I attempt to write about rising traits on this column, however this week I am flipping the script, as they are saying, and having a look on the finish of 4 well-liked issues: Neo-medievalism, Kendrick Lamar, memes, and flicks are all within the technique of being thrown into the rubbish heap by younger individuals.
Girl Gaga and the loss of life of neo-medievalism
If you happen to watched Girl Gaga’s look on Saturday Evening Reside on March 8, you won’t have identified you have been witnessing the top of a youth development, the second when neo-medievalism went from cool to commodity.
Together with internet hosting, Gaga performed her new single “Abracadabra” for the SNL viewers, and she or he was doing a lot. The track’s pure pop hooks blended with arduous dance beats would have been at residence on Gaga’s 2008 launch The Fame, so that is Girl Gaga reheating her own nachos. However there are a lot older nachos being reheated too: From the Gregorian chants of the background singers to Gaga’s dancers rocking corpse paint and plague-doctor outfits, Gaga is dabbling in neo-medievalism, an aesthetic born in cutting-edge artwork and vogue circles that has been slowly oozing towards the mainstream over the previous few years.
Perhaps in response to the world devolving from globalism to warring regional powers, similar to the Center Ages, vogue designers like Hedi Slimane began dressing fashions in ren-faire type outfits product of leather-based to make them seem like “moody princes.” In the meantime, outside-of-the-mainstream musicians like Dandelion Wine started including drum machines and synths to Center Ages-style melodies. The neo-medieval type relies on individuals’s concepts of historical past, not the true article (I doubt a thirteenth century peasant from Hungary would know what to make of “Abracadabra”) so it owes a debt to RPG video video games, fantasy films, and Dungeons and Dragons.
Over the previous few years, neo-medievalism has change into a complete factor. However the Nineteen Nineties swing revival was a complete factor too, and all complete issues die the way in which Large Unhealthy Voodoo Daddy did: Too many individuals began paying consideration, and what was as soon as cool and underground turns into ridiculous and embarrassing.
You might see the cracks forming when Chappell Roan confirmed up on the Grammys wanting like this:
However Roan is at the very least in her 20s. Girl Gaga is almost 40 years outdated. She’s nonetheless nice, however she’s a last-gen artist for mothers driving small SUVs now, and her copping the neo-medieval type on a stage large enough for you and I to see it’s a loss of life knell for the motion. For a historic pop-culture equal, ask your self who was “voguing” or dressing in a neo-Renaissance type after Madonna appeared on the VMAs in 1990.
So search for the mass-market-friendly model of the Center Ages to hit the back-to-school clothes racks at Goal this summer time, for “Abracadbra” to be performed at weddings, and for the cool children to ditch the fairy wings and clown make-up for regardless of the subsequent factor is.
Has Kendrick Lamar jumped the shark?
Talking of issues that have been as soon as cool… Kendrick Lamar!
Drake did not have many good bars throughout the well-known Drake vs. Kendrick rap war, however he had one punchline that ended up touchdown arduous. On “Family Matters,” Drake raps, “Kendrick simply opened his mouth; any person hand him a Grammy proper now,” a line that performs on the outsized adulation Kendrick had began receiving. Since then, Kendrick carried out on the Tremendous Bowl, guested on Playboi Carti’s album, and has been handed 5 Grammys. It would not be bizarre to listen to “Not Like Us” performed in the identical small SUV that simply bumped “Abracadabra.” As Drake’s line suggests: You may’t get this well-liked with out the hardcore saying, “Wait, is that this man really corny?”
Case-in-point: the T-shirts. On Lamar’s “TV off,” he shouts out the identify of producer Mustard in a means that appeared designed to be meme-ified. As you possibly can have predicted, individuals began making and promoting T-shirts of the second, like this early and well-liked model that includes Kendrick as a Peanuts character saying “Mustarddddddd!”
Or this one from Etsy, that performs on Heinz brand:
Credit score: Etsy
Then different individuals began noticing how cornball all this gear is and posting responses like this:
And this:
Whether or not it is regular or brain-rot, the query is identical: “Who’s shopping for this shit?” The reply: Lame individuals.
It is not Kendrick’s fault that Etsy entrepreneurs are making a fast buck off his work, however within the pitiless courtroom of public popular culture opinion, Ok.Dot appears to be strapping on the water skis and heading for the ramp.
What’s the nice meme drought of 2025?
For my third “factor that could be over,” I am taking a look at memes themselves. TikToker @goofangel began the ball rolling by proclaiming that there have been no new, unique memes in March of 2025.
Others picked up on the development and began posting image of the Nice Melancholy as an example the supposed lack of memes:
Or expressing how the meme despair makes them really feel:
Others have identified that the Nice Meme Melancholy is an unique meme that was created in March, figuring out an essential paradox within the meme-verse:
Nonetheless others appeared to the longer term with a way of hope:
The “loss of life of memes” is usually ironic, however perhaps memes themselves have reached their logical conclusion and youthful individuals will begin doing one thing else with their time. It is a pipe dream, positive, however you by no means know.
Viral video of the week: I unintentionally acquired means too invested on this TikTok film
My ultimate entry within the listing of useless tradition issues: cinema.
That kids don’t really care about movies any more is not a brand new factor, however on this week’s viral video, YouTuber Danny Gonzalez takes a have a look at what’s changing conventional movies for an increasing number of younger individuals: long-form tales designed to be watched like TikToks or Instagram reels. Films like “True Heiress vs. Fake Queen Bee,” an 85-part(!) collection that tells the story of a highschool heiress’s feud with a well-liked lady.
Gonzalez wonders at one level whether or not the “film” was really written by AI. So, as an experiment, I requested ChatGPT to write down a film with an identical thought, and I feel it did at the very least pretty much as good a job because the precise “True Heiress vs. Pretend Queen Bee” script. Here is a part of the primary scene:
Lily walks previous a gaggle of scholars who pause and stare at her. One whispers to a different.
Scholar 1: Wait, who’s that?
Scholar 2: I feel… she’s, like, an heiress or one thing. Some massive household with a great deal of cash.
Scholar 3 (skeptical): An heiress? To what, like… a sweet retailer?
Lily (overhearing, with a smile): Truly, it’s a worldwide luxurious vogue model. Simply inherited a stake final month. However thanks for noticing.
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