Five Things: Trump, Luckey, Women, Neotoddlerism, Creators

Hello and welcome back to Five Things! It’s Monday and I have compiled five articles that you should read. Well, you don’t have to, but I took some time and read lots of stuff this week and these are the five articles I liked most.

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Let’s start with the obvious topic: Trump is demented and he is unfit for office. Journalists are still mostly ignoring this, but it is their duty to report on his lies and on the fact that he cannot articulate even one single coherent sentence. I still hope that people understand that putting a madman in charge rarely will lead to better policy decicions. The next article is a profile of Palmer Luckey, who likes Trump and could be seen as controversial - and also as very creative and obsessed with pushing his tech ideas forward. Then let’s talk about brats and why women always get bo classified into subcultures. Also, has we have more and more protests by young people that demand something and want it now, I quite enjoyed the article about Neotoddlerism. Finally, let’s have a look at the way creators are redefining the way videos get produced and distributed.

That’s all for this Monday. It rains too much here in Northern Germany and I’m in a grumpy mood. I need more sunshine. ??

Trump’s decline: His interviews and lies get worse

Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post tells it like it is: “With time, Trump’s delusions have gotten wilder, his thinking more scattered.” and she also asks the big question about the still so called GOP: “Where does this leave Republicans? The MAGA party is caught in a gloom-and-doom loop, forced to run away from the radical Project 2025 plan, defend an increasingly irrational candidate and make excuses for its unlikable, inept nominee for vice president.” - I’m old enough to remember decent people among the leadership of the Republicans…

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American Vulcan

Palmer Luckey is an interesting character, and this is a huge understatement. His name doesn’t come up when people talk about the tech leaders in Silicon Valley. From Oculus Rift to helping Ukraine fight against the Russian invaders, Luckey certainly developed some great technology that shapes the industry.

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From brats to tradwives: why do we keep putting women into subcultures?

“No equivalent relentless trend cycle exists for men. Many revive the trope that all women want is to live a life of leisure, bought for them through marrying rich, with popular posts claiming that women are not performing hyper-femininity to conform to the patriarchy but instead as fourth-wave feminists, “refusing to accept society’s devaluation of anything feminine as inferior”.

Unlike the conservative subcultures that outwardly endorse female submission, this misogynistic view of women is carefully repackaged as complexly feminist, where empowered women are craftily fooling men into doing the work for them.”

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The Rise of Neotoddlerism

“[…] a growing trend of shock-activism that combines political protest and public nuisance, and which has this year seen activists across the West spray-paint Stonehenge, squat on university campuses, block access to roads and bridges, occupy museums and government buildings, storm sports events and movie premieres, attack priceless artworks and historical artifacts, and even desecrate war memorials and holocaust monuments.

Ostensibly, these “nuisance-protests” are carried out by distinct groups motivated by a particular cause, such as the environment, Palestine, trans-rights, or immigration. In reality, however, all are animated by the same, self-destructive ideology: neotoddlerism.”

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The Year Creators Went Hollywood

The entertainment industry is changing rapidly and even I find myself spending time on Youtube more often. It’s interesting how the attention economy is changing and how professional the creators are now.

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