The column that is terminally online so that you don’t have to be.
I used to care about being on the right side of history; now, all that matters is being on the right side of the joke.
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Last week, while fussing over the Chinese dogs that supposedly escaped from killer thieves and made their way home, I wondered aloud if it might be a high-tech hoax. It turns out it was actually an old-fashioned fiction (the horny mutts were following a German Shepherd in heat) but hey, the antennae were working pretty well. I was right to have suspicions.
Pranks and parodies, cunning stunts, AI impersonations, fakes of all different depths… At a time when it’s impossible to know who to trust, trust RATED AND SLATED to bring you the best and the worst of what the internet has to offer each week.
Now let’s get into it.
Rated
THE PACKET CONNOISSEUR
The Packet Connoisseur must be in line for a Pulitzer. This sketchy citizen journalist is currently traveling the world documenting the price and quality of cocaine in different countries, in a rogue form of public service. According to him, if you’re not on coke, you’re woke—so maybe he’ll be able to hide out in the U.S. once Interpol finally catches up with him.
‘DA-BOOM-DA-DA-MMM-DUM-NA-EE-MA’
Sure, TikTok may be a crippling addiction for the teenagers of today, leading to alienation, self-loathing, sexual confusion, and body dysmorphia—but have you ever tried growing up as a nu-metalhead without it? There was no TikTok for me. I spent my youth alone in my bedroom with a red baseball cap and fake Chester Bennington tattoo sleeves, sniffing a dead crow in a jar. If TikTok had been around? Well, maybe I’d still have my bottom two ribs.
KILLING DICK
After experiencing firsthand the devastation of opioids, Luke Goebel says he wrote his new novel as a form of “direct action against the major dicks that kill us all.” Writing a book seems like a particularly peaceful and time-consuming form of protest—the equivalent of a one-man flash mob stretched out across however many years it takes to finish the damn thing. Luckily, Kill Dick is one of the most anticipated underground literary releases of the summer, otherwise Luke might have been forced to resort to more violent methods—dropping crates full of the book on the heads of Big Pharma CEOs or building a massive bonfire of paperbacks on the Sackler family estate before leaping into the flames. You know, that kind of thing.
‘JULIEN, JULIEN, JULIEN, JULIEN’
It’s unclear whether a prerequisite of standing for the Workers Party of Great Britain is dressing like leader George Galloway, with a black fedora and a weird-fitting suit. Local election candidate Julian Nistor’s look is an undeniable classic, perfect for both the speakeasies of Prohibition-era Chicago and the vape shops of modern-day Birmingham. It’s certainly preferable to the tight red leotard that Galloway wore on Celebrity Big Brother—but perhaps they’re saving that for the unlikely event of winning the public vote.
HARRIET RICHARDSON’S SUBSTACK
Performance artist and writer Harriet Richardson is best known for getting the names of her ex-lovers’ mothers tattooed on her ribcage. Now she’s writing straight into the collective consciousness with a new personal essay on growing up in pedo Britain. The piece is full of hard-earned wisdom, as Harriet talks about everything from becoming aware of sexuality at a young age to her experience of dating older men. It’s profound, affecting, and at times darkly funny; after publishing the article on Substack earlier this week, she shared a response from an Instagram follower which will doubtless haunt me this Easter: “I can’t believe you Cadbury’d your Creme Egg in front of your family.”
OSINT STRIPPERS
Who’d join the Army? Getting publicly chewed out by some pig-faced ex-drill sergeant type after you got drunk and told military secrets to a TikTok stripper seems bad enough. But then you’re dispatched into an inferno of attack drones and RPGs and as you lay wounded and dying in hell, all you can hear are her words as she describes you and your fearsome warrior brothers as little guys who look like fetuses.
And now for the fun part…
slated
CLAIMING TO BE A CHANNELER FOR THE GALACTIC FEDERATION
If Shanin Blake can talk to the aliens, surely one of them would’ve had a word about her fashion sense. Extraterrestrials are known for their understated gray outfits and sleek, minimal spacecraft. Shanin dresses like a room full of teenage cowgirls exploded all over her.
BARBIE DREAM FEST
It might be unfair, but I’ve held a grudge against Barbie ever since Greta Gerwig used her multimillion-pound Mattel advert of a movie to spit on those who happen to enjoy the slacker stylings of 1990s indie-rock favs Pavement. Me and my fellow mansplaining Stephen Malkmus enthusiasts finally got the last laugh when this three-day festival in Florida for fans of tacky plastic dolls turned out to be slanted but very much not enchanted.
ROTISSERIE-CHICKEN DISCO BALL
There’s a restaurant in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon that’s “#servingcvnt” with a side of chicken. As a vegetarian, this giant rotisserie-chicken disco ball disgusts me. But as a fan of interior design, I’m even more appalled. Nonetheless, I remain helplessly mesmerized by the eerie rotations of this shimmering hyperreal object in all its flightless, inedible glory.
BOB DYLAN’S PATREON
No matter who you are, podcasting will come for you eventually. With the inexplicable launch of a new Patreon, Bob Dylan has moved one step closer to having his own little online radio show—so while you’re doing the dishes, you can disappear into a dissociative fantasy of being at Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Your hands are covered in soap suds, and you snap to as the greatest singer-songwriter of all time starts rasping his way through rants about murder twinks and Lacanian super-predators, pausing only to deliver a message from the sponsor of today’s episode, Dude Wipes, “designed for a clean, more refreshing feeling than toilet paper.”
BEING BANNED FROM THE DMT REALM
I had a good laugh at comedian Damien Slash’s video about being told to “fuck off” by the “all-seeing, infinite intelligence” that governs the DMT realm. But it’s no joke, according to spirit-molecule appreciators on X, who logged on to say that there have been a number of reports of seasoned psychonauts receiving a “hyperslap.” Fortunately, we’ve got our best minds on it: Bryan Johnson, the tech billionaire who’s recently become enthused by psychedelics as part of his quest to never die, has promised to help get to the bottom of it. Well, thank God (the machine elves?) for that.
FIVE NIGHTS AT EPSTEINS
Jeffrey Epstein deepfakes are going mainstream. I’ve already had my nearest and dearest ask me about bad taste video game Five Nights at Epsteins after reading about it in the news. I’ve had to act appalled and like I don’t spend most of my time watching videos like “Jeffrey’s War”—a parody gameshow where soldiers compete to win crippling PTSD, higher gas prices, and a brand new luxury casket. But then I guess we all have our secrets.
Follow Adam on Instagram @yungtolstoi
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