Flex and Frooms, Flex and Fromes. This is the Flex and Frooms catch up podcast. Hey guys, it's Flex and Frooms for another podcast. Hope you enjoy it. See you on the other side.
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What the frick, Lexie? We must keep the TikTok how do you call it? Analysis? Continuing? Because what's more annoying than tiktoks? Analyzing tiktoks? I feel like we don't have the language yet.
Do you know what's more annoying than analyzing tiktoks is explaining a TikTok?
Oh, I hate it, I hate it, don't make me do it. Well. One thing that I'm sure we both have seen is the gen Z shake. I think after the millennial pause, the millennials hit back and said, we can also pathologicize what you're doing, and so the gen Z shake was coineda oh, the camera shake. Yees, So when they're putting the phone down, I thought they were talking about this one where they put their hands in front of them.
It's the camera shake. So what gen Z have been known to do when they're posting content is to hit the record button and then stabilize their phone on a surface and shake it around, give the illusion of this is happening haphazardly in a moment, I'm not even thinking
about posting just an extension of what I do. Whereas millennials generally set themselves up, prepare themselves, click record, and then double check its recording so they can just then they can speak with certainty that it's their facts.
Well, this is an explainer straight from the belly the based.
With gen Z, a lot of their institutions crumbled around them. They no longer have the school institution that everyone else did, the job institution, the college institution, and as a result, it was even more amplified that they had to be perceived online as a way to kind of pay to play seriously, And I think because of that generational resentment, a way of rebelling against this is by approaching everything they do online in a kind of ironic way. Someone who's gen Z could go on to get a PhD
and become an open heart surgeon. If they were to post about it online, they would have to do it in a way that's like it was just a bit the joke was pulled off, and so the camera shake has really become an act of rebellion for gen Z. They could script out an entire video and put a lot of thought into it, but the camera shake is their last act of rebellion. I didn't plan to be perceived online. It's kind of an accident that I'm being
perceived online. Whereas I think the millennial pause has more to do with just the fact that millennials had snap stories and Instagram Stories when they first started filming themselves onlined. If anyone used any of those apps back then, there was a delay and when the video would start and when it would start recording audio, so you had to wait a few seconds to talk or else it wouldn't get your first few words.
An act of rebellion, she says.
When we did go on, we scowled, we scoffed.
Act of rebellion. We've got a woman shutting shutting off lines on the harp breach mean American.
People gluing themselves to tennis poles are scrumpted to surruct national events. But gen Z as a population after rebellion, is to shake the camera as they participate in everything that we participate in. Look, I get it. I love analysis generally, but it's very unhelpful for an everyday conversation.
I do think it is this dissonance with not wanting to be perceived as millennial, but also not wanting to be perceived generally, and how at one point in time people used to make fun of people who spoke to the camera in selfimode. It was maybe two three four years on the Internet where I was like, oh my goodness, you can think you're an influencer, you think you're cool,
and now it's the norm to do so. So it almost was I like, oh, no, I just happened to be here, and I guess I'm gonna post something, but like I wouldn't actually sit here, you know, you.
Get what I mean.
It's casual.
It all is as contrived as the next unfortunately, and the one thing I appreciate about the millennial Internet is that everything was contrived and hypercurated with intention. You knew what it was. People sat there in front of their cameras with sixteen lights, a little agenda of what they were going to say and why they were gonna say it, and the content ate it was consistent. The thing about the way that gen Z's or even this new style
of curating. It's relying on you and the observer to think that everything is natural, that everything came by coincidence haphazardly, and that's not the case. You can't keep that up. And that's also why there's this big dissonance of why TikTok creators don't translate in real life, because you can't fake this like, oh, I'm on the contrary, I know you're in the room with me currently, and you can't rely on a trending sound or a quip to get
the conversation across. You actually have to align yourself with social norms and the way that things aren't like naturally done, not in this like alternate land where you can speak in half sentences and memes.
I feel like a millennial Internet is a classical painting. Yeap gen Z is abstract, Yes, abstract, and they're just they're just in this rebellious period where you know, going up and doing a well thought out video is an art. As you say, let's not forget that, let's not forget it. Nissance beautiful. This is flex and frooms on kit.
If you're a land of flex and frooms, you would know that at one point we referenced TikTok every waking minute I landed this, I saw there's am and it's dropped off. Not for lack of trying. My TikTok screen time is higher than ever. But what I'm finding is that I have to keep scrolling much longer to get anything that tickles the spot. It used to tickle frequently. I just look at my phone in Giggle, save posts, last share, and now it feels like I don't know
if it's because everybody knows, no, that's not true. I don't know if it's because the majority of content creators on TikTok are trying to be famous or viral or well white, and so popular content gets replicated so quickly that everything starts looking and feeling same, samey, And then with every derivative post, it's less good than the last one I saw because it happened later. And also, you can't fake the feeling of experiencing something for the first time.
So maybe it's just like fatigue from app use. But as I was scrolling, I came across this theory that might be the answer as to why TikTok and most social media apps are getting shit.
Yes, you're not crazy. My fyp has also been totally jacked. I'm like seeing dancing teens on it, like it doesn't even know me anymore for whopage. But this creator really got to the bottom of it. They're putting the squeeze on us. I just like them, have seen my screen time go up as I'm chasing that good old FYP. I think that they did realize that they could get us to be on the app longer. It's harder to get the fix. Perhaps you've heard about the in shitification
of social media. This is the theory that these tech companies have this venture capital cycle where they're in this big growth phase and they don't suck at first. They get you hooked, but then slowly but surely, they get worse and worse. We knew TikTok would eventually take a turn. I don't know if it's right now or if they're just tweaking some stuff with the algorithm, but change is inevitable, and at least for me, I think I need to make the decision to divest my screen time a little bit.
I think we have to turn around and put the squeeze back on them, let them know that if they won't give up that FYP that we know they can deliver. We're not going to stick around. I mean, that's obviously the solution, but it's easier said than done, especially if you're going through something really hard and you really need that dissociation. I'm not sure what plans they really have coming down the pike, but this is one small way that I think we can help stave off the in shiitification.
When they said we're going to divest, I said, Nana, I'm going to say thank you. They're going through tough time, but I'm going to stick by them. Okay, divest. What do I just think what's happening? And what I've noticed is that because TikTok isn't ticking every box because it's flawed, I'm able to use Instagram with a lot more joy. It is a welcomed break because something about TikTok and scrolling up constantly is it fatigues me. I'm like, gosh,
I gotta work so hard to see something interesting. Whereas an Instagram story, because I'm not following anyone who's trying to make engage in content on the story, the amount of effort that's required for me to engage feels equal to the amount of effort or the quality of content I get in return. Little tap tap tap, I'm seeing a little outfit. I'm seeing a little barada, seeing a
dog that's chill. But on TikTok, because I'm used to chasing such a high, it feels like I'm laboring to get even a squeeze of what came so freely before.
How they get you.
It is how they get you.
And you've got nick watched, you know. I just go on TikTok to try and find the best little nuggets, and it takes hours.
It does.
I do it once a week and just let me let me tell you, I'm popp on my bussy.
It's a week.
You're good.
I know.
Flex and flex and firms FLEXI. We seem to often talk about pretty privilege and other matters of being hot, pretty and beautiful.
I mean from a lived experience, we have three interests ourselves, the things we like and the things we don't like.
Honestly, it's true. He is a TikTok by a cheek called Kira.
I think something is missing when we talk about pretty privileged, and I have a theory about what it is. I will be using Kimberly Finkel as an example. I think we think of pretty privilege as like a linear thing, but I actually think it's like multiple different categories, multi axis, and one of those axises is respectability or perceived respectability, and another access, probably has something to do with environment
and intention. What I'm saying is there's types of women that specifically men find respectable and don't find respectable, and that establishments and businesses find respectable and don't find respectable. A lot of these notions are racist. I hear blonde girls on this app say when they were blonde, they got way more attention, but the wrong kind of attention, And I think we know that comes from like the
stereotype of blondes being dumb, YadA YadA. Think about the girl in your life who is always in a long term relationship. Do you know what I'm saying. It's like it's like the mousey brunette, short brown hair, big eyes, small nose, unassuming. They people feel like they are the pinnacle of that intersection for whatever reason, do you know what I mean?
And shade no shade to.
These people like they're just I think it comes very natural to them, But do you kind of see what I'm saying. When people talk about I see a lot of videos of people saying pretty privileges actually working against me and like they feel that it's done more harm than good.
So from what I gather from that video, and I too, is someone who says a lot of words when I could say less words, I understand that that needed to be thirty seconds.
Yeah.
In summary, pretty privilege is not just hot person. Pretty privilege is someone who can be seen as quite average, but benefits from being seen as quite average because sometimes being too pretty is to the detriment of the pretty person. We got that same thing, yep, Okay, cool, we reckon, as Brookie was pointing during that video when they started rattling off some of the qualities.
Now see Brunette, etc. Yeah, do I think it's intellectualizing something that I guess it is that deep in a way.
It is that deep, do you know what?
So?
I think when I have been in my really insecure phases, especially we're pretty privilege has to be concerned. I always have not I always, but in those situations had this fear that the thing that I want is going to be lost to somebody. Plain interesting because it happens in some capacity. I'm like, oh, you know, you spend all this time trying to be pretty, be unique, be memorable, be whatever, And then you're like, oh, that was the
person that got what I wanted. And it's never you think to yourself, it doesn't really matter what you look like. But I'm like, no, that it definitely is an archetype of neutral, not in a bad way or a good way, but neutral that is more generically appealing than rare. But that's cointuitive to what you're taught to be like as a person. Be memorable, be different, be unique, be whatever.
Turns out that's polarizing, fully, and if you were just the most mousiest version of yourself, maybe you wouldn't feel really exciting. Maybe you wouldn't get people complimented you every day and stopping you on the street to say you're so beautiful. Happens all the time. It does to me, it does, but I'm still being picked in the same way the neutral person is being picked interesting.
So really having colored hair, for example, your pinks and your purples are losing out.
But that's if you want to be picked as well. Because you know, we had this conversation a little while ago, when we're talking about dating apps, and when I was on Hintre in particular, I was like, I don't want to be liked by everyone. It's flattering to be seen as appealing to everyone, but realistically I want someone to know why I'm appealing, to be like, oh no, I really like her for insert these reasons here. I like her mind, I like the way she looks, I like
what she thinks. Like this is really exciting to me. As opposed to being like I can project what I want onto this person, I'm viewing as neutral.
Totally, do you know what I mean? I feel like was a very dominant kind of like growing up that would get the most attention in high school and stuff were kind of like blank canvases, like the ones that really captured a lot of guys that I knew attention didn't really talk much.
Yeah, you know, which is odd because then you could know that maybe even consciously or subconsciously and still feel in your heart of hearts and your loins that to be more appealing is to add more.
Yeah you know.
And it's like, isn't it ironic that when we're younger, I remember when I was like, maybe eighteen, I was obsessed with like wearing so much foundation, eyelashes, like like a spank or whatever, things that would give people the illusion that I looked different. And then you get older and you're like, I don't really care to deviate too far from what I actually look like because it doesn't
actually matter. It's similar to that. It's not like you grow up to want to be a blank canvas, but you recognize that the additions aren't really adding or getting you the result that you think it's going to get you.
Oh, speak, do you know?
And it happens. I know right now, there's we're having a bit of like a lip what's the opposite of lip filler, a lip dissolver moment, moment where people were like, oh, at one point, I looked at this and I thought I felt really beautiful. It felt like a good job.
And now I look back on the same pair of lips I have and they look bul bulky or they're migrating, and I didn't see it like I used to see it, And now I want to get it resolved, dissolved, and I want my natural lips back, or people who did
hectic things with their eyebrows at one point thought. You know, at one point I felt really beautiful, and then I had some distance from myself and were like, actually no, and so maybe the concept of being a neutually appealing person is not I mean, if you want the best go at benefiting from pretty privilege, it's not the trend cycle pretty, it's the neutral pretty, the one where people can almost what's the thing I'm looking for, Like the when people can kind of look at you as like
a blank canvas and supurien, you know, as opposed to you creating such a specific vision that people are put off by vision that you've created.
Oh, this is really interesting.
I love learning.
Yeah, take it, Yeah, just do whatever, do whatever. But the idea that additions will change what you are is tricky territory because some people are just going to see you for this thing that you are elementally.
Yeah, thanks to that, babe. I like this chat.
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