HERE COMES THE BACKKLASH

On this episode of HERE COMES THE BACKKLASH, Poolhouse descends beneath the material machinery of marketing to investigate its stranger, more esoteric twin: influence itself.
Taking Charli XCX’s prophecy of “anti-marketing” as a point of departure, Poolhouse traces pop culture’s mutation from please love me, to please notice me, to the new commercial imperative: I don’t care if you like me. Just don’t stop talking about me.
Enter Lizzo, Lola Young, Audrey Hobert, Charli XCX, Slayyyter, Tiga and more – all avatars through which Poolhouse decodes moderns notions of manufactured authenticity, invisible PR, algorithmic friction and the strange new economy in which polarity may be worth more than popularity, backlash becomes distribution, and being called cringe might be the ultimate prestige strategy.
A material and octolectical analysis of how ideas move, celebrities are manufactured, and culture changes before anyone quite realizes it has changed.
Mimesis is not material. Influence is intangible. Cringe is the new prestige.
The university set has everything more figured out than Ms. xcx…. right right

Poolhouse on anti-marketing, pt.1

Poolhouse on anti-marketing, pt. 2
DJ POOLHOUSE IS ONLINE.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit backklash.substack.com

On this episode of HERE COMES THE BACKKLASH, Poolhouse dives into the strange and relatively uncharted realm of pop authorship, an already nebulous concept made even more slippery in an age when persona, performance, identity, and technology are becoming impossible to separate, let alone authenticate.
From Audrey Hobert’s clownish, hyper-aware pop persona, and the uncanny specter of one Ms. Sue Heck looming over the project, to Tyga’s critically detonated and AI-assisted $TARFACE, Poolhouse asks what we actually mean when we call an artist “authentic.”
Does authorship reside in the hand that makes the thing, the mind that conceives it, the voice that performs it, or the persona that holds the entire construction together? Are pop auteurs even real, or are they carefully manufactured illusions designed to obscure the collaborative, technological, and highly industrial nature of mass-produced pop product?
Along the way: cringe as creative strategy, authenticity as artistic currency, AI panic, pop-star identity, machine production, inherited archetypes, Pitchfork’s resting bitch stance, and the increasingly unstable line between artist, producer, persona, and avatar.
Pop music performance has always relied on artifice – but does this dilute the artist’s agency, or extend it? Poolhouse delivers a soaring meditation on the pop auteur with the type of episode you will ONLY find on BACKKLASH.
Episode Mixtape:
Peech Boys NYC - Stay With Me (Tom Moulton Twelve Inch Extended Mix)
DJ POOLHOUSE - Track ID (unreleased)
DJ POOLHOUSE - Ramon Novarro’s Revenge Dub (unreleased)
DJ POOLHOUSE - Put It All On Ice
Tyga - Rack City (DJ POOLHOUSE All Screw No Chop Remix)
BRUISEFI.IST – The Box (unreleased)
DJ POOLHOUSE IS ONLINE.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit backklash.substack.com

Hi! this one is just a quick update from backklash studios east….I promise I will get a proper microphone for the next one. We don’t have to live like this!
Thanks again for your lovely support of my ice reggae musical projects, ARCTIC SUNSPLASH and HYPERBOREAN DUB EXCURSIONS. It means a lot when you take the time to listen. I’ve so thoroughly enjoyed the process of creating these albums, that there is an audience for them at all is such a joy and a blessing!
Thank you, backklashistas. And remember, inside of you, there are two Poolside Dub Versions…
P.S. … Stick around to the end of the episode (as if you would ever not do this!) for a special treat – my “Acid Cotton Candy Hurricane Mix” of BELSHAZZAR. Enjoy!


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit backklash.substack.com

Recorded LIVE on X Spaces - August 7, 2026
Poolhouse was beyond thrilled to team up with TwinkTheory and Detty and a few special guest callers for this all-the-way-live, audience-powered deep dive into the strange cultural power of *Vanderpump Rules*. From cult Bravo curiosity to full-blown zeitgeist, we get into the fame machine, what the show did to its cast, what was happening behind the story, Twink Theory’s recent rewatch, favorite moments, and why a bunch of beautiful disasters working at a West Hollywood restaurant somehow became one of the defining television sagas of its era. Shoutout to special guests Toast, Starr and Honky for joining in the discussion.
Sexy. Unique. BACKKLASH.
Follow Twink Theory
Follow Detty


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit backklash.substack.com

What makes a viral moment? Is it some improbable combination of circumstances, a near-impossible collision of timing, spectacle, and human curiosity that, once captured by consumer surveillance technology and injected into the massive public library of shame we call the internet, suddenly ignites an electric connection and spreads from user to user until the clip reaches critical mass?
Maybe.
But in my esteemed opinion, that is what is happening only ten or fifteen percent of the time.
The rest of the time, it is advertising.
Welcome back to the program, Backklashistas. I have wrested control of this episode away from BRUISEFI.IST to bring you a juicy little nugget about the featured players in one of the summer’s recent mega-viral moments, a detail that validated an assumption I had already formed about this bizarre story.
From the jump, something about the clip set off my fnord detector. Something was not right. Why was this even considered noteworthy enough to record in the first place? What was it about two people becoming annoyed after being filmed making out in a park that guaranteed the footage a permanent berth across my timeline?
Then I took a cursory look at the people involved, and suddenly the whole thing began to acquire a scent: passion, indiscretion, retaliation, and the synthetic musk of a story engineered for maximum exposure.
Once Poolhouse went on the case, it all started to make sense.
Join me for this special episode as we move beyond the headline, beneath the viral spectacle, and into the strange machinery that may have carried this story onto the public stage.
Plus, I reflect on the invincible summer of the heart, that private reserve of warmth, memory, and freedom we can return to even as the season begins to fade.
One out of the like, 6 million articles the NY Post ran about this stupid viral clip:
“the TikToker, who has a history of posting antagonizing content” so like I was saying, a scum of the earth shitbag.
Episode Mixtape
Ace of Base - Dancer in the Dark
DJ POOLHOUSE - Invincible Summer
The Blackbyrds - Rock Creek Park (Twelve Inch Extended Mix)
Fallout Boy - Dance Dance (Tommie Sunshine Brooklyn Fire Remix)
Slayyyter - Brand new chanel$ [instrumental]
DJ POOLHOUSE: https://linktr.ee/djpoolhouse
BACKKLASH: https://linktr.ee/backkklash
HQ: backklash.substack.com



This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit backklash.substack.com