Spotify Unwrapped.

I’d like to consider myself fairly open-minded, but if there’s one group of people who I’m quite happy to condemn en masse, it’s those lost souls who opt to use any music streaming platform other than Spotify. I don’t care if YouTube Premium is better for reasons X, Y and Z; you’re weird and you need to grow up. Go sit over there on the naughty step with Android owners, James Corden, and anyone who ever refers to a conversation as a “chinwag”. You’re all on the list.

This week Spotify sought to expand their hegemonic dominion beyond our corporeal plane into the cosmic realm. Their new ‘Song Psychic’ feature allows users to address the spirit world directly and have life’s most burning questions answered through a combination of fortune-telling and song selection.

You simply ask whatever question is plaguing your sick mind and the app answers with a nominatively-appropriate song which, based on your musical tastes and listening patterns, it also suspects you might rather enjoy. I asked what I should have for lunch and it suggested ‘Dirty Water’ by The Standells – so the good news is that I’ve discovered a new band I like, the bad news is that I now have cholera. Swings and roundabouts. Still beats using Apple Music like a wrong’un.

Don't Techno For an Answer.

It appears that getting on the UNESCO Cultural Heritage List is a bit like getting on the shortlist for some of these industry awards of lesser repute. You know, the ones where you just give some cold emailer a few hundred quid and they graciously bestow upon you an email footer and a ‘World’s Best Creative Agency’ mug in return. We won’t name names.

Following nearly three years of campaigning from ‘Rave the Planet’, UNESCO have finally added ‘Berlin Techno’ to their illustrious list of cultural icons. To be fair, three years is quite a long time, so perhaps I’m doing UNESCO a tremendous disservice by suggesting that they’re just dishing out accolades like they’re Plan B pills at an Olivia Rodrigo concert. Plus that’s three years non-stop that these technovangelists have been campaigning – but I suppose amphetamines will do that for you.

Now I urge you to join me in my campaign to get the Morris Men of Chipping Campden inducted in the next list update. We’ll be holding our first rally this weekend. Be there with bells on.

Meta Health.

Everyone stop worrying, Facebook have solved mental health. Isn’t that a relief? Don’t you feel better already? No? Well, you might after you get yourself a Meta Quest 3 headset equipped with all manner of fun functionality designed to suppress that voice in your head screaming hopelessly into the void. You can’t put a price on mental wellbeing – but that’ll be about 450 quid, please.

Headspace and Meta launched Headspace XR this week, a virtual reality experience built primarily for Gen Z users to “strengthen their mind-body connection”. Because how better to combat loneliness than to put on a headset and immerse oneself in a fictitious existence?

The launch has been met with a healthy degree of scepticism from people who wonder if we might be overcomplicating matters and raising the barrier of entry for practices that have proven effective for millennia without requiring a VR headset. However, if it does indeed get more people meditating and practicing mindfulness, then surely the ends justify the means. I for one have found meditation extremely helpful in my day-to-day life – I now only go out mowing down pedestrians in my car once a week – so I sincerely believe all of us deserve to tap into this supreme state of celestial stillness.

24 Carat Chode.

Funnily enough I had already intended to spend my weekend searching the streets of London for hidden golden penises, and as luck would have it my chances of success may have just increased exponentially.

Isamaya Ffrench has secreted four of her phallus chalice lipsticks around our nation’s capital. Over the course of this week, friends of the brand including Cora Corre and Chet Lo have been releasing clues on where they stashed the goods, with the first person who showed up receiving a free lipstick. And yes, I also thought the prize would be a bit better than that when I started shamelessly copying this information from the article linked below. But apparently the runner-up only gets an ill-defined ‘Golden Ticket’, so it could be worse.

Is this the 2024 version of an Easter Egg hunt? Are we witnessing the apogee of the moral degradation of Western civilisation? And do those lipsticks come in cherry blaze? Asking for a friend.

Vintage Diesel.

Fun fact: ‘Vintage Diesel’ is actually Vin Diesel’s full name. Honestly, look it up. That was a test. If you looked it up, you failed. Vin Diesel isn’t even Vin Diesel’s real name. It isn’t even Vincent. And I’m not really here right now. You are being fooled by the Cartesian Deus Deceptor. De omnibus dubitandum est. Don’t believe everything you see on the internet. Unless it’s from Tucker Carlson, that shit’s gospel – in the sense that it also probably isn’t true.

A 92-year-old bodybuilder, a woman with a long tongue and a man with spoons on his face walk into a bar… What do you get? No, not that, you filthy pervert. You get Vin’s namesake clothing brand’s S/S 24 campaign.

In what we have been encouraged to describe as a talent show rather than a freak show, creative director Glenn Martens is celebrating extreme excellence by casting Guinness World Records holders to star in the campaign. And the result is equal parts alarming and mesmerising. I don’t know where to look but I can’t look away. The tongues, the spoons, the nonagenarian striations! It’s all too much. Please make it stop. I just want to eat a tuna sandwich, listen to some Snow Patrol and go lay down for a bit.

Reality Check.

Social media gets a bad rap, and no wonder; it can often represent a miasmic cesspit overflowing with the very worst manifestations of human psychology seen through the lens of a cute filter. But that doesn’t make those people who proudly proclaim themselves to be undergoing a ‘digital detox’ any less annoying. It would be fine if they didn’t feel the need to mention it every 5 minutes. The same goes for ice baths. You can always tell when someone’s recently started taking ice baths, because they’ll fucking tell you. Speaking of which, I’ve recently started taking ice baths.

To contradict everything we’ve just said: Bottega Veneta do deserve some credit for their enduring commitment to the real world. They’ve stuck to their guns for over 3 years now, having ditched socials in January 2021 and not returned since – in stark contradistinction to your attention-deprived friend who deletes and redownloads Instagram every couple weeks. And embracing this reality-first approach, Bottega have just dropped a new travel-inspired zine which can only be picked up in person. I know, how adorably novel. So be brave, put some trousers on, and go pick up a copy from a reputable bricks and mortar bookstore near you.

Or you can just wait for someone to leak the content on Reddit. Go outside in the real world? Fat chance. There are people out there.