It’s been a BRAT GIRL SUMMER in the northern hemisphere — Brat this, Brat that — everywhere we look, BRAT BRAT BRAT. Of course, we know, it was injected into the culture by queer icon and soft techno-pop brat mother, Charli XCX, with her album of the same name. Simple and understated, the movement was seeded in a chlorophyll hued image emblazoned with ‘brat’, lowercase, slightly blurry. Apathetic and raw, Brat evokes a bonafide TikTok-age archetype (to be Brat is to protest conformity, except armed with a great skincare routine). Brat is a mood, and a patronic style snapshot of our current cultural moment. Charli and her team have shown us one thing — from a marketing perspective, you best make sure your album artwork and accompanying assets are memeable. 

When Vice President Kamala Harris found herself as the presidential candidate in July — her team, led by a rumoured cast of ‘gen-z and millennial marketing auterers’ got hold of the moniker to garner support; we witnessed a clashing of worlds that rarely collide. On TikTok, Kamala was hailed as a certified ‘brat’, and her Kamala HQ ran with the Brat movement to contrast the vitality of her persona to the dithering, grotesque and orange mess that is her opposition. Also, New York’s Mayor Eric Adams co-opted the movement, announcing his plans for a brat summer. 

Virality is vitality in this day and age. 

‘FIRST ROUND’ photographed by Jelly Luise, via Death To Stock

Suddenly, the obscure zeitgeists that we consume and mine for as young people on the internet, punctuated by trends and frenzied epitaphs, came head to head with the dry, barren landscape of politics. Fox News was hell bent on understanding ‘brat’, and a host of either politically disenfranchised or indifferent young people entered the political arena in America. Gay folks disseminated ‘kamala’ Brat style merch instantly — and in turn, Kamala was born again, this time as a star. A strange turn of events for an album catered to gals and gays who might spend hours in the que at Berghain, carrying their coke and ket in chrome bullet vials around their necks. 

After all, many of us are a demographic of non-conformists and as young people raised on the novel and inescapable bizarre nature of the digital age — we prize hedonism, and Brat hitting the mainstream is kind of an evolution of the weirdness that continues to pervade our lives spent online. Not that we really care, and as Dazed have declared — Brat Summer Is Already Dead. It has swiftly been replaced with the ‘demure’ trend, created by TikTok beauty influencer Jools Lebron, who announced to the girls that now is the time to be, “demure, cutesy, and mindful” – and the trend has exploded like wildfire. 

That being said, this is about Brat right now – dang, we can’t even catch our breath! 

Content Creator Frankie AKA ‘mediations of the anxious mind’, crafts short-form video essays, exploring topics and ideas in a flat, monotone voice. In between the satirical awkwardness of his productions, his commentary often leads to flat-lining truths of searing proportions. In the video Brat Summer Explained, he had this to say, “in a consumerist society, culture takes on the commodity form. Life is no longer about meaning-making, it’s about buying products and slaying. Brat is a product of consumer behaviour, but more specifically — of audience labour. People undertake the unpaid, leisure-based tasks of posting brat-related content to their social media to accentuate their social status in ways that we can’t fundamentally understand or entirely evade,” and that, “we all claim to have brat summer, but we don’t really know what that means on a molecular level. To be Brat is to be marketed to. Beyond that? Brat remains a cultural moment that’s unsure of itself.”

‘EDEN’ photographed by Marlen Stahlhuth via Death To Stock

And there it is — among all the brat-coded verbiage and anecdotes of the year, the movement is ostensibly a dystopian cultural case study on the effects that a very sophisticated and well-oiled marketing campaign can have on the masses. As fashion writer Elliot Hoste so brilliantly said, “with Brat, Charli has finally achieved the fully realised version of her XCX-persona: a strung-out, 365 party girl, but one who thinks about stuff a lot and has an insatiable diva complex. Most of this was achieved through the album’s marketing, which positioned itself as an off-the-cuff guerilla campaign of dive-bar drop-ins and random block parties, but was, by Charli’s own admission, meticulously planned,” and that, “Charli knows exactly who her fans are, and the campaign was practically AI-generated in its ability to exploit them.”

Philosopher and thinker, Terence McKenna, believed that our tendency toward greater complexity is evident in the evolution of life, culture, and consciousness as human beings. Seeing this as the driving force in the universe, where nature evolves from simple forms to more intricate and interconnected systems, I imagine McKenna would find Brat as wholly contextual to the way the 21st century is unfolding. The digital age has vastly accelerated the pace at which culture evolves. With the internet and our vast array of digital tools, information spreads rapidly, and trends emerge and dissipate as quickly as they occur; we are shaping complex cultural forms almost instantaneously through memes, viral content, and digital subcultures, and disposing of them even quicker — and trying to define them, is kind of obsolete. 

From the perspective of McKenna’s complexity theory, Kamala HQ co-opting Brat is not unexpected; in fact, it’s right on track with where we are heading as a society pursuing more and more interconnected strands of cultural production. The purpose isn’t necessarily to ‘make meaning’ in the digital age; it’s about capturing the mood of the moment, instead. Meaning becomes an afterthought, a retrospective exercise for anyone who might feel nostalgic. What provides said meaning might be just the mere fact that it was perceived, viewed and enjoyed; the very definition of pop culture is popularity. The more ubiquitous, the more meaningful. 

The ephemeral nature of digital production in 2024 also means that everything feels very surface level. Brat feels important, but it’s really just a marketing tactic; designed to capture attention quickly and generate buzz. It’s hot, messy and appealing — and being all those things is not to say it doesn’t matter. Purely because Brat is relatable, makes it a moment in and of itself. But, when we watch a movement arise from one singular person, namely a pop star (and their team), rather than through a grassroots means between communities, this rapid rise and fall of trends can create a sense of superficiality, where the deeper meaning or lasting impact of cultural moments is overshadowed by their transient appeal. 

These are all interesting things to consider, and yet — who really cares? This isn’t about judging whether pop culture is inherently meaningless, because we know it isn’t (just by virtue of the connection and joy it brings people) any less than it is about highlighting just how diametrically opposed politics is from appealing to young people. Cultural phenomena like ‘Brat’ or ‘Demure’ may come to symbolise the broader issue of how our engagement with digital content is often driven by momentary excitement rather than enduring substance, and we are left reminded that trends don’t really represent meaningful shifts in cultural dynamics; instead, we’re simply witnessing yet another batch of commodified experiences and images through our screens. Not to mention how we will consume / purchase from companies who market their products pertaining to such trends. 

The only true sin in life is to become boring, and that’s just not an option. Brat this, Brat that – rat girl summer – or being demure; as long as it’s queer-coded and aesthetically palpable, and we can keep our intellectual wits about us as things get weirder — then, I’m kinda into it. Cig, anyone? 

Written by Holly Beaton

For more news, visit the Connect Everything Collective homepage www.ceconline.co.za

The Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony was quintessentially French. Le Papa Smurf’s blue hue created global controversy (equally ridiculous and also unsurprising) and the self-indulgence was palpable (we love to see it). The French committee offered up Revolution-style guillotined heads and metal bands while DJ and producer Barbara Butch (an LGBTQ+ icon) wore a silver headdress that looked like a halo while flanked by drag artists and dancers – we quite frankly vibed in this visual orgy.

However; after the conclusion of that Scorsese-length, in-situ, in-Seine-ity, we sighed a collective sigh — ‘how the f*ck are we going to sustain this sensory, over-stimulation, when the sports haven’t even commenced yet?’  

Sacré bleu!

We live in a society that ‘moves at the speed of culture’ and many of us were left wondering if the pressures of cultural relevance (and the French went to lengths to achieve this) are now prized more than the fortitude of what the Games represent for human athleticism. In this day and age — it seems no matter the event, it better prove meme-worthy for the masses in order to be marketed. Was the Olympics more a feat of ‘shitposting’ than it was of meritocracy in the elite athletics realm? Exhausting the cultural alley-ways and backends of social media platforms, you are probably more familiar with the achievements of a pole vaulting Parisian penis, Noah Lyles claiming Covid and last but not least, Hall of Shame, PhD breaker, who well and truly broke the internet; the street artist formerly known as ‘RayGun’, who made Olympics history by scoring a unanimous ‘0’ for her contentious and let’s face it, extremely silly performance. RayGun alone brought into question the very integrity of the Olympics Games, and what had always been revered as the pinnacle of human achievement seemed to teeter on the edge of becoming just another sideshow for social media consumption.

Image sourced via Akani Simbine Instagram

Has the focus on viral moments, whether intentional or not, cast a shadow over the true spirit of the Olympics, where the pursuit of excellence, discipline and sportsmanship should be paramount? As we collectively scroll through highlights and lowlights, have we traded the values of meritocracy and genuine athletic achievement for the fleeting amusement of a meme-able moment?

What of Tatjana Smith – the aquatic artist formerly known as Schoenmaker – becoming the most decorated South African Olympian of all time; a breast-stroking GOAT, who swims off into a Corona-sponsored sunset with two Olympic golds, two silvers and a World Record in her achievements’ column? How about Letsile Tebogo – Botswanian who – as the tweet suggests – created so much wind with his 200m blitz that it gave the favoured Noah Lyles instant Corona (the bat one, not the lime one) and a VIP seat in a wheelchair. Tebogo brought home the first-ever gold medal for our neighbouring country – that’s pretty massive. 

Also, AKANI FINALLY HAS A MEDAL. Simbine with the personality of Disney’s Simba, ran his anchor leg of his team’s 4 x 100m relay sub 9 SECONDS. 8.78 seconds to be exact. Then, there’s Bayanda Walaza – the matric pupil and teammate of Akani- who is currently being welcomed back at his high school hall in Tshwane, as he prepares to write a Trigonometry preliminary examination. Wild, completely wild. 

I was fortunate enough to attend both swimming and athletics fixtures at the Olympics, and the experience was unlike any other major football or rugby fanboy event. The crowd becomes a collective megaphone willing on individual world record breaking performances. The decibels doubled, noticeably, when a Frenchman or woman dons the lycra and circumnavigates the arena. The five rainbow rings symbolising human excellence across speed, strength, stamina, and distance were on display, and yet somehow our greatest innovation has algorithmically stunted our physical progression. Maybe it just feels this way, as those of us who are not competing at the highest levels of sport have more access than ever to extract these moments, as we digest them into the cultural zeitgeist in strange and hilarious ways. Maybe there’s enough room in the cultural milieu for memes AND moments of incomprehensible endurance? If the Olympics showed us one thing, it’s that there better be enough room — because our capacity for collective piss-taking shows absolutely no signs of slowing down. We call it ‘doom-scrolling’ for a reason. 

Image by Bo Zhang via Unsplash

In the world of creativity, advertising is our commercial-art imitating life. It becomes more ineffective each year, as the Cannes Festival of Creativity in 2022 was already reporting that 85% of ads do not work. Also, annually, a new brand will inevitably succumb to being cancelled for, ironically, being tone deaf with its virtue-signalling tactics. We’ve seen billions of dollars wiped off multinational corporations’ bottom lines, and share prices bottoming out because a CMO or agency somewhere, failed to read the room.

Nike, however, whether you pronounce it like ‘Mike’ or ‘Ny-key’ (this is the right way bt dubs) won the communications Olympics by going all-in on victory – the Latin meaning of Nike (by the way) with messages like: ‘Winning isn’t for everyone’, ‘If you don’t want to win, you’ve already lost’, and ‘There’s one souvenir I want from Paris’, were some of the defiant taglines espoused by the sporting behemoth ingeniously cut through category clutter.  

As a father of three small children, wanting to steer my progeny to greatness in their lives and to stand out from the billions of others, it’s hard to find real mentors in our generation. Locally and globally, dads are still absent or non-existent in large droves, our politicians are populist, and/or captured and celebs rarely have any scruples to actually be leaders. In a complex cultural landscape, sports have come to matter more than ever before; just think of what the Boks have done for South Africa. 

Sports stories are the most inspiring. Athletes are our North Star for success and personification of the human spirit. This is why Netflix, Apple, Disney and Showmax are investing billions of dollars in this narrative genre. When AI consumes all of our creative jobs, live sports will always be recession proof — hopefully. Perhaps we’ll reset to factory settings and return to mortal combat in venues such as the Colosseum, people will watch gladiators sever heads (not as art direction, but for real) and other limbs. Until then, we’re going to make the most of the digital age, in which one athlete’s misfortune might be momentary comedic relief.  

Yes, the French did it differently, but merci for magnifying human merits and earthling excellence from the Olympics to the upcoming Paralympics. Your river may be literally shitty, but your sporting showpiece was sensational. It’s not everything but it’s one of the greatest achievements and feelings in the world to WIN!

Written by Mike Sharman

For more news, visit the Connect Everything Collective homepage www.ceconline.co.za