Coca-Cola misses the mark with AI-generated Christmas ad again
After last year’s debacle, Coca-Cola has doubled down on its use of generative AI for its annually anticipated Christmas ad. The public reaction is even worse this time around. ‘Tis the season, it’s always the real thing’… except for when it’s not. Halloween is officially over, and Guy Fawkes Night will...
Current in Culture
Opinion – women are done with heteronormative ideas of love
As Lily Allen’s scathing account of marital infidelity resonates so broadly, it’s clear women are detaching from outdated ideals that their value can only ever truly be found within men. Maybe it’s because I’m a single woman in her late twenties – but something feels different lately. A change in energy,...
Considering dating an AI partner?
AI promised us a better future. Yet here we are, one step away from asking our AI therapist how to cope with our AI partner’s latest update. OpenAI is getting ready to launch a new ChatGPT feature by the end of the year, letting verified adult users have romantic or...
Have body-shamers made Nelly Furtado want to stop performing live?
Last week, Canadian singer Nelly Furtado announced on social media that she would ‘step away from performance for the foreseeable future’ after returning from a seven-year hiatus. Fans are speculating that body-shamers may have caused her to make the decision. Throughout her career, Canadian singer Nelly Furtado has graced her...
Opinion – TV’s serial killer continuum has stooped to new lows
When themes are explored and executed this tenuously, can we finally admit that TV’s fascination with serial killers is carried by morbid curiosity and nothing more sophisticated than that? Our minds are in the gutter, let’s just admit it. We can pretend the modern obsession with the macabre is about something...
How responsible should artists be over their content?
Lily Allen’s new album ‘West End Girl’ is an honest account of her separation from David Harbour. She references infidelity in extremely raw, authentic detail, and an inevitable online backlash has ensued. Do artists have any responsibility for the effects their work will have on those they reference? ‘West End...
Opinion – the reinvention of Taylor Swift is totally unrelatable
Apart from the fact that TLS lacks the endearing country innocence of her first albums, the artful yet poppy lyricism of her mid-career work, and the surrounding celebrity/poetic wannabe characterisation of her more recent releases, it’s just bad. But the biggest mistake Swift has made in painting herself as an unrelatable showgirl? It just doesn’t fit with any of the versions of herself that Swift gave us to choose...
‘Trad-sons’ are now a thing
Stay-at-home sons are the latest iteration of the ‘trad-wife’ trend. We have Nara Smith to thank for the advent of the modern ‘trad-wife’. Whether Smith defines herself within these borders is another thing, but the influencer’s dulcet tones and endless couture collection ensured her cooking skills became the blueprint for housewives everywhere. Controversial though it may be, the ‘trad-wife’ aesthetic (trend, cultural phenomenon, whatever you want to call it) has...
Opinion – Sabrina Carpenter is the opposite of submissive
Sabrina Carpenter began to receive criticism for her most recent album before it was even released in full, many people taking umbrage with her ‘submissive’ pose in the cover art. But is Sabrina catering to the male gaze, or is she turning round to stare right back, and to charge people for the privilege?
The criticism for Sabrina Carpenter’s latest album cover art has been far reaching and pervasive.
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What are lavender marriages and why are they on the rise?
Thanks to TikTok trends, a bleak dating culture, and a rising sense of patriarchal dread, we’re pining for platonic love. The term ‘lavender marriage’ originates from the ‘lavender scare’ of the mid-20th century, a period of moral panic fuelled by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and President Eisenhower that saw a widespread purge of the federal workforce. Thousands of individuals lost their jobs, livelihoods and even their lives – dismissed under suspicion of homosexuality....
