korrents

korrents · piece

Labubus and the brainrot aesthetic

Kyle Chayka · 20 Aug 2025 · kylechayka.substack.com ↗

2 korrents from this piece

Kyle Chayka did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

  1. Our reading

    People's desperate need to manipulate their own image, and their acceptance of being human-machine hybrids in the AI era, is reflected in current ugly, artificial-feeling consumer aesthetics.

    Their wordsI think this slop-adjacent realm of dupe products and Instagrammable potions points to our increasingly desperate need to manipulate our own images, and an acceptance of the fact that we're kind of hybridized monsters ourselves in this post-A.I. human-machine moment

  2. Our reading

    Contemporary consumer products no longer claim purity or naturalness; they present themselves openly as artificial mixtures.

    Their wordsAny pretense of the pure or organic is undercut by a kind of willful alchemy; everything is an admixture.