Having been an “Instagram artist” for the past 8 years, it felt hard to delete the app from my phone once I finally felt burnt out. I’ve managed to have a consistent stream of creativity and posts up until a few weeks ago when I finally decided to delete most of the socials off of my phone, with the exception of Tumblr. I have felt increasingly overwhelmed by using social media for the past couple of years and the fact that it took so much effort (and a lack of screen time self control that carried me this far) to delete it is upsetting to me. I’m not completely clean from it since I do have to keep up with messages and the presence I’ve built up there, so I’m still using it from my laptop in the evenings to check in. I think this is acceptable because it is how earlier forms of social media existed. It also makes me feel like I have some small sense of what’s going on with people I actually care about keeping up with, such as Slayyyter.
This blogpost was initially meant to be more about Slayyyter and my recent obsession with WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA, but I feel like there is a lot more wrapped up in my loose thesis statement which is: iPod music will (maybe) save the world.
As I’ve deep-dived recent Slayyyter interviews, I’ve learned that she describes the WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA/WOR$T MAN IN AMERICA project as “iPod music”. I love this description because I think it paints the exact same image (or rather, creates the same exact mental soundscape) for myself that I imagine she sees/hears. I know exactly what she means by this. A complete jumble of sounds, genres, and moods on one shiny little device. A magical rectangle made for one sole purpose of listening to whatever you want whenever you want.
I often laugh at my own ability to put a ridiculously broad range of genres on one playlist and not feel completely whiplashed between each change in song. That’s what I remember feeling so fun about the iPod growing up. You can feel surprised by whatever comes next. I think this also speaks to my personality and the range of media I enjoy, or how I want to dress or do my hair each new day. One thing I try to remind myself of often is that life is nuanced, and personal style can be whatever you want it to be each day, even though social media tells us otherwise by encouraging extremely specific sub-styles that result in a false sense of uniqueness or coolness.
Being able to translate the feeling of jumbled up genres on an iPod into a cohesive album does not seem easy to do (at least from my non-musical standpoint). Each song is uniquely its own. And now she’s releasing the album’s counterpart, WOR$T MAN IN AMERICA, as a way to “redo” each song. Maybe some will be a continuation of each song’s story, and maybe some will have a completely opposite meaning. She captured the iPod sound so well with her instrumentals too, as her references and inspirations have included many artists from that era.
When was the last time you felt genuinely “connected” to anyone or anything on social media? I’ve already talked about this ad nauseam, but I suppose I’ve had a lot of feelings wrapped up in it lately. The constant, excessive flow of content makes it significantly more difficult to see the content of users you actually follow on Instagram than any time before reels were implemented into the algorithm. As both a “creator” and a casual user on personal accounts, I’ve just started to care a lot less about participating in any of it. I also think the people that have perfected ways to make vapid, “cool girl” text posts with a song in the back are tacky clout chasers that contribute to overconsumption of content and exploit users’ desire for genuine social connection. Maybe I’m being too deep. Maybe not.
These feelings I’ve had about social media throw me back into a painful jealousy of those who got to be 23 year olds in the iPod era. This is an emotion I may never get over. I have this feeling the most strongly when I listen to STRFKR’s self-titled album. Specifically, “Rawnald Gregory Erikson the Second” sends me into a simulacrum of a 2008 hipster college student walking around campus with a latte and huge New Girl-esque glasses in the fall. Not only was I in kindergarten in 2008, but I also never walked around a college campus listening to that song whilst drinking a latte and wearing huge glasses. So really I have no idea what I’m talking about. But what matters here is the emotion.
“DANCE” was the first song of Slayyyter’s I heard all the way through and it became an instant obsession. And shortly after that I listened to the full album through her music videos. I am also very impressed with the fact that she made either a visualizer or full music video for every single song, and that they are self directed, even though some of them really freak me out. I also love “GAS STATION”, “OLD FLING$”, and “WHAT IS IT LIKE, TO BE LIKED?”. It just feels so good to have an album to be completely obsessed with. Her music videos are so TUMBLR. I know that was also a massive source of inspo for her, and a major style developer as a teenager. I wish I could’ve had Tumblr during the glory days of it, but I was too little.
If you are familiar with my artwork, I tend to be pretty motivated by my deep and endless nostalgia towards everything. Through making work this way, I know that it feels much more cathartic to reference something so deeply personal or buried deep in the subconscious, and therefore it makes the work so much more relatable. People can feel when something has a lot of emotional weight to it, because it comes through in the visuals. Slayyyter has said that during the process of making this album, she just wanted to make something her teenage self would find cool. She has said that she tried making the album knowing that she just wanted to be proud of her own work, even if it were to be the last album she’d ever make. And since she stayed true to herself, and made something she loves, and that references personal teenage memories and tastes, the music has related deeply with so many people. She has gained herself a lot of new fans, including myself. Sometimes social media bandwagoning of artists that gain them almost overnight fame actually is worthwhile.
Gracie and I have been especially obsessed with “brand new chanel$” at the moment, because it gives us the feeling we often describe as “I love music”; an intense emotional reaction to just loving everything about a song. It feels a little more 2016ish Tumblr era to me than the stuff on WGIA. And it really does feel emotional, maybe because the lyrics are sad, but also because it sounds like what teenagehood should’ve felt like for me, if I’d been a little more adventurous. It’s also very optimistic sounding despite its meaning. It makes me want to throw a dance party. I also love how opposite it is of “beat up chanel$”, while still being connected with references to the original lyrics and melodies.
As I embark further into my social media-less iPhone, I have been curious about how realistic it is in today’s world to eliminate music streaming. I wish I could just use an ipod for music, but do I just want that because of the aesthetic? Or because I love the 2000s iPod commercials? Will it remind me of being little or help me mentally time travel to when life was way cooler? Probably, but maybe that’s all fine. I also think having a slim and sleek and cute pink single use device feels appealing because everything we encounter in our lives is so overcomplicated and overwhelming. This was my motivation for trying to lower my social media usage. I get overwhelmed by everything as it is, why would I continue willingly scrolling nonsense? I’m definitely not perfect and still get caught in the scroll even on my laptop, or on Tumblr. But it’s progress.
Streaming was so advanced and ideal with its ability to give people access to basically every song in existence for free. We no longer have to own the music we want to listen to, which is cheaper, and makes things more accessible, but having so much music can be overwhelming. I have over 3000 liked songs saved to my Spotify, and on a day to day basis I probably won’t be in the mood for the majority of them. What would my day to day be like on an ipod, or with a personal music library on iTunes, where I am limited on storage or to what I want to download? Not many things take as much effort, or as much of a “hunt” anymore the way that finding new music did back then. It’s also cool that so many people can be somewhat “successful” as musicians now (and this also applies to the visual arts world somewhat) because of social media and streaming, but it is also oversaturating the market, and is significantly less financially lucrative for artists. I feel pretty turned off initially to a lot of the music I see online, maybe because of how much of it is over promoted. I can’t stand the “Instagram Reel-style lyric video with a repeated song chunk” thing. I am happy it helps people, but it comes off as so clickbait-y. I admire so much that Slayyyter didn’t do this with WGIA. She actually made legitimate music videos, many of them super DIY, and let those speak for themselves. That amount of trust in yourself and dedication to the craft of something that speaks to the story you are trying to tell means so much more than a lot of what we are handed today music-wise. This isn’t to criticize anyone either; we all have to make do with what the resources are, and what the industry looks like nowadays. I also know that Slayyyter already had an audience built up over the years of her career before this major takeoff she’s had in the last year or so, which definitely helps more so than if you were starting from scratch today. The bottom line of what I’m trying to say here is that I just want things to start going viral on Youtube again instead of Tiktok.
It reminds me a lot of what I had happen with my fabric crowns, where I was given some amount of popularity online because of them, but not because that’s what I really tried for. It was all happening outside of my control and became what I am most known for, which I don’t think properly represents my body of work. Unfortunately the stuff that took the most effort doesn’t always appeal to what social media is aiming to push.
When was the last time you felt genuinely “connected” to anyone or anything on social media? I’ve already talked about this ad nauseam, but I suppose I’ve had a lot of feelings wrapped up in it lately. The constant, excessive flow of content makes it significantly more difficult to see the content of users you actually follow on instagram than any time before reels were implemented into the algorithm. As both a “creator” and a casual user on personal accounts, I’ve just started to care a lot less about participating in any of it. I also think the people that have perfected ways to make vapid, “cool girl” text posts with a song in the back are tacky clout chasers that contribute to overconsumption of content and exploit users’ desire for genuine social connection. Maybe I’m being too deep. Maybe not.
The lack of connection on social media right now is so disheartening, and I hope that with the resurgence of iPod culture, and 2000s and now even 2010s nostalgia, we can all start returning to what feels genuine. We are nostalgic for those times because technology helped us without hindering our abilities to feel properly socialized outside of it. Everything has become too convenient and because of that requires less thought about the things that mean the most to us. Why have an overload of things you only kind of like, when you could have a more curated selection of things that bring you the most happiness, excitement, and understanding? I have a playlist of all sorts of 2000s songs that I put on when I’m needing this feeling. Some of it is stuff I loved as a kid, and some of it is stuff I love now as an adult that I never knew as a kid. Or stuff that I never knew was so influential to everything that came after it. Music might be the closest thing to time travel that we have.
If iPod music, whether simulated or a legitimate 2000s-2010s artifact, can do this much for me mentally – summoning up a mental picture of some time period I apparently envy for its appearance of social connection, personal style, and positivity – perhaps it’s the answer to all of our exhaustion with life and social media and technology. Looking backwards constantly is not beneficial, but we can look to that period for inspiration on how to backtrack out of the pandemonium that is modern day Instagram. So thank you, Slayyyter. Crank it.
Leave a Reply