Culture Creep: Notes on the Pop Apocalypse

by Alice Bolin

From the critically acclaimed author of Dead Girls (“stylish and inspired”—New York Times Book Review), a sharp, engrossing collection of essays that explore the strange career of popular feminism and steady creep of cults and cult-think into our daily lives.

In seven stunning original essays, Alice Bolin turns her gaze to the myriad ways femininity is remixed and reconstructed by the pop culture of the computer age. The unlikely, often insidious forces that drive our popular obsessions are brilliantly cataloged, contextualized, and questioned in a kaleidoscopic style imitating the internet itself.

In “The Enumerated Woman,” Bolin investigates how digital diet tracking apps have increasingly transformed our relationships to our bodies. Animal Crossing’s soothing retail therapy is analyzed in “Real Time”—a surprisingly powerful portrait of late capitalism. And in the showstopping “Foundering,” Bolin dissects our buy-in and complicity with mythmaking around iconic founders, from the hubristic fall of Silicon Valley titans, to Enron, Hamilton, and the USA.

For readers of Trick Mirror and How to Do Nothing, Culture Creep is a swirl of nostalgia and visions of the future, questioning why, in the face of seismic cultural, political, and technological shifts as disruptive as the internet, we cling to the icons and ideals of the past. Written with her signature blend of the personal and sharply analytical, each of these keen-eyed essays ask us to reckon with our own participation in all manner of popular cults of being, and cults of believing. 

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Feminism, Audiobook, Pop Culture, Adult, Cultural

269 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 3, 2025

Reviews

[CJ Alberts]

Good for the essay heads but why was the last one about the damn playboy mansion a third of the book

[Gabrielė Bužinskaitė · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another high-potential book squandered by the author's inability to retain from talking about herself.

Sure, some people like books heavy with personal storytelling because it makes them feel more connected to the author. However, I enjoy it only in small doses, and only if it leads to a stronger argument.

All these stories about her food tracking, her worries over weight, her lockdown Animal Crossing gaming, her endless Sex and the City rewatches, her moving away to study, her childhood bedroom with inflatable chairs, her Pinterest scrolling, her teen magazine nostalgia were nothing but burdensome to me. My eyes kept wanting to skip this endless self-talk to get to the point, but too often her experiences were the point.

Cultural criticism, or whatever the author claims these essays are, needs to be grounded in more than personal anecdotes. And while she occasionally mentions deeper topics such as cults or surveillance, they are soon drowned in her personal reflections again.

[CatReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alice Bolin (b. ~1988) is an American essayist; 2025's Culture Creep is her 2nd book of pop culture-related essays from a female millennial's perspective. The essays span Y2K-era topics including Bolin's obsession with tween and teen girl magazines, how body image was portrayed in the 2000s in fashion, fashion blogs, and troubling thin celebrities, and female agency or lack thereof (there is a very long essay on Playboy and the 2000s E! reality series Girls Next Door, which Bolin rewatched in light of Hugh Hefner's ex-poly girlfriend Holly Madison's salacious 2015 memoir Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny and other recent podcasts about the series. (For what it's worth, I also remember occasionally watching Girls Next Door in the mid/late '00s when I was in college and feeling icky about the whole thing, not like it was an aspirational fantasy like Bolin seemed to think at the time.) Other essays deal with more contemporaneous technological phenomenon, like the pervasiveness and time-sucking nature of mobile gaming.

There are moments of resonance here, especially for readers who came of age alongside Bolin and also remember the cultural dominance of size-zero celebrities, fashion and paparazzi blogs and websites, and the shift from print to digital culture. But for those who’ve already read similar essay collections from women in their 30s and 40s reckoning with coming of age in the '00s, Culture Creep doesn’t tread much new ground. Bolin’s reflections often feel more like musings than revelations, and the writing occasionally lapses into the kind of introspective spiral that seems content to note contradictions without fully analyzing them.

That said, for readers who haven’t yet dipped into this emerging subgenre, or who want a more nostalgic than analytical take on growing up millennial in the shadow of Y2K pop culture, Culture Creep may strike a chord. For those who've already consumed similar connections (in book/essay form or in other forms), it’s likely to feel more like a rerun than a revelation.

Further reading: millennial musings (listed from most to least recommended)
Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age by Vauhini Vara
Toxic: Women, Fame, and the Tabloid 2000s by Sarah Ditum
Hit Girls: Britney, Taylor, Beyoncé, and the Women Who Built Pop's Shiniest Decade by Nora Princiotti
Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino
One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In by Kate Kennedy
Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything by Colette Shade

My statistics:
Book 244 for 2025
Book 2170 cumulatively

[Jillian B · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this essay collection, but by far my favourite essay was the final one about the Playboy mansion and the huge role it played in pop culture, particularly in the Y2K era. It questions the way media like the Girls Next Door reality show sanitized Hugh Hefner’s reputation and presented being an elderly man’s “girlfriend” as something aspirational, and contrasts that with what was going on behind the scenes. I think this collection is worth a read for that essay alone.

[Sammi · Rating 2 out of 5]

The whiplash between “oh lol i remember that” and “hmmm i maybe dont think its that deep”

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Millennials, this book is a good reminder that we had no control over the way we are (I’m looking at us millennial women).

*cries in body image issues*

[Audrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
I really enjoyed this overall but I think this collection will fall victim to some of the same criticism as "dead girls." The essays aren't as linked or set in their purpose as the synopsis implies, so you're bound to have essays that you really like and others that you struggle to get through. I flew through and LOVED the first half of this collection but found some of the later essays a bit less focused and far too long.
I personally enjoyed Bolin's writing and I always love just escaping into someone else's head for a while, but if you're specifically interested in this based on the synopsis, it might stray farther than you prefer.

[Cranky Commentary (Melinda) · Rating 1 out of 5]

These essays are supposed to be about how pop culture has created cult-like groups, and how this affects women.

Good grief. After reading this, I realize I’m not nearly the pessimist I thought I was. I’ve rarely seen anyone so determined to be miserable and unjustly treated. The author states, “humiliation is arguably a fact of life for women more than it is for men, not least because our bodies are considered public property for anyone to ogle, touch, or comment on”. Yeesh!

We, as a population, are now pretty much aware of the shenanigans going on behind closed doors of the marketing departments of large corporations in order to control our minds. None of this is a surprise, and it won’t change anytime soon. You’ll feel less of a victim after learning their techniques. The simple old saying, “forewarned is forearmed”, is all you need. Most of us know to steer clear of pyramid schemes, and savvy business people can now recognize demands from a company that are always suspicious of a cult environment. This information in this book is mostly old news.

“Lean in Bend Over” was an interesting account of a cult, although I was already familiar with the case. This was an anomaly, however, and I would hope that mentally healthy women would not accept a brand on their private parts to work at a company. I WAS surprised (but not surprised) about Amazon using Fitbit-type devices to monitor warehouse workers. Amazon does, though, have a very bad reputation when it comes to how they treat their employees. Although people need their jobs, they still are free to make the choice to move on.

I don’t agree with Bolin’s politics, not at all. For me, that’s ok. She has the right to her opinion. She does not, to say the least, have an accepting attitude towards people who have different views from her. Those dirty Christians, and those dirty republicans, and those dirty white men are ruining everything! Her views are so biased, she almost lives in an alternate universe. But enough about that.

These essays are really more of a memoir rather than a balanced view of our world. She goes through all the ways the capitalist machine has affected HER life. It seems it’s really more personal than actual insight. The essays don’t always stay on point, so they seem jumbled.

By the time I finished this, I didn’t know any more than I did when I started, except that Bolin is an angry woman looking for something to direct her anger at.
Honestly, if you agree with her views, you might like this collection. Maybe. I had to rate it 1 star, because after finishing, I needed to shake off the whining and discontent.

[Stu Milde · Rating 4 out of 5]

i always wondered what sex and the city was about

[Lavelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

fascinating, if a little long and unfocused at times, and slightly cynical. but that's exactly how I think/feel
about the world, and pop culture specifically, so I can't say I fault her on any of it.

[Samantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve gotten to the point where I’m pretty much done with critical collections that are unilaterally focused on pointing out what’s wrong with absolutely everything.

Bolin is a lovely writer and I wish I could enjoy that more, but criticism exclusively focused on channeling hater energy just doesn’t hit for me anymore.

I suppose to Bolin’s credit, she’s not claiming to be taking a balanced approach. “Can’t you let people just have their little fandoms?” she mocks. No, she says, because she’s a “critic” and an “asshole.” Credit for admitting the latter, I guess, but I’m not sure how we got to the place where criticism can exist solely comprised of negative opinions on the material.

The best criticism takes a fair and balanced look at what’s good and bad about the subject. Can any given subject be seen through a lens of all positive or all negative thoughts? Sure, absolutely, but once you’re picking at absolutely everything about absolutely every topic you cover, you’re not acting as a critic, you’re just indulging your own critical thoughts. Which is boring, and quite frankly pretty depressing to slog through an entire book of.

While I generally agree with Bolin’s political stances (which FYI, are present in most of the essays), I’m not sure we need to hold every piece of culture from 20-30 years ago to a specific standard we are now applying to what is objectively unproblematic in the present. I’m also not certain it’s the job of most popular culture to satisfy a specific person (even if they are — gasp — a critic) in terms of the subjective exactitude of morality for that person.

And while this isn’t true of every subject, in many cases yes, you can absolutely “let people have their little fandoms.”

*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*

[Kaitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this set of cultural essays a lot, probably since it was perfectly targeted at me, an aging millennial who skipped a grade and started college at 16. I enjoyed the author's fresh takes on things I haven't heard across many cultural writers or podcasts, such as discussion of the sinister nature of MyFitnessPal. My favorite section was the deep dive on the Playboy bunnies and Hugh Heffner. In retrospect, it's kind of insane we all just accepted that as normal. My husband reminds me "20 years was actually a long time ago if you think about it," which made me sigh.

[Isa · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's so crazy to see markers of my upbringing viewed in retrospect like this. truly makes me realise that being a woman in society has always, ALWAYS been awful.

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I reeeeeally liked this, maybe 4.5 stars just for how spookily relevant it was to my precise interests and experience lol. Essays about fitness tracking, animal crossing, the sims, and y2k teen magazines, written through a feminist, anti-capitalist, late-millennial lens??? Fantastic.

[Jessie Jacoby · Rating 1 out of 5]

for a book on pop culture, it seemed vastly focused on personal experiences and opinions, politics, & used a wildly unnecessarily amount of big, fancy words.

[Madison Grace · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. I picked it up because the cover was interesting and the dust jacket promised discussions of pop culture and feminism in the modern era, which interested me. Honestly, the dust jacket description was a little vague. Words and phrases like “computer age”, “late capitalism”, “keen-eyed essays” floated around a nebulous core, and I wasn’t sure what I was getting into but had an idea about the tone, at least. And after reading it, I’m still not quite sure what I got into.

In fairness, she brings up some interesting points, such as in “The Enumerated Woman” when she compares voluntary FitBit use to the involuntary tracking bracelets that Amazon wear house workers wear. I also liked some of the comments in “Foundering”, especially concerning Alexander Hamilton and his eponymous musical. My favorite essay was “Lean In/Bend Over”, which detailed the case of the NXIXM cult, where she smartly skewered those who use the language of female empowerment for the purpose of oppressing women. I wish that essay had been longer.

The next three essays were more mediocre. “Stardate” and “Real Time” consist of her grasping at straws to make her own personal life relevant to the topics at hand, and “Teen People” was too long and anecdotal, though the topic of teen magazines was interesting to read about, and she made some salient points throughout. By this point, the book was going to get a solid three-star rating from me.

The last essay undid my premature rating. It was about Playboy, which so many younger Gen-X and older Millennial women seem to be inordinately preoccupied with. I was too young to remember the Hugh Hefner reality show, so I can’t really comprehend why anyone is even entertaining a narrative other than Playboy being a predatory company run by a rapist, but I guess you had to be there. This essay is mostly descriptions of allegations against Playboy Inc. and half-baked arguments about how sexphobic the feminist movements was/is. I don’t have the time or the knowledge to really debate that, all I’ll say is she describes Gloria Steinem’s writing in a way that tells me she’s read very little of it (she admits to as much in the text). Steinem isn’t my personal “problematic fave” feminist, and she has made some major blunders, but her work is mischaracterized here, and it was embarrassing to read a feminist article by someone who hasn’t bothered to read essays like “The Real Linda Lovelace” or “Erotica vs. Pornography”. They aren’t perfect essays, and disagreeing with them is fair, but Alison Bolin makes some sweeping declarations about Steinem’s work that are in contradiction with Steinem’s work, and that poor research frustrated me.

All in all, this book did sharpened my own thinking and it was very readable, so I’m glad I read it. But unless you’re a feminist theory nerd like myself, skip it. It’s a lot of ideas that don’t have a center to stick to.

[Chris T.Etris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Culture Creep was a frustrating read. There are passages, sections, sometimes whole essays that land upon things that feel important. This, as a collection, attempts to tease meaning from the Y2K period of millennial culture and media, often through a feminist eye, but its own messaging can feel garbled and unsatisfying.

At their strongest, Bolin’s essays use personal experience to sculpt their stories. Interacting with TV, or magazines, or videogames in an almost phenomenological way, the writing has the feel of someone very honestly reflecting on pivotal media interactions and making genuine connections with the wider world. Positioning herself within culture, allows the writing to be observational rather than declarative: we as the reader discover alongside the author.

At their weakest, chunks of essays drift into cultural recap. “I read a book and am now going to paraphrase the key points from said book.” The collection is well written, but there’s no energy in these passages. Plotted on a graph, even the most successful essays show a spiky profile: sections you’ll highlight and circle balanced against sections you’ll trudge through, with the eventual payoff usually landing somewhere in between.

Although a collection of essays doesn’t necessarily need a thematic throughline to be considered successful, there’s a sense here that trying to use a thematic framework as the connective thread has pushed Bolin’s arguments further than some of the material really allows. The book explores cults of personality, celebrity voyeurism, with an underbelly of feminist solidarity running throughout. Whilst all of these foci are able to suggest interesting connections in the texts explored, sometimes they feel too strained. Even after revisiting sections of the essay ‘Stardate’ I felt pretty unsold on the persistent pairing of Star Trek: TNG and Sex and the City.

Most striking, perhaps, is a tension in the book’s treatment of early-2000s celebrity culture. Bolin is clearly sympathetic to the women subjected to the media gaze of the era, yet the essays themselves (and by extension Bolin’s own first-person perspective) linger voyeuristically on that same fascination. It’s one thing to acknowledge how, as a young person, she was, like the rest of the world, herded toward reality TV and teen magazines, but quite another to remain so voraciously invested in the gossip of celebrity memoirs while presenting herself as an adult attempting serious cultural commentary. In the final essay, when reflecting on her own role as a ‘feminist writer’, Bolin explicitly acknowledges that this contradiction makes her “part of the problem”. Yet it often feels as though writing that line functions as a sufficient personal admonishment, allowing her to continue in the same vein rather than meaningfully pivot her angle or investigation.

The book gestures toward scholarship without fully committing. Texts are constantly referenced and quoted, yet the closest thing to a bibliography is a vague “Other Sources” section that accounts for only a fraction of the works discussed. Ideas ping pong in ways that can make the central through-line of each essay hard to pin down. Bolin is too easily swayed by others’ opinions like in ‘Real Time’ where she appears to openly laugh at PETA’s unhinged read of Animal Crossing New Horizons before quickly furrowing her brow and asking ‘but maybe they have a point?’.

‘Loose’ might be the best descriptor for Culture Creep. Disappointing.

[Brittany Allyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Enumerated Woman, Stardate, Teen People, and the Rabbit Hole were varying degrees of fine to interesting. Foundering was too scattered to enjoy or get anything from. Real Time was the one I was most interested in reading, but ended up calling into question everything else the author had to say about anything when she went along with PETA’s nonsense about Animal Crossing. However, Lean In/Bend Over was very good, and would’ve excelled as a standalone article rather than the sole bright star in an otherwise middling collection. It seemed like the cult aspect was forgotten about after the first few essays until she circled back around to it in the final essay, and I was also disappointed that the extremely accurate assertion in the introduction that fandoms can often operate exactly like cults was never returned to in any of the essays. Kind of cements that this type of nonfiction is not for me.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Bolin's writing is stronger here than in her first book (Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession), and that she has also benefited from the book having a more general title. (Dead Girls was only partially about dead girls, and a lot about other topics.) I really enjoy and relate to Bolin's writing, especially on Animal Crossing and reliving the 2000s through physical magazines.

[Bibliophileverse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Culture Creep by Alice Bolin is an intriguing essay collection exploring cultural shifts in American society shaped by political and social forces. The first half is gripping, especially the discussion of religious leaders who exploited women over a decade—disturbing yet eye-opening. However, the latter half shifts focus toward the author’s personal experiences, particularly around video games, which felt less impactful. I was expecting sharper, more unsettling revelations about society, but instead found introspective narratives that didn’t fully match the intensity of the beginning. While thoughtfully written, the imbalance in themes made the overall reading experience feel uneven and slightly underwhelming. The book deserves 3 stars.

[Taylor Cunningham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Desperately wish this book had a bit more editing because when it was good, it was GOOD. Some chapters meandered way too much. The author would often seem insecure about why she was writing these essays in the first place. When focused, the essays force the reader to reckon with cultish aspects of pop culture; I loved The Enumerated Woman and much of Down the Rabbit Hole. But when it veered off course, it became confusing. What point was the author trying to make? Even still, I recommend this as a good listen for anyone who loves feminist pop culture analysis.

but man I just don't want to read more essays about Sex and the City lol

[Milo Carey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think this book really delivered on the title promise. There wasn't a great deal of discussion of cults, social media, or a connection to how the pop-culture of the 90s-Y2K really connects to our present reality. Nothing particularly insightful or new to be gained from this book if you're already a decently read feminist. Rounded up from a 2.5 because it's the holidays. Happy New Year.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

i want off this ride.

excellent writing/analysis, mandatory for millennials, arguably gen z, and anyone that actually cares about contextualizing the invisible hand that informs everything we know :~)

[Elise]

DNF at 30% (ish) - she drew me in at “calorie tracking apps are evil” but lost me at the tech founder deep dive. Nothing wrong with the content, just not quite what I was looking for. I bopped around to a few other essays and they also failed to draw me in.

[Risa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite good! Very a la trick mirror. All the essays went together well and seemed very well-researched.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last essay was a real doozy

[somtoreads · Rating 3 out of 5]

really enjoyed the enumerated woman and lean in/bend over

[Miranda Holmes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hi I hated this. The whole thing felt so pretentious and im better than you.

[eve is reading · Rating 2 out of 5]

these essays were close to the topics i would have loved to read more on but unfortunately didn’t come together for me. some were more focused than others but overall i think this is mostly a me problem:

love video games but wasn’t connecting to the animal crossing story

body image/calorie counting valiant critique but nothing new here, and making a connection to the present resurgence of “heroin chic” look and pro ana content was missing.

i should have more knowledge of sex and the city and star trek to make a comment on this essay, but I don’t unfortunately so i had limited interest.

playboy essay was again nothing new and too incredibly long. that we were so deep in the essay and then got a basic bio of hefner structurally was jarring. wish this one pursued the celebrity memoir topic that was discussed with the author’s reading of ex-bunny books.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rambling, disorganized, repetitive and tedious. While Bolin has some good nuggets in there, this book can really be summed up as "Alice Bolin thanks everything sucks but likes it anyway." She makes some good points about the patriarchy and how much of what passed for culture in her childhood is problematic when viewed from her more enlightened current perspective, but there wasn't much in here that I found to be truly insightful. Maybe that is because Bolin comes from relative privilege...white, with enough money that she doesn't have to worry about the cost of college or whatever she charges to her account there as her parents will settle it up for her. Bolin's insights come from consuming media and then reading critical works about it (and she quotes and paraphrases these HEAVILY throughout this book).

I also think that in her negativity, Bolin gives short shrift to some of our society's advances and positives. For example, we do have cyborg enhancements (mostly...just ask an amputee) and we have greatly extended women's fertility window. But, I recognize that essay collections are basically long rants or op eds, and Bolin is entitled to her opinion. However, so am I and this book just wasn't for me.