Cultural Forces #66

talking the whistle-blowing era of early 2000s reality tv, the rise and rise of FamousBirthdays.com and the counteractive movement of joy baiting online.

📺 REALITY TV IS GETTING A REALITY CHECK

✨ Podcast alert! “What in the world” unpacks the scandals of different reality shows

✨ Similarly, Redditors discuss the exposé documentary “Fit for TV"

✨ But there’s lots of scepticism around how “true” these docus are (*Tyra Banks as producer of the ANTM one cough cough*)

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Flora’s take: The deeply ingrained cruelty of early 2000s reality tv is finally getting the reckoning it needs. And what shocks us today it isn’t how extreme it was, but how normalised it was at the time. But when former producers are involved with these documentaries, how much can we actually trust their accuracy?

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🎂 FAMOUS BIRTHDAYS IS GOOGLE FOR GEN Z

✨ Move over Wikpedia, there's a new search engine in town

✨ At the same time, it's become the new scouting tool for talent agents

✨ And, according to the data, birthdays are the thing people seem to care about the most when it comes to famous people

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Flora’s take: FamousBirthdays.com isn’t just an archive of talent, it’s a constantly updating leaderboard of (primarily) Gen Z faces. You can literally see who’s “trending” at any given moment.

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🥰 JOYBAIT AGAINST RAGEBAIT

✨ Move over rage baiting, it’s all about joy baiting now

✨ Huge engagement! Joy bait Tiktoks get millions of likes and thousands of comments

✨ Joy baiting IRL: Designer Lyas invited a load of fans to a real Willy Chavarrias show during PFW

✨ The new Moo Deng? Punch and his toy monkey made us all cry this week

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Flora’s take: We’re living in a time where the comment section is king and yes, that’s why rage bait content thrives, but joy bait invites a whole different type of engagement - sharing. While rage bait triggers an individual response, joy bait can ignite a collective one.

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🗣️ BEST OF MY X TIMELINE