The viral news voice: SYSCA
You’ve probably seen this account blowing up your Instagram feed over the years. Remix Editor-in-Chief Amber sits down with the iconic crew from Shit You Should Care About for an exclusive chat, diving into their unapologetic take on everything from pop culture to world issues.
You took over the social media world in 2018 and now YOU’RE OFFICIALLY AUTHORS! Walk me through the evolution of SYSCA to get to this point of releasing a BOOK...
Luce: Ok, so like any good origin story Shit You Should Care About started because I was bored and confused. I was three years into my university degree, sitting in the back of an International Relations lecture theatre in 2018, not understanding ANYTHING, so I sent my two best friends from childhood, Ruby, and Liv, these texts:
Here’s a little excerpt from the book about why I sent them in the first place: “Here I was, three years into a degree where I was literally studying the world, and somehow, I felt less informed or inspired to learn about it than ever before. Why weren’t people talking in words we actually knew and used? Why did I feel stupid for not knowing terms like ‘hegemonic discourse’? Where was the colour? Where was the fun? There must be a better way to make sense of all of this, I thought over and over again as I lugged those textbooks up the hill to a fourth-storey tutorial each week. In hindsight, it seems audacious to think the three of us would be the people who would try and find this ‘better way.’ But when you’re a young woman in your 20s, sometimes audacity is all you have —just one of the powerful forces we would go on to learn that would be constantly underestimated.” From there we launched a blog (this was 2018 remember) and then quickly realised that NO ONE was reading blogs anymore. This was 2018, so everyone was on Instagram, mostly using it to post saturated brunch photos.
“What we did next didn’t seem groundbreaking at the time — we started repurposing our content and posting where we knew everyone was hanging out: Instagram. Maybe it was a wild idea to use a photo-sharing app for words, but it felt like a welcome disruption to the influencers peddling waist trainers and old high school classmates sliding into your DMs with a “Hey, hun!” and an attempt to recruit you into the latest insane multi-level marketing scheme. That December, we reached 1,000 followers. Midway through 2019, we had 20,000, and by the end of that year, we had 61,000. “Then 2020 hit and we all know what happened. Everyone was desperate for information but in the simplest (and least depressing) form possible because, so in lieu of living a normal life, I started spending all my time reading, writing, understanding, explaining, and sharing what was going on in the world. These were called our ‘no bullshit daily updates’ and that’s exactly what they were. We were doing all of this for free, just because we loved it. It was that year that we launched our first podcast, The Shit Show, having raised the money to buy a podcast microphone by selling tote bags online. The year after that we launched our second podcast Culture Vulture (mind you, it was still not a full-time job for any of us) and during our second lockdown in 2021 I sent out our first ever newsletter (cutely referred to as the newsy.)
Tell me, of course, about the book... What can readers expect?
Bel: We’ve both been carrying around the idea of Make it Make Sense in our minds (in some way or another) for most of our twenties, obsessed with the way everything terrible eventually turns into something good, but only if you know how to make sense of it. It seems as though the moments that are so dizzyingly good in life never last long enough, and the ones that crush you into someone unrecognisable feel as though they’ll last forever. And through it, all — the late, bleak nights, the trains we’ve missed, the escalators we’ve been riding up, the loves we’ve fallen into, and the times that have skinned us alive— our female friendships and belief in what is good and right are what have always triumphed. It’s definitely NOT a coffee table book of infographics on how to read the news or get famous on the internet. It’s a collage of cultural analysis, anecdotes, personal essays, poems, and lists, interplayed like a conversation between friends. So sharp they’ll make you wince, so honest that you might feel uncomfortable with what’s reflecting back at you on the page, so funny you’ll want to send it to your best friend. We wrote it because social media isn’t forever, and it, like our attention spans, will wax and wane and potentially even disappear at some stage. But the pleasures and dangers that life forces us to feel won’t, and when everything feels like it’s whooshing away in an endless scroll, we want people to be able to hold the answers (or questions) with what to do with all these big feelings in their hands. In the spirit of all of this, Make it Make Sense will be a book you’ll keep and turn back to often. The one you give your heartbroken friend.Your friend in a ‘purposeless’ era. The friend who needs to quit their job or relationship or hold a mirror up to themselves to really see the magic they are. The one who’s on the precipice of ending something major and taking a chance on something wild and unknown. It’s the bedside table essential for women who’ve felt their way through life and want that experience reflected back at them. To be made to feel intelligent, safe, seen, understood, and inspired, no matter what aches and dreams they’re going through.
Be honest, was writing a book hard, or easy?
Luce: I’m not even being dramatic when I tell you ‘lots-of-short-projects-all-at-once’ kind of girl so having what turned into basically a two-year project was NOT what my brain is used to. We moved across the world and I had a full menty-b halfway through writing it, so I moved home, which was... a lot. And then there was the technical stuff, like, since I’ve been running my own platform for so long, I’ve never been edited! So that was new. And humbling. And probably very, very good for me. But now this book is the thing I’m proudest of in the whole world.
Bel: It was hands down the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Like, I kind of adore looking back at the girls we were two years ago and really admire the gumption we had at the time to pitch it and believe in it. Friendship is so magical. People are often fascinated by our co-writing process, which we both found surprisingly easy because we already work together so much. It was a process of sitting around drinking a lot of coffee, and deciding what each piece should be, and then going away and writing it. It was more the realities of life that made it difficult! As Luce mentioned, both of us managing our mental health, the intense political climate at the time we were writing, and both having to do so while keeping our own businesses afloat. It was... a lot!
Are people going to lose their minds over it the way BookTok have lost their minds over the ACOTAR series, or is there slightly less smut and slightly more productive information? Lol.
Luce:[Laughs] Honestly, I hope not! As we’ve seen time and time again, the higher something goes, the harder it falls (ask any coconut.) I’m kinda kidding – I know I’m biased but I do think that the more people that read this book, the better — there’s such good stuff in there about how we straddle online life and real life, as well as grief, being in love (or in my case, never being in love), friendships, and getting good at being alone (it’s chic, not bleak!) We just want this book to reachthe hands of our younger selves — the daughters, sisters, mothers, friends and anyone else in our lives who might need it.
Have any books served as inspiration or is this truly the first of its kind?
Bel: We’re definitely trying to make essay collections way more accessible! And so we thought emulating the way people read online— frenetically, obsessively, in short bursts, picking things up and putting them back down — would be a fun way to do this. That’s where our ‘collage’ concept came from and that’s why there are so many different content forms within it; poems, lists, mantras, essays, stream of consciousness... It feels like a reflection of how we both think and work together. I love the way Sheena Patel writes about the internet, and was really inspired by Jenny Holzer, and Tracey Emin’s art. bell hooks and Natasha Lunn’s writing on love blew my world open too, and I’d like to think that informed the way I was thinking about modern romance and modern life on a philosophical level. Then honestly? Each other. There’s this crazy energy we get when we sit down to come up with ideas where one can validate the smallest musing of the other and that’ll be enough for us to believe in it. That was the true gift of writing a book with one of your best friends — you have your biggest writing/living/friendship crush in your corner who wants to make the coolest thing possible!
Originally Shit You Should Care About was known as a viral news and entertainment sensation, how would you describe yourselves now?
Luce: A SIMPLE GAL TRYING TO HELP US ALL MAKE IT MAKE SENSE! I don’t spend very much time on social media anymore, I’m deeply disinterested in going viral, but the place I love being the most is in our newsletter. It’s taken me a while, but I guess I’d consider myself a writer, more than I am a ‘content creator’ these days. I’d also describe myself as happy and content, which is a crazy way to feel when you spend your life online. What can I say? I’m phoenixing.
Describe the most crucial moment when you dared to dream...
Luce: Sounds cringe, but I think I kinda live in a dream state. Like, I feel like my mind doesn’t put up boundaries when it comes to what we’re capable of. There’s that audacity again.
Bel: I’m a dreamy girl, I can’t grow out of it. It’s like... the best way to be I think because it makes you live in an ‘anything’s possible’ state. I also think growing up in a small town where the things I wanted to be (a drummer in a band, a painter, a writer, an accomplished woman of the world) were not super visible turned me into a dreamy person. I loved any time spent on my bedroom floor, listening to CD mixes I’d burned from Limewire or painting my NCEA art boards like the indie cool girl I wanted to be from the movies — those moments of creative solitude were what got me into daydreaming and all the possibilities it can unfold. Plus, ‘The city’ felt like a really far away concept, let alone New York City or London where Everything Important Happens. I remember thinking at a young age, oh well, I might as well try —like, what’s the worst that could happen? Someone thinks I’m cringe on the internet? If I let that thought stop me, it’ll ruin my life.
Can you take us back to the lightbulb moment where SYSCA became a tangible reality as a business and not just a platform?
Luce: Oh my god, there was no ‘lightbulb’ moment — which is why the SYSCA story would be a shitty documentary. We literally worked on this for three years without making a cent, because we loved it. That’s why it works. Because we still just love it.
Why was the conception of SYSCA so important to you?
Luce: Oh, other than the fact that it’s changed my whole life? It showed me that even if your lecturers are telling you that there’s no career for you in the field you’re studying, you can make one yourself. It showed me that you can work with your best friends and still remain best friends the entire time (and when they leave.) It showed me to trust my gut, and take about 1% of the advice you’re given. It showed me that if you care about something enough, it will work, and then you’ll get to employ all your favourite people. It showed me what’s possible with a dream, a lotta gumption, and unwavering audacity.
Who or rather what inspired you to become a Dreamer?
Luce: My best friends, Bel, Lola Step from Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen.
Bel: I was really obsessed with Frida Kahlo’s art as a kid. I know that sounds like I went to a gift store and saw her on a cushion, looked her up online and decided she was my idol, lol, but I’ve always found her work really inspiring. I spent a lot of time sick in bed as a teenager and took so much solace in her confessional paintings and the way she turned her convalescence into something creative. It made me feel like I could fly like a bird out into my imagination, too. Oh, and obviously Luce and basically any woman in the world doing anything brave. But that feels like a given.
If you could dream of a better future, what would that look like?
Luce: Everyone being able to care about and love whatever or whoever the hell they want. Unless you’re a politician who cares about their next paycheck more than the planet. So actually, a better future would also include term limits for politicians so we can get a whole new generation in there.
Bel: No notes except for the complete shattering of the glass ceiling.
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