Samosa Rave, Fake Weddings, and Viral Tarps For Travis Scott

This month felt like we were all aimlessly scrolling through one never-ending Instagram story. Then again, every month kind of feels like that in an attention economy that spews out viral news with just enough post-meta irony to make us pretend it’s all very profound. 

Zohran Mamdani—the New York mayoral candidate who once made a rap for his naani—won big in the Democratic primary this month. It felt like a communal victory for South Asians everywhere, celebrated with the same kind of group chat hysteria reserved for your overachiever cousin’s exam results. Then there’s the curious case of the Labubus, which have now become so viral that you can wear them as grillz. Also, the parties have gotten wilder. Not because the energy’s any different, but because literally anything can be classified as a party now. And in that same unhinged spirit, apparently everyone can also be a DJ now. Welcome to The Rodeo. Let’s dive into it. 

The Samosa Rave Is Real, and So Is Our Indigestion

If the mere mention of a samosa raves gave you instant acid reflux of the soul, you’re not alone. Just when we thought we’d hit peak absurdity with coffee raves, burger raves, run club raves, and even dosa raves, the deep-fried triangle decided to crash the party. It was one of those hard-to-digest pieces of information that sent the collective online consciousness spiraling over what even qualifies as a rave anymore. Call it blasphemy or genius marketing, it’s one of those moments that leaves a permanent “SMH” bubble floating above you. 

Fake Weddings Are All The Rage

As if The Materialists turning matchmaking into a painfully white-gazed performance piece wasn’t already a cultural crime (#JusticeForSimaFromMumbai), things have gotten so bleak on the modern dating front that we’re now throwing wedding parties without the bride or groom. Fake wedding parties, complete with thumping dhols, mandap-style stages, and even chaat counters have made their way to the bingo card of bizarre theme parties. Maybe it’s our Bollywood nostalgia flaring up, or maybe it’s the collective burnout of dating in 2025, but somehow, this deeply unhinged trend just…makes sense.

The Viral Tarp Takeover 

If you haven’t stumbled across one of those badly photoshopped tarpaulin posters congratulating Taylor Swift for owning her masters or Travis Scott for becoming the chief visionary at Oakley yet, we regret to inform you that your algorithm might still be running on a dial-up modem. The brainchild of Filipino designers Xylk and Fleasayo—who call themselves “life designers”—these viral masterpieces have made the leap from Poblacion to Paris, using nothing but Comic Sans, celebrity cutouts, and the janky capitalization of “PHiLiPPiNES iS PROUD OF UUUU.” Low-res, low-brow, but high on vibes. And if it feels familiar, that’s probably because it shares the same design DNA as every Indian barbershop shutter that’s ever featured Zayn Malik.

The Former President of Colombia Is Now…A DJ? 

Colombia’s controversial former president Iván Duque is swapping cabinet meetings for club tracks in his latest rebrand as…DJ DUQ. Duque is best known for running Colombia from 2018 to 2022 under the conservative Democratic Centre Party and faced widespread criticism over violent crackdowns on protesters and human rights defenders, particularly during the 2021 national strike. Turns out, the only thing he’s spinning now is badly mixed afrobeats. It’s a pivot so bizarre that it would be funny if it weren’t coming from a guy whose administration was mired in brutal repression and linked to the deaths of over 900 activists. 

New Apple Feature For Playlist DJs

And since everyone thinks they’re a DJ now, Apple decided to launch a new feature that fully feeds into the fantasy (or delusion?). Tailor-made for that one friend who insists they’re a selector because they once made a nostalgia playlist that slapped at the pre-game, the new AutoMix feature in iOS 26 claims to “use intelligence to transition from one song to the next like a DJ, using time stretching and beat matching to seamlessly move from one song to the next.” And while it might sound slick on paper, it’s already tapping into our deeper existential dread. What’s next: technology that texts you saying “U up?” at 3 AM? 

That Cool New Band You Discovered Might Be a Deepfake

Feeding further into those anxieties is the mysterious rise of a new band called The Velvet Sundown, which has racked up over 400,000 monthly Spotify listeners despite seemingly materializing out of thin air a month ago. Their sudden rise has Reddit sleuths in overdrive, after listeners stumbled onto their tracks through Discover Weekly and quickly noticed that they had no interviews, no gigs and no digital footprint. Then came the Instagram account, full of eerily hyperreal band member portraits that look more like NPCs in a cyberpunk fever dream. And while AI experiments in music are nothing new, it’s the suspiciously manufactured vibe of this band that has everyone doing a double-take.