The Thousands

Welcome to the future. It’s 1994 here and gender (socially defined differences between men and women) doesn’t exist. In Teen Witch, ‘The Crush Issue’, printed on full-on colour, glossy pages (formatted as annoyingly/amazingly as Duke magazine), are the stories and artworks of neon-online-beings.

The first article ‘Too Hot For Youtube’ is about Rhonettahot. A recently-purged Youtube account that was a ‘camwhoring-as-an-artform’ video diary of a failed American Idol star, who turned into a truck stop prostitute with purple lipstick and a blonde fright wig. She mostly filmed herself yelling about how famous and beautiful she is. There’s a spot-the-difference with a picture of the #HDBOYZ. Hatsun Miku gets a shout out, and there’s the long awaited ‘Teen Advice with Molly Soda‘.

This is all the brainchild of Zain Curtis, a young Chicago club kid who oozes creative juice all up in the Internet; he’s kinda like if S4LEM, Nicki Minaj, and Ryan Trecartin had a gay baby but left it in the trash can at a 90s rave, where it was raised on smart juice and Special K. The authors and subjects are all crazy-good writers, musicians, performers and tweeters who’re all seemingly best friends. I can’t tell if they’ve met IRL or not, but it would be cooler if they hadn’t. So deeply dialed into their virtual-mall-goth world, I wonder if they realise how incredible they are? Of course they do.