AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND — Colenso’s Love This podcast hosts Maria Devereux and Beth O’Brien sat down for a chat with Shit You Should Care About co-founder, Lucy Blakiston.
Shit You Should Care About (aka SYSCA) is an online platform taking the world by storm run by three women in their early 20s. They repackage hard news, soft news, and culture into humorous and digestible pieces of content. And judging by their 3.4 million followers, they’re nailing it.
SYSCA offers an entry point, a window into complex information, from which people can start to learn. It’s a platform born from a skillset Lucy developed early, from her teenage exploration of fan culture. That’s one of the reasons SYSCA will never stay in one lane because in complex worlds of fandom everything in life relates.
“I hate when people say, oh, you posting about Harry Styles makes you lose all credibility about every single other thing you’ve posted, because it’s not mutually exclusive, I can post about, the fucked up abortion laws in Texas and Harry Styles at the same
time.”
When it comes to brands being successful in digital spaces, Lucy explains that people can sense it when brands are just throwing money in the direction of eyeballs in an attempt to jump on the bandwagon. She believes that authenticity lies when a community is talking to its own community, “If you’ve got something great going on, or you are putting on a TV series based on a book I really love, or there’s a new artist we’re obsessed with, we’re happy to work with brands in publishing this great work, this great thing, this great artist. Where I draw the line is I don’t like selling people shit. I don’t like manipulating people into doing anything that you don’t want to do, because I don’t like when it’s done to me. And if I am the audience and I want everything I say to be true, I really stick by that.”
Beth O’Brien says, “SYSCA is changing the way people enter information, but also how they view culture and community. Talking to Lucy was awesome, she’s awesome. Her insight into young people, STANS, and digital community-building is immense. We were left with the sense that her team is fundamentally centred around cultivating trust. The care and time they put into achieving this in each post blew me away. If you’re a human in this industry and want to hear more about youth or knowledge culture, I would say this episode is for you.”
