Julia Friese explains what effects the fires in California have on pop culture.
Three observations:
1. History
Trump wants to annex Greenland. Elon Musk recommends choosing the AfD. Trump wants to merge the USA with Canada. At the AfD party conference, his party leader gestures in a “new” aggressiveness, says that her party will tear down all wind turbines. Meanwhile, California burns. The well-known Malibu Beach houses are rubble, Pacific Palisades is brandy. Friedrich Merz thinks that convicts with double citizenship should have to expect the German passport. The American reality star from the very beginning, Spencer Pratt (“The Hills”), shows what is left of his house: a large saucepan, a surrounded children’s swing and part of a colibri feed dispenser. He cries. He underlines his TikKoks with his wife Heidi Montag’s trash pop. “Look how i’m doing”-for example: “Look how well I can”-so she sings as proudly as car-tune-distorted over his own rubble.
A few Scrolls continues to dance a young person in the wind who constantly puts the California fire behind him, to the “Earth Song”, which Michael Jackson once sang in front of wind machines: “We’ve Turned Kingdoms to Dust. What about us? ”Our present now seems to be a story later. So time to look closely at the pop cultural presence in this column. What happens? And how and why is it all related?
I love the untreated of our generation, comments on a Tikok user. Jackson’s history’s cover shows it as a fire-proof marble sculpture, the clouds behind him are red. Spencer Pratt says everyone should stream Heidi’s music so that they can rebuild their house. “Fever dream” is the one-word comment of the hour. But “fever dream” is more than that, it is a lifestyle. Heidi Mondays Album Superficial (2010) went to number 1 on the American iTunes charts in the second January 2025 week.
2. Ah-aaaaaaah, Ahah-Aaaaaaaa-a-A-AH, What have we Done to the world?
In 2024, the Belgian historian Anton Jäger revived the term “hyperproition” characterized by Peter Sloterdijk in 1993. In the essay of the same name (Suhrkamp / 2024), he describes the present as a phase of political heating, with too low institutional organization. The mass is politicized, but neither deeply informed nor tied, so it does not rely on a “slow drilling” from “hard boards to the sense of my mind” (Max Weber), but an anger in the Internet is to be mobilized in a very short time to take a short time on the Internet Combined the street before all the energy is back into its individual parts.
Mark Zuckerberg announced that the fact check for his meta-platforms. One talked down: then register with Bluesky or mastodon? Tiktok is to be banned in the USA. In the short term, the Chinese Tikok version “Red Note” is at the top of the download charts. Will every bubble have its own social network in the future? Will we then speak of hyper -fragmentation? Hyper is ancient Greek for “over” or “over it”. Sang in 1994, scooter in “Hyper, Hyper”: “I want to see you sweat! I Said: I want to see you sweat! “
3. over it
The solutions that hunters offer and which he does not believe at the same time are: occur in parties and unions. Go out! At this point I want to be over this point and actually try to mobilize you through a print column: forget “community”-make a real community in 2025! Don’t look for a new social media platform, but simply delete the shit. Or do you write a column about the present so that you have to drive around there? I don’t believe! Do not violate “problematic” people. There is no unproblematic life in problematic structures. Do you want to come out to someone?
Maybe you can call it easy? They are not better. Your misconduct is only somewhere else. Are you angry? If possible, try not to start any other small parties. Support one of the established, democratic parties. No party program must correspond 100 percent to your convincing. Do not discuss to be right, but to learn. Do you have a hobby – outside, with others? Volunteering? Neighbors? Bridge insurmountable differences. And don’t forget the fun! Tend this column out of the booklet, put it in a fire bowl and light it. Even a little hair dryer can be a wind machine. Dance to the “Earth Song”. And in any case, resist the urge to want to record a video of it …
This column first appeared in the music express edition 3/2025.