The Hottest Culture War of Summer 2026
Also, that big gay fight at Animal, phone cameras, Nobel winners, The Row, New Yorker writers, animal sacrifice, and more! FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays is getting its base tan.
Today is Friday, June 12th, 2026.
It’s the 4th Summer Friday of the year, 12 to go until Labor Day.
In theaters this weekend: Disclosure Day, the new Spielberg aliens-are-among-us blockbuster starring generational talent and lust object of unrepetent hornballs (and Blackbird Spyplanes everywhere) Josh O’Connor. Do you have a line into Josh O’Connor? Hit the BBSP batline.
In sports: Game 5 of the Knicks/Spurs NBA Finals runs on Saturday night. On Sunday in Spain, the running of F1’s Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix. Also, there’s some soccer happening with this World Cup business: USA vs. Paraguay on Saturday, a bunch of other countries playing pussyball for the rest of the weekend too no come on I’m kidding soccer fans, we like your sport.
In the land of the living, Summer legend/splashmaster David Hockney has ascended to the big pool in the sky.
Finally, around the world today, the weather: New York City: 93/73, partly sunny, windy, maybe rain, mostly chaos • Los Angeles: 84/66, sunny • Cala Goloritze, Sardinia: 79/71, sunny • Fteri Beach, Kefalonia: 76/61, cloudy • Machu Pichu: 60/38, clou—
—well, well, well: If it isn’t you, back for more Summer Friday, and Summer Friday, back for more you. Did you know that some people apparently need to take vacation from writing a newsletter? That’s because they don’t write newsletters that, are in and of themselves, vacation-esque — like this one. Speaking of which, FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays Radio will officially return next week, live from (where else?) the currently-gatekept European beach (of the summer).
Meantime, we’ve got plenty of fun for you today. Before we begin, as ever, the tipline remains open, as we still seek information on NYC’s mythical “cocaine wine” and other great games to play on vacation. Feedback, nominations for new DSM entries, ideas, skincare tips, spiritual revelations, mergers and acquisitions “wisdom” that definitely wouldn’t constitute insider trading, photos of “daughter or girlfriend?” couples, you know where to send ‘em. Off we go.
Table of Contents:
The Summer of Phone Camera Culture Wars: Either you’re filming a concert, or you’re at Guantanamo Bay.
A Pride Month Primer, In Three Parts: God save The Gays.
Still More Rhetorical Questions Of The Summer, Answered: Who asked me? You did, motherfucker!
The Hot Nobel Laureates of Summer 2026: A Series of Adjoining Issues Involving Sicily, Sardinia, The Row, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, Nobel Laureates, Two of The Best Beaches In The World, and How to Be Happier For the Rest of Your Goddamn Life.
1. The Summer of Phone Camera Culture War Is Upon Us!
Finally.
Last week, in documenting This Summer’s Hot New Vacation Game to Play With Friends, it was written:
We really gotta shame people for being on their phones more. Same with shooting on a phone camera: GAUCHE! Can this be the summer we start judging ourselves and definitely others for using phone cameras (unless you’re incriminating police)? Reader, I think it can. Remember, the panopticon is anathema to vibes!
Already, in NYC, clubs have moved towards London and Berlin-models of stickering cameras and disallowing phone use on the dance floor: Basement, Nowadays, and Nightmoves have always had these policies, while House of Joy, Signal, and Refuge have adopted anti-phone camera policies in the last year. Earlier this month, Outer Heaven on the Lower East Side announced their own no-phone policy.
Even in the epicenter of phone-cameras-in-the-club, Ibiza, season-long phone bans are showing up.1
Of course, banning phones at nightclubs — which at their root, were historically safe spaces for marginalized communities to go and be absolute freaks, i.e. exactly the kinds of places that should have anti-phone policies — isn’t really all that controversial, and thus, isn’t getting a ton of pushback from people. A semi-viral recent post by Magical Dancefloors giving newcomers to dance music and nightlife a compelling view into the glory of a phoneless dancefloor keeps spreading, tilting that discourse in the right direction even more. Nature is healing, etc.
But a new discourse has risen, in light of the announcement that Phoebe Bridgers Summer Tour will be a phoneless one in which concert-goers phones will be locked in Yondr pouches, pitting those who can’t be away from their phones against those of us who wish they could launch theirs into oblivion.
Before I go any further, just, like, take a second and imagine the grounds on which people — who we really want to give the benefit of the doubt to, as a matter of practice — are objecting to having to put their phones put in pouches for the duration of a concert. Now ask yourself: How great is your imagination, really?
And that goes without mentioning the person drawing a line from not using your phone at a Phoebe Bridgers concert to “autodafe[s]” and their fellow revolutionary declaring that phone-free concerts are “classist as fuck.” There are also concerns about the gay kidnappers and the banana suit guy, and we won’t even get into the whole “ableism” arguments of it all. A culturally-astute person pointed out to me: “This stuff feels incredibly 2017, and I mean that in the worst possible way.”
Let us forego all the obvious counterpoints to the paint-huffingly paste-eatingly stupid pro-phone arguments, which — like all truly dumb things — don’t deserve to be taken seriously, except as a way to make yourself immediately stupider by dignifying them. Phone bans are definitely a solution, and as someone who strongly believes in the power of draconian punishments for petty offenses (don’t get me started on littering), I’m all about the nanny state, which I’ll take over the panopticon any day of the week. That said: Yondr pouches — which have reach limited to the live events they’re deployed at — will only do so much in the war for vibes, which need to be tended to through soft power. Thus, that ages-old power of just straight up shaming losers. If you’re gonna be the person to shame someone influencing in public, as long as you’re not rude about it, I’m not gonna stop you!
Observe: The flyer Summer Fridays hero Solomun has been distributing at his residency at Ibiza club Pacha since 2017, which explains that using your phone camera fucks up the experience for everyone else, and also, is kind of for assholes.
Yet, the most effective way to pull soft power on the phone addicted, however, is by making people feel like they’re missing out. And mark my words: In a world where privacy is increasingly becoming the kind of thing people come by at a premium, phone-less spaces are gonna increasingly be associated with dignity, exclusivity, and thus, luxury — while phone-filled spaces, the opposite. Anyway, that’s all to say that this isn’t really much of a fight: Tide’s already turning, and in the mean time, apologies to anybody who gets gay kidnapped at the Phoebe Bridgers concert and can’t film it, or whatever. You were worth the sacrifice.
2. A Pride Week Primer, In Two Videos
Pride Week is on the way, and with it will arrive its own internal, intersectional culture wars about what constitutes inclusion, who it’s for, and when it shows up, what should and should not be permitted, etc. As a straight, I’ve got very little to offer anyone in this dialogue, except for the following three things:
An ominous warning from a New York City Media Power Gay telling me not to mess around in “TERROR ZONE” dialogue (“Omg I saw tweets of you getting into gay people’s business, be careful”). For Pride month, like Lent, I’m swearing off tweeting about the “TERROR ZONE.” That said, I will not stop going around to studios pitching my “gritty Mr. Ed reboot” wherein the titular horse is a ketamine addict. Admit it, WiLlBuRRrrrrRrr I nEEd aNoTher BUmP!!!! has a certain something to it.
This video from a little over a week ago about “the fight at Animal last night” that begins with the words “those two twinks went down like 9/11, I don’t know why you think you could take her because she’s trans — she’s a bouncer with a karate background.” and only gets better from there.
This decidedly sapphic video of Rosamund Pike eating a pineapple in a fashion I, quite frankly, did not know was possible (AND NO CHRIST NOT LIKE THAT, YOU FREAK) (BUT ALSO, UH, NOT NOT LIKE THAT?).
3. More Rhetorical Questions, Answered.
For some reason, in 2026, people are still deploying rhetorical questions in headlines. Lucky for everyone involved, I’ve got the answers.
“Do you hate Jia Tolentino, or do you hate yourself?” I hate jellyfish, ticks, and mosquitos, and I’m fully convinced one of these three things is how I’m going to die. The latter two explain why I hate on the Catskills so much, but the first does nothing to explain why I keep jumping into the late-summer Balearic Sea like I’m gonna find a missing sock in there. Do you ever think about how you’re going to die? Hit the FOSTERTALK tip line, we wanna know.
“My Sister Won’t Vacation With My Kids. Is She Being Selfish?” Fuck them kids!2
“Is a $30k Glow Up Worth It?” Certainly not if you have a line into any goats to sacrifice to the revered and sacred Oshun. Also, ideally, some overlooked empty commercial real estate to do it in.
“Why is a New Yorker writer taking a job at an AI tech company?” New Yorker writers make people go fucking insane as a matter of course, don’t they? This question is predicated on the idea that a job at the New Yorker is all that great — don’t get me wrong, plenty juice in that lime, but ask most of the people who work there, and many of them can probably name a better job they’ve had at one point or another. Also, goats cost money.
“Are goats being sacrificed inside this Hackney office?” This asshole ain’t gonna bleach itself, brother!
This has been another edition of Rhetorical Questions, Answered! Sponsored by our good friends at the Foundation For Honestly, Think About It, Have You Ever Thought To Yourself “What the World Needs Is More Goat?” Right You Definitely Haven’t. Also, the Betteridge’s Law of Headlines Wikipedia Page: Teaching the world that the standard for yes/no questions in headlines as this, and only this. Got any rhetorical questions that need answering? Please, send ‘em right over.
4. The Hottest Takeaways From the Irrefutable Wisdom of Two of This Summer’s Hottest Nobel Laureates
Or: A Slight Correction Involving Sicily, Sardinia, The Row, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, Two of The Best Beaches In The World, and How to Be Happier For the Rest of Your Goddamn Life.
In last week’s newsletter, we noted:
…Sardinia as the Elizabeth Olsen to Sicily’s Mary-Kate and Ashley: Historically lesser-known but arguably more talented than the latter in most ways, except where it concerns being shady and ripping people off. Mi dispiace ma non mi dispiace, Sicily fans!
At present, we apologize for nothing, and absolutely stand by this assessment, especially where it concerns both Sardinia’s pasta and its beaches, which have been ranked both Number 1 (Cala Goloritze) and Number 2 (Cala Mariolou) in the world, by people who know what the fuck they’re talking about. Also, me.
But I do, in fact, apologize for depriving you of the following footnote, that was supposed to be attached last week to the words “being shady and ripping people off”:
Real ones know that The Row’s such a goddamn ripoff it’s actually funny! Especially when considering that Michelle(s) Tanner is the marketing genius rivaling all others, to say nothing of their ruling over The Row with an iron fist. Seeing someone wearing The Row isn’t just a great reminder of the small cultural justice that is rich people really not knowing how to spend it, it’s also a stark reminder that nobody deserved their Nobel Prize in economics more than 2017 winner Richard “Nudge” Thaler. Who wouldn’t be caught dead in The Row.
It’s true: All high-end “quiet luxury” brands you’ll see around the world this summer are simply absurd ripoffs that demonstrate a gauche grasp of style, sleazy money, and the K-Shaped economy more than anything else. Related: Praise be to the gods who sit at Machu Pichu and conscript fates beyond this mortal universe to the monsters who still wear Loro Piana.
But alas, the truly important part of that footnote involved aforementioned Nobel economist Richard Thaler, whose work deserves more illumination, here. Thaler won for his pioneering work in behavioral economics, and specifically, irrational economic dynamics.
Let’s say you’re sitting on Kefalonia’s Fteri Beach (Number 2 Beach in the World, 2026), and your friend goes to get a bottle of Alfa, which costs €5 at the beach. At a Greek bodega — a periptero (η μαμά σου?) — that beer might be €1. That €5 feels fair at the beach, but would be an outrage at the periptero? Behavioral economics at work, baby!
And economics used to fail to account for economic “misbehaviors” like these, until Thaler came along, and said: Let’s math better, by remembering that people regularly act in ways that don’t reflect their self-interest, like buying beer at the beach, wearing The Row, or paying to read anything other than Summer Fridays (which is free).3
Thaler’s work is an absolute goddamn belter of a party combining psychology, economics, and humans being insane. Thaler’s “Nudge” is the only economics book on the list of acceptable Summer Fridays Beach Reads List. His Twitter is also old-man-being-cute-on-Twitter adorable. It also, in May, pointed to a fascinating and overlooked NYT piece concerning the work of Thaler’s fellow Nobel laureate Herbert Simon, on “maximizers” vs. “satisficers.”
Basically, maximizers are people who search for the very best of something while satisficers have a standard of “good enough for me.” Guess who turns out to be happier? That’s right, the satisficers — especially because the maximizers often fail to account for the time expense of searching for the best. This is especially pertinent in 2026, when — while swiping on an endless feed of content, or potential romantic partners, or something to alleviate our boredom — we have more opportunities to “maximize” at any given moment:
In 2006 an economist calculated that the consumer options available to citizens of modern economies exceeded those of preindustrial societies roughly by a factor of 100 million. That is an almost incomprehensible multiplication of choice […] One way to interpret the findings is that the mere notion that something better might be out there spoils the moment.
I will now, in fact, apologize to Sicily, The Island. Because — heed your Nobel economists — the best Summer Friday in the world isn’t necessarily on the best beach in the world (still not really a debate), but rather, the one you’re gonna be the happiest at, which is usually the one you can commit to the most.
This is all to say that this summer, you’re gonna read or swipe through a bunch of hyperbolic headlines or vertical videos or newsletters or podcasts telling you the best parties to be at, the vacation spots “everyone” is going to, the “best” restaurants or bars or fro-yo or thong thongs or whatever it is. Hence, the convention of “The Best” in headlines in this email: It’s a joke, much like all those “of the Summer” proclamations are (or certainly look like in the rear-view).
The entire conceit of marketing (and most of the monetized media in the world) is paid for by the regularly desperate human need to not feel like we’re missing out or up to speed or that feeling that we’re somehow getting less than we can. This summer, note the difference between the people who walk around the world concerning themselves with these kinds of things, and everyone else. There are, I promise, more of the latter than the former. And they — yes, they — are the vibe. Allow yourself to be inspired by them, for you can be, too.
Folks, that’ll do it. Admittedly, we’re a little light this week, but that’s because I’m en route to Summer Fridays Radio HQ, as well as Cannes Lions the following week, where the only cool thing on the Croisette — the Cannes FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays Radio launch party (YES I CANNES!) — is already the hottest ticket in town. You gonna be there? You want in? Shoot me a line.
Otherwise, a dispatch from the world of self-important media execs who have historically attended this conference for seemingly no better a reason than to continue to fuck up the media business’ fortunes — until, of course, this year, when I’m there — will be in your inbox, soon, spilling all their secrets. Until then, remember: Satisfy don’t maximize, shame the phone filmers, kill your idols and spare goats, fear not the TERROR ZONE, and there are more than one ways to eat a pineapple, so eat your pineapple however you want (while it’s still legal).
As ever,
-f.
Though nothing will ever best The Six Pikes Commandments.
That said, to the guy who Max saw hit Claude up to ask “Should kids be allowed in first class?” on Alison Roman’s flight back from Amsterdam: Enjoy your new (brothy) fatwa (with lots of dill), motherfucker.
Also, GETTING A PRENUP. 2026: Hot Prenup Summer, thank you Belle Burden! As the son of a lawyer and a child of a War of the Roses-style divorce, I firmly believe — much like vaccines — pre-nups should be forced on people! That way, none of us would’ve ever had to watch Divorce Story and relive that trauma. My entire slate of Nanny State ideas, honestly, is pretty amazing. Ask me about them sometime. Also, a good one: You should be automatically unsubscribed from Substacks you don’t open for a month. See? Much like my $500 littering ticket idea, these are reasonable policy proposals only the worst people could possibly hate and thus are the ones they should be enforced upon the most :) Anyway, people with prenups get divorced less either because they’re more secure in their marriages or they were ALWAYS IN IT FOR THE MONEY AND NOW MUST SUFFER IN THEIR DEADENING MARRIAGES but either way they always seem to work out better and cosmically than the alternative.
See you on the Croissette, bud.