Flex and Frooms, Flex and Frooms. This is the Flex and Frooms catch up podcast.
We've got a main character epidemic. And I know what you're thinking. This is a new thing. People are just coming into themselves. Let people feel confident. Know it's worse than that. It's been an issue since twenty seventeen. I didn't realize that there was a study that came out Viacom, they own MTV and stuff. Anyway, they did this study and over fifty percent of the millennials that they surveyed believe that a movie could be made about their life.
Oh dear, oh dear.
And you might think that's kind of like it holds no bearing or it's not that strange, but like, the average person lives quite a mundane life, even if you get near on the weekend and you've been to Europe a couple of times in your life. We create movies about exceptional people, and even the most exceptional people in the whole wide world will never have mo who's made
about them and you. But it gets worse, right, I don't know if it gets worse or better, But it's really interesting that when this article was made, they were tying this like shift in self concept of the rise in instagram about getting being able to self publish so frequently and so heavily, and to be able to curate and edit your persona so specifically gave people this kind of like internal director, as in, instead of living life more intentionally, it gave people this feeling that they were
living an exceptional life by being able to choose how when people saw them fascinating anyway. Some of the other findings were that sixty one percent of millennials believe they can influence pop culture.
In me Lousiza. These stats are crazy.
Eighty six percent of millennials believe that fans have some ownership of the things they're fans of. Terrifying but also very indicative of the way people like behave with things that they like and appreciate. I'm sure the majority of Taylorswood fans would feel like they're somewhat responsible for her level of success.
Definitely, which like is that true?
If you had to remove one thing from Taylor Swift, like her voice, her looks, her fans, her law, what could she live without her looks? Taylor stood would always be Tailor Swift without fans. Oh the thing that got her fans, is her law, her looks, her personality, her music, Hi lyricism, I think she came.
First firstly is her lyricism? This wasn't in order?
Oh she's Shakespeare. This is say, becoming a Shakespeare.
And I would love to see how these findings have evolved, for like the life we live now, because there is no way a millennial in twenty seventeen could have even imagined the life they'd be living in twenty twenty three post the internet.
The Internet was around in twenty seventeen.
Yeah, but post this internet, Oh okay, TikTok is a different kind of internet.
We jumped timelines.
Can you just explain to me or explain to the audience, what is this jumping to TikTok? What about TikTok is different compared to the Internet that we had in twenty seventeen.
The Internet we had in twenty seventeen was the first wave of TikTok. It showed you that regular people could achieve some kind of celebrity for a little while. There, they were seen as being exceptional because they could do so right. In twenty seventeen, influencers were seen as exceptional because how are you amassing this much popularity and this much allure, you're just a regular person. And what ended up happening was that influencers had to start living exceptional
lives for it to be justified. So you weren't just pretty. You had to be the prettiest, or you weren't just well if you had to be the most well off, or the most connected or the most clouded up. Right, But it was still a very small percentage of people. Not everyone could do it. The price of admission to that lifestyle was a lot you had to pay to play. People couldn't afford it. Then you fast forward almost ten years later or like, I don't know, five years later.
Now literally every single person can experience a level of fame and virality and clout from TikTok. We're not prepared for a world where everyone can be a celebrity and everyone can be a main character. If we think about the fundamentals of movies, the fundamentals of literature, the fundamental media, there's always a protagonist, main person.
And a love story.
Yes, I realized that's why I didn't like Barbie just came to me in a flash.
Yeah, no love story.
I was always like, what are you guys gonna they never did?
Kid?
Can I say? Yeah? Of course.
I think that The Rise, which is kind of on the same timeline as like twenty seventeen Dan Data was mumblecore movies and like hyperreally sick TV programs because art imitates the life.
Yes, the Rise of the Normal mm which was just like I think it's like, I don't think it's the worst thing to happen to media, but I don't think it's good that we can't discern between what is real and what's fake, and that we can't separate ourselves from fiction, and that we see these like constrived and constructed narratives and we're like, wait, that's me.
I chew them like that.
It's like good Ever, anyone thinks their favorite celebrity is relatable.
It's to you, it's not possible.
I feel like Instagram was the first wave, TikTok is the second wave, and we're seeing the issue with that because people can't discern between what voices are worth listening to, what information is worth hearing. I how to discern between people who are thought leaders and who are trustworthing people who aren't. But also when everybody is aiming to create. We forget the role of the consumer. You know, the consumer holds a lot of merit. You get decide what's important,
what's not important, what's worthy watching. But now everyone's just fighting for any type of eyeball. I don't think it's
inherently bad. I just think that, like where to from here, I think if people thought that Hollywood and fame was gate kept before, it's gonna be worse now because even yeah, because I think that right now people are going to be like poisoned or like led astray by this fake exceptional It's like when regular people are taking up exceptional places, exceptional people are gonna become more and more rare, and
then things become more gate kept. Like it's not going I feel like, right now it's enough to just be it's enough to be mediocre, and it gets to a point where it's like, no, it's not enough to be mediocre, babe, like we should be better. For example, right the one thing that's trending on the internet is this MPC streamer thinky she just makes noises all day and here she'd be like, look ice cream ice cream, delicious, delicious ice cream, ice cream, Wow, wow ice cream and she's making bank.
What is this and like she's really good at it, Like it's.
Hardway MPC is the platform, or she's non that's like that's the archetype of what she's doing.
Like she's not being herself, she's being just like this shamaugas board of characters.
Okay, she needs a joke or it's fetish content.
Really she's a sex worker, so she's got like a pipeline to take her audience down to. So like people are seeing that, they think it's sexy, they go to her only fans, they subscribe. It makes sense right right, and she's making bank from that. She goes viral. Now a bunch of people are trying to imitate what she's doing and doing it poorly, hoping for their moment of fame.
So like it's like this exceptional person starts this thing exceptional, not in the sense that what she's doing is amazing, but how she's doing it, the fact that she can make money from it is exceptional. Everybody following it in a mediocre sense it ruins the exceptional thing, and then people get disillusioned. Why couldn't it be me? He was never gonna be you.
I don't know, I was just so interested to see.
Like, what what happens after fame, what happens after celebrity, what happens after exceptional because people don't like normal, and people aren't aspiring to be the best regular people they are, They're aspiring to be mediocre exceptional.
I think we are renaissance of the normalcy along with the renaissance of community and religion.
Yeah, it's coming.
It's like, what was that guy saying that futurist He's like in the eighties, he did this whole monologue. He's like, the world is on track to get exponentially weirder in a way that you could never imagine. And he's like, it's going to be really really hard for everyone to get back to get back to default, because it's like you're gonna have to reprogram, rebuild and redoctrinate everyone to figure out what is neutral Hammond Tale.
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