Author: Aviva Majerczyk

Small Steps: A goodbye

When approaching the idea of closing out this column, I’ve found it difficult to figure out where to start. To me, the idea of writing about writing often seems a bit overdone, and as a 21-year-old who still forgets to use spell check and typically writes these entries the morning they’re due, I struggle to think of what I could possibly say about the act of writing a column.

However, as I look back through the backlog of Small Steps, I realized that I’ve already answered that question for myself. In a previous column, I discussed how creativity is not something that is innate to the core of a person. Creativity shows itself in different ways, and we should celebrate the ways in which it manifests in ourselves, even if that looks more like bullet journaling than it does abstract painting. I think writing can be seen in the same way.

To be honest, Small Steps was quite the challenge for me. My typical beat is pop culture critique and media commentary, so the act of sitting down to write a personal reflection every two weeks was a lot harder than I originally thought when I pitched the idea.

Yet, in a very pragmatic way, this writing has helped me get in touch with my beliefs.

I really relate to Joan Didion’s approach to understanding the act of writing. In her essay, “Why I Write” she states, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

It’s easy to go about your life with a general understanding of what you believe and what you’re passionate about. However, articulating these thoughts is a whole different issue. When writing Small Steps, I have sat down many times on a Friday morning (sorry copy editors) without more than a vague notion of what I wanted to say, and lo and behold, the ideas eventually started to flow. Often, I found I would write myself into a different opinion than I thought I held to begin with, and that’s totally okay.

Whatever style of writing you feel the most comfortable with, I encourage you to use it to learn a bit more about yourself. While I had a requirement to write every two weeks, lest our editor-in-chief, Lilly, come banging down my door, it didn’t have to be that formal. A journal, blog or poetry notebook can be a great way to stay in touch with yourself.

Above all, I’m thankful for this opportunity to write and learn, not just from myself but from all my amazing colleagues and editors.

 

Feature graphic by Taylor Reddam

Categories
Music

The case against “male manipulator music”

TikTok’s newest music meme does more harm than good

Picture it: you’re at a house show (pre-pandemic obviously), you get approached by a ghostly guy in Dickies and Vans sneakers, boasting a small rolled-up beanie with a cigarette behind his ear. He introduces himself and then leans in to sarcastically ask you if you know the band that’s playing, because they’re really experimental y’know, you probably wouldn’t get it.

While I’m sure this brand of interaction has happened to many women in alt music scenes (I’ve definitely met my share of pretentious music bros), this sort of exaggeratedly misogynistic conversation has become more of a meme than anything. Online spaces love to continue rehashing the “indie music bro”/“softboy” archetype that’s been popular for around five or so years now. However, recently he’s gotten a more nefarious makeover: the male manipulator.

The hashtag “male manipulator music” has 18.6 million views on TikTok, so what exactly are the teens talking about? 

Trying to pin down what artists are considered “male manipulator music” is a fool’s errand. When going down the rabbithole of TikToks and Spotify playlists, additions of bands like The Smiths may lure you into a sense of understanding. The band is largely connected to media portrayals of the so-called male manipulators in 500 Days of Summer and High Fidelity, not to mention frontman Morrisey’s fascistic tendencies.

But as you go deeper, you’ll see acts with otherwise tame public reputations such as Radiohead, Neutral Milk Hotel and Slowdive, taking up a bulk of the spots. Go even deeper, and you’ll encounter the truly baffling additions of female fronted acts such as Metric, Beach House and Phoebe Bridgers.

What do any of these acts have in common? Basically, just some indie cred and a completely arbitrary label used to ascribe immorality to music taste.

Many of the videos under the TikTok hashtag follow a similar format. They include either joking skits or videos flipping through records with the caption “POV: you manipulate women.” Also common is a trend of ranking bands and singing along to audio of so-called male manipulator music containing Mac DeMarco, My Bloody Valentine and Tyler, the Creator, to name a few.

While it may all seem in good fun, there is something very sinister about manipulative relationships and even gaslighting being mapped onto music taste. 

Firstly, the notion that you could determine which men are “safe” and which are “red flags” simply by their style and music taste is incredibly harmful. There is no singular archetype of a person who is abusive and toxic, and pretending like you can guess which men pose a threat from outside indicators can lure women into a false sense of security. Honestly, a man who listens to EDM is just as likely to be a jerk as one who listens to shoegaze. A lot of the posts under this TikTok hashtag come from teenage girls and young women, and it could be giving false notions of how relationships should look.

On top of that, the mere idea of ascribing morality to music taste is slippery at best. For the most part, in the manipulator music discourse, this isn’t a case of separating the art from the artist. Sure, some “male manipulator music” comes from toxic men, such as the aforementioned Smiths or Sorority Noise, but the majority of artists given this title are labeled such for seemingly arbitrary reasons.

There is an argument to be made that if a consumer continues to support artists they know to be bad people, part of that blame gets conferred onto them. Yet, how has that argument gotten twisted into ascribing malintention when supporting squeaky clean artists with a subjective “red flag” vibe?

Further, this puts female music fans in a tricky situation. When Joy Division, for example, becomes music for gross men, where does it place us women who hold a tenderness for it? Labeling these artists as “male manipulator music” ultimately labels them as for men.

The issue of male manipulator music may seem inconsequential, but labels can be impactful. As a culture, we’re already so steeped in the notion that the media you consume tells deeper secrets about who you are as a person. Rather than leaning so heavily into that notion, let’s try taking a step back and not micro-labeling and psychoanalyzing Spotify playlists. 

 

Graphic by Lily Cowper.

Categories
Opinions

It’s time to reject unpaid internships once and for all

Unpaid internships exacerbate the rampant inequalities in our labour market

National Football League (NFL) reporter Jane Slater sparked the ire of young journalists all over the Twittersphere earlier this month when she promoted an unpaid internship position. After receiving an avalanche of responses on how unpaid internships are unethical, unsustainable, and exploitative, she responded that this was simply the norm and that, “There is a reason not everyone makes it in this business.” She continued, “I don’t have time for those of you who don’t understand grind.”

While Slater’s unwavering commitment to the practice of unpaid internships is baffling, she wasn’t exactly incorrect that they are omnipresent in media and journalism fields.

Although no career field could ever be a true meritocracy, unpaid internships are pushing us further and further from that ideal. This is because to even be able to work unpaid, you must start out with a base level of economic security and privilege.

A student who needs to pay their own way through university or support dependents would simply not be able to allocate their time and labour to a company not willing to pay them. This leads to a culture where the only people applying for these entry-level internships are those who already have a financial leg up.

Additionally, working for free can put interns in precarious situations. Despite the fact that, as of 2019, all interns in federally regulated industries, including unpaid student positions, received standard worker protections, there are still many interns across Canada left without proper protections. This ruling did not account for federal civil service jobs or positions under provincial jurisdiction. Thus, the burden of adequately caring for their unpaid interns is placed on the employer, who often has little incentive to provide anything above the bare minimum needed to not get sued.

Not to mention, the mere concept of unpaid internships perpetuates the notion that one’s labour can be removed from their pay. The more a young person gets used to not being paid for their work, the less they’ll value their labour as they move into positions later down the line, which may lead to them not properly advocating for themselves.

Full disclosure, I have worked an unpaid internship. I am privileged enough that working for pay part-time over a summer and interning the rest was enough to sustain me. Looking back, I hate myself for offering my labour to such an unethical system, but at the same time, it’s what I was told was common, if not necessary, to have a career in media.

Yet, I now believe that no internship, no matter the prestige, would be worth selling out my labour for free. I can no longer in good conscience prop up any company not willing to pay their workers a living wage, because when privileged people feed into these systems, they’ll continue functioning regardless of backlash. There are so many resources such as Concordia’s Housing and Job Resource Centre (HOJO) or Career and Planning Services (CAPS), that make it easier to find paid opportunities and avoid falling victim to the unpaid internship scam.

If we all as students reject the concept of unpaid internships wholeheartedly, the industry will eventually be forced to follow suit.

 

 Graphic by Alex Hutchins

Small Steps: Cutting the guilt from the pleasure

Sometimes it feels as if North American culture revolves around the notion of guilt. Between sex shaming, health food snacks labeled “guilt-free” and Spotify playlists full of early 2000s pop hits under painfully self-aware titles, it’s impossible to escape the idea that we should feel bad for the things we enjoy. Rather than flat-out admitting to liking something deemed unrespectable, it’s more tactful to couch it with the qualifier “guilty pleasure.” Between the popularity of “Grey’s Anatomy,” Carrie Underwood, and John Green novels, it’s obvious that we’re all consuming so-called guilty pleasures, however, the label remains.

In this view, every piece of media we consume reflects directly back on us as people. Now, I’m not here to argue that culture is removed from ideology or immune from criticism, and that we should blindly consume whatever problematic media we want. Because that’s not what people mean when they discuss guilty pleasures — it’s never an issue of media being harmful (unless you take “brain rot” literally), just media that isn’t up to some arbitrary taste level.

Labeling something a guilty pleasure is a sneaky way of distancing yourself from your enjoyment of it. “Oh sure, I enjoy this but I still know better, unlike some other people.” Somewhere between self-flagellation and self-flattery, designating things guilty pleasures pads our own intellectual insecurities.

Under late-stage capitalism, every action we take must have some goal or purpose in mind. Leisure for leisure’s sake has been eaten away by a drive to monetize every hobby and capture every moment for the perfect social media post, which in turn monetizes ourselves. Thus, even what we do in our spare time contributes to the easily packageable and brandable version of “you,” not to be muddied by unsavoury choices.

When you ascribe negative moral value judgements onto culture and media, it opens the door for the counter to be true as well. If listening to Bon Jovi and reading Dan Brown makes you worthy of shame and disdain, it would stand to reason that one could Brian Eno and Dostoevsky themselves into righteousness. Now, written out that may sound crazy, but tell me you’ve never met someone with a bookshelf where their social judgement should be.

It’s time we remove taste from its link to morality. The pursuit of a guilt-free media environment can easily force you down a hole of music you don’t like and books that don’t speak to you. And who does that serve but your inner critic? Posturing about your intelligence will only drive you deeper into the shame and guilt of your choices, rather than fully rejecting the notion of guilt in the first place. And come on, there are so many larger social ills to tackle than whether to listen to King Princess or King Crimson.

 

 Graphic by Taylor Reddam

The halcyon days of 2014

All over social media, people are reminiscing over their former Tumblr kid selves

Imagine you’re mindlessly scrolling through Twitter, as we all seem to be doing more and more these days, passively reading through job announcements, middling “hot takes” and COVID-19 stats. Suddenly a post comes up that stops you in your tracks and drags you right back into your adolescence with a wave of nostalgia. Scrolling through the replies, you see that the aesthetics, music and products from your teen years are all coming back into style. You’re only 21.

Recently, a lot of people all over the internet have been reliving a certain 2011–2015 subculture that revolved specifically around the website Tumblr. This burst of nostalgia came fast and hard, but it hasn’t even been that long since us “Zillennials” were spending our days scrolling down our dashboards. So, why now?

If you didn’t have the (dis)pleasure of living your early teens predominantly online, I can try my best to explain the early 2010s Tumblr aesthetic, often dubbed “soft grunge.” While the look had little in common with the 90s subculture it got its name from, other than the mere existence of flannel shirts, it could be seen as the product of the 20-year cycle of fashion. In the 2010s, elder millennials were nostalgic for their youth in the 1990s, and that nostalgia trickled into the style and media of the day.

Now, feed that through the hyper-visual medium of Tumblr and you’ve got yourself countless images of teens in jelly sandals, ripped tights under denim shorts and choker necklaces posing with polaroid cameras, holding up records, or, most commonly, smoking cigarettes.

On the music front, in 2014, I, like my fellow Tumblr teens, was listening to Lana Del Rey, Arctic Monkeys, The 1975, and Grimes, because the songs on your iPod Touch were integral to the maintenance of the aesthetic.

In terms of 2010s fashion, this aesthetic was far from the worst thing in memory. Yet, that alone can’t explain its resurgence in recent months. We’re nowhere near the 20-year nostalgia cycle yet, so there must be something special about that time, or our current time, that holds special significance.

For a lot of Zillennials, Tumblr wasn’t just an aesthetic, it was a formative part of their adolescence. While any media you consume on a regular basis through your tween and teen years is likely to shape you in some way, Tumblr was uniquely good at fostering a community environment. Being more of a microblogging site than a traditional social media, users were encouraged to publish long posts and personalize their blog’s design. This affordance, mixed with the fairly low median age of users, and possibility for anonymity, led to users sharing a lot more personal information than they would on other platforms.

While it wasn’t always perfect (I’m looking at you, #thinspo), overall, this caused Tumblr to become a safe space for many young people in the early 2010s.

As one Concordia student describes, “All the fangirling, aesthetic stock images and memes were incredibly private. Your Tumblr was definitely not something you shared with anyone.” She continued, “Yet, there was strangely a big sense of community.”

Community-making on sites like Tumblr can be invaluable in helping young people through their search for identity. And this is double fold for youth who are already marginalized.

As Stefanie Duguay, assistant professor of Communications at Concordia explained to The CBC about LGBTQ youth Tumblr use, “They share GIFs and videos and content around queer celebrities, queer characters, and fanfiction,” Duguay explained. “It’s a general part of people’s self discovery, especially when you’re a young person and you’re determining things about yourself and your sexual identity.” For many, 2010s Tumblr text posts were their first introduction into important conversations of politics and identity.

Lisi Schauer, a fourth-year student at the University of Southern California puts it as such: “I think it struck the perfect balance of ‘cringy’ fandom stuff and people starting to use aesthetic as an adjective and just enough political text posts sneaking in to be really influential for people our age.”

Now that we are all so disconnected through COVID-19 isolation, it only makes sense that many of us would yearn for an adolescent time where everything felt new and important. As everyday feels mundane and predictable, it can be fun to engage in a bit of escapism in the aesthetic of who you used to be, before the world delved into chaos.

Additionally, many young adults have had to move back home, so if you’re constantly being reminded of your former self, why not lean into it?

While it may be jarring to see the rose-coloured glasses come out so soon, there’s really no harm in taking a stroll down those dashboard memories and into your younger self. We all need whatever bit of respite we can get from the current world. If what gets you through it is blasting Passion Pit and digging out your old Brandy Melville clothing, far be it from me to tell you to stop. At least it keeps people indoors.

 

Photo collage by Kit Mergaert

Small Steps: Turning back the clock

I saw a tweet recently that showed screenshots from a TikTok of a teenage girl saying that she hoped to age like the cast of Bridgerton, displaying a photo of the actress who plays Daphne Bridgerton, age 25. The tweet’s caption jokes, “why do they all think ppl rot at the age of 21.”

While, on first glance, the notion of a 25 year-old being seen as “aged” would cause any twenty-something to laugh, this Zoomer’s analysis didn’t come out of nowhere. Our late teens and early twenties are often posited as the most fun, defining and important time of our lives. These years are supposed to be a time to experiment and find your true self — whatever that means. So it would stand to reason that after we hit that horrifying quarter century, it’s all downhill.

Between coming-of-age movies depicted by deceptively old actors and rom-coms that try to make you believe the main character could have a lucrative career in the publishing industry before age twenty-five, pop culture places a lot of emphasis on those early years. If you watch film after film of people finding love, reinventing themselves in a new city and making a name for themselves straight out of college, it may start to feel like that’s the natural progression of everyone’s lives but yours. This sort of thing makes it seem like there’s some cap to the time you can experiment and make mistakes in your life. So, once you reach thirty you need to settle down, join the corporate machinery and start going to jazz brunch for fun until you die, I guess.

Add on to all of that stress of your supposed physical peak, for women especially. The age in which women are seen to be most attractive is astonishingly low. According to a study covered in The New York Times assessing dating app use by heterosexual people, a woman’s desirability peaks at 18 and falls steadily from there. So the moment we become legal, it’s just a ticking clock counting down until our sexual obsolescence. Whether you want to blame this on reproductive biology or near-pedophilic beauty standards, it’s enough to make you gag.

I know simply saying something is a “social construct” doesn’t do much to liberate people from their actual anxieties, but it is true that this timer put on your life is completely arbitrary. Whether it’s in relationships, career or just being a bit of a mess, it’s nearly impossible to fit that all into one decade, and why would you want to? While, yes, many amazing and identity-forming things will happen to you in your early twenties, that doesn’t mean they automatically need to stop at a certain age.

Our culture’s focus on youth stifles us from enjoying the fullness of life in our later years. I hope to continue to be curious and a bit chaotic well into my last years on this planet. Yes, I want a stable job and to not eat as much instant ramen as I currently do, but I’m done putting a fixed date on when this era of my life needs to end.

Graphic by Taylor Reddam

Categories
Opinions

Spending money for money

“I just bought that private Island, land ho!“ yells a white millennial man in a khaki-coloured research hat, while gliding towards shore on a small boat. He flashes the papers to prove it, and later we’re told that the land cost $730,000.  We’re now less than a minute into the video, aptly titled “I Bought A Private Island,” by YouTuber MrBeast.

MrBeast, a.k.a. Jimmy Donaldson, has made a career off of this type of content. A quick scroll through his YouTube page will show you dozens of titles reminiscent of the aforementioned private island video. “I Spent $1,000,000 on Lottery Tickets and WON,” “Lamborghini Race, Winner Keeps Lamborghini,” “Spending $1,000,000 In 24 Hours” — the formula becomes obvious.

To those unacquainted, Donaldson’s content may seem like a mishmash of neon thumbnails and immature bragging. However, MrBeast content is highly planned and researched and fits squarely within YouTube’s newest vice — flex culture.

The term comes from the idea of flexing — to show off or boast, first popularized by rap and hip hop artists before it trickled into wider popular culture.

Flexing has found a home for itself on YouTube with influencers making mass amounts of content specifically about their consumerist tendencies. Gucci shopping sprees, opulent vacations and closet tours filled to the brim with Birkin Bags have become a genre of their own, where influencers shamelessly flaunt the vast fortunes they have amassed on the platform.

To understand this phenomenon, it’s important to take a look at the current influencer market to understand why creators would be interested in producing “flex” content.

YouTubers now have more revenue streams than ever. Up until just a few years ago, Adsense — the Google program that allows YouTubers to make money from ads run on their videos — was the primary way YouTubers gained an income. But now that social media influencing is seen as a lucrative business, more parties are involved financially. Due to third party partnerships, which can come in the form of corporate sponsorships and affiliate links (not to mention income from merch and Patreon), creators are less beholden to their audience.

On the one hand, having multiple income streams can be creatively freeing, as ideally you would be less compelled to shape content simply around increasing the amount of eyeballs you’d get on your ads. However, for many already ultra-successful creators, the cushion of third party income can diminish the importance of viewer satisfaction. In other words, if you’re already making hundreds of thousands of dollars from sponsorships, how many people like and comment on your videos really doesn’t hold as much weight.

Furthermore, many creators who make “flexing” videos are ones who rose to fame on the basis of their personalities alone. While some gained their success through makeup tutorials, such as Jeffree Star, many have risen to fame through simply their demeanor and conventional attractiveness. The concept of “being famous for being famous” has existed since the reality TV boom, and arguably earlier. However, with the democratizing features of social media, the saturation of this type of celebrity is higher than ever.

So what do you do when you have achieved wild online success for no discernible talent and you have more money than you know what to do with? You make the money itself your content.

However, flex content doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Many of these YouTubers have young fans who have yet to develop a mature understanding of class and money. So, for these viewers, the sheer indulgence of these flex videos may just seem aspirational, not shocking.

Additionally, these sorts of videos promote unhealthy views of consumption. Luxury haul videos, for example, normalize the mass consumption of unnecessary goods. While haul videos from fast-fashion retailers like H&M and Shein can be found all over the internet, they’re often slammed as problematic for their promotion of unethical brands. However, luxury brands’ practices can be just as bad, as they also outsource their production to countries with less worker protections. And that’s all before you even factor in the major price markup. Needless to say, no matter where you shop, “hauling” goods can never be sustainable.

Flex culture is not likely to go away anytime soon. As long as we live in a society with major wealth disparity, some people will have massive fortunes, and others will like to live vicariously through them. Many of us are financially suffering and trapped at home, where it’s easy to spend all day staring at social media. It could be fun in these times to escape into the lavish lifestyle of others. However, at the end of the day, it only serves to further the divide as these creators get richer and richer.

 

Graphic by @the.beta.lab

Small Steps: Irony culture will slowly kill you

In June of 2016, The 1975 came to my hometown. Virginia summers are oppressive, and the day Matt Healy and the band came to Charlotesville was especially so. After grabbing a few slices of pizza and stocking up on to-go cups of water to share amongst ourselves, my friends and I sat on the ground outside of the amphitheatre gates. In my American Apparel cut-offs, my thighs burned against the blazing bricks as we scarfed down our pre-concert nourishment and compared what songs we wanted to hear later that evening. I was filled with a mixture of unbridled excitement and agoraphobia-based anxiety that I have never experienced since, and likely never will.

Yes, this is partially because of the teenage hormones that spurred my fandom-like admiration of, well, almost anything. But there’s more to it.

I, like many other Extremely Online Zoomers, have become irony poisoned to an extent to which I don’t believe I could publically get that excited about a piece of pop culture again, no matter how much it connected with me. Rather than genuine admiration for art and media, I, like many of my peers, hide my opinions behind a curtain of cynicism and mockery to the extent to which my true beliefs are muddled by my own posturing. If I never express genuine excitement for something, no one can ever take away my fun.

This isn’t simply a necessary facet of exiting adolescence; the particular moment we’re experiencing right now has conditioned this all-encompassing cynicism.

As a generation that has only known a post-9/11 world in political and economic turmoil, how are we meant to react to the constant barrage of despair? You could put all your energy into rallying to change the world, but soon you’ll exhaust yourself anyway, and besides, how much could you ever really change?

In activist circles, there’s the concept of burnout culture, which is “a response to prolonged stress and typically involves emotional exhaustion, cynicism or detachment, and feeling ineffective,” according to The BBC. Many activists start with lofty goals and quickly devolve to hopelessness and cynicism once they get a full view of all the cracks in the system. With that, it’s so much easier to start from a point of apathy. It reduces the risk of getting your hopes up and inevitably falling short.

Some believe that irony culture, and its spawn cringe culture, are dead. But one long scroll on social media will tell you otherwise. For every “painfully” sincere teenager dancing on TikTok, there will always be five more making fun of them on Twitter or Reddit.

I often feel I need to put up the facade of irony when it comes to the media I consume. I’ve always considered myself to be someone with good taste, and thus my personality became intrinsically tied with what I like and dislike. This is a precarious place to value your self worth, however, as taste is never objective, so a shot to a liking of mine becomes a shot to me, personally. So, better to never reveal these interests unless they have been crafted and vetted by what seems right to like, right? Instead, I’ll just make fun of the masses obsessing over whatever recently dropped on Netflix or Spotify. God forbid anyone call me a joiner.

But, at the end of the day, irony is really just insecurity dressed up in another form. It’s a manifestation of the anxiety that everyone is secretly watching you — and they’re laughing. It’s clinging onto a certainty that you’ll always be superior, even as the foundation starts to crack beneath you. Unchecked, irony culture will slowly eat away at your spirit until there is nothing left but regurgitated Twitter discourse. As The 1975 said, sincerity may be scary, but try, for once, to let yourself have a bit of fun.

 

 Graphic by Taylor Reddam

Small Steps: astrology is ok, actually

Everyday I wake up to an increasingly bizarre and cryptic notification from my Co–Star astrology app. Today’s message was a simple, “Are you starting shit?”

I don’t think I am. I’m barely starting the mundane things I need to do, let alone stirring any sort of proverbial pot. Should I be starting shit? Maybe this was a call to disrupt my typical routine and do something more impulsive than my typical bed-to-desk-to-bed quarantine routine. Maybe Co–Star wanted me to engage in some sort of civil unrest, shake up the system a little bit. Regardless, it got me thinking.

Astrology is often proclaimed to be pseudoscience; simply New Age spiritualism packaging itself as fact. That is, of course, to the dismay of astrologers who never claimed it was a science to begin with. This argument assumes that for something to be useful and impactful, it must be scientific in nature in the first place.

Many also argue that leaning into astrology and horoscopes is harmful, since they make it seem like our lives are predestined and we have no control over our actions. In this view, those who follow astrology must believe they are all fully guided by the stars, unable to control their impulses to act due to whims of planetary motion.

While I am not one for disregarding the idea of free will and skepticism, I think this notion is pretty flimsy. Are there not a myriad of forces in our world that limit our freedom to act as we truly wish? We’re born into a slew of conditions that form who we are and who we can be, for better or worse. Race, nation, year of birth, sex, family and more shape who we turn out to be. So are the stars really the system we need to question?

Additionally, astrology doesn’t make us more removed from human impulses; it could actually help bring us in dialogue with them. It’s human nature to view yourself as a sort of “main character” in your life and to have trouble truly understanding the complicated idiosyncrasies of others. There’s even a word for the phenomenon of realizing that all the people you pass by have lives just as extensive as your own — sonder.

Astrology could help fight this impulse. By knowing that all people have detailed charts showing how they love, how they fight, how they think and how they dream, it reminds us that everyone is just as complex and flawed as we are.

The current age is filled with uncertainty and insecurity, from a pandemic to contentious elections to economic downturn — It’s no surprise that people have decided to turn to a belief system to help guide them. There are many more dangerous paths to go down when looking for answers to life’s big questions than downloading Co–Star or hiring a chart reader. Astrology is a belief system like any other, and your ascription to it is as personal as what religion you may or may not follow — and that won’t change no matter how much people tear it down.

 

Graphic by Taylor Reddam

Behind the open letter: an interview with Juliet Bartlett

The Concordian talks to student Juliet Bartlett about her open letter to Concordia’s administration

This past week, Concordia forums have been abuzz in response to an open letter posted online regarding the university’s approach to online schooling during COVID-19. The letter outlines complaints about a wide array of issues such as the lack of a pass/fail option, tuition breaks and support for international students.

The Concordian sat down with the author, third-year Intermedia student Juliet Bartlett, to discuss the letter and her intentions behind it.

TC: Your letter is extensive and very impassioned; what prompted you to write it?

JB: The letter was quite a few months in the making. It wasn’t just something that I typed overnight. It was inspired by months of talking and listening to students either via the [Concordia] subreddit or reading posts on Facebook or my own friends as to what their experiences were. I didn’t just want to write a letter based on what I was experiencing. I wanted to write it with everyone in mind and kind of capsule [sic] the frustration the student body is feeling at the moment.

TC: Concordia has many formal ways to communicate with administration. Why did you feel an open letter was the best format for your message? 

JB: Open letters are public, they usually embody something bigger than one person. If changes were to be made, they had to be public and they have to pick up traction. Concordia — I think a lot of students feel this way too — doesn’t make changes unless it is something bigger or that’s been on the slow burner for an extensive period of time. It was really important that it was public knowledge and that it was going past the student body and Concordia to make sure that we aren’t just going to sit and be silent and take this.

TC: You’re in Intermedia. How is Concordia’s approach to an online semester affecting you as a BFA student?

JB: I’ll prelude by saying this: I love my program, the people, the professors. But, as a fine arts student, it’s affecting me specifically because for most of my projects, you need a higher-end computer to run the software you need. Fortunately, I do have a good enough computer to run these programs. It is getting outdated though. Whereas, last year, we had the option to use either the Intermedia editing suite or the Centre for Digital Arts (CDA). There’s a lot of students that I have spoken with that aren’t as fortunate as me. They’re on a laptop that’s almost catching fire while they’re trying to run Blender. And especially for students that aren’t located in Montreal, even if [the department] were to open something, there isn’t really a way to get that equipment to them. So we need to consider fees and we need to consider costs, because tuition wasn’t lowered, we got a $17 discount. The CDA fee was waived, but how can you justify the cost of an $800, plus upgrade to your computer to run the software you need for school?

TC: What would you like CU admin to take away from your letter? 

JB: Number one, I hope that they read it in full. I hope it’s not skimmed. I want every word to be considered in my letter. Number two, I want them to know this isn’t out of spite. I wanted them to erase and forget this whole current ideal that’s been spun around by some people saying that students are lazy, students don’t care, they just want a pass and they want to cheat. That is not the point [of] my letter. What we’re trying to say is that it is a rough year. There are more issues than are being assumed going on behind closed doors with students.

The ones who were in university 20, maybe 25 years ago, maybe those employees who just started, remember what it was like when you started university. Remember the stress that you felt. Then, I want you to take away all those memories you had with your friends in first year. Take away all of the social outings you went to. Then, I want you to confine them to one small room with a computer, a webcam, Moodle frequently crashing and a heavier workload. Add a strong tiredness that is 24/7. Then, I want them to imagine that this is what their university tells them is fine.

TC: In the recent CSU by-election, students voted in favour of a pass/fail option, lightening course workload, and turning away from proctored exams, all topics you mention in your letter. Do these results give you hope or do you expect more of the same from the institution?  

JB: It doesn’t give me hope in terms of what the administration’s next plans are going to be. It does give me hope and empowers the idea of the letter, and the fact that the student body does agree with that and does want this. I think it’s pretty evident that we have wanted it since the beginning of fall term. I also don’t understand how the administration wouldn’t want to [implement] a pass/fail option. Everyone seems to be struggling — that I have spoken with. Everybody’s GPA is most likely going to take a hit. So, as a university, why wouldn’t you favour pass/fail, rather than having your overall university GPA drop? Because that is most likely what is going to happen.

TC: What would you say to other Concordians who want to have their voices heard on these issues? 

JB: I would strongly encourage them to write their own letter. Sit down and really think about the things you have felt this term, these specific things that apply to your faculty and school-wide. Be honest, and write a letter. We all need to unite, both the student body and professors, because this is affecting professors as well. We need to understand that we need to work together to make changes happen. The louder we are, and the more vocal and well-versed we can be in this, the better the outcome.

In response to the concerns laid out in the open letter, Concordia University replied in a statement:

“We understand the difficulties and frustrations that students and everyone are facing during the pandemic. Since the beginning of the pandemic, students’ success and well-being have been priorities for us and we have put in place a series of measures to help them through these difficult times. We have hired more teaching assistants, are loaning IT equipment to students, have extended the winter break, safely opened study spaces in the library or sent at-home kits for some courses, among the many measures taken. The university has also made significant technology investments to support the move to remote course delivery and assistance to faculty and staff, direct financial aid to students as well as online learning supports, increased on-campus health and safety measures, and stepped-up cybersecurity in a context where cyberattacks are proliferating. We will continue to further adjust to the situation and remain committed to the success of our students.

On tuition fees generally, please note that for the vast majority of students, tuition fees are set by the Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur (MES) and are adjusted on a yearly basis. [For Quebec residents and out-of-province Canadian students, the government increased tuition for the 2020-21 academic by 3.1 per cent.]”

 

phoPo by Christine Beaudoin

Small Steps: Don’t let imposter syndrome get you down

Once, sitting at a Cook Out (a southern fast food joint, sadly missing in the “great” white north) at around midnight with my friend Hannah, the topic of nepotism came up. I bemoaned to her about my fears of never truly knowing my worth in the creative industry because I happened to be following in my parents’ footsteps. My mom is a broadcast media professor and my dad sports a 40-year radio career. And now, I am an aspiring media professional who does radio on the side. It all just felt a bit too close to home. How could I ever know if I’m actually good at what I do if I’m always being told where to apply and who to contact?

Hannah, never one to parse words, looked straight at me and asked “What does it matter?” She goes to a much more “WASP-y,” predominantly well-to-do school than Concordia, where many of her peers wear their generational wealth on their sleeve, so she was able to see things a little more clearly than I.

“Hey, if John Rockefeller Vanderbilt the fifteenth is using his nepotism, why shouldn’t you? At least you’re a woman,” she said.

She was right. I was using my fear of what little nepotism I am capable of gleaning as a smokescreen for what was really going on —  imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is basically when you feel like you’re a fraud despite ample qualification. It’s the gut feeling that you don’t deserve any of your accomplishments, despite having worked for them. It’s the difference between me and John Rockefeller Vanderbilt the fifteenth— he believes he is good enough for the position, regardless of circumstances, while I do not.

Imposter syndrome is not solely personal, though. It’s intrinsically tied to how society values the labour of certain people over others. If you’re conditioned throughout your life to believe certain fields aren’t meant for you, or you never see people who look like you reflected in your desired job, it only makes sense that you’d still feel like you don’t belong even after you’ve beaten the odds. For that reason, women are much more likely to experience imposter syndrome than men, and women of colour tend to experience it the most.

It’s extremely hard to break the cycle of negative thinking when it’s so ingrained in our culture. And exclusionary and toxic work environments only exacerbate these issues. It would be easy to say that women and POC should just put on a smile and “know their worth.” But that sort of #GirlBoss logic doesn’t fix the reasons why so many are plagued by feelings of inadequacy.

To actually stop imposter syndrome, we’ll need to address the structural reasons why people feel inadequate in their careers in the first place. The vast majority of workplaces were never constructed with women or marginalized people in mind, so of course those trying to navigate these structures will feel alienated. Additionally, a capitalist structure which views professional failure as akin to death doesn’t really help us put our careers into perspective.

It helps to know that imposter syndrome isn’t just you, because most of us all feel unworthy every once in a while. Keeping that in mind may just help you navigate our capitalist hellscape a little bit easier.

 

Feature graphic by Taylor Reddam

“Alt” over the ages: how Gen Z is redefining subculture

A deep dive into the murky waters of “Alt TikTok”

Girls cutting their hair into mullets, boys in French maid costumes, anime cosplayers and gothic eyeliner tutorials — it’s nearly impossible to imagine a place where all this content would live in harmony. Yet, they (almost) do on “Alternative TikTok.”

Initially, it could be difficult to understand how all these disparate creators could feel comfortable under the same label. Counterculture movements have been at each others’ necks time and time again (think mods vs. rockers or the phrase “never trust a hippie,” popular in early punk scenes). Yet, as it was back then, it is still evident now that there must be something gelling all these groups together.

Until recently, the label “alternative” was only used in the context of music, and even so, its origin and winding meanings have remained murky. When the phrase “alt rock” comes up, most people likely conjure images of bands from the 1990s and early 2000s popular with Generation X: Nirvana, Sleater-Kinney, Pavement, Pixies, Yo La Tengo. However, the term “alternative rock” was coined in the 1980s to connote any music that did not fall under the purview of major record labels. This term took over the previously used “college rock” in the U.S. and “indie rock” in the U.K., to tag albums produced by independent labels that were popular on college radio stations. But, once Nirvana broke into the mainstream, the term alternative gained popularity as a catch-all.

While it’s unclear how the word “alt” showed up on TikTok with its current usage, the meaning is generally pretty consistent: alt TikTok sits in opposition to so-called “straight TikTok.” Straight TikTok is what you’ll be served when you first download the app: Charli D’Amelio, Hype House, and an onslaught of preppy teens doing dancing challenges. It’s the default, but honestly not very entertaining.

So then, “alt” in its current Gen Z usage is similar to its Gen X meaning — an umbrella term for all the subcultures standing in opposition to the norm. Though, it gets complicated, because now we aren’t just talking about music, we’re talking about people’s entire identities. The subcultures of Gen Z — E-Boys, VSCO Girls, cottagecore, and so on  — no longer base their identities around the music they listen to like the Emo and Grunge kids of yesteryear. Style has become the defining feature of these groups.

While style has always been instrumental to subculture, it’s telling how in our hyper-visual social media culture, it has become the driving force behind young people’s community-making.

That is not to say that style is without substance. In his widely influential book, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, media theorist Dick Hebdige explains how subculture groups of the 1960s and ‘70s used style to further a political message. Hebdige posits that the clothes worn by subculture groups function as a form of political rebellion in their own right. Something as simple as the tailored suits worn by the Mods of the 1960s show a disregard for the symbolic power of the suit in mid-century Britain. When a subculture co-ops the dressing style of those in power, they tear down the boundaries between themselves and those in classes above them. Through this, people are forced to question why we give power to these seemingly trivial symbols. For the Mods, when you disregard the symbol of the suit, notions of power, class, and white-collar ideals come down with it.

Is that so different from subcultures today? Take Gen Z’s cottagecore for example, an aesthetic of flowy fabrics, rural vistas, home-made breads and hair scarves. Through these style cues, cottagecore rejects the hyper-materialistic, technologically-reliant modern world, instead searching for slow-paced, rustic alternatives.

With that, creators can gain lots of cultural cachet by emanating a particular “look,” as it’s a shorthand to express your inner politics and desires.

The Internet, and most recently TikTok, has become the springboard for young people’s counterculture or “alternative” movements. Due to its advanced algorithm that constantly curates content that’s meant for your tastes (even calling its feed the “For You” page), TikTok is able to create micro-communities of like-minded people. And the more you interact with these communities, the more you’re fed their content, thus further cementing your place.

While it’s easy for Millennials and even elder Gen Z to write off the teens who seem to form their identities around how many pocket chains they have or even doing that weird eye roll thing, it’s important to take a step back and realize that this is all completely precedented. Alternative subcultures will, barring major political crackdown, always exist and always be changing. It’ll just be interesting to see who the next group to be absorbed into the alternative umbrella will be.

 

Photo collage by  Kit Mergaert

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