Latest / Mini Scroll / Touching Grass with brand strategist Eugene Healey

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Touching Grass with brand strategist Eugene Healey · Mini Scroll

0:00
Welcome to Touchgrass, a miniseries where I chat with.
0:03
Creatives about. Staying sane while being
0:05
chronically online. I'm your host Lauren Meisner,
0:09
and Touchgrass is a miniseries brought to you by.
0:11
Britta, where we explore the. Implications of being
0:13
chronically online with the creatives who can't escape it.
0:17
One thing that keeps coming up in these conversations is how
0:20
important small grounding routines are offline.
0:23
And for me, one of those routines is drinking enough
0:26
water, whether I'm refilling. A water bottle.
0:28
For a long walk or taking a break scrolling my For You page,
0:31
Britta makes it easy for me to stay hydrated and grounded with
0:34
pure, fresh tasting filtered water straight from any tap.
0:37
Thank you to Britta for supporting independent media and
0:40
helping us. Take better care of ourselves.
0:42
One refill at a time. Today I'm chatting with Eugene
0:46
Healy, a global grand strategist, keynote speaker, and
0:49
online creator who grew his following from zero to 400,000
0:54
in under a year. Eugene and I chat about his
0:57
career journey from academia to marketing, the power of creating
1:01
opinion based content online, dealing with criticism, and my
1:06
favorite topic, Vanderpump Rules.
1:08
Welcome, Eugene to Touch Grass. Hello, thank you for having.
1:11
Me, I'm so excited to be chatting with you today.
1:14
I feel like we've been Internet friends for maybe like 6 months.
1:18
Yeah. And it's so nice to finally meet
1:19
in person. Yeah, it's nice to touch grass.
1:23
Yeah, no, we are fully outside, so if you hear any loud noises,
1:26
there's nothing we can do. It's ambiance.
1:28
Yeah, it's part of the experience.
1:29
Exactly. OK, so I start every episode by
1:32
asking most of our guests. Do you consider yourself
1:36
chronically online? Yes, yeah.
1:40
Unfortunately, the job necessitates that I'm basically
1:44
fully plugged into the matrix. Like when people ask me if I've
1:48
missed a trend, if I have, they're always like, really
1:52
unhappy. Like I don't know if a reporter
1:54
asked me for a quote about like, recession indicators.
1:57
So I just find that I basically always have to be plugged into
2:02
LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, sub stack.
2:06
Most legacy media is garbage and six months downstream of what's
2:09
happening Internet anyway days digital.
2:11
I actually read quite a lot. Yeah, they're good.
2:13
Yeah. So that's what I'm finding.
2:15
I'm finding basically that I have to spend a huge amount of
2:18
time collecting information about what's going on online so
2:22
I can develop a perspective on it, and that's kind of how my
2:25
content is scaffolded. Yes.
2:26
OK, so then how would you actually describe the style of
2:30
content that you make? My platform is really about
2:33
culture and society, analyzed through the lens of brand.
2:38
I think it's really driven through my ideology, which is
2:41
that, I mean, I'm a brand strategist by background, but I
2:44
think brands are pretty boring. Like I don't find brands
2:48
interesting. I find people interesting.
2:50
I find culture and I find society interesting, and I find
2:53
brands interesting in as much as they can tap into or channel the
2:58
things that society is missing. I think if you ever find a brand
3:01
that has any kind of meteoric success, it's not that they
3:05
created a culture, it's that they were able to effectively
3:08
tap into that particular cultural well, really well
3:11
through the lens of their brand. So the content I make is really
3:14
about, you know, why do we feel the way that we feel?
3:17
Why does something that might be trending in the algorithm
3:19
reflect a deeper cultural trend or a way that we feel about
3:23
something? And then how is society shifting
3:26
or culture shifting as a result? And then how do brands need to
3:29
adapt to be part of that culture and to be part of that
3:32
conversation? Tell me then, how you got to
3:35
where you are. Give me a little rundown on your
3:37
career. So I am just over 10 years now
3:42
into my career as basically both a strategist and a lecturer.
3:48
I started my brand strategy career about the same time that
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I started my teaching career. So I was a tutor at the
3:55
University of Melbourne starting in 2015, then made my way up to
4:00
a sessional lecturing position. And then at the same time I was
4:03
also working at a brand strategy consultancy.
4:06
First as like an intern, literally like doing like the
4:10
coffee ordering like that, that job like the yeah, like girl in
4:14
the big city. And then working my way up to
4:16
senior strategist and eventually strategy director.
4:18
And now like, I guess like I, I hit a wall in both parts of my
4:23
career where if I wanted to go any further in my agency, I was
4:28
going to effectively the agency was going to have to grow.
4:30
And if I wanted to go any further in my teaching career, I
4:32
was going to have to do a PhD, which I had basically 0 interest
4:35
in. And so I decided that I was
4:37
going to start making content as a way of creating a portfolio of
4:42
my thinking. Because the strategy work that I
4:43
did was like corporate strategy was really like heavy duty
4:47
strategy was a lot of strategy that was like, how does this
4:50
business structurally make money?
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And then how do they externalize that as a position?
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So I kind of crossed over into management consultancy a little
4:56
bit. So I couldn't show any of my
4:58
work basically. So that was effectively, I
5:01
thought the content was going to be like a living portfolio of
5:03
thinking and that would maybe give me some leverage to think
5:06
about what I wanted to do next. And then it just ended up that
5:09
the content was so successful that I ended up being able to
5:12
build my own consultancy off it, a keynote speaking business.
5:16
And I'm building a course that's going to be releasing in the
5:18
next couple months as well about sort of the new fundamentals of
5:21
brand building. So yeah, it's all kind of, but
5:24
it's all scaffolded from organic content.
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Like haven't spent a single cent on paid.
5:29
How are you managing both? Like do you have a strategy
5:33
behind this? Not at the beginning.
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And that's why I came real close to burning out last year.
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And I didn't learn about what burnout is.
5:40
I thought I was just something that happened to weak willed
5:42
people until a much stronger willed mentor of mine burnt out
5:47
and then said that it was a problem with your amygdala when
5:49
you have too many decisions to make and your body goes into
5:51
permanent fight or flight. And I was like that actually
5:53
that is currently happening to me.
5:55
So I now have a system in place. I have a, I have a content team
6:00
and I just turned down about 80% of strategy projects.
6:03
I think like now I'm at this point in my career where I can
6:07
pick and choose basically across keynote speaking, the content
6:10
that I make and the paid partnerships that I do.
6:12
And then also the strategy projects.
6:14
Basically like my whole business and my whole life has been
6:17
structured to never do anything that I don't want to do like
6:19
that. I think that was what I decided
6:21
I wanted this turn in my career to be That's.
6:23
The Dream. Yeah, exactly.
6:25
And so, like, I had to be diversified.
6:26
I have to be diversified across all of these different bits
6:28
because otherwise, eventually, if one thing takes over too
6:32
much, I'm going to have to start doing things that I, you don't
6:34
want to. Yeah.
6:35
That I prefer to say no to. I love saying no.
6:37
I really like saying. No, Oh my God, I need to get
6:39
better at saying. No, and I hate when people say
6:41
no to me so. I mean, fair enough.
6:44
Isn't that how it noises? OK, so I want to talk about your
6:48
content creation a little bit more because I want to know what
6:50
it feels like to be so famous. You don't really feel?
6:52
You don't really feel it. Do you feel famous?
6:55
No, but you are. You're you're a host of an
6:58
empire of an empire of a growing empire.
7:01
Thank you so much. That's so nice.
7:03
I mean, I'm sure this happens to you every once in a while.
7:05
When people come up to me in person, I'm like, that's crazy.
7:08
But that's what I mean, right? Like it doesn't the fame doesn't
7:11
feel like anything. What like 500,000 like
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conceptually it's a big number, but you're never going to see
7:18
them all. You know I'm not playing Rod
7:20
Laver Arena, right? Like I think it only is really
7:24
felt when like, I don't know, last week I was in Berlin and I
7:27
was walking down the street and I just got off like a 24 hour
7:31
flight and then someone came up to me and was like, Hey, I
7:33
really like your content. Like how's it feel?
7:36
Honestly, being famous, particularly for this 95% good.
7:41
Like I, I kind of like it opens a bunch of doors for you.
7:44
And also people are exceptionally nice all the time.
7:47
Like it's not a bad thing for people coming up to you
7:50
basically once every couple of days and giving you a really
7:53
nice compliment. But what I will say, actually,
7:55
the 5% is when people are weird about approaching me, just say
8:00
hi. So the worst part of being
8:03
famous is when people throw you conspiratorial glances from
8:06
across the room. Like they just do a little like
8:08
that. And then maybe they whisper to
8:10
their friends and they don't just say hi.
8:12
It's much better for both of us. I guess because you are building
8:16
your platform off of being like smart, right?
8:18
So it's like a positive reinforcement for you, but it's
8:22
also a positive association for others.
8:25
Like you're helping them do their jobs better.
8:27
You're in like this very interesting niche.
8:29
Yeah, it's like I think the job is less about me being smart and
8:34
it's more about making other people feel smart.
8:37
I think that's what I learned from not only my strategy
8:42
career, but also my education career.
8:43
So like both of these things have kind of come together and
8:45
where I'm at now, strategy, brand strategy in particular,
8:50
it's not an output, it's just a plan of action effectively or
8:54
brand strategy specifically, which is brand is just the sum
8:57
total associations of an entity. So brand strategy is defining
9:01
what you want those associations to be.
9:03
And so the only way that you're going to make your brand
9:06
strategy effective is whether people in the organization
9:08
actually believe in it. And so you have to not only get
9:10
them to believe that you're smart, but that they're smart
9:12
for following the advice as well.
9:14
And so that I think is, is really the key.
9:16
And like what I, what I try to do for the content is combine, I
9:20
guess, the intellectual rigor that I learned in academia with
9:25
platform logic, which is this incredibly frenetic pace that we
9:30
have to like be on, on the Internet.
9:33
And so I still make my videos 2 minutes or less where possible,
9:37
unless you really earn it. I talk fast enough that people
9:41
won't watch me on two times speed.
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That's like a really important principle, which means I have to
9:45
do like, a lot of tags. So a lot of people ask me if I
9:47
did the videos off the cuff. Absolutely fucking not.
9:50
Are you kidding me? And yeah.
9:52
And making sure that all of the stuff is really shareable, like
9:54
making sure it's an insight, like delivering an insight every
9:57
15 seconds. That's like a learning principle
9:59
that I have in my head. Or delivering a joke every 15
10:01
seconds to like, make the content feel fun to engage with
10:04
and make the content the kind of thing that you want to start a
10:07
conversation from. And how did you learn these
10:09
principles? Was it through your work, like
10:11
through your previous lives and career, or was it really just
10:14
like being tapped into culture and tapped into online?
10:17
I think at the end of the day, like what I'm selling is me.
10:20
It's my like as yes, there's a bunch of information sources
10:23
that I pull from the fundamental.
10:24
This is just like the way that I see the world.
10:26
It's influenced, yeah, by my career, but I would say also is
10:30
just influenced by my environment, the conversations
10:33
that I have with people that I mate increasingly now, the
10:36
conversations that I have on the road because I travel a lot for
10:39
work. But ultimately this is just like
10:40
the way that I see the world. And that's what makes the
10:42
content distinctive as a, it's my opinion, yes.
10:45
And no one, no one else is ever going to be able to have this
10:48
opinion. Yeah, I wanted to talk to you
10:50
about that. So I mean, we, we get this a
10:52
lot. We get a lot of pushback because
10:54
I truly believe for we us covering Internet culture, pop
10:57
culture, you know, opinion, opinion is part of reporting on
11:01
that. I believe commentary, all of
11:02
that requires, I mean, they're social disciplines, right?
11:05
And so people want to hear your opinion on that.
11:09
And sometimes we get pushed back from audience members or people
11:12
who come across our content. They say like, I just want to
11:14
hear the T between two creators or whatever.
11:17
Like I don't want to hear your opinion.
11:18
Stop inserting your bias. But I saw somewhere, I read
11:21
somewhere in an interview that you said what you think is
11:24
different about your content is that you do insert opinion.
11:26
Can you tell me about that? OK, media literacy one O 1.
11:30
There's no such thing as objective news.
11:32
Everybody has an agenda. In fact, I would say the problem
11:35
with a lot of legacy media is that it presents itself as
11:39
objective when clearly it has a quite significant bias, which is
11:43
more often than not to raise the status of elites, right?
11:46
Once you understand this, once you understand that under the
11:48
appearance of objectivity that everyone is trying to sell you
11:52
an agenda, you will realize that the Age of the City Morning
11:55
Herald is as partisan as the Herald Sun or the Telegraph.
11:58
Often it's actually worse, because it's pretending like
12:00
it's not. At least at least Murdoch papers
12:03
wear their shit on their sleeves, right?
12:05
Right. Yeah, yeah.
12:06
I mean, you know where they stand.
12:08
It's not a great stance, but you know.
12:09
Yeah. So I think like what?
12:10
OK, what do we have? Yes, there are, there are maybe
12:12
some outlets like Ground News, if you're familiar with Ground
12:15
News, which is an aggregator that places news reporting and
12:18
it shows how all of the different news sites to the left
12:21
and right are reporting on the news.
12:22
But even then, like they're making a decision on what they
12:24
consider to be leftist media versus what they consider to be
12:26
centrist or conservative media, right?
12:28
So the idea of objectivity in media is bullshit.
12:31
Like we can just let that one go.
12:33
And then I think, you know, also like reporting on things is a
12:38
commodity. Like why would anyone go to me
12:42
from my first of my job is not as a reporter, right?
12:44
Like my jobs as an analyst. And I would say like in an era
12:48
where effectively the median, which is to say, you know,
12:51
technology, AI is able to deliver composites of opinions,
12:55
the only thing that is really valuable is subjectivity.
12:57
Yeah. OK.
12:58
No, I like that a lot in our chat for our newsletter.
13:01
Well, in your chat with Annabelle, actually, technically
13:03
our newsletter hit follow, you admitted that managing, quote,
13:06
the dissociative effects of turning oneself into a brand has
13:09
been quite a learning curve for you.
13:12
Can you talk to me about the mental health implications of
13:16
going viral, like starting this and going viral so quickly, and
13:20
what it feels like to commodify yourself?
13:23
I think it's interesting because in some way I think I'm just a
13:26
more significant dramatic version of something that I
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really believe that we all feel, which is that we're all the
13:37
brand versions of ourselves. When I mean like to turn myself
13:40
in a brand into a brand, what I mean is like to start to look at
13:43
yourself as an entity and then to manage that entity from the
13:46
outside. So as I said before, if a brand
13:48
is the sum total associations of an entity, to brand something is
13:53
to engage in active management and manipulation of those
13:56
associations. That's dissociative by design.
13:59
And I think like we all face that and that like social media.
14:03
I've been trying to develop a thesis on this for a while, and
14:07
I'm coming closer and closer to it.
14:08
Increasingly, I'm starting to think of social as this kind of
14:11
it's like a God that we burst from our collective unconscious.
14:15
Like it explains why it took off so quickly.
14:17
Like the platform itself, by the way, the platform itself is just
14:20
a marketplace where we are able to complete the transaction of
14:24
the personal turning into the professional.
14:26
But we all have the camera inside our head.
14:28
I think like even this, like we talk about like Gen.
14:30
Z or Gen. Alpha, like that.
14:32
They're not posting as much, like they're certainly not
14:36
expressing themselves as much on social media, but that doesn't
14:38
mean that they don't face the invisible camera.
14:42
In fact, they face it more. That's why it's so constraining
14:45
on their self-expression, hence why they post less.
14:47
If anything, they view themselves like brands more than
14:51
anybody else. And so they're governed by the
14:53
rules of this God, if you like. And I feel like that's what I, I
14:59
experienced that very quickly. So I had to dissociate
15:02
relatively quickly and I had to put guardrails around it.
15:05
I think probably I was able to take advantage of it in that
15:08
when I was building out my own brand strategy, my personal
15:10
brand strategy, which I did emergently start to use the
15:13
comments, the nice ones anyway, as a way of understanding what
15:20
people think of you and how you want people to think of you.
15:22
So one of my brand codes now is intentional ambiguity.
15:26
And what I found is that people online couldn't figure out my
15:30
age, my sexuality, where I live, my ethnicity, anything.
15:36
And what that allows me to do is it allows me to wade into
15:40
complex topics like race or class, how they intersect
15:44
marketing and brand. And people can't dismiss the
15:48
argument based on what I look like because I can't figure out
15:51
what I actually am. So they have to engage with the
15:54
idea. That's so interesting.
15:56
So every now and then you face a situation where you can see this
16:00
stuff like that. Get ready to hear what in this
16:03
career, Get ready to hear exactly what people think of
16:06
you, but figure out how to turn it into your advantage.
16:09
OK. Yeah.
16:10
No, that's actually a great, it's a really interesting
16:14
strategy. I feel like it's actually quite
16:16
opposite to what a lot of creators do.
16:18
But I also recognize you're not trying to necessarily be, you
16:21
know, like a lifestyle creator. You're not trying to get an
16:24
audience to develop like a para social relationship with you.
16:26
No, exactly. And I'm this other creator, Oren
16:29
John, who's, you know, even more famous than me.
16:31
I think he's got like a million followers.
16:32
We've chatted a bunch of times. He actually, I was watching his
16:35
green screen content in, you know, June 2024 and I was like,
16:39
oh, there's a market for this. And that's when I started
16:41
creating and he talks about how this the difference between
16:44
creator and influencer. An influencer is selling a is
16:47
Kim Kardashian, right? Like selling a lifestyle that's
16:49
aspirational that you know, effectively, you know, to use
16:52
like the Marlboro Manor, like the Lacanian mirror stage thing,
16:55
like you see yourself in the mirrored in this influencer.
16:58
And so you buy on the basis of that mirroring the parasocial is
17:01
a huge part of that as well. A creator is someone that's more
17:04
based on selling their perspective and selling and you
17:06
know, and you may say thought leadership as well, and you're
17:10
on a spectrum to what extent you are one versus the other.
17:14
I'm basically like 100 zero creator to influencer.
17:17
Orrin's probably like 7030. It's really determined by like,
17:21
what's the relationship that you want to have with the audience
17:23
and on what basis? Like I like to keep my private
17:26
life private. So I find I find, you know, all
17:30
that stuff that I was talking about, the invisible camera,
17:32
like I find that really oppressive.
17:34
The idea of having to capture experiences.
17:38
I already disassociate enough without having to think about
17:41
how I'm going to capture things. And this job is already is
17:44
challenging. I don't have to take videos of
17:47
what it is that I'm seeing, but I have to think about that.
17:49
And then everything just becomes a content problem.
17:51
That's actually probably been the more difficult thing to deal
17:53
with. Is like everything becomes
17:54
content. Yeah, tell me about that.
17:57
When you make content about culture and society, where I
18:02
live in society. So every time that you're out
18:05
there interacting with the world, you're finding pieces of
18:09
things to talk about. And the problem when you have an
18:15
algorithm that demands A ferocious amount of content
18:18
perspective from you is that, you know, you are actively
18:20
incentivized to continue to find nice new, like interesting
18:26
points of view on things. And so it's not as bad now.
18:30
But when I first got started, I was having situations where my
18:32
friends are being like, you know, we had a conversation two
18:34
weeks ago and now that's the video that's got 400,000 views.
18:37
I'm not sure how I feel about that.
18:38
Like, I think that's kind of a bad friend move.
18:41
And I think, yeah, that that's, there's something quite
18:43
chronically online about that experience is that I think like,
18:46
if you're not careful as as a person or as an influencer, real
18:50
life becomes the screen. And the screen becomes real
18:53
life, whether or not you're posting again, the camera is
18:56
internalized. Posting just makes it obvious
18:59
and external. But what you have is a situation
19:01
with the real life becomes subordinated to how you
19:04
document, categorize and talk about and reproduce that
19:08
experience online. So the online world becomes the
19:11
real world. And this just becomes something,
19:13
it becomes The Cave. This is what Baudrillard would
19:15
say he was like. Reality has become The Cave,
19:18
like. And and that that was a really,
19:21
really difficult thing for me to work through.
19:23
Like now fortunately, what I have as a team.
19:25
So now I have a system in place that's planned out six weeks in
19:30
advance, and so I'm not in a situation anymore where I'm
19:33
constantly having to create frenetically for the algorithm
19:36
we have, like planning that allows me to think freely and
19:39
make stuff when I want to make stuff.
19:41
Oh that's so good. Unfortunately we're not there
19:44
yet because we do record a daily podcast that requires us to be
19:47
in the moment. Although this will be pre.
19:49
Recorded if it's news, right? Yeah, exactly.
19:52
I know it's hard. OK, so I wanted to talk to you
19:56
about how you describe yourself as an observer participant in
20:01
culture. I feel like that ties in really
20:02
nicely to what you were just saying.
20:04
I'm in the game, you know like and I I think marketing is one
20:08
of the lamest professions of them all like below data analyst
20:11
I'm serious I'm. Why?
20:13
What do you mean by that? Expand.
20:15
We work near creativity, but we don't, we're not creatives, you
20:19
know, OK. And I think there's something
20:21
about the desire to be in proximity to something, but not
20:26
willing to take the leap. Like, you know, you can respect
20:29
creativity and all that. But like, I find so much
20:31
marketing is like, oh, that's a really cool piece of art.
20:34
How can I make money off it? And I think that like, for me
20:37
personally, like there's nothing uncooler than that.
20:40
And so I guess like what I try to do is figure out ways not
20:47
just to capture culture, but to participate in it as well and to
20:52
to like be an active some sometimes try and be an active
20:55
contributor to it. Funnily enough, I make a point
20:57
of never making content about the things that are really close
21:01
in my life, like subcultures, for instance, any subculture
21:04
that I'm a part of. I don't make any content about
21:06
that just because like I really want to keep that for me.
21:08
And I want to keep that subculture for itself as well,
21:10
rather than mining it for content.
21:12
But that I think, yeah, there's a, there's sort of like a a bit
21:15
of a gonzo element to it as well.
21:16
Like I'm still young enough, right, to participate in a lot
21:20
of like what's happening in culture.
21:21
And again, it goes to that, the subjective gaze as well.
21:25
Like, I don't want to report on it.
21:27
You know, I feel like a lot of youth reporting is really bad
21:29
because even people that are sympathetic to youth, they still
21:33
report on it. Like, you know, they're like
21:35
1800s colonial explorers, like bounding through the Amazon that
21:39
have just discovered like a pygmy tribe, you know, I'm.
21:42
Actually dead that analogy is. Crazy, you know, and they're
21:45
just then they they overlay effectively, you know, you
21:49
overlay this like in that instance, like western colonial
21:52
centric point of view on like the savage.
21:55
But we still do that. Like the amount of arguments
21:57
that I have to have with people about like Gen.
22:00
Z have a different work culture. What culture, what work culture
22:04
would you have if you faced the same economic, cultural,
22:06
political, economic context? Do you think that they came out
22:09
of the fucking womb this way? Totally.
22:11
Like they're influenced by the things that you created.
22:14
You made the society that they're an occupant of.
22:17
They're responding in a perfectly rational way.
22:19
Who set that system up? Yeah, no, 100%.
22:23
I actually am so similar to what you said that I just made me
22:26
reflect on myself. I'm so similar where I protect
22:29
my, the subcultures that I'm part of as well.
22:31
Like Bravo. I will never talk about Bravo.
22:34
When we get an opportunity to interview a Bravo star, of
22:37
course I'm going to take it because like, why would I not
22:39
want to meet one of my idols? But like I don't want to start a
22:44
podcast about housewives. Like, I don't want to cover that
22:46
because it's sacred to me. Someone was telling me about
22:49
Vanderpump Rules the other day. They were just, they were
22:51
explaining it to me and terms that I would understand.
22:55
They were like, you've got to watch no season 2 through 5 and
22:58
then season. I don't watch a lot of
23:00
television. I don't watch a lot of reality
23:01
television outside Survivor. My God, come on Eugene.
23:07
Very pop rules. Survivor.
23:08
It's a class I used to watch a lot of Come Dine With Me.
23:11
Oh my God, these are not real. Yeah, and then and then like, I
23:15
don't know, Australian dashcam car crash compilations.
23:19
Those are my big three. I'll watch The Departed in 79
23:23
YouTube Shorts clips out of order.
23:25
Not YouTube Shorts. Yeah, yeah.
23:28
But like, that's my, my media. That's fucking shocking.
23:31
I just find that there's a lot of really bad media right now
23:34
that does a lot of showing and telling, and I just don't have a
23:38
lot of, like, I don't have any patience for media that isn't
23:42
like, don't give me. I saw no other choice a couple
23:45
of weeks ago. That was fucking amazing.
23:48
What is that? I don't even know what.
23:49
That is by Park Chen Work, who directed Old Boy and the
23:52
Handmaiden. And just like South Korea's
23:55
other Otter, it's very difficult to explain what it is because it
23:59
crosses across so many different genres.
24:01
The basic premise is middle-aged man loses his job at a paper
24:06
factory, and in order to get another one, he decides that
24:09
he's going to murder all of the other candidates for the role.
24:13
Oh my God. He has no other choice.
24:15
It's the only way and it's genre bends between drama, some of the
24:20
like Korean, the way that these Korean directors structure the
24:25
comedy, the like the way that they pull on this tension of
24:29
like something is really the situation is really absurd and
24:33
that's what makes it funny. But also there's a lot of
24:35
jeopardy in the scene. And so there's you're holding
24:38
all of this tension in your body and you can't help but laugh to
24:41
get it out of you. I just honestly like, I think
24:43
it'll probably be my movie of the year.
24:45
Oh my God. OK, well, I feel like I need to
24:46
watch it now because you really just gave an amazing review.
24:50
A glowing review. Well, I'm going to give you a
24:51
glowing review of Vanderpump Rules, OK?
24:53
It's literally, I actually think as somebody who is very
24:58
interested in society and culture, it's like an
25:00
anthropological study. Like you have to freaking watch
25:03
it. I am not even joking.
25:04
It's like literally OK. Do you watch Jersey Shore?
25:06
Did you ever watch Jersey Shore? It's the same thing.
25:09
It is like they tapped into this incredibly niche subculture in
25:12
the US like this. It literally only exists in this
25:14
one tiny part of the country and they put it on display for us.
25:18
It's like that. And it's like servers in LA in
25:20
this very specific time frame before Instagram where like they
25:24
didn't even know what reality TV was and everything is authentic.
25:27
Oh my God, please, you have to watch.
25:28
Yeah, yeah. A portrait of America's
25:30
sickness. We love it.
25:32
I love it. OK before I let you go I need to
25:35
talk to you about 1. I feel like theme in your
25:38
content that is going viral at the specific moment because I
25:41
keep getting served all of your videos about it.
25:43
Post luxury status symbols. Tell me about that.
25:47
So a year ago I made this video where I was basically
25:53
identifying like why luxury is in so much trouble right now.
25:58
The basic premise is that luxury abandoned its status in market
26:05
for scale. So it used to have a ultimately
26:07
all brands have to have a source of truth and luxury used to be
26:11
based on craft like that craft and scarcity.
26:14
Those things are not synonymous with scale, with wanting to
26:18
scale up literally like, you know, you can't make craft goods
26:21
at up. To be honest, there's not enough
26:23
artisans to make that that product.
26:25
So they traded it for hype and effectively what they ended up
26:28
doing along with something that was not necessarily their fault,
26:31
which is this extraordinary proliferation of images that
26:35
gradually just began to flatten the entire world into
26:39
two-dimensional algorithmic wallpaper.
26:41
Physical visual items stopped becoming status symbols.
26:45
You can see we have even items that are themselves physically
26:50
scarce or culturally abundant. It's not hard to see a picture
26:53
of a Birkin anymore, you know, in the same way it's not hard to
26:56
see a picture of a Lamborghini. You know, like, in the same way
26:59
like we're completely overloaded with like open your phone.
27:01
You see like a perfect 10 on TikTok, and then you scroll
27:05
three more times and you see another perfect 10.
27:07
You're like that. That must just be the world.
27:09
So increasingly my thesis is that the status has moved into
27:14
more coded elements that are behavioral rather than just
27:19
visual. And so I've begun documenting
27:22
these six key post luxury status symbols.
27:25
And what was interesting was that I started the Series A year
27:27
ago. I made six videos and I've come
27:30
back to them this year. This time I've actually had the
27:31
time to write sub stacks about them.
27:33
So to give a little bit more depth and research to, you know,
27:36
what is necessarily a hot take when you're doing it on short
27:39
form. And so much of that stuff
27:41
actually became it's more true now than it was a year ago.
27:44
So I think like all of this conversation about going analog,
27:47
you know, was this time last year I was talking about
27:49
connected privacy. And now the analog conversation
27:52
has become like the defining conversation, if you like, of
27:55
like this part of the year, everyone deciding about going
27:57
analog, which I think is a little bit of like everyone is
28:00
framing it as like, hey, it's this great movement going
28:02
offline. I'm like, no, it's not.
28:04
It's a privilege. That's what makes it a status
28:06
symbol, as a status symbol because it's inaccessible to the
28:08
majority of the population. And So what we have here is a
28:11
situation where those who have the capital, financial,
28:14
cultural, social can retreat into private spaces away from
28:18
algorithmic detection. The rest of us, either we rely
28:22
on visibility. We rely on visibility for
28:24
influence in our careers. We rely on visibility for
28:26
influence in our fucking social lives.
28:28
We rely on visibility in our romantic lives.
28:30
Like we have to have, you know, we have to have a Hinge profile,
28:32
right? Yeah, Yeah.
28:33
Unless you have significant social capital, you need that,
28:38
that you can meet people in person.
28:40
I was just having a conversation with with Cliff at the Commons,
28:44
the founder of the Commons, who was telling me people at the
28:46
Commons Health Club are coming there looking for love.
28:49
Oh my God. And of course they would,
28:50
because it makes sense. It's a bunch of people in the
28:53
same aspirational economic segment as them that also
28:55
happened to be disgustingly good looking.
28:58
Right. And really into fitness.
28:59
And really into fitness, of course.
29:00
So you've so, but that's the thing, right?
29:02
These people, it's pay to play. You have to pay, you pay to
29:05
access that. And so you're able to access
29:06
this offline community experience.
29:09
What we have is a situation where the third space, for the
29:12
most part, Australia is not that bad.
29:14
Like, you know, like we still have fed Square and, and we, you
29:17
know, we still have decent social infrastructure.
29:19
Go look around the world like third spaces have effectively
29:22
been destroyed and everything now is paid to play.
29:24
So I think what we have is a situation where going offline is
29:27
the status symbol that only some people can afford.
29:30
But it is a behavior. And I think what is interesting
29:33
is this analog, if you like, is the aesthetic layer that
29:36
underlies the behavior. So, so going analog, you can see
29:40
it the the aesthetics of analog are the CDs and touching grass
29:44
and this and like candle lit dinners.
29:46
But it's it's an aesthetic, right.
29:48
And I think there's that, that there's the irony, of course, of
29:51
like going offline performatively online.
29:54
But that, yeah, again, analog is just the aesthetic
29:56
representation of what the actual status symbol is, which
29:58
is to be able to evade the algorithm and the need for
30:03
visibility because you already have enough influence to be
30:06
invisible without missing out. So then what's your take on
30:10
creators who like Becca Bloom, who seemingly are so wealthy and
30:14
would have that standing in society, like trying to be
30:18
influencers? First off, like I think we can
30:20
all acknowledge that it's a fake it to make it.
30:22
She's clearly not as rich as she wants to be, which is in many
30:25
ways, it's like the most pathetic thing.
30:27
But like, that is. But that is America, right?
30:30
America is faggot. You make it.
30:31
It's making content about, hey, I'm a private chef for these
30:35
famous people, even though you're not.
30:36
And then becoming a private chef as a result of it.
30:39
Probably the, the most interesting thing for me with
30:41
Becca Bloom was that she was really well respected in the
30:44
beginning because what we had was a caricature that we could
30:48
engage with in a fictitious manner, which is, Oh my God,
30:53
like, yeah, this person. Yeah.
30:54
Rich people who are rich. Right, Right.
30:56
And so there was something about, like us engaging with
30:59
this avatar of desire, this person that's performing for us
31:03
and consuming it as a performance.
31:04
Now, of course, she's facing all of this criticism.
31:06
And I think the interesting thing, the criticism is because
31:08
people have realized that this is an actual person.
31:11
And not only that, but that all of this supposed wealth has not
31:14
freed her from the algorithmic grasp, the need to constantly
31:20
perform for this audience, visible or invisible.
31:23
And so now we approach her with not only the sense of disgust,
31:26
but the sense of pity. Right.
31:28
And as soon as someone becomes pitiable online, they become a
31:31
target for ridicule. Yeah, 100%.
31:34
Like, that's, I think, the sort of the interesting thing about
31:36
where she's at. Like Nara, Smith doesn't face
31:38
that same level of criticism because she looks fucking dialed
31:40
in. Yeah.
31:41
OK. Well, the last question that I
31:43
have for you today is how do you touch grass?
31:46
I really like going for walks around my neighborhood, like
31:49
long walks where I'll do 1 in the morning, one after lunch and
31:54
then one after dinner. And I go around the neighborhood
31:57
and I have like a bunch of favorite gardens that I like to
32:01
look at. Usually.
32:03
I find like nature can be a little bit grotesque to be
32:06
honest with you. I'm a city boy by heart, but
32:08
there's something about watching like birds and insects sort of
32:11
fussing around and like a really well kept garden that I really
32:13
love. I read a lot of fantasies, so
32:16
Ursula Guinn is my favorite author.
32:18
And I ride my bike. I try to commute everywhere by
32:22
bike. Like, you know, I really wish
32:25
there was this study that came out that found that Australian
32:28
motorists actually think of cyclists as less than human.
32:31
What they, they, they tested this thing where they actually
32:35
found that they look at them as slightly subhuman.
32:38
They're not quite human. There's a literal dehumanization
32:40
going on. Oh my God, I wish more people
32:42
would give it a go. It's like an amazing, like I'm
32:45
not talking about the ideological thing.
32:47
Like putting all of that stuff aside, environment, etcetera.
32:49
It's an amazing way of getting around.
32:51
It's so liberating to make your way through traffic, to ride, to
32:57
feel this constant sense of movement and you're moving fast
33:00
as well and you can go so far, and particularly in a city like
33:04
Melbourne and the inner suburbs, we've got shit load of bike
33:06
lanes. I find it's just like the
33:08
perfect way of me either entering my compression zone for
33:12
work or decompressing after work and like filtering out all of
33:15
the processing and stuff as well.
33:17
And you know, having a couple brushes with death like every
33:20
month and like, you know, getting into throw like the
33:24
cycle's attitude. Like I never use the word
33:26
fuckwit, but when I'm on a bike you call a lot of people
33:29
fuckwit. Oh my God.
33:33
Thank you so much for joining me.
33:34
Thank you for having me. Centennial world podcast network
33:37
operates on gadigal land we would like to acknowledge the
33:40
gadigal of the eora nation, the traditional custodians of this
33:43
land and pay our. Respects to elders both.
33:46
Past and present.