🧨Listen all y'all, it's a sabotage 🧨
Become a ✨SYSCA Supporter✨ and never be stuck on what to read/ watch/ listen to EVER AGAIN!
As most of you know, all our monthly & annual SYSCA supporters get access to an extra spesh Saturday newsy - the world famous Culture Vulture newsy - written by our darling Liv. Each week it unpacks the biggest pop culture story of the week, but this week it's basically unmissable. This week, you're getting a bumper list of EVERYTHING WE'VE EVER RECOMMENDED ON THE CULTURE VULTURE PODCAST (Liv has truly had to trawl through hundreds of episodes to curate it) and it's gonna save you all so much time & brain power, next time you're stuck for something to consume.
Get the Culture Vulture newsy by becoming an annual or monthly ✨SYSCA Supporter✨ today!!
Holy shit!! Let me level with you all - it's currently 11:30pm and I've just come home from Battle of the Agency bands - I've had a few drinks, my ears are RINGING, but guess what??? WE WON!!! It was the most gorgeous night (considering it was a band competish where only advertising agencies could enter.) Our band was called 'Daylit' (we were repping our besties at Daylight) and we had the SICKEST SET/ GROUP OF PEOPLE EVER! Here's our band:
Todd: Vocals/ guitarist
Liv: Vocals
Bel (yes, our Bel): Conga drums
Paul: Guitarist
Luke: Keys
Te Aihe (yes, our dungeon master & podcast producer): Drums
Kyle: Bass
Luce: Vocals
Each team (I think there were 8??) had a set of about 15 minutes, so roughly three songs. Our songs were 'Come Together' by The Beatles (we had a gorg three part harmony), 'Heart of Glass' by Blondie, but Miley Cyrus's version, where I got to belt my absolute heart out, and then 'Sabotage' by The Beastie Boys, which is perhaps one of the funnest songs I've ever heard/ sung/ performed! At one stage Todd (who led this one) slipped over and sung it on his back, it was ICONIC!!!! All the other bands were actually amazing, but our set did just feel super spesh. Not to mention I hadn't sung in front of a crowd in probs 5 years, so the amount of validation coming our way last night was enough to last me a lifetime.
All of this is to say that I'm SO STOKED TO HAVE NOT ONLY PLAYED BUT ALSO WON??? Oh, and I'm gonna need a sleep in tomorrow, so I'm writing this the night before. Apols in advance for any typos xxx
PS thank u to Daylit for letting my live out my School of Rock dreams xxx
Listen all y'all, it's a sabotage (maybe)
Slam Dunc: Have YOU been doing volunteer work for Mark Zuckerberg???
Floods in Florida, thanks to Ian
Emma Chamberlain gave us an Architectural Digest video and I'm obsessed with it
K-pop stans amaze me, again 🤯
Listen all y'all, it's a sabotage (maybe)
As you just heard, one of the songs we played last night was called 'Sabotage' and... not to make this about me, but I feel like we may have inspired the Russians to do a lil sabotaging of their own.
For those of you who aren't following the happenings of major pipelines across the world, a few days ago two major pipelines - the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 - were found to have leaks in them (seismic blasts were also recorded before the leaks occurred, so... explosion vibes). These pipelines run between Russia and Germany, and the US, EU and NATO have all 'suggested' that Russia was involved in the damage. Russia, predictably denies this, saying that they reckon the US had something to do with it.
Neither pipeline was actually operating at the time, but they were both full of gas, so you can see it bubbling under the water:
So who did it??? Time to get the true crime TikTok sleuths onto solving this mystery I reckon.
Floods in Florida, thanks to Ian
Ian is wreaking havoc on the Florida coast rn. Ian, who is a hurricane, but for the purpose of this newsy will be a personified hurricane, has left over one million people without power, has cancelled over 3,500 flights, and is causing widespread flooding across the region.
Florida seems to be in for a nasty couple of days, so if you're in proximity to Ian, please stay as safe as poss xx
🏀Slam Dunc: Have YOU been doing volunteer work for Mark Zuckerberg???🏀
Dunc really didn’t want his lil newsy segment to be named this (despite him being the biggest basketball fan I know), but it was too good of a pun to pass up, so I did it anyway (who’s the editor here???) Dunc is freakishly smart about… most things (I love it the most when he talks about music or media tho), and is also the founder of The Spinoff & host of The Fold, so when you’ve finished reading this, there’s plenty more Dunc out there for you xxx
It's now about six months since, after one particularly bad time on Twitter, I quit all my public-facing social accounts. I asked a few people in my life, including Luce, whether this was acceptable, and was extremely surprised to be told it was fine, chill out, no one cares u egg. And truly, it has been great! I generally feel like my brain has been given back to me after a very long period in which it felt a bit like some uninvited randos had made themselves at home in it.
For someone who cannot be found on social media, I still spend a lot of time thinking, talking and writing about it. And while I try not to be one of those people who've quit something and now can't talk about anything else, I do think you see the world a bit different when you've left.
One thing which consistently buzzes me out is the way the different platforms treat the people who make stuff for them. YouTube has consistently worked on a revenue share model, typically splitting every dollar it gets from advertisers 55/45 in favour of whoever made the content. Everyone else does something very different, which is (mostly) giving people who make content 0c in every dollar they make in advertising. Facebook, Instagram and now TikTok all do a similar thing to YouTube, putting ads between content you make – but share almost none of it.
Within the creator community, this is widely discussed and complained about, but I feel like we should all think about the fact that when we post, we're essentially doing volunteer content creation work for some of the world's richest people. I know that's too simple, and we get some things back, like reach/friendships/etc. But I don't think YouTube gets enough credit for how radically different its system is – and part of me hopes it will win long-term even in the new TikTok/Reels/Shorts battle with its rumoured and radical plan to... just pay people.
Emma Chamberlain gave us an Architectural Digest video and I'm obsessed with it
I love her, I love her taste, I love her house. Watch.
K-pop stans amaze me, again 🤯
This time it's the Blinks:
"Fans of the K-pop group BLACKPINK, who call themselves Blinks, built and distributed guides for how to essentially game streaming platform algorithms to make sure the group’s newest album Born Pink stayed at the top of platforms like YouTube and Spotify."
It's news to no one that stans rule the internet, and that K-pop stans organise better than basically anyone else I've ever seen. This time round the Blinks took it upon themselves to teach each other how to fuck with the algorithms on major streaming platforms to get Born Pink to the top of the charts: figuring out the nuances of the algo's, creating guides, hosting tutorials... it's kinda amazing.
We could totally get into the parasocial side of all of this, or we could leave it and have a nice morning together. I choose the latter. More on this story here!
Did you know who The Try Guys were before Ned cheated on his wife?
This was yesterday's mundane poll because I was hella curious - I didn't know who they were! I'll admit it!
52% of you knew who they were
48% of you didn't
Canada Stabbings and New Prime Ministers (The Shit Show)
Taylor Swift & Romanticising Your Life (Culture Vulture)
Killing Our Darlings: A Fandom Expert on Why We Urgently Need to Get to Grips With the Hate Engine (Letterboxd)
SYSCA playlists (✨Supporters only✨)
Our HUGE SYSCA reading list! (✨Supporters only✨)