Hi hi! In a much-welcomed twist of events, I’ve been feeling so good this past week. Cartoon birds are practically flocking to me, except in the harsh light of day, they’re gnats that have annoyingly infiltrated my nice and clean apartment building. Beyond minuscule pests, what’s also lingering with me is the tension between hindsight and foresight. Specifically, when the old becomes familiar and vice versa.
— Morgan
And more…
One of the (many) topics Matthew Stasoff’s Social Signals brilliantly covers is clipping.
“Clipping is the practice of taking longer-form content - typically YouTube videos, podcasts, livestreams or interviews - and breaking them down into more digestible content pieces.”
We’re conditioned to show ourselves online in fragments. Why should trending edits be any different?
Even as YouTube, the classic long-form platform, surpasses Netflix in watch time, long-form content can’t exist on its own anymore. It can’t escape the demand of the short-form attention span.
And, of course, people have found ways to monetize this. But what is it doing to us as a culture? When does clipping become watering down the source material?
Matthew highlighted a creator, Mike Sunday, who said: “YouTubers, VTubers, influencers. We don’t even watch people anymore. We just consume them one clip at a time. A sentence that sounds profound because it’s been cut completely free from its context. We don’t know what came before, and we don’t know what comes after. It flattens nuance into certainty, and certainty always comes off as the truth.”
As vertical entertainment rises, like Issa Rae’s new series, I’m afraid long-form is going to be seen more like an epic tome, like War and Peace. Something the performative vanity readers brag about starting more for clout than enjoyment.
It makes me want to train my attention span for staying power, to be lit up by a big timestamp and not crave the quick hit of the CliffsNotes, TL;DR cut lingering in a new kind of liminal space.
Target sells records, and it annoys me every time. Same goes for Barnes & Noble and the Urban Outfitters exclusives.
They pander to the trends and ride their target demographic’s coattails.
But these big chains are not purveyors of this media. They are opportunists, bulk-buying until prices drive sales away from the OGs, who go beyond customers at the register.
Target hasn’t been on the front lines during the pre-popular years of vinyl obscurity. Your local record store has. They’re fighting to survive, but they do have one thing on their side: the movies.
High Fidelity or Empire Records could never be replicated at Target. They own the immersive act of entering one of those stores, scanning the employees, and picking out the real-life John Cusack (or Zoë Kravitz) counterpart. That makes it even more desirable than what lines the shelves.
The nostalgia doesn’t have a hard stop. It might not result in a sale, but it results in an experience. One that’s dependent on the stories we tell and the places we set them.
As new forms of nostalgia, like typewriters, enter the cultural chat, those stores need champions, too. Because Target is waiting to swoop in. And it begs the question: Where is their movie representation to keep the magic and small-biz commerce alive?
At least, according to this CNN short from earlier this year, we have Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift.
When Data, But Make it Fashion posted this carousel, I almost lost it. The artistry. The drama. The smoke and mirrors. The urge I have to graze the fabric to believe it!
This, of course, tickles my high-low loving heart, but also speaks to a larger creative endeavor:
Illusionism, to create a deceptive sense of reality.
Or mimesis, where creators mimic or reflect the real world.
It reminds me of the original Backrooms videos. It is illusionism and mimesis at its finest. Did Kane Parsons go find a location to film? No. He built one in Blender. It’s Bottega Veneta’s leather to Levi’s denim. It looks like the real thing, but is far from it.
Sometimes it’s more logistical. Other times it defies time and logic for the sake of art. But either way, it should challenge us not to let the limits define what we create. We can always find and use different tools to arrive at the same visual result.
I’m still salty that I didn’t get to make it to the mobile Criterion Closet. It’s my own fault because I like to sleep in on the weekend. But this is very cute and made me cry just a little at the end.
For a fascinating look into how a former Simpsons and The Office writer is navigating Hollywood right now, tune in here. It’s quite on brand with this Substack, too!
WRITTEN BY
The latest in the world of creativity, delivered every Wednesday to help you stay inspired and get through the rest of the week.
*Never written with AI. Proudly featuring typos that me and my ADHD will likely miss :)
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