Travelling has a way of unraveling us.

Inside Out 2 gave audiences every beat of a classic Pixar film- perhaps its biggest praise comes from its genuine and ground-breaking portrayal of anxiety in a children’s film. As with any piece of popular culture, the question prevails as to whether this ground-breaking representation is truly the first of its kind to be represented, or if it’s just exactly what its cultural category denotes it as: popular.

Kick’s roofied mediatized cocktail of entertainment, hate speech, and radicalization demonstrates the path unregulated entertainment has ahead as technologies continue to get more accessible, and entertainment becomes even more entrenched into every sphere of life. The harmful spectacle that is more alluring, more enticing to consume. This is the process of Addictainment, the societal outlet for a violent entertainment.

It is truly fantastic that no matter where you are, there’s a good chance you’ll be recorded or photographed. You have no control, no say over this at all. The man, six stories up on the wrong side of the balcony, looks down to see a sea of phones. Suicide becomes a vaudeville act.

Empaths only

We’ve witnessed a rapid resurgence of analog technology, with vinyl records and film cameras sparking revitalized interest among younger audiences. This phenomenon is a testament to our generation's collective fascination with the past, our attempt to find a semblance of authenticity or a connection to the tangible, in a vastly digitized world.

Violent, Heartbreaking, and Hopeless. City of God is a stylishly brutal film. Inhouse movie reviewer Kofi walks us through this 2004 masterpiece.

Anyone else ever been jarred from what someone else has as their phone wallpaper? I have a bad habit of looking at other people’s phone screens on transit. I’m fascinated by it. Little glimpses into people’s lives.

I think my phone spends more time charging than it does vice versa. This is mentally sound. In fact, I don’t trust the battery status to just show me a green, yellow, or red to signify what my battery level is at. I want to see the exact percent I am currently operating at—how much abstract time remains for the object of my love and adoration to continue serving me.

The Spectaclist loves the news. They love popular culture. They love to consume, to watch, to stay up to date. They live in the now, present in contemporary understandings. Which could never be a futile feedback loop of hopeless misery.

What does it mean to see beauty amidst destruction and catastrophe? To create from a place of pain and desolation? Why is it that some of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces of art come from the depths of human suffering and the abstraction of the banal?

“So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.”

- George Orwell, Why I Write

No entertainment you consume can be digested into waste, it stays tumourlike. Keep gorging—your near future will resemble nothing human. What would your mirror reflection look like if it showed your media body? Your media mass index (MMI) will swerve higher than 25. You are obese on entertainment—your consumption is violence.

It really sucks that selling out is not really criticism that holds much ground these days. We live in the age of the entrepreneurial artist, the era of ‘getting your bag.’ We have gone full simulacra; popular artists now aren’t even artists; they are just ornaments and decorations on the product.

The consequence of our contemporary era’s understanding of the utilization of creativity is a desire for control over the emotional/material conditions of life that leaves a wallowing want for more. Contemporary mimicries of creativity are realized as an unauratic, surface-level embodiment of segments of meaning that lost their genuineness long ago—appearing, but like lensless spectacles.

Headphones render life itself into silence. You experience a deep sensorial and emotional inner life, but you withhold that, determining that this is a gift for yourself, allowing it to ring through your head as your ears follow suit. And when you’re forced to go out into the world without your trusty earsidekick—you struggle to rekindle what life used to sound like. An alien in your own commute.

This country needs energy. Imagine the things we could do if we all moved faster, if we all ran and sped TOWARDS change. We need to be running daily, no more walking, NO MORE WALKING. RUN to the polls, RUN to the grocery store, RUN to a psychiatrist and get a stimulant prescription. Run back a month later and ask for a HIGHER DOSE. Run a CELSIUS© down your throat. SWALLOW NICOTINE GUM WHOLE. We need to put our pedal to the metal and MOVE. We’re running out of time.

Growing up I’ve been told countless times that a mark of a great artist was the ability to capture an essence. In philosophy, an essence is the attribute that makes a thing what it fundamentally is. When applied to art, capturing an essence means conveying the intrinsic nature of a subject, whether it's a person, object, emotion, or idea. Essence gives art a sense of authenticity and depth that resonates with viewers on a profound level. Art that captures an essence is a reflection, art without essence is mimicry.

Multitasking Man is the embodiment of someone who has lost control to their infinite appetite for distractions. Multitasking work with entertainment. The behavior the symptom of a deeply addicted individual, one who lacks agency unless certain stimuli are fried to satisfatory numbess. Only the extent of your ever-dwindling agency is the determiner of whether you rise into productivity or continue swallowing water, sinking into stasis.

The balancing act between genuine and ironic bleeds into every interaction. But all these interactions fluctuate between wanting to express a deeply emotional part, doing it in a half-attempted manner, and then falling into the trap of self-ironic verse. The temptation to self-sabotage passion in the fear of not being heard, enacting the de-connective social act myself, not allowing the other to do it for me.