Pop Culture Mondays/11.14.22
The “I AM SHOCKED 🙄” Edition
Happy Monday my darling pop culture junkies. I hope you had a beautiful weekend where you did yourself a service and MAYBE stayed off of Twitter for a bit and gave yourself a real mental health rest. Maybe you had a few group chats going that covered themes like, “Tiffany Trump had some amazing work done pre-wedding!” and “OMG did you see Ivanka cut that crazy lady out of her pic?” (Sorry we are usually Trump-free but this was SPECIAL).
Here was what she posted and I think despite my personal feelings that these are women from the Underworld, they look VERY pretty:
Here was the OG pic before Beelzebub was cut out:
HAHAHAHAHAHA I mean look KIMBERLY…if you wore THE PASTELS maybe you would not have been cropped out but frankly you look like a shadow from HADES. ANYWAY, Ivanka the Diplomat, claimed it was a mistake and how has posted the full pic because I am sure Don Jr lost his coke-addled mind.
Your other groups chats MAY have included conversations about Prince Charles in The Crown being TOO hot to be believable (we will get to that) or it may have been FILLED with schadenfreude over the demise of FTX and the utter circus of Elon Twitter (Obviously I am talking about my texts). AND maybe they were filled with joy to learn that Democrats kept control of the Senate (or maybe they were filled with upset and that’s ok too we are able to have friendly discourse here!) IT was an action-packed weekend.
So let’s just dive in…
AND in case you missed last week’s podcast, I chatted with Washington Post tech columnist, Taylor Lorenz:
I AM SHOCKED…SHOCKED I SAY!!!
Hate to see it. Do we though? DO WE? Look, let me start by saying I IMMEDIATELY DO NOT TRUST PEOPLE WHO GO BY THREE INITIALS as their name. Two I am totally ok with. Lots of friends with names like TJ, DA, SJ, JR, BB, DJ, and on and on. These are GOOD people. Trustworthy people. But let me tell you HAND TO GOD if any of those people added a third initial to their name…I would UNFRIEND THEM because I know that means evil spirits have taken hold of them and darkness follows.
There IS precedent here guys.
The BIGGY is obvs MBS:
I WONDER if we started calling him by his WHOLE NAME, if maybe he would be less inclined to be you know, murdery.
OK, I know my theory doesn’t totally hold up….JFK, SJP (though I much prefer her as Sarah Jessica) but I am sticking to my thesis because it is my newsletter.
For those of you who do NOT know what I am talking about…please take me with you to whatever magical land you are living in. I want to go there. The curly-haired lad above MBS is the 30-year-old founder of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, who goes by SBF.
WHAT IS FTX?
Maybe what WAS FTX. BUT, Bahamas-based FTX is a NOW bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange (it enables customers to trade digital currencies for other digital currencies or traditional money.) FTX and Binance were the two biggest crypto exchanges as they processed the majority of all crypto trades in the world, according to CoinMarketCap, an industry data tracker.
I am pulling a LOT of this from this very good explainer in the New York Times.
And LOOK…you do not want to come to PCM or to me in ANY capacity for any real deep understanding of the finance world…specifically crypto. I will just say this…I got a LOT of sympathy pats on my back from a lot of crypto investors when I gave them reasons as to why I wasn’t all in on crypto. People wanted to pay me in crypto or have me take on companies based outside of the US because of regulation as clients and I would say no. I was told I was turning down MILLIONS of dollars and perhaps that’s true and I am not saying that I don’t believe there is a world for crypto (there most def is) but I am just saying that during these early days of land grabs, I like to sit and observe. I did this in the late ’90s during the first Internet boom when I was told I was CRAZY for demanding more cash for salary and lessening my equity package. People junior to me were set to make millions and I was making a salary. OF COURSE, it was not as black and white…I just am risk-averse and wanted to see how things played out. In 2001, many of my friends defaulted on loans and owed taxes on equity that was less than zero and they had to move home with their parents.
I DIGRESS.
In what I HAVE to believe should not have been allowed and was HIGHLY problematic, SBF ALSO had a hedge fund he ran “SEPARATELY” from FTX, called Alameda Research. UH huh. Great job regulator guys. ANYWAY, FTX has its own cryptocurrency called FTT and some whistleblowers uncovered that while these two businesses were meant to be separate, in fact, ALAMEDA RESEARCH held an incredibly large amount of FTT tokens. Which is shady AF. And basically, the other big exchange Binance, announced it was going to unload its FTT tokens due to all the revelations and this led to a frenzy where everyone wanted their cash out of FTX. And a story as OLD as time…FTX did not have enough money to give to everyone who wanted to withdraw so they were in a crisis. BINANCE then seemed to enter in as a WHITE KNIGHT if you will, to save the day. This would give the FTX customers aircover and be able to get their money out. More than MANY billions at stake here.
BUT…just as SBF was praising Changpeng Zha (the Binance founder and CEO), aka CZ (TWO INITIALS GUYS), and everyone seemed saved to SOME extent….CZ pulled out of the deal. MANY think he never intended to go through with it and merely did it as a cat & mouse dark arts move and THANK GOD MICHAEL LEWIS is writing this book and has been in the room with SBF for 6 months so we will get real insight into these moments. CAN NOT WAIT.
So here we are. SBF has stepped down as CEO, is under federal investigation but his parents are well-respected legal professors I believe at Stanford so he will have good representation. He was outspoken in his belief (smoke and mirrors) on philanthropy and was a big donor to political campaigns though one wonders was it HIS money or investor capital? ONE HOPES he won’t be playing video games during his trial like he allegedly was during his investor meetings. Here is a little social color on FTX and SBF:
I mean there is a lot here and this creator has many more videos.
ADDERAL IS A HELL OF A DRUG.
And some funny memes during this whole crazy week:
WORLDS COLLIDE:
AND….let me end this post with…ELON. He announced that SBF set off his BF detector and he gave the world his thoughts with this meme which is funny 14-year-old boy humor. THIS IS REAL LIFE:
MORE ELON. MORE TWITTER:
I don’t want to be writing this just as much as you likely don’t want to be reading this. BUT HERE WE ARE.
I am not going to add a lot of thoughts here because I am TIRED and BORED and just want to get to Thanksgiving so I can eat my cares away and not think about the clown show that is Twitter right now. Full disclosure, I loved Twitter. I have had a lot of fun on the platform for more than ten years. I have met friends through it, learned a lot about so many things from it, found solace in the community at times. And I hope it survives I REALLY hope it does. But if it doesn’t then I hope someone will take all the lessons learned from what worked and what didn’t work with the platform and create an even better one. AND NO…sorry kids, but MASTODON IS NOT IT.
Let me just paint a picture of what happened last week with Twitter and the crazy verification mess aka TWITTER BLUE. So a quick tutorial…there has been a verification process for some time at Twitter. Celebs and people of note got blue checks to make sure people knew they were the real person. Some non-famous or not-important people like me got verified…the process basically was sending requests and reasons why you deserve verification. And some I am sure had friends at Twitter at some point who helped them. You will see people with less than a few thousand followers be verified and it could be a variety of reasons. VERIFICATION not only allowed the rest of us to know if someone was who they said they were or not, but the verified users got some benefits. Those included being allowed to DM others even if they did not follow you allowing you to really SLIP INTO some fun DMs.
But apparently, this process was NOT working and became Elon’s REASON FOR EVERYTHING this past week. As we discussed LAST week, troubles first began when verified users began changing their display names to Elon Musk and then shared pro-democracy/women’s rights messages.
Musk shut it down.
Or at least he tried.
The verification went on sale last week…meaning anyone could be verified if they paid $8 which you can imagine MIGHT be problematic. (IS this all beginning to sound very much like a spin-off of THE PRODUCERS to you?)
Let’s just DIVE in shall we?
There are so many…here are some others:
I mean…it goes on and on and on.
One of the more damning ones on all sides is the fake tweet from Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical company that manufactures and OVERCHARGES for lifesaving Insulin:
And POOR ELi Lilly…their stock got HIT hard. And the people got going.
But it is possible that companies like Eli Lilly will have a legit lawsuit against Twitter for all of this.
A car crash we cannot stop watching.
AND NOW FOR SOME OF MY FAVORITE THINGS (OR SOME OF THE DESPICABLE ONES…)
We have a lot of things high and low and just for good old-fashioned fun.
- We had LOVE IS BLIND 3 come out the other week and last week we had some wedding reveals AND the reunion. I mean this show is just garbage. In case you don’t know, this is a Netflix show that separates men and women and they date in these pods without ever seeing one another. They spend a week in conversations to theoretically make an emotional connection. If they end up getting engaged then they are finally revealed to one another. WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Well in this season, Netlfix decided to have a couple of 25-year-old FUCK BOYS who belong on LOVE ISLAND vs a show about MARRIAGE and all hell broke loose.
There are so many meme-able parts of the show. The GOLD CHALICES ARE BACK. But this past week nothing took over than these adorable little fruits:
Here is the reunion scene and then the scene that didn’t initially air…Cole, a 25-year-old fuck boy and Zaneb, a woman who got really passive-aggressive throughout the show…were TOXIC:
- GUYS. GUESS WHO IS BACK??? The KING of BDE baby.
IN what context? GET READY…
- In other news, LINDSAY LOHAN is also back. She stars in a Netflix Christmas movie called Falling for Christmas and I am not going to lie…it is utterly adorable in a Lifetime made-for-TV movie kind of way. But shocking I know, I enjoyed it. Here are a few reasons why:
- Frisco is playing her FATHER. That’s right GEN Xers…General Hospital’s FRISCO aka Jack Wagner aka Melrose Place’s Peter Burns…is Lindsay’s very blonde daddy. And I mean DAD in a non-creepy way.
2. The movie is very sweet and a nice, wholesome place for our Lindsay. It steals from Overboard and others but we forgive it because it gives our Lohan a platform to remind us she is OK.
3. It hopefully tells the tale of a real Linday trajectory…hot mess to a wholesome person who GETS it now.
- THE CROWN is back on Netflix. I watched the entire season which I will say is WORK. I mean Elizabeth Debicki as Diana is HAUNTING. Like it is too scary how you lose yourself for a bit in thinking it could really be her. Her expressions, her head tilt, the outfits. Truly too real. But then the opposite thing with the character Prince Charles played by the rascal Dominic West who we all followed along IRL when he shamelessly flaunted an affair for all the world to see. OK so maybe that’s why the producers thought he would play a good Charles but NO. He is too hot. He oozes sex appeal which is LITERALLY the last thing the now KING Charles is, is sexy. The Internet is appalled.
And this creator sums up exactly how I feel…the Mohammed Al Fayed back story is AMAZING. His childhood in Egypt being obsessed with the ROYALS and going as far as hiring the much beloved lifelong valley of the former King Edward just is a REALLY interesting backstory in a season that is otherwise dull.
- WTF IS GRWM? OK so if your kids are using this acronym or you are seeing it on socials here is what it means.
GET READY WITH ME
It is a TikTok trend really where people get ready on camera for their audience…whether their outfits or make-up and they talk to the camera and the queen of this right now is a creator named Alix. Here are some examples:
- And hanging on by a thread last week was this James Corden restaurant narrative. BUT with a twist. Creators started telling their own James Corden restaurant stories…but NOT REAL ones and they just are very funny.
THAT IS IT, my darlings…
There are so many more things I could cover but we cannot be here ALL day. I got to get back to my real job. But if you have any requests for next week, HIT ME UP!
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