🎮✨The Nexialist #0174

aceita | hit me hard and soft | on heteropessimism | zhuzh | 360 | bet on it | sex | nasty | boa

May 23, 2024

welcome to your weekly chaordic cyber-physical zine, the nexialist!

hey you! i hope this e-mail finds you in a good moment. last week i was acting the clown, asking if was manifesting my astral hell… oh well, saturday my bike’s chain broke and i flipped over it while trying to stop it. the first time i have a bike accident in amsterdam since moving here in 2018. thankfully, some nice people came to help me and no one else got hurt. my bike is all crooked, my dignity also, and my right wrist is a bit fucked up (it might take some weeks to heal). for this reason, i’ll keep this week’s nexialist more focused on music, so i reduce my time using my wrist on the computer. get ready for some music videos (and one excellent text on heteropessimism and an idea of merch). send positive energies my way, pls. 🫀✨

—Rodrigo Turra

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🌧️aceita

it’s not new that i’m obsessed with anitta’s new album, funk generation (tn#171). last week she released the video for the aceita (imperative of accept), beautifully displaying her candomblé faith, one of the main afro-brazilian religions. in a matter of five hours, she had lost 150k followers. it’s hard to believe that brazil is still perpetuating religious intolerance, mainly perpetuated by evangelicals. for anitta, “Laroyê Exu is removing from my paths everything that no longer serves me." i’m celebrating her even more now.

brainsparks: syncretism (tn#44), funk generation (tn#171), beat diaspora (tn#125), funk rave (tn#128), mugler + funk carioca (tn#74)

🎧hit me hard and soft

something similar happened to billy when she came out last year: 100k followers lost in a matter of hours (i don’t think it makes a difference in her 119M). well, last week she released her new album, hit me hard and soft, and i honestly loved it. the mix of emotions and rhythms is right on. i loved the lyrics with her lesbian gaze (tn#12), it makes a difference for me.

brainspark: lesbian gaze, dyke camp (tn#12)

🤦‍♀️on heteropessimism

i had never heard this term before, and i thought i knew what it meant as soon as i read it. yes, it does include the frustration i hear from my straight girlfriends about the dating scene, but writer asa seresin brings so many layers that i could not take my eyes off this article.

from straight pride and incels, to the why do i like men meme and feminicide rates, it shows how heteropessimism manifests differently for men and women. it’s worth the read:

Heteropessimism consists of performative disaffiliations with heterosexuality, usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment, or hopelessness about straight experience. Heteropessimism generally has a heavy focus on men as the root of the problem. That these disaffiliations are “performative” does not mean that they are insincere but rather that they are rarely accompanied by the actual abandonment of heterosexuality. Sure, some heteropessimists act on their beliefs, choosing celibacy or the now largely outmoded option of political lesbianism, yet most stick with heterosexuality even as they judge it to be irredeemable. Even incels, overflowing with heteropessimism, stress the involuntary nature of their condition.

just another tweet (which seems to have been deleted): “comedian Solomon Georgio tweeted (to the tune of over 23,000 retweets and 142,000 likes): “Today is a reminder that if homosexuality was a choice, there would be 2, maybe 3, straight women left after today.”

brainsparks: taxa names after human genitals (tn#171)

🍯zhuzh

ZHUZH (the U is as in PUSH) - verb
To zhuzh something up is to improve its flavor or appearance by way of a small improvement, adjustment, or addition.
// He likes to zhuzh up his outfits with brightly-colored ties.
Zhuzh (alternatively spelled zhoosh) has an onomatopoetic ring to it: it resembles other sound-effect words, such as whoosh or zoom, that suggest dynamic movement, or perhaps more appropriately, a ruffling of hair or fabric. The earliest evidence of zhuzh shows that it is part of Polari, a kind of slang known especially for its use in 20th century British gay culture. The word has been in use since at least the 1970s, and gained wild popularity during the 2018 reboot of Queer Eye, a television series in which a fellow needing help in the areas of fashion, grooming, living space, food, and social grace gets a makeover courtesy of five talented gay men. While often used as a verb (usually paired with up), zhuzh is also a noun that refers to a small improvement or adjustment, as in “my hair just needs a quick zhuzh and I’ll be ready to go.”

i love this word and was happy to see it in my inbox from merriam-webster’s word of the day newsletter, i don’t think i had ever seen it written before. while writing this i might just have created my first merch just in time for pride: only god can zhuzh me.

brainspark: polari, the queer code (tn#92), the yuppie handbook (tn#111), the gay number (tn#24), queer the future (tn#5)

💥360

i’ve been listening to charli xcx’s new song on repeat. it’s amazing to see how well she knows her audience, chronically online gays who know all of the hot internet girls.

brainspark: anti-design (tn#169), digital fluency (tn#28)

🪩bet on it

another feel good bop from mette, with a superfun video. the perfect video to open gemini season, as she dances with herself. also loving the x-men vibe with her superpowers.

brainspark: van gogh (tn#134), mafiosa (tn#28)

🫦sex

my favorite boyband is from the netherlands and they just released a new song/video. they know how to make bops.

brainsparks: stiekem (tn#94), emergency disco (tn#28)

⭐️nasty

tinashe has always been serving us with great choreo, and it’s hilarious to think she is going viral now for a funny choreo someone did to her song (and she played along). another summer bop.

🎮boa

i’m impressed by how megan is turning it out as an independent artist. she’s not only fluent in her verses, her dancing and her craft, but she’s the epitome of digitally fluent. she knows how to dialogue with the zeitgeist, not only musically, with style, lyrics and samples (c’mon, what you waiting for by gwen stefani?), but also with her themes. i’m such a fan. (been obsessed with her #meganmonday, like a g6 freestyle.

brainspark: rosetta stone for the digital age (tn#25), digital fluency (tn#28)

see you next week, nasty boys and girls🫀✨

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