As a journalist, I’m endlessly curious about people – or I was until short-form video made real-life interactions feel like a drag

It’s never pleasant to confront something unflattering about yourself, particularly when you catch yourself in the act. Recently I was mid-conversation with a stranger at a party, when I suddenly became conscious of my internal monologue: yes, hurry up, get to the point, you’re going to say this, then that, and what is the takeaway here?

This wasn’t the first time I had noticed a shift in my real-life interactions. Over the preceding months, I had felt tired, even irritated, when loved ones so much as veered close to an anecdote or detail about their lives that I thought I had already heard. During interviews I conducted as a journalist, it sometimes took a heroic effort to concentrate on conversations once they failed to be truly stimulating. Ordinarily I am endlessly curious about people, but I couldn’t ignore a creeping feeling that my attention was waning.

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In a collapsing world, artists like Slayyyter and Cobrah are chasing extreme highs with hyperactive music and debauched lyrics. Is their trashy vibe emancipating – or a bit contrived?

If any year demanded a soundtrack of self-aggrandising female mayhem, it’s 2026. Amid the terrors of war, AI and the climate crisis, women are expected to be symbolic vessels of order and stability: thin, beautiful and perpetually 25 – a state of perfection newly available for purchase thanks to weight-loss drugs and the deep plane facelift.

Covered unironically in leopard print and rhinestones, a cohort of young female pop stars are defying this familiar con with brash electronic pop, shamelessly hedonistic lyrics, anarchic sexuality and an obsession with what was once dismissed as “white trash”. It’s an aesthetic embraced by performers such as Slayyyter, Kim Petras, Cobrah, Demi Lovato, Snow Strippers’ Tatiana Schwaninger, Tove Lo and returning scene godmother Kesha.