Rated and Slated: Things We Hate and Love Online This Week

Welcome to RATED AND SLATED, the column that is terminally online so you don’t have to be.
Watching clips from the “most insane war in history” as if it’s footage from a video game livestream is enough to make you feel like you’re losing your mind. The sight of a Ukrainian gunner shooting down Russian Shahed attack drones from an open cockpit—with his rifle—has that brain-bending sense of feeling both real and unreal at the same time. 

So much so that even when I read a post claiming that the conflict, which has claimed thousands of lives, is happening “quietly,” I kind of get where they’re coming from. Almost as soon as I’d watched this spectacular battle action, it fell back into the timeline, buried beneath the unending debris of our collapsing reality.
I’ve been sifting through this silent wreckage, week after week, purely for your benefit.

Enjoy?

rated

….DO DIE?

If Bryan Johnson really does feel like he’s “taken this whole longevity thing too far” then I’m extremely here for the upcoming course correction where he works out how best to optimally trash one’s own health. What if, for the rest of the year, he replaces the machine that makes every single decision in his life with the heroic ghost of John Belushi? We’re finally going to find out what is the perfect cocaine-to-heroin ratio in a speed ball—this time, according to science! 

STEELY DAN SUMMER

After many years of neglect I’ve finally started training the tiny muscles in the ear that allow you to appreciate Steely Dan. So I’m in good shape to enjoy the music of GB, whose upcoming Herzsprung album is inspired by “The Dan” and Dire Straits. Months of working out to Aja means my musical IQ has never been higher, but all my real muscle has withered, so I’ll need to be careful not to get so into this record that I drop a 2.5kg dumbbell on my head.  

CHAOTIC SEX COMEDY FOR A SEX-CAUTIOUS AGE

If Gregg Araki is as sex positive as he claims to be then he won’t have a problem getting Cooper Hoffman to piss and shit himself while wearing a giant diaper and sucking on a colorful plastic pacifier. I’m not trying to kink shame anyone here, it’s just that for once I’d like to see an accurate cinematic depiction of a “nepo baby.”

BEING IMPALED ON A TREKKING POLE WHILE WALKING 6.5 HOURS TO AVOID A HELICOPTER MEDICAL BILL

I haven’t stopped laughing since the night my friend bought a £22 kebab only to drop it on the floor as he went to take his first bite, and that was almost a decade ago. If he’d somehow found a way to turn himself into a 22-year-old kebab, then I’d be making jokes about it for the rest of my life… never again would he enjoy a moment of shish (kill me).

EMILY WILSON’S REVIEW OF THE ODYSSEY

Go on X and you’ll find plenty of brave warriors ready to die over whether or not The Odyssey sucks ass. So maybe translator Emily Wilson is wrong to suggest that this film has “nothing convincing to say about time, memory, history, war.” When it comes to attacking your enemies, you don’t need a chonky wooden horse anymore, not when you’ve got unfettered access to the braindead bird app. 

YOUR FUTURE IS BEHIND YOU

Paul Dalla Rosa’s short fiction is a queasy dream for the lit bro, full of savage and hysterical observations about getting an MFA, hanging out with the boys, and aspirational fits. So obviously I’m equal parts excited and terrified to learn that his debut novel Your Future Is Behind You touches on London’s “collapsing media scene.” You should also be afraid, as the book is described as a “skewering portrait of a generation reared on false promises of self-fulfillment,” which means you can’t escape the poignant ridicule by learning how to code.

THE WHO

As a gang of Brits who defined a generation, it’s only appropriate that The Who resemble no less than four thwarted attempts to sketch Bonnie Blue’s face from memory. What a group of strange and shamefully attractive bastards.

slated

GOAT-HEADED CENTAUR ROBOT

This dude is wasted on wildfires and rubble searches. What he should really be doing is living in his mom’s basement recording the most wretched black metal demo tape ever heard. 

RFK JR. THE REPLICANT

It’s not like using AI to place RFK Jr. in a scene from Blade Runner 2049 takes much effort, so why not have him visiting an aging JFK in the sand-swept ruins of a hauntological Las Vegas? Then we could see how Unc spends his lonely days gooning over a Marilyn Monroe hologram and listening to old Sinatra vinyls? That would be some real food for the soul.

BEING A MALE QUIRK CHUNGUS WHO LOVED BRANDS

I don’t know why you’re laughing. When you die a snob, your family will be telling the world how you always loved Fitzcarraldo Editions, Pitchfork’s Best New Music, and A24 films.  

THE AI GENIE

When this big big blue nerd comes out the bottle and promises three wishes, the answers should be obvious: infinite ChatGPT credits, infinite semiconductors, and infinite data centers. And the water and electricity to power all of that? What do mean I’m out of wishes?!

THE TUBES

I get that this is meant to be a vision of a dystopian future, but in the dystopian present we’re experiencing heat so extreme that being locked inside a glass tunnel with sub zero temperatures actually looks like a relief. Outfighting a bear in a 1.5 meter wide tube can’t be much harder than trying to find an aircon unit that delivers this side of Christmas.

EVERYTHING BURNS AND THE HORSES RUN WILD AGAIN

We now appear to be living in a Charles Bukowski sentence, well done everyone! You can probably put money down on whether the fire will consume all of us before the decade’s out, with the odds getting shorter with each passing day. Let’s hope that Chuck was right; he never bet the same way as the crowd, because they always back the wrong horse.

BUTTER DIPPED IN DR PEPPER

What better way to experience the sensation of being a dying celestial body than to shovel sticky sweet melting goo into your gaping maw? Or maybe this is just the 800 calorie hit of cholesterol and sugar speaking. You am become death either way.

Follow Adam on Instagram @yungtolstoi

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