We Asked 20 Cultural Figures The Same Question
The Welcome Quarterly Survey
Everyone is always trying to figure out what is ‘going on’ in culture. A common time to try to do this is at the end of the year. But things change too much in one year. To get a real sense of what’s happening, you need to be checking in more frequently than that.
It also helps to have a larger sample. That’s why we’re conducting the Welcome Quarterly Survey, where we ask a panel of notable figures what they noticed happen in culture and the world these past three months. Their responses are reproduced below.
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Illumitati [artist]:
In reaction to world war 3 and impending doom, I’ve noticed a lot more solar-punk hopecore types of content. I’m not sure if it’s linked to accelerationism, but it seems there’s a lot of content emerging that is using nature and sustainable energy as pinpoint to unify people.
And peptides. Holy shit the peptides started in 2021 I didn’t think it would get this big, thanks Clavicular!
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beenslackin [style icon]:
I don’t think I could say just the last three months, I would say something that has been culminating for the last four years but has escalated to new levels I thought were unimaginable, is the aggressive campaign against human empathy. Empathy being seen as a sign of weakness as opposed to an admirable trait.
And I think some of the best works of art come from humans with empathy or a human showing empathy and compassion for other humans like Earth Song by Michael Jackson, Viv Westwood in her early days, all the way till she passed away using her runway as a political narrative of what she believed to be right and wrong, some of Raf Simon’s most coveted 02 / 03 collections all was bout the war on Terror. The issue is now we have mostly either: spineless creatives and creators who don’t want to align themselves to any political side in fear of losing money or sponsorships, or just straight up people who only care bout themselves. And that’s fine just lame imo lol.
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42 [music journalist]:
AURA has died in Q1 of 2026.
No one cares about aura.
And that’s a good thing!!!
Just be yourself.
That’s how you can be happiest.
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The Femcels [musical group]
Our boobs grew…. 4kg… each… wait I don’t think it went to my boobs…. I’m obese… oh and we are famous.
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Bazo [designer and founder of 1199]:
Good question.
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Slawn [artist]:
You know what trend I noticed actually kind of died was baggy pants. You see less and less of them nowadays. Not that people are wearing skinny jeans now but they’ve they’ve kind of been getting skinnier.
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DIVA Corp [art critic]:
All of a sudden, artists are bullish on San Francisco. It makes no sense. It’s not all artists, of course, but the city’s being discussed and taken seriously as an alternative to LA and New York, and this is new. The sentiment’s gaining steam, too, which speaks more to the perceived erosion of LA and New York than it does to some cultural renaissance specific to SF. After all, San Francisco hasn’t been artistically relevant since the Beats; rents are through the roof and rising; and the moneyed priorities are tethered to seed funding, not art. Are LA and New York any better, though? Rents certainly aren’t, plus we’ve got slumping markets, gallery closures, and pretty austere artistic ambitions due to a career-obsessed creative class. Not to mention sociopolitical upheaval. So, “Why San Francisco?” – a question without an easy answer – has given way to “Why not?” Artists feel stuck in cities that don’t seem to want them (see: Josh Kline’s piece last week in October), and San Francisco represents an escape, a shred of hope, a familiar alternative. Realistically, it’s also a pipe dream built on pure projection.
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Hamza [one half of Slushy Noobz]:
Our ability to make sense of information and distinguish what matters is being tested.
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Martin [the other half of Slushy Noobz]:
More AI generated memes.
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Max Evasion [?]:
Everyone is cooking, for better or for worse.
No one is just watching anymore.
We’re all in the kitchen.
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Lightris [musician]:
The pizza movie dropped.
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Nation [musical group]:
They’re adding 125 traffic cameras to the streets of Los Angeles after years of them being outlawed.
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Eilish Constance [musician]:
World war 3. my room is getting messier. And my hair is getting longer, I’m also trying to figure out what my favorite color is and I think I landed on pink?… but I’ve learned a lot about myself and my relationships and what works to keep me balanced and I think that’s what I’ve been trying to teach myself my whole life.
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Zukovstheworld [musician]:
Gymskin & Clavicular.
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Mikail Haroon [Welcome staff writer]
Overt imperfection in design, fashion, and writing is something that people increasingly value in the past 3 months. with AI’s advance, it’s more appealing than ever to keep the imperfections, share casual unfinished pieces of thoughts, and display visible wear.
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AS IS AGENCY [creative agency / Welcome collaborator]
Acute authenticity poisoning. Levels of cynicism have reached new highs. Baseline trust in the sincerity of content encountered on the internet is crashing in the general population.
A glut of polished content placed a premium on authenticity, the intimate BTS type moments, and marketers caught up. The SWAG rollout was a turning point for a lot of people who thought those crash-outs were real. Turns out you can’t trust the video of a bystander anymore. You cant’t trust people in the comment sections anymore: Chaotic Goods is manufacturing discourse for clients using effective bots. This is pretty much just the dead internet idea, but it is kind of sad to see. Like Clavicular ODing and the first question is whether it was a stunt. Maybe it was. New methods needed.
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Jordyn Lasko [founding publicist at LASKO / Welcome collaborator]
The stakes feel way higher now. The stakes elevate faster. That’s how it feels the world has changed to me. Given the majority of my clients are not American I see how international politics affect musical touring and people’s ability to execute creative projects and it requires a true fighting spirit and it kinda breaks my heart sometimes but the resilience is cool and that’s what I’ve noticed :)