Sean and Edmond

Sean Monahan, a Los Angeles-based writer and consultant, is perhaps best known for co-founding K-HOLE, the trend forecasting collective that gave the world normcore – a term that became both a cultural phenomenon and a punchline, as well as more recently, vibe shift and boom boom aesthetic.

Edmond Lau, meanwhile, operates from Sydney as a self-styled luxury memeologist and cultural strategist. His work explores the convergence of fashion, technology and new media.

Both are members of our SEED CLUB, so we decided to get them together to see what they had to say about what's going on with the world right now. What follows is the unfiltered exchange (with links added for context) that spans the unswaggy valley and vibe shifts to the triad of capital, dark modes, Californian ideology, globalisation aesthetics – and more. Enjoy.

Edmond Lau: hey hey

Sean Monahan: Hi guys

Protein: welcome sean welcome edmond 👋🏻 it would be great if we could kick things off what you’re both working on/thinking about at the moment? ‎

EL: I've been experimenting with vibe coding on cursor. Have been working on a 90s videogame/racing inspired art project

EL: I think it's quite ironic that the tech bros claimed that AI would spell the end of designers when it seems like AI is instead lowering the barriers for devs too. So perhaps simply the old thesis holds true - AI will replace us all

EL: I've also been reading Tony Tulathimutte's 'rejection' - it's so deeply uncomfortable to read but I can't stop. It's very 'of the time'

EL: oh, and also I'm going to new york next week so I've been stalking people's following list on instagram to find out where they go to eat/drink

EL: finally....been thinking about 'the unswaggy valley' a lot - and how easy it is to say 'trends don't matter, just wear what you like' but harder to practice when what you like is being clowned left and right

SM: I’m in Paris right now. Enjoying the weather immensely. After years in Los Angeles, I’ve remembered how good seasons are for productivity. What have I been thinking about…

SM: Today I’m thinking about Mark Eydelshteyn’s pre-Oscars outfit:

SM: Feels very now—especially if he added sunglasses:

SM: Basically this look over and over again is pinging my pattern recognition

SM: Every twentysomething wearing it in Los Angeles right now

SM: I called it the “globalization aesthetic”

SM: It’s basically the toned down rock-centric aesthetic that was coterminous with Y2K but whose associations were different

SM: In LA, it’s too hot during the day for leather so it’s more too tight tees with a boxer (NOT boxer brief) showing above jeans

SM: But lots of sunglasses all the time also

SM: Something that feels new

SM: Even in Los Angeles

SM: Another thing that’ll be on my Substack tomorrow: Diesel showed some ultra-low rise jeans in Milan

SM: The NYT asked will men wear it????

EL: saw that, thought it was surprisingly sexy

SM: Which is hilarious bc I remember ultra low rise in high school

SM: And boys had to shop the girls section for them

SM: But those are worn with no underwear

SM: If you want to show crack just go for it

EL: lmao

SM: Shout out to Dave Bernard the first to do it at my high school

SM: Like many things we owe it all to Alexander McQueen RIP

EL: when I read your globalization aesthetic piece, I kept thinking about Hugh Grant in About A Boy

EL: something about his caddishness mixed with the new agey toni colette mum character

SM: That’s in there too

SM: Late britpop pre garage rock revival

SM: The era when London was the most expensive city in the world... 

SM: Being in Paris another thing on my mind is how insanely expensive American cities have gotten post-pandemic

SM: I see a lot less European friends in the US and a lot more American friends in Europe

EL: Living in London and earning a US wage is a cheat code

SM: Absolutely

SM: Or Europe generally

SM: Americans are paid much more but the cost of living is mind blowing

Protein: let’s switch up from the cost of living to "dark mode"... edmund, your vibe shift meme was inspired by sean’s boom boom aesthetic piece:‎

Protein: sean, i’d love to hear a bit about the thinking behind the original piece as well as your thoughts on Edmund’s response to it?

SM: For background – I was thinking about the lack of a coherent elite in the United States. Tech had (and still has, in my opinion) failed to pick up the crown finance had flung in the gutter. From a certain perspective, the “Normcore 2010s” can be seen as an attempt to avoid having any elite at all. Woke politics (which like Normcore were most popular with the most affluent) were another way to “denounce privilege.” Unfortunately all societies have elites. Even communism had its nomenklatura. The 2020s are the decade where people are scrambling to be on top again. In the US, especially, tech is being given a shot at being the new elite. Though looking at Elon Musk’s poll numbers. I’m not so sure it going very well. And I’m not so sure they realize it.

Protein: this is a great perspective. building on this, edmund i’d be interested to know some of your thinking behind your “light mode/dark mode” meme and how this is playing out in asia?

EL: Sean makes a really salient point about society always having elites

EL: And dark mode is in a lot of ways a reaction to the realisation to the fact that hey actually no, CEOs are not “just like us”

EL: I still come back to the Anne Hathaway hr zoom meeting meme a lot because I think that encapsulates the energy of light mode so well

EL: I’ve had a couple of people ask about how dark mode plays out in Asia

EL: It’s not really something I have an answer for, not having spoken to people in Asia about it

EL: Though I do think dark mode is more of an Eurocentric phenomenon. My friend Eugene Kan recently remarked that the reaction might be different because Asia is more of a collectivist society. I think that’s true too. Lower propensity to be so outwardly individualistic. 

EL: I was being interviewed by Daisy from dirt this morning and she said something that caught my attention about how embarrassing it is to be in power

EL: IMO techs being the elite - not so aspirational anymore now that they are firmly in the establishment

EL: I think eventually people will realise how cringe they are and somewhere else a more aspirational elite will arrive

Protein: thanks edmond, equally astute. when you say “a more aspirational elite will arrive” … when/who/how do you see this manifesting?

EL: I wish I knew Will haha 🤣

EL: But I think it has to capture hearts and minds

EL: I think it’s an open space and perhaps one that the left could be able to seize

SM: I suppose this is what I mean by a “coherent elite”

SM: They need to have financial, social, and cultural capital

SM: Social capital, but especially cultural capital, has always been tech’s Achilles heel

SM: It’s amusing to me because finance had the awareness to know you can buy into these things. Anyone who works in a culture industry knows that good taste is oftentimes just purchases: from decorators, stylists, art advisers, architects, aestheticians, etc

EL: reminds me of your recent triangle:

SM: That’s explicitly what I’m referencing 😉

EL: tech has an aversion to it

SM: The pronouncements that X has replaced the press remind me of YouTube proclaiming it would replace Hollywood

SM: None of these things quite accomplished that

EL: I think tech has an arrogance about it

EL: that finance did not

EL: finance bros still aspired towards beauty

SM: Even the TikTokkers are desperate to escape being thought of as “TikTokkers”

EL: tech sees it as something to be optimised out

SM: My friend Mike Pepi – an art critic and management consultant – always says finance is humanist

SM: Which in my experience is true. There are a lot of Rhodes scholars with philosophy degrees working at hedge funds.

SM: The most humanist tech figure is Thiel

SM: Which is probably why he’s the most feared

SM: Tech is obsessed with disruption, replacing things

EL: obsessively so

SM: It’s telling that the only product from the 2010s that did succeed in replacing an industry is streaming

EL: taxis as well arguably?

SM: But most of it is old incumbents and Netflix shot across the bow was very legible. House of Cards. A remake of a British show with known celebrities, Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, directed by a known director David Fincher

SM: Well I mean in a culture industry

EL: ah right

SM: Substack followed the same game plan

SM: Giving bonuses to get established writers on the platform

SM: Tech imagines it can wholesale replace political and cultural elites, but historically that tends not to work

SM: Finance bought into New York society – they didn’t found some ersatz museum of money

SM: Some of this is just geographic

SM: Tech being on the west coast puts it out of step with power in America

SM: Being from the northeast this is probably one of my more unpopular opinions: northeasterners are closer to power and understand it better than people from the west coast

SM: Even coming from a small college town, there are powerful people around, elites, and the codes of how power works are more obvious if you’re from there

SM: As always these codes are mostly illegible. And Silicon Valley strives to make everything legible and transparent

SM: That’s tech’s ideological mission

SM: But it’s not “Lindy”

SM: Elites are always illegible to some degree

SM: So tech is always stymied. I think a lot of them probably are smarter in an IQ sense than their east coast rivals. Yet they really struggle against them. And this is what fuels a lot of the resentment

EL: I don't want to exalt the rich too much but in the past there was at least some correlation between wealth and sophistication/elegance

SM: Absolutely

EL: I think this resentment you talk about is a big part of why tech has such an aversion

EL: to the arts, beauty, cultural sophistication

EL: they want to remake it in their image

SM: Yeah and that doesn’t really work

SM: It’s this west coast libertarianism

SM: “The Californian ideology”

SM: Which is hugely unpopular in America actually

SM: Being both socially and economically libertarian

EL: are they that socially libertarian?

EL: Idk much about Thiel tbh

SM: Yes definitely

SM: Elon  – outside of trans issues, which have a personal relevance to him, it’s hard to think of a social issue he’s conservative on

SM: But the exception proves the rule imo

EL: I think that might be the rub some day

EL: or may be already

EL: we saw a bit with the vivek H1B discourse

SM: Well it’s moved much further away from that recently with Trump

SM: Because the big underserved political community in the US is those who are the opposite: conservative on social issues and liberal (in the American sense) on economic issues

SM: It’s kind of funny to see tech try to move the republicans back to the social/economic libertarian position they had under say Bush

SM: I don’t think it will work

SM: There just isn’t a constituency for it

SM: Probably bc it hasn’t really served the interests of the average American

EL: it's very 'hollywood' haha

EL: liberal on both

SM: Yeah

SM: People fucking hate it

SM: When people talk about elites

SM: They’re really talking about the American upper middle class

SM: Even more than say the art of fashion world or the political consultants of DC

EL: "coastal liberal elite"

SM: This was the class who did best in the 2010s

EL: I think that term is so funny

SM: And who embraced Normcore to disguise their position

SM: Also who embraced “wokeness”

EL: I'm curious who you think has the potential to capture all three corners of capital

SM: Trump spoke about his economic policies last night and it was very popular

SM: I think the middle of the country is hoping it ruins the lives of the American middle class

SM: People are cheering on the DC economy being decimated

SM: No joke

EL: yeoman farmer gets their revenge

SM: People really hate each other in America

SM: It’s why I’m relatively bearish we’ll have a new elite any time soon

SM: Americans are much more viscerally afraid of their domestic enemies than Russia or China

SM: Lmao maybe I’ve gone on a tangent

SM: Dark mode shift is definitely a bit ironic

SM: The vice signalling is really just spitting in the face of the other side

EL: 100% victory lapping

SM: And being gleeful at upsetting and/or frightening them

SM: Lmao and just so a Brit and an Aussie don’t have to hear me talk about politics endlessly it does connect back to what we discussed initially ...

SM: Only money really unites Americans

SM: And Gen Z both expects to get paid the most and is in the most debt

SM: So the most politically divided generation that is adrift on how to form social and cultural capital is just looking to financial capital to orient themselves:

EL: imo gen z is right tho

EL: like if you really want to talk about "successful"

Protein: i’m keen to try and weave some of the ideas together

EL: I forgot it was for an article hahaha 😂

SM: Lmao me too

SM: I just had two espressos in the marais

EL: I'm in Brisbane atm so it is distracting me from an impending cyclone

Protein: haha, ok two final questions guys. sean, inspired by the crypto “greed index”, where do we feel we currently sit on a cultural "despair index”?

SM: I think it’s hard to say. Because from an American perspective, it’s split 50/50. So half the country always feels like it’s the end of civilization

SM: So we seem stuck at a heightened level of despair. But because it remains about the same regardless of what happens (and has for about a decade) it feels pretty normal now

Protein: 💯

Protein: final one for you edmond: why memes? ‎

EL: They are fun to make and look at

EL: Why not spread a little joy while I’m spreading misery (i.e yuppie self owns) 

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