The New Aesthetics

Streaming sunlight, warm rustic wood, fresh bread, the 🍄 and 🌼 emojis. In The Atlantic, Kaitlyn Tiffany wrote about Cottagecore and the Aesthetics Wiki. Tiffany lists some cottagecore sub-aesthetics, like “‘bloomcore’ (mostly flowers), ‘honeycore’ (mostly bees), ‘Southwest cottagecore’ (succulents and lizards), and ‘cottagegore’ (the creepy version).” But there’s also woodland goth, cowpunk, stimwave, dark academia… it’s a potentially infinite periodic table of vibes. Let’s see what aesthetics were in the tabs over the weekend.

Consequencecore: Fox Business apparently decided to cut its losses and cancel top-rated but commercially radioactive host Lou Dobbs. Parler founder and hapless dope John Matze was fired by “the Board” (i.e. Parler funder and gender-swapped Buddy Pine Rebekah Mercer). Not even openly attempting to bribe the President with a stake in the company could save him. (C.f. corruptionpunk: Rep. Lauren Boebert’s mysterious travel expenses / tax problems.) And Marty Baron got a light Chotining but I’m not sure anyone really noticed.

Flouncewave: Forgettable bit-part actor resigns from SAG. Transphobic drug addict Jordan Peterson cancels the media tour for his upcoming book after the confident pronouncement that “I can’t make an adequate judgement (sic) of its quality” in his first interview.

Pinkertonpunk: G/O Media fired editor Alex Cranz for union activity, according to WGA East. Amazon has waged an intense anti-union campaign ahead of today’s ballot in the company’s Bessemer, AL warehouse. Meanwhile, the New York Daily News just formed a union.

Cannibalcore: This Venn overlap of blandwave and abusegoth finds its avatar in perpetual-next-big-star Armie Hammer, who was dropped by WME and his personal publicist in the midst of an expanding abuse scandal. Anne Helen Peterson updated her 2017 Buzzfeed profile with a much shorter and eminently more readable newsletter post if you want to catch up on the backstory without spending a truly excessive amount of time in the company of the square-jawed charisma void. Hollywood seems finally ready to agree with AHP that “Armie Hammer is expendable.”

Hobbitgore: Handforth Parish Council meeting “descends into absolute chaos.”

Benningtonwave: Two short stories reminded me of the way imagination infects and warps reality in Shirley Jackson’s stories. Ben Okri’s “A Wrinkle in the Realm” echoes the transformation of identity in Jackson’s “Nightmare,” and Erin Somers’s “Ten Year Affair” runs on split tracks of fantasy and reluctantly-acknowledged reality like a modern playgroup version of “We Have Always Lived in the Castle.”

Cancelcore: At the New York Times, drink-dumping audiobro Andy Mills and “old fashioned” (wink, wink) science reporter Donald McNeil both resigned on Friday afternoon. The Erik Wemple Blog has the Mills backstory, and Mills posted a truly dreadful and unrepentant resignation letter on his own website. McNeil wrote a superficially more forthright note which nevertheless manages to center his resignation on one specific allegation, instead of the range of race and gender related issues his readers have noticed over many years. PEN America’s CEO Suzanne Nossel jumped at the opportunity. The usual crowd came out to celebrate two new inductees to their Whiners Club. Congratulations to Substack for its upcoming new writers!

Today’s Song: “Anti Matter” by King Geedorah (feat. MF DOOM & Mr. Fantastik)

~ Sold my plasma in Amsterdam, spent it all in a night, buying tabs at the Melkweg for a soldier in drag ~

Classifiedcore. Followpunk. Tweetwave. Subscribegoth.