1. Universal Brainrot
We should begin with news of a disconcerting development here at our editorial offices in Quimper. It seems our interns, Augustus and Eglantine, have seized control of The Hinternet’s social media. We are completely locked out of our own Instagram account, which Gus and Eggy now seem intent on transforming into a veritable cataract of grade-A bona-fide Gen Z brainrot.
A dissenting minority on our editorial staff, including JSR himself, has argued that this twist might not turn out entirely to our detriment. Brainrot, they maintain, is really the only significant aesthetic sensibility that matters in 2026, the only that is not moribund, but is in fact likely to continue to evolve, and, within a few years, some of us are now predicting, to ramify into high and low branches, to insinuate itself into museums and fashion and the narrative arts and whatever is left of academia, to serve as the new stone on which our lapidary critics will whet their faculties of judgment. Could this be possible? Friends, as of 2026 anything is possible — anything, that is, except returning to the status quo that prevailed before the massive cultural, technological, and geopolitical reset currently underway.
And so we are coming around, at least in one of the branches of our operation, to seeing the strategic appeal of placing our bet on the youngest of the currently adult generations — whose creative fecundity, significantly aided by image- and text-generating machines, is already showing us, or at least those of us who know how to see, the rough outlines of our future. And it looks something like this:
