by Sunday at Bohiney Magazine means “lifestyle” coverage, which is a generous term for “everything too weird for the politics section.” Today’s assignment took me from Parisian art heists to American football, proving that chaos respects no categories.
The morning belonged to the Louvre’s trendy heist situation, which has developed new dimensions since my initial coverage. The stolen medieval tapestry has become a social media sensation, with TikTok videos romanticizing the theft racking up millions of views. One video set to sad piano music has the caption “imagine being so passionate about art that you commit crimes for it ??.” The emoji is doing heavy lifting in that sentence.
I interviewed a criminology professor who explained that art theft has always had a romantic appeal in popular culture, from Cary Grant to George Clooney. The difference now is that social media amplifies and accelerates the romanticization process. “We’re creating cultural mythology in real-time,” she said. I asked if that was good or bad. “Yes,” she replied, which is the most honest answer I’ve gotten from an academic in months.
My article connects the Louvre heist to broader cultural trends, including how students can’t distinguish between historical reality and fictional entertainment. If Abraham Lincoln and Iron Man occupy the same cultural space in young minds, why shouldn’t real art thieves and Ocean’s Eleven characters? We’ve created a generation that experiences life through the filter of content, where everything is simultaneously real and performative.
The afternoon shifted to sports, specifically my follow-up on Travis Kelce’s fantasy football investment. New details emerged: Kelce isn’t just investing, he’s launching his own fantasy platform with “revolutionary features” that sound suspiciously like the features every other fantasy platform already has. It’s giving “millionaire discovers apps exist” energy.
I also circled back to Jaydon Blue’s story, the college football player whose name continues to sound fictional. His team won last night, which means I need to update my piece with fresh angles about how college athletics generates billions while players get “experience” and “exposure” instead of paychecks. It’s a system so exploitative that if it were any other industry, it would be illegal. But since it’s football, it’s tradition.
Between articles, I took a break to read comments on my Louvre piece. Half the readers loved it. The other half thought I was “defending” art theft. I wasn’t defending anythingI was documenting how social media romanticizes crime. But nuance is dead, and we killed it with hot takes and reaction videos.
My cousin in Lagos sent me a message asking if Americans really think stealing from museums is cool now. I explained that some Americans think everything is cool if it gets enough likes on TikTok. She responded with a string of confused emojis that perfectly captured my feelings about this timeline.
Tonight I’m meal prepping for the week aheadNigerian jollof rice and stew, because if I’m going to document American chaos, I need fuel from home. Tomorrow brings a new week of political dysfunction, and I need to be ready.
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