IT’S HAPPENING!!!!
Yes, I’m writing a book. It’s been a long time coming and I’m so excited to finally be able to share this secret project I’ve been working on, THE LEFT CAN’T MEME: How the Funny People Became the Fun Police.
Did any of you guys subscribe to Wholphin back in the day? It was a DVD magazine released by McSweeney’s. It launched in 2005 and ran quarterly, for 15 issues. The last issue came out in 2012, right as DVD players were gaining speed in the death spiral to obsolescence. You can still buy some of them on the McSweeney’s website. It would be great if they did a streaming version of Wholphin, but it definitely wouldn’t be the same: Each issue came in a folding case that doubled as a magazine. I’ve got mine lined up on a bookcase, even though I haven’t seen a disc compact disc of any kind in years. Each issue was full of the weirdest assortment of video art: a bizarre short featuring David Byrne and Patton Oswalt, then a Spike Jonze mini-documentary about Al Gore, a hallucinogenic rotoscoped short film about an autistic guy at a theme park—there’s too much lore to spill here. Every time you put the latest issue into your disc tray, it was an adventure. You never knew where you were about to go.
So many of the features have stuck with me for years. But the one I want to share with you is “Choque,” a ten-minute short film by a Spanish director whose first project earned him a ton of acclaim. “Choque” did not. But that adds to its hidden-gem status.
It appeared in Wholphin: Issue 7, which came out in 2005. The case includes a Q&A with the director, and it’s enjoyable because the questions are so dumb. “Choque” doesn’t need much prefacing. There’s a Grand Theft Auto theme in the titles, music, and cover. Which should be cheesy, but the seriousness of this branding elevates the humor of the brief scene. It’s a very simple story, but there’s a lot happening. I think you guys will enjoy it. Besides, it’s better than the literal brainrot that’s literally making us dumber.
DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #342
Can Crying Teachers Fix The Literacy Crisis?
America has a literacy crisis and the teachers are going viral on TikTok crying about it. Gambling is more popular than reading. Harvard students are using ChatGPT to translate A Clockwork Orange because they think it’s in Old English. Bridget breaks down how we got here and who’s actually to blame.
WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #404
Victimhood Destroyed An Entire Generation | Katharine Birbalsingh
Bridget Phetasy sits down with Katharine Birbalsingh — the founder of Michaela Community School and the woman known as Britain’s strictest headmistress — to talk about how an entire generation grew up without values, and whose fault that actually is. Katharine makes the case that kids never abandoned their values; they were simply never taught them, because Gen X and Boomers took those values for granted and stopped leading. They get into why consistency in praise and punishment is everything, why you should praise the work and not the child, the case for choosing religion over woke when picking a school, and the smartphone fight — including why Katharine thinks parents who hand a toddler an iPad are handing them a manual for ruining their life.
DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #343
Lindsay Clancy Trial Radicalizes Women
The Lindsay Clancy case has broken women. They are flooding TikTok holding their babies while saying “Same, Lindsay” about a woman who strangled her three children. They’ve raised nearly a million dollars for her parents. And they’re throwing ice into bathtubs to release their rage. Bridget breaks down what this mass psychosis says about where we are as a culture.
THE SPECTATOR
The internet is dying and so are we
DESCR
Button
A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down
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…
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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