This week I attended a party at a cat diner. At the back, there was a many-windowed room full of furniture and toy mice and 20-or-so cats, who were mostly hissing or comatose. In the afternoon light, surrounded by terrible lions, I thought about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This was a cruel week for maternity—the Lindsay Clancy trial, the late-term abortion bill in Massachusetts, and the clip of AOC freezing her eggs. She came into my mind at the cat cafe because I was there with my kids. Without them, that experience wouldn’t have been so lovely: their joy as they tried grabbing cats, and their distress when one of them bit back. Not having kids is perfectly fine, even admirable in some situations. A lot of people solemnly determine that parenthood just isn’t for them. And there are others who want to have children more than anything, but can’t. Then there are the anti-natalist types, the teenage nihilists. What struck me about AOC is that she froze her eggs. It reminded me of the time my youngest kid collected rainwater for a week so that she could build a water castle—and the way she cried after the water lost its shape and vanished.

Obviously, parenthood is far more complicated than all of this. Maybe AOC will unfreeze her eggs in a few years and have triplets before turning 40, and she’ll become the greatest Democratic Socialist of all time, the first to conquer the White House. It’s possible. I happen to know a certain someone who became a mother at 43. In fact, Bridget wrote a great piece about how she wishes she had frozen her eggs when she was 37: “There are things you have no way of knowing until you experience them. For me, being pregnant, the excitement of getting to be a parent with a man I love—these are things I couldn’t conceive of until they happened to me. And sure, frozen eggs aren’t a guarantee. They’re a very expensive insurance policy most people can’t afford that might not even pan out.”

But for AOC, cryopreservation is political. It shouldn’t be. The fourth-wave feminist power move: “I’ll be a birth-giving mammal when I decide, after I’ve proven that I’m way more than a surrogate for the patriarchy.” (Why the rush? It’s not like there’s an age limit for Congress or the White House.) In reality, AOC would probably be a great mom. And, ironically, parenthood would give the political insight that is currently inaccessible to her. If the rumors are true about her presidential aspirations, she would be a better candidate if she had kids. Because civic duties take real meaning when you’re a parent. You aren’t voting or serving for yourself. You’re doing it for your children, and the hope that they’ll be lucky enough to do the same in return with children of their own. Politics without parenthood is a game, an activity.

But what AOC doesn’t realize—because how could she? why would she abandon the path to empowerment?—is that every moment without a child takes her farther from the meaning of life itself. When you become a parent, you’re basically launched back to your own infancy with all the knowledge you’ve stored, and forced to start your life over. That’s how brutal it is. And it is unfathomably brutal. Harrowing. Exhausting. At times, maddening, dizzying. Children wreck everything you thought you wanted. The Oval Office is cool, but it’s nothing compared to a cat cafe with your kids. You don’t actually even know yourself until you have kids, because, until then, there’s too much persona in the way. Dreams of yourself vanish—career goals and old bucket lists—the moment you hold your child the first time. From there, you rebuild yourself. A rare opportunity. Having overcome obstacles you assumed were insurmountable, you’re lighter and sharper. Parental anxiety gives you a new clarity. And here’s what AOC doesn’t realize: parenthood may slow you down, but only because it builds you up. She also doesn’t realize that, from that moment, your understanding of time changes. They grow so fast. Life whirs forward. Because when your kids turn 18, you’ve spent 95% of your time together, for the entirety of your lives. It’s impossible to describe the weight of this reality. Not to mention the broader effect AOC’s viral egg freeze has had on American women who now see themselves in her. We live in a funny nation, though. Because none of this will matter if Taylor Swift gets pregnant. Her pregnancy would inspire the next Baby Boom.

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #340

AOC Wants To Be President And She’s Lying To Get There

AOC has a new name for the last decade of insanity — she’s calling it “Woke 1.” Bridget breaks down why the woke era didn’t start with COVID, why the unwokening is a massive retcon, and why AOC is exactly as radical as she’s always been — she just learned to hide it because she’s running for president.

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WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #403

We’ve Been Waiting For Sophie Cunningham | Jennifer Sey

Bridget sits down with Jennifer Sey, founder of XX-XY Athletics — to talk about why the fight to keep men out of women’s sports is gaining ground. They get into Sophie Cunningham becoming the active pro athlete willing to say girls deserve their own spaces, why the WNBA, the media, and corporate America are still acting like it’s 2020, and why Caitlin Clark shouldn’t be a target for saying she just wants to play basketball. They cover the Fauci Diaries and the rage of being proven right when COVID cost Jennifer friendships, family, and the life she loved in San Francisco — and why, in her experience, only about ten percent of people will ever take a stand that costs them something. It’s a conversation about courage, resilience, and what it actually takes to say the true thing out loud when everyone around you is too afraid to.

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DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #341

The WNBA Can’t Define A Woman And Now Men Are Signing Up

Two former NBA players have declared themselves eligible for the WNBA draft. One is six-foot-eight and says he “identifies as sometimes identifying as a woman, for purposes of basketball.” The WNBA responded by holding a meeting, validating everyone’s feelings, and adjourning without a resolution. Bridget breaks down why this was always inevitable, why there’s no way to tell the “sincere” trans women from the bad actors, and why that’s always been the point.

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A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

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THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

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Bridget has designated this the Summer of the Normie. In the realm of internet slang, “Normie” is an insult for people who lack individuality and accept whatever’s mainstream. The term often has a disparaging connotation. But the Summer of the Normie challenges that notion. The Normie spirit has actually been refreshing and transformative lately. That’s partly because popular culture is right more often than we assume. If Normies are so vapid, why is most of what they do so much fun? I’d much rather go to an Ella Langley concert than an Antifa rally. Is it the same as being blue-pilled? For some reason, I don’t think it is. What are the politics of a Normie? William Graham Sumner said that the masses are conservative. The same applies here. The normies are the masses, and the masses are, in general, conservative.

They prefer to be instinctive over being ideological. It’s a preservation tactic. There’s too much reform involved in ideology. Better to latch on to what has always worked. These cultural norms uphold civilization and enduring human values. Normies establish the standard of living. What defines comfort? What constitutes the base level of life in a society? The Normies have total command of this fundamental layer of a civilization. Summer coined the term Forgotten Man, which is pretty much the 1920s version of a Normie. His section of society determines the mores of the whole. He obeys laws and keeps the economy afloat and constantly succumbs to the manipulation of politicians and cultural elites.

The Normie ethos is deeply realistic. It gives us all a pretty good idea of what we as a culture are actually like. Because more often, the revolutionary mindset is just a weird distance from something way worse than Normie ethos. It’s a kind of nihilism. At the very least, it’s contrarianism as a way to seem important and unique. So maybe the Normie nonchalance is a repudiation of the cultured class, the social elites. Besides, everybody is someone else’s Normie in one form or another. On the subject of Country music, Bill Hicks is a Normie compared to Johnny Cash. But as Sumner put it: “Is the ideal of the man-as-he-should-be to be found, for us, in the ‘common man,’ or in the highest product of our culture? That is a most vital question for any society.”

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #338

Sophie Cunningham Went Viral For Pointing, Now She’s A Culture War Villain

Sophie Cunningham pointed at someone for 22 seconds and became the most talked-about player in the WNBA. Then she said women shouldn’t have to play against biological men — and people decided she should die. Bridget Phetasy breaks down how a finger point turned into a culture war, why the WNBA is the last place woke is still fully alive, and why women defending men in women’s sports might be the dumbest thing she’s ever seen.

DUMPSTER FIRE

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #402

I Had to Be a Loser First — That’s Why I Can Help You | Stasia Patwell

Bridget Phetasy sits down with fitness coach Stasia Patwell, to talk about fitness, recovery and how COVID accidentally launched her career. They get into why accountability is the only thing that actually works, how AA and weight training are basically the same program, why most trainers who tell you they love working out might be lying to you, and why Stasia’s approach of embracing the fact that you will never like the workouts might be the thing you need to hear that motivates you. They cover the Ozempic lunch problem, stage fright, why normies need a program as much as people who struggle with addiction, how Stasia ended up living in Greece, what it means to forgive yourself for the years you wasted, and what she’s learned about life from lifting weights.

WALK-INS WELCOME

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #339

Spiderman and Shane Gillis Win Summer of the Normie

The normies showed up for everything this summer — and it was exactly what America needed. July 23rd was the biggest travel day in history. Spider-Man broke box office records. Shane Gillis set a Guinness World Record with 73,000 people at a comedy show. Ella Langley beat Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. Bridget breaks down the Summer of the Normie, why the doomers were wrong about everything, and why none of it matters if normies don’t start paying attention to the DSA quietly winning elections while everyone was tubing down a river.

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A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

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THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

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Christopher Nolan is the latest storyteller to bring The Odyssey to life. If you haven’t already, check out Bridget’s review of the movie. I saw it Tuesday, and I agree with Bridget’s take: This is a work of art.

I’ve always loved the Kirk Douglas-led version of The Odyssey from 1954, and the entire mythic fantasy/action epic genre that arose in the 1940s and lasted for several decades. But Christopher Nolan’s rendition lifted the poem to a new height.

I went into the movie with a touch of angst from the culture narrative, but Bridget’s stance shook me out of it, so my expectations were pretty high. And the film surpassed them—enormously.

For context: I adore The Odyssey. One of my children is named after an important character in the poem. I’ve studied it for years in various ways, from various contexts. My favorite novel is James Joyce’s Ulysses, the Irish rendition of The Odyssey. One of my favorite poems is “Ulysses” by Lord Alfred Tennyson.

I’m also a Dante fanboy, and my view of Odysseus is complicated by Dante’s depiction of Odysseus/Ulysses in Inferno, that his tactical prowess probably ultimately did not pay off. Nolan certainly has a history of delivering characters with similar complexities, but none of them demanded the depth required of portraying Odysseus. Yet he succeeded.

Best of all, he gave us an entertaining experience. The action, in all its violence, was enthralling. But also the cinematic action, a cascade of flashbacks that jerk us around like Nolan’s breakthrough film Memento (2000), then pause in a way that strengthens the longer scenes. Most of all, it was fun.

This is important. Entertainment is a stabilizing force. It provides us with much-needed structure. When we have been entertained, we perform better in all parts of our lives, both individually and in connection to others.

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Let’s accept the theory that entertainment takes two forms: low art, “agreeable art” and high art, or “fine art.” Low art is immediate and fleeting. Its effects are momentary, with no lingering influence on our emotions or thoughts. It has no distance or endurance. But it can be a lot of fun. It’s often a much-needed escape.

Fine art is the cud of insight and reflection. When you walk away from a successful experience with fine art, it burrows itself into your mind and lingers. It has distance. Part of it will always capture you. The risk is that it can become too abstract and intellectualized for enjoyment.

Nolan’s take on the Odyssey accomplished the best of both experiences without fumbling much into their downsides. This is a breathtaking maneuver. And you can tell that he orchestrated it with a unique artistic intensity.

I was doubtful about Nolan’s casting Matt Damon as Odysseus, but Damon performed the role masterfully. Overall, Nolan was brilliant in his controversial casting: he outfoxed the right-coded discourse, which was absolutely right, based on the announcement of the cast and the trailer. As Bridget noted in her Odyssey episodes, the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra wound up being oddly perfect. My only real irk was the role of a certain gender-dubious someone—or rather, I was peeved by the character’s maudlin undertones. But this frustration was minor, especially in the grand scheme of the film.

Another grievance people had was the film’s use of lingo like “daddy,” “let’s go,” and “fuck off.” The modern-day vernacular that we saw in the trailer is actually fairly rare, the typical one-liners planted specifically to make trailers as insufferably dumb as possible. What’s impressive is that the Americanized lingo actually complemented the deeply poetic moments—and there are a lot of them.

Nolan accomplished a lot of technical and cinematic maneuvers: the chaotic sequencing that led up to the Cyclops scene, the choice to portray the Sirens scene from the perspective of Odysseus’s crew, the claustrophobia of the shots inside the Trojan horse, the patchwork delivery of themes and symbolism, like the decapitated statue. There was a lot of cinematic trickery, and it enhanced Nolan’s portrayal of Odysseus, the man of twists and turns, the complicated man, the strategist, the tactician, the city-sacker.

And this leads to my broadest takeaway, my counterargument to the accusation that Nolan’s rendition somehow degrades Homer’s original text—an accusation so heated that you’d think the movie takes place at a BLM protest: The Ancient Greeks loved to tell stories. And Odysseus is arguably their greatest hero, certainly their most complicated.

Nolan’s approach honors Ancient Greek thought and community. We can’t call it society. The Romans invented the concept of “society” and “social.” The Ancient Greeks thought of community as more local, a balance of the private life (household) and the civic life, the polis, which roughly translates to “political community.” Aristotle writes that “the polis comes into existence for the sake of living, but remains in existence for the sake of living well.”

The polis was the birthplace of politics. Or rather, through legends full of conflict. Storytelling is the basis of Ancient Greek community and social character, its mythological spirituality and history-mindedness. The polis offered everyday men the chance to achieve immortal fame.

This space of appearance is what forms whenever people act and speak together, which means it can also vanish at any moment. Homer’s Odyssey outlasted this civilization it arose from, and many other fallen kingdoms that used its power to strengthen themselves—gone.

I want to close with the final lines of Lord Alfred Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” because it really captures the depth of Odysseus, a depth that Nolan also succeeded in portraying. In the poem, Odysseus spends a while complaining about his confinement at home, then slowly builds into the fervor of a speech, into the rousing declaration of a commander, and you can see how so many valorous characters died for this literary titan, the ultimate tactician and legend of fiction and mythology.

Because Odysseus embodies all the qualities that define Western Civilization, especially when its very survival is threatened. Who can beat an opponent who fights the gods because humans aren’t a challenge? A tactician who gives total life through speech and action, delivering a story that has survived 3,000 years for a reason.

So even if Nolan’s Odyssey is a defilement of the poem’s legacy, it could hardly make a tiny blemish on the masterpiece it depicts. But I believe the film once again proves that Homer’s Odyssey has a depth and magnificence that has made it timeless and universal.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

It’s no secret that I love the poems of Mary Oliver. Her writing is always so visceral, but in an earthy, forest-hearted kind of way. I always walk away from her verse with an indescribable tranquility and joy, even when the subject matter is terrible or sad, which it often is. Probably because her poetry is never emotionally univocal: It always contains a range of powerful feelings. “The Summer Day” is a glowing example. My favorite lines are “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. / I do know how to pay attention.” Because they form a contradiction. Prayer is attention. Enjoy this beautiful experience, Pham.

Who made the world? 
Who made the swan, and the black bear? 
Who made the grasshopper? 
This grasshopper, I mean— 
the one who has flung herself out of the grass, 
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, 
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down— 
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. 
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. 
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. 
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. 
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down 
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, 
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, 
which is what I have been doing all day. 
Tell me, what else should I have done? 
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? 
Tell me, what is it you plan to do 
with your one wild and precious life?

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #336

The Odyssey Review: I Was Wrong

Bridget went and saw Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this weekend, tune in for her honest take. She discusses the actual controversy nobody’s talking about is 70mm IMAX privilege — that’s what’s really pissing off the white dudes.

DUMPSTER FIRE

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #401

I Was A Secret Weapon Of The Far Left — Then I Voted for Trump | Evan Barker

Bridget Phetasy sits down with Evan Barker, former Democratic operative and author of Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative, to talk about what it looks like when a political party decides it doesn’t need normal people anymore. Evan spent years as a fundraising specialist for progressive Democrats and watching the party be slowly hijacked by social justice activists, special interests, and the DSA until she reached a breaking point and ultimately ended up voting for Trump in 2024. She and Bridget discuss the DSA’s strategy for the 2026 midterms, why the progressive wing thinks they lost because they weren’t radical enough, what Mamdani’s rise actually signals for 2028, how politicians spend all their time begging people for money, how motherhood radicalized them both, why the Democrats are running out moderates who never should have been lost in the first place, and what Evan’s biggest regret is.

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DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #337

Fauci Diary Proves He Lied and He Knew It

Following the release of his COVID diary, Anthony Fauci pled the fifth 111 times before Congress. Bridget breaks down what Fauci wrote privately versus what he said publicly, what he knew, when he knew it, and why the damage he did to this country — and to our trust in every institution — is completely irreversible.

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THE SPECTATOR

The internet is dying and so are we

A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

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THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

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The heat is here. It’s been here for months, and, depending on where you live, the next month or two, the weather will be brutally hot. Find a pool, if you can, and, when you’re looking for a playlist that will soundtrack your excursions into the heat (or hopefully to a pool or lake or river), you can always play Summer Cool in the background. Feel-good, light, fun. Enjoy, Pham. Stay cool.

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #334

Even Liberals Are Over The Left

Bill Maher said he might vote for JD Vance. Van Jones told his own party to stop pooping in the punch bowl. And Hasan Piker showed up to the College Democrats convention dressed as Mao. The Left has lost its mind and old school liberals are finally speaking out. Bridget breaks down the DSA takeover of the Democratic Party, why there’s no such thing as too far left in America, and why the capitalists funding island bunkers instead of pro-America media are going to regret it. Also: a plea to David Ellison, one hundred million dollars, and a yacht for every pleb.

DUMPSTER FIRE

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #391

Why The Right’s Meltdown Over The Odyssey Is Liberal - Art Tavana

Bridget Phetasy sits down with culture critic and journalist Art Tavana — a former Playboy colleague — to talk about why the Right’s meltdown over Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is the most Liberal thing they’ve ever done. They dig into how both sides have been completely consumed by the same culture war brain rot, why nobody can actually win this fight, how postmodernism has infected everyone including its own critics, and what it means that we’ve lost the ability to sit down and finish a movie. Plus: The literacy crisis nobody’s talking about, Gen Z’s dead-eyed immunity to outrage, how Playboy blew its last chance at a comeback, and why Christopher Nolan is just Michael Bay in a scarf.

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DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #315

Rewatching Dirty Dancing As An Adult Was A Mistake

Dirty Dancing was a huge hit when it came out. Everyone remembers the fun and the dancing. It also has a botched back-alley abortion, a 25-year-old male prostitute dancing with a 17-year-old, and a dad who was completely right the whole time. Bridget rewatches the 1987 classic and breaks down why the movie is genuinely insane, why nobody noticed because there was dancing, and why the only reason it became legendary is that the Lift at the end made everyone forget everything else. Nobody remembers the abortion.

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A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

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THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

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Beyond Parody with Bridget Phetasy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Bridget is the Geronimo of American culture.

A full week before the Jonathan Pageau tweet shifted discourse about Christopher Nolan’s rendition of The Odyssey, Bridget devoted an entire episode of Dumpster Fire to the idea that the scandal is more complicated than most of us had assumed. And if you’re going to war with the establishment, you better side with Geronimo.

There’s a certain defiance of the crowd involved in this. Which is not an easy accomplishment, bucking the outrage of a unanimous horde. Throughout human history, this has been a dangerous maneuver, but humanity itself owes its survival to the people willing to say, “No” when the angry mob demands total agreement.

You might even say that this mentality is the animating force of Homer’s Odyssey.

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #332

How a “Passion Project” Became My Life

Bridget does an Ask Me Anything giving details on how Dumpster Fire is made, what her actual day looks like, why she threatens to quit every quarter, what prevents her from doing so, and more!

DUMPSTER FIRE

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #399

Coming Back to LA Is Like Going to an AA Meeting

Bridget checks in from Los Angeles — where she’s spending five weeks with family — and the city is not what she remembered. Empty storefronts on 3rd Street, deodorant locked behind glass at Walgreens, stores you have to get buzzed into, and a Hollywood Bowl 4th of July that felt more like a eulogy than a celebration. She and Maggie get into what it actually feels like to come back to a place you loved and see the decline in real time, why Texas feels so different, what a dead Vegas says about the country, and why the right needs to calm down about Christopher Nolan.

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DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #333

Los Angeles Is Still A Dumpster Fire

Bridget’s back in LA and the decline is noticeable. It doesn’t have to be this way, decline is a choice.

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The internet is dying and so are we

There is a lot of proof that the internet is dying. People aren’t burned out of politics, although that’s part of it. They are burned out from going “is this real?” No one has the bandwidth to become an investigative reporter for each post.

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Geriatric Mommy

A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

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THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

THE DAILY WIRE

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Beyond Parody with Bridget Phetasy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The day after their birthday, kids love to ask, “Do I feel different now that I’m older?” As Americans stumble out of our post-birthday haze, through a wall cloud of fireworks and Blue Angel contrails, this question is what’s waiting for us to catch our breath: Do we feel older, now that our nation is 250? When we were 249, our soccer team still had the gleam of a squad that could win the World Cup. Now we know better. The sting of finding a wall in the American spirit, the shock of realizing that our miraculous power has limitations.

All the summer fanfare served as a much-needed distraction from the midterms. Now we have to reorient ourselves toward the political spectacle of this fall’s elections. The nagging voices that fuel them will only get more plangent. Not that any of this is bad. It’s a feeling. The afterglow of a historic event, a landmark that always seemed so far ahead. Back to ordinary time. And we’re Americans, so we’ll devote the entire year to the celebration of having reached a quarter of a millennium. The weird thing about getting older is that life always remains new.

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As for our soccer team, they did a hell of a job. Even a single moment of excellence is an accomplishment. And they had many. They prayed before and after games and sang “The National Anthem” with their eyes closed and evinced the lovable American eagerness to dream big. And they did it all with dignity and humility. They won our hearts, and that’s more than most Americans expected.

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #330

Most American Reaction to Losing the World Cup

The US men’s soccer team got knocked out of the World Cup by Belgium 4-1, and America responded by immediately going back to not caring about soccer. Bridget breaks down the Balogun red card, Trump calling the president of FIFA, and all the reasons why America will truly never care about soccer the way the rest of the world does. Also: two Russians illegally climbed the Empire State Building, got engaged at the top, and got arrested on the way down. She was raised in the circus. Obviously.

DUMPSTER FIRE

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #398

Why The Internet Is Already Dead | Kat Rosenfield

Bridget sits down again with novelist and Free Press columnist Kat Rosenfield to talk about the rise of death doulas, the death of YA fiction, and how the internet is quietly erasing itself. Kat digs into how YA fiction collapsed into “romantasy” and smut, the dead internet theory and vanishing digital archives - including Bridget’s own lost Playboy articles and Kat’s MTV News work. They also cover the Kennedy Center controversy, why Gen Z treats Trump as their political “factory settings,” why woke isn’t dead, it’s hibernating, and how people are substituting politics for personality now. Kat’s new thriller, How to Survive in the Woods — pitched as “Basic Instinct with bears” — just hit The New York Times summer reading list and is in development at MGM Amazon.

WALK-INS WELCOME

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #331

You’re Going To Hate My Odyssey Take

Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey hasn’t even come out yet and it’s already the most disliked Hollywood trailer since Snow White. Bridget breaks down the casting controversy, why Elon rage-tweeting about a movie he hasn’t seen is just as annoying as woke casting, and why the script is a downstream effect the collapsing literacy rates of our youth.

DUMPSTER FIRE

THE SPECTATOR

The internet is dying and so are we

There is a lot of proof that the internet is dying. People aren’t burned out of politics, although that’s part of it. They are burned out from going “is this real?” No one has the bandwidth to become an investigative reporter for each post.

THE SPECTATOR

Geriatric Mommy

A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

Read full story

THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

THE DAILY WIRE

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Beyond Parody with Bridget Phetasy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Stay safe out there, Pham. Don’t lose any limbs or appendages. If you haven’t already, check out Bridget’s Dumpster Fire episode about America 250, the part about toilet paper is humbling and beautiful.

“America” by Walt Whitman

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #328

Supreme Court Detransitions Women’s Sports

Bridget breaks down the Supreme Court Hecox ruling upholding states’ rights to ban biological males from competing in women’s sports — and somehow it took nine justices, two lawsuits, and six months to confirm that girls are girls. Also: Supergirl bombed so hard even the pirates didn’t bother, and Armie Hammer makes a comeback in a role only an aspiring cannibal could pull off.

DUMPSTER FIRE

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #397

Title

Drinkin’ Bros podcast host Dan Hollaway joins Bridget for an uncensored conversation about all the third rail topics you could ever ask for, from why we should probably just invade Mexico, to how 20 million illegals and BlackRock turned 29-year-old home-buyers into 40-year-old renters, the reality behind the horseshoe theory that brings together “Queers for Palestine” and actual Islamists, and Zohran Mamdani’s “brown guilt.” They explore how pure libertarianism was tried and failed during the founding of the United States, the truth about Trump’s plan to bring manufacturing back to the US, why the Constitution is the best document ever written, his belief that people aren’t stupid - they’re ignorant, why a nation of strong men is a strong nation, and why he only offends people because they’re delicate.

WALK-INS WELCOME

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #315

Happy 250th Birthday, America!

A new CNN poll says only 29% of Democrats are proud to be American. Bridget Phetasy asked her audience what they love about this country — and got hundreds of responses. The four things that came up most: free speech, the founding documents, guns, and the freedom to build your own life. The people who felt it most weren’t born here. They were immigrants, refugees, and World Cup tourists who showed up expecting the country the media described and found something completely different. This is Dumpster Fire’s love letter to America on its 250th birthday.

DUMPSTER FIRE

THE SPECTATOR

The internet is dying and so are we

There is a lot of proof that the internet is dying. People aren’t burned out of politics, although that’s part of it. They are burned out from going “is this real?” No one has the bandwidth to become an investigative reporter for each post.

THE SPECTATOR

Geriatric Mommy

A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

Read full story

THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

THE DAILY WIRE

Phetasy Merch

Share

Beyond Parody with Bridget Phetasy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

A recent poll that CNN shared says only 29% of Democrats are proud to be American, but if you step outside of the news cycle and into a World Cup watch party, you’ll see a version of this country that the media has been trying to bury for 30 years.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!

I love America. A lot of people do. In fact, I think most normie Americans do, and so do a lot of people around the world. Watching the World Cup footage and posts online has been amazing because so many visitors from other countries have flooded into the United States and have been posting about how blown away they are by what real America is like. Not the America they hear about in the news.

The America that’s been demonized and criticized to death for a solid three decades—at least. Being given the chance to see this country through the eyes of people who have never been here before gives us the ability to appreciate it in a new way.

I got this experience from my first husband. He was straight off the boat from Belarus. For those of you who don’t know, Belarus has been ruled since 1994 by Alexander Lukashenko, who is often referred to as “Europe’s last dictator.”

One night, we were watching South Park, and it was an episode where they were TP-ing some houses: “Bridget, what is this thing you do in America with toilet paper?”

And I explained that it’s a classic prank where people throw rolls of toilet paper over trees, bushes, and the roof of a house so the paper unrolls and covers everything in long streamers. It’s just a common teenage/housecoming tradition prank, usually harmless and meant to be funny, though the cleanup is annoying for the homeowner. Especially if it rains man, then it’s a nightmare.

And he stared at me. “You mean to tell me while I was standing in line for toilet paper, you were throwing it in trees?”

That line pretty much summed it all up for me, but there were many instances where living with him, I realized I’d been born into extravagant wealth and privilege most people in the world cannot begin to comprehend.

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I also realized that traveling as much as I have traveled, particularly to the developing world. Places like India, where on a bus across the country you shit in a hole in the ground because there are no public restrooms and you witness levels of poverty that are hard to imagine. Or Sri Lanka, which had rolling blackouts constantly and you never knew if you’d have wifi or power or if the country was going to erupt into civil war again. Nothing takes me back to my time in Egypt quite like the smell of burning garbage. True Patriarchies, where I learned to avert my eyes and cover my wrists and thought about how crazy it is in America I can be a mouth broad in booty shorts.

Even coming back from Spain felt like returning to a place that was wealthy beyond measure. This country is a goddamn miracle, and I think that most of the time we just take all of it for granted. But it’s our 250th birthday, and we need to take a moment to find some gratitude for this place.

First, I’d like to thank the men and women who sign up to keep this nation safe and to honor those who came before us, who gave the ultimate sacrifice, their lives, in order that we may live in this imperfect nation. And I do want to take a moment of silence for those who have fallen in the battle they waged abroad or the one they waged silently, when they returned home. You are the real heroes of this nation.

Even before the World Cup started, I’ve watched videos of people documenting their trips to America. A lot of them talked about how they were worried about how unsafe it would be. They were told it was dangerous by the media and by friends, and then they got here and they were like, “Holy shit, this is incredible.”

They love how big it is, how different all the landscapes are, how you can find beaches and mountains and deserts and bayous and farms and charming coastal towns straight out of a tourist brochure. They love the food and the yellow school buses, and the stunning natural beauty and the guns.

They LOVE the guns. Once they get here, they go to a gun range and are like, “I get it. I understand now why Americans love their guns.”

But most of all, they’re blown away by how friendly Americans are. Because we are goddamn friendly. They can’t get over how strangers will just start talking to you in a store or in the middle of the street, and you can wind up in a 15-minute conversation that ends up with an invitation over to their houses for a BBQ.

America takes a lot of shit. From the rest of the world and from its own people.

Do we have our problems? Yes. Is the history of our country a bit dodgy? Absolutely. But name me one country in the world that doesn’t have a dodgy history of its own.

When CNN reported that just 27 percent of Democrats say they’ll display the flag on July 4th and that just 29 percent of Democrats say they’re extremely, or very proud, to be an American, I wanted to know if this was just a vibe or something deeper, so I asked you guys what makes you proud. I asked: What do YOU love about this country? What makes you proud to be American? And if you’re not American — what’s your favorite thing about us?

I got hundreds upon hundreds of responses.

In going through all the responses I got from everyone about why they love America, four main themes emerged as the most popular.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

This was number one by a mile. And what was interesting is the people who felt it most viscerally weren’t the ones who were born here — it was the people who’d spent time somewhere else.

Multiple people said they’d lived in Germany, or been stationed in Europe with the military, and came back genuinely shaken by how little speech protection actually exists over there. We think of Western Europe as these enlightened liberal democracies, and then you realize — oh, you can actually get arrested for a Facebook post in the UK, which we’ve covered on Dumpster Fire.

Freedom of speech is one of the hills I’ll die on. It is our greatest strength as a country, and we have to recognize the sheer brilliance of the founders in understanding that freedom of speech is the cornerstone of a free country.

My favorite response on this: “I get to talk all the shit I want. That seems silly, but it turns out to be vital.” Yes. It IS vital. That’s the whole thing.

THE DOCUMENTS

The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Bill of Rights. People LOVE the documents. One person bought their newly-naturalized coworker a copy of the Bill of Rights as a citizenship gift.

As many brilliant thinkers have pointed out, The Constitution does not grant rights. It secures rights that already exist. The Bill of Rights does not list everything a citizen may do. Instead, it prohibits the government from doing certain things to a citizen.

In America, the government doesn’t give you permission to exist; you’re born free, and the rules are there to keep them off your back. That was the opposite of every previous human society.

GUNS

Number three was guns. Of course it was. I asked hundreds of Americans what they love about their country, and the third most popular answer was guns. We are so on brand. I love us.

Here’s what got me though: Multiple non-Americans cited the Second Amendment as something they envied. Including this absolute gem: “I’m a Dutch import now a citizen. I came for the date and stayed for the guns.” And then there was a guy who has never even been to America who wrote: “I’ve always envied two things from you folks: freedom of speech, and the Second Amendment. Without those you’d be like any other country. Fight for those.”

There was even a recent video about this from a British dude talking about how British people are a bunch of pussies now when it comes to protecting their nation, and they’ve been totally pacified through the removal of the right to bear arms.

I’m not saying we should put a Glock on the birthday cake, but maybe just a small one next to the sparklers?

THE FREEDOM TO BUILD YOUR OWN LIFE

This one came in a lot of forms. Self-determination. Opportunity. The ability to fail and try again. Someone wrote, “America is the ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Nation.” Someone else wrote: “People come here with nothing and then own stores in my neighborhood. You can start a business, or you can work for one of the big guys. You can decide to slack, or you can put in the effort and become wealthy. It’s truly incredible, and I don’t think it happens in any other country.”

And then there were the responses that didn’t fit neatly into any category but deserved their own moment. Someone wrote: “Being able to crank up Pantera at 3 am and nobody complains. Actually my neighbors will be like, ‘why weren’t we invited.’ Had cops show up and dance with us.”

Someone answered, “It’s where I keep all my stuff.” Fair enough.

Some of the best responses were from immigrants, or the children of immigrants. People for whom the promise of the American dream is a reality, it’s not just something they were born into and take for granted.

Now a lot of you might say, “But Bridget, you were just ranting about immigration.” Here’s my stance on this. It’s pretty much what the common sense stance was until about five minutes ago. I support legal immigration because America has always been strengthened by people who come here legally, work hard, learn English, and embrace our Constitution and culture.

But we've had far too much illegal immigration in recent years, and it has overwhelmed our borders, housing, schools, and hospitals and hurt the quality of life for everyone. Just ask Europe how it’s working out for them, too.

We need secure borders, we have to end catch-and-release, and deport criminals and recent illegal entrants. Assimilation is essential — immigrants should respect our laws and adopt core American values like liberty and self-reliance. Anyone who enters illegally or openly hates America and wants to replace or destroy our way of life has no right to be here. Sharia courts? Get the fuck out of here. Citizenship is a privilege, not a license to undermine the country.

Some of the most poignant replies were from people whose families fled something terrible, usually that something being communism. Because a lot of times, lately, when you ask an American what they love about America, sometimes you get: "Very little lately." But when you ask someone who escaped something — you get a completely different answer

One person wrote: "My favorite thing about America is that it gave my family a place to go after they were killed, their property was stolen, and their freedom was sacrificed to a government ideology called communism." No elaboration needed on that one.

Someone else: "I was married to a Polish man that escaped communism. My family came from Cuba. We had our lands taken. We were jailed. We were killed. So yeah, I celebrate the independence of this country because it became a haven where my family landed." And they ended it with: "I wish people really understood the power of our constitution." Me too, honestly.

A Hungarian student who arrived to study at BU in September 2001 — think about that timing — wrote: "I was taught the lesson which shaped my way of thinking forever: 'Stop saying no, János, start saying yes.' This is the fundamental difference between the old and the new world." He arrived a week before 9/11. And his takeaway was still optimism.

Still: America taught me to say yes. And this is a gift that America gives us all. Dream big. Say yes.

And then there was a Canadian who wrote in to say he watched the September 11th attacks from Calgary. "How you rallied as a people. Strangers helping strangers. As a Canadian, it was inspiring. My heart was filled with hope." He also helpfully described Canada as "the shit parts of America combined with the shit parts of Europe." God bless our neighbors.

The pattern across all of them is the same: the people with something to compare it to love it the most. The people who had to choose it — who earned it, who fled toward it — they know exactly what it is. They're not confused about it.

One guy from a Greek immigrant family put it simply: "I love the fact that we are all from somewhere else, we are all individuals, and yet somehow we actually get things done. Look how much better the world is since the ascent of America."

Look how much better the world is since the ascent of America. I promise you this--you don’t want to live in the world with a fallen America.

Happy Birthday, you beautiful, chaotic, Pantera-at-3am, free-refills-having, cheddar-cheese-loving, nobody-is-coming-to-save-you dumpster fire of a country.

I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

Media outlets spent the past two weeks whining about Trump’s renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Politico spazzed about dead ducks. Then The Hill frantically scooped an update: “Two more ducks found dead in the reflecting pool.” As if a mass-murdering dictator had executed another infant. Lower the flags for the ducklings killed by fascism! Activists gnawed at the pool’s lining like piranhas in a river of hot dogs, then stomped through the water like Jenny from Forrest Gump, only somehow dumber and more crass. Because, in their performative tantrums, the Activist Class has lost all fidelity to heroism.

Only a villain would look at this national monument and hate its polyurethane and its “American Flag” blue in honor of our nation’s birthday. It’s hard for most people to understand the cynicism of someone who constantly wants to contaminate and destroy. As if the entire universe is nothing but their personal mirror.

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Hey! What are you doing? We’re not supposed to look away from the Reflecting Pool. What if we miss breaking news? Apparently some militant activists are going to dump noxious chemicals into the water so more cute animals die. If you keep talking about elections, you’re going to overlook this manufactured scandal. Enormous fire? I don’t see an enormous caustic fire gripping the horizon like a noose. Oh that fire, the one with the skull-shaped plumes of death-smoke and satanic howling and rants about how 9/11 was justified because America is Islamophobic? No, no, no. Hah. That’s actually a whirling super-miasma that envelops everything uniquely good in American life until society is vulgar, humorless, violent, and ugly. Don’t be dramatic: the deadly blaze is much less concerning than the Reflecting Pool algae. Just make sure the World Cup Europeans stay away from it. They shouldn’t have to witness that hellscape until they get back home.

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #326

Americans Can’t Get Enough World Cup Attention

World Cup fans came to America expecting the worst and left obsessed with free refills, ranch dressing, and Buc-ee’s. Bridget breaks down the Great American Sleepover, how we’re basically thirsty thots on Instagram excited that everyone thinks we’re pretty, why Europeans are treating gas stations like religious pilgrimages, and why America now deserves Greenland.

DUMPSTER FIRE

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #397

Make Karens Great Again | Kira Davis

Bridget sits down with conservative commentator and political pundit Kira Davis to talk about why she thinks it’s time to bring back shame, decorum, and “Karens.” They discuss the Major League Baseball Pride Month controversy, why California’s election system is built to erode trust in democracy, why influencers don’t actually affect elections, the Gavin Newsom scandal Kira believes is about to blow up, and her predictions for the GOP and Democrat 2028 fields. They cover dealing with TDS from family members, inspiring people to love America again, and why we should be renormalizing normal — saying grace in public, flying flags, calling out bad behavior — because it is the only way to actually shift the culture.

WALK-INS WELCOME

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #327

The Rise of the Anti-American Left

The Democratic Socialists of America just swept the New York City primaries, and one winning candidate has said 9/11 was America’s fault because of “capitalism, racism, white supremacy, and Islamophobia.” Bridget breaks down the new anti-American wing of the Democratic Party, why “democratic socialism” is just socialism wearing a wig, why these aren’t just progressive Democrats — they’re revolutionaries who openly want to tear down America, and why gentle parenting might be to blame for all of it.

DUMPSTER FIRE

THE SPECTATOR

The internet is dying and so are we

There is a lot of proof that the internet is dying. People aren’t burned out of politics, although that’s part of it. They are burned out from going “is this real?” No one has the bandwidth to become an investigative reporter for each post.

THE SPECTATOR

Geriatric Mommy

A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

Read full story

THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

THE DAILY WIRE

Phetasy Merch

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Beyond Parody with Bridget Phetasy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Few things are as poetic as the pursuit of flawless songs. Crate-digging for vinyl. Poking through alphabetized CDs at the mall, the “clunk” when you shove an 8-track cartridge into a car stereo, the fuzz of cassettes. All of these experiences produce warmth, the primordial joy of a successful hunt. Now that the music ecosystem has been mostly digitalized, these connective experiences have vanished. Analogue connected our physical bodies to the invisibility of music. And, thankfully, we’re seeing a resurgence in vinyl purchases, saving so many record stores that were on their deathbed. Radio is the king of analogue, and while it’s no longer as important as it was during Elvis, it’s the body of recorded music. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with NTS Radio. (Apparently, “NTS” stands for “Nuts To Soup” lol.) It’s very digital, but also very analogue. It’s hard to find a lot of the songs—apparently, 40% of the music is not available on Spotify.

It’s got two live stations, 24/7, and 16 stations with different genres of infinite mixtapes, hour-long sets by different DJs or musicians, as well as tribute sets (there are a ton devoted to David Bowie alone). Poolside is the most lovable, and the most reliably fun and relaxing. It’s almost always very cool. I highly recommend this station. The other day, the DJ was playing Yacht Rock and Eagles b-sides, and you could hear the crackle of the spinning vinyl.

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4 to the Floor is for anyone who missed the days of tent raves in a field. Slow Focus is great when you’re working or studying. Memory Lane is folk. Low Key is mellow hip-hop and great R’n’B, including some absolute bangers nobody should live without. Although if you’re looking for R’n’B or Soul or funk, go to Feelings. It’s incredible. Jazz, Reggae, Post-Punk. And two stations that pair well: Sheet Music, the realm of beautiful compositions, and The Pit—METAL!!!! And lastly, there’s Field Recordings. Just check it out. It’s weird and amazing.

Or better yet, put on Radio Phetasy. Here are this week’s bangers:

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #324

UFC At The White House Proves Men Are Back

Trump hosted UFC fights on the South Lawn of the White House and men are back! Blue Angels, Thunderbirds, a bald eagle, fireworks, and a 6-1 underdog who emerged victorious. Bridget draws a straight line from the 2016 pussy hat marches to UFC on the White House lawn, and what this means for the country.

DUMPSTER FIRE

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #395

Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion | Luke Burgis

Bridget sits down with Luke Burgis to discuss his new book, The One and the 99: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion. They explore one of the most uncomfortable ideas in modern thought: that we don’t actually know what we want — we copy the desires of others. They discuss why tribalism is surging even as loneliness is rising, the longterm effects of turning everything - even religion - into “content”. They share a variety of stories from attending seminary to winding up at an ashram cult, analyze the Gen Z stare, and talk about what it means to be a real person in an increasingly mediated world.

WALK-INS WELCOME

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #325

Even the Gays Are Over Pride

Americans are suffering from Pride fatigue. Bridget breaks down how Pride went from a winning cause to a divisive one, why MLB players are getting warned by the league for writing Bible verses on their Pride Night hats, and why California now requires actual proof of being gay — paperwork and all — to win public utility contracts worth millions.

DUMPSTER FIRE

THE SPECTATOR

The internet is dying and so are we

There is a lot of proof that the internet is dying. People aren’t burned out of politics, although that’s part of it. They are burned out from going “is this real?” No one has the bandwidth to become an investigative reporter for each post.

THE SPECTATOR

Geriatric Mommy

A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

Read full story

THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

THE DAILY WIRE

Phetasy Merch

Share

Beyond Parody with Bridget Phetasy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Here’s my idealistic take. I think information fatigue is shoving us into an era that values simplicity, where there’s value in everyday characters, storytelling with fictional people who embrace their wrinkles and birthmarks, the flaws that prove humanity.  Hello Kitty, Horatio, Superman, Atticus Finch, Leopold Bloom, Dante, The Dude, R2-D2.

Morality is involved. We tend to love characters who are unerringly good-natured and resilient. They’re usually fun, and—here’s the part that I find interesting—somehow they seem to be good for the world, as if they’re aliens (sometimes literally, like E.T. and Chewbacca) visiting us with an innocence and curiosity we’d forgotten about or abandoned but desperately need.

Carl Jung wrote that “all the highest achievements of virtue, as well as the blackest villainies, are individual.” But, he adds, “Nature is aristocratic, and one person of value outweighs ten lesser ones.” This involves authenticity. A character who is genuine in a saintly way. It ought to give all of us hope. That the characters we love contain humanity, the humanity we all want. Villains are powerful, but lovable heroes are the lifeblood of culture.

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #322

California Made Election Fraud Legal

In California you don’t need an ID to vote, ballot harvesting is completely legal, and ballots signed with a smiley face might be counted as valid. Bridget Phetasy breaks down how the LA mayor’s race went sideways, why Spencer Pratt went from second place to out, and why none of this is a conspiracy theory — it’s just what happens when you make the sketchiest possible voting practices legal and then dare anyone to question it.

DUMPSTER FIRE

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #394

Woke Is Just Communism Repackaged | Xi Van Fleet

Bridget sits down with Xi Van Fleet, author of Made in America: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Enabled Communist China and Created Our Greatest Threat. Xi is a survivor of China’s Cultural Revolution and traces the eerie parallels between Mao’s revolution and today’s woke ideology. She draws on her own experience — growing up under the CCP, enduring re-education in the countryside, and eventually escaping to America — to argue that cultural Marxism is not a foreign threat but a homegrown one, and that American elites have been enabling the CCP’s rise since the 1920s.

WALK-INS WELCOME

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #323

World Cup Tourists Discover Real America

The World Cup is in America and Europeans are losing their minds — in the best possible way. A German named Freddy went tubing down the Chattahoochee, discovered Buc-ee’s, watched an eagle fly around a stadium, and declared it the most “European mind can’t comprehend” moment of his life. A Swedish woman tried ranch dressing and said it was like crack. Bridget breaks down why watching foreigners fall in love with Real America is the 250th birthday celebration we actually needed — and why we take all of it completely for granted. Also: Tom Brady launched a coconut water brand called Good Nut and the slogan is “It’s a Delicious Mouthful.”

DUMPSTER FIRE

THE SPECTATOR

The internet is dying and so are we

There is a lot of proof that the internet is dying. People aren’t burned out of politics, although that’s part of it. They are burned out from going “is this real?” No one has the bandwidth to become an investigative reporter for each post.

THE SPECTATOR

Geriatric Mommy

A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

Read full story

THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

THE DAILY WIRE

Phetasy Merch

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Beyond Parody with Bridget Phetasy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Summer is here. So I figured I’d share a lovely poem by Mary Oliver.

“Wild Geese”

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

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DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #320

The Vibe Shift Is a Lie

America is turning 250 and the birthday party is already a mess — every artist booked for the Freedom 250 celebration dropped out, but don’t worry, Vanilla Ice to the rescue. Bridget breaks down what the collapse says about the “vibe shift,” why woke is crawling out of hibernation, and why normie Americans still don’t want to be lectured - by anyone. Also: Democrat Graham Platner’s never-ending scandals, UFC fights on the White House lawn during Pride Month, and the Donald Trump buffalo in Bangladesh who is apparently Bridget’s spirit animal.

DUMPSTER FIRE

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #393

The Left Turned on the Jews. Now What? | Batya Ungar-Sargon

Bridget sits down with Batya Ungar-Sargon — journalist, author, and deputy opinion editor at Newsweek — for a wide-ranging conversation about her new book, The Jews and The Left, about American Jewish history and the political realignment happening in real time. They dig into how Jews became so deeply identified with the Democratic Party, why October 7th forced a reckoning for secular Jews who had barely thought about their identity in decades, and what it means that the loudest antisemitism right now is coming from the Left rather than the Right.

WALK-INS WELCOME

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #321

Billionaires Are Building Bunkers and Boobs Are Back

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are building a $1.4 billion luxury eco-resort on a Cold War bunker island in Albania — and locals are responding with Molotov cocktails. Bridget breaks down the corruption probe, why Ivanka should not have gone on a podcast to talk about this, and why every billionaire quietly building a bunker on a remote island should maybe read the room. Also: Hunter Biden went viral on X with an AA joke, boobs are officially back, and Spencer Pratt is still in the LA mayor’s race, but just barely.

DUMPSTER FIRE

THE SPECTATOR

The internet is dying and so are we

There is a lot of proof that the internet is dying. People aren’t burned out of politics, although that’s part of it. They are burned out from going “is this real?” No one has the bandwidth to become an investigative reporter for each post.

THE SPECTATOR

Geriatric Mommy

A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

Read full story

THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

THE DAILY WIRE

Phetasy Merch

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Beyond Parody with Bridget Phetasy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

My six-year-old recently asked me to define “gesture,” and I felt flustered because I had so much to say. I told her that a gesture is when you reach out to someone. But why? Why reach out to anyone?

Gesture expresses the impossibility of speaking. It rises from performance, from repetition that captures the meaning of an event, a motion, a sound, a crisis, a spectacle. Gestures serve as expressive forms, true symbols. A life without gesture lacks personality and music. Gesture expresses the impossibility of speaking. Here’s a lovely and confusing quote from a lovely and confusing writer, Giorgio Agamben: “An epoch that has lost its gestures is, by the same token, obsessed by them; for men from whom all authenticity has been taken, gesture becomes destiny. And the more gestures lost their ease under the pressure of unknown powers, the more life became indecipherable. And once the simplest and most everyday gestures had become as foreign as the gescic­ulations of marionettes, humanity — whose very bodily existence had already become sacred to the degree that it had made itself impenetrable­ — was ready for the massacre.”

To live as a human being demands vulnerability, love, disgust, contradiction. The swell of a melody, the wash of a chord, the simplicity of enjoying rain.

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DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #318

Hasan Piker Won’t Shut Up

Twitch streamer and communist LARPer Hasan Piker has been subpoenaed by the US Treasury over his Cuba trip — and instead of lawyering up, he immediately went on a livestream and started spilling everything. Bridget Phetasy breaks down the Piker legal saga, why the far left has always been allowed to play by different rules, and what it means that Elon’s baby mama ended up on a communist’s livestream giving away hoodies. Also: a meditation on Podcastistan, the nihilistic slop economy, and why livestreams are the laziest form of entertainment ever invented.

DUMPSTER FIRE

THE JEREMY BOREING SHOW

Tucker and Jon Stewart Are Running the Same Grift

The defining illness of new media isn’t bias. It’s audience capture — and a generation of hosts on both the left and the right have stopped trying to lead an audience and started trying to be picked by one. Bridget Phetasy has watched it happen, written about it, and shed followers for refusing to play along.

THE JEREMY BOREING SHOW

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #392

The DoorDash Generation Can’t Feed Itself | Courtney O’Dell

Bridget Phetasy sits down with Courtney O’Dell, food blogger and creator behind Sweet C’s Designs, to dig into the viral DoorDash discourse that exploded online and ask the obvious question: how did we end up with a generation that genuinely doesn’t know how to feed itself? They get into why convenience culture has replaced basic life skills with helplessness, what food blogging actually looks like as a career, how AI is changing the industry, and why the simple act of cooking dinner might be one of the most underrated forms of self-sufficiency left.

WALK-INS WELCOME

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #319

Thomas Massie Lost and It Wasn’t Israel’s Fault

Thomas Massie lost his Kentucky primary by 10 points and immediately blamed Israel. Bridget’s not buying it. She breaks down why Massie lost his own constituents, why Israel derangement syndrome is the new woke, and why the anti-woke comedians who’ve gone down this road are starting to sound exactly like the people they used to make fun of. Also: Trump trolling the right by saying he’ll run for prime minister of Israel.

DUMPSTER FIRE

THE SPECTATOR

The internet is dying and so are we

There is a lot of proof that the internet is dying. People aren’t burned out of politics, although that’s part of it. They are burned out from going “is this real?” No one has the bandwidth to become an investigative reporter for each post.

THE SPECTATOR

Geriatric Mommy

A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

Read full story

THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

THE DAILY WIRE

Phetasy Merch

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Beyond Parody with Bridget Phetasy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

President Trump released the UAP Files, and aliens might be real, so we should talk about your hair. It’s made primarily of keratin, a protein built from amino acids containing carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur. None of these elements originated on Earth.

So, where was your hair before you were born? In outer space (who knows how far), since before the Sun. Atoms that survived a supernova. Cooked at 180 million degrees Fahrenheit. Next, these pieces of your future self journeyed through the deathly void, until they encountered a collection of gas and dust larger than our solar system, the force field of a black hole. And this mysterious structure compacted the atoms into rock that wandered around the cosmos for God knows how long, guided by God knows what, till it eventually landed on Earth. The atoms lived inside this rock and waited for you to be born. Billions of years of waiting. Until you ate them and used them to make hair. Carl Sagan described it as being made of star stuff.

You are the subject of this gorgeous sonnet by 18th-century Romantic poet William Wordsworth: The Stars Are Mansions Built By Nature’s Hand. You participated in your own creation. And now you wear the last breath of a star on your head like jewelry.

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #316

A Data Center Murdered My Family

Commencement speakers got booed this weekend for mentioning AI — by the same graduating class that used ChatGPT to write their papers. Bridget Phetasy breaks down why the anti-AI panic is just climate anxiety with a new face, why Bernie Sanders and AOC’s plan to ban data centers is the worst idea in recent memory, and why China is absolutely loving every minute of our meltdown.

DUMPSTER FIRE

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #391

The Dark Side of America’s Therapy Obsession | Jonathan Alpert

Bridget sits down with Jonathan Alpert, therapist and author of Therapy Nation: How America Got Hooked on Therapy and Why It’s Left Us More Anxious and Divided, to dig into something most mental health professionals won’t say out loud - that the therapy industry may be making people worse, not better. They cover how therapists are trained to validate rather than challenge, why the explosion of diagnoses tracks more with social media trends than actual illness, and how therapy culture has quietly become one of the most divisive forces in American life. They also discuss political bias in the consulting room, therapists coming between parents and their kids, how to tell the difference between good therapy and bad therapy, and how Jonathan was nearly de-licensed for an op-ed he wrote in the New York Times in 2012, arguing that if therapy isn’t working, you should probably leave.

DUMPSTER FIRE

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #315

The Death of Late Night and Why Nobody Cares

Stephen Colbert’s Late Show aired its final episode tonight, ending a decade-long run that cost CBS roughly $40 million a year and alienated half the country. Bridget Phetasy breaks down how Trump derangement syndrome turned late-night television from a unifying institution into a smug resistance rally — and why no one is actually sad to see it go. Also: the case for Dumpster Fire to fill the slot.

DUMPSTER FIRE

THE SPECTATOR

The internet is dying and so are we

There is a lot of proof that the internet is dying. People aren’t burned out of politics, although that’s part of it. They are burned out from going “is this real?” No one has the bandwidth to become an investigative reporter for each post.

THE SPECTATOR

Geriatric Mommy

A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

Read full story

THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

THE DAILY WIRE

Phetasy Merch

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A JFK conspiracy theorist dies and goes to heaven. At the Pearly Gates, God greets him. “Welcome. You are permitted to ask me one question, which I will answer truthfully.”

The man asks, “Who really shot Kennedy?”

God replies, “Lee Harvey Oswald shot him from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. There were no accomplices. He acted alone.”

The man pauses. “Shit. This goes higher up than I thought.”

That’s the country now. Not just the guy in the joke—all of us, drowning in what I’d call X-Files politics: a shallow understanding of first principles, a deep distrust of every institution, and a general paranoia in which the lack of evidence is proof. “The truth is out there,” The X-Files promised. Except it isn’t. Increasingly, it feels like the truth is nowhere.

In fairness to the conspiracy-minded, most of this stuff has some basis in reality. There really was an island with a shrine where young girls were served up to the most powerful men in the world. The Boy Scouts really was full of pedos. There really are grooming gangs in the UK.

All the ugly truths escaped containment, and every conspiracy theorist could point at them and say see, we were right all along. Add to that the blatant “don’t believe your lying eyes” levels of propaganda that have occurred in the last decade. Racism is the real virus. Mostly peaceful protests. Russiagate. Very fine people on both sides. Politicians, institutions, and their media mouthpieces got caught lying enough times that “trust the science” became a punchline.

The Establishment collapsed. The Void opened, and it filled with half-truths.

It used to be that there was about one person in your friend group who was the conspiracy theorist. They were usually the stoner (I actually think mass weed use and a nation of marijuana addicts has contributed to this phenomenon, but that’s another piece entirely.) The village idiot in your friend group/family chat kept you up to date on the most recent developments with the lizard people, government surveillance, and how the moon is a hollowed out spaceship.

This isn’t a left/right thing. This is an everyone thing, as we saw in the aftermath of the White House Correspondents Dinner incident when STAGED started trending on X. Everyone is running the playbook now. The mainstream right. The mainstream left. The comedians. The podcasters. The whole influencer class.

We’re all Alex Jones now.

What I always hated most about the Trump years is that he gave us permission to be the worst versions of ourselves. But it’s also his super power. He’s revealed how full of shit and self-serving we can be. The comedians who had him on are now crying he betrayed them. Is he your boyfriend? They got conned by a con man. They saw their mostly male audience was with Trump and they followed—not the other way around. The influencers who spent years saying #MeToo went too far are suddenly very concerned about justice for the Epstein girls. The same people who platformed Andrew Tate. The folks who defended Harvey Weinstein just to be contrarian. These people did not suddenly develop a deep concern for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein. They see a way to get attention, money, and clicks.

Trump is right to call them out on their bullshit moral crusade about Epstein. Everyone is full of shit. Including him.

This isn’t hypocrisy in the old sense, because hypocrisy requires a shared standard of truth. And these influencers won’t admit to sharing truth, to there being some basic reality to which we all belong and against which our theories and speculations must be tested—in fact, their whole gig is that you’re a dope if you try. So this is what you get.

It’s a new business model, and the model doesn’t run without The Void. The grift economy isn’t a bug of post-truth politics. It’s the product. The idiots aren’t useful despite the collapse of shared reality. They’re useful because of it. Their relevance requires that nothing can be verified or falsified.

Who benefits when nothing is true? Every influencer, comedian, podcaster, and politician in this story. Trump. The people feigning outrage about Epstein. The ones pretending to be betrayed. Their careers depend on The Void. They are The Void’s contractors.

Pick a tribe, you get a villain and a vibe. The right has the deep state. The left has the oligarchs. The wellness moms have seed oils. The podcast bros have the Epstein class. Everyone has the Zionists. We’re all on the same broken feed, performing a certainty nobody has, competing for the same thin slice of attention. Everyone is sure. Nobody is right.

The rabbit hole isn’t a subculture anymore. It is THE culture. Look at your own feed. Count the things you’ve shared this year without reading. Count the people you’ve written off over a post. Count the times you’ve felt righteous this week and ask when righteousness got this cheap. Nobody here gets to stand outside of this, either. I’m writing a take about takes. You’re reading one.

You can’t fix this system. But you can starve it. Attention is the only currency this economy runs on—it’s what every name in this essay needs to stay relevant. It’s also the one thing no one can take from you without your consent.

The truth is nowhere. And when nothing is true, all the idiots remain useful.

Starve them.

President Trump brought an impressive entourage to China, maybe the most impressive entourage of all time, short of Jesus and the Apostles. The entire spectacle was breath-takingly surreal, from a thousand different angles. Like the exuberance of the Chinese school children as Trump walked alongside Xi Jinping, the glimpses of Elon meta-memes, the grace of Trump’s and Xi’s speeches. Or how we learned from Xi’s remarks that when he was young, he fell in love with America through The Federalist Papers and Thomas Paine, and studied the lives of great American presidents—that this staid leader of the CCP admires some of the most classic American literature (Whitman, Twain, Thoreau, Hemingway), and this whole time we had assumed that he hated Western civilization.

Then, after giving Trump a tour of the Temple of Heaven, Xi treated the President and his entourage to an opulent banquet dinner featuring Beijing roast duck, overcooked beef (a Trump favorite), and tiramisu. The People’s Liberation Army band played “America the Beautiful,” “We Are the World,” and the Elton John song from Lion King. Then, to end the night, The Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” Utterly surreal. The relationship between Donald Trump and “Y.M.C.A” deserves its own book. In an effort to explain this to my kids, I played “Y.M.C.A” and they shouted, “It’s the Minions song,” because they only know the Minionese cover from Despicable Me 2. I told them that last month, a marching band played the song in St. Peter’s Square to honor the first American Pope. That’s how American “YM.C.A” is—from every angle. Even the institution is based on. Did you know that the YMCA invented basketball, volleyball, and Father’s Day? Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X are just two of the YMCA’s many important guests since its founding in 1844.

And we shout its name at football games, weddings, proms—any major public gathering. Americans are practically born knowing how to do the “Y.M.C.A” arm dance, which was invented by Dick Clark, “America’s Oldest Teenager,” live on American Bandstand. It’s impossible to describe how culturally ubiquitous that song is in our country. If we die knowing only a handful of the most important national rituals, the “Y.M.C.A” dance will be one of them.

While covering the 2020 presidential election, I undoubtedly suffered hearing loss from the volume that Trump played “Y.M.C.A” at his rallies. It lit up a MAGA arena with volcanic force. And even this has its own subplots: In 2022, the Village People asked Trump not to use the song at his rallies, but gave up, assuming Trump would eventually get tired of it. But then the “Trump dance” went indescribably viral. Globally. It was everywhere. And “Y.M.C.A” shot to the top of the Billboard Dance/Electronic chart—47 years after its release. And the world changed and the Village People performed at Trump’s 2025 inauguration eve rally. Most recently, “Y.M.C.A.” songwriter Victor Willis said that he’ll sue any news agency that describes the song as a “gay anthem,” which is a whole other discussion deeply rooted in American cultural history.

Trump’s China visit should make everyone in the world drop their shoulders with relief. Maybe we’re not stuck in a tragedy after all, maybe the human story really is a happy one, where rivalries don’t necessarily end with carnage, and humanity is actually redemptive. Maybe we’ve just lived through a Dark Age and now we’re witnessing its social Renaissance. Maybe, despite our digital era, “face-to-face” encounters can still improve moral responsibility and prevent wars and advance political stability. Anyone who’s complaining through this historic moment should be treated like a teenage nihilist. Who knew that life on earth could reach this level of beauty and hope? And America’s 250th birthday celebrations haven’t even started. We’re still a month from the UFC showdown on the White House Lawn, to celebrate Donald Trump’s birthday, which also happens to be Flag Day. I mean, come on, man, this is great stuff!

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #314

New Plague, Who Dis?

A deadly virus is spreading around the globe. Health officials are scrambling to keep it contained. We’ve seen this movie before and we did not enjoy it. But this time it’s a virus with a 40% mortality rate. Bridget walks us through the Hantavirus outbreak, how people are reacting to a potential Pandemic: The Sequel when our trust in our institutions is already shattered, and why the World Cup could be the accelerator event to a catastrophe. Are any of us actually ready to do this again? Definitely not.

DUMPSTER FIRE

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #390

Why Left-Wing Violence Is a Suppressed History | Noah Rothman

Bridget sits down with Noah Rothman, senior editor at National Review and author of Blood And Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence in America, to trace the long, suppressed history of radical left-wing political violence in the United States — from the anarchist bombings of the 1920s to the Weather Underground to the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Noah argues that this history isn’t obscure, it’s deliberately buried, and that the same patterns driving today’s wave of violence have shown up in 50-year cycles throughout American history.

WALK-INS WELCOME

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #315

America and China Are Pretending to Be Friends Again

America and China are in the world’s most expensive bad marriage — they need each other, they don’t trust each other, but it’s too expensive to get divorced. Bridget breaks down Trump’s trip to Beijing, the CEO delegation that proves capitalism always wins, the handshake heard round the world, and why the Left would rather Trump spit in Xi’s face than narrowly avoid World War III. Elon took pictures like a tourist and Marco Rubio has a new name and a new look.

DUMPSTER FIRE

THE SPECTATOR

The internet is dying and so are we

There is a lot of proof that the internet is dying. People aren’t burned out of politics, although that’s part of it. They are burned out from going “is this real?” No one has the bandwidth to become an investigative reporter for each post.

THE SPECTATOR

Geriatric Mommy

A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

Read full story

THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

THE DAILY WIRE

Phetasy Merch

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Exotica/Lounge is one of the most intriguing musical genres—weird bachelor-pad music that emerged in the 1950s. The genre takes the first half of its name from Martin Denny’s Exotica (1957). You’ve probably heard “Quiet Village,” which I place alongside “Yellow Bird” by Arthur Lyman. These songs capture the genre’s enchanted island croon, Hawaiian Easy Listening. Another gem is Eden’s Island (1960) by Eden Ahbez, a vaguely psychedelic jazz-folk album with sporadic poetry readings. “Mongoose” features Ahbez, backed by a beautiful chorus, repeatedly telling a mongoose to chase a snake away.

The “Lounge” part of the genre is twofold: 1) Latin-jazz cocktail music like Esquivel’s Latin-esque (1962), featuring “Mucha Muchacha,” which would later appear in Beavis and Butthead Do America, and 2) Wacky synthesizer space music. This is where Exotica/Lounge gets weird. Polymath composers like Les Baxter and Jean-Jacques Perrey applied their expertise to the Moog, the original synthesizer. These digital compositions are layered and at times cartoonish and sometimes downright beautiful. There’s elements of Retrofuturism, visions of a humorously 1950s-coded technological future. Funny enough, this Space Pop has become the most influential part of the subgenre, laying the foundation for electronica-driven pop from Depeche Mode to Brittney Spears, Lady Gaga, and Billie Eilish.

The Obscuro dual-genre of Exotica and Lounge supplies the soundtrack that plays during our most dreamy yet futuristic moments, a pleasant mindframe we could all use more of. Playful but not silly. Industrious, masterful, but never quite austere. Songs that take place either in another galaxy or on a beach in Honolulu. Although there has been a revival of Exotica/Lounge, as seen in “Lena’s Song” by the Sweet Enoughs, the genre had a short life. By the late 60s, it was mostly done, too innocent for an era characterized by Moon landings and nonstop assassinations. Next time you host a dinner party, sneak this playlist into the background and watch what happens.

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #313

Spencer Pratt STUNS at LA Mayor Debate

Spencer Pratt — yes, that guy from The Hills — lost his $3.8 million Palisades home in the LA wildfires and decided to run for mayor against the people who let it happen. He’s crushing debates, winning 88% of post-debate polls, and making the best political content on the internet. Then there’s the arsonist who started the Palisades fire: a Luigi Mangione superfan might as well have Googled “how to start a forest fire” before torching a city.

DUMPSTER FIRE

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #389

Why the Word “Antisemitism” No Longer Works | Adam Louis-Klein

Bridget Phetasy sits down with Adam Louis-Klein, anthropologist and founder of the Movement Against Antizionism (MAAZ), to examine why the word “antisemitism” has stopped working — and what language we actually need to name and confront the Israel hatred spreading across campuses, media, and institutions. Klein traces antizionism from its roots in Nazi and Soviet propaganda through its capture of Western academia, explains how it functions as a libel machine resistant to any counterevidence, and lays out why defeating it — not just defending Israel — is the only path to peace.

WALK-INS WELCOME

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #312

The End of Roadhead: Why the Government Wants to See Your Eyes

There’s a kill switch being built into every new car in America by 2027 — and both parties voted for it with a smile. Bridget breaks down the AI that decides if you’re too emotional to drive, why the mandatory seatbelt law was always a slippery slope, and how the surveillance state got built — not by the government, but by us, one smart home device and ignored terms of service at a time. The Alexa, the Ring doorbell, the face scan to unlock your phone — we handed all of it over for the sake of convenience. Don’t worry though, you can opt out. You just won’t be able to participate in society.

DUMPSTER FIRE

THE SPECTATOR

The internet is dying and so are we

There is a lot of proof that the internet is dying. People aren’t burned out of politics, although that’s part of it. They are burned out from going “is this real?” No one has the bandwidth to become an investigative reporter for each post.

THE SPECTATOR

Leave Me Behind

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 29

I caught clips of Tucker Carlson interviewing Nick Fuentes, and the thing that struck me was the body language. Here was a man who had the biggest show on cable news, who once commanded an audience of 5 million adults, sitting across from a twenty-something New-Age shock-jock with the energy of a guy trying to impress his son’s friends.

Read full story

Geriatric Mommy

A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

Read full story

THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

THE DAILY WIRE

Phetasy Merch

Share

“Are unicorns real?” asked my then-four-year-old daughter, at the height of her love for unicorns. She’d recently asked a relative, who told her, “Well, no.” And now I had to rebuild the little walls of her imagination. I balked at the question: “How could they possibly know that there are no unicorns?”

Then I grabbed a handful of sand. “Think about all the sand you’ve seen. Sandboxes, playgrounds, rivers, beaches. But also the desert. There’s sand in mortar and concrete. Golf courses, volleyball courts. For every single grain of sand, there are 10,000 stars in the universe. 10,000. And for every grain of sand, there are more than a billion planets. If you counted to a billion one number at a time, it would take you 31 years. Altogether, there are about 10 septillion planets up there in the sky, too far for us to see. That’s a ten follower by 24 zeroes. And that’s just the observable universe. And, I’m sorry, but I just think it’s ridiculous that anyone, any human, could claim to know the truth about all of it. You’re telling me that, in all that endlessness, there’s not at least one horse-like animal with a horn on its head and maybe the ability to fly? Absurd.”

She smiled—gums swollen because she’d lost a tooth at school that day—in the beautiful way of a kid enjoying the redemption of magic, then asked, “Are mermaids real?”

“The oceans aren’t as vast as the universe, but humans have still only explored about 15% of the oceans, and almost none of the deep ocean sea floor. Just last year, scientists discovered a whole new ocean. An entire ocean that we didn’t even know about. You’re telling me that there are definitely no human-fish hybrids in all that unexplored ocean? There’s a decent chance that humans evolved from fish, so who’s to say whether a subspecies of half-fish, half-humans didn’t say, ‘Nah, I’m good,’ and stay in the ocean?”

Then she glowed with another swollen-gummed smile and stared up at me: “What about the tooth fairy?”

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #310

Democrats Have A Terrorist Problem

A gunman burst through the doors of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and opened fire — and somehow, within hours, Democrats were calling it a hoax. Bridget Phetasy breaks down the WHCD shooting, the shooter’s manifesto (which opens with “Hello everybody!”), and why his beliefs weren’t fringe at all — they were garden-variety left-wing media talking points. Also: why is the left so comfortable with assassination culture, and what does Trump building a ballroom have to do with any of this?

DUMPSTER FIRE

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #388

What the Internet Did to Girls | Freya India

Bridget Phetasy sits down with Freya India, British writer and author of Girls: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything, to dig into why Gen Z women are struggling in ways previous generations didn’t. They discuss why it’s not simply a case of kids being soft, and how the mental health crisis among young women isn’t just about bad parenting or weak foundations, but predatory industries stepping into the vacuum left by family breakdown, community loss, and the decline of religion — and selling girls a simulation of everything they lost.

WALK-INS WELCOME

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #311

Anti-Hate Charity Got Caught Bankrolling the Klan

The Southern Poverty Law Center — America’s premier anti-hate nonprofit — has been indicted for secretly funding the KKK. If you donated to the SPLC thinking you were fighting racism, congratulations: you may have bought the Grand Wizard a new truck. Bridget Phetasy breaks down the most ironic scandal in nonprofit history and why the demand for racism apparently outpaced the supply, so they decided to manufacture some.

DUMPSTER FIRE

Leave Me Behind

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 29

I caught clips of Tucker Carlson interviewing Nick Fuentes, and the thing that struck me was the body language. Here was a man who had the biggest show on cable news, who once commanded an audience of 5 million adults, sitting across from a twenty-something New-Age shock-jock with the energy of a guy trying to impress his son’s friends.

Read full story

Geriatric Mommy

A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

Read full story

THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

THE DAILY WIRE

THE SPECTATOR

Meet the male Kardashians

What happens when the Internet’s Groypers gather in Miami Beach for a night of “slay gurl” partying? Reality TV, the likes of which have never been seen.

THE SPECTATOR

Phetasy Merch

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I Loved You Before I Was Born by Li-Young Lee

 I loved you before I was born.  
It doesn't make sense, I know.

I saw your eyes before I had eyes to see.  
And I've lived longing   
for your ever look ever since.  
That longing entered time as this body.   
And the longing grew as this body waxed.  
And the longing grows as the body wanes.  
The longing will outlive this body.

I loved you before I was born.  
It doesn't make sense, I know.

Long before eternity, I caught a glimpse  
of your neck and shoulders, your ankles and toes.  
And I've been lonely for you from that instant.  
That loneliness appeared on earth as this body.   
And my share of time has been nothing   
but your name outrunning my ever saying it clearly.   
Your face fleeing my ever  
kissing it firmly once on the mouth.

In longing, I am most myself, rapt,  
my lamp mortal, my light   
hidden and singing. 

I give you my blank heart.  
Please write on it  
what you wish. 

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #308

Is the Government Giving Us Drugs to Forget About War?

Trump signed an executive order fast-tracking FDA approval of psychedelic drugs — psilocybin, MDMA, ibogaine — and Joe Rogan was standing right behind him when he did it. Bridget breaks down the results of a text message between Rogan and Trump, why libertarians are finally winning, and whether any of this is actually good for anyone. Plus: Aliens.gov is real, it’s launching soon, and the government has been quietly confirming UFOs exist for years.

DUMPSTER FIRE

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #387

Why Tariffs Are Crushing Small Business | Scott Lincicome

Bridget Phetasy sits down with Scott Lincicome, Vice President of General Economics and Trade at the Cato Institute, to unpack what Trump’s tariffs have actually done to the American economy. They dig into why the apocalyptic predictions didn’t pan out, who’s really paying the price, and how small businesses got blindsided by customs bills they never saw coming.

WALK-INS WELCOME

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #309

The Dangerous Truth About Media’s Favorite Radical

Hasan Piker sat down with the New York Times Opinion podcast — alongside Jia Tolentino and Nadja Spiegelman — and made the case that murdering a healthcare CEO is “social protest” and stealing is activism. Nobody pushed back. Bridget Phetasy and Mike Solana of Pirate Wires break down how assassination culture went from fringe rhetoric to the paper of record, what it means that the left has no “too far,” and why the NYT mainstreaming a violent Marxist is the actual story.

DUMPSTER FIRE

Leave Me Behind

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 29

I caught clips of Tucker Carlson interviewing Nick Fuentes, and the thing that struck me was the body language. Here was a man who had the biggest show on cable news, who once commanded an audience of 5 million adults, sitting across from a twenty-something New-Age shock-jock with the energy of a guy trying to impress his son’s friends.

Read full story

Geriatric Mommy

A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

Read full story

THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

THE DAILY WIRE

THE SPECTATOR

Meet the male Kardashians

What happens when the Internet’s Groypers gather in Miami Beach for a night of “slay gurl” partying? Reality TV, the likes of which have never been seen.

THE SPECTATOR

Phetasy Merch

Share