🎂Um, It's Our Fourth Birthday!! 🎁
If you couldn't picture your life/ mornings/ family debates without Shit You Should Care About, then I reckon today would be a pretty cool day to become a ✨SYSCA Supporter ✨
We kinda need you to survive, and I kinda freakin love every single one of you who supports the media they love 🥺🥺
My angels!!!
I wasn't supposed to write anything for you today (I'm technically not supposed be working today at all), but when I woke up and looked at the date I was absolutely SHOCKED to see that it is our baby's fourth birthday!!! I am SHOOK that I almost missed it (timezones will do that to ya I guess) but glad that I'm back home, sitting in my fresh sheets, ready to get into my feels with you a lil.
A bunch of you already know the story, but four years ago I text Rubes and Liv (my all-time home town besties) saying that I reckon we should start ✨something✨ to help other people understand the world around them, and here's how the exact conversation went:
It is my favourite thing EVER that I still have these texts, and every year, without fail, I will share them with you so that you can keep me (and I can keep myself) from ever straying from the vision!!!
I also just wanted to share what I wrote last year, to celebrate our third birthday, because... it's cute and I want to:
"When you’re from a small town (ours literally isn’t even classed as a city), there’s not much to do except talk and think and plan businesses with your best pals. We went from dreaming up magazines, to playgrounds (but get this - for adults,) to full-blown mental health cafes (still low-key a good idea...)
Funnily enough though, we landed on a little unassuming media company with a swearword in its title and a big love for Harry Styles. I’m sure Rubes and Liv are with me when I say I wouldn’t have it any other way."
In these four years, Shit You Should Care About has gone from a lil back-of-a-lecture-theatre idea, to a community of over 3.6 million besties across multiple platforms. We laugh and cry on podcasts, I share with you every detail of my life and Liv gives you a pop culture deep dive in our newsletters, you follow me around on my silly lil 'day in the life's' on TikTok, I shitpost and connect with my fellow stans on Twitter, I ask you mundane polls on Instagram, and I still hate LinkedIn.
It also seems super fitting that this anniversary comes just after I've arrived back from Austin to help voice what Gen Z want in a workplace (hi to all my new angels who I met over there and forced to subscribe to this newsy), after we've just gotten to interview FINNEAS, and right before we embark on a roadie of the whole country. Earlier this year we also got to host some HARRY STYLES LISTENING PARTIES on behalf of the man himself, and I feel like that's a career highlight that deserves one hell of a shoutout too.
I note all of these to let you know that the doors you all have opened (and continue to hold open) for me are wild and extraordinary, and I will continue to try and make you proud as I walk through each of them.
It's still all because of you 💘
Since our last birthday, we've all become full-time workers on this sick lil media company. You know this, but Rubes works tirelessly to make sure our lives are all organised and that the biz is making money (not easy in this weird media landscape), Liv makes everything look and feel AMAZING (and has quickly become a pop culture connoisseur) and me? Well, I'm here to steer the ship and help you all understand the world (without making you feel depressed by it.) No presh.
But!! The reason we get to wake up and do this every day is because of one of the things I'm most proud of (which didn't exist last year) our ✨SYSCA Supporters✨
Our SYSCA supporters are our angels who have normalised paying for the media they love!! I hope you can feel how much time/ effort/ love we all put into getting up and making this shit happen every day for you, and you're doing the best thing we could possibly imagine - you're PAYING US FOR IT! Your support keeps our shit editorially independent (so we can post as much Harry Styles content as we want), it means we only work with partners we genuinely love, and most importantly it means we can pay rent and keep doing this for you. So from the bottom of my mf-ing heart, thank you so much.
You might already be a supporter or you might be waiting until you've finished studying and have a bit of disposable income (relatable) but if you're in a posish to, and you're wondering how you can show some love to your fave newsy writer, please consider helping us out today xxx
Oh yeah, we're going on a road trip!
As you know, this whole biz started because we weren't understanding the news even though we were literally studying it at uni. So, we built a place where we could help other people understand it, and kinda solved that problem??? Now, we're coming full circle by travelling from Auckland to Dunedin and hitting most of the uni's on the way. We'll be chatting in a bunch of lectures, hosting coffee catch-ups (more on them tomorrow) and celebrating making the news ✨vibey✨.
When we first started we actually went around and stuck up all these posters around vic uni (pictured below) and who knows... four years later we might be sticking up some new (and v much improved ones...) so keep your eyes peeled 👀
This whole newsy is just to say thank you, I love you, and here's to the next four years of SYSCA (we'll stick around as long as you do!!)
PS, regular programming (AKA some actual news) returns tomorrow!!