Taylor Lorenz’s Power User

China is winning the culture war: From "galvanized square steel" to drinking hot water, why is the entire internet suddenly looking more Chinese?
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Over the past year, a massive cultural shift has taken place. From China-maxxing memes to TikTok migrations, Chinese tech, culture, and lifestyle have become aspirational in a way no one could have predicted a decade ago. 
Twitch streamer and pop culture commentator Caroline Kwan joins me to break down how and why the internet became Chinese.
We discuss what these memes actually mean, and why US politicians are panicking. We talk about the TikTok ban, RedNote, Chinese tech dominance, cultural soft power, high speed rail, American decline, surveillance hypocrisy, and why Gen Z no longer believes what they were told.
We also talk about why American propaganda on China is collapsing in real time, and what that says about the future of politics, culture, and power in the 21st century.
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Topics Covered:
"China Maxxing" and "You met me at a very Chinese time" memes.

Why Gen Z is moving to Red Note (Xiaohongshu) after the TikTok ban.

The contrast between US infrastructure (crumbling) and China (high-speed rail).

The truth about the "Made in China" stigma vs. modern quality.

Why US anti-China propaganda is backfiring.

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Last week, Brooklyn Beckham, the 26 year old son of Victoria and David Beckham, posted a 7 slide essay on Instagram Stories, accusing his parents of controlling his entire life and disrespecting his wife Nicola Peltz. Immediately, he was hit with a tidal wave of backlash.
Right wingers have pounced on this drama, with Candace Owens, House in Habit, and others pushing the idea that Nicola Pelz is yet another "Meghan Markle" and that Brooklyn is "Prince Harry 2.0," yet another privileged son being manipulated by an evil woman into betraying his family.
Kat Tenbarge joined me to break down what Brooklyn actually said, how tabloids and influencers are distorting the story, why Nicola Peltz was instantly cast as the villain, and what it reveals about how society reacts when men set boundaries with powerful families.
We discuss boy mom culture, media manipulation, and why cutting off family still triggers moral panic. We also talk about how PR machines operate, how smear campaigns are constructed, and why the public constantly blames women for men's choices. 
While this seems like your standard celebrity drama, it actually reveals a lot about how our culture treats men, the normalization of gender-based violence and how propaganda works in the digital age. 
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[FREE SPEECH FRIDAY]
Every single moment that you're online, you're feeding the data harvesting industry. Corporations then sell that data to the government, allowing them to target you for online speech, protesting, and more.
Now, the government wants to build a single centralized platform where U.S. spy agencies and the government can easily buy highly private information about millions of people. Documents obtained by The Intercept reveal that the U.S. is seeking to establish a "one stop shop" for the U.S. government to buy American's most sensitive data. This sort of surveillance is a massive threat to free speech and expression. 
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[This episode originally aired in June 2025]

Matt Bernstein, Kat Tenbarge and I dig into what the 2016 nostalgia is really about. 
Why is everyone suddenly obsessed with 2016? Hyper-saturated Instagram photos are back. The Snapchat puppy filter is everywhere again. Nostalgic edits are flooding TikTok. From the "King Kylie" era to Harambe, it feels like we’re collectively regressing.
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But was 2016 really “the last good year”? I wanted to understand why this particular moment looms so large in our cultural memory, so I called up my friends Matt Bernstein and Kat Tenbarge to discuss.
Kat is an incredible journalist and the author of Spitfire News, and Matt is an iconic podcast host and content creator. We re-examined the defining moments of 2016, talk about the old days of YouTube, why boomers don't get the nostalgia, and why 2016 has become such a powerful focal point. 
We unpack what this fixation on 2016 reveals about today's internet, culture, and politics nearly a decade later.
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In this video, we cover:
The revival of 2016 aesthetics on TikTok.

Why people romanticize the pre-Trump/early-Trump era.

The impact of 2016 internet humor on today's culture.

The rise of the content creator industry. 

Why it's all Gen Z and Millennials who are getting nostalgic while older generations don't seem to care.

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For decades, tech billionaires have sold us a shiny future powered by AI. But what if the future they’re building doesn’t include us? A disturbing ideology has quietly come to dominate Silicon Valley: the belief that we need to dispose of the flawed, biological human race in order to give birth to a superior AI intelligence that will ultimately replace us. Tech billionaires are already investing in the technology and infrastructure to make this happen.
I dove deep into how these ideas, known as TESCREAL, took hold, who’s funding them, who the power players are in this new movement, how they've been quietly prepping the public to accept this fate for years, how TESCREAL, pro-extinction beliefs are already shaping how the most powerful companies on Earth operate, and how real, human workers are paying the price for all these decisions. 
If you're feeling uneasy about AI hype, billionaire bunker “prepper” culture, and getting the sense that AI technology is moving way too fast, you have probably seen evidence of these extreme beliefs manifesting in the world already.
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