Culture and Couture Brief #5 - Matt Forney

"It was always fun going to a train station or airport transit lounge, sitting down with a cup of tea, and watching people going about their business."

Apr 02, 2025

We’re creating tastemakers for the new regime.

We’ve got a new Culture and Couture Brief today. Our last brief was with creative writer and aspiring model Layla, and you can check it out here if you missed the release. Twice a month, I’ll feature someone who is leading the culture in an unexpected way. We’re influencing the influencers, and this time I’ve brought over Matt Forney who you may remember from back in the day. He’s now here and ready to fire things up.

What is Matt Forney’s media pick of the moment?

Matt Forney: God in the Machine. I had the honor of publishing Brian's first novel Into the Vortex with Terror House many years ago. Where many authors wallow in the kiddie pond of barely-disguised autobiography---autofiction? so you jack yourself off in print?---Brian crafts truly imaginative, comic stories that attack the deeper themes of our overstimulated, oversexed, inauthentic age without resorting to bathos or cliche.

I've owed him a review some time now, but this will have to suffice for now: God in the Machine is a pitch-black examination of our society's lurch towards the era of the machine, one that will leave you in stitches, or it might frighten you. Depends on the strength of your stomach. I personally had to refrain reading it before bed. But it's great when the sun is up.

What’s a place that is meaningful to Matt?

Matt: It always comes back to Grand Central Oyster Bar and Restaurant. I miss liminal spaces. COVID ruined them. It was always fun going to a train station or airport transit lounge, sitting down with a cup of tea, and watching people going about their business. Then it turned into a mass of neurotics looking over their shoulders while assholes on Segways shouted "SIR, PLEASE PUT ON YOUR MASK" if you didn't have a beverage to your lips.

I haven't been on a trip of any kind since 2022, but whenever I'm in NYC, I always made a point to stop by the Oyster Bar in Grand Central, even if I wasn't taking the train out of there. I've been all over the world at this point and Grand Central is one of the most beautiful buildings I've seen, and the Oyster Bar has amazing clam chowder at a reasonable price.

What has Matt enjoyed reading and listening to lately?

1. Master Hallucinator: Philip K. Dick’s The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Manuel Marrero at Expat Press

2. Alpha Male Mindset ft. Pericles Abbasi with Patrick Casey at Restoring Order

3. Top 50 Nick Fuentes Pedophile Scandals by Chris Brunet at Karlstack

4. Witch of 1,000 Wreaths by Blake Armstrong at 1325 Publishing

5. The Influencing Machine by Jonathan Keeperman at Office Hours with Lomez

An Announcement from Matt

I'm a writer and editor currently looking for work after my main job decided to put me on indefinite hold while they "reorganize." I have over a decade of experience in writing (blog posts, emails, advertising copy, ghostwriting), editing (including over 50 books), and also have years of experience in remote sales/customer service. If you're hiring, contact me at mattforney [at] protonmail [dot] com or DM me on X/Twitter @realmattforney. My resume and samples are available on request.

That’s a boom. It’s the fifth installment of Culture and Couture. I plan to run more of these because they’re lots of fun. Also, let’s get real. Most people have horrible tastes and it’s time to show them something better.

If you’d like to become a tastemaker for the new regime, email me at theculturalfuturist@gmail.com. Whether it’s fashion, art, music, architecture, or a period in time that has inspired you, (maybe even all of these things) I’d love to hear from you about some of your favorite things.

Matt Forney is a freelance writer and editor who was the founder of Terror House Magazine, an independent literary magazine focused on nurturing and promoting the best up-and-coming writers of our generation.