🐡If I Were A Fish🐠
and you caught me you'd say look at that fish! 🎣
Holy shit - it’s the first of MAY and we’ve started this month off with a ripper (and by ‘ripper’ I mean I just slept for like 12 hours straight, missed two meetings & am writing this newsletter about six hours later than usual...) This is your reminder that I am in fact, human!!!
Close Friends saw it ALL, but I had a huge and gorg weekend in Sydney with Rubes and Hayden and all of their cute friends. I was over there to speak at an event for Instagram (sandwiched between Tammy Hembrow and Brooke Blurton - incredibly chill.) The event was so cute and I met a newsy reader in the wild (hi Kirbee!!!) At events like those Rubes and I are always a bit ✨shy✨ because we’re not ‘influencers’ no one knows who we are/ what we’re doing there, and we don’t have a ‘group’ to hang out with like a bunch of the other creators do, so when we meet people who read the newsy and really KNOW us, it’s the best thing ever (Kirbee also inspired one of the sections of today’s newsy and sent us some earrings that I’ll show you all when they arrive.)
This is also a reminder to reply to this email with any of your stories to do with your experiences in the health system - good or bad, we want ALL your feedback!!
And if you never want to miss a Close Friends story again, you know what to do…
The song that’s restored my faith in TikTok
No pun intended, but RIP Paper ˙◠˙
Harry Styles went on The Late Late Show for The Last Last time
Around the world in a few headlines:
Public invited to swear their allegiance as king is crowned
A Transgender Lawmaker Is Exiled as Montana G.O.P. Flexes New Power
Sudan crisis: Chaos at port as thousands rush to leave
The song that’s restored my faith in TikTok
“If I were a fish and you caught me, you’d say ‘look at that fish’ / shimmering in the sun / such a rare one / can’t believe that you caught one.”
I’m so so sorry for what I’m about to do because this song is about to be in your head for the rest of your LIFE. For the past two weeks, every second video TikTok has served me has been covers of, or reactions to, a new cute song about fish. When I met Kirbee (gorg newsy reader) we were talking about the problems with ✨the internet✨ (as you do.) We soon discovered that BOTH of us were being served this song on TikTok and agreed that it made us feel better about the world and being online, so naturally I had to talk about it with the rest of you! Here is the initial clip that went viral:
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Corook, the creator of the vid (and person in the dope frog hat) captioned it:
“I was having a very emotional day, feeling insecure and out of place. So I cried to Olivia and after feeling through it, we wrote this song in 10 minutes to remember the joy in being different 🐸 happy Tuesday”
And since then - sitting at a chill 15 million views - it seems to be the internet’s happy song. There are videos of teachers singing it to their kids, parents showing their kids and them saying ‘is this song about me?’ and even an impromptu meetup in New York City where hundreds of people gathered around and sang the song together:
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One of the best parts about this song is that they DIDN’T FUMBLE THE BAG ON THE RELEASE OF IT!!! After its initial virality, the two creators got to work and recorded the tune themselves, kept it SUPER close to the original, and didn’t strip any of the beauty out of it. When a song like this usually goes viral the music machine tends to slow the release down and fuck with the magic a lil - not with this one! (It also helps that the second verse is as cute as the one that went viral - that’s another challenge for these 30sec hits.) This is just such a cute story and a cute song and I wanted to write about it for you all!!
No pun intended, but RIP Paper ˙◠˙
We’ve been talking a lot in this newsletter (and on The Shit Show) about just how hard it is to run a media company in 2023 (and I can confirm this - which is why we love all our SYSCA supporters SOOOOO much.) The latest era to be ending is Paper Magazine - they’ve just laid off their ENTIRE editorial team as publisher Tom Florio is “looking to cut costs in the face of declining ad revenue.” To be clear, I’m not sure whether the publication is shutting down yet, but what’s a magazine without any editorial staff?
I loved this publication - the photoshoots were always FIRE, they kinda symbolised those ‘Break The Internet’ moments (remember that Kim K photoshoot) and were always just a cool place to go for art/ culture/ internet stories. RIP Paper ˙◠˙
Harry Styles went on The Late Late Show for The Last Last time
I saw SOOOO much James Corden against my will this weekend, but the only bits I really cared about were the emo chat he had with Adele, and the Harry moments (naturally.)
Here we have Harry saying (in a very media-trained way) that a One Direction reunion isn’t off the cards (I do not think this will happen, at least not any time soon):
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And someone fainting (or just falling?) when Harry gave her a fist bump (relatable):
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And that’s a wrap on that!
Around the world in a few headlines (because this newsy is already half a day later than usual)
UK
Public invited to swear their allegiance as king is crowned (The Guardian)
“Members of the public watching the coronation on television, online and in parks and pubs will be invited to swear aloud their allegiance to the monarch in a “chorus of millions of voices” to be known as the Homage of the People.
People around the UK and abroad will be invited to say the words “I swear that I will pay true allegiance to your majesty, and to your heirs and successors according to law. So help me God”, in a declaration that replaces the traditional homage of peers.”
USA
A Transgender Lawmaker Is Exiled as Montana G.O.P. Flexes New Power (The New York Times)
“As Montana lawmakers entered the critical final days of their legislative session on Thursday, one of the state’s only transgender lawmakers, Zooey Zephyr, was left exiled from the House chamber, monitoring the debate and casting votes on a laptop as she sat on a hallway bench near a bustling snack stand.”
Sudan
Sudan crisis: Chaos at port as thousands rush to leave (BBC)
The fighting which raged in recent weeks, amidst very imperfect and partial ceasefires, is a pitched battle for power between the Sudanese army led by Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group headed by Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti.
"Port Sudan has fared relatively better in this war," my British-Sudanese colleague Mohanad Hashim explained. "Fighting only erupted here on 15 April, the first day, but now this port city is overwhelmed by people fleeing Khartoum and other places."
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Pledging allegiance to anything just feels so last century. Protect the flag, go to war, save the King and country. Such bollocks.