Latest / Mini Scroll / From Shaaanxo to Alix Earle: How The GRWM Video Became So Iconic

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From Shaaanxo to Alix Earle: How The GRWM Video Became So Iconic · Mini Scroll

• 0:00
  This episode of Infinite Scroll is brought to you by Britta from
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  Water Talk to the Emotional Support Water Bottle.
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  Gen. Z and millennials have developed
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  water, it filters about the guilt of plastic waste.
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  Thank you to Britta for supporting the pod, helping us
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  keep our deep dives going, and of course, keeping us hydrated.
• 0:38
  Get ready with me to get married.
• 0:40
  A then college aged blonde creator tells the camera that
• 0:44
  creator was none other than Alex Earl filming what would become
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  her most viewed Get Ready With Me video.
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  Obviously, Alex was not actually getting married, however that
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  didn't really matter because she managed to capture her viewers
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  attention with the very premise of the video.
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  Have been waiting for this day for so long.
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  Hands are so orange my lips are looking like a duck.
• 1:08
  Perfect. Through the video, she clarifies
• 1:10
  that she was attending a frat wedding at the University of
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  Miami as the bride. She goes on to do her makeup,
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  talking about all the logistics before checking in with her
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  quote UN quote bridesmaids. At the time of recording, the
• 1:22
  video has over 2 million likes and 20 million views.
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  In it, Alex doesn't discuss the products she uses or how she
• 1:30
  applies them. Instead, she chats to the camera
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  and gets ready. Thanks to creators like Alex,
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  the Get Ready With Me has become a stable form of content across
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  TikTok in recent years. Scroll through your For You page
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  and you're bound to come across users, usually young women,
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  chatting to the camera as they get ready for work, a night out,
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  school, or really anything at all.
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  Even though the Get Ready With Me has become rather formulaic,
• 1:55
  the popularity of this content isn't slowing down.
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  Which begs the question, why is the Get Ready With Me so
• 2:02
  popular? And how has it maintained
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  relevancy for so many years and now across so many platforms
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  from Centennial World? I'm Lauren Meisner and this is
• 2:14
  Infinite Scroll, a podcast about Internet culture, the creator
• 2:17
  economy and how social media is shaping.
• 2:19
  Jen Zed. Welcome back to Infinite Scroll,
• 2:22
  everyone. Welcome to our June deep dive.
• 2:27
  We're diving into the world of the Get ready with me, from its
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  origins to its new found popularity on TikTok.
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  And of course, we're diving into some theories as to why it has
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  maintained so much popularity and relevancy.
• 2:41
  Before we get into it, Please remember to rate, review and
• 2:43
  subscribe. Please sign up to our
• 2:45
  newsletter, also called Infinite Scroll, where on Fridays we
• 2:48
  round up the five biggest thing pieces on the Internet that
• 2:51
  week. And if you want to support
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  independent media, if you want to help us keep the podcasts
• 2:56
  going, please consider buying us a coffee.
• 2:58
  There will be a link in the bio. To truly understand the success
• 3:04
  of the Get Ready With Me, we have to look back to its origins
• 3:08
  OG beauty YouTube. We've spoken at length on this
• 3:11
  podcast about the YouTube beauty community from its rise, its
• 3:14
  peak, to its fall. However, it's this corner of the
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  Internet where the Get Ready With Me format originated.
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  Beauty YouTube in its infancy was far more educational than
• 3:24
  the content that dominates today.
• 3:26
  So if you take a moment to think back to some of the OG beauty
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  creators like Michelle Phan and Bethenny Moda, their tutorials
• 3:33
  didn't really resemble the Get Ready With Me's that we know and
• 3:37
  love, but it was definitely a precursor of sorts.
• 3:40
  According to Know Your Meme, the earliest apparent YouTube Get
• 3:43
  Ready With Me video was uploaded by New Zealand YouTube Shan Exo,
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  whose real name is Shannon. For those unfamiliar with
• 3:50
  Shannon, she joined YouTube in 2009, with the earliest
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  available video on her channel being a New Year's Eve haul from
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  early 2010. Since then, she's continued to
• 4:00
  create beauty content and even launched her own brand and EXO
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  Beauty and 2013. Her first Get Ready With Me
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  video was titled Get Ready With Me with a :) added at the end.
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  Uploaded on January 14th, 2011, the 5 1/2 minute video was
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  pretty simple. Shannon filmed herself doing her
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  makeup, speed up the footage, and put what almost sounded like
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  video game music over the top. The video was well received by
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  her followers and many viewers left positive comments.
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  Shannon would go on to experiment with her Get Ready
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  With Me videos, posting several more in March of that same year,
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  like a Get Ready With Me to go clubbing where she showed her
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  outfit, something that has since become a staple with these kinds
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  of videos. Most of Shannon's Get Ready with
• 4:41
  Me videos during that period adhered to her original format,
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  but occasionally she mixed things up with the chit chat
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  style versions, videos that more closely resemble the Get Ready
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  with Me that we're familiar with today.
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  She even had a Face of the Day series, which was essentially a
• 4:56
  makeup Get Ready With Me where she would talk directly to the
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  camera while getting ready. Although many beauty gurus would
• 5:03
  go on to incorporate Get Ready With Me into their content, long
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  time beauty community enthusiasts view Shannon as a
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  trailblazer. Aside from Shannon XO, another
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  beauty guru who helped pave the way for the Get Ready With Me
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  content as we know it today was Jackie Ina.
• 5:18
  We have done a full deep dive on Jackie before, covering just how
• 5:21
  much she's contributed to the beauty community over the years.
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  But as a quick refresher, Jackie started posting under Lil
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  Pumpkin Pie 05 in 2009. Her best friend encouraged her
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  to start a channel, but she ultimately decided to start
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  posting because she didn't see anyone else who looked like her
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  doing makeup on YouTube. As such, Jackie has always been
• 5:41
  incredibly vocal about the need for diversity in the industry.
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  But she also leaned into a chatty approach to her content,
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  which naturally funneled into her Get Ready With Me videos.
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  As Patrice Peck explains for Birdie Quote, the Get Ready With
• 5:54
  Me format evolved as beauty vloggers like Jackie Ina
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  incorporated a chattier approach.
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  Ina's blend of beauty routines and humorous, transparent
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  personal storytelling offered makeup tips and insights into
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  beauty standards, inclusivity and cultural identity.
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  These reflective, in depth videos, often stretching over 30
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  minutes, allowed creators to form deeper connections with
• 6:16
  their audience. All that to say, the Get Ready
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  With Me first gained traction in the early 20 tens, but it's safe
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  to say that these videos really hit their stride when
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  personality driven content began to dominate the Internet.
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  We've covered the shift in detail on this podcast, but
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  around the mid to late twenty 10s, online culture experienced
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  A vibe shift. Polished and professional videos
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  were no longer a guaranteed way to rack up views.
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  Instead, audiences gravitated toward content that felt more
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  authentic, honest, and personality LED.
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  A shift largely credited to creators like Emma Chamberlain
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  with her editing style and Tana Mojo with her story times.
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  Get Ready With Me is became the perfect in between for beauty
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  creators. They maintained the structure of
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  traditional beauty content while allowing creators to showcase
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  more of their personality and personal life.
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  It was a way to still share teens and tips, but in a more
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  casual, conversational tone that matched the new direction of
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  Internet culture. We even started to see
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  mainstream celebrities and creators outside the beauty
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  niche jump on the Get Ready with Me bandwagon.
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  One of the most notable examples was Kylie Jenner series of drunk
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  Get Ready With Me videos with Chloe and Kendall in 2019.
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  Another example is the Vogue's Beauty Secret series, which is
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  essentially a Get Ready with Me style video featuring
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  celebrities from Serena Williams to take McRae sharing a key part
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  of their get ready process, whether that be skin care, hair
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  care, or makeup. However, this content style
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  really went into OverDrive with the advent of TikTok.
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  This platform, as we know, is significantly more casual than
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  Instagram, which is part of the reason why Gen.
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  Z resonates with it. According to a Pew Research
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  Center survey from last year quote, about 6 in 10 teens visit
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  TikTok daily. This includes 16% who report
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  being on it almost constantly. Teenage girls are also more
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  likely to use TikTok than boys, and while there are many
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  different types of content on the app, Get Ready With Me
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  videos are extremely popular among girls and young women.
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  Before the rise of TikTok, Get Ready With Me videos have become
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  associated with long form content.
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  Shan XO and Jackie Ina, for example, would go on to post
• 8:25
  some chatty Get Ready With Me that were upwards of 20 minutes
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  through the late twenty 10s. That being said, the short form
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  version was not unprecedented. In some ways, the TikTok Get
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  Ready With Me returned this kind of content to its original
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  format, given that many of these videos started as speed up clips
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  with the get ready process. Given that the Get Ready With Me
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  was already well established in the beauty world, it made
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  perfect sense for beauty Tik Tokers to adopt the format.
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  This type of of content also felt suited to the app.
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  By this point, many beauty creators were already making
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  transition videos, so a short form chatty Get Ready With Me
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  allowed followers to see the full look come together while
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  building the parasocial bond. For example, we saw Mikaela
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  Naguera post Get Ready With Me as early as 2020.
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  Meredith Duxbury also embraced this kind of content, whether
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  she was preparing for a dinner or heading out clubbing.
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  I made all the Get Ready with me on TikTok.
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  However, there is one creator who has become synonymous with
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  this genre, and that is, of course, Alex are all.
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  Alex has quite literally built her career around Get Ready With
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  Me videos and in the process legitimized, popularized, and
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  normalized this kind of content across the app.
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  For those unfamiliar with Alex's rise to TikTok it girl status,
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  she started posting videos in college.
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  Aligning with the trends, Alex first started sharing dancing
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  videos, which she herself admits weren't super successful.
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  Alex later started sharing her struggle with acne, and that is
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  what helped propel her to new heights, as EJ Dixon explained
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  in a piece for Rolling Stone back in 2023.
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  Quote. It wasn't until she made a video
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  showing her acne before and after makeup that people in her
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  comments started clamoring for her makeup routine and she
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  figured out her niche. By the end of 2022, Alex had
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  started to accumulate a significant following.
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  She managed to parlay this into genuine TikTok fame through
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  chatty Get Ready With Me videos, where she would mostly share
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  life updates. Much of the reason people loved
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  Alex's content was that she was extremely candid with her
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  audience, introducing her friends and unabashedly living
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  her life in college, often sharing stories about chaotic
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  nights out and partying. While this is what we've come to
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  expect from Get Ready with Mes today, that wasn't always the
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  case. The original chitchat Get Ready
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  With Mes were mostly focused on the makeup routine and were
• 10:42
  delivered in a more relaxed tone compared to traditional
• 10:45
  tutorials, so the conversation still largely centered around
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  beauty. But Alex moved away from this
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  format, using Get Ready With Me to talk about her plans for the
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  day, or her night or her personal life.
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  It became less about educating and more about connecting a way
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  to chat with her followers rather than walk them through a
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  routine. Take it Get Ready With Me posted
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  by Alex in 2022. As an example, in the video,
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  she's getting ready to go clubbing in Miami.
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  She barely walks her followers through the steps of her makeup
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  routine, aside from a few quick comments.
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  Instead, she chats about a whole range of topics like her friends
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  for the night and the fact that a plumber was coming to fix
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  their toilet at 9:00 PM. As Davi Shira writes for Glossy
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  Quote. As the end of 2022 neared Get
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  Ready With Me content took on a new life as University of Miami
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  senior marketing major Alex Earl reinvented the format.
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  The overnight TikTok sensation doesn't use skin care and makeup
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  to guide you through her routine.
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  Instead, she uses them as visual distractions while sharing
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  stories about her often alcohol fueled adventures or asking
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  viewers engaging questions. Ultimately, Alex's personality,
• 11:54
  relatability and show not tell mentality made her massively
• 11:58
  successful, inspiring TikTok users across the platform to
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  adopt this kind of approach. These days, the For You page is
• 12:06
  almost guaranteed to be flooded with Get ready with Me, Get
• 12:09
  ready with Me in Korean. Get ready with.
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  Me for a date? Get ready with me for a funeral.
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  The frequency of these get ready with me is only intensifies
• 12:18
  during major events on the pop culture calendar, such the
• 12:21
  awards show season and Coachella.
• 12:23
  Having said all that, it shouldn't come as a surprise
• 12:25
  that many users have adopted they Get Ready with Me.
• 12:28
  It's a fairly easy way to post consistent content where users
• 12:32
  are simply filming something they do every day.
• 12:34
  On top of this, seeing people like Alex succeed only makes it
• 12:38
  more appealing. But what we haven't touched on
• 12:40
  yet is the commercial side of things.
• 12:43
  Get Ready With Me is are very easy to monetize for established
• 12:47
  creators. The Get Ready With Me video is a
• 12:49
  natural way to incorporate beauty brands with which they
• 12:52
  have a partnership. We are all aware that targeting
• 12:54
  Gen. Z and Gen.
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  Alpha as a brand is extremely challenging.
• 12:58
  Having grown up in the digital age, they are very literate when
• 13:01
  it comes to advertisements and they will simply just scroll
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  past. However, packaging an ad in a
• 13:06
  content format that this demographic is familiar with has
• 13:09
  become a go to for many lifestyle and beauty creators.
• 13:13
  And while we've already discussed how Alex built her
• 13:15
  audience, we haven't really explored her impact from a
• 13:18
  commercial perspective. Alex has become a total
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  powerhouse for brands, to the point where her ability to sell
• 13:24
  out products has become known as the Alex Earl Effect.
• 13:27
  In her Get Ready With Me's, she'll mention a product she's
• 13:30
  using and viewers immediately go buy it.
• 13:33
  Over the years, she's managed to sell out everything from Drunk
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  Elephants Bronzing Drops to My Yellow Organics Rosemary Hair
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  Oil, and various Charlotte lip liners.
• 13:42
  Before we continue, it's worth adding a quick coffee out.
• 13:45
  Well, there's no denying that Alex is smart, talented, and
• 13:48
  extremely good at what she does. It's also important to
• 13:51
  acknowledge that she represents a very specific and a very
• 13:54
  traditional standard of beauty. As someone who fits within the
• 13:58
  Eurocentric ideals, Alex benefits from a level of
• 14:01
  opportunity that isn't always available to creators who don't
• 14:04
  look like her. For many outside of these narrow
• 14:06
  standards, the barrier to virality is much higher.
• 14:10
  We're monetizing a that Ready With Me video at the same scale
• 14:13
  can be significantly more challenging.
• 14:16
  Nonetheless, with creators like Alex converting views into
• 14:19
  sales, it's clear that the impact of the Get Ready with Me
• 14:22
  isn't just cultural, it's commercial.
• 14:24
  Creators haven't just carved out a niche to better connect with
• 14:27
  their audiences, they've also found a way to monetize it.
• 14:30
  In fact, a master's thesis from Aerosmith University Rotterdam
• 14:34
  examined this exact phenomenon, investigating how Get Ready With
• 14:38
  Me videos impact Gen. Z's purchasing behavior.
• 14:41
  After conducting a survey and analyzing the results, the
• 14:44
  research concluded that Get Ready with Me videos on TikTok
• 14:47
  positively impact Gen. Z's purchase intentions within
• 14:51
  the beauty space, largely because this format feels more
• 14:54
  authentic and trustworthy. Quote.
• 14:55
  One of the key takeaways is that the level of trust is different
• 14:59
  based on the kind of video. Get Ready with Me videos have
• 15:01
  more trustworthiness than normal TikTok videos, the thesis reads.
• 15:05
  The results also emphasize that using TikTok videos that are
• 15:08
  perceived as more trustworthy increases the purchase
• 15:11
  intention. You could say that using Get
• 15:13
  Ready With Me videos positively effects purchase intention when
• 15:17
  you focus on trustworthiness as a determining factor.
• 15:21
  While this is positive for brands, we can't ignore how this
• 15:24
  is impacting the consumer. There has been a lot of talk
• 15:27
  over the past few years about how social media is influencing
• 15:30
  tweens and teens. Many commentators and
• 15:32
  journalists have gone so far as to make claims referring to the
• 15:36
  death of tweendom. While this may seem dramatic,
• 15:39
  they aren't entirely wrong. We have seen in just about
• 15:42
  anything tween focused suffer in recent years.
• 15:45
  Iconic tween shops like Justice and Claire's have filed for
• 15:48
  bankruptcy, Not to mention the old school teen magazines like L
• 15:52
  Girl and Cosmo Girl have ceased publication entirely.
• 15:56
  Instead of embracing youth culture, tween girls over the
• 15:58
  past few years have looked to emulate the likes of Hailey
• 16:01
  Bieber and Sofia Ricci. The ultimate clean girls,
• 16:05
  slicked back buns, glowy makeup, and donut glaze skin care have
• 16:09
  to find beauty standards since the pandemic.
• 16:11
  While this may be shifting with the return of grunge and the
• 16:14
  party girl aesthetic thanks to BRAT, clean girl and Wellness
• 16:18
  culture have left many young girls hyper fixated on aging,
• 16:21
  which is crazy when you are like 12.
• 16:24
  Ironically, this demographic is caught between a fear of getting
• 16:27
  old while simultaneously wanting to dress and behave like adults.
• 16:31
  Several factors on social media are driving this trend and
• 16:35
  unfortunately the Get Ready With Me video is among them.
• 16:38
  With young girls seeing their favorite influencers, who are
• 16:41
  often adults, share their skin care routines in their Get Ready
• 16:44
  With Me content, it's only natural that they may want to
• 16:47
  mimic their routines and product preferences.
• 16:50
  Nowadays, instead of seeing tweens talking about their
• 16:52
  favorite Lip smacker lip gloss, girls are flooding the For You
• 16:55
  page sharing their favorite anti wrinkle products in skin care
• 16:59
  smoothies while they get ready for school.
• 17:02
  Here I should make it clear that the Get Ready With Me isn't the
• 17:05
  only reason in this case, it is rather a symptom of a broader
• 17:09
  and unfortunate shift within the beauty and Wellness industry.
• 17:12
  But as Australian women's organization Tomorrow Women
• 17:15
  explains in a blog post quote, another issue is the way these
• 17:19
  get ready with me videos weave urgency and perfectionism into
• 17:22
  daily routines. We all get ready for the day.
• 17:25
  It's a natural part of being a human being.
• 17:27
  But when getting ready is blasted on social media and
• 17:30
  quote UN quote perfected to AT, it can create a tsunami of
• 17:33
  pressure for young people to perform.
• 17:36
  On top of this, various scholars have pointed out a connection
• 17:39
  between get ready with me and heteronormative femininity.
• 17:43
  Heteronormativity may have been a term you have heard before,
• 17:46
  but it's an ideology that positions heterosexuality as a
• 17:49
  given and the societal norm. It also upholds the gender
• 17:53
  binary, where there are only two distinct and opposite genders.
• 17:56
  According to this view. Now, femininity in this context
• 18:00
  can refer to a type that adheres to traditional gender roles and
• 18:03
  notions of womanhood. As we have established by this
• 18:06
  point, Get ready with Me videos often include various self-care
• 18:09
  routines and are simultaneously appearance focused.
• 18:13
  Even though these videos are usually informal and personal,
• 18:16
  they can still be seen as practices that reinforce and
• 18:19
  preserve conventional ideals and appearances of femininity.
• 18:23
  With social media algorithms tending to favor white,
• 18:26
  conventionally attractive, and often straight creators, A trend
• 18:30
  that's only worsened in the current conservative turn
• 18:33
  online, the Get Ready with Me format can end up reinforcing
• 18:36
  narrow, traditional notions of femininity and womanhood.
• 18:40
  One scholar spoke to this dynamic in a book chapter about
• 18:43
  YouTube Get Ready with Me. Specifically, as author and
• 18:46
  artist Amy Lynn Hill writes quote YouTube presents viewers
• 18:50
  with a totalizing aesthetic. From amateur beauty vloggers to
• 18:54
  professional beauty influencers, these videos Get Ready With Me
• 18:58
  present a homogeneous and flattened world in which knowing
• 19:01
  how to stylize oneself with an intelligible under binaries is
• 19:06
  key for participation within the system.
• 19:08
  But this isn't to say that only creators who adhere to
• 19:11
  heteronormativity, whiteness, or traditional gender norms find
• 19:15
  success. Posting Get Ready With Me, The
• 19:17
  democratization of virality and online fame has also allowed for
• 19:21
  a broader range of creators, including those who actively
• 19:24
  challenge these norms, to gain visibility.
• 19:27
  To reiterate what I said earlier, success is possible for
• 19:31
  those outside the Alex Earl mold.
• 19:33
  But the barrier to end tree is simply higher.
• 19:36
  In Hill's piece, for instance, she references creators who have
• 19:39
  disrupted the gender binary and Eurocentric beauty standards,
• 19:43
  including Patrick Starr and Jackie Ina, respectively.
• 19:46
  This discussion of diversity and inclusion leads us to a key
• 19:50
  reason why the Get Ready with Me format has gained renewed
• 19:53
  popularity on TikTok. The rise, of course, and the
• 19:56
  growing obsession with aesthetics, as Jen said, has
• 19:59
  become the cultural engine of the Internet.
• 20:01
  It's clear that this generation has a strong tendency to.
• 20:05
  Categorize identity not necessarily by demographics, but
• 20:08
  by visual signifiers. From cottage core to eclectic
• 20:11
  grandpa to coquette, these aesthetics have become both
• 20:15
  personal identifiers and communities in their own right.
• 20:18
  If we think of these cores as digital subcultures, this isn't
• 20:22
  exactly new. However, what is new is the way
• 20:25
  TikTok has made even the most niche aesthetics feel accessible
• 20:29
  and visible, thanks to the algorithm's ability to push out
• 20:32
  content to specific audiences. In a world world that feels
• 20:35
  increasingly chaotic and uncertain, aesthetic
• 20:38
  categorization has clearly become a ritual for users to
• 20:42
  both make sense of themselves and find a sense of belonging.
• 20:45
  Get ready with me. Videos, in this context, act as
• 20:48
  a tool for self-expression. They allow users to present
• 20:51
  their identities not just through makeup or clothing, but
• 20:55
  through aesthetic performance. The scene queen resurgence on
• 20:58
  TikTok is a perfect case study. For those unfamiliar, the term
• 21:02
  Scene queen referred to a group of mostly girls who skyrocketed
• 21:06
  to Myspace fame thanks to their scene aesthetic.
• 21:09
  It made a comeback in 2019, with the hashtag 2019 making the
• 21:13
  rounds on TikTok. Since then, it has persisted
• 21:16
  with TikTok users. Creating Get Ready With Me is to
• 21:19
  embrace the look for a new era. Ultimately, these videos enable
• 21:22
  TikTok users to document their daily transformations, share
• 21:26
  their individuality, and offer tips on what makes them
• 21:29
  confident. However, it's not only about
• 21:32
  sharing the process, it also allows users to see them self
• 21:35
  represented and find a sense of community, especially when we
• 21:38
  consider how targeted and personalized the algorithm has
• 21:42
  become. Another reason to Get Ready With
• 21:44
  Me has become so popular is because of the oversharing
• 21:47
  factor. As we have already established
• 21:49
  TikTok, Get Ready With Me's are hardly about the makeup or skin
• 21:52
  care routine, but rather about what the creator is actually
• 21:55
  saying. This type of content has
• 21:57
  essentially become the new story time video, with creators almost
• 22:01
  treating it as a confessional. That being said, there have
• 22:04
  honestly been an extremely rogue get ready with me that have gone
• 22:08
  viral over the years. For instance, 1 user named
• 22:11
  Taylor Lawson posted a get ready with me to turn myself into jail
• 22:15
  in 2022 that has since accumulated over 1.6 million
• 22:19
  likes and almost 18 million views.
• 22:22
  As a viewer, it makes sense that we would be locked in.
• 22:25
  It is a rare chance where we get to hear the crazy, juicy or
• 22:28
  personal stories from public figures or regular people, which
• 22:32
  is honestly sometimes more interesting.
• 22:35
  The perspective of a creator or someone simply seeking to go
• 22:38
  viral. Oversharing in this context is a
• 22:40
  quick and easy way to gain traction on the app.
• 22:43
  Furthermore, an engaging hook is incredibly important in short
• 22:47
  form content as you only have a short amount of time to capture
• 22:50
  the viewers attention and oversharing is definitely one
• 22:54
  way to do that. But why does it feel so natural
• 22:57
  to watch users bare their souls while putting on mascara or
• 23:00
  straightening their hair? Laura Malloy posed this question
• 23:03
  in a 2023 piece for Dazed, speaking with a media and
• 23:07
  communications lecturer, Dr. Melanie Kennedy.
• 23:10
  She attributes this to an extension of girls bedroom
• 23:13
  culture and a lingering impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 23:18
  Quote girls have always used the space of the bedroom to reveal
• 23:21
  very personal things to their friends.
• 23:23
  The pandemic exacerbated all of this because people turned to
• 23:26
  social media when they were stuck in their homes as an
• 23:29
  outlet for how they were feeling and to stay connected with
• 23:31
  people, Doctor Kennedy tells the journalist.
• 23:34
  What's changed is that it's now hyper visible.
• 23:37
  The very boundaries between what we traditionally understood as
• 23:40
  public and private have become blurred here.
• 23:42
  It's clear that the story timeification of Getting Ready
• 23:46
  has given the Get Ready with Me video news life.
• 23:49
  Lastly, we can't discuss our ongoing interest in Get Ready
• 23:52
  With Me content without mentioning thirst trapping.
• 23:55
  I'm sure you're all familiar with what a thirst trap is, but
• 23:58
  I will define it for those who aren't.
• 23:59
  A thirst trap is a post intentionally designed to
• 24:02
  showcase the posters attractiveness, eliciting
• 24:05
  admiration or desire from the viewer's perspective.
• 24:08
  This type of content gains traction on social media for
• 24:11
  obvious reasons. For creators, it offers
• 24:14
  validation, while for viewers, appearance often plays a role in
• 24:17
  who we choose to follow, whether we want to admit it or not.
• 24:20
  So with the getting ready process often being about the
• 24:23
  glow up, Get ready with me is can easily fall into this
• 24:26
  category, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are
• 24:29
  effective. There's a fine line between
• 24:31
  attractive and cringe when it comes to thirst trapping and a
• 24:34
  get ready with me. While it ultimately comes down
• 24:36
  to personal taste, many of these videos fall into the latter
• 24:40
  category. But it should be noted that this
• 24:42
  is also part of the appeal. What starts as a cringe video
• 24:45
  often gets a second life as a meme.
• 24:48
  One of the most prolific examples of this was Ashton
• 24:51
  Hall's viral morning routine. While not exclusively a get
• 24:54
  ready with me, it included a detailed getting ready process.
• 24:58
  Ashton was up before 4:00 AM, removing his mouth and nose
• 25:01
  tape, brushing his teeth, working out, and swimming.
• 25:05
  In most of the video, he's shirtless, which led many
• 25:08
  viewers to interpret it as some kind of thirst trap.
• 25:10
  The commentary on this video was extensive, some of it poking fun
• 25:14
  at Ashton and some of it unpacking how this kind of
• 25:16
  content has become aspiration for young men.
• 25:19
  It triggered genuine conversations around idealized
• 25:22
  perceptions of masculinity, how Ashton's lifestyle was being
• 25:26
  positioned as the epitome of success, and what this means for
• 25:30
  young people. At the same time, certain
• 25:32
  moments, such as Ashton dunking his face in a bowl of ice or
• 25:36
  rubbing a banana peel on his skin, quickly became a meme.
• 25:39
  With that being said, when parts of the Get Ready with Me process
• 25:42
  become a meme, it only piques our interest.
• 25:44
  Beyond poking fun at creators, we have seen other meme formats
• 25:48
  emerge from Get Ready With Mees that have kept us entertained.
• 25:51
  One example is the Get Ready Without Me trend, where users
• 25:55
  start the video with the phrase only to immediately cut to
• 25:59
  themselves fully ready. There are also videos where
• 26:01
  people parody the kinds of stories told and Get Ready With
• 26:04
  Mees by making up outlandish anecdotes.
• 26:07
  At the end of the day, the Get Ready With Mees appeal lies and
• 26:10
  its versatility and that is exactly what has kept it around
• 26:14
  for all these years. Whether it's a thirst trap, a
• 26:16
  confessional, a tutorial, or just a life update, this format
• 26:21
  can be whatever the creator or to be honest, the algorithm
• 26:25
  wants it to be. So as long as there are stories
• 26:27
  to tell and creators are willing to drop lore, Get Ready With Me
• 26:31
  Too is likely to echo through the For You page for years to
• 26:36
  come. Infinite Scroll is a podcast
• 26:38
  produce presented and Co written by me Lauren Meissner for
• 26:41
  Centennial World. This episode was researched and
• 26:44
  Co written by Annabelle and David.
• 26:46
  Thank you so much for listening. I love you guys and I will talk
• 26:49
  to you next week. Bye.