They lived delulu and got tons of views

Something’s happening. You can feel it. Even if you can’t name it yet. A hum in the air. A current in your feed. Flashing images, moods settling in without warning, and the last of your convictions melting between two sponsored posts. It’s subtle, but constant. And it tastes like something. Like saturated pop culture, hyper-aware fashion, perfectly timed social performances, and DIY belief systems held together with algorithm tape and serotonin glue. It’s no longer just a trend. It’s an ecosystem. And it’s evolving faster than you are.

Welcome to episode 101 of Cappuccino & Croissant, where we’re not just commenting on what’s trending — we’re decoding what it says about us. Spoiler: it says everything. How we dress, how we hope, how we lie, how we dream, how we survive ourselves. We could’ve called this one “how to keep existing with flair while the world is glitching,” but we went with a shorter title.

In a time when the news cycle reads like an RSS feed having an identity crisis, younger — and not-so-young — generations aren’t content just consuming pop culture. They’re digesting it. Remixing it. Hacking it. Sabotaging it. Turning it into refuge, provocation, and language. What comes out is a wild cocktail of post-colonial cowboys, cosmic sirens, dangerously calculated coquettes, and deranged TikTok prophets. An algorithmic carnival. A parade of shiny armor against the void.

In this episode, we dive into four of those archetypes. Four aesthetics, four narratives, four survival blueprints. We’ll start with Shaboozey, postmodern cowboy and crown prince of country-rap, galloping over the ruins of Nashville with a lasso made of 808s. Then we’ll look to the stars with the Space Sirens — future femmes who shine brighter than their trauma, dressed in chrome and coded pain. From there, we’ll crash-land in the hyper-feminine battlefield of the office: coquette, blokette, office siren — not here to please, here to reign. And finally, we’ll plunge headfirst into the most viral, most absurd, most essential mental state of our time: Delulu is the Solulu. Believing to keep from breaking. Declaring to avoid disappearing. Imagining to stay intact.

This isn’t just fashion. It’s not just content. It’s cultural code. A map drawn by those who stopped trusting GPS. And in this chaos, every outfit, every post, every catchphrase becomes a compass. Flawed, maybe. But at least it points somewhere. You don’t have to agree with all of it. You can smirk. Roll your eyes. Say, “They’re doing too much.” We know. We always do too much. That’s the point. That’s what it means to be alive in 2025: to be too much, to be elsewhere, to be loud in a world begging for silence.

So grab your coffee. Plug in your headphones. Open the tab in your mind titled “I want to understand this world without losing my soul.” And let me take you there. We begin. Now.

Shaboozey & the rise of the “New Western” — Country is dead. long live country.

There’s a place where cowboy boots shine brighter than Rolexes, where guitar solos drip over trap beats, and where cowboys sip bourbon from recycled Starbucks cups. That place is 2025. And its sheriff? Shaboozey.

If you somehow missed the phenomenon — maybe you were too busy ignoring TikTok or listening to Radiohead archives on loop to reassure yourself of your cultural relevance — Shaboozey is what the industry calls a hybrid. A mutant. A glitch in the Nashville matrix. Born in the U.S. to Nigerian parents, the artist first flirted with hip-hop before swerving into a country sound that’s messy, post-genre, rebellious, and unapologetically viral. Last April, his single “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” bulldozed through the charts with the grace of a rodeo tractor: 19 weeks at No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100, tens of millions of streams, and a hype machine fueled equally by nostalgia and the sheer absurdity of what he represents. He’s not walking in Lil Nas X’s footsteps — he’s blazing his own trail in chrome bootcut. But Shaboozey isn’t an outlier. He’s just the loudest symptom of a broader shift: the emergence of the New Western. This isn’t another cowgirl-core revival or a TikTok-friendly country rebrand. What 2025 calls the New Western bears little resemblance to spaghetti Westerns of old. No John Wayne, no Arizona dust. Instead: surfboards, iridescent Stetsons, music videos shot in abandoned gas stations, and above all — a hybrid aesthetic. It’s the folklore of deep America, remixed by the algorithm generation. Think Mad Max, but slowed down and Auto-Tuned.

Beyoncé, naturally, fanned the flames of this cultural mutation with Cowboy Carter, an album that honors the Black roots of country music while obliterating its racist and sexist clichés with her trademark subtlety (read: none). The album was critically acclaimed, redefining what country could be: theatrical, queer‑friendly, Black, feminist, and intergalactic. And Shaboozey wasn’t clapping from the sidelines — he saddled up on two tracks (Spaghettii and Sweet Honey Buckiin’), cementing his place as the rougher, more unfiltered heir to this country renaissance. So what happens when country — long coded as white, macho, homophobic, and politically suspect — becomes the latest playground for the most innovative artists of the moment? You observe. You listen. And you laugh, softly, because it’s both completely unexpected and deeply inevitable.

The New Western isn’t just a sound. It’s a vision. A narrative. An aesthetic. According to cultural analysts (yes, that’s a thing), this trend reflects a post-pandemic disorientation mixed with a craving for roots. A hyper-connected generation — fed up with Y2K neons and filtered realities — is now reaching back for symbols they can anchor to, even if those symbols are thoroughly distorted. Western boots have become the new statement piece, fringe shirts are back on the festival circuit, and Apple Music playlists casually blend Morgan Wallen with Doja Cat like it’s the most natural thing in the world. The other reason for this westernized fascination? TikTok. In 2025, the app remains the battlefield of aesthetics. That’s where line dancing made its comeback, where viral challenges to “A Bar Song” exploded, and where the cowgirl-fusion vibe was crowned the moment. Between choreographed group dances and confessional ex-Mormon deep dives, TikTok turned country from a dusty relic into a hypermodern sandbox.

But Shaboozey isn’t just riding a wave — he’s making it. His visual universe is dense, intentional, daring. His videos blur the line between dream and reality, turning rural America into a punk backdrop, where vintage ponchos meet sci-fi set design. Musically, he walks a razor-thin line between provocation and sincerity. There’s no ironic wink when he belts out a bar song with the soul of a drunk poet full of rage and melancholy. He’s doing what few young artists dare anymore: embodying a character. A real one. With a world, a voice, a vision, a look, and a groove that doesn’t resemble anything else. Behind the viral buzz, there’s a political undercurrent deeper than it seems. Because yes — country is political. And watching a Black, hip-hop-rooted, queer‑friendly artist proud of his Nigerian heritage dominate a genre historically controlled by America’s conservative right? That’s not neutral. That’s subversion. Infiltration. Deconstruction. And, let’s be honest — it’s delicious.

But beyond the message, what makes Shaboozey so captivating is how uncalculated it all feels. He’s not some label-bred hit machine. He’s a beautiful mess, channeled through raw energy. And that, in 2025, is a luxury. While everyone else plays it safe online, he shows up with his hat, his whiskey, and punchlines coded in deep South slang. The New Western wave may not last forever. Six months from now, we might be mocking fringe boots and barn-filmed TikToks. But Shaboozey? He’s already somewhere else. His next album is on the way. He’s stacking live appearances and unexpected collabs. And most importantly — he seems more interested in building a world than just topping charts. So no, country isn’t dead. It’s been rebooted. And like all great Westerns, the ones who write history aren’t the sheriffs — they’re the outlaws.

Retro-Future Femme / Space Siren — Zendaya, Beyoncé, and the Chrome Rebellion

Some trends arrive in silence, ushered in by a few stylists ahead of their time. And then there are those that land like a meteor — dropped by Beyoncé from an orbiting station, pulsing with chrome, vinyl, and galactic feminist energy. That’s how it was born — or rather reborn — in 2025: the Space Siren aesthetic, also known as Retro-Future Femme in its boldest form. An aesthetic that blends leather, chrome, kitschy sci-fi, and femininity honed like a blade. More than a look — it’s a statement of intent.

It began, officially, in two waves. First: Zendaya. The actress entered the promo tour for Dune: Part Two looking like she’d just stepped out of a high-grossing interstellar bar. Metallic curves, futuristic silhouettes, armor molded like Chanel exoskeletons. Second: Beyoncé. With Cowboy Carter, she didn’t just revisit the Western mythos — she crushed it, glittered it, rebuilt it, and hurled it through a wormhole where cowgirls wear golden boots and cybernetic bustiers. And just like that, without warning, the Space Siren look was back. But let’s be clear: this isn’t just some stylist’s whim or another TikTok filter. It’s anchored in something deeper — a post-#MeToo, post-pandemic, post-patience kind of femininity. One that no longer tries to blend in, stay quiet, or cosplay neutral beige coolness. No. It flashes. It gleams. It cuts. She looks like a Blade Runner in Margiela ankle boots. She’s not here to seduce — she’s here to dominate the visual space.

The Retro-Future Femme aesthetic, as noted by analysts at Loop Labs, is a direct response to the rising obsession with amplified, hyper-coded femininity. It’s the next stage after 2023’s Barbiecore or 2024’s Coquette Girl. No pastel lace or sweet pinks here — but vinyl, latex, structural cuts that declare: “I’m here to save the world — but not before catching my light.” Y3K replaces Y2K. Aero-sexy overtakes cute-silly. And following in Beyoncé and Zendaya’s footsteps, an entire generation of young women — and stylists — are reclaiming the codes of the space warrior to recode them through a femme lens. It’s no coincidence that hashtags like #spacesiren and #retrocyberchic exploded on TikTok as early as March 2025, nearing 200 million cumulative views. As if everyone was trying to escape a world too flat by imagining themselves piloting a plexiglass-pink spaceship headed straight for independence.

The Space Siren isn’t just beautiful. She’s untouchable. Intimidating. She’s the opposite of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. She’s not here to help you find your truth as a tormented man — she’s here to slap it into your face while dancing to an industrial remix of Donna Summer. She doesn’t talk much. She clicks loudly. Her stilettos are 13 centimeters tall and double as Wi-Fi antennas. She reads Octavia E. Butler and posts selfies in holographic gloves. And above all, she’s done apologizing for being “too much.” Too loud, too glossy, too made-up, too slow to reply to DMs. She has other things to do — like building her intergalactic empire.

From a fashion perspective, it’s a fascinating hybridization of 1960s silhouettes (think André Courrèges, Paco Rabanne) and the techno textures of 2099. Models strut like androids on strike. Knee-high boots have replaced ballet flats. Oversized mirrored sunglasses are the new eye contact. Sculptural bodysuits belong as much on a catwalk as in a cockpit. Even nails become weapons — chromed extensions of an identity no longer afraid to be brandished. But behind the spectacle, there’s something deeper. If the Space Siren mesmerizes so easily, it’s because she restores a sense of mystery. Of distance. In a world that over-demands authenticity, transparency, spontaneity — all these buzzwords used to justify ever more intimacy from women — the Space Siren reinstates boundaries. She shows only what she’s chosen to reveal. She’s hyperaware of her body, of her image, but she turns it into armor, not confession. She reverses the gaze. She’s the one scanning — not you.

You might think it’s just a fashion game. But in the mirror of 2025, clothes are narrative tools. Beyoncé understood this better than anyone. She doesn’t perform fashion — she writes it, dismantles it, transcends it. In Cowboy Carter, she achieves what few dare: taking a marginal aesthetic — here, Black Western — and projecting it into a future that is female, sovereign, and free. That she chose to do this in looks that sit somewhere between Mad Max and cyberpunk Venus is no coincidence. It’s a rewriting of history, an anticipation of what’s next. And this aesthetic isn’t just conquering the stage. In ads, music videos, fashion editorials, more and more futuristic figures are emerging: women who don’t smile, who don’t seduce, who command. Non-binary figures too — because Retro-Future Femme isn’t about gender. It’s about posture. It says: I control the backdrop. I am my own filter. You want to look at me? Reflect yourself in my visor.

Of course, the trend will have its derivatives. In a few months, H&M will be selling “casual space jumpsuits” for Sunday brunch. TikTok will flood us with tutorials titled “How to look like a Space Siren when your rent is due and your eyebrows are uneven.” And brands will inevitably try to sanitize it into something sellable. But at its origin, this aesthetic holds a radical charge. It opens a portal. A way to exist outside the usual expectations, outside the usual tags, outside the planet — literally. Fashion is often mocked for its inconsistency. But sometimes, it captures tremors that politics or literature take years to name. And if the Space Siren speaks so loudly right now, it’s maybe because she gives language to those no longer willing to apologize for existing in the light. Who want to shine, yes — but on their own terms. To be seen, but not vulnerable. To be heard, without screaming.

So no, the Space Siren isn’t a utopia. She’s a tactic. A battle cry in iridescent latex. A promise of the future, disguised in stellar highlighter.

Coquette, Blokette, Office Siren — Hyperfemininity as Armor

They say fashion is cyclical. That everything comes back. That we’re just recycling. False. What comes back never returns unchanged. It comes back armed. And in 2025, hyper-gendered silhouettes aren’t returning as nostalgia — they’re coming back like vengeful ghosts. Heels firmly planted. Lipstick sharp. Irony tightly managed. Welcome to the age of reinforced femininity, where ultra-feminine archetypes — long mocked, fetishized, or silenced — reclaim their power. They’re called coquette, blokette, office siren, mob wife, cherry girl, sailor chic. A swarm of micro-aesthetics that, when stitched together, form an army. A procession of clichés — mastered, reappropriated, recontextualized — transformed by TikTok into a global cultural movement.

Let’s start with the coquette. On the surface: lace, ribbons, pleated skirts, visible blush, and dainty hair bows. A silhouette plucked straight from a shōjo manga or a Victorian Pinterest board. But beneath that powdered pink veneer lies a subversive strategy. The 2025 coquette isn’t here to charm boys or play innocent. She’s a perfectly curated façade, a calculated aesthetic that flips the gaze. She wears pink as camouflage. As armor. And she slips into the collective eye to quietly poison it. As one now-iconic TikToker wrote with deadly precision: “If you think I’m soft, good. That’s the trap.”

Then there’s the blokette. An improbable fusion of 2003 bimbo and ultra-sporty streetwear queen. Low-rise cargo pants, exposed bras, football jerseys worn as crop tops, and baby hairs gelled into architectural perfection. A look that screams both “hanging with the boys” and “posting £200 manicures to close friends.” She walks the line between performative masculinity and ostentatious hyperfemininity in a way that would have made stylists ten years ago glitch. And that’s the whole point. Refusing to be boxed in. Being cute and brutal. Soft and threatening. The blokette isn’t playing tomboy — she’s playing the girl who can kick your ass in rhinestone Air Maxes.

And then comes the office siren. Arguably the most disturbing of the trio, because she resurrects an image long dismissed and derided: the sexy secretary. The one who stalks corporate glass towers in pencil skirts, sharp heels, and a blouse undone at precisely the right button. The one we used to see in trashy 2000s music videos, cringeworthy rom-coms, and male fantasies that never quite got digested. But in 2025, she’s back with a serrated twist. She’s not here to answer phones or flirt by the elevator. She’s here to close the deal, fire your ex, and gut capitalism with a tube of opaque gloss. The office siren is the resurrection of feminine power in its most sexualized codes — but this time, they’re not offered. She doesn’t ask for permission. She doesn’t tone it down. She walks through a man’s world without lowering her voice. And if her heels echo through the hallway — good. She’s marking her territory. Business Insider — and they know a thing or two about corporate corridors and interview looks — recently called the office siren “the most elegant rejection of the clean girl aesthetic.” Translation: she has no time to be minimalist. She doesn’t need to be neutral. She’d rather be incendiary.

In truth, all these aesthetics — coquette, blokette, office siren, and their many cousins — are tools to interrogate femininity as performance. As political terrain. As artistic language. As identity. These aren’t trends. They’re narratives. Counter-discourses. Gestures. American sociologist Hilary Malatino calls it “tactical femininity” — the use of outward signs of the feminine to flip them against the system. The girls of Instagram already understood this. The girls of TikTok industrialized it. They dress like stereotypes to sabotage them. They flirt with the image without ever being trapped by it. They wear the miniskirt like a manifesto. And if their aesthetics go viral, it’s not because they appeal to men — it’s because they speak to girls.

What’s striking about this era’s hyperfemininity is how coded it is. Nothing is accidental. Outfits are puzzles. The references pile up: cult films, Gen Z stars, Y2K archives, club culture, teen shows, red carpet glamour. Nothing is left “natural” — and that’s the point. We’re far from the fake-effortless coolness of the 2010s. Here, everything is effort. Everything is curated. Everything is tactical. And in a world where control over the female body remains a constant issue, claiming artifice becomes an act of power. Teen Vogue echoes this idea. In its 2025 trend report, the outlet notes how these aesthetics become “tools for asserting identity in a world that, under the guise of equality, remains norm-driven and punitive.” In other words, these looks are survival tactics. Symbolic parades. Pastel war dances.

You could laugh at the explosion of micro-trends — if they weren’t so revealing. Of the world’s state. Of shifting norms. Of how an entire generation is rewriting the rules with irony, cynicism, and rhinestones. Coquettes don’t want to live in 1820. Office sirens don’t dream of working at Deloitte. And blokettes aren’t training to become footballers. They want to blur the lines. Create grey zones. Appear where no one expects them. So yes — in 2025, femininity is an armor. Sometimes candy pink. Sometimes black vinyl. Sometimes white leather with seam-back stockings. But always deliberate. Always aware of the gaze it attracts. And of what it protects.

Delulu is the Solulu

Some words change the world. Some change the algorithm. And then, there are the rare ones that manage to do both. “Delulu” is one of them. Born on Twitter as a cutesy shorthand for “delusional,” raised on TikTok as a generational battle cry, it has mutated into dogma: Delulu is the Solulu. A phrase as absurd as it is addictive, now whispered like sacred mantra by millions of exhausted young people. A new kind of prayer for a generation that’s lost its faith—but not its need to believe.

At first, it was a joke. A meme. A lighthearted way to justify slightly ridiculous fantasies: believing your crush is secretly into you, that you’ll land that job despite a chaotic interview, that karma will eventually take care of your passive-aggressive manager. And all this, while fully knowing that none of it is likely to happen. But as the months passed, delulu evolved. It was no longer just a delusion — it was a lifestyle strategy. A soft rebellion. A 30-second remix of spirituality, set to an autotuned soundscape. According to The Guardian, the phenomenon is a direct response to the psychological precarity of a generation promised everything — except stability. A generation raised on self-help content and manifestation journals, only to find that gratitude planners and TikTok life coaches don’t actually pay the rent. Because in 2025, being realistic is depressing. Delulu is a refusal. A rejection of logic, of productivity, of the crushing ambient pessimism. It’s believing in miracles not because they’re likely — but because they’re necessary. Because the version of truth sold by career counselors and 24/7 news cycles offers no livable dream.

On TikTok, delulu mindset videos have exploded, racking up hundreds of millions of views. You’ll see girls repeating “I already got the job” before even applying. Boys claiming they’re in stable relationships with people they’ve never spoken to. Students proclaiming their degrees are already earned, their bank accounts already full, the universe already working for them. A heady mix of magical thinking, visualization, and fake-it-til-you-make-it — but with a razor-sharp awareness of its own absurdity. Because delulu isn’t a naïve illusion. It’s a conscious illusion. One wielded like a weapon. Like the kind of fantasy children invent to survive a brutal world — only here, the kids are 22, drowning in student debt, clocking deadlines in sterile open-plan offices. And instead of spiraling into nihilism, they’re choosing an extra layer of fantasy. The world doesn’t want me? Fine — I’ll imagine I own it. Rejection, loneliness, invisibility? I’ll spin them into an inner novel where I’m the star, the boss, the main character in Technicolor.

The genius of delulu is that it sidesteps reality altogether. It doesn’t try to fix it — it bypasses it. No debates, no evidence, no rationality. It decrees. It prophesies. It auto-invents. It feeds on dreams, and on the urgent need to have them. Because what’s the alternative? Believing in meritocracy? In the lie that an underpaid contract job and a daily routine of "commute, carbs, collapse" will fulfill you? The post-pandemic world has crushed belief in the system. So in its place, people believe in themselves — even if it’s false. Especially if it’s false. It’s no coincidence that the delulu boom coincides with record burnout rates, collapsing student mental health, and a spike in antidepressant prescriptions. Delulu is a kind of pagan response to a hyper-rational world. A world that demands proof, performance, profitability. Where people used to pray to gods, Zoomers scroll and affirm: “My manifestations are already happening.” It’s absurd — and useful. And if it doesn’t work? At least it’s aesthetically pleasing.

Because make no mistake: delulu is also an aesthetic. A posture. A vibe. It’s believing you’re the lead in a dramatic film while eating alone at a late-night kebab joint. It’s walking like there’s a camera following you. It’s buying yourself flowers, snapping selfies in a grim waiting room, and captioning them “vibe check.” It’s wearing sunglasses indoors. It’s turning boredom into comedy, humiliation into lore, failure into a pilot episode. In short: it’s surviving through fiction. And the most fascinating part? It works. Not because the universe listens — but because mindset changes behavior. It shifts how we show up, persist, present. It’s TikTok-friendly neuroplasticity. A sociocultural placebo. And like any placebo, it doesn’t heal everything. But it helps. It gives momentum. It restores desire in a life gone flat. It puts style back into chaos.

Of course, delulu has its critics. They call it toxic, disconnected, irresponsible. They say it creates unrealistic expectations. That it blurs the line between inner life and shared reality. Maybe so. But let’s not pretend the “real world” has ever been especially responsible. That logic ever rescued anyone from a 3AM existential breakdown. That objectivity ever filled an empty heart. Delulu isn’t a lie — it’s resistance. It’s an attempt to reclaim the narrative. To create a space where dreaming isn’t laughable — it’s necessary. Where love, success, beauty still matter, even when reality says otherwise. It’s imagination as immune system.

In 2025, traditional religions are fading — but the need to believe hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s mutating. Going digital. Going viral. Becoming performative, community-driven, algorithmic. Instead of prayers, we have affirmations. Instead of priests, influencers. Instead of doctrine, looping soundbites. But underneath, it’s still the same thing: a longing for meaning, transcendence, hope. So no — delulu isn’t a pathology. It’s a culture. A liturgy of the absurd. A faith rewritten in Zoomer syntax. And if it brings a flicker of light to those wandering blind, maybe it really is the Solulu.

Conclusion — What If chaos had a dress code?

Four trends. Four faces of a world no longer sure where to look — so it pulls on cowboy boots, a chrome bodysuit, cherry gloss, and spins a gentler reality from scratch. This isn’t escapism. It’s a method. An architecture of style built for survival. Because in 2025, we don’t have the luxury of waiting for the world to heal before we start existing. We can’t afford to “just be ourselves” when everything around us pushes for dilution. So we perform. We amplify. We glow. We exaggerate. We wear outfits that say more than our words — because sometimes, words are exhausting. We become our own storyboard. Our own set design. Our own religion.

Shaboozey brought Black cowboys back to the charts, turning dive bars into temples and cowboy boots into banners. The Space Sirens reclaimed the galaxy — one stiletto at a time — wrapped in metallic bodysuits and lucid cyborg gazes. The coquettes, blokettes, and office sirens shattered the patriarchal shop window, just to snap selfies inside the wreckage. And the delulus? They realized reality, left unchecked, isn’t always a safe space — so they rewrote it. This isn’t just fashion. It’s not just content. It’s code. It’s high-resolution mythology. These are the new archetypes: glitched, post-ironic, hyper-connected. These are the blueprints of a generation refusing to vanish. Refusing to be reduced to a function, a job title, a failure, or a feed. We call it pop culture — loudly, humbly — but if we were being honest, we might call it something else: poetry in 4K.

So if these stories hit home. If these faces feel familiar. If you see yourself in the coder-cowgirl, the intern in a latex skirt, or the girl whispering “this has to work” while staring at the ceiling — know this: you’re not alone. And you’re not crazy. You’re in the moment. You’re in the glitch. You’re in the alive. And if you want to keep navigating these liminal zones with me, you know where to find me. The Cappuccino & Croissant podcast drops every week — decoding, questioning, fanning the embers of this cultural wildfire. But that’s just the surface.

💿 There’s my music, too — GLITCH, my latest album, is out on every streaming platform. It’s the same universe, but in synths, soft rage, and hooks no one asked you to like.

📚 There are my books — sci-fi short stories, psychological thrillers, essays, fables. Words for those who don’t quite fit anywhere, but still want to understand everything. Even the void.

🖥️ There’s my site, my socials, my videos, my lives. It’s not a brand. It’s a space. A refuge for those who feel too much, think too loud, and refuse to tone it down.

So if you want to explore all of that — dive in. No irony this time. The link’s in the bio. Or maybe in your gut. I’ll see you soon. In your headphones. In your books. In your thoughts. And maybe, just maybe, in your own glitch.

Until then, take care 💙