aren’t even pretending that they don’t view the whole “journalistic” enterprise as advertising with extra steps. Then there’s the self-avowed “gamers” themselves, foaming at the mouth over wokeness and DEI in their product, celebrating studio closures and layoffs as victories in the culture war. Time will tell whether the contingent of the gaming public under the spell of ragebait is merely a loud minority or if refusing to design optimal sex kittens for gooners really is corporate malpractice. Suffice it to say, things seem pretty bleak either way.

There is, however, cause for some optimism. As the western publishers flounder, Japanese development and publishing has enjoyed something of a resurgence. Nintendo is, as always, untouchable and Capcom, Sega, Namco-Bandai, and Atlus are all riding strong tailwinds from critical and commercial successes. Even SNK (Saudi money injection) and Konami (remembered they’re a video game company) are on the upswing. However, I’ll advise some caution here as well. These companies are notoriously prone to re-entering the doldrums after one big bet goes sour (don’t think I’m letting Sega get out of here without a stern wag of the finger about whatever the hell Hyenas was supposed to be). Furthermore, it’s difficult for me to be optimistic about an industry propped up by aging workaholic “visionaries.” Yeah, Hideo Kojima is in the lab, cooking up Death Stranding 2 (we will be there at launch), but he’s no spring chicken. None of these guys are anymore. Appreciate them while they’re here.

It really is one of the great artistic developments of my lifetime that any and all companies I mentioned in the above paragraphs can find their multi-million dollar endeavors outflanked and destroyed by a single freak living in a broom closet, surviving off Top Ramen and energy drinks, coding their masterpiece with cum-crusted fingers on two hours of sleep a night. It is that raw creative urge, that “fuck you, you’re wrong, fuck you, I’m right” single-minded dedication to one’s own vision, that will save this industry, this art form, even as its historic institutional gatekeepers fall to rot and decay. Shine on you crazy diamonds, and maybe shower some time this week.

OUT: ONLINE FASHION CURATION / IN: FASHION AS SELF EXPRESSION

Look, getting pointers from tastemakers when you’re young and trying to digivolve into a fully formed human being with a personality is all well and good. But if you’re over twenty five with a grown up job and disposable income and you’re still letting Instagram accounts tell you how to dress you need to knock that shit off. The average fortysomething divorcee with a JC Penney’s wardrobe full of mass market band t-shirts and NFL Shop dot com apparel has four or five times the visual appeal of even the most dedicated looksmaxxer or hypebeast. There’s no substitute for confidence and authenticity. Wear your clothes, don’t let your clothes wear you. If you wanna truly dress well, you gotta be willing to dress poorly. Most things follow that basic model.

OUT: MICROTRENDS / IN: APATHY

- Dracula Flow

Look, I can’t notice things for you but if you haven’t clocked this one I really don’t know what to tell you. Realistically I could have written this one as soon as “Kamala is Brat” happened but then the Hawk Tuah girl did a crypto pump and dump and disappeared like Keyser Soze (none of those words are in the Bible). If we’re gonna insist on a new thinkpiece generating manufactured “trend” every three weeks I’m gonna insist that you brief me with some actual actions, signifiers, and products to form the skeleton of the thing. Say what you will about Brat Summer, it at least had a beating heart in the form of a fairly successful record. That’s not nothing. The repetition of the mantra eventually made it meaningless but it at least started off with some root in reality. I can’t say that about most of these. Oh you’re a Coquette now? What happened to the Clean Girl Aesthetic? What about Dark Academia Vibes? What makes this different from those? Oh you’re tying a ribbon in your hair now? Good for you. Enjoy.

Vapor. Fairy dust. Marketing campaigns, one and all. Quit distracting yourself to death.

I think it was hard-coded in regardless of how the US presidential elections went but the total collapse of the Democratic party has engendered a real deep atmosphere of apathy. MSNBC ratings are in freefall. Resistance is out. Muddling through is in. We’ll see how it takes shape over the coming months but I really suspect this will be an intergenerational phenomenon which stretches across class boundaries. The upper class cosmopolitan Dems will scale back their political donations. The middle class Millennials who drove so much of the content machine during Trump One are now hitting middle age, less vital, less energized, less cool. The kids who spent the spring camping out for Gaza will shrug, maybe mumble an “I told you so,” and enter the political wilderness as their elder siblings did almost a decade ago.

If you don’t see yourself in the prior paragraph, know that I respect your point of view. The need to get involved, to organize, be active, to do something, is a noble one. Maybe one of the fundamental civic urges that animates representative democracy. Just know that I think it’ll be an uphill battle this time, maybe even more so than ever before. Lotta “fuck you, got mine” in the air these days, bubba.

Anyway, before I go too long here, I must draw a distinction between apathy and inaction. Not caring can keep you on your couch, sure. It can keep you from worrying about anything outside of your daily routine. But it can also free you from fear of consequences. A state perceived as criminal inspires apathy towards the law. A society seen as amoral inspires moral apathy. You think America’s new hunky boyfriend Luigi cared whether the New York Times agreed with his decision to commit premeditated murder in the middle of Manhattan? Nah. Apathy, brodie. Apathy. It’ll set you free.

Shit ain’t nothin to me, man

PERSONAL AFFAIRS:

TAKING THE SHOW PILL

If you’re a long time reader of this feature you may notice that I don’t really watch TV. Outside of sports and background noise (Top Gear, Corporate YouTube) I don’t really engage with the medium. It’s nothing personal, I just don’t really have the time for it.

I aim to change that somewhat. Two of my yearlong projects for 2024 involved reducing the piles of unplayed games and unread books which loom over everything I do. I have a similar pile of shows I should get to at some point. It’s been growing and mouldering since I wanna say the summer of 2018, when I watched The Wire and The Sopranos back to back. No longer, I think. Maybe.

Look, all the unwatched anime on my shelf has gotta get done, that’s non-negotiable. We’ll see if I follow through beyond that. Seinfeld, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men all seem due for re-watches but that would seem to go against the spirit of the exercise, somewhat. Gotta experience some new stuff. (Why not recommend something to me in the comments?) In my typically insufferable fashion I will be seeking out weird shit most people do not care about. A friend of the blog has been extolling the virtues of The Young Pope for years now. He’s also bullish on Big Love. Another friend of the blog is big on Severance. Unsure about that one though. This project will have to be a trust fall exercise with my ancient enemy; streaming services. Maybe it’ll be chill. Maybe the eldritch data-horror can inhabit my being for awhile. Maybe it’s like Devilman where being possessed makes you a cool guy with great eyeliner.

JOINING UP

This one’s already in progress and set to continue. I think it’s high time we get proactive about ending this so-called loneliness epidemic. Say no to the fear of your fellow man. Attend a few parties. Even the mediocre ones serve the essential function of reminding you what good parties are like. Find a few organizations and go to a few meetings. My DC area Stack Freaks would do well to follow the good people at DC Movie Club. Good fun and conversation to be had. I went to my fighting game community local and found more than a few friendly faces among the stoic joystick ronin who did most of the winning. I intend to make a habit of it. Both these organizations and others I haven’t met yet. I used to think I missed college. In reality I just missed joining things. I crave cafe society. I think we all do. It can’t happen without you, without us. See ya out there.

FINISHING A NOVEL

I have a confession to make. I am a fiction writer with an essay habit. I do not post my fiction here, on Substack, because I submit it to literary magazines and journals. I’ve been published once before. I am knee deep in the hunt for my second publication. The chase for my third will likely begin in the new year. Then my fourth, and so on.

All of this is in service of the novel. I have been working it out for ages. Now I feel I can actually draft it properly. I want the publications so that when I have the novel drafted, edited, and polished I can query agents about it with at least some sort of portfolio. Yes, yes I am aware. Publishing is terrible. I’ll never make any money. Literary men are dead (of no concern to this particular genre fiction boy). Save it. I don’t care. I do this for me. I always have. Let me fail on my own terms.

I include this to hold myself accountable. I’ll have it done by this time next year or else.

MISC.

Hmm, what else? I got engaged, that’s not really germane to anything else but it’s certain to affect much of my writing going forward and therefore relevant to this plucky, charming, talented little tribe I’ve found since I rededicated myself to Substack. I’d like to thank my Aunt, who’s been here the entire time. I’d like to thank my cat. Frankly I’d like to thank anyone who made it this far. Happy Holidays to you and yours.