This Must Be....Pop!

with Ana from This Must Be Pop 💥

Jan 05, 2023

HNY!! ✨ 2023 is off to a lovely start. I do a lot of New Year’s traditions (most inspired by Gretchen Rubin, i.e. a 23 for 2023 list, color of the year, and calendar of catalysts), and something was different this year. I have a sense of calm that I have really not felt…like, ever. No striving for goals, no pulling through by the skin of my teeth, no chasing people/places/things, no identity crisis. This is growth!!

The grand majority of you reading this letter have insight on my journey, from corporate side hustler to full-time entrepreneur and creator. I’ve been super transparent about the hustle and struggle (before this newsletter was published publicly, at least), and my sentiment can best be described in the timeless words of Justin Timberlake: “Man, I’m tired of singing.” I’m ready for the (figurative and literal) dance break!! So I’ve started working full-time at a small company at the intersection of pop culture and tech (YAY!!) and am continuing my part-time work in DAOs.

For me, solopreneurship was incredibly lonely and isolating. (Going solo full-time in March 2020 didn’t help the cause.) Incessant content creation also kinda ran me into the ground. What I learned is that 1. There is such a thing is too much freedom; I need day-to-day structure. 2. It is SO much harder, physically and mentally, to do literally everything alone. I’ve entered 2023 with an optimistic outlook and am looking forward to contributing to creative projects, whatever that looks like, with other people.

Moving forward, I’m likely going to decrease the cadence of Nicstalgia releases and will keep the newsletter at once a week. I really want it to be about quality > quantity here. (You have 42 episodes to catch up on in the meantime!!) Thank you thank you thank you for your email responses, DMs, texts, podcast reviews, Nicstalgic pictures you’ve sent me of yourself as a kid in the 90s-00s, and literally everything. Words of Affirmation is my love language lol. I appreciate you so much. Til next time. xx Nic

🍒 This Week on Nicstalgia

Ana from This Must Be Pop is featured on this week's episode of Nicstalgia. We discuss how the music of boy bands have been overlooked in music history, how This Must Be Pop was developed through a feminist lens, reframing the whole idea of what being a “fangirl” or “fanboy” means, and legitimizing the fandom space by not diminishing the viewpoint of primarily young girls and the LGBTQ+ community.

When it comes to boy bands, there are soooo many dichotomies to unpack!! We dive deep on the reconciliation of being rich (well, depending on who your management is) and famous vs. exploitation and rejecting a a superficial, manufactured, crafted image with stifled individuality.

Ana and I talk about BSB and *NSYNC musically, commercially, and how you can’t really compare them the way we did in the 90s-00s. We ponder important questions: Why can fandoms be resistant to change? What if Howie was in Menudo? What would have happened to JC Chasez’s solo career had he had the label support Justin did? Do we really need all of these reunions? What does the future of fandom look like?

Watch/listen: YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts • Website

🛼 Haven’t You Heard?!

My fav things from the internet rn:

Grateful to be included on my friend Tasafila’s list: 100+ Founders and Artists Share Their Vision for Building Something That Matters in 2023. My advice: What you’re building must resonate with who you are building it for. Zoom out from your own POV so what you create ultimately brings people together and makes them feel like a part of something. Fostering connection among others makes the greatest impact. ICYMI, catch Tasafila’s episode on Nicstalgia, Be Kind, R3WIND!

Very excited to have been a guest with the amazing Melissa Kristin on my friend Shaleena’s Everything 90s Podcast! Our episode was 90s vs. 2000s Fashion Trends, an extremely fun topic!!! (See, I’m still putting my fashion degree to good use…) ICYMI, catch Shaleena’s episode on Nicstalgia, We Met at Spice Girls Trivia!

I really love that you can find anything and everything nostalgic (and Nicstalgic?!) on Etsy. I wanted to show you the amazing Nicstalgia merch that my amazing sister Gina got me for Christmas. (Yes, she was on Nicstalgia too hehe – catch her episode, aptly named Sister, Sister!!)

📲 Digital, Digital, Get Down

2023 is here, and it is time to get your digital life together!! I do this throughout the year and it gives me so much peace of mind. Being organized and setting boundaries around technology and content consumption like, scientifically makes you happy. Happy people just don’t shoot their husbands…they just don’t.

📱 General Phone

• Schedule notifications. THIS HAS ALREADY CHANGED MY LIFE and gives me nostalgia for pre-smartphone times. I’m not ~always~ on my phone, but I was always checking notifications. Stopping what you’re doing to check notifications is such a waste of time, and it adds up throughout the day. I have 4 alerts a day: 8AM, 12PM, 4PM, and 8PM, where notifications for all social media appear at once. (My texts, calls, and emails are in real-time.) Go to Notifications then Scheduled Summary to choose the times and apps. Do not click the ‘Show Next Summary’ toggle, that kinda defeats the purpose.

• Turn off badges. I find badges (the little red number on an app) extremely annoying and unpleasant!!! I’m a inbox-zero girlie and feel secondhand embarrassment when I see someone’s phone that has 362,145 unread emails. There is one exception for this, and that is for work emails. I have 3 inboxes in one place and want to differentiate any potentially urgent vs. non-urgent emails. (The only badge I cannot control is my software update as evidenced in the screenshot below!)

• Go through pics. This is often a painstaking process, but it’s worth it.

• Go through notifications. Do you really need a notification turned on for every app? Turn off the ones you really don’t use.

• Reorganize apps and delete ones you don’t use. I have a million apps, so they’re arranged in folders.

• Change your phone background. I really like the one I have right now (I custom made it so it was reminiscent of an old Windows desktop lol very Nicstalgic), but usually I change it seasonally. May sound kinda silly, but your phone background should make you happy, smile, or laugh – you look at it enough.

💻 General Computer

• Go through pics stored locally on your computer and in the cloud (i.e. Google Photos). This can be brutal, but it feels so good when it’s done. I use folders meticulously, including one called ‘Reference’, so when I tell specific stories, I can reference a picture immediately.

• Go through your Google Drive (Docs, Sheets, Slides). Archive what you don’t need.

• Put anything important that you would not want to lose forever on a flash drive and an external hard drive. Do not pull a Carrie Bradshaw!

• Clean everything off your desktop. I find a million documents and icons on a desktop to be extremely overwhelming to the point where I am frozen in shock.

• Clean laptop under the case. I have a clear computer case, so it gets extremely gross when it is not cleaned. A quick dusting is all it needs.

• Go through email subscriptions. People always say, “I get so many emails”. Can’t relate!!! I only get emails I truly want to read and unsubscribe immediately to any that I don’t.

• Go through password document (or book). Deactivate any accounts you no longer use, and change any compromised passwords.

💖 Instagram

• Archive Instagram photos.

💙 Facebook

• Remove Facebook integrations. These are the apps that you’ve used Facebook to log into. I literally had like hundreds from up to 10 years ago. To remove, to go Settings, then Apps and Websites.
• Download Facebook albums and delete photos. There is now a one-click way to download your photos so you can delete the 143 blurry pictures you took on a digital camera at a high school party.

💜 Discord

• Turn off mobile notifications. Or mute notifications for channels that aren’t specifically work-related. 99% of these notifications aren’t time sensitive.

• Put Discord servers you don’t often access in a folder. Discord’s UI is cluttered enough. For servers you don’t access much but don’t want to leave, hold and drag the icon like you do on your phone to organize in a folder.

💿 Hey Mr. DJ, put a [playlist] on

Playlist of the week:
Of course Boy Bands is the playlist of the week!!! This is not at all comprehensive (it is mostly BSB and *NSYNC), but it brings out all the heavy hitters. ICYMI, especially if you’re a JC Chasez fan, make sure to catch this week’s episode of Nicstalgia with Ana from This Must Be Pop!

With that being said ⬆️

My Top 5 BSB songs:
1. The Call
2. I Want It That Way
3. Just Want You to Know
4. The One
5. Larger Than Life

My Top *NSYNC songs:
1. I’ll Never Stop
2. Tearin’ Up My Heart
3. It’s Gonna Be Me
4. Bye Bye Bye
5. I Want You Back

*NSYNC Celebrity gets its own category:
1. Pop
2. Tell Me, Tell Me…Baby
3. The Game Is Over
4. Just Don’t Tell Me That
5. Girlfriend

Nicstalgia