Cultural Commentary

DEAR PATRIOT, we have some CRITICAL news. Your FAVORITE candidate is UP in the polls but DOWN in fundraising — or is that UP in fundraising but DOWN in the polls. REGARDLESS, the race is ALMOST OVER. With just HOURS TO GO, it might feel like the campaign is reaching …

Months before Charli XCX even released Brat, a video of a truck displaying the name “Kesha” on a chartreuse background went viral online. At the time, fans speculated that a collaboration with the “Tik Tok” pop star would come on the album. Brat arrived, and it wasn’t there. Brat and …

A few years ago, I was talking to the host of a popular Disney-theme-park podcast when the conversation invariably led to where it always does between two Disney adults: Why do we love Disney so much, when everything it does seems tailor-made to piss us off? This was in 2022, …

People, people, people. This is not what Chappell Roan meant when she encouraged us to be freaks in the club. For the past two weeks, the Midwest Princess has been on fans’ and detractors’ minds — and lips —alike after the release of her September Rolling Stone cover story. Now, …

No one has been able to monetize a terrible German accent and a personality disorder as effectively as Anna Delvey. The fraudster, who in 2019 was convicted of posing as a German heiress and swindling members of the New York art scene, has parlayed her career as a felon into …

Over the past few years, with the rise of the social-media marketing ecosystem, the word “authenticity” has been increasingly integrated into the pop culture consciousness. As used by brands in pitch meetings and slide decks, it’s an ineffable commodity possessed by a rarified few in the creator space who seem …

Before Luke Combs became Luke Combs, instantly recognizable by his beard, Blue Otter baseball hat, and PFG fishing shirt, he used to make regular trips to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum to wander its halls. He’d marvel at Merle Haggard’s boots and Keith Whitley’s motorcycle and let …

“Love.,” the four-time platinum single from Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opus Damn., was made an inescapable earworm and a breath of fresh air with a timeless hook from Zacari. At the time, the young singer was not yet signed to Kendrick’s label, Top Dawg Entertainment, but was managed by TDE …

It’s said that nobody likes a tattletale. So why does it seem as if many of us are eager to catch a random individual behaving suspiciously in public, record video of whatever they’re doing, and blow them up on the internet? This week, TikTok was consumed with a domestic drama …

Like any other morning, trans content creator Lana Madison woke up and grabbed her phone. She checked her OnlyFans income, where she ranked in the top 0.06 percent of earners, and then her Instagram direct messages. Since Meta, parent company to Facebook and Instagram, frequently deletes performers’ pages, Lana maintained …