Episode Details

BACKKLASH OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY 2025 (FY2026) feat. Kellock & Hagalaz

We punched out, strung up the lights, expensed some top-shelf booze with the petty cash, and flung open the virtual office doors at BACKKLASH COMMUNICATIONS for possibly the most unhinged and heartfelt installment of our holiday tradition yet: the annual Backklash Office Christmas Party.

Poolhouse convenes a candid, intimate, and slightly feral three-way summit with returning favorite Kellock (last year’s Backklash Christmas Secretary, now promoted to Senior Director of Christmas Operations) alongside debut-time guest Hagalaz (officially appointed Christmas Secretary), to toast the end of a strange year and take stock of the culture at large.

What begins as forced corporate fun quickly descends into a revelrous—and revelatory—conversation on the true meaning of parasocial (the reason for the season?), New Normal consumer culture, the lost art of gift-giving in the age of instant gratification, algorithmic decay, media collapse, and why 2025 felt sweaty, floppy, and spiritually seventies. Along the way, the trio conduct a thorough excavation of pop as the new counter-culture: from inspired visionaries like Slayyyter and Addison Rae (the new punk?) to the unbridled excess of projects from Taylor Swift and Charli XCX.

It’s funny, tender, profane, and sincere. It’s about staying human, staying online (against your better judgment), and fighting backlash with BACKKLASH. Pour a refreshment, pull up a chair, and survive the office party with us.

Stick around ’til the party ends, and you might even hear from one of the hottest names in TakeSelling at the moment.

Merry Christmas—and a BACKKLASH New Year.

An Ice Reggae Festive Holiday Glittery Gif Cinema by Hagalaz! →

Follow Kellock, BACKKLASH Senior Director of Christmas Operations

https://x.com/kellockx

Follow Hagalaz, BACKKLASH Christmas Secretary (FY25-26)

https://x.com/lasteuropak1ss

THE BACKKLASH YEAR-END SPECTACULAR!

BROUGHT TO YOU BY:

The Royal Charter of 1670 for Incorporating the Hudson’s Bay Company

…and the Byzantine Latino Quarter of Los Angeles! BACKKLASH stands with Latinbyz peoples worldwide !

BACKKLASH 2025 YEAR IN REVIEW MINI-ZINE

THEME OF THE YEAR: TOO MUCH SIGNAL! OR WAS IT ALL JUST NOISE?

The kind of year where Candace Owens can emerge as the most coherent-sounding voice in the room (but it was also a hot Widow’s media market kind of year). A lot is happening all the time, so much so that nothing ever happens. People either began to grow allergic to the toxic swarm of white noise and feedback (“social media” which is now just “the media.”), or they were drawn to its intoxicants and rendered deranged. There is no middle ground. You’ve either been made insane by the media you hold in the palm of your hand, or you were made insane because of it.

MEME OF THE YEAR:

Was this from this year?

2025 THE YEAR THAT…

…we Flopped Ungracefully (Miley, Lizzo, Doja..Poolhous