[SIC] 159: Just an Ordinary Zebra

Volume 4, Number 3

Hi all.

Casey Newton’s “What I Learned from a Year on Substack” post from last week, was something that keeps coming back to my inbox, and especially the oft-cited line “The only way a Substack grows is through tweets.”My experience with [SIC] has been different (though maybe I should use Twitter more, much as I dislike it).

For [SIC], almost 100% of growth has come from recommendations from subscribers - especially subscribers to [SIC] who have newsletters and have been generous enough to cite this digest. Which is just to say; if you like what I’m doing here, please feel free to share it with friends, family, colleagues, etc. Here’s a button ➡️:

The OTHER finding for this week is that of the (surprisingly large) number of people who upgraded their sub last week when I turned on optional paid subscriptions, many were publishers themselves. That was really gratifying. Thanks all who ante’d up, and if you’d like to join their ranks, here’s a button for that, too. [SIC] will remain free every Thursday, whether you do or don’t. But you can (probably) expense it if you do.

No [SIC] Talk today (as always, the archive’s in my grid @dietznutz), but I *am* doing a special edition of the weekly Culture Club Show today at 2:30p ET. Jeff Carvalho, Jian DeLeon and I are talking to Matthew Gardner, CCO of @Rumfoords (and others) about “Crypto in Our Closets: Fashion & the Metaverse” live from the Unfinished event in NYC. Tune in on Clubhouse if you’re interested.

Finally, thanks to Jeff, Blue and Iolanda for contributions this week. More, please.

Ok: into the stream from here. x Ben

Via Future of Transportation: Brian Eno's design principles for streets (Medium)

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trends

• The Trend Report™ on “Borecore” (or, why boredom is the aesthetic, the lifestyle, of the moment).

• Seemingly in opposition, tho, via Lean Luxe: Maximalism has overtaken minimalism.' (Town and Country)

• Via Public Announcement: (Also from Town & Country?!) You’re either born with it or you’re not. It’s the ultimate club. What Is Good Taste? (Town and Country)

• Speaking of clubs, via Lean Luxe: For those who can afford it, the brandlonging economy promises nothing less than Life-as-a-Service––an appable, tappable, all-you-can-eat buffet of loyalty programs, subscriptions and memberships. (Bloomberg)

• Via Declarative Statements: The exponential age will change economics forever, (Wired)

• Meanwhile, from my kids: Hitting those devious licks. Students are destroying bathrooms, swiping school supplies in latest TikTok challenge. (WaPo)

• Corollary: The fidget business (The New Statesman)

• Via the Lindy Letter: What if most of our major contemporary problems stem from housing being too expensive? The housing theory of everything. (Works in Progress)

• As remote employment becomes the norm, some refugees are discovering new opportunities and autonomy. Why ‘Work from Anywhere’ Works for Refugees (Reasons to Be Cheerful)

• Conversely: “I’m afraid to leave the house: young people and the fear of going out.” FOGO is increasingly being used to describe the post-lockdown, post-Covid anxiety affecting many young people in the UK (The FACE)

• Via the Lindy Letter, apropos of my conversation with Ryan McGinness last week: Sean McClure explains why ignoring details is useful. Why high-level thinking is superior to detailed reasoning.

• Peter, “Just Circling Back on That Whole Management Thing” (The Atlantic)

STYLEE

• The “father of logomania” [Dapper Dan] loves Liberian art, Gucci loafers and the Harlem streets (How to Spend It)

• The woman behind China’s local fashion scene: (Jing Daily)

• And her London equivalent (Vogue Business)

• Michael Williams won’t talk fashion, but expounds this week on his favorite brands. All good recos, whether they’re new to you or just a reminder of what you already knew. (AContinuousLean)

• I’m personally VERY ambivalent about this one. How We Learned to Love Crocs (GQ)

• Is Live-Stream Shopping the Future of Retail? (WSJ)

ARTS & PLACES TO SEE THEM

• Thinking about art on the 10th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street (Hyperallergic)

• Surveillance artist Trevor Paglen on the “Time Sensitive” podcast (the Slowdown)

• You Can 3D Print Your Own Mini Museum (Hyperallergic)

• Same but different: there is now strong commercial interest in high-tech art installations (FT)

• A Collector of Antiques Asks: "Can Something Be Racist and Also Be Beautiful?" (Hyperallergic)

• Art museums = The Sopranos, apparently. Key Quote: “The impossibility of reforming Tony [Soprano] bears some resemblance to the crisis plaguing museums and toxic philanthropy today, where a culture of bullying and exploitation belies programming of socially- and politically-engaged art.” | (Hyperallergic)

DIVERTISSEMENTS

• From Iolanda Carvalho: "Now in its 22nd year, PwC’s Outlook turns its focus this year to the power shifts taking place in entertainment and media. (PWC)

• “And the Perspectives doc in .pdf - super cool” (PWC)

• Netflix's acquisition of the Roald Dahl Story Company would seem to represent an avenue toward everything the streamer wants to do as it looks beyond its core business. Into the Wonka-Verse (The Hollywood Reporter)

• The FACE interviews Pa Salieu

• Via Music Redef: Amapiano: inside South Africa’s sound of freedom (Dazed)

• Via Jian DeLeon: Freak Scene (the story of dinosaur JR) looks great. (Instagram)

• Via Bob Lefsetz: “If you're interested in the recorded music business you must read this article.” (Music Business Worldwide)

• Related: Good for who? How music copyright has gone too far. (The Verge)

• How Wizkid Became the King of Afropop (GQ)

• Barbie Unveils Music-Producer Doll 'to Highlight the Gender Gap in the Industry' (Variety)

• From David Blue: “Thanks for flagging the Tim Sweeney mix — I've been missing the NYU BIS show (the final episode is pretty solid with a lot of balearic classics if you haven’t heard it). If you are indeed looking for tunes along similar lines, I recently posted a mix you might like.“ (Soundcloud)

• Elsewhere in the end of an era, Kyle Chayka expounds on the death of digital collection (Substack)

Platformation & Influenczars

• Via After School: Meet the Youtubers determined to find lost media (The Verge)

• The rise of the big-budget Youtuber (Simon Evans)

• Via Motive Unknown: YouTube says that music is now 25% of its global watch time

• Morning Brew did Icebreakers with [SIC] homie Kat Cole

• It's getting harder for people to believe that Facebook is a net good for society (Recode)

• Fed up with TikTok, Black creators are moving on (LA Times)

• Meanwhile, via Understanding TikTok: A TikToker redesigned major brand logos w/ the most cringe, microsoft paint vibes and brands like The Washington Post IMMEDIATELY adopted them. (Twitter)

• From Iolanda Carvalho: "Of the millions of apps available around the world, just a small handful of the most used apps dominate global internet traffic" (Visual Capitalist)

• So, via Motive Unknown: PayPal launches its ‘super app’ combining payments, savings, bill pay, crypto, shopping and more (TechCrunch)

The Marketing Arts

• Via Thingtesting: When did the book become a brand? (Eye On Design)

• Corollary: what Fashion (and everyone else) can learn from Lil Nas X (BoF)

• Also: With Kris Wu & Other Idols Tainted, What’s Luxury’s Next China Strategy? (Jing Daily)

• Will Covid and Klarna kill the credit card? (FT)

• Via Maekan: Like Vinyl For Vids: Developers Are Making New Game Cartridges For Discontinued Consoles (The Guardian)

• Beauty’s next retail channel is …. Uber? (Vogue Business)

• A summer of pop-ups points to a promising future for marketers’ favorite medium (the Drum)

• Retail Dive’s “Trendline” on the evolution of stores in 2021 (Retail Dive)

• Maekan’s Charis and Eugene take to the pod to dissect the previously cited “Nike’s End of Men” post.

Media Biz

• Via Nieman: It me: Is Sunday-only print the future for local news? (Local News Initiative)

• Young people think it’s “very important” for news organizations to link out to their facts and research. Older people don’t care as much. (Nieman Lab)

• How the pandemic has pushed journalists to exit the industry (Nieman Lab)

• Via Marginal Revolution: The reality show about activists has been...cancelled!  In both senses of the word, it seems. (BBC)

• Publishers hope fact-checking can become a revenue stream. Right now, it’s mostly Big Tech who is buying. (Nieman Lab)

• What Social Media Needs to Learn From Traditional Media  (WIRED)

Mixed reality & web 3

• From Jeff Carvalho: “Believe”  [Fortnite x Balenciaga] (Twitter)

• Via Music Ally: Are Fractionalised NFTs a sign that the market is eating itself? And how would you feel about owning 20% of a picture of a dog? (Bloomberg)

• Is direct-to-avatar (D2A) the next big business model? (Wunderman Thompson)

• MetaSocieties. A values-based digital reality is in the making. (Wunderman Thompson)

• Via Motive Unknown: NFT Avatars and Onboarding Subcultures to the Web3

food & drink 

• Via Future Perfect: The case for Meatless Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (The New Republic)

• The environmental benefits of lab-made dairy products (Axios)

• But, but, via Future Perfect: Cultured meat predictions were overly optimistic (Effective Altruism Forum)

• Via Axios: Why we still haven't solved global food security (BBC Future)

• Willfully obtuse to that question, Door Dash will deliver booze (NYPost)

• Logical, since Andrea Hernandez points out that  by 2024 delivery will account for 7% of the total alcohol biz (Twitter)

• Meanwhile, Samuel Adams' new beer is so strong it's illegal in 15 states (CNN)

inspired miscellany 

• 032c talks to Will Alexander, whose poems just orbited the earth.

• Via Marginal Revolution: Twitter megathread covering ”forty concepts you should know”

• Via WITI: Your reality is out of date (and this article is already a couple years old) (Boston.com)

• Headline of the week: Deep Sniff: poppers and the pursuit of pulsating pleasure (The FACE)

• Via Morning Brew: the whitest paint ever made (USA Today)

• Related: L.A.’s New Reflective Streets Bounce Urban Heat Back into Space (Reasons to Be Cheerful)

• Bailgun Gary’s THE VIDEO is the best 11:24 I’ve spent this week. Though if you’re not a washed-up skater you might just like the music. (YouTube)

things to do

• Via Franchise, support the folks at Superior Elevation in recovering from Hurricane Ida flooding that destroyed 75% of their inventory. DONATE HERE (Go Fund Me)

• Go here: via Lean Luxe: “I’ve never seen a room like this!” In time for Succession 3: Even Higher Waists, Cousin Greg’s got a new NYC speakeasy (s/o to SIC Homie Carlos Quirarte btw). (Vogue)

• Corollary: Another Ray’s partner, Taavo Somer dominated the mid-late streets with signature tees like this “morally bankrupt” joint. IYKYK. Poised for a comeback. (eBay)

• Cop this, via Gossamer: Pure Beauty x Jochen Holz. Pure Beauty is debuting 10 one-of-a-kind bong sculptures made by glassmaker Jochen Holz. (Pure Beauty)

• The Meme in the Moment Festival by Digital Void is back. Part II is Oct. 27.

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