And BOOM...all I talk about is MySpace
Simulacra marketing, mystical celeb merch, online <> offline identity 🔮
Hope everyone is having a lovely unofficial start to the summer! Bucket list activities are already in full swing: dined dockside, went mini golfing, went to a new winery, and started recording on the vintage camcorder. I became a new person physically, mentally, and spiritually after sleeping under a blanket in a salt cave. Shoutout to my mom for taking me to see Crossroads in theaters when I was 11 and for doing fun activities with me at 34.
In this issue:
🍒 Catch up on Nicstalgia; Tiger Beat Theory; I Saw the TV Computer Glow and online <> offline identity
🛍 Simulacra marketing; celebrity tarot cards, guided meditations, conversation cards, and coloring books; Pinterest summer trends; the [Prada] man worth fighting over
📲 My piece for Take Up Space zine on AI, the beauty industrial complex, and aesthetic labor; nostalgic holograms; “bring back bandage dresses”, Corbin Bleu Double Dutch
ICYMI, last week’s issue included the latest Nicstalgia episode, a specific section dedicated to Lindsay Lohan, my Challengers review, and much more.
Support Nicstalgia with a paid subscription for less than this epic ruched Prada bag. Who knew this tiny little guy has such a storied legacy?
Huge thank you to Nicstalgia supporters who I will love forever: Janine, Marie, Liv, Mitra, CY, and Aleena! 💐💐💐
🍒 Catch up on Nicstalgia
In case you missed it, a wonderful new episode of Nicstalgia with
came out! It’s the first one filmed IRL too! Are we done talking about how much we love Lindsay Lohan? Is that it? No, there’s more!
Dilettante Army’s recent Tiger Beat Theory issue features a fascinating article by Katherine Fusco. Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon on the problematic fixation on Lindsay Lohan’s transition from child star to sexualized teenager and what is culturally expected from girl stars. It also draws super interesting parallels between Lohan and her early predecessor, Shirley Temple. (Also from this publication – The lovely Maya Man’s piece, Cut and Paste: Teen Magazines and the Collaged Self is excellent!! A must-read!)
Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance worked at the Hot Topic at the Willowbrook Mall in New Jersey. Turns out, a lot of musicians have!
Adryan wrote an insightful piece on how Jane Schoenbrun’s works speak to their experience growing up online as an unhatched trans, nonbinary teen. Appreciative to Adryan for the shoutout below!!! 🫶
“It's an honor to be on the show because my friendship with Nicole reflects the work I'm doing on my newsletter: commenting on pop culture of then and now as well as building online connections along the way. For my memoir project, I've been revisiting my time roleplaying on Xanga. I found Nicole last fall while researching for my memoir project. I was curious of who was still talking about Xanga on YouTube, which lead me to her episode, My Fav Internet Era: AIM, Xanga, Myspace.”
One question that I asked Adryan on the show is if they felt like they had to initially “pretend” to be someone else online vs. showing up authentically as themself. While Adryan hasn’t pretended in the sense of cat fishing or deliberately posing as someone else, they were involved in high school roleplaying on Xanga. In this fictitious online world, Adryan could pursue the connection and friendship they desired in real life. They could express themselves authentically through their character, but otherwise hid their authentic self from peers, family, and everyone else offline.
This got me thinking about the convergence, integration, and divergence of our digital and physical identities with each iteration of the internet. How has the way we represent ourselves online and offline changed?
Web 1.0: The World Wide Web of the late nineties and early 2000s
We started “going online” as a time-constrained activity separate from the rest of our daily lives. We assumed screen names as a marker of a separate, online-exclusive identity. I was dancerbaybee4273 on AIM, signaling that I was a dancer and also a baybee. (Not to be confused with baby, babi, or babii <3) No one called each other by their screen names the way that people with a notable presence online may be referred to as their handle now. E-commerce had not yet reached mainstream adoption; people were hesitant about sharing their real life info (notably, their credit card number or SSN) online. Personal websites and blogs existed, but also didn’t yet gain traction until the mid 2000s with Xanga, LiveJournal, etc.
Web 2.0: Social Media of the mid 2000s to mid 2010s
The mass adoption of smartphones allowed inhabitation of the online world to become the status quo. We didn’t “go online” anymore, we never left. I personally love this era (MySpace, early to peak Facebook, very early chronological Instagram before Stories), because it was the last time people were on social media without being too self-conscious. Bloggers had monetized their work and commodified themselves, but the status quo was not (yet) that every single person had to have some semblance of a personal brand online. People’s primary motivation was connection, whether with friends or even with strangers.
This was the era of not using your real name on Facebook because you could get in trouble if beer cans were in the background (not blurred out lmao) in the 40-something pics you uploaded to a Facebook album on a college night out. This was (arguably) the last time that your IRL reputation was more important than your URL presence. There were real-life implications for your online actions, whereas now, people face repercussions just as powerful for their actions online (getting ‘canceled’, losing followers, losing brand deals, ostracizing audience members, etc.).
Web 2.0: Influencer culture of the mid 2010s to late 2010s
I call this time Influencer Culture 1.0, so basically when the IG algorithm was still good and people were still mesmerized by “highlight reels”. It’s all so icky to me. So much posturing. So much oversharing under the guise of “authenticity”. So much performative activism. So much desperation and relentless thirst for external validation. (Not saying I wasn’t a part of this.) During this time, we weren’t simply being ourselves online, we were “being” our “authentic” selves online in a highly curated, self-conscious, “do it for the ‘gram” kind of way. People’s primary motivation was attention. Bleak!
Web 2.0: Post-authenticity influencer culture of the early 2020s to present
2020 changed literally everything, but for millennials, experiencing The Chasm™ meant there was a new (digitally-native) generation on the internet. New memes. New slang. New ways of creating, distributing, and accessing information. TikTok challenged every picture-perfect, staged, contrived Instagram convention for the sake of a new kind of lo-fi production quality and messy authenticity. Due to TikTok’s algorithm making users go mega-viral in a way that IG never could, lots of super random people got internet famous overnight. This made fame – something our society greatly values and equates with morality – seemingly democratized.
We started to see that with the hyper-acceleration of trends (paintball theory!), a relentless 24/7 news cycle, the e-shittification of the internet, late stage capitalism’s enablement of overconsumption (i.e. fast fashion), ~being online~ as humanity’s now-natural stasis, waning post-pandemic physical & social connection, and the normalization of the attention economy, people’s primary motivation became novelty. We lost ourselves to the endless scroll. So what’s next? We don’t have time for that today… 😇 But despite it all, I feel more like myself than I ever have – the same person online & offline, as one integrated whole rather than competing halves.
🛍 Hit ‘em up style
This week in culture and commerce:
Although I don’t like giving brands/people I find problematic too much air time, Alexander Wang’s newest campaign makes perfect sense for the cultural present. This is what I’m calling simulacrum marketing. (The purple ketchup from the early 2000s is my favorite example; it in no way bears resemblance to the basic reality of what ketchup is – a tomato.) But now people, rather than products, are what has been commodified. We’re in a post-truth, post-authenticity, post-STOP BEING POOR internet culture, where the order of media fidelity has been disrupted and Everything is Default Fake. “To advertise the rerelease of Alexander Wang’s 2010s it-bag — the studded Rocco, now reborn as the Ricco — the brand hired doppelgängers of Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Kylie Jenner, and Ariana Grande to show off the “100% certified authentic” handbag.” The irony of advertising a so-called authentic handbag with imitation spokespeople is not lost on me. These content creators aren’t quite impressionists or impersonators, though they intentionally model their likeliness to resemble an A-list celebrity for views, likes, clicks, attention, and apparently brand deals they can monetize. I suppose AW didn’t have the budget to hire the actual celebrities, so he instead put the bag in the hands of creators whose image represents the status and influence of the celebrities. I don’t like where this is going…
My beloved celebrity doppelgänger, Christina Ricci, is releasing Cat Full of Spiders Tarot Deck and Guidebook this September. So sick. It’s “a surrealist dive into the cinematic subconscious of the iconic actress,” and the never-before-seen, custom artwork is based on movie characters she’s played. Ricci always goes for quirky, offbeat, dark, edgy roles – very Aquarian – so this venture into the mystical and esoteric is a super interesting and aligned opportunity.
Speaking of mystical alignment, Jewel has released “The Portal,” a 10-minute meditative track infused with affirmations. “The song is the soundtrack to Jewel’s 200-piece choreographed drone sky story currently at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art.” Like only the folk singer from Alaska turned meta-ironic satirist of postmodern consumerism turned metaverse explorer that is Jewel can do this and actually have it make sense. (You already know she’s one of my favorite cultural research subjects!) In addition to The Portal, she’s released supplementary Conversation Cards as well as a coloring book inspired by her album Pieces of You. This is the kind of merch I wanna see! Now if only Britney Spears would let me redo her branding, email marketing campaigns, and merch offerings…
Pinterest’s Summer 2024 Trend Report is here! I love trend reports because I don’t take them too seriously. (A lot of people do.) I have always had a very specific personal taste. I know what I like! Plus I recognize that my generation is no longer the focal point of youth culture and is therefore not the driving force behind what is ‘trending’. But looking at the list…Y3K retro future fashion, eclectic jewelry, Italian makeup, dopamine decor, eclectic vintage??? Are…they…following…me??
I’m extremely invested in this story about
nearly ruining a friendship for the sake of acquiring her dream Prada bag. I wouldn’t fight over any man except this one.
📲 I’m just a simple girl in a high-tech digital world
My fav things from the internet rn:
Take Up Space is a creator collective building culture through media and community experiences. I’m really grateful to have been a contributing writer for their inaugural zine exploring the Technology of Togetherness. I wrote about AI, the beauty industrial complex, and aesthetic labor, exploring how emerging tech will impact self perception and the investment of time, money, and resources to meet evolving standards of beauty.
I think a lot about nostalgia and memory, how we relate to both vintage and retro physical objects, and how we respond to the sight or recollection of an object we no longer possess. Was fascinated by this artist’s recent school project, where they made holograms of their childhood memories. What would you make a hologram of?
A video came up on my Instagram feed of an extremely conventionally attractive girl who runs a “Y2K vintage” Depop shop advocating to “bring back bandage dresses”. She’s wearing stupid little stilettos à la Charlotte Russe ones that could survive an apocalypse. A slowed version of “Stereo Love”, a song that deeply defined my college experience, plays in the background. Millennial culture is a costume. A lot of people who have experienced The Chasm™ are upset by this, but I’m entertained. BRING BACK BANDAGE DRESSES! Where would I wear them? Not sure. But let’s do it.
Actor Corbin Bleu was seen jumping Double Dutch in New York City for the first time since appearing in the 2007 Disney Channel Original Movie, Jump In! He’s in Little Shop of Horrors on Broadway now, good for him!!
🦋 Social butterfly
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