The Cave #12

It’s getting colder, so gather round and warm yourselves on some hot takes. It’s what we do best, aside from all the things we actually do.

Comms

Sensationalism as standard

Election results are still, somehow, being finalised, but that hasn’t stopped perspectives flowing from everyone with a mouth or a keyboard. Brain cells optional.

It’s a buffet of half-baked analysis  - it was the voters who were wrong (so much for democracy), it was the influencers that won it (TBC, as much as they’d love you to believe it), it was Dutton that lost it (to an extent, although the Libs are currently proving there’s plenty of blame to share around), it was Trump’s fault (uncertainty seems to have broken the global incumbent curse at least), it was a vote for kindness (if only).

Election nights are a microcosm of our obsession with instant, definitive analysis. If you’re not saying something instantly interesting, you’re irrelevant. Even Senator James McGrath turned offering absolutely nothing into a meme that outlasted the event.

But it’s not just elections. Sensationalism is now standard. Clickbait has gone from low-brow embarrassment to quiet aspiration. 

The subject line of this email is proof that no one is immune. 

Imagine if we’d used ‘The importance of restraint, an uneventful Met Gala, and Trump’s threat to Canada’. Would you have so readily opened it? I guess we’ll never know, mainly because we’re not paying Hubspot enough to do A/B testing. 

We’re not here to criticise hot takes. But the need to balance restraint and evidence with speed and virality can’t be ignored. 

The void is there to be filled, but filling it with something considered does more than improve the quality of the debate. It builds credibility and makes you the grown up in the room.

Which, after all, is probably what the Australian public really just voted for.

Culture

A cultural flop era?

No, it’s not another cheap hit on Katy Perry.

This week, Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic’s music and culture writer, published a long piece examining whether the US has entered a cultural dark age. There’s plenty of evidence and anecdotes in support.

A YouGov poll from 2024 reported Americans rate the 2020s as the worst decade in a century for music, movies, fashion, TV, and sports.

This week’s Met Gala came with high hopes and political intrigue, but as Guardian's fashion and lifestyle editor, Morwenna Ferrier put it “no clangers, but no fireworks.”

An effort to bring BookTok to Baltimore earned the title of the Fyre Festival of Book Festivals, after turning out to be some hastily arranged tables in a brutalist warehouse.

And Trump’s latest tariff tantrum put the global movie industry at risk, including Australia’s burgeoning status as the home of heavily-incentivised blockbuster production. Alas, no more Ryan Gosling being dragged across Sydney Harbour Bridge. 

Kornhaber acknowledges many of these fears, but argues that culture is simply evolving as it always has done, and that much of the hand-wringing is a result of a generational handover and longing for an imagined golden age.

But there’s something going on here beyond technology-driven transformation and millennials entering grumpy middle age.

Culture is, at its core, the expression and experience of creativity. And being creative when everything seems so relentlessly grim is hard. 

Science fiction is an interesting case study for this argument. A piece from earlier this year asks why sci-fi has stopped imaging our future in favour of apocalyptic wastelands (The Last of Us, Paradise etc.) and retrofuturism that reaches for the nostalgia of historical aesthetics.   

This is all, of course, entirely subjective. But it’s also a useful reminder that creativity doesn’t just happen, and to put effort into creating the right conditions for it to thrive. Starting with shutting out the news, even for an hour or two.

Curiosities 

When to stop laughing, and when to definitely laugh

It’s been another weird and wonderful week in the world of Donald J Trump.

He posted an AI-generated image of himself as Pope on Truth Social, then denied it.  He clung to his plan to buy Canada. He rambled about reopening Alcatraz. And his administration conducted an influencer briefing in a fake briefing room that rapidly and inevitably descended into racist fawning.

This is so strange as to be legitimately funny. Until it isn’t. Because the US President also continues to deport people to countries like El Salvador and Libya, where conditions are life threatening, and upend the global economy on a daily basis. 

As John Oliver previously pointed out, we’ve crossed the threshold where the terrifying reality eliminates the humour from even the funniest asides.

Which brings us, for (probably) the final time, to Clive Palmer. Because if success in implementing awful right-wing policies is the line between hilarity and horror, Trumpet of Patriots is the fairest game imaginable. 

After winning 1.85% of the national vote (Legalise Cannabis Australia, which barely campaigned, won 1.14%), Palmer is preparing to turn back to his other endeavors. 

Perhaps he can reinvigorate Palmersauras, which was once the ‘world's largest dinosaur park’ and is now a run down golf course that is currently rated 2.4 on Tripadvisor. Ron W sums up both the dinosaurs and the Trumpets with his review, “You can give this one a miss with a clear conscience”. 

Like basically everyone else, we will.