Mizzy, Tate, Love Island and Counterculture - and why we're getting this all so wrong!
(Everyone can take a breath and calm down - it's not as bad as you think!)
Firstly – this latest comes with a bit of an apology – there has been no updates here for over a month – BUT there is a good reason for this! Or at least a justifiable one. I have just finished a new book, and more on that anon. But now that’s out the way, be assured of this being a weekly (at least!) again, with all the insight into what is happening in the world of #GenZ and #GenA!
As a little sweetener/apology, I’m also providing links to a nifty little report I did recently in collaboration with the good people at M&C Saatchi (it’s one of a number of reports I’ve done with them.) This one is pertinent to the column today, as it looks at the changing landscape of social media and how much this is going to transform over the next five years: think less broadcast and influencer-model and more community and intense-tribal.
https://mcsaatchi.com/change/thinking/discord-community-conversation
This week’s (one of many) scandals was the sudden ubiquity of 18-year-old prankster-influencer, Mizzy (real name Bacari Bronze O’Garro) and his appearances on BBC News, Talk TV, and various other news outlets – all of whom feigned massive outrage at his content, whilst cheerfully giving him a wider platform and enjoying the spike in audience, rewatches, shares and clicks he attracted. Similarly, BBC News’ decision to give controversial ‘manosphere’ voice and influencer, Andrew Tate, a platform and big-draw interview, where he ran pretty much roughshod over journalist Lucy Williamson with what might be generously called ‘alternative facts’ was poorly thought out, hypocritical and left the BBC looking foolish and unprepared for how these new type of influencers roll.
There isn’t much more to say on these car-crash interviews that hasn’t already been said, other than for god’s sake broadcasters, hire people who actually understand modern culture to dissect modern culture!
What I do want to say on Mizzy, Tate, and all the ‘controversial’ so-called influencers waiting in the wings to get Daily Mail and BBC knickers in a twist, is let’s approach this with a cooler head and look at it from another point of view than the one we currently are.
Since ‘the teenager’ became an analysed cultural phenomenon way back in the 1950’s, youth has practically existed to wind up and shock older generations. Whether it was the post-war, free-love hippie culture of the ‘60’s, the anti-Vietnam, anti-authority punk wave of the ‘70’s, boys wearing makeup a la Adam Ant or anti-hippie parents ‘greed is good’ of the ‘80’s, gangster rap and Riot Grrrls of the ‘90’s, talking and acting like Paris Hilton clones in the 2010’s, right up to the 2020’s, where more kids seem to want a career lighting each other on fire and filming it for TikTok than to go to university in order to become teachers and doctors; one of the major points was to scandalise oldies by demonstrating very emphatically ‘our generation is going to do things differently to yours, so look out.’
But here’s the major, major difference for modern young people: Generation Z and now Generation A. They, for the most part, have liberal Gen X or millennial parents. The net result of this is, unlike EVERY previous generation of teenagers for the last seven decades, they can’t shock their parents with music, calls for social justice, tattoos, sexuality, gender identity/fluidity, clothes, TV shows, computer games, books etc. because their groovy, modern parents will support and often share those tastes and predilections.
In a sense, this robs modern teenagers a vital rite of passage, i.e., shocking your parents and elders, and so it was inevitable, Gen Z and Gen were going to light upon their own counterculture that terrifies and scandalises older people. Whether you like it or not – and the parents who freaked out over their kids tuning into The Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save the Queen’, Ice T’s ‘Cop Killer’, Larry Clark’s Kids or Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’ acted pretty much the same as all the parents freaking out over the shock-influencers like Tate and Mizzy.
But the point to remember is, these influencers are modern kids’ counterculture. They shock, scandalise, wind up, encourage bad behaviour, challenge norms and status quo and excite lots of kids. Sound familiar?
This isn’t to say we shouldn’t be concerned about some of the darker stuff modern day influencers are promoting and encouraging, but, and I can’t say this forcefully enough, banning, panicking, pearl-grabbing and sticking Parental Advisory stickers on things HAS THE EXACT OPPOSITE EFFECT. There’s a reason ‘90’s kids all wore Parental Advisory t-shirts!
Instead, we should look to why these influencers are getting so under the skin of modern teenagers and what is happening both nationally and globally that has contrived to so promote their appeal? What Mizzy is doing isn’t anything original and what Jackass did much better over twenty years ago. What appeals to his young audience, is he is beating a system and getting rich in spite of how much this system doesn’t work for so many of young people. If you basically exclude large portions of a generation from the traditional economic norms like a job with prospects that gives them a decent standard of living, buying a house and being able to save, it’s inevitable, they are going to create their own alternatives that work for them. That is exactly what Mizzy is doing and has become a poster boy for how being an economic and professional outlaw just works for his generation.
Whether we like it or not, Andrew Tate has tapped into a well of misery and fury of young men, but and this never gets pointed out – not by any means, all. Yes, we must listen to and understand why failed Big Brother contestant is chiming so hard with so many young guys but we are so at pains to focus on all the angry young men, we ALWAYS overlook the ones who aren’t. Rather than frothing at the mouth or trying to ban Tate and his disciples (whilst also interviewing and promoting them endlessly for cheap clicks), why don’t we turn to the dudes who aren’t angry, furious at women, are mostly happy and feel like things are working for them, figure out what’s going right for them and then decide to do a bit more of that and bit less of this. Part of the reason we got to this state of play with Tate, was young men felt so (paradoxically both) ignored and maligned, that when someone didn’t do those things, millions flocked to him. There are so many young men both famous and non-famous, mass followed and doing it under the radar, who are doing awesome things in every conceivable field. Why not give them some attention? Probably because it won’t result in as many clicks for the BBC or give Andre Walker the opportunity to cosplay a hard man. But until we start lifting up positive masculinity, we can’t navel-gaze about why a darker form of masculinity continue to appeal.
And it is Love Island season, which gives the tabloid and broadsheet media ample column inches to fill with breathless coverage about whatever controversy happens on Shag Island this year. Which would be less galling if the same talking heads and columnists then ask in faux shock-horror why young women follow the kind of influencers that decimate their self-esteem and distort all realistic standards of beauty, rather than follow, say, Maria Ressa or Nadia Murad – both of whom won Nobel Prizes in the last five years. To be clear, lots of young women do follow them, but for context, Ressa has 58.9K followers on Instagram, Love Island alum Molly Mae has 8 million. For well over the twenty years, way before Love Island, the Kardashian/Jenners and the behemoth beauty influencer industry, young women have been hammered with the idea that nothing matters more than being beautiful or the way they look. If you like, the popularity of hottie, young Love Islanders getting it on, or the continuing mind-bending popularity of Kim and all her clones, is a symptom not a cause of the ultimate value that have been instilled in most modern women: thou shalt be hot above all.
Counterculture historically has risen up as a response to something that has perceived by younger generations to have gone wrong: social conservatism, inequality, war, economic decline, lack of jobs, lack of hope. Rather than pay too much attention to the Mizzy-shaped symptoms of Gen Z’s online counterculture, we should be paying far more attention to the causes, and be asking what is it that’s making these individuals and their messages resonate with so many young people? If the mainstream stopped pointing fingers at the counterculture and asked what it could do to improve things socially, economically, culturally and spiritually for so many young people who feel excluded from these things, we might see real change in who Gen Z and Gen A follow.