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After years of working in marketing, social media, and content, our perception of Tech has slowly shifted from skepticism to outright disappointment, and what once seemed like tools with unparalleled opportunities now looks more like a not-so-smart tyranny of consumer surveillance. It is not a surprise, then,  that our algorithm, always lost, just adds terms to the tag “hot guy” as the simplest way to grab attention within the randomness of our content consumption. Gay guys, we are simple. Yet we wonder whether, instead of educating, we have diskilled our YouTube algorithm to the point that it even considers showing material that we actively avoid, such as ASMR,  a whole sensory world that we, slaves of the flesh, cannot physically tolerate.

Traumatic example number one: this video of a guy licking inside an ear.

This type of content was something we first encountered while researching anime girls streaming ASMR sessions, and we cannot find words to properly express the visceral reaction those sounds produce in us. Traumatic example number two: this video of a guy suggestively looking at the camera while making sloppy sounds.

We gag just by looking at that video, and don’t find the guy ugly. We like spit, sweat, and think blow jobs should be sloppy and gagging, but that video…. So, if our readers got the idea, ASMR is something we cannot tolerate. However, when our YouTube algorithm plunges into one of its sudden obsessions and we start seeing videos of men objectifying themselves while teaching human anatomy and doing ASMR, we must at least check them.

As we have mentioned before on the blog, one of the unexpected results of platforms pivoting to short-form video is that many corners of the internet started looking like a performance or video art class on assessment week. Using your body as digital matter -to monetize- is a reality for many in the current economy, and we can only wonder where all this is going when AI, most likely, rather than replace people is here to optomize their discoverability in the sea of content creators. 

In the meantime, we can enjoy the oddity of a concept like ASMR you’re kidnapped by Himbo (forever), idea that, leaving the moral connotations aside, as Colombians, we find hard to imagine what is ASMRic about being kidnapped.

A couple of weeks ago, during a job interview, we were asked what was financially smart about applying to their position. While finding the proper HR answer, ignoring honesty, we only thought about how Himbo ASMR probably makes more with a video of him apologizing than we can make in months with our traditional jobs, insisting on using our mind rather than our body in this economy.      

Full disclaimer: we couldn’t care less about superheroes, and we know nothing about video games. Yet, we have a huge respect for concept art and character design, top artists! So when we saw this video of the Gummy Surprise Venom’s skin, licking white glaze and twerking with a transparent iridescent miniskirt, we immediately knew we needed to investigate further.

Which led us down the rabbit hole of content analysis, objectification, and countless smash-or-pass tier lists about the game. It goes deep. Look, we might be too attached to actual flesh-and-blood bodies to develop parasocial romantic relationships with video game characters, but in a design world that feels increasingly grim, the idea of getting paid to make characters hotter and their asses bigger has us shout: how do we get that job?!

Characters also have Physics

A reminder that we all start somewhere, many have a twink past, and a call for more slutty looks in the current media. 

Most people know Snax as the biggest party taking place twice per year at Berghain. What most people don’t know is that Snax preceded and shaped what later became Berghain. Long story short, Norbert Thormann and Michael Teufele organized parties in the Reichsbahnbunker Friedrichstraße (current Boros Foundation), combining fetish sex with techno called Pervy Party by Snax Club. Later, the party found a permanent location called Lab.Oratory, eventually expanding into two adjacent spaces: Osgut and Panorama Bar. When those buildings were demolished, the club moved to its current location, Berghain. 

Much can be said about what is arguably the most famous and institutionalized club in the world, but one must admit that they are good at what they do. As a sex club, Lab.Oratory is very nicely designed. The bar, the slings with long chains, the lightning, the pissoir, and the candle holders (nobody talks about the candle holders), you can tell someone took their time to think about details. Thus, it is no surprise that the same rigor is applied to their flyer. When we found this lovely flyer for the 2015 easter party by Benedikt Rugar, we couldn’t help but fall into the rabbit hole of Snax’s flyers.

Berghain releases a monthly program of its parties, also inviting artists for each issue. Here is an example by Nicola Napoli

We are tired. Tired of things we should not do. Of the products that do not sell. Of the mistakes that make our art worse. The recipes that are damaging our cooking. The movements that keep our asses flat or the strategies that will finally move our career forward. Tired of the flood of experts that, even in the isolation of our basement Headquarters, manage to shout at us, through thumbnails and catchy titles, the thing we should be doing with our time instead. In a world that is becoming increasingly complex, we are fed up with being the only ones who do not have a grasp of it, still missing a chance to make a profit.

We are tired of the salesy feeling of the internet. In a moment when everybody is an expert, we kind of miss when people were stupid, and their online presence was limited to posting their hobbies and the food they ate. Yes, we miss food photos. But those times are long gone, and now everybody has a Domestika course, is an online movie critic, and has fully transformed their hobbies into side hustles or freelance careers. And between the video hooks and clickbaiting titles, we just find a constant reflux of the same sources, methods, and ideas more diluted with every cycle, which makes us wonder: if everybody knows about marketing, where is the value? How many people do we still need to teach us how to be a full-time artist, draw from imagination, or invest? How many excruciating times do we need to hear about the Pomodoro technique, Atomic Habits, or Rick Rubin?   

It might be our corner of the internet, but it was a feeling that began with OnlyFans videos. We grew up watching amateur porn on xtube, where people use the cameras they have access to show us a bit of their sex life for free. Sometimes you find someone with a profile that documents their horny adventures, and you will binge on their videos with a mix of jealousy and voyeurism. You would follow them to that house party, that toilet stall; there was a storyline, and you rooted for them. But all that is disappearing with OnlyFans, where you can actually feel the labour of the creators and tell that it might be the second of five collabs that person has that week. We don’t find labour sexy.  

While the rest of the world’s expertise grows, our ignorance deepens with inefficiency that hits our profitability. We are not nostalgic people, but we wish someone would bring some sense of fun again, cutting the noise and guiding us on a trip where we can actually learn something -hopefully soon- before we are expected to profit from all aspects of life and record it on video as proof. Behind the glut of guides and opinions, there should be someone tired, lost, and inefficient; we cannot be the only ones.

A couple of weeks ago, Instagram didn’t allow us to publish a story with the text “suck his dick” because it was not in accordance with its community guidelines. After 10 minutes trying to find a spelling that dodges the filter, we ignored the warning and published the story with the configuration “$*ck h1s d*ck” knowing that, most likely, it won’t be shown to our followers because of the guidelines violation. Then, the whole absurdity of the situation struck us; if we are going to talk to an empty room, we want to do it on our own terms. If invisibility is the result by default when talking about sex, we want to at least properly write suck his dick! The story was about Heated Rivalry.

This blog is an attempt to reclaim autonomy and a response to the idea of content. We hate content, or more specifically, we hate the belief that everything should be content, because it is not true. Although one can make content from everything, the perception that all online material needs to be scroll-stopping with a strong hook is a discourse pushed by the platforms, which aims to make them the main channel of communication for people, but not necessarily how said people consume the media that connects them to their contexts. Proof of that is the increasing number of creatives who are starting YouTube channels, podcasts, and newsletters, trying to escape the constraints of the 3-minute videos, looking for formats that allow them to actually develop the ideas that might relate to people on a deeper level.

Which brings us back to this blog. In the paywall era of Substack, having a public blog can be seen as outdated and not the most monetization-smart move. However, we would like to remind everybody that we are a Latino project, which basically means we like free stuff and public information. We learned digital art with a pirate version of Adobe, and we got the first legal version of Microsoft Windows just 4 years ago. Hence, we will keep the free spirit as long as we can. Rather than a new way to profit, this space should be understood as a public learning about finding the voice of a project that has been on hiatus for a couple of years now.

So, what to expect from Poppers Before Breakfast? Grammatical mistakes -English is not our first language-, videos, sex, songs we listen to while drawing, porn, images we like, podcasts we like, complaints, and all the context that make this project El Corruptor. We won’t rate places or movies, we won’t tell people what to do, what is in or out, we will only share ideas around material as a way to process them. Regarding the name, we will expand further in another post. For now, we can only say that our favorite type of poppers is isoamyl nitrite (cas 110-46-3), we like liquid colors, meta amyl, Amyl, and Everest.