Inside the microdrama industrial complex

From the AI stock market bubble to Governor Kathy Hochul deploying the National Guard to NYC subways based on the “feeling” of danger, it’s clear that the modern world runs increasingly on… vibes. That’s the subject of Good Vibes Only: Phenomenology and The Biopolitics of Algorithmic Legitimation, the new book by writer, philosopher, and returning CUJO guest Robin James. In it, Robin examines how the hidden mathematical systems fueling AI, recommender systems, and other digital technologies are changing how power operates and the futures it makes possible.Robin joins us to discuss what “vibes” are, how they operate as the cultural manifestation of this shift, and why she believes they have replaced “norms” and other systems of control as a way that “white patriarchal capitalism” perpetuates itself. We also dig into the shift from musical genres to vibes in the age of streaming, the intersection of emotions with financial markets and algorithmic recommendation systems, and what resistance to this regime might look like.Order Good Vibes Only: Phenomenology and the Biopolitics of Algorithmic Legitimation via Duke University Press with the code E26VIBES to get 30% off.Subscribe to Robin’s blog, It’s Her Factory This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe

Are two-minute vertical videos the future of television? On this week’s episode, gonzo reporter extraordinaire Daniel Kolitz walks us through “Secret Billionaires, Mafia Brides, Alpha Kings: The Insane World of Microdramas,” his brain-bending New York Times Magazine cover story on the smutty, histrionic, questionably money laundering-adjacent world of the microdrama, a shortform vertical video-based spin on the traditional soap opera that is sort of the televisual brainrot equivalent of the Romantasy craze.We dig into how the Chinese-born phenomenon of microdramas rose to become a driving economic engine of post-pandemic Hollywood, what its mercenary production practices tell us about the state of labor in the industry, and the geopolitical implications of companies in countries like China effectively offshoring to the U.S. We also get into softcore pornography’s increasingly central role propping up contemporary cultural industries, and what it means to live in a world where this sort of algorithm-driven slop can co-exist with three-hour movies like You Can See Everything and the sort of ambitious longform journalism Daniel specializes in. Plus, Daniel tells us about his just-announced first book, Goonworld, which is loosely inspired by his ASME award-winning article about the gooning community for Harper’s.Follow Daniel on Instagram and X“Paid Phones: Owing the payday loan apps” (The Baffler)“The Goon Squad: Loneliness, porn’s next frontier, and the dream of endless masturbation” (Harper’s) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience, we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and The Weather Report, a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains.When it comes to AI, Neo Ludditism has been the default response of the American Left for some time now. But if we accept that boycotting can only go so far, and that AI is probably here to stay in some form, what might a progressive platform regulating today’s frontier technologies actually look like? During a month marked by a fever pitch hysteria around AI, with AI employees resigning and warning of extinction-level risks, CEOs calling for a slowdown, and politicians proposing jail time for developing “superintelligence,” we jumped on the horn with writer, researcher, and technologist Joshua Dávila to make sense of this inflection point in the AI culture war—and what it might look like for the Left to play an active role in shaping the technology’s future.We discuss how the niche ideology of Rationalism has shaped Silicon Valley’s language of doomsday inevitability, and whether we should actually be alarmed; what we can learn about the American AI industry from contrasting it with the landscape in China and the EU, and what the “Medicare for All” of AI policy might look like, or whether that’s just… well, Medicare for All. Plus, Josh tells us about his new project All Models Are Wrong, a show and blog about AI, robotics, biotech, crypto, and “the political choices hidden inside every technological future.”Follow Josh’s work at All Models are WrongPieces discussed in the episode:“The Long Doomsday of AI” by Joshua Rothman (The New Yorker)“How Scared Should We Be of AI Right Now?” by Cal Newport (The New York Times) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience, we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and The Weather Report, a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains. Hey pals. This week, we savor the final moments of summer with the author of our favorite non-fiction book this year. Her name is Meaghan Garvey — you probably know her as one of the best music journalists in the game — and the book is Midwestern Death Trip, which chronicles a period where she purchased a used red Cadillac and spent her days driving to far-flung corners of rural Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois, drinking in taxidermy-adorned supper clubs and dive bars and trying to “re-enchant” her life. It’s part memoir, part outsider history of a place, and part on-the-ground reckoning with a part of America often flattened into political abstraction. Though, if you really wanna boil it down, it is — as Meaghan puts it — a manifesto.We discuss Meaghan’s contention that American culture is actually way more interesting, psychedelic, and varied than it’s cracked up to be; what her weeklong benders taught her about both her relationship with herself and Americans’ relationships with one another; and what it’s like to occupy the lonely position of a female writer compared to Hunter S. Thompson (and why she’s actually more of a Lucia Berlin).Purchase Midwestern Death Trip at Country Highway and at local booksellers (second edition forthcoming)Subscribe to Meaghan’s excellent Substack SCARY COOL SAD GOODBYE This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience, we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and The Weather Report, a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains. Catch last month’s episode, where we dig into the rise of “waiting-in-line culture” in cities across America, the Spotify vs. Kalshi saga, Lebron James’ post-factual free agency, and more.Hi pals. While we’re off on vacation this week, we decided to do something a little different for this week’s show.If you checked out last month’s Weather Report, you probably heard that Andrea recently had the opportunity to participate in a multimedia installation at LA’s National Museum of the Aftermath called “California Gothic” that dives into the question of what Los Angeles, and the lives of those who live there, will look like after collapse.The project is the brainchild of Gina Delvac and James Kim, two of the most creative minds working in audio storytelling today. For “California Gothic,” they commissioned audio creators, journalists, writers, and artists (Andrea included) to imagine a future where their favorite place in Los Angeles no longer exists, and then to create a speculative audio story about it — short prose, an intimate fiction scene, an ambient piece, or something surreal that doesn’t fall into any of those. They ask: What memories reverberate from this place? What memories can still be heard? What have we lost?While “California Gothic” was (at the time anyway) a one-off event, we were so moved by the vision and creativity of these experimental pieces – which range from sound collages, to surrealist scifi, to letters from future selves – that we thought it would make for a sweet summer treat to feature them here on CUJO.Today’s episode features six of those pieces, each imagining a different place in Los Angeles as remembered in a post-apocalyptic future. But first, Gina joins us for a quick chat about the meaning of “California Gothic,” why spoken audio should be recognized as an art form as much as a commercial output, and what’s in store for the project beyond “California Gothic.” If you have ideas or want to get involved with future iterations of the project, reach out to Gina at [email protected] California GothicCuratorsGina Delvac is a native Angelena and podcast showrunner, audio creator, and curator. Her work includes projects like Call Your Girlfriend, Bandsplain, and Lost Notes: Groupies.James Kim is the EP of original programming at Lemonada, and he previously made the fiction podcast Moonface, the Apple TV documentary series Magnificent Jerk, and was the showrunner for the HBO/TCM show Talking Pictures.ContributorsJennifer Swann: Shatto 39 Lanes bowling alley, Koreatown (18:45)Jenn Swann is a journalist, radio producer, and the writer and host of the podcast series My Friend Daisy. She’s on Substack and Instagram.Angel Carreras: The Thai Boxing Institute, Venice (24:21)Angel Carreras is a journalist and audio producer. Say hi to him on Instagram and pls listen to whatever econ thing he helped make at NPR. Henry Johnson: Frogtown (27:40)Henry is an artist and native Angeleno based in Los Feliz. He works in television. Molly Lambert: The Southwest Museum tunnel, Mt. Washington (31:07)Molly Lambert is a podcaster, journalist, and writer in Los Angeles. She hosts the podcast Mollyworld. Sophie Bridges: Barndall Park darkroom, East Hollywood (36:30)Sophie Bridges is a writer and audio producer. She's the producer and story editor of the podcast Shell Game, and she lives in the last city on earth (Los Angeles).Kristen Torres: Echo Park Lake (44:37)Kristen Torres is a freelance podcast and video producer based in Los Angeles. She recently became a great-aunt and feels like her weird aunt powers grow stronger by the day.Andrea Domanick: The Sunset Strip, West Hollywood (51:42)Andrea Domanick grew up watching the Strip change on Holloway Drive, where the (real) Sunset Strip sinkhole ruptured this summer. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience, we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and The Weather Report, a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains. Catch last month’s episode, where we dig into the rise of “waiting-in-line culture” in cities across America, the Spotify vs. Kalshi saga, Lebron James’ post-factual free agency, and more. Here at CUJO, we love ourselves a good topical film. And as far as hot-button topics are concerned, Our Hero, Balthazar, a new movie from Oscar Boyson and Ricky Camilleri, has it all: coastal elite vs. red state class antagonism, the performance of self on the internet, gun violence, toxic masculinity, MLMs, designer drugs, and more. Written during the internet-addled lockdown days of the pandemic, it follows Balthazar (Jaeden Martell), a wealthy private school teen and online “cryfluencer” from New York City who becomes a obsessed with Solomon (Asa Butterfield), a working-class internet troll he suspects is planning a school shooting, and travels to Texas to stop him.It’s a crazy premise for a film, but what transpires ends up being a deeply believable exploration of what happens when you bring social media and the attention economy into one of the most challenging phases of life: adolescence. And while the subject matter isn’t funny at all, the film, surprisingly, very much is. Balthazar hits streaming on Apple TV on August 11, so we’re thrilled to have Oscar, who directed the film, and Ricky, who co-wrote and produced it alongside Oscar, on today’s episode. You might know Oscar from his work as a producer on 2010s indie classics like Frances Ha, Good Time, Uncut Gems, along with the show Chillin Island, and Ricky from his work as a film commentator and video talk show host for media companies like HuffPost, but the pair have known each other since meeting at film nerd camp in their teens. We talk about how they came back together later in life to write Balthazar; why they chose to frame the movie, somewhat controversially, around the specter of a school shooting; and its unsparing examination of what it is like to come of age in a world where attention is currency.Plus: We get into the challenges they faced making a dark topical indie satire during a period of extreme risk-aversion in the film industry, the story behind the film’s amazing Iceage needledrop, and how they drew inspiration from idiosyncratic coming-of-age films from the turn of the millennium like Larry Clark’s Bully. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience, we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and The Weather Report, a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains. Catch last month’s episode with Callahan & Witscher’s Jack Callahan, where we dig into the Fenix Flexin saga and the future of AI-assisted music, the recent hipster discourse, and more.You’ve probably heard the phrase “the marketplace of ideas”: the classical liberal belief that when ideas compete freely in the public square, the best ones will always rise to the top. But what does that “marketplace” look like in the media landscape of the 2020s, where ideas are distributed via personalized algorithmic feeds and the public sphere has fragmented into clusters of charismatic content creators with cult followings? That’s the question that Doomscroll’s Joshua Citarella and New Models’ Carly Busta and Lil Internet tackle in “The Online Marketplace of Ideas,” an installation they put together for Strange Rules, a group show currently on display at the Palazzo Diedo at Berggruen Arts & Culture in Venice, curated by Mat Dryhurst, Holly Herdon, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, with Adriana Rispoli. Hint: It’s a room packed with over 400 t-shirts, hats, books, and other “dropship basics” from the personalities that have dominated the discourse in the 2020s, ranging from Joe Rogan and Call Your Daddy to Chapo Trap House, “Abundists” Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Andreas Malm, Curvis Yarvin, Balaji Srinivasan, and Byung-Chul Han.We brought on Josh and Carly to walk us through the exhibition, what bringing together all these objects reveals about the larger economic and geopolitical shifts this apparent ideological diversity obscures, the increasingly blurred line between being a content creator and being a politician, and our transition from the age of linear media into a neo-oral one. Plus: a cameo appearance from New Models co-founder Lil Internet, discussing his theory that this wild profusion of internet ideologies has become America’s primary cultural export.Strange Rules is on display at the Palazzo Diedo in Venice until November 22, 2026Subscribe to New Models on Substack or PatreonSubscribe to Doomscroll on Substack and YouTube This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe

For our cultural predictions roundup back in January, the musician and technologist Trevor McFedries predicted that 2026 was going to be a really good year—professionally speaking—for people with good taste. The jury’s still out, but it’s definitely turning into a big year for talking about taste. And for the first time in history, the tech world seems to be leading the charge, from engineers penning essays about how “personal taste” is the new moat, to startups promising us more aesthetically discerning AI, to the Palantir chore coat and tech billionaires sitting front row at Fashion Week.To make sense of why taste has become such a Silicon Valley buzzword—and what that tells us about the changing meaning and role of taste more broadly–we brought on Drew Austin, a writer and urban planner who runs the excellent Substack, Kneeling Bus, where he recently penned a piece called “Tastecore and the Enclosure of the Commons.” We discuss Drew’s research on the tech world’s changing relationship to fashion in the post-pandemic era, the growing epidemic of “tasteslop,” and how the current discourse frames taste as something less about personal distinction and more about gaining a competitive edge. Plus, we tap Pierre Bourdieu to try to parse the evolving function of taste in society over time—and what the tech industry’s taste obsession can tell us about the shifting landscape of class and class antagonism.Follow Drew at Kneeling Bus on Substack.Read Drew on taste:“Tastecore and the enclosure of the commons”“Worn out: Tech elites’ supposed indifference to fashion is a contempt for the commons” (Real Life)“Here comes a regular: Taste is obsolete & gatekeeping is code for what the internet took from us”“Bots in the beerlight: Sometimes embodiment is all you’ve really got”“Lo-fi beats for studying: How to push more through the human attention bottleneck”Additional references:“Taste is Eating Silicon Valley” by Anu Atluru (Working Theories)“Personal Taste is the Moat” by Wang Cong“Tasteslop: Notes on technological anxiety” by Emily Segal (Nemesis) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms, from Emilie Friedlander and Andrea Domanick. You can learn more about it here.For fans of independent music, the Geese psyop allegations earlier this year raised an anxiety-provoking question: How much of our taste is our own, and how much of it is just a function of the music industry using a range of tactics (from the mundane, to the shadowy, to the straight-up fraudulent) to manufacture consent?  We held back from commenting on the story at the time because we were cooking up a longer response that we finally unveiled this week: a deeply researched, centuries-spanning history of the art and science of musical taste manipulation, spanning Tin Pan Alley sheet music scams, chart manipulation, streaming farms, the modern clipping economy, viral “trend simulation,” and more. Our hope was that shedding light on these historical persuasion tactics — and the psychological mechanisms that underpin them, from the mere-exposure effect to René Girard’s mimetic theory of desire — would help our listeners make sense of a present where it can feel like everything on the internet is fake.The episode, titled “Free Clout for Sale,” is part of an exciting collaborative podcast project called Tranche that came out this week on Metalabel. Tranche is the brainchild of friend of the pod and Nothing But Respect cohost Harry Krinsky, who you may remember from our episode on the psychology of the modern Knick fan a few weeks back. As Harry describes it, it’s basically a literary magazine, but instead of articles, you get podcast episodes. Listen to today’s episode for an interview with Harry about the project and an excerpt from our contribution to it — and please consider supporting our work by purchasing Tranche 001, which gets you five episodes for just $5. Other entries include a history of the word “based” (from Naomi Zeichner and Eamon Whalen), a meditation on Eddington and the fate of the Western in the 2020s (with Nate Fisher and Eddie Averill), an aesthetic analysis of Praxis and the Palantir chore coat (featuring past CUJO guest Sam Venis), and a cross-generational analysis of major life milestones with CUJO regular Ben Dietz and friends. All proceeds will be split among contributors. Something we loved this week: This fascinating episode by the excellent podcast No Such Thing on the history of different corporate management styles and the problem of micromanaging at work, featuring The Drift editor and Harvard historian Erik Baker, author of the book Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience, we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and The Weather Report, a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains.What does it take to chronicle contemporary culture through the ancient medium of theater, and what new insights can it unlock about the present? On this episode, we talk with playwright, author, and critic Matthew Gasda about his recent staging of The Last Days of Downtown, the third and final installment of his “Dimes Square” trilogy, which chronicles the aspirations, anxieties, attentional antics, and creative rivalries of New York’s post-pandemic downtown scene. Matthew joins us to discuss his role leading a resurgence of DIY theater in NYC — including as the founder of an institution called Brooklyn Center for Theater Research — and how he’s used the medium to capture subcultures in real time, before they’ve even had a chance to register their place in history. We talk about the downtown’s scene’s polarizing legacy and where it fits within previous eras of NYC counterculture, what happens when you and your work become part of the story you’re trying to tell, and how the world of the trilogy acted as a harbinger of culture in the decade to come.Visit the Brooklyn Center for Theater Research for upcoming plays from MatthewFollow Matthew on SubstackRead Matthew’s novels and plays This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe