Dashboard Culture vs. Camouflage Culture
How the White House UFC fight defines our moment
The following piece is a collaboration between Matt Klein + Rémi Carlioz.
Rémi Carlioz is creative director and cultural strategist. He’s the Founding Partner of La War Room, a global information warfare agency, and founder of Studio Paname, a creative and cultural strategy studio. Carlioz works with governments, brands, and Fortune 500 companies to build narratives, shaping public perception. He also chairs the advisory board of a philanthropic index fund dedicated to fighting hate and antisemitism.
Imagine: It’s 2026.
A UFC Octagon is erected on the White House lawn. The spectacle is drenched in red, white and blue chest-beating bravado while the most dated vision of manhood is broadcasted. Fireworks. Flag capes. Roars from over 5,000 patriots. Two shirtless men beating the shit out of each other until one’s knocked unconscious.
It’s the Temu Roman Colosseum.
Preposterous. Absurd. Grotesque.
So enchanting you’ll watch regardless.
For those out of the loop, this is a very real plan. The White House has already released renderings of the South Lawn where the fights will transpire to honor 250 years of America. 60 Minutes did a segment, revealing the fighters will walk out of the Oval Office. Don’t consider the security implications. It ruins the fun. Or then again... we’re actually quite cool with casual Washington landmark drop-in tours nowadays.
James Kirchick, writing for The New York Times, reaches for Camp to explain our moment, calling the president:
“a Camp icon, like a drag queen... outrageous, transgressive, catty.”
Close.
But Camp requires ironic distance — the ability to stand outside itself and wink. There’s no distance here. You can’t critique The UFC x White House collab because the wink is built in. The event knows it’s ridiculous.
So if it’s not Camp, what do we call this corrupt, flimsy “extra-ness,” which seemingly permeates every aspect of society nowadays?
Endless reboot franchises, dual-screen ASMR slime slop, mass enshittification, Mr. Beast YouTube thumbnails, bots, Duolingo push notifications, hostile Verizon Wireless UX, 23andMe refusing to delete users’ data, Logan Paul, Netflix autoplay, Shein hauls, outrage at brand logos, brands trolling consumers, AI girlfriends, clickbait, Cybertrucks, menu items designed just for Stories, and cotton candy-flavored vapes.
What is this?
The terms we once employed – Camp, Kitsch, Cringe, Tacky, Cheap, Gauche, Garish, Trashy, or Low-brow – all feel obsolete. Too judgemental. Especially considering how pervasive and accepted these manifestations are. It’s not exactly Brain Rot either considering how strategic it all is. Mass tastlessness is not it either. No.
We need new language to make sense of what’s happening.
But first, we have to understand how we arrived here.
Camp vs. Kitsch & The Death of Distance
In the 20th century, cultural dynamics were simpler.
Generally, cultural critique was organized around a tension between sincerity and irony. Kitsch and Camp. Susan Sontag defined Camp as “failed seriousness,” the ironic appreciation of something striving and missing.
“Camp sees everything in quotation marks.”
Camp embraces the extravagant and absurd, finding appeal in what’s generally seen as “bad taste.” John Waters, glam rock, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Austin Powers, midnight screenings of The Room, Lady Gaga, RuPaul and drag. Camp becomes cultural resistance by embracing what mainstream society deems inferior. Ironic appreciation.
Camp has historically been a survival tool for marginalized communities — a way to challenge dominant cultural hierarchies without direct confrontation. When you can’t critique power head-on, you wink.
On the other hand, Kitsch is the garden gnome. Kitsch is cheap and mass-produced. Disney, the Cheesecake Factory, Lisa Frank, Hallmark greeting cards, Hallmark Christmas movies. “Live Laugh Love” decor.
Essayist and art critic Clement Greenberg positioned Kitsch as the antithesis of avant-garde art, representing a degraded form of culture. Kitsch comments on how capitalism hollows out authentic expression, turning it into decoration. But regardless, we place the gnome in the garden because we genuinely love it. It is sentimental and 100% sincere. Kitsch means it.
Therefore, Camp is the “Garden Gnome Liberation Front,” a real French prankster group from the 1990’s, where activists would “rescue” gnomes and release them into the woods. They appreciated the gnome... although ironically.
Kitsch says “this is genuinely beautiful to me,” while Camp says “this is so bad it’s good.” The crucial difference here is distance. The gap between the sincere gnome’s owner and its liberators is where Camp lives.
This distance is cultural critique and commentary.
Okay, so why are we talking about garden gnomes and metaphorical distance?
Today, with the immediacy of our digital networks and global participation, reflective distance has collapsed.
There’s no room to wink online.
No space to deeply criticize.
No opportunity for friction.
No time for aging.
Instead, we have quick, slimy, slippery, always-on, frictionless, re-affirming pleasure-maxing nowness.