Coolness in a world of lookalike contests

You only smoke Mozz, I only got Sticks

Housekeeping:

I love the new song by my favorite artist, Lady Gaga:

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Do you remember when that guy ate chicken in Philadelphia and everyone in Philadelphia showed up to watch the guy eat chicken?

food network 2022

There are, in my view, two cultural conditions that allowed this event to happen. Firstly, the guy has the aesthetic disposition of someone who holds plants in Tinder pictures, which is something smart women who are stuck in cities where men can’t go to Anthology Film Archives so they have to bond with one another on X.com go crazy for. Secondly, this happened in Philadelphia, a place where men can’t go to Anthology Film Archives so they have to bond with one another on X.com. 

Philadelphia and Chicago are romanticized because they have a working class, gritty aura that becomes exotic to you once you are poisoned by coastal elitism or have otherwise never lived in a city. They are also cheaper to inhabit than New York or Los Angeles but still look like cities, so people who have never been there or haven’t lived there think they are idyllic. This is internally cultivated by guys who wish they lived in New York, but with visceral insecurity embrace life in Philadelphia and Chicago as if they are in heaven. I am very in touch with the sensibility of these guys who think they are hotter and smarter than the cities they live in. They are transplants from vast sticks and are constantly having adult house parties, but want you and themselves to believe they are immersed in and belong to city life. What’s interesting to me about these phenomena is not any real disdain for boys who cuff elastane jeans, but that they make me sad: I think they want to live in New York more than a lot of people in New York do.

The most viral restaurant in New York City is Bernie’s in Greenpoint.¹ I see a video about Bernie’s on one of my feeds every single day. To be clear, I would love to go to Bernie’s, because I love when things are popular and I also love things like McDonalds. I blame that I’ve never been on my friends who would just always rather go somewhere else, but it’s not like I ever put up a fight. I don’t need to go to Greenpoint if I don’t live there; I already know what Chicago looks like!

Meals Meals Food summed up what’s curious about Bernie’s:

Bernie’s in Greenpoint is a “neighborhood” restaurant which bills itself as “Greenpoint’s third place.” The owners say that the menu is “familiar,” but tastes “much better than your memory serves.” Essentially, that means Bernie’s is upscale Applebee’s… So nearly every night, but especially during the summer, people line up to put their name down in hopes of securing a table (the restaurant does not take reservations). What are they willing to wait two hours to eat? Mozzarella sticks and an ice cream sundae…This praise lends credence to my theory that more people than would like to admit who live in New York City would rather live in suburbia than New York City.

Do you remember when there was a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest in Washington Square Park?

x.com

I don’t have any real problem with a guy eating chicken in Philadelphia if it makes people laugh, but my assessment of that situation is that the guy eating chicken is inauthentic. He wanted people to think he’s conventionally attractive and follow him on X.com, and he has no authentic connection to the joke of eating chicken. I have the same amount of a problem with a “Timothée Chalamet Lookalike Contest,” which was organized by a guy eating cheeseballs in New York (this is really the guy who organized the lookalike contest):

I wasn’t anywhere near Washington Square Park yesterday but if I would have been it would have really annoyed me. Not because people convening to take pictures or hopefully see a celebrity annoys me, but because if I wanted to watch children do activities for children I would go back to high school!² The premise of this event causing Club Chalamet any sort of extended, mild ire charms me, and I like the idea of Timothée Chalamet having experiences that make him positively reflect on his own fame level.³ This is merely an assessment: it was a conference for wannabe influencers which is, inarguably, deeply uncool.

The world is my oyster and I’m the only girl

I recently wrote about why I love Sabrina Carpenter so much:

Sabrina Carpenter’s lyrics about narrativized, cruel, horniness are new and original, but her platform shoes still are not. She is basic. But in the way Taylor Swift is: happily, and while having lots of boyfriends and cheating on all of them. To me, this is the epitome of coolness right now, in part because it is unattainably normal. Having enough money and power to do whatever it is Zendaya gets Law Roach to do for her but instead proudly dressing in a way that a contestant from Love Island would think is cool is far cooler than whatever Zendaya is getting Law Roach to do for her. It’s honest, and proves to me a truth I have been pontificating for years: if you are looking for inspiration, for how to behave or act in a way that will make you seem cool to others, the best place to look is a Starbucks in a rich suburb. We were right to lose a lot of our mean, gross, tendencies from high school, but the ability to admit that Anthropologie is a fetishistically fascinating and pleasant place to shop isn’t one of them. Nor is calling people dumb, or being “so fucking horny.”

Short n’ Sweet was released in the wake of “Diet Pepsi,” which is a song that is pretty good but had a video that made me certain Addison Rae was the greatest living “it” girl. It is cloyingly fetishistic and citationally indulgent despite being a video about Addison Rae putting her feet in someone’s mouth. It is cool for a TikTokker turned pop star who no one takes seriously to do this.

i’m swooning like love and art are both real (bts)

Addison Rae has always been cool to me on the same, genuine register as Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter, because, despite (like the other two) being stage-mommed into Kourtney Kardashian’s rockin’ and rollin’ world, her aesthetic affiliations are authentic.⁴ She wants to dance around and be sexy, so she does; she wants to wear Minnie ears and post like a maniac, so she does. Sabrina Carpenter is embarrassed by her old music, which is why the new stuff is so fun; she is clearly very comfortable with and had her hand in designing its stylistic gimmick.

Balancing any sort of corporate celebrity with a clear sense of selfhood is the chicest thing of all. It’s not that wanting to be famous so bad you eat chicken or host a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest is embarrassing, it’s that there is no sense of self in those projects. The chicken guy, like the guys I knew in Chicago, would likely think he is operating on a plane more authentic than pop music in the chicken’s postured authenticity, its attempted marriage between grotesquely heteronormative sex appeal and “humor.” I would much rather watch a girl eat a mozzarella stick at Bernie’s and say into her phone camera, with can-do conviction, “these are the best mozzarella sticks in New York City.”

What’s Wrong With The Suburbs?

If you want to go to a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest or watch a guy eat chicken, you could probably live in Chicago or Philadelphia. If you get really excited about $16.95 mozzarella sticks, you could probably eat them for $10 in Minneapolis. Brunch, beer, Greenpoint: these are all things that exist in places where one-bedroom apartments are less than $2000. I’m not stupid: you want to live in New York, and who doesn’t? But, do you actually want to live in New York, or do you want to say that you live there whilst attempting to recreate the experience of living in Milwaukee?

Let me be clear in reminding you that I want to go to Bernie’s so bad. Turning Manhattan into an influencer ecosystem of brunch reviews and Repettos is more anthropologically fascinating than innately problematic to me. I don’t have a problem with the people going to Bernie’s and saying it’s awesome, nor do I have a problem with Bernie’s. The problem I’m sensing is that a culture where people watch some random girl say, “Bernie’s is my favorite restaurant in New York City,” swallow it whole, and pay $16.95 for mozzarella sticks in Greenpoint, begets a culture where a boy who stopped noticing aesthetic changes in popular culture in 2017 throws a meme party in Washington Square Park and people post about it like the meme party was hosted for fun and not for scraps of Internet clout.

I have a problem with the way people perceive “coolness”: “Charli xcx is cool, Taylor Swift is basic.” Charli xcx is the Philly chicken guy of pop music, and Taylor Swift is the Nara Smith. “The Dare is copying LCD Soundsystem.” James Murphy is 54-years-old, and The Dare is a hot guy. Do you think LCD Soundsystem is still cool? Do you still think meme parties are funny?

This isn’t a demand for any type of person to vacate New York City. I’m really asking: what’s wrong with the suburbs? Addison Rae, who looks like every girl from the Midwest, is one of the coolest, hottest women. At the Eras Tour, embarrassing and cool people of all generations break bread over the fact that shade never made anybody less gay. And, at the show where Sabrina Carpenter does sex positions, Disney adults clap and smile. I’m a Disney adult. I don’t know if I want to live in New York. All I’m demanding is that people are honest with themselves, and with me: you want to live in Minnesota. Taylor Swift is cool.

1. As summer turns to fall, this title is slipping into the hands of PopUp Bagels again (Zionist … when someone explained to me that their only gimmick is RIPPING giant bagels apart like a fucking animal and DUNKING them—it’s more like scraping or clawing, isn’t it? These large, tough pieces of dough into thick, static cheese—into TUBS of cream cheese I laughed for 2 days: stop), or Ella Funt. “Ella Funt” is something I insist on saying every 15-60 minutes. I am begging my boyfriend to take me there. Please, Ella Funt!!!!

‘night out’

2. Romy Mars was there—that’s who this should be “for!” Let it be known this treatise is specifically about any adults who willfully participated in this.

3. I like when men are famous and hate when they are not. One time my friend asked me what I “have against Paul Mescal,” and my answer was, “he’s not famous.” If this doesn’t make immediate sense to you I can’t really help with that.

4. I want Sean Price Williams to direct a Taylor Swift video.