micro trend final boss
s02e04
The newsletter lives! Hello and welcome back to aridotcom…
table of content
+ election recap
+ micro trend final boss
+ slops as a reward for reading allat
election recap
I wanted to hold this until after the election so we’d have some tea to get into, but now I fear that once-piping beverage has gone stagnant. I’ll proceed regardless. I think the biggest takeaway from Labor’s victory is that the Murdoch empire and its misshapen gaggle of freaks has fallen. It’s been a long time coming… In 2023 News Corporation recorded a 75 per cent drop in profit, per the slug of this Guardian article, which reads: “Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has recorded a steep 75% drop in full-year profit but sees opportunities ahead as it expands the use of cost-saving AI-”. It cuts off there in an ugly cliffhanger but I’d assume whatever cost-saving AI they were modelling hasn’t gone so well. I’d also warrant that not even the biggest colony lapdogs of the land would have been keen to lick Dutton’s big egg.
Overall, the Australian public has proved themselves smarter, more discerning and less racist than News Corp’s slop-a-ganda circus took them for. And, incredibly centrist. Refreshing, when the past few years has seen a large majority of our OECD peers elect far-right conservative governments.
But the epic Greens losses were a shock. Maybe more people watch FriendlyJordies than I’d thought. Speaking with people on the ground in the lead-up to the election, I’d heard a lot of “I think it’s time for a change” which, coming from under-30s, could be very foreboding or very hopeful, depending on your disposition. I also heard a lot of “I’ll vote how my parents voted” which I took to mean Liberal but I’ll never admit it you cunt but after the results I’ll have to concede that maybe, just maybe, even multiple-investment-property-holding-gen-Xers aren’t that evil. As we know, this is the first election baby boomers were outnumbered by gen Z and millennials at the ballots, and all the boomers are… dead!?
micro trend final boss
Australian Fashion Week has come to an end. And what a mess it’s been. In short: The influencers have stood up for themselves and, along with everyone with an iPhone and two cents to throw in the TikTok pen, are coming for shock jock youth media… Outside of Carriageworks, in defiance of COMMERCIALITY, the verve, intrigue and diversity you were looking for was at Alvi Chung’s WINGS Fashion Festival … And inside the function? They’re coming for Sydney’s darling via vertical video … no plus size models?* … reports of not a single acknowledgement of country in-show … but now I’m second-guessing whether there… ever… were?
Messy. There were signs… In November the event’s host of 20 years, IMG Fashion Events & Properties, announced it would close its fashion division, leaving AFW with a stewardship vacuum six months to presentation. The Australian Fashion Council took helm, secured “Shark Beauty” as the event’s primary sponsor, and a sweep of Australia’s finest emerging designers – many of them known for transgressive, anti-fashion work – gave it a miss. Student presentations were rejected. Absent from this year’s ballot were labels heralded just under a year ago as the new vanguard of Australian fashion: Wackie Ju, SPEED and The Injury.
This year, influencers had to be approved “delegates” to attend and shows were invite-only, which essentially closed the function to the general public, and the usual mild hunger for content devolved into a feeding frenzy over the scraps, and by scraps I mean slop. This year, criticisms were not hailed upon the influencers paid thousands of dollars to be there, but on the media’s feverish desperation for views. You know, I’m shocked. I thought we’d have at least another year of questions that boil down to “do you piss in the shower” to suffice for dauntless cultural reporting.
The target of furore over what little content was scraped together in a remarkably quiet AFW was a since-deleted TikTok from Pedestrian TV where influencers were asked to name their community’s “micro trend final boss”. I don’t know which Pedestrian TV employee made the video, and I’m very sorry to say this, especially if you’re one of my former colleagues, but my god**. Other than an abysmal attempt to bait people into a trap so obvious the collective response was an awkward giggle and “we can’t answer that”, the question itself was so mind-numbingly stupid it actually managed to start a conversation… about how youth media is awful.
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It’s not the reporter’s fault. As someone who works in this space, your job is to drive views, and the best way to do that is to provoke, whether it be a revelation or a hot take. There is, however, a way to go about it, which to be honest is beyond the scope of a $55k salary. In the olden times [last year] a question like “how much money were you paid to be here” actually worked and influencers were surprisingly candid about it. I’m sure many regretted their honesty, but when you’re being paid thousands to watch and the people working behind the scenes are paid in “experience”, we gotta talk about it.
But this… this “micro trend final boss”
The question is rude. But worse, it’s boring. So is “what’s your most expensive item of clothing” or “what’s the most money you’ve turned down”. And here it might be interesting to question: What is the vertical video producer’s purpose at these events?
In a TikTok, Sophadopha, an influencer with 1.7 million followers and the rumoured “micro trend final boss” in the room with us right now, lamented on the media’s inability to ask “positive questions”. She offered examples: who is your favourite emerging designer or which show are you most excited to see. Unfortunately, for a publication like PTV, or anyone else trying to get a quick hit, those are bad questions. The answers will be boring, and online audiences do not care. And PTV, famously not a fashion magazine, does not care.
Even at an esteemed fashion event, low-hanging content like vox pops relies not on the fascinating insights to the fashion industry offered by people whose mortgage is being paid off by Motel Rocks partnerships, but on triggering them into saying something scandalous, embarrassing, or real.
PTV’s sole purpose at AFW was to trigger relatively famous people into saying something stupid to get views on social media. Content farming doesn’t even do it justice – Carriageworks is a zoo. And we all get to tap on the glass at these young women while they figure out whether they have more or less to lose from being “authentic”.
I think, to an extent, public figures do have a responsibility to speak with media. The extent is a line, and that line is that there is an onus on the publication to ensure that it’s in the public interest, like this is literally journalism 101. Is it timely? Is there a fresh angle? Will it make your audience hate you? Who cares? There comes a time when we need to ask whether there actually is any value in what we’re doing, and if there isn’t [maybe if the words “micro” “trend” “boss” pop up], why be there?
PTV wasn’t the only major publication searching for a reason to be there, ABC Sydney tried an explainer angle, “why is Fashion Week different this year”, and the Daily Telegraph were… there. This TikTokking swarm outside AFW seems to have produced an amnesia among viewers [myself included] about the whole purpose of attending AFW – supporting fashion and getting a street style photo. It is supposed to be an industry event.
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A designer who has showed at previous AFWs said the institution had a long way to go to encourage and support emerging designers, many of whom don’t have a spare $50k necessary to put on a presentation for literally no money. They also said it was funny sitting second row this year, behind all of the influencers. I think a lot of people wish that the people paid to be at AFW were designers, or makers of some kind, even friends of designers or people in the scene and not just people with a following who know their way a brand deal. And maybe if any of the delegates made their own clothes, or even dressed in clothes they already owned then maybe, just maybe the fits wouldn’t be so hideo– OOP. I’ll leave you here with a quote from jpegmafiaupdates: “y’all are ugly. your fashion is so ugly. your fashion is soulless. your fashion has no soul and no fucking heart. you can tell when someone’s fashion is performative. you can tell when someone’s fit is completely disingenuous to who they are as a person … you will never be fashion … you are not the feeder. you are the one that is being fed. YOU ARE AT THE END OF THE PRODUCTION LINE”.
*I can’t speak for the absence of plus-size models across the entirety of AFW, but Nicol and Ford did not disappoint. Yet again the bar, the standard, the blueprint for Australian Fashion. Each look is custom-built to each body. All bodies. A dizzying array. If one singular show has plus-sized models, that is fucked up. But if one singular show has plus-sized models, it’s Nicol and Ford.
**I am aware that I spent 2.5 years asking stupid questions for vox pops but the only evil one I ever did was when I asked old people whether they felt guilty for climate change and while that may have been an ageist premise I can promise you not a single person was uncomfortable they loved it and that’s because vox popping is an art. And I’m a cancer moon.
slops as a reward for reading allat
that’s quite enough thank you!
thanks for reading aridotcom. i’m out of practice and i might need an editor but i’ve just remembered i love writing. and i love clout. and i love you ! thank you thank you … smash that like button if you enjoyed this! kisses
The sentence “And we all get to tap on the glass at these young women while they figure out whether they have more or less to lose from being “authentic”” really stuck with me!!! Love it - a great commentary on the social media landscape as a whole I think 🤔
u are goat fr <3