Intro + Homework · The Brand Is Strong

Hi everyone! I’m Diamond. I’m a culture journalist and poet/novelist based in Chicago (and sometimes NYC). I’ve worked at Bandcamp and Rookie, amongst other places. I wanted to take this class to gain new tools around TikTok. I feel more at ease on text-based platforms like Twitter (RIP), Threads, and Substack. But I decided I want to grow my TikTok and Instagram followings.

My brand pillars are culture, fun, and curation.

Culture: That looks like insights on pop culture or relevant conversations based on my background.

Fun: I said I was only going to try to grow my TikTok and other platforms if it’s fun for me and my followers. That means not being too serious. I make collages and moodboards in addition to talking head and curated recommendations. I remember when the internet was fun and I don’t want to lose that.

Curation: My most popular content on TikTok has been my curated recommendation series, which at this point, has been largely static cards but I’ve started doing book reviews. I plan to make more music recs as well.

I’ve been thinking about making a video about how the push for only data-informed decisions has impacted culture journalism. This is the draft script below. Which opener should I go with?

~~~~~~~

*We’re letting the losers win.*

Hi, I’m Diamond. A lot of my career has been in cultural journalism. That means recommending music, films, TV, books, etc. and that work has never been done with a data sheet. I’m not looking at a spreadsheet to tell me what’s cool. I’m looking at the world around me and observing.

We live in an era where everything is increasingly determined by data. But what’s cool or culturally impactful cannot be determined by looking at data, and we’re letting the people who think it can determine culture.

I’ve been watching @Denasia’s series on the collapse of the marketing industry due to the push toward only data-informed decisions, along with AI making it worse. I’d like to talk about this from my perspective as a culture journalist and a social media strategist.

Why is everything suddenly “data-informed”? Because media budgets got cut and nobody’s investing in journalism. The ad dollars went away, so the suits want a sure shot, and the only thing that feels like a sure shot is data. But culture can’t be quantified. I also think there's underlying disdain for culture makers at play here.

Think about who has historically pushed culture forward. Black and brown folks. Queer folks. Working-class folks. Women. Young people. Those are the people making culture, and they’re often the people writing about it in the most impactful ways.

The suits want everything to be a metric. That is not how culture gets made, and it’s not how it moves forward. It never has been, and it never will be.

*OR*

*Who gets to decide what’s cool?*