Things We Hate and Love Online This Week

· Vice

Welcome to Rated and Slated, the column that is terminally online so you don’t have to be.

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Sometimes, I almost let myself believe that Timothée Chalamet is a normal person just like me. He gets overenthusiastic about team sports, enjoys wearing unflattering double denim outfits, inflicts his bad rapping on anyone who will listen…

Then, I’m invariably served up a reminder of what a peculiar species the modern celebrity truly is. Case in point: this story about his girlfriend, Kylie Jenner, surprising him with a private IMAX screening of Interstellar for his birthday. 

Personally, seeing my own face enlarged to the size of an apartment building is not how I typically like to celebrate another year around the sun. I don’t know what would be more haunting, the looming spectacle of my 18-year-old visage preserved in cinematic eternity, or the eerie glimpse into a future where I end up becoming Casey Affleck. 

In the same interview, little Timothée tells another delightful anecdote about how, on his final day of filming the 2014 space blockbuster, a huge floater was left in the toilet of his trailer by Matthew McConaughey (who sits there the whole time, laughing maniacally with his preternaturally white teeth) as some kind of deeply grotesque Texan souvenir.

So in the same spirit, here are a few stinking nuggets that the internet has dumped straight into my head this week. The filmset catering must be high in fibre, because there’s simply no flushing them out of the toilet bowl of my mind however hard I try. So instead I’m sharing them with you.

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TOM HOLLAND AND ZENDAYA GETTING MARRIED

Tom Holland didn’t need to explain to his family members that AI-generated photos were fakes because they were there on the big day to see Zendaya’s father, a giant apple in a suit, walk her down the aisle where a humanoid strawberry priest was waiting to unite them in holy matrimony. 

‘TRUE ARROGANCE’

Listen, Bob Dylan can do whatever the hell he wants, he’s an old king from a vanished country. And they simply didn’t have basic manners or a concept of “stagemanship” in his invisible kingdom.

CASHING OUT YOUR PENSION EARLY

Hello, is that the British Government? Yes, I’d like to take my £12,500 and put it all on Curaçao winning the World Cup at 5000 to 1. When my bet comes in, I’ll buy the whole island and still have change. That’s right, you’re looking at the new King of Great Britain. 

SMOKING IN THE AGE OF AI

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David Hockney once famously turned up to a political conference holding a placard saying: “DEATH awaits you all even if you do smoke.” Writing for The Critic following his death last week, Victoria Comstock-Kershaw argues that the British artist always “insisted on doing exactly as he pleased—and his cigarettes were as much a part of his artistic philosophy as his paintbrush.” This is more than you can say for the mass of neurotic internet health optimizers. I wonder how many of them will make it to the age of 88? 

PLUGMOGGING

Sticking a fork into my U.S. socket and gigafrying myself with 120 volts of raw electricity in the name of good old American energymaxxing.

NEW SLANG

You meet a beautiful stranger in a doctor’s waiting room who tells you to listen to this one song that’ll change your life, she hands you the headphones and this is what’s playing.

SLEAZEPOP

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I predict we’ll be onto sleazegaze by the end of the month and, frankly, I cannot wait.

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REAL OR CAKE?

But seriously, if Nicki Minaj exploded out of a gigantic cake to sing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to an 80-year-old Donald Trump wearing nothing but a sash with his name on it then he would probably die (and not in the good way). 

USING POKÉMON GO TO TRAIN AN AI MODEL THAT MAY BE USED TO HELP US MILITARY DRONES

Team Rocket¹ gonna capture Pikachu².

¹The combined military power of the United States and its strategic allies in the Middle East.

²The Strait of Hormuz.

TASTESLOP

What if the real tasteslop wasn’t your gooseneck kettle or that copy of Butter by Asako Yuzuki or even those Margiela Tabi ballet flats, but actually the liquefied gruel pumped intravenously into your birth pod while electromagnetic transmissions fire through the headjack grafted onto the back of your skull, creating the illusion that every single object you own or piece of “content” you’ve ever consumed actually exists.  

ARMIE HAMMER’S COMEBACK

I’ll refrain from saying how I feel about this collaboration as I don’t want to be punched in the head.

BEING ON THE ROAD A TON

Everyone is so focused on whether this sentence from The New Yorker is or isn’t “illiterate crap“ that they’re missing the main point: people are actually paying good money to see Kurt Vile in 2026.

MUSIC FOR SERVER FARMS

Eno the industrial humanoid robot doesn’t need legs or a head to make the most boring ambient music you’ve ever heard.

THE RETURN OF MCDONALD’S FRIED APPLE PIE

Depending on your perspective, America is either the world’s richest third-world country or the most “based” nation on Earth. Either way, when it comes to the 250th anniversary of the United States, I’ll be celebrating with homemade apple pie (I’m going to put my dick in it). 

Follow Adam on Instagram @yungtolstoi

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