[SIC] 166: King Ting

Volume 4, Number 10

Nov 12, 2021

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Hi all,

Apologies for the delayed delivery this week, and therefore no delays in getting into it. No [SIC] Talk this week obviously, but past [SIC] Talks are over in my grid @dietznutz. Next week’s is with the newly-relaunched The Pop Manifesto’s Ilirjana Alushaj, a long time friend and one of only a few people I was brought together with by Fischerspooner’s “Emerge” (which should be blowing up on Tiktok again any minute now). All my previous conversations are there too, have a look.

Other than that - lots of trends and metaverse stuff to dig into this week. And some ancient stuff. Thanks to Celeste, Iolanda, David and Nick for suggestions. And to [SIC] homie Tyler McCauley for the shout out in his Unskippables newsletter, which is a great one for fans of new music without a lot of time to pore over new releases.

Ok - the links…

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Blown Out.

Trends

Via Understanding TikTok: “You have a full body costume too? Good. Here is your guide how to create a TikTok trend. You might want to use the magic formula. Simple – essential. Universal – essential. Reactive – essential. Followers – helpful. Let me know if this worked out.”
[SIC] Talks alum Ana Andjelic on drips (plural) vs drops (Substack)
How to predict the future(s)(Axios)
From Iolanda Carvalho: “If 2021 was the year the world turned the tide against the pandemic, 2022 will be dominated by the need to adjust to new realities." (The Economist)
How a decades-old business model became part of a side-hustle trend that affects nearly every shopper on the internet. Drop shipping, explained (Vox)
Dude, where's my order? Tracing one container through the broken global supply chain (Los Angeles Times)
Are people lying more since the rise of social media/smartphones? (Nieman Lab)
The question we’ve stopped asking about teens and socials: Should they be using these services at all? (New Yorker)
AI scientists are comparing their field to nuclear physics in the run-up to the Manhattan Project. “Yeah, we’re spooked"(The Guardian)
Via Marginal Revolution: Twenty new words for the dictionary. (Mental Floss)
Post Cop26, Trillions of dollars worth of green investments are coming (Axios)
Vogue’s Memes of The Year and Why They're Wrong (Memeforum)
Inside the ‘life extension’ market. From adding a few extra years on, to the quest for immortality, the business of ageing is getting older by the day (FT)
Rachel on what started the culture wars (The New Statesman)
Via Howard Lindzon: “this Ben Thompson essay – The Death and Birth of Technological Revolutions.” (Stratechery)
Enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities is on track to drop for the second year in a row. (Axios)
Gen Z job applicants are scrubbing campus political activism from their résumés (The Washington Post)
From Celeste Blewitt: Big, Bigger, Biggest: The History of Competitive Philanthropy (Town and Country)

Style

More press for [SIC] Talks alum Casey Lewis in The Embedded, talking those Gen Alpha aesthetics blues.
And more via After School: The rise and rise of the post-lockdown buzz cut. (i-D)
Via After School: TikTokers are using eyeliner to trick men. (Dazed)
Via Franchise: Games of taste. (Paris Review)
What Gen Z investors mean for fashion: (BoF)
Via Blood and Champagne: The future wearing iconic chairs. (AD)

The Arts

Beeple is changing the relationship between the artist and the collector (Quartz)
Winners of the Environmental Photographer of the Year 2021 (It’s Nice That)
Via The Slowdown: Wild Design, a new book by science writer Kimberly Ridley that spotlights beautiful, functional shapes found in nature.
Michael Lau, Godfather Of designer toys, on Collectible Culture And Commerce (Jing Culture & Commerce)
Via Blood and Champagne: [SIC] homie KAWS donates the holy grail of folk art to New York’s American Folk Art Museum (Artnet)
Fave gallerist and [SIC] homie Leo Fitzpatrick of Public Announcement interviewed by Gata.
From Celeste Blewitt: Glimpsing A Soon-to-Vanish Surrealist World in Chelsea (NYT)

Entertainment + IP

Dan Ozzi made a nine hour long playlist of punk songs featured in his book SELLOUT, in chronological order of release. (Spotify)
Via 2PM: How Hollywood stars lost their clout. (Economist)

Via After School: Grimes is forming an AI girl group.
While from [SIC] homie Nick Adler, there’s a BAYC Gorillaz called Kingship now too. (Twitter)
More on that note, from Iolanda Carvalho: Candy represents Prada’s next digital adventure. The virtual muse replaces the company’s traditional marketing strategy to target Gen Z. (Virtual Humans)
This week in REAL musicians, via Music Redef: New British jazz messengers. The UK jazz renaissance shows no sign of letting up. (The Guardian)
Via 2PM: Is 'Spencer' the ultimate horror movie (T&C)?
Via Music Redef: Money is fake, Harry Styles is forever (The Fader)
S/o SIC homie Greg Bresnitz. Eric Wareheim on the SnackyTunes pod. (Spotify)

Platforms & Influencers

Instagram wants to help you use it less (TechCrunch)
This is the wild west': An investment startup is building community trust with Discord. (Digiday)
Via The Drop: Discord tweeted out a little Web3 tease. (Twitter). And then almost immediately backed away because of a backlash (ArsTechnica)
From David Bloom: Niantic, best known for Pokémon GO, announced today that it will launch Lightship, an AR Developer Kit (ARDK) that will make building augmented reality experiences more accessible. (TechCrunch)
Via 2PM: How Hollywood stars lost their clout (Economist)
From Celeste: Internet Influencers & Generation Gaps' “This was a great episode, a discussion on the boomers, millennials, Gen Z and the differentiations in concepts of influencers. ‘Junklord Influencers’ was a term I learnt.”'(BBC)

Marketing & Advertising

NFL, Abercrombie & BuzzFeed rank among gen Z’s least favorite brands (Lucid)
Nevermind the bad reviews: Gamers want to see their favorite games turned into Movies, TV Shows. (Morning Consult)
Dodge Is Hiring a 'Chief Donut Maker' To Ride Around in a Hellcat (Hypebeast)
Reese's Puffs Teams up With KAWS to Launch Cereal and AR Game (Hypebeast)
Via Public Announcement: The illicit ad industry . Ad tech is about trying to scam the rest of ad tech as hard as possible, while trying to not get scammed too hard yourself. (Ariadne.space)
Via Maekan: How to work the LinkedIn algorithm (Search Engine Journal)
Future of Retail panel videos are now available to watch online.

Media Business

Via Maekan: We Probably Need to Dial Back The Climate Defeatism (Wired)
Via Nieman Lab, Ryan Broderick tweets: “Even though single topic newsletters are hot right now, it’s literally not a sustainable or safe way to live.” (Twitter)
Via Music Redef: 404 Error, Genre Not Found: The Life Cycle of Internet Scenes (Pigeons and Planes)

Teen Art Show goer at Jen Stark’s “Cascade” closing party.

Metaverse & Web3

Via Marginal Revolution: “Writing at the Harvard Business Review, Steve Kaczynski and Scott Duke Kominers have en excellent explanation of how NFTs create value.”
Via The Drop: Here is a list list of NFT Discords that have recently been compromised. (Twitter)
How to turn an NFT into an experience (AdAge)
Via Afterschool: An 8-year-old explains the metaverse (NYT)
From Iolanda: Matthew Ball (again) on The Metaverse, which “will not develop as the internet did.” Key Quote: “To restore the internet to its originating ethos, we need more than desire for a more open and collectively prosperous future. We need a mechanism which can offer developers greater profits than are available via closed platforms, and to users, a healthier and more respectful experience." ❤️❤️❤️
To build the metaverse, Meta first wants to Build Stores (NYT)
It’s because the metaverse “can't go mainstream without brick-and-mortar stores.” The metaverse promises to destroy physical limitations through its virtual constructs. But IRL is still the primary option for shoppers. (Quartz)
Hence: Marie Dollé asserts “Hyperphysicality as The Physical World's Answer to the Metaverse” (Substack)

Food & Drink

WITI’s future of meat edition (Substack)
Via 1440: Mapping alcohol consumption by country. (Visual Capitalist)
Via Axios: The Michelin Guide next year will begin a Florida edition.
S/o [SIC] homie Tommy Lucente: Kittch is a live feed of cooking classes and restaurant action. (Fast Company)

Miscellany

Meet Dracula, the dark mode color scheme with a cult following.(Protocol)
The medieval Middle East lived in terror of the Order of Assassins. But the strangest part of their tale is the ongoing rumors about their initiation ritual where they got blazed out of their minds on strong hashish and witnessed "heaven." (MedMen)
Corollary: Archaeologists have pieced together the first comprehensive map of Karakorum, the capital of the Mongol Empire. (Hyperallergic)
Via Public Announcement: Lads, Gak and Union Jacks: The Oral History of 'Cool Britannia' (VICE)
Via WITI: How the 3-point line is breaking basketball. (YouTube)

Things To Do:

Get skateboard photo legend J. Grant Brittain’s book “Push.” (Gingko Press)
Go see the Joe Roberts show (Instagram)
Then go see all the shows Leo Fitzpatrick recommends via Public Announcement AND all the other shows he recommends via his own handle. (Instagram)
Check out the [*airgan] opening night launch event featuring NFTs, MERCH, ROBOT ARMS, DJs, YOU and of course our FIRST MACHINE LEARNING DESIGNED SNEAKER on 11/16. Also there’s open bar 6 to 10p. (Eventbrite)