I attempt to write about rising tendencies on this column, however this week I am flipping the script, as they are saying, and looking on the finish of 4 standard issues: Neo-medievalism, Kendrick Lamar, memes, and flicks are all within the technique of being thrown into the rubbish heap by younger individuals.
Woman Gaga and the loss of life of neo-medievalism
Should you watched Woman Gaga’s look on Saturday Evening Stay on March 8, you may not have recognized you had been witnessing the top of a youth development, the second when neo-medievalism went from cool to commodity.
Together with internet hosting, Gaga performed her new single “Abracadabra” for the SNL viewers, and he or she was doing a lot. The music’s pure pop hooks blended with onerous dance beats would have been at house on Gaga’s 2008 launch The Fame, so that is Woman Gaga reheating her personal nachos. However there are a lot older nachos being reheated too: From the Gregorian chants of the background singers to Gaga’s dancers rocking corpse paint and plague-doctor outfits, Gaga is dabbling in neo-medievalism, an aesthetic born in cutting-edge artwork and style circles that has been slowly oozing towards the mainstream over the previous few years.
Perhaps in response to the world devolving from globalism to warring regional powers, identical to the Center Ages, style designers like Hedi Slimane began dressing fashions in ren-faire type outfits product of leather-based to make them appear like “moody princes.” In the meantime, outside-of-the-mainstream musicians like Dandelion Wine started including drum machines and synths to Center Ages-style melodies. The neo-medieval type is predicated on individuals’s concepts of historical past, not the actual article (I doubt a thirteenth century peasant from Hungary would know what to make of “Abracadabra”) so it owes a debt to RPG video video games, fantasy films, and Dungeons and Dragons.
Over the previous few years, neo-medievalism has grow to be a complete factor. However the Nineteen Nineties swing revival was a complete factor too, and all entire issues die the best way Large Unhealthy Voodoo Daddy did: Too many individuals began paying consideration, and what was as soon as cool and underground turns into ridiculous and embarrassing.
You would see the cracks forming when Chappell Roan confirmed up on the Grammys wanting like this:
However Roan is not less than in her 20s. Woman Gaga is sort of 40 years previous. She’s nonetheless nice, however she’s a last-gen artist for mothers driving small SUVs now, and her copping the neo-medieval type on a stage large enough for you and I to see it’s a loss of life knell for the motion. For a historic pop-culture equal, ask your self who was “voguing” or dressing in a neo-Renaissance type after Madonna appeared on the VMAs in 1990.
So search for the mass-market-friendly model of the Center Ages to hit the back-to-school clothes racks at Goal this summer time, for “Abracadbra” to be performed at weddings, and for the cool children to ditch the fairy wings and clown make-up for regardless of the subsequent factor is.
Has Kendrick Lamar jumped the shark?
Talking of issues that had been as soon as cool… Kendrick Lamar!
Drake did not have many good bars in the course of the well-known Drake vs. Kendrick rap struggle, however he had one punchline that ended up touchdown onerous. On “Household Issues,” Drake raps, “Kendrick simply opened his mouth; someone hand him a Grammy proper now,” a line that performs on the outsized adulation Kendrick had began receiving. Since then, Kendrick carried out on the Tremendous Bowl, guested on Playboi Carti’s album, and has been handed 5 Grammys. It would not be bizarre to listen to “Not Like Us” performed in the identical small SUV that simply bumped “Abracadabra.” As Drake’s line suggests: You possibly can’t get this standard with out the hardcore saying, “Wait, is that this man truly corny?”
Case-in-point: the T-shirts. On Lamar’s “TV off,” he shouts out the identify of producer Mustard in a means that appeared designed to be meme-ified. As you might have predicted, individuals began making and promoting T-shirts of the second, like this early and standard model that includes Kendrick as a Peanuts character saying “Mustarddddddd!”
Or this one from Etsy, that performs on Heinz emblem:
Credit score: Etsy
Then different individuals began noticing how cornball all this gear is and posting responses like this:
And this:
Whether or not it is regular or brain-rot, the query is similar: “Who’s shopping for this shit?” The reply: Lame individuals.
It is not Kendrick’s fault that Etsy entrepreneurs are making a fast buck off his work, however within the pitiless court docket of public popular culture opinion, Ok.Dot appears to be strapping on the water skis and heading for the ramp.
What’s the nice meme drought of 2025?
For my third “factor that could be over,” I am taking a look at memes themselves. TikToker @goofangel began the ball rolling by proclaiming that there have been no new, unique memes in March of 2025.
Others picked up on the development and began posting image of the Nice Melancholy for example the supposed lack of memes:
Or expressing how the meme despair makes them really feel:
Others have identified that the Nice Meme Melancholy is an unique meme that was created in March, figuring out an vital paradox within the meme-verse:
Nonetheless others seemed to the longer term with a way of hope:
The “loss of life of memes” is generally ironic, however perhaps memes themselves have reached their logical conclusion and youthful individuals will begin doing one thing else with their time. It is a pipe dream, certain, however you by no means know.
Viral video of the week: I unintentionally bought means too invested on this TikTok film
My remaining entry within the record of useless tradition issues: cinema.
That children do not actually care about films any extra is not a brand new factor, however on this week’s viral video, YouTuber Danny Gonzalez takes a take a look at what’s changing conventional movies for increasingly more younger individuals: long-form tales designed to be watched like TikToks or Instagram reels. Films like “True Heiress vs. Pretend Queen Bee,” an 85-part(!) collection that tells the story of a highschool heiress’s feud with a preferred lady.
Gonzalez wonders at one level whether or not the “film” was truly written by AI. So, as an experiment, I requested ChatGPT to put in writing a film with the same concept, and I believe it did not less than nearly as good a job because the precise “True Heiress vs. Pretend Queen Bee” script. Here is a part of the primary scene:
Lily walks previous a gaggle of scholars who pause and stare at her. One whispers to a different.
Pupil 1: Wait, who’s that?
Pupil 2: I believe… she’s, like, an heiress or one thing. Some huge household with a great deal of cash.
Pupil 3 (skeptical): An heiress? To what, like… a sweet retailer?
Lily (overhearing, with a smile): Truly, it’s a world luxurious style model. Simply inherited a stake final month. However thanks for noticing.
