unbillable hours: volume 2
a confusing tiktok i can't stop thinking about, internet generation wars, finding myself through a meme format
This is the second installation of a casual series where I share what media has been impacting what I’m thinking about and writing about this week. You can probably see how these influences shape what I write down. More importantly, I might influence you into finding something you find interesting, too.
I just got back from the kind of vacation in which you do nothing, learn nothing, and simply vibe. I returned home last night head-empty and peaceful. As of today, I am once again voraciously indulging on snacky tidbits that make the slow, boring apocalypse a little more bearable! And it WILL be snacky. The next 2 pieces I publish will be long and serious and important to me. So until then, have some air puffed low-fat popcorn.
It’s been almost a month since I first saw this video and I have thought about it every day since:
I didn’t think I would rewatch this. It’s just a silly woman answering a silly street interviewer’s silly question. But I kind of think she’s god. She showed up in my dream the other night. She’s everything. I’m landing on a theory for why I am obsessed with her beyond measure. I hate this genre of video. Boring, useless men without a sliver of personality trying to get micro-influencer famous by attempting to poach interesting intoxicated women into saying something funny or shocking. Their demeanor is reminiscent of Kids Say The Darndest Things (warning if you look that up, Bill Cosby jump scare). Men standing around lightly poking fun, infantilizing women, drawing out the stupid thing they might say one leading question at a time. Why do we tolerate this? If you’re a man who has done social media street interviews you should have to disclose that on your driver’s license between their address and organ donor status. We cannot put up with this as a society.
It’s really important to me that she has a nondescript accent and that her sentences do not fully make sense and that she is nonverbally communicating like a person who has spent her entire life alone in a dark cave until one minute ago. No one could confidently get in the comments section and assert she’s drunk or on coke or something. Of course she is not. This woman is in full, sober control of her spaceship time machine. It’s important that she doesn’t make the hint of a lick of sense. No, sir. You will not get a cute sexy silly sound bite. She is breaking genres. She is flipping the paradigm on its head. She is queering 1800s. I can’t stop thinking about her. I’ll let you know if I come up with any further insights.
2.Are you sure you're not guilty of the millennial pause? By Kate Lindsey
Apparently, one of the things that give us away as olds on the internet is the half-second we wait to start talking once the video is recording. We only know this because teens make parody videos about the “millennial pause”. Lindsey speaks to the phenomenon of millennials “aging out” of the internet, meaning the first generation that grew up on the internet is no longer influential or relevant to its culture. It’s one of those things you’ve never thought of before, but now that you’ve heard it, your memory backfills with countless examples. I am thrilled that a mirror is held up to me by surprise. I revel in the narcissistic wonder, and then I try to crack the code. Is it that our phones used to be less good? No, maybe it’s cause we didn’t use to have front-facing cameras so we would always have to turn the phone around. I saw someone posit that it’s because when Snapchat first came out, it had a bug that cut out the first milliseconds of a video. It was annoying to have to start over, so we would give it a second to warm up.
I find myself wondering how consumer media will reckon with this shift. Millennials had (and have) less wealth than older generations, so media wanting to look cool and young in an aspirational way would have had to balance millennial aesthetics while targeting gen x and baby boomer demographics. But it’s even starker now that the generation who influences culture most couldn’t dream of buying homes or having children (even if they were willing to raise them through the water wars.) Will graphic design trends, for example, stagnate to cling to the favor of those in the age brackets with actual buying power? Could youth culture lose its grip on the zeitgeist? Will the internet just keep looking the way it does now, forever? I hope not. Even if young people can’t afford healthcare or education or whatever, I hope they at least can keep our websites looking fresh.
3.This meme format
The meme format/image of the bored woman staring ahead while a man talks into her ear about some ridiculous man thing like DMT or crypto doggies is a classic for a reason. But while I identified with the sentiment, I remained never fully seen. Because I actually have never shut up in my whole life. I am the instigator. This image reminds me who I am. I’ve never seen myself depicted like this. I didn’t know I was like this until I saw it. This meme format was truly born for me. I love to corner a guy and ramble about solstices or elaborate on a spur-of-the-moment thesis statement.
Some of the topics I have spoken to while looking exactly like this:
tax increment financing
niche vs indie vs designer fragrance
how I hate Colorado
the Community Mental Health Act of 1963 was terrible
restaurant groups are doing real estate speculation
pork is gross
the evolution of eating disorder treatment
marvel is the death rattle of the monoculture
___ is today’s satanic panic
Chicago common brick
I’m really excited to share the series I’m writing about soon. I hope you have a good day.