August 7, 2026

New month, new tweets, except also not, because there is nothing new under the sun, and most meme formats are callbacks to earlier memes. Remember the “Imagine” video? Those were the days. 

Enjoying watching gate-à-terre unfold. (Or is it pied-à-gate? I might need help with this one.)

Something good happened in Michigan! Yay. 

Hard to say what’s going on here, but it involves sad-girl music and children’s bed sheets. 

And the children’s bed sheets in question are not cheap! 

Something new and insane that I do NOT want to investigate is coming …

Also, before the weekend, we have unlocked a new fear: My therapist making a TikTok about me. 

A new meme to talk about yourself being judgmental and snobby, which is sadly necessary for most of us. 

And another instance of a Gen-Zer who is possibly a right-wing grifter being earnest and accidentally creating a meme format. 

Meanwhile, millennials … 

It is important to acknowledge the “Imagine” video and its spawn once a quarter:

RIP to my former media-people group chat that kept getting renamed to different riffs on feral hogs.

Yes, this is indeed why I stay online! 

Photo: FX

Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s 2023 novel, The Shards, premiered on Wednesday with a sleazy, gauzy two-part episode that came off as watered-down Brian De Palma. Set against the backdrop of ’80s Los Angeles, the show tells the story of Easton Ellis’s senior year of high school at a ritzy prep school as his cult-y popular-kid group gets infiltrated by a hot newcomer at the same time a serial killer nicknamed The Trawler comes to town, hacking and slashing teens (and their pets — animal lovers, you can definitely skip this one). As Vulture’s Roxana Hadadi writes in her review:

Everyone I know who has read The Shards loves it (and warns how scary it is), but Murphy’s version is not unlike the third season of Euphoria — which reminds me, I still haven’t seen the finale. It’s a show that bills itself as edgy and sexy and transgressive and is none of the above. That said, a miss for Murphy doesn’t necessarily forecast bad. Remember how he turned All’s Fair’s badness into its own kind of feat? But stop if you’ve heard this one before: If you want to feel horny and provoked, plus or minus some blood, you’re better off catching Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. 

Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Courtesy of David Pogue

Here’s something I didn’t know could happen: Someone else can wind up with your family photo album. I get that family heirlooms — trinkets, furniture, silverware, etc. — can wind up at estate sales and auctions, passed around and bartered for, but so can, as David Pogue learned, family photo albums. Last year, his sister received an email from an archivist who had found their grandmother’s photo album and scrapbook and was willing to sell it back to Pogue’s family for $150. But how did his grandmother’s stuff, which should have been in Nebraska, wind up with the archivist in Ohio? Especially when he got it from someone in Florida? That’s Pogue’s story to tell, and it’s a winding tale, with lots of incredible old images. One of his big questions, however, is whether it’s wrong for these archivists and researchers to sell people their families’ belongings back? My two cents: Considering that archival work in Ohio is not, like, a booming industry, the modest price of $150 is probably fine.

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Photo-Illustration: The Strategist; Photos: Angela Tafoya

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