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I noticed Substack is rolling out a new feature called “audience-specific content.” I have not taken the time to understand what that’s about but it intrigues me. Has anyone began using it and if so, what do you think? In today’s paid edition, I’m sharing a few things I’ve been into—music, books, film—and would like to ask what you guys have been into as well. Don’t be afraid to talk back to me.

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If Madonna Calls…

Well, the bitch did it. As I’m sending this out Madonna has achieved her tenth #1 album in the U.S. with Confessions II. It’s been a rare pleasure watching word of mouth spread, from rumors, to the rollout feedback, to a reappraisal of a lot of her earlier work—albums like Erotica, Ray Of Light, and American Life have been re-entering the conversation of late—and ultimately to the release and the reviews. (I can’t stand alliteration, it was an accident, I swear.) I’ve noticed that a lot of people who might be inclined to dismiss a new Madonna record have been persuaded to give this one a chance based on the recommendations of people with taste, and they’re telling me they’re hooked on it now. That’s probably why the positive reception feels so authentic to me, which is rare in the music industry right now. A lot will be analyzed and discussed about what made Confessions II such a success (trailblazing in ways), and there is a lot to applaud in terms of the decision making that led us here. You might think an artist of Madonna’s stature would be guaranteed a top-selling album in 2026 but that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s worth keeping in mind that it was very much not a given. So this is a big deal. And if you were ever a Madonna fan, you have the opportunity to live through an iconic Madonna moment, to paraphrase Mel Ottenberg, which, to the pop-minded individual, is priceless. In a new episode of Bandsplain with Yasi Salek, I second-mic my perspective on whether or not the album has Grammy potential. It should surprise no one that I think it absolutely does. It feels like the most opportune time we might get to honor Madonna both for her entire decades-spanning run and for a record that actually deserves the award on its merits. It might even be the final opportunity to do so, some are saying. (Knowing her, it absolutely won’t be, but her inevitable awards campaign should lean into that talking point regardless. “Honor the phenomenon. Honor the woman.” Or something.) Listen to the full episode:

It’s Gaultier, Sweetie.

I always enjoy the sociology of a fashion season, the way it resonates (or repels) the denizens of my group chats, sends social media into a state of vitriol, or causes general dispute among the Ones That Care. What I don’t like is when the discourse around a collection reverts back to clickbait, especially clickbait from the previous season, clickbait that has already proven to have worked, unoriginal clickbait, ran-through clickbait being employed by certain commentators. It feels desperate to me. But I suppose the fashion crusades are long, the eight-plus times a year that they happen. We have to forgive fashion writers for running out of things to talk about and lowering themselves to replay the hits. Maybe analysis of a collection within its own context—that of the house and the designer—is boring to them, unless they spice it up with some reductive indictment of fashion writ large, and what it’s doing to women! Or even more commonly: what’s the point of it all!

(I really enjoy listening to Tim Blanks unpacking the shows on the BoF podcast, which feels like the way it ought to be done, in my personal opinion.)

There was a time, culturally, when most people were not glued to industry trade publications. Even if you imagined yourself a cinephile, policy wonk, or fashion fanatic, you likely weren’t spending time browsing Deadline, TechCrunch, or Women’s Wear Daily on a constant basis. Somewhere along the line, social media accounts sprung up whose entire existence is based upon scanning the trades all day and aggregating rumors and news, which became the way that a lot of breaking information actually reaches people. And from there, out sprang a million business-obsessed spectators, newly trained on the behind-the-scenes goings-on of their favorite companies, record labels, fashion conglomerates and film studios. It became like a spiderwebbing operatic effect, in which discussion of mergers and acquisitions replaced conversations about the product or output itself. Feeding this hunger, Puck launched its business newsletters, applying a bottom-line mandate to not just politics and tech, but also entertainment, art, fashion, media, and sports. Now, it seems, everyone has adopted a certain vocabulary when discussing things like the Haute Couture collections, and it’s memetic in nature. It centers V.I.C.s, stakeholders, and share prices. It’s tinged with fear and hysteria, and it hinges on existential peril and total annihilation.

A couple days ago, the writer Tim Noah published an article in The New Republic labeling this tendency as “doom porn,” asking, “Is There Any End To The Atlantic’s End-Ism Fetish?”, which addresses this precise trend. I found this litany particularly amusing:

In fashion, as in every other business segment, endless growth is the only option. Anything short of it is deemed a cataclysm, even if your business is bringing in €6 billion annually. Not only that, but the disaster is now announced and called out on sight, before any revenues have even been reported. It can taint a designer’s collection upon arrival and communicate to the fashion-literati that to support XY brand is akin to getting onboard a sinking ship. “They’re not thinking about the client,” goes the common refrain whenever a designer is seen to have taken too much of a risk, or pushed a brand into a genuinely new direction. It seems that some alleged fashion lovers cannot wait to express concern on the behalf of, presumably, individuals like Noura Bint Faisal Al Saud, Queen Rania of Jordan, Ivy Getty, or whoever else is regularly purchasing $80,000 dresses—or even getting $16,000 embroidered cashmere sweaters from Chanel. There’s much less hand-wringing over what resonance a garment has as an idea or an expression, how it filters into the rest of the brand and informs other product ranges, or what it communicates.

So of course, the designers first in line for the guillotine are always the ones who work within a high-concept framework. I used to refer to a certain type of person as a “luxury hog” back when I worked at V magazine. The industry is filled with people who are into fashion for aspirational, rather than artistic, reasons. You can hardly blame them. In many ways, fashion is built to attract and exploit the shopper. These people see fashion’s function as helping them create a wardrobe or craft an image, to project onto the world that they are a connoisseur… a highbrow person who appreciates nice things. When it comes to perennially conceptual designers like Rick Owens, Rei Kawakubo, or Junya Watanabe, the luxury hog politely tolerates their presence, as it comes with the association of being among the flock. But if you’re a designer with a fresher face and you attempt to do something avant-garde, it’s not long before the knives come out. Into this scenario walked Duran Lantink at Jean Paul Gaultier.

When Jean Paul Gaultier emerged onto the scene in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s he was known as fashion’s “enfant terrible,” due to his instinctive perversion of classical tailoring and his willingness to shock or even offend. Gaultier was a constructor: his designs came from the scaffolded approach of suiting, corseting, bustiers and brassieres. His gowns were deceptively complex and often embedded with elements of camp. To me, Duran is cut from the same cloth, albeit from a distinct and original angle that separates his work aesthetically from Jean Paul’s. He’s astutely mining the Gaultier archives for elements that suit his own sensibility, rather than trying to curve his sensibility to fit the existing expectation for the brand. The way he referenced some of Gaultier’s more maligned collections, like Autumn/Winter 2013 haute couture, with its voluminous, Eiko-Ishioka-inspired tendon coats, felt like a logical throughline to his own protruding, anatomical specimens. It also might have been an embrace of work from his predecessor that he feels was misunderstood and warrants reconsideration, albeit in shapes that are hyper-exaggerated and bear their own opulent, fearless lunacy. (Duran’s iteration is here for reference). What emerges from this alchemy is a shock of newness you sadly don’t often see anymore.

Citing Marie Antoinette and Louis XIV as inspiration, this season Duran takes a deconstructionist approach to the idea of haute couture, dismantling and questioning the utility of timeworn formalities like bustles, crinolines, and protrusions of tulle. His faucet silhouettes, Frankensteined leathers, and contorted bodices ridicule the standards and practices of what constitutes highborn status in design. It’s a primitive, theoretical exploration not unlike the hypotheses of spiritual forebears like Hussein Chalayan and Martin Margiela. (Even Kanye West, with his obsessive minimalist removal of layers, shoes, undergarments, and even clothing itself has some anchor in this same iconoclastic, blow-it-all-to-smithereens and start-over approach.) Whatever you think about the collection and how it pertains to actually being wearable, is, to me, beside the point. There are plenty of covetable daywear and eveningwear looks within the collection from which you could see entire ready-to-wear propositions being formed. Many houses are, right now, relying primarily on an excellence, and even an overwroughtness, of craft as their couture proposition, from Chanel to Dior, Fendi, Armani, and even Balenciaga. It takes a certain audacity, if not spiritual cauterization from outside criticism, to put forward a genuinely interrogative artistic statement in 2026, even within the walled-off category that has historically intersected with the avant-garde (see past collections from Thierry Mugler, Schiaparelli, Alexander McQueen, Margiela Artisanal, or John Galliano for Dior). What Lantink’s harshest critics are missing is that couture doesn’t have to be about beauty, luxury, politics, or even sales. It doesn’t have to dictate the way that anyone ought to dress—one thing does not negate another. Sometimes it’s about asking questions. If someone is given the opportunity to do so, wouldn’t it be depressing if they didn’t?

“Have you ever fucked on cocaine, Nick?”

Paraphernalia rule #1 is always meet your heroes. It’s impossible to be disappointed by anyone, in my experience, as they always give you something to come away with, even in the worst instances. Luckily, there were no such instances when I interviewed the legendary Joe Eszterhas for Interview magazine’s Summer 2026 issue—the Madonna Interview, you might call it. The screenwriter behind movies such as (but not limited to) Flashdance, Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, Sliver, and Showgirls is still in an echelon of his own, in terms of how much money he’s made on script deals. He’s also defined pop culture with his scorched-earth dialogue and penchant for erotic, tabloid voyeurism. I can’t believe I got to meet him. He inspires me endlessly and is a charming, lowkey, genuinely nice guy. Check it out.

Do Yourself a Favor

And if you’re in the vicinity, planning a trip up or down the state of California, take fucking HIGHWAY 1. I do the drive alone, tacking hours onto the duration I might instead have on the hellish Highway 5. Every time I do it, I pull the top down on my Jeep Wrangler and listen to a playlist I’ve now had for many years, named after the vortex I like to call the “California swirl” of Big Sur. Communing with the most beautiful coastline on earth to bands like The Wake, Lansing-Dreiden, Cocteau Twins, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Brian Eno, Wild Nothing, Soft Kill, the Mary Onettes, Private World, Narrow Head, Nothing, Pure X, Big Star, Craft Spells, This Mortal Coil, Weekend, The Cure, DIIV, the Psychedelic Furs, Echo and the Bunnymen, Deafheaven, Ariel Pink, and Yves Tumor just does something to me I can’t really explain. It’s supernatural and it yields dividends. I ask for things and they come true. It’s where spells are born and my soul gets reset. Besides, where better do I have to be? Free playlist for everyone. Do the drive with the windows open and thank me later.

PARAPHERNALIA #014

Call it trance, call it house.

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It also reminded me of a favorite editorial during my V Magazine days, shot in 2015(!) by Eloise Parry, styled by Akeem Smith, featuring Chiki.

Speaking of the algorithm, I’ve been thinking today about how profoundly I love and appreciate existing in sadistic gay culture. Whenever a hot guy pops up anywhere in the world, like Aphrodite from the surf, he rockets onto many a “For You” page, and the gays (writ large) report for immediate duty with a dossier of personal information. It happens so irrationally fast, it’s head-spinning. They reveal his identity, who he used to date, who he’s dating now, how many guys he’s fucked, how many guys he’s currently fucking, how open he and his partner are (or not), how big it is, which supplements he’s taking, even what he’s been arrested for and in what state and county and when. It’s a breed of cyber-gang-stalking I’ve earned the privilege of witnessing due to being a certain kind of gay guy online. When one pours over the disclosures being volleyed, one can’t help picking up on a certain tone of resentment and envy, masked with nonchalance, including attempts to discredit the subject outright—”he edits his photos"—which just makes the whole thing even more entertaining. It exposes the pathos of the obsessed as much as the background of the obsessed-over. And being obsessed and obsessed-over feels really in style right now. It’s a sickness and an open wound, a symbiotic relationship in which both sides are victimized and both sides win. Stop perceiving me / Don’t look away.

We all know that the attention economy rewards bad behavior—anything that gets people heated rises up the invisible charts. It’s nothing new, but it’s mutating slowly into an extreme parody of itself. I’m willing to speculate that maybe it’s only happening on my algorithm…but somehow, I doubt it. Lately, pop stars are waging proxy wars against each other with their respective fandoms, which only increases engagement with their music. Accusations of copying, who did what first, who’s authentic, who’s pretentious, who’s niche, who’s lying, and who stole what from whom have all emerged as a present-day lingua franca in all manner of creative spheres. Often, attacks are leveled behind “Close Friends” filters or on burner accounts—direct confrontation would, presumably, be too hot to handle. But the reflex to attack one’s “opps” now extends beyond pop music and into such far-flung corners as professional sports, fashion design, graphic design, algorithm coding, substacking, OnlyFans, and every other conceivable sphere of influence. Once I found myself immersed in X postings by a long-COVID activist in which she was expressing a battered, jealous rage over how much attention the Budibungyo Ebola outbreak was getting, I knew I had hurled myself headlong into the spiritual abyss. (Did I choose to extricate myself from it? Of course not.)

I’ve been sitting on an idea for a Costume Institute exhibit and Met Gala theme. It feels timely, and like it could take innumerable academic and analytical directions. Since I don’t know who to speak with about it, I’ll just drop it here. (Andrew Bolton, call me?) The exhibition would be called Copycat: The Art of Influence. The show would deconstruct the very concept of the reference, tracing garments back to their earliest, crudest origins, and demonstrating the myriad ways in which designers have iterated on iterations in order to arrive at novel, boundary-pushing fashion within a historical framework. Chinatown knockoffs, deliberate homage, unusual collaborations, trademark infringements, not to mention the core business model of new designers taking over storied houses and interpreting their codes—all would be grist for the delirious ripoff mill. Virgil Abloh’s “remixing” approach to Pyrex Vision, for example. Or Dapper Dan’s influential luxury pastiches. Think of all the Gaultier, Galliano, Comme Des Garçons, Vaquera, Moschino, and assorted Demna collections that embody this idea—clothes by designers with irony and humor finally being considered in a corrective, diagnostic context. It would explode conceptions of the idea itself—what is an idea, where does it come from, who owns it, and to what end? Finally we can put the delusion of idea-theft to rest, having acknowledged its primacy in the very concept of fashion itself.

For the carpet, the theme would be “knockoffs only.” Designers could dress their guests in reinterpretations of looks by other designers. Imagine the Prada guests all wearing Miuccia’s fantasy of Versace, or Anthony Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent doing a spin on Christian Lacroix. H&M or Zara, who never stay away from this promo opportunity, could tap Jeremy Scott and go completely insane. Let Alaïa collaborate with Hervé Léger! Something happened after the tragedy that was Diet Prada’s rise where everyone lost their ability to consider fashion from multiple angles or through a postmodern lens. The Internet’s outrage became too personal and nasty, and designers retreated into a mode of luxury over modernity. It feels like we’re still on a path back to sanity, and it’s perfect timing to poke holes in the all-too-sacred—and ludicrous—notion of “originality” in an industry that has sustained itself on trends in the first place.

I’m going somewhere with all of this.

I’ve noticed that the resort collections have been trickling out and garnering responses that are overblown. Something always happens during the pre-collection season in which brands more easily seize the spotlight than during the Paris or Milan shows. Part of this is because the presentations aren’t all clustered together, so brands get at least 24 hours of undivided attention where they often split it with several others. They also, often, take the form of extravagantly staged destination shows, stuffed with celebrities and V.I.P.s., which create more of a “moment.” This can result in an imbalance where more attention is paid to the pre-season collections than the more fashion-forward seasonal ready-to-wear (or couture), despite the fact that pre-seasons are designed to be more commercial and less of a fashion proposition. These collections are meant to be judged on a curve: how has the designer expanded upon what was proposed in the previous collection, before the next one pivots to something else? Instead, the Internet flattens them into the same category. On some level, the brands prefer the pre-collections soak up the lion’s share of the attention because those clothes make up the bulk of what’s in the stores. But from a fashion perspective, they’re just not as interesting. Unless they’re designed by Nicolas Ghesquière.

When the Louis Vuitton women’s Resort 2027 collection hit the runway at the Frick museum a few weeks ago, I was surprised by the outcry. The very same people who police originality are likewise repulsed when confronted with the real thing. Louis Vuitton is as blank a ready-to-wear canvas as you can dream up with a heritage brand—it’s fundamentally and historically a luggage purveyor. When Marc Jacobs became Vuitton’s creative director in 1997, he created its first ready-to-wear line ever, which debuted for Fall 1998. Austere and minimalist, it emphasized a blank slate. It would take until 2001 or so, with the first Sprouse collaboration, for its identity to begin to take flight. By the time Jacobs exited in 2013, he had put forth landmark collections like Spring 2003’s Murakami Minnie Mouse, Spring 2008’s Richard Prince nurses, Spring 2010’s afro-puffed Mark Ryden-esque nomads, Spring 2013’s escalators of twinning mega-mods, and his grand finale, Spring 2014’s midnight-black tribute to Miuccia Prada, Rei Kawakubo, Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele, and a litany of other “showgirls” who inspired his work. Jacobs had effectively created the template for Louis Vuitton’s fashion line, exploded it, made it into pop culture, and lovingly torched it on his way out the door. But more crucially than those hit collections, each a spectacle in their own way, Jacobs established a wardrobe and an attitude that in many ways defined the aughts, from the metallic jewel toned crop tops to the Olsen-esque sunglasses and swingy, desecrated handbags. What was once associated with ‘90s grunge took on a post-electroclash layer of glitz.

By the time Ghesquière stepped into frame, in 2013, he only had one predecessor to look to, and part of the reason he was hired was to skip past that reverential early-season backward glance that often comes with a new appointment. His 15-year tenure at Balenciaga was considered, by all accounts, nothing short of groundbreaking. In their statement announcing his hire, Vuitton stated that Ghesquière would bring “a modern creative vision to the House’s women’s collections, building on the values of refinement, savoir faire, and extreme quality.”

His debut at Vuitton delivered on that promise, with a slick treatise on ‘60s modernism by way of forward-looking hybridized leathers. From there he continued to establish something of a signature approach: he casts a hook line of nostalgia, only to pervert, mutate, and subvert it into something alien, expressive, and entirely new. He takes what’s familiar, evoking often outdated or naff ideas of glamour, and twists it into something hallucinatory, unfamiliar, and unflinchingly progressive. Where some designers focus on the body, creating clothes that beautify a woman, Ghesquière creates artifacts that draw attention to their own singularity. To his dissenters, this can be at odds with the wearer. To his faithful, it’s a fleeting opportunity to ride the lightning.

Personally, I look forward to a Ghesquière show more than I do almost any other designer, because the work is unfailingly novel and reveals itself in layers. What at first can be discordant or repulsive reveals something fascinating upon closer inspection, and continues to morph with each successive glimpse. His Resort 27 collection, inspired by a sort of absentee dissection of uptown/downtown street codes, is dizzyingly anticonventional. There are the leather ankle-boots sculpted to look like Foamposites, the belted socks, the asymmetric back-brimmed bucket hats, leather-trimmed denim ruffles that seem to explode from the groin like a cabbage patch, Edwardian-by-way-of-Amish ruffle-shouldered dress shirts, neoclassical Greek column handbags, Gaultier-inspired tromp l’oeil jeans (Jean-Paul Gaultier was Ghesquière’s first boss, and the job that first took him to New York), and a psychoactive remodel of westernwear filigree that expands and hangs off jacket lapels or the bottoms of miniskirts. Perhaps the ugliest dress of the year, worn on the runway by Alana Haim, boasts what appears to be lacquered puce hair extensions snaking over a black lace dress with a hot pink lining. The more I look at it, the cooler and more insane it becomes. Boxing shorts in charcoal satin, liberated motocross jackets, bitchy zebra belts—it’s 1980s by way of the 2000s in the 2020s, before the Chinese-takeout-boxes through a Judith Lieber filter, or the aggressive Keith Haring prints, even enter the equation. To mine ideas of raunchily bad taste, offend thousands of Gen-Z internet commentators, and push fashion ahead in ways that many are too close-minded to take notice of is a ferocious blessing to behold. This is what Nicolas does. I hope he never stops. And Zendaya agrees with me.

PARAPHERNALIA #012

New York cares.

I went and voted in Franklin Village yesterday, and then watched the (bad) results trickle in with the same ambient, noncommittal amusement with which I receive most pseudo-consequential information these days. But it’s been brought to my attention—viciously, vociferously, and unforgivingly—that I’m not like most people. There is nothing wrong with being vocally politically engaged, it’s just not something I’m interested in. Maybe it’s because so many other people are. I always feel better after speaking to friends of mine who work in politics, or whose work revolves around political organizing, in general, because their point-of-view tends to be rooted in a sort of world-weary, straightforward rationality. I was talking to my friend Amber, who succinctly brushed off my anxiety saying that the Los Angeles mayor is, generally speaking, constitutionally powerless. “L.A. has a horribly byzantine political system by design.” This clear-eyed attitude rests in opposition to the histrionics on social media, people who seem eager to betray their lack of bonafides or perspective via sheer volume and ferocity of nonstop mongering. To use my friend Greg’s favorite expression, it’s a full panic. And after the culturally destructive, artistically bankrupt, socially deleterious waves of righteous indignation that accompanied both Trump presidencies, I’m unfortunately noticing a disturbing pattern.

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If you don’t care about any of this, I’ll be back to regular scheduled programming shortly.

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Let’s keep it brief, as I am OOO.

I attended the preview week for the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Biennale in Venice as a tangential participant of the Danish Pavilion where artist Maja Malou Lyse presented Things To Come, an interrogation of how images and fertility can potentially intersect in a rapidly advancing, artificially intelligent, virtual reality atomization of erotic lonerism. I had written a loose script for a film by Lyse and DIS, featuring Brazzers porn stars working in sperm labs and engaging in verbal humiliation toward the, presumably, beta male participants. I loved the exhibition staging by Common Accounts, which included an adjacent installation of cryogenic sperm containers and a new fertility ritual of “sperm races,” designed to foment rivalries between men online over their own virility. Apparently declining birth rates are on everyone’s minds? The Japanese Pavilion also featured a show on the subject, Ei Arakawa-Nash’s Grass Babies, Moon Babies, in which 200 lifelike babydolls cried through amplifiers, hung from scaffolding, lounged in chaises, slid down ropes, and basically exploded from every angle of the pavilion’s surfaces. They all wore printed onesies and reflective sunglasses, giving the proceedings a taunting lunacy. Both exhibitions were favorites (I’m biased), not because I share their alarmism but because they both made supposedly catastrophic global concerns seem ludicrously funny—such is life.

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Moving on: the Universal Pictures Michael Jackson movie is a phantasmagoric, multi-sensory, spectacular issue for me. And that’s fine. I’m simultaneously ecstatic that it’s happening, fascinated by the peculiar dimensions of its architecture, and cynical about its intentions. All of these feelings can and should coexist if we are watching movies in good faith, and if we care about films and pop iconography (and in my case, rifling through the personal debris of other people).

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It feels, increasingly as if everything has turned into a zero sum game, which has me questioning if we’re depriving ourselves of certain indulgences. Certain mysteries, theories, or analyses. I think a symptom of living in terrible times is a sort of ambient extremity in temper. People want certainty, and they want to know where everyone stands. Flare-ups shoot up like flames in a burning building, windows blown out almost out of nowhere. Even the BBL influencers are running each other over with their cars. Everything is either incredible or heinous, we’re either obsessed with it or we hate it and it’s fucking over and it’s embarrassing. You either condemn someone or you condone them, and actually, you’re probably complicit. I’m guilty of this often. I hear the things coming out of my mouth and stop dead half the time because I can’t believe I got got! Like a sucker, like a fucking mark. So I issue the quick rejoinder “unless…”

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Some quick plugs:

• I will be attending the Venice Biennale the week of May 4. If anyone is going, hit me up.

• Last week I moderated the Q&A for the U.S. debut screening of John Early’s Maddie’s Secret as part of the emerging and impressive Los Angeles Festival of Movies. I think the movie is a masterpiece and advise everyone to keep it at the top their lists in case any screenings pop up. It comes out in theaters later this year.

• This week I appeared on Bandsplain to talk about Hole’s “Boys On The Radio,” a sonic trojan horse through which I got to smuggle out my unleashed thoughts on indie snobbery, dope fiend mentality, ambition, jealousy, female rage, pop subversion, California punk, and Courtney Love’s unforgettable Hollywood rise. This is the kind of thing that gets me cooking with gas, so to speak, so have at it. Courtney even gave us a nice review in the comments, even though I used the term “gutter snipe” at one point. Hey, you either get it or you don’t.

It’s been interesting reliving the Celebrity Skin era in preparation for that podcast, as well as Madonna’s entire career for another project, and thinking about ambition in general — how it’s perceived, glossed over, covered up, defended, excused, demonized, ironized, celebrated, totally ignored, or widely condemned.

It feels like we’re living in a moment of widespread desperation across the board.

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In this issue: diagnosing a mass delusion, illusory truth effect and fan fiction reality replacement, and the debut of the Paraphernalia Soundtrack, breaking down new music you should know about as a Chic Normal Adult Person in 2026.

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Am I really doing this? I’ve been asking myself this question lately, as I’ve somersaulted through an internal spin cycle over whether or not to “have a Substack.” I am, at times, extraneously aware of my own undiagnosed personality disorder which renders me all-or-nothing when it comes to any sort of personal commitment. I’m typically thrilled to selec…

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