Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello and welcome to Shameless, the pop culture podcast for smart people who love dumb stuff. You're joined, as always, by Melbourne writers Michelle Andrews, that would be me, and Zara McDonald, that would be you. Hello, Michelle Andrews, and hello, producer Eilish Gilligan. Hello. Hello, Gill.
Chapter 2: What is clipping culture and why is it important?
Coming up on today's show, clipping culture. Some of you may have seen the viral piece about clipping culture around this week. So in today's episode, we are going to ask the big question, is everything we see on the internet really fake? It turns out the answer is kind of complicated.
I thought it was going to be more complicated, though. I thought that maybe the sentiment on the internet this week, which is, oh, everything is fake now, was a bit overblown.
See, no, I think it is overblown. Oh, I'm not sure it is. I think we'll argue about this later.
Great. I'll see you there. I'll see you there. Before we get into it, a quick shout out to our sponsor Nespresso and their new Virtuo Up coffee machine. Inspired by style and discovery, it has got many a fan in the shameless office. Thank you, Nespresso.
Thank you, Nespresso. All right. So... When we decided to do this story, we thought let's open with an example of clipping culture because this stuff can feel amorphous or confusing.
Also, if I'm honest, before the weekend, if I heard the term clipping culture, I wouldn't know what you meant. So if you are listening to this and you're like, I feel like we've jumped three steps and you're referring to this term I don't understand, do not stress. We will explain that too. But we thought we'd start with a good example to kind of root this in something.
So, of course, we're starting with Justin Bieber and Coachella.
Yeah. So cast your minds back to the first weekend of Coachella a month ago, maybe a month and a half ago. So the feed that weekend was awash with clips of Justin Bieber's performance. So you might remember Justin Bieber had this very pared back performance compared to Sabrina Carpenter. He was scrolling through YouTube. It was pretty ad hoc. pretty off the cuff and very, very viral.
Super viral. So viral that even, I mean, I got around that. I think I posted it on my own Instagram and I don't really post on my Instagram anymore. And our head of socials, Naima, even on the weekend decided, no, shameless needs to get around this. Collated a bunch of videos from the internet, posted it on our own channels.
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Chapter 3: How did Justin Bieber's Coachella performance highlight clipping culture?
And you know how robots just like kind of just die?
Yeah.
Yeah, robots aren't very resilient.
No, I think that was the point. And Gil is right. It was deeper than that because everyone's like, firstly, it's always funnier to see a robot fall over than a human. And I agree with that sentiment. That is true. It is always funnier. Like you fucking idiot. Yeah. Like we can all make fun of that. You dumb clanker. Clankety clank clank.
And I think then it's the resilience point to be like a human could never. Like a human wouldn't just fall over and then lie there. A human has to get up and keep going. Yeah, right. Anyway, after the break, what is clipping? How may have that impacted the sentiment around Justin Bieber's performance? And how is that impacting almost everything we see on the internet every single day?
We're going to get into it after a word from today's sponsor.
So as for many of us, coffee is the best part of the day. That first sip, literally nothing compares.
No, literally nothing compares, but it's also so much about the ritual, like sipping on your morning coffee while you get ready for work, meeting in the work kitchen for a mid-afternoon coffee and yap and procrastination.
Our office, if they love anything, our office loves a coffee and a yap.
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Chapter 4: What role do paid campaigns play in shaping online sentiment?
Now, it goes without saying, these clips are not disclosed as paid ads, even though that's exactly what it is. This is advertising in a different form.
And what was really curious to me is when I was on this clipping website yesterday with my brand new account, it could plug in directly to my TikTok account. So I also have questions. Do the social media platforms have a vested interest in this economy? Do they get some kind of kickback from this economy? Because it sounds huge.
This sounds like something that has been happening particularly in Hollywood for years now and it's only getting bigger. It's only getting more mainstream. Why would TikTok make it so easy for me to plug in my account? Like I just have to scan a QR code and all of a sudden it's completely synced to my TikTok.
It's confusing as well because in this story, like Lane Brown goes to all the social media apps, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and asks them specifically about what they're doing about this. And TikTok came out the strongest in opposition. They were the ones that came back to them the fastest. Lane Brown reported that Instagram were actually, I don't want to like exaggerate my wording.
I would say slightly the shadiest or maybe the most unwilling to offer comment on it. Whereas TikTok were like, oh, came back straight away and had responses and said, we want to try and pull this stuff down. Where Instagram have only really responded in a way where they've said on their platform that, they will deprioritize content that looks repurposed. So if it's not original.
Yeah. If you're wondering, listening to us, okay, well, who's doing this? The answer is kind of everyone. Yeah. Per that vulture piece, in a couple of weeks of lurking in these clipping communities, I saw campaigns scroll past for Bad Bunny, Zayn Malik, Fleetwood Mac, Shania Twain, Luke Combs, Noah Khan, Teyana Taylor, Teddy Swims, Dominic Fite, Kane Brown, Netflix's The Night Agent,
Apple TVs for all mankind, the horror movie Insidious 6 out of the further, the Michael Jackson biopic Michael, the betting platform Kelshi, the Met Gala among others. So I guess the big question becomes, Is culture all bought now?
Is culture actually just paid advertising? Well, there's no such thing in culture as organic virality almost anymore. It feels very much like if you wake up one day and suddenly a certain thing, a person, place or thing, a company, a celebrity is everywhere out of nowhere. I used to think that that could just happen on these algorithms.
Now I'm realizing, for example, the betting platform Kalshi came out of fucking nowhere in my life.
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Chapter 5: How are social media platforms involved in clipping culture?
Potentially rep Dua Lipa and Justin Bieber.
Oh, yeah. Potentially rep people on behalf of them.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
They gave a live interview with a billboard journalist in which they explained their trademark, quote unquote, trend simulation. So they essentially explained how they make money by manufacturing thousands of fan accounts for their clients, one of which was geese. This interview made people very mad because they were looking at geese as, I guess, a
I don't know, this indie came from nothing music group. And yet all of a sudden they were finding out that actually geese was the definition potentially of an industry plant.
Well, that's the thing, right? For so long we've spoken about industry plants and how it's an internet term that feels kind of reductive and what does it even mean? But then in the context of how geese we're buying eyeballs or our eyeballs are being bought at the moment. Or ear holes. Ear holes.
Oh, I said ear holes. Ear holes.
It does now feel like we can have a legitimate conversation about what an industry plant is and means.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of clipping culture for artists?
Yeah, I completely agree. And then you have to wonder, wait, if other podcasts in particular are doing this, how much have we been trying to push our own stuff organically against a machine that you just cannot compete with?
But you can. That's where I think you and I are going to disagree.
No, I don't disagree with, I think, what you're about to say.
This idea, and I know this article is... suggesting that 90% of the feed is fake, I flatly refuse to believe. I was taking that number into my head scrolling through my own TikTok feed last night. There's absolutely guys, and I mean it, there is absolutely no way 90% of my feed has been artificially inflated. I think what they're saying is 90% of social media activity is inflated. That's fine.
But things do not make it to my feed unless they're legitimately good content. And I think probably one in a hundred, maybe one in a thousand clip campaigns end up actually going viral.
Yeah, I think a quote like that is not going to go viral unless it's like pretty reductive. So when they say 90% of what you see on the internet is fake, I think there's a way to tease that out for in some way that to be true. But I don't think it's 90% of the things that I see on my feed are fake. Does that make sense? The things you get on your feed are genuinely things that should be viral.
Virality though. is largely concocted and culture is largely concocted. Do I think it's 90%? No, but I think what this has done is made me think a lot about who we're talking about and why. And it's really complicated because if you look at the example of someone like Clavicula, for example,
And if there are conversations about his following and his feed or whatever, his videos being artificially inflated by clipping, maybe allegedly for a while, that is still finding an audience that's real. That is still finding an audience that we don't want to be going down these internet rabbit holes, young men in particular. That is then still worth talking about.
And so in the context of our job in this show, I felt kind of complicated over the last few days because it's like, well, do we need to be extra discerning about what conversations we bring on? Or do we still just have to reflect the stuff we're seeing online?
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Chapter 7: How does clipping culture affect the perception of authenticity online?
Yes.
I read that. I was thinking about that a lot. I was thinking about that so much. I was like, this is more sophisticated than a bot campaign. It's way more sophisticated, way harder to trace. I know about it now and I still don't know where the fuck it is or how it's happening or when it's reaching my feed. Exactly.
That's all we've got time for. Gil, thank you so much.
Thank you. Mishy.
Thanks, Zazie.
Thanks, Gil.
We'll be back in your ears on Thursday. Bye. See ya.
This podcast was recorded on Wurundjeri land. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.
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