A series of short thoughts recently.
I think the mobile games have caught onto the fact that neurodivergent people exist and have put all their fucking chips on making genuinely addictive games littered with ads as an infinite money glitch. Yeah, mobile games have always been a dumpster fire of quick-fix dopamine but the amount of games that fit that 'oddly satisfying' subgenre have skyrocketed both in quantity and exposure. Additionally the amount of ads that have deliberately trash gameplay could've been outperformed by a racoon on adderall work incredibly well, I'm sure, but I honestly just get frustrated looking at it without the followup need to play the game. Lastly, fuck the new model of in-game advertising where you get the shit gameplay, a "playable ad" and then a prompt to download it. I said no shithead. I think it's not exclusive to mobile games tho. Like the first time I saw a sensory toys showbag I lost my shit. There's this sense of autism and ADHD being a marketing demographic more than it is a classification of behaviour and brain activity that brings its own challenges being in a world that has very little accommodation for it. I can't tell if it's just my circle or my internet algorithm, but the fact autism is now just being thrown around like a meme (Me and the boys have AUTISM LOL. My friends are UNDIAGNOSED LMAO. I was NEGLECTED AS A CHILD ROFL), and when it's brought up seriously it tends to be this incredibly cheerful, rainbow, 'special', 'stimmy toy' way just feels kind of off. Like we advocate for autism as long as we can make content from it and make it fit an aesthetic. There's this resistance to talk about how it actually can be an incredibly frustrating situation to be in, and has genuine lifelong challenges that can and does affect a person's ability to function in society. I mean, I get it. It's a hard truth to swallow. I guess I'd much rather we were able to acknowledge there are genuine struggles with autism, it's not all fun and 'quirky'.
To be fair, at least the memes around men having autism are actually kinda funny and speak to the truth of being a silly boy. My point is I feel like most of the content around autism, and thus our cultural perception, is limited to being memes or pandering to autism as #relatable, and not about the actual challenges in a way that matter, or to understand those who are high-support-needs (fka low-functioning). I guess my real point is, Fuck Sia. Her making Music and defending it the way she did was the most brownie points scoring, pandering "iM aN AlLy oF AuTiSM #SpEcIaLLyAbLeD' dumb cunt behaviour and everything wrong with discourse around neurodivergence.
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I keep up with this circle of culture like a quadriplegic keeps up with Usain Bolt but I find JoJo Siwa's metamorphosis incredibly interesting.
The way she's expressing herself now has been described as "she thinks she's just invented the colour black and emo culture", which as comedic as that statement is, probably isn't far off. I mean, she's spent the past decade essentially having this super family-friendly image that has required her to effectively code herself as a pre-teen girl, a modern day take on bubblegum pop as a marketing strategy, filled with rainbows and sketchers and ponytails. While it is true that other child stars have had to position themselves as younger than they are, especially through their teenage years, I feel like at least they were allowed to grow up. I mean, Hannah Montana was a character, Miley Cyrus was allowed to exist, and other teen stars have been allowed to mature their image in-line with their actual age. When I see JoJo go through what looks like a 15-year olds personality shift, I can't help but feel like only now she is going through what I feel a lot of actual 15 year olds went through. She's developmentally stunted, and her continued efforts to come across as edgy or different or new are probably just her desperately trying to escape the image she cultivated, and I guess grow up. I mean people aren't wrong, it is kind of cringe. She ain't Gene Simmons. But to see her talk about how in her world, people hate on her and gatekeep her, it's probably just the way she's viewed the world after being denied changing for however long. She struggled to differentiate people clowning on her and what are objectively cringe things she's doing, because again, she's a 21 year old acting like a 15 year old, and the pushback she's probably received from a lot of people in her career. At the very least, while I think the optics of what she's doing is ridiculous (and her EP felt more like an attempt at being lady gaga with very little substance), I don't think it's her fault. The only feeling I really have is a profound sadness and a loathing for the child-star industry. Show business is ridiculously pedophilic.
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You ever scroll in reels and then once in a blue moon Instagram will show you one from like an account with 10 followers, it has 1 like and it's just like a popular song over contextless footage and / of facecam? That shit weirds me out.
I guess building off a short segment from the video I put up last post, I find people who post the most random things on social media interesting. More specifically, things that you have to look at and say “why would anyone like this/why post this?”. I'm far from thinking social media should be a competition of likes and that you need to make everything competitive, but when it's overlaid with a popular song in particular obviously to boost attention, I'm just kind of lost. Like, you posted what could be forgiven by the outsider for being 'my camera went off at a completely random point or I accidentally hopped on facetime or this is B-roll for an experimental mockumentary of the everyman'.
People should be allowed to express themselves, but the need to post absolutely everything on social media or otherwise farm engagement with what seems to be a child's idea of 'influencer' content honestly annoys me. It shouldn't, but it does.
Since Frank Ocean has stopped posting music, there's been a litany of leaks. Every new song, people will scramble to find copies, usually because the old ones get taken down. There's an entire strata of content that is “here is the song you're looking for but I've added my own vocals or it's a vlog with constant talking making it obviously not about the music”. One I saw for 'These Days' was titled after the song alone, and was footage of this dude who literally did nothing aside from pet his cat twice, go outside for a total of 30 seconds, and every 5 seconds was a shot of him adjusting his hair. The audio had random dips. Nothing was said. And I'm just like 'honestly who the fuck cares about you adjusting your fringe, what is the point of this vlog. I could not tell the difference after you put you hand through it like 5 times.'
Or on SoundCloud, rappers started uploading These Days but it was an 'edit' by or 'featured' the rappers on questions, usually adding a shitty vocal line on the top of the original song.
I guess the thing that stumps me about this particular phenomenon is, people are trying to elevate their brand or get exposure off work that is completely someone else's, and are trying to foster an audience by attracting one that doesn't (and shouldn't) give a shit about them. Like, if I was on SoundCloud and wanted exposure so I posted a leak, yeah, I'd get crazy numbers on that track, but at the end of the day, they were listening to it because of nothing that I was doing, and I doubt it would bring attention to things that are actually mine, so why bother? I couldn't imagine a more hollow feeling. The answer is money, but to get to that point would be in defiance of what art is all about, the expression of the self.
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Similar vein, I've always had a fascination with the fracturing of audiences of online content. Like, say you create a video that blows up. It wasn't meant to be a series, it's just a thing you did. You suddenly have a massive audience for something you made, but it might not be the thing you want people to notice you for. Do you A - try and capitalise on this lightning in a bottle and create more/rehash content in that style, or do you B - try to migrate your audience to this other form of content. Do you do a combination of both? How do you deal with this newfound fame?
It's really interesting the different ways creators deal with this, and how universally it almost never works out. The creators that try to replicate their success again and again usually suffer burnout and see their numbers decrease over time. The creators who try to persuade their audience to check out their other work usually do so heavy handedly in a way that comes across as naive or bitter. Like their understanding of their audience is that it can be easily manipulated (in the purest sense of the word), that this engagement will be transferable to new ventures purely because the audience will recognise their face and tag along, or that they feel upset that what they might've worked their whole lives towards and their passion, is being passed up for a comparatively throw-away gag, and that people keep wanting them to 'say the line' so to speak, instead of be themselves. I feel like I'd rather be cynical, at least then I'm not naive or foolish.
Off the top of my head, I think Joji is probably one of the few to master it. Dude is bigger than he ever was when he was doing comedy as Filthy Frank. Dude was doing work as Joji as early as 2013 under the radar and garnered a deeply loyal if not niche fanbase (one I gladly consider myself part of, shoutout Chloe Burbank), and made a transition so great that his music has overshadowed any of his original work. And good for him. But I think his success story is vastly out-shadowed by the mountains of other creators that have fallen to the wayside. A truly enviable position.
As a teenager I had this compulsion to follow all associated ventures to the channels I watched on YouTube. A music promotional channel started a vlogging channel? I'd follow it. A personality started a gaming channel? Sure. Over time, I found myself clicking off a lot of these videos and channels just because I didn't care at the end of the day. I liked Alex Rainbird when he was posting music, not when his girlfriend took a camera into their everyday lives. I'm fully part of the problem.
What I feel like many don't understand about online fame is that it mostly happens one of two ways, even if they share a lot of traits. You either have a moment that comes and goes, a 5 minutes of fame, or you have a dedicated audience that you cultivate over a long time. We like to think of these as mutually exclusive, but the truth is they're not. A lot of people have gained a career off a smaller bit of fame. The difference is, those who keep their fame usually do so because they have a strong enough personality when their regular output is different from their viral moment, or because the content they make is in line with what that moment was about. Donald Glover keeps his acting relatively separate from his music, but is able to create a career doing both because he has that strong personality, and either section of his career could easily stand on his own. He just so happens to do music AND acting, and happens to be (in my opinion) very good in both. I think principally, the multi-disciplinary types understand that each new venture is a new beginning for their art with new challenges and progression, much like how being good at Tennis didn't make Nick Kyrgios good at soccer, nor Leffen good at Tekken.