reporting on everything

Media freaks love when a Weird Thing Happens. We are vultures scavenging subcultures like carrion, gnawing over esoteric conflicts and contradictions. Feed me your covid-conscious lesbian bar in Western Massachusetts. Toss me a morsel of that pro-data-center party in DC. Surely I’ll tear off the tastier piece of ragebait.Gonzo journalism is back in vogue. It’s hip to be ever-so-slightly complicit in gooning subculture or agentic discourse or the dinergoth scene, as long as you can retreat to a sense of editorial detachment. These are the weirdos, not me—I’m just reporting on the phenomenon.I went to that pro-data-center party, just like I went to the anti-data-center parties in New York City. It’s the same incestuous swarm of substackers and journalists accidentally interviewing other substackers and journalists. Everybody wants to be first to the spectacle, to have that smug victory of categorizing the sideshow into ruthlessly accurate archetypes.And oh boy was it a thrill to…