On a winter’s day in 2018, Lucy Blakiston sat in a university class trying to make sense of an article about Japanese pacifism and something from the BBC that her lecturer was lecturing about. She knew she should care about this stuff and that after three years, it should be making sense, but it wasn’t.
“Here I was, spending my youth (and an obscene amount of money) fighting tooth and nail to try to keep up with not just my coursework but also the world around me, and it seemed as though no one had tried to make it even the least bit enjoyable.”
So, she texted her friends Ruby Edwards and Olivia Mercer, who’d helped her understand the hardest world of them all – high school – and made them an offer: why didn’t the three of them come up with a better way to explain shit you should care about?
It started with a blog. Today, Shit You Should Care About is a fully fledged media brand that millennials and Gen-Zers (and their parents) flock to: two podcasts, 3.5 million Instagram followers, a daily newsletter, and a weekend advice column.
Now, SYSCA founder Blakiston and regular contributor Bel Hawkins, a poet and writer, have released the book Make It Make Sense. Instead of asking the questions, here Blakiston and Hawkins answer a few about how they’ve grown a media business when many big players are struggling, the differences between Gen X and Gen Z, their famous followers, and their hopes for the new book.
You started SYSCA in the back of a political science lecture. Have you ever had to use what you learnt in political science – or any of your university courses?
LB: I can’t even remember what the lecture was about, which is telling, but what I can say is that everything I learnt about how the world (and the media) wasn’t working, helped me figure out a way to build a business that did.
BH: I studied journalism just before social media really took over – so it was quite a buzzy experience entering the workforce as everything was disrupted. I can’t say I’m using the inverted pyramid [it’s a writing technique] or rallying against hegemonic discourse every day, but I do think it taught me to be curious and cynical, and I don’t think you can write (for online especially) if you don’t have those two things.
Does it ever give you panic attacks about how big it has grown? And how do you fit in other writing/life stuff you might like to do?
LH: I still find the size of this thing incredibly hard to fathom, which I think is the best thing ever. When I’m mentally in a good place, it doesn’t give me any type of anxiety, because, strangely, it just feels like I’m talking/writing/posting to my friends.
In terms of ‘fitting in’ all the other things I like to do – it’s easy. I structure my days (and the job) so that I do have time to do all the stuff that makes me happy. Like, I have an e-bike that I’m obsessed with, so I’ll always make time to get on that for a ride or make time to see my brothers (my favourite people!). And, shockingly, if I make time to be happy, my writing is better, the business performs better, and I’m more productive – funny that.
Bel: I run my own freelance creative studio on the side of writing for SYSCA (and working on the book), so it’s always a juggle – across timezones and deadlines and summoning ideas to come at the right moment. I think it’s easy to glamorise online businesses (you can work anywhere. You’re not chained to a desk.), but there’s an incessant, forever turning aspect to it that most people don’t see. So much of the work Luce and I do together is after hours and very frenetic – luckily, that’s how we both naturally work, so we can pull it off. Outside of work, having strict offline/phone on Do Not Disturb weeks or nights or weekends has become increasingly important for mental health and feeling like a real person in the real world with a real life outside of work.
How much do you worry about inadvertently saying the wrong thing and being cancelled? And what about the trolls?
LB: I used to worry about this heaps, but now that I’ve been running this thing for about six years, I’ve developed one hell of a thick skin. I’ve actually written about this before, but I’ve learnt to become obsessed with low-stakes errors.
BH: Luce’s attitude to this is super inspirational and I’ve only had the smallest fraction of what she’s had to face. I think if you’re going to put your work out online – particularly in a social media context – you have to build a thick, nonchalant skin fast and get over your sense of cringe.
The danger is having to caveat everything, so you don’t offend anyone, but then I think that ruins your writing. For example, I was trolled a bit once for posting a poem about being out on a lake with friends after heartbreak. People were like, ‘This is the most privileged, rich thing I’ve ever heard, it’s disgusting’, when the reality was that the boat was a dinghy, the wine we were drinking was $7 from Pak’nSave and the house we were staying in was a DOC hut. Context is everything. The internet just doesn’t allow us enough time to give it.
How do you make decisions on what to post and write about it?
LB: Gut instincts, baby! And it’s a real two-way interaction with the SYSCA-hood. They’ll send me something that’s happening.
BH: I’ll see something trending, or hear something my friends are talking about, or something I notice on the street that’s an obvious manifestation of something happening online, and know there’s something to it.
Who’s the most famous person to follow you?
LB: Olivia Rodrigo, Reese Witherspoon, and Dua Lipa. Unfortunately, they’ve all since unfollowed.
At SYSCA, you’re all big fans of Harry Styles, and you post about him a lot. Have you met him? You know, when he’s been in NZ had tea with him?
LB: I have not met Harry Styles and, honestly, as much as I love him, I don’t know if I want to. At the same time, I do still harbour the delusion that if I meet him, I could make him fall in love with me.
Why did you want to do a book?
BH: I’d been carrying around the idea for this book for years – travelling all throughout my 20s and collecting stories and aches, drawing lessons from them and hoping I could some day use them to inspire other young women (cringe? Self-entitled? Oh well, it’s true).
I’ve always been really obsessed with the internet and how it’s changing us. Then Luce and I met and started working together and it felt like the perfect place for this idea to develop and take on a life of its own. I think the idea that young people don’t like tangible, analogue things isn’t quite right. I think the physical act of turning the page, slowing down, and being in real life is something we all crave and need and are becoming increasingly aware of.
LB: What she said. She literally told me the idea and I was like, cool, let me help make this happen.
What’s your hope for the book?
BH: That it becomes something young women give to each other when they’re going through a time where they’re not so sure about the world or life. And that they take a pen and scribble all through the margins at parts they want to refer back to.
LB: That I look back on it in 10 years with minimal cringe and lots of love for the 26-year-old feeling all those big, weird things and being brave enough to write about them.
What’s been the most rewarding part of it all?
LB: Thinking back to my lecturers who said there was absolutely no money or jobs in journalism. Perhaps true, but cool to know we did it, anyway. I’ve also started a dedicated newsletter called ‘Culture Vulture’ where we publish young or upcoming writers with something to say, and I love giving people somewhere to be published. It’s all I wanted when I was younger.
BH: It’s hard being so exposed. Especially when you write non-fiction/diaristically. At times, it’s really anxiety inducing and difficult to navigate how much of a story to tell. So, the most rewarding part is when you’re a bit brave, or really revealing and it hits a nerve and resonates. This is where I love the internet and the SYSCA community – they’ll be the first to write you an emoshe (emotional) message in the back of an uber on the way to the airport about how much you’ve struck a chord with how they’re feeling, too. That’s when it feels real and worth it.
Life seems much more complicated for millennials and Gen Zers. Do you think that’s true, and is the desire for advice, support and kindred spirits partly why you think you’ve been so successful?
LB: As the Gen Z in the room, I think we no longer have this universal feeling that ‘things will just work out’, which is why we’re so loud and active about the things we care about. When you can’t rely the type of future that your parents had, it does bring a generation together in quite a unique way, which I’m obsessed with. And yes, the fact that I’m Gen Z, going through it with other Gen Zs is totally part of why SYSCA is successful. I don’t have a home, I’m scared about the environment, and I wish Tinder didn’t exist (just like most of our audience!). They see themselves in me, like I do in them.
Bel: It’s crazily complicated for young people, and I think we’re at a point where we can’t compare generations anymore. The life that was available to Gen X is simply not possible today (we all know the house price hell, but, like, buying your first home being possible while you’re on the benefit looking for work? A girl can dream), and young people are faced with the task of working out an alternative way because there’s no clear path ahead.
What has come from that, though, is way more open conversations of things and feelings that are usually hidden and a challenge to look at things differently. I write a weekly advice column and I see this angst all the time: How do I feel meaningful? What does work mean when the planet’s burning and I can’t even afford to move out of home? How do I make friends when everyone’s so chronically online? Everyone’s yearning for sense of community and belonging that straddles online and real life more than ever.
Make It Make Sense, by Lucy Blakiston and Bel Hawkins (Moa Press, $39.99), is out now.
