- Hello, my beautiful doves. My name is Mina
Le, and someone recently called me their favorite yapper, which I'm taking as the highest form
of compliment. So yeah, if you're new here, I yap about fashion, media, and culture on this
channel. Also, if you're old here, if you're a returning viewer and you're like, "Mina, what
happened to your voice? It's so sickening," I'm not sick, I'm just super congested because I
have allergies and because March is spring now, thank you, climate change, I'm getting
allergies way sooner than normal. And also, my meds are taking a bit to kick in, so
we're just dealing with this for now. Anyway, today, we're gonna be talking about the
privilege of being able to exist offline, the romanticization of the solitary
artist in the face of Oscar campaigning. - [Interviewer] Are you aware of the
Disappointed Cillian Murphy meme on the internet? - The what? - [Interviewer] The Disappointed
Cillian Murphy meme. - I don't, what's a meme? - And the hatred for influencers. Two things have
happened that are related to this video inception. One, on the fashion front, everyone was just
losing their shit over The Row banning the use of phones during their Paris Fashion Week show last
month, and, two, in the Hollywood circuit, people continue to make fun of Austin Butler for being
cringe, and I think the latest method acting news for him is that he had to hire an accent coach to
relearn how to speak his normal voice post-Elvis. - I mean, I had a dialect coach just
to help me not sound like Elvis- - Oh, wow. - In that film. - Wow. - Um. Why don't we just try
saying your name? Austin. - El- - Ah- - Elvis. - Austin. - Elvis. - Ah. - Ah, ah, ah, Aust- - Nuh-nuh. - Aust- - I'll get all into that in due time, but
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something that you wanna put in your own body. Take Care/of's quiz to find out what's recommended
for you, and use my code MINALE50 for 50% off subscription items in your first order. So as I
said, during Paris Fashion Week, the luxury brand The Row made headlines for banning phones. Prior
to the show's start, guests were sent this email: "We kindly ask that you refrain from capturing
or sharing any content during your experience. In place of phones, guests were provided notebooks
to jot down their comments, and afterwards, dozens of journalists and TikTokers published think
pieces on what this meant. "It was elitist." "It was quiet luxury snobbery.' "It was a marketing
ploy." "It was a commentary on our inability to live in the moment." Et cetera. The reason why
some people criticized this move was because not allowing photos and videos could be seen as an
act of gatekeeping. Granted, official photos were released later, but I think it's important to note
that social media has democratized the fashion industry in a really profound way because fashion
shows have always been and still are invite-only events. So, for many people, seeing a show
through someone else's phone screen may be the only way that they can experience the show. Plus
many creators also give behind-the-scenes looks, unboxing the elaborate invitations, and show
outfits, and going to the venues. Also, The Row sells at some of the highest price points seen
today in ready-to-wear and is the poster child for the quiet luxury aesthetic. For anyone unfamiliar
with this brand, I highly suggest that you go onto their website and, you know, experience that shock
for the first time. Their anti-phone move can thus be more easily interpreted as a way to preserve
high fashion for the elite. It can also just be like an annoyance for editors and journalists who
need to cover the show. Fashion editor Vanessa Friedman, who attended the show, was frustrated
by this move, writing on Twitter, "I don't believe that taking photos interferes with my ability to
fully consider what I'm seeing, and I believe I'm old enough to decide that for myself." For people
who work in fashion and are not just there to simply look at pretty clothes, having no access
to their phones makes the work more tedious. It's just faster to jot down notes via an iPhone
keyboard than to chicken scratch on pen and paper, I'm sorry to say, even though, you know, I do love
analog stuff. It's just also easier to remember the clothing pieces that you wanna write about
if you have images of them from the moment. And, you know, I don't usually do, like, fashion
show reviews, but whenever I do a costume review of a movie, I'll watch the movie, and as
I'm watching the movie, I'll watch on my laptop, and I'll take screenshots of every single costume
that appears in the movie that I think is, like, noteworthy. And yes, it does take from the full
experience of watching something, but I'm working, and reviewing screenshots afterwards helps
me see similarities or differences between costumes and characters. It also lets me see the
sequence of when costumes cropped up and how that relates to storytelling. And honestly, it's just
easier for me to remember what's going on if I'm taking the screenshots myself versus looking up
high-res screen caps of the movie afterwards. Though sometimes if I find myself, like, really
enjoying the movie, I'll just watch it straight through and then do the whole screen cap thing
in my second watch. However, I also wanna add that The Row was founded by the Olsen twins, who
are notoriously private individuals. They rarely give interviews, they don't have personal
Instagram accounts, at least public ones, and their attitude towards privacy carries over to
their brand branding as well. The Row's dedicated Instagram account posts sporadically and mainly
images of artworks to inspire rather than products to promote. Writer Adelaide Guerisoli also notes
that ironically, despite the brand's low profile, TikTok and social media have become obsessed with
it. In recent months, The Row has experienced a wave of growing popularity in conjunction with the
rise of quiet luxury, celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence who've been photographed repping the
brand, and via its line of men's bags that have been championed by it boys Jacob Elordi and Harry
Styles. The Olsen's decision to leave phones at the door could be them just trying to reign the
brand back to its more, for lack of a better word, quiet luxury roots. And as Guerisoli writes,
"Taking control of the narrative of their product, designed for those who can buy a 5,000 euro coat
without their heart or wallet skipping a beat, ultimately isn't so unfair." Their anti-phone
agenda can thus be seen as an even bigger flex. They don't need social media publicity
to make money or build brand loyalty, as is the case with most other corporations, even
the luxury ones. For example, Loewe used TikTok to celebrate and publicize the artisans behind
their creations, and smaller brands like Coperni, Elena Velez, among countless others have had to
rely on borderline gimmicky spectacles to create buzz. It reminds me of the Substack essay read on
friend of the channel Avery Trufelman's Articles of Interest Substack, which I highly recommend for
any fashion history lovers along with her podcast, which is just so research dense while being
entertaining. Love Avery. Anyway, Avery featured a guest writer, Marie Myrhoj. I tried to look up
the pronunciation of her last name and I couldn't find that pronunciation, so I apologize to any
Danish people. But anyway, Marie wrote about how smartphones have changed the fashion show, and
she wrote, "Arguably the smartphone might have brought more depth, movement, and tactility to the
clothes moving down the runway. Thanks to video, the algorithmically-preferred content, we could
all watch the runway as the light changes. The model turns around, we can watch what she looks
like to the viewers sitting off to the side. It's no surprise that, as fashion shows became more
Instagrammable, they had to provide more action. They became social media spectacles." While
admittedly designers have presented experimental shows way before the smartphone, Maria explains,
"The phone has turned the attention away from the laser beam of the runway and onto the showgoer.
If we look at Jacquemus's Fall 2023 show, for instance, guests arrived in pairs and rowed
to their places in little white boats that docked along the runway. All of this is to say that
in some shows, it feels like the clothes play a supporting role, especially when these shows
put trending influencers in the front row that have little to no previous relationship with
a brand or even the fashion industry at large. Sabrina Bahsoon, also known as Tube Girl, who
became a sensation after posting TikTok videos of her dancing on the London Tube, was folded
into the industry almost immediately post-going viral. For example, she walked MAC Cosmetics' The
Face Show event and the Christian Cowan runway show. She also attended the Balmain, Courreges,
and Alessandra Rich shows, all during her first fashion month. I have no personal hate towards
Sabrina, as a disclaimer, I liked her subway videos and I'm always gonna root for an Asian
queen, okay, unless they say something crazy, you can write that on my grave. But some people
online criticized her ascent into the high fashion space because they couldn't see the link between
energetic dancing and high fashion. This is not a new conversation by the way. I remember when Emma
Chamberlain and the Dolan Twins first got invited to the Louis Vuitton show. People were clamoring
in the comments about how they didn't deserve to be there because they were not fashionable
enough. But the hard pill to swallow is that it doesn't matter if a creator or celebrity likes
fashion because these brands are just looking for someone who can draw more eyeballs to them in a
super oversaturated industry. Plus, fashion is very niche and these lifestyle influencers have
the advantage of having a reach that can draw in new consumers into the fashion space. And as just
an example of successful influencer marketing, Madeline Argy, who has about 5 million followers
on TikTok last time I checked, attended the Tory Burch show during New York Fashion Week and drove
$289,000 in media impact value. In comparison, Emma Roberts, an actress who has almost 21 million
followers on Instagram, drove 177,000 in MIV at the same show, a little more than half of Argy's
impact. The reason that celebrities were invited to the front row in the first place was because
of their star power or advertising power. Think Audrey Hepburn advertising for Givenchy. But
times are changing and celebrities may not be as powerful in the advertising front as top
influencers. Of course, the top dogs like Dior and Gucci still have notoriously higher barriers
to entry for their shows, but that might be because they feel they don't need as much social
media press because they have pretty well-known reputations already. Also, not to sound shady
because I love many of these brands, but some legacy high fashion brands, I think, are also a
bit more traditionalist in their marketing. For example, I used to be signed with a top modeling
agency. I know! Keyword is used to though, and one of the scouting agents from that agency
was once solicited by this massive TikToker back in 2020 and the agent said no. She didn't want
this TikToker to be signed because she didn't like TikTokers. And a year later, everyone
in the office was like, WTF, we could have made so much money off that girl. In comparison,
smaller brands kind of have to fill their front row with influencers because that's how they get
viral, that's how they make money, that's how they jumpstart a successful business. And most smaller
brands present during New York Fashion Week, which is why every season we get the same discourse
about how New York Fashion Week sucks because it's overrun by influencers and the real fashion
girlies go to Paris and Milan. Look, I've attended New York Fashion Week for a few seasons, and yes,
there are definitely influencers who are entitled and who don't really care about what they're
watching. But I do think the discourse that comes up literally every six months is really exhausting
and overplayed at this point. And a lot of it is just, like, overemphasizing, like, what's actually
happening. For example, last September, there was rage bait about influencers like the Ariana
Grande impersonator walking runway shows and taking jobs from models, and of course people were
commenting that New York Fashion Week is dead and these influencers can't walk and I can't believe
they're, like, replacing models, et cetera. The show that Miss Ari impersonator walked in was
the Creators Inc. show, which was not on the official New York Fashion Week calendar, and the
whole premise was for influencers to walk because it's a talent agency putting on the show. It was
like a gimmicky thing, not a representation of New York Fashion Week. It reminds me of this
Rachel Tashjian article for "The Washington Post" last September. In it, she talks about
how most influencers are not actually going to shows on the official calendar. As an example,
Chanel set up a pop-up event in Williamsburg to celebrate their new perfume during New York
Fashion Week. But many of the attendees weren't invited to the official actual Chanel fashion show
in Paris. To be invited to an actual fashion show, you have to either have the connections to a PR
team or just way higher of a follower account. But it probably doesn't matter at the end of the
day because most of these influencers' followers aren't clocking the differences between a front
row seat and a perfume presentation invite, and therefore brands like Chanel are still able to
profit off of these influencers' followings while still reserving their front row for more prestige
guests. But the idea that privacy is more elite is not just a fashion industry concept.
If we look at my favorite actor du jour, Cillian Murphy, part of his charm is the
fact that he is so offline and private. - [Interviewer] You know there's a
chunk of your hair for sale for 7K? - Nope. - [Interviewer] Straight off
the set from "Peaky Blinders." - Right, sounds a bit expensive. - The Olsen twins, as I mentioned earlier,
have that similar charm for being offline. Ashley Olsen even had a baby last year
and there was virtually no news about it. Raven Smith wrote about the lack of baby
announcement for "Vogue." "We cannot deny that this is extremely chic. Chicness is, of course,
amorphous, hard to pin down to a sum of parts, at once mystical and tangible. But the less the
Olsens give us, the more we want. Their privacy is the ultimate luxury." While being an offline
celebrity seems like it's especially subversive, given all the Kardashian-esque type of stars
out there who profit on every single life event, the allure of privacy has actually been a
thing for a while. Greta Garbo, for instance, was an intensely private movie star of the
1930s era. She avoided all industry functions, interviews, movie premieres, award
shows, and never replied to fan letters. - I want to be alone. - She even won the Academy's Honorary
Award, that's a tongue twister, in 1954, and she didn't even show up to receive it, so the
Academy had to mail it to her. She retired early in 1941 and lived in Manhattan, where she inspired
the act of Garbo-watching among the public, who hoped to catch just a glimpse of her taking a
long walk. For stars of today, one way for them to avoid the public is to hang out in an exclusive
membership club. The one that I became obsessed with reading about was the San Vicente Bungalows
in Los Angeles, though they're reportedly opening another location in New York City. As part of the
club protocol, members and guests have to sign a code of conduct contract upon entry, phone usage
is discouraged, and guests of members get their phone lenses covered with a sticker to further
deter any photographs. Tracee Ellis Ross explained the appeal to a "New York Times" reporter in
2019. "I know there's sort of an eye roll about the exclusivity, it feels privileged and all
that, but at the same time there's this real need in Los Angeles for a place where you can go
and be a private person and take off the celebrity part of yourself at the door." Privacy is such
a big deal for this club that in 2021, a guest of a member actually leaked that Justin and Hailey
Bieber were there, and the member who brought this guest was immediately terminated, which I would
be so embarrassed if I brought my friend and they literally got my membership removed, just saying.
In 2019, it was reported there were 7,000 people on the waiting list and the capacity was 3,000
people. And once you're off, you're definitely not getting back on. But just to, like, even if,
like, they didn't have that policy, like, there's no way you would get back on because there's 7,000
other people who want in. And apparently, people who live in New York City and London who don't
even have a residence in LA were trying to get memberships to the club. Yeah, if I was a member
there, I would never bring a guest. But while I can understand wanting to be in a space that's
vetted and safe and without paparazzi, these clubs can also have negative effects for society
as a whole. For example, if you're able to get all your wonderful amenities through either your
own private domain or via an exclusive membership club, you invest way less effort in trying to
improve the city you actually live in. Why give the public parks any money when you can just
put all your money in a private garden? This is the same issue I have with the concept of country
clubs and gated communities. I actually stumbled across this article from 2016 covering the gated
communities cropping up in Hanoi, Vietnam, though, you know, obviously gated communities happen in
every single country. Urban studies professor Lisa Drummond said in this article, "These gated
communities remove a group of people from active everyday engagement in the city. They take that
group of people and allow them to withdraw from the city, behind walls; to have their own private
facilities in an economically homogenous space, because, of course, money buys entry to that
space, so only those with money can be there." The gated communities in Hanoi also advertise
themselves as being peaceful oasis and boast lush private gardens, tennis courts, private schools,
private hospitals, among many other amenities, and they're able to get this much space through
gentrification. One community project named Ecopark experienced repeated protests from
local communities who had lost their rice fields and farmland due to its expansion. This
idea of reconnecting with nature and abandoning phones is actually a deceptively wealthy-person
mindset. As an example, Walter Isaacson, author of "Steve Jobs," told "The New York Times" in a 2014
interview that the Jobs household was a fairly tech-free one, even though this man literally
sold us the iPhone! Isaacson said, "Every evening, Steve made a point of having dinner at the big,
long table in their kitchen, discussing books and history and a variety of things. No one ever
pulled out an iPad or computer. The kids did not seem addicted at all to devices." But given
all the articles and books written about how bad iPhones and iPads and social media are for
children, it's no surprise that those who have the time and means to be reading these books
and staying up to date with child development news would start scaling back their kids' phone
usages. The most recent article I've read on it was published in "The Atlantic" earlier this
month. The writer, Jonathan Haidt, wrote a pretty long comprehensive article about everything wrong
with children being on phones today. But in short, more time spent on phones means less time spent on
face-to-face interaction. And when we're unable to have enough real-world interaction as kids when
our brains are still developing, it inevitably affects our ability to form friendships, to date,
to come to our sexuality, to exercise, to sleep, to do well in academics, to understand politics,
to essentially form our own identities. But Haidt also covers the initial appeal of handing a
child an iPad. He writes, "Touchscreen devices were also a godsend for harried parents. Many
of us discovered that we could have peace at a restaurant, on a long car trip, or at home
while making dinner or replying to emails if we just gave our children what they most wanted:
our smartphones and tablets. We saw that everyone else was doing it and figured it must be okay."
Parents who can't afford extra help, like a nanny or babysitter, also might feel more compelled to
hand their kid an iPad just to get a break for a few hours in the day. I actually have a friend
who's a babysitter, and she was hired by this wealthy family to basically take care of an infant
for a couple hours every day. And I asked her, I was like, "Isn't that, like, interesting how
this family, like, trusts you, no offense, to take care of this literal, like, newborn baby?" And she
said, "Well, actually, both parents are home, and the mother is actually on maternity leave, but she
just, like, is tired and she doesn't wanna take care of this baby, like, all day long." And that's
totally fair. I'm, like, not shaming that desire to just want a couple hours to nap to yourself,
but it is, like, a place of privilege to be able to literally be on leave, paid leave, and then on
top of that, hire someone to help you take care of your child. And this class pattern of technology
use also, like, moves into teenagehood as well. According to 2018 research by Common Sense Media,
lower income teenagers spend an average of eight hours and seven minutes a day using screens for
entertainment, while higher income peers spend five hours and 42 minutes. By the way, this study
counted each screen separately, so a child texting on a phone and watching TV for one hour counted
as two hours of screens being used. Two studies that look at race have found that White children
are exposed to screens significantly less than African American and Hispanic children. As Nellie
Bowles wrote for "The New York Times" in 2018, "It could happen that the children of poorer and
middle-class parents will be raised by screens, while the children of Silicon Valley's elite will
be going back to the wooden toys and the luxury of human interaction." We even see this trend
in schools. For example, the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, which is a private school that
is popular among Silicon Valley executives, bans most screens. Meanwhile, the nearby public
Hillview Middle School has a 1:1 iPad program. It's interesting though because at the same time
as all this social media addiction, there's also been a rise in the group chat medium over the
past year or so. Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, even said that teens are spending more of their
time on the apps in their DMs than they do on stories or on the feed. Many people theorize
the move towards group chats is because people are tired of producing content, of sharing their
lives so publicly, and instead trying to curate more selective communities again in the same vein
as the old internet when we had forums and instant messaging. As just an aside, I was definitely,
like, still really young, but I experienced forums and instant messaging, and I just remember, like,
how nice it was to be able to say BRB or GTG and the messages would just stop afterwards.
Like, ugh, oh my God, if you don't know, I don't know how young my demographic goes, but
BRB is be right back and GTG is got to go. The nice thing is that for an instant messaging
situation, you would log in and then people would see that you were online and then they would
start messaging you. Most people would not message someone if that person was, like, offline. And so
you're not getting, like, inundated with texts, like, throughout the entire day. It's only
when you have opened yourself to receiving, like, you're in the head space to want to receive
communication, and I think that's beautiful. What all this means to me, at the end of the day, is
that privacy is something that everyone right now is seeking across the board regardless of income
status, and that's probably why when celebrities are able to achieve it so successfully, it makes
them worthy of awe. It also gives the illusion that they never wanted to be famous. They're just
so good at their art, their acting, their music, that fame was just predestined for them. It's even
more impressive when compared to the countless celebrities and influencers who give off the vibe
of attention seeker by posting multiple times a day. I read this "Buzzfeed" article highlighting
16 celebrities who don't use smartphones, and some of the people in the article claimed to
not own a phone, period, like apparently Justin Bieber and Shailene Woodley. But even if they
don't own phones at all, which for some reason I highly doubt, what they probably have are personal
assistants who own phones, and they probably give out their assistant's number if someone asks for
a way to contact them, and it ends up being their team who stays online and alert and tracking their
metrics and trending topics while they can relax and be zen and touch grass. Also, I feel like as
a woman, I have grown addicted to my phone for reasons as everyone else, but also because I feel,
like, unsafe if I'm going through the city not having a phone, like what if I get lost or what
if I get kidnapped or something? But I feel like the thing with a lot of these richer celebrities
is that they can afford a driver and they can basically be chaperoned wherever they want, and so
also the safety aspect of it is not as pressing. And then there's also celebrities like Timothee
Chalamet, Jacob Elordi, among many others, who have social media accounts but follow zero
people on them, giving the illusion that they don't actually use their accounts. And obviously
I don't wanna generalize, I'm sure some people who follow zero people actually don't use Instagram
and are not addicted, but I do remember listening, I don't know if it was a podcast episode or what
it was, but in it, Emma Chamberlain talked about how she, like, would spend, like, five hours
a day on Instagram. Meanwhile she follows zero people on her, at least, public Instagram
account. So I'm like, just because you're not following anyone doesn't mean you're not using
the platform. I also read this "Vox" article called "Everyone's a sellout now," and in it,
writer Rebecca Jennings talks about the history of the artist as a cultural phenomenon. Basically,
ever since the late 18th and early 19th centuries, we've started to think of artists as these
"solitary oracles who exist on a higher spiritual plane than the rest of us." And that romantic
mindset was exacerbated post-World War II when the US government institutionalized its cultural power
through museums, graduate programs, art councils, and awards, meaning that more artists were able
to survive just making art because they could apply for, like, grants and residencies. On the
pop culture side of things, writers and music artists started working with these new publishing
houses and recording companies so they didn't have to delve into the business side. They could
just record their music in a cabin in Upstate New York or, you know, whatever music artists do to
get inspiration. William Deresiewicz, author of "The Death of the Artist," told "Vox," "Before
the internet came along, artists not only could let their companies worry about the money, but
they actually didn't have a choice. The companies didn't let them." As I talked about in my recent
BookTok video, having control over your art and the way you're marketed can be empowering if
you're someone who's already business savvy, knows your demographic really well, and, you know, of
course, like, there's lots of predatory management that you can avoid the trappings of if you just
do it yourself. However, if you're someone who's more introverted or who doesn't spend a lot of
time online, having to market yourself all by yourself can feel daunting and an unfair barrier
to entry if your art is already really good. I've talked about Ricky Montgomery before in my
musicals video, but Jennings quotes him in her article as well. Basically, he's a singer, and
he made a viral video lamenting over how he has do all these cringey TikToks because no one else
would discover his music otherwise. It's less of, like, a creative choice for him to wanna do it,
it's more like a necessity. Jennings also writes, "Despite the fact that for most people, the act of
writing looks very boring, author-content creators succeed by making the visually uninteresting labor
of typing on a laptop worthwhile to watch." You'll see a lot of cottagecore-esque videos where the
writer will sip tea by the fireplace against the soundtrack of Wes Anderson, or wake up in a
forest cabin and read by a river, or women like this Oxford University student who dresses up like
literary characters and films herself working on her novel. Videos like these emulate the Romantic
ideal of solitary genius artistry, evoking a time when writing was seen as a more pure or quaint
profession. Yet what they best represent is the current state of art, where artists must
skillfully package themselves as products for buyers to consume. Literally this! I sometimes get
comments from people asking me to vlog my research process, and the problem is, I feel like when I'm
researching and writing, it's actually incredibly boring to watch. Also, I'm like always running
on deadlines, so the idea of writing to curate a writing scene that's commodifiable enough for
TikTok and for my own Libra sensibilities is like an extra hour or two of my day that I don't really
have. Anyway, these writing or art-making scenes are subtle marketing tools. They are pulling
you in to read this person's work or listen to this person's music because their video gives off
the air that they are a true artist. There's also this longstanding idea that privacy is not just
ideal for the true artist but for the consumer of art as well. As Deresiewicz writes in his
book, "The modern person encountered themselves by encountering art, through silent reading and
aesthetic contemplation, in the solitude of their own mind." I mean, how many times have we all
just laid in bed, listening to Lana Del Rey at like 3:00 AM just, you know, thinking about life.
In contrast, the in-your-face marketing method, like the memeified saying "Did I just released the
song of the summer?" is the total opposite of the solitary genius and makes us consider, why is this
person trying so hard? Is it because their art isn't good enough to speak for itself? And you may
be wondering, like, why don't all artists just go, like, the more art-making scene route when they
make TikTok content? And honestly, I think it's because the TikTok algorithm rewards people who,
like, talk to the camera and who are more, like, in your face. So even though one way is a fine
way to market, it's also just less likely to go as viral as someone who's like, "Hey, guys, did I
just release the song of the summer?" So finally, let's talk about Austin Butler. There was
a video going around on TikTok, sorry, I'm talking about TikTok all the time,
I'm addicted to my phone, okay? Where Austin Butler was interviewed on the red carpet
about his favorite childhood movie and he said- - I love "The Good, the Bad and The Ugly." - And this big creator criticized him for
being pretentious, and he said that Austin should have just said "Toy Story" like
the rest of us. The video was taken down because I think the Butler fans came for this
person. But, you know, in general, I feel like Austin Butler has activated many people's
distaste for try-hards ever since "Elvis," when he refused to stop talking with his Elvis
voice leading up to the Oscars. And, you know, there were claims that he actually couldn't stop
because he method acted too close to the sun. - There's people out there who say
that ever since I played Elvis, my voice has changed. But that's not true. I've
always sounded like this, and I can prove it. - How excited are you to be
Sebastian on "The Carrie Diaries"? - I'm really excited. - And then there were later claims that I
mentioned earlier that he needed an accent coach to get him back to his regular voice. I
personally, you know, I felt really weird about his accent claims at the time. They're difficult
to fully believe, to be honest. But either way, the conversation that many people are not
ready for, and that I'm ready to have, is the fact that he slayed Elvis and he slayed
the evil baldy in "Dune 2." And I think what's interesting and what's happening with Austin
Butler that cannot be said about Jared Leto, who is similar in his method acting publicity
antics, is that Austin is actually a good actor. He's good and he tries hard, and those are not
mutually exclusive terms. And there's also nothing wrong with trying hard. Hot take. It was his first
big role after sort of being a child star flop, sorry, Austin, and he was Oscar nominated
for it. I think that's incredibly exciting, and I don't think we should hold people getting
excited about awards, like, against them. Most people just like the idea of the private celebrity
because they feel this person is not trying to make people like them. They must be so good that
their work speaks for itself. And on top of that, it seems like they're overtly trying
not to succeed. So if they do succeed, it's a testament to their talent. I think
this is also why, once again, Cillian Murphy, but also Renee Rapp and Dakota Johnson, got so
much fan favor this past year because of how openly blase they were with the press and with
having to market themselves and/or their movies. But there's a certain privilege with being able to
have this attitude. Jennings writes, "The people rewarded for putting themselves out there are most
often the same people society already rewards. Algorithms are biased against poor people, against
people of color, against people who don't conform to patriarchal societal norms." As just a
clear example of how being candid backfired, Rachel Zegler, who was cast as Snow White in
the new Disney live-action movie, was the target of a harassment campaign after admitting that she
didn't like the animated "Snow White" growing up. - I mean, you know, the original cartoon
came out in 1937 and very evidently so. There's a big focus on her love story
with a guy who literally stalks her. - Yeah! - Weird, weird. - I mean, the new Snow White actress is
literally walking around, interview to interview, just bashing "Snow White." That actress
is so smug and this movie's gonna flop. - And finally, I also think that feeling annoyed
towards someone who is advocating for themselves too much is part of how our brains are wired,
at least journalist William Storr seems to think so. Storr wrote a book called "The Status Game,"
which is about the human pursuit of higher status and how it defines who we are. He explained to
"Glamour Magazine" that our behavior goes back to the hunter-gatherer period, where there were
mechanisms of maintaining equal status within the tribe. He said, "If someone in one of those tribes
acted in a big shot way, they'd get taken down, they'd get teased, bullied, and humiliated
until they stopped and started behaving. So, resentment and envy are fundamental parts of
the human condition." This is not to say that advertising ourselves all the time is good for us
either. The need to create a brand for ourselves is kind of dystopian, honestly. I also think it's
very telling why some of the influencers who've made it through sharing a lot of their life decide
to scale back once they realize they don't need to anymore for money. Emma Chamberlain comes to
mind for sure, because I remember when she first stopped posting on YouTube every week, people
were like, "WTF, Emma has quit YouTube?" And her comments had people demanding her to come back.
She does still post, I think, just not at the same cadence as she used to, but I think it's honestly
really hard to go from posting a lot to posting a little because people like Emma are really good
at fostering these parasocial relationships with their followers. So, obviously there's going to be
some kind of backlash. Mardon, Cocker, and Daunt wrote a piece about influencer gossip forums, like
Tattle Life, Guru Gossip, GOMI, and the Blogsnark subreddit, and noted that many of the users on
there used to be fans of the influencers that they now criticize. As the authors write, "Establishing
privacy can shatter the illusion of intimacy, prompting anger from followers who feel entitled
to omitted information." They quote one forum user who wrote, "You can't share a relationship with
your followers for the best part of 10 years, then not properly address the breakup. She
set the boundaries and level of privacy in her life. She can't just suddenly shift them and
not expect a reaction." Emma Chamberlain was actually interviewed by "The New York Times" last
year, and she addressed some of the reasons why she scaled back. She talked about her physical and
psychological safety as being forms of anxiety she constantly dealt with. She said, "I'm terrified
because I'm human and I'm not perfect and who knows what people could find about me. Somebody
could make up a lie about me tomorrow and ruin my life. I feel powerless about my own identity at
times because I feel like it's in the control of the public. Sometimes it can feel like, ugh, do I
even have a voice? I do, but are people listening to me or do they just have an idea of who I am
and that's stronger?" Other influencers like Jenna Marbles, the Dolan Twins, and Elle Mills faded out
of the public eye for similar reasons. And, you know, who knows what kind of jobs they're doing
right now, but I hope they're all happy. I just think it definitely hits lifestyle influencers
the hardest, because I noticed with musicians that have come outta YouTube, like our favorite
alumni, Justin Bieber, just kidding, he wasn't really vlogging, but Troye Sivan and Conan Gray
were both at least part-time YouTube vloggers, and they didn't experience too much backlash
from establishing boundaries once their singing careers took off. And I think that's because, one,
they're men, but two, prioritizing making art is considered worthy of praise, whereas prioritizing
your mental health, sadly, is not. And I also think a lot of it has to do with the fact that
once the art is made, it's meant to be shared and enjoyed by an audience at the end of the day.
So fans do ultimately benefit from giving their favorites some space to write songs or to method
act or whatever. Tell Rihanna to make an album. - She's working on it. - Say cheese. - Because- - Thank you so much. We love you, A$AP! - We love you! - I guess the point of this video is I want to
unpack how privacy and elitism are intertwined and also shed some understanding on why some
artists are able to maintain a mystique and how, while many artists want to, it's oftentimes not
possible for everyone to be as offline as they'd like if they want to make a career doing art
full-time. I also just thought just now about, like, an earlier part of my video when I talked
about how people feel a certain way about influencers getting invited to Fashion Week. I
feel like celebrities also get invited to Fashion Week who have no real interest in fashion or who
have a very random association with fashion. Like, you know, Kyle MacLachlan walking for
Prada. Maybe Kyle MacLachlan is, like, really invested in fashion, I don't know, he
was just the first celebrity that came to mind. - Replacing the quiet elegance of the dark
suit and tie with the casual indifference of these muted earth tones, it's a form of fashion
suicide. But call me crazy, on you it works. - Where it's like, this is really weird, but it's
also, like, camp because it's so weird. But an influencer walking for a fashion show would never
be viewed as camp. And I think it's because of the halo effect that we have around celebrities
where we just assume because they're talented individuals for doing yada-yada-yada, they must be
like, you know, they must have really good taste, they must be also really well-versed in fashion
and whatnot. But I also think a lot of it has to do with just, like, the prestige of
privacy and this idea that, like, these, like, more private celebrities are going to this
fashion show because they truly support the brand, whereas any influencer, even if they like that
brand, who goes is clearly trying to, like, plug themself in some way. Anyway, that's the final
thought, this is the end of the video. Let me know what you think. You know, I really appreciate
the kind of intellectual comments and discussions that people have below my videos, and I would
just love to thank you all for being as smart and as kind as you are. So, yeah, have a lovely
rest of your day and I'll see you next time. Bye!
