Film Cameras and Content Machines

"thanks! big fan!!!"

Meet Selina Fillinger, the young playwright behind three of this year’s Tony nominations; fleece queen Sandy Liang is expanding to swimwear; Instagram is rolling out new creator tools in hopes that people will start making Reels and stop making TikToks once and for all; and what the hell happened to the MTV Movie Awards?

HOW THE INTERNET TURNED US INTO CONTENT MACHINES, newyorker
Pop stars log their daily routines on TikTok. Journalists spout banal opinions on Twitter. The best-selling Instapoet Rupi Kaur posts reels and photos of her typewritten poems. All are trapped by the daily pressure to produce ancillary content—memes, selfies, shitposts—to fill an endless void.

HOW I MONETIZED MY VIRAL BABY YODA TIKTOK ACCOUNT, wired
According to a bunch of professional Creator™ types, “the keys to consistently making money from TikTok can be simplified into three essential elements: create an online persona, manage your account, and consistently create content.”

DON’T THINK TOO HARD ABOUT THESE TIKTOK VIDEOS, nyt
Instagram account @favetiktoks420 gets the Times treatment. Primarily followed by millennials, “a generation that is aging out of the cutting edge of social media may be using @favetiktoks420 to keep tabs on what Gen Z is getting up to. The account bio nods at this — ‘I look at tik tok so you don’t have to ❤️’ — as does its handle, which calls back to the jokey millennial naming conventions of the Myspace era.”

GEN Z AND MILLENNIALS DEFAULT ON AUTO LOANS AT FAR GREATER RATES THAN BEFORE THE PANDEMIC, nbcnews
Young people today have auto loan delinquency rates that are significantly higher than their pre-pandemic levels; this data stands against the backdrop of near all-time high automobile costs. The average new car now stickers at $46,526, and that’s to say nothing of gas prices…

‘YOU ONLY HAVE ONE SHOT’: HOW FILM CAMERAS WON OVER A YOUNGER GENERATION, guardian
Gen Zers are increasingly using film “as an antidote to digital fatigue.”

One last thought:

𝕔𝕒𝕣𝕧𝕖𝕝𝕝 @carvellwallace

hi i just read the 3k word piece you published. there was one sentence i’m not sure i agreed with. please write another 1500 words specifically to me explaining why you’re right. thanks! big fan!!