Why #CryingGirl Is in Tears over Pop Culture’s Break up with ‘The Rich’

It’s been over ten years, so we were due another global financial crisis. Last time it was Lehman Brothers and subprime mortgages. This time it’s the double whammy of covid and the war in Ukraine that has led to inflation, recession and a cost-of-living crisis. The pain is real, but who’s to blame? Plenty of twitter characters will be spilt arguing over that, but Tom Beckmann suggests a more entertaining path to the answer: look at current pop culture villains to reveal The People’s Baddy.

Last time round, we lapped up films like Avatar and Moon for their stories of ‘bad’ companies vs ‘good’ people while Occupy Wall Street was cool enough for Kanye West to make an appearance. The People voted and the culprit was ‘Corporates’. The consequences? Corporates spent the next decade promoting ‘purpose’ in an attempt to win back trust and convince us they were on the side of good as opposed to evil. The People’s vote matters.

This time round Corporates did well. By and large businesses bust a gut to serve customers through covid, they looked after their staff and they took big financial hits to do all this. As a result, trust in business went up. So where does the pop culture finger of blame point today? Screens don’t lie… We’re bingeing on TV series like Succession and The White Lotus. We’re loving films like Parasite, Knives Out, Triangle of Sadness and The Menu. Their common narrative thread is one of unpleasant elites getting their comeuppance. The People have voted and this time they blame The Rich.

Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising. The covid and wartime narratives were “we’re all in this together”, but blatantly we were not. The rich got seriously richer and the poor got seriously poorer. ‘Fuel poverty’ became so mainstream it required government intervention. The heroes we clapped got real-term pay cuts. Meanwhile, the luxury sector boomed. The Partygate line ‘one rule for them, another for us’ landed. And while covid rampaged across the planet, the world’s richest man spent his money on a day trip into space.

There have always been tales of egregious inequality, but arguably we’ve now reached a tipping point where for the first time the middle-classes identify as ‘feeling poor’ (by their own standards) leaving the rich in golden isolation. The material path to aspiration no longer seems as viable. Tom Beckmann talks of, “society entering a post-bourgeoise era where the conventional consumer dream is over”. And as any spurned suitor knows, if you can’t be with the one you love, reject them acrimoniously. And just like that, pop culture fell out with The Rich.

So what’s the cultural response to this new social order? What is the equivalent to the ‘purpose’ narrative that guided corporate storytelling? Or put it another way, what does social status look like if we reject wealth and consumerism? One place to look is social media to see what’s getting likes. Here, there is one undisputed winner. The Rich’s fall from grace has coincided with the meteoric rise of TikTok.

TikTok is not a new platform, it’s a new culture. Old school ‘social networking’ is about keeping up with what your friends and family are doing. And guess what, seen through the Insta-lens they all appear to be drinking cocktails at sunset by swanky hotel pools. Their feeds feature perfect lighting, flawless skin and flattering angles. They look as popular, confident and happy as the people in ads. They’re living richly.

TikTok actively rejects this ‘fakery’. The TikTok look is lo-fi, spontaneous and ‘real’. The TikTok mantra is ‘just be yourself’. So, in a world of unrealistic beauty standards, give it up for #NoMakeUp. Where social Alphas are characterised by bullet-proof self-confidence, #CryingGirl bares her soul, pain and vulnerability. While others show off their best side to gain approval, #Toxic opens up about your worst traits. The rise of TikTok comes from people embracing not a new technology, but a new set of values. In the brave new ‘post-bourgeois’ world, social status comes (more affordably) from ‘being real’.

So what does ‘be real’ mean for brands? How do you (ahem) get that aspirationally ‘real’ look? It’s easy to get lost in ‘what’s in vs what’s out” and I think we all ‘get’ the need to tone down the bling, less empty celebrity, lose the ‘supermodel’ props, etc… More insightful is TikTok’s ambition to become the most ‘relatable brand on the internet’. Relatability is key to ‘being real’. Aspiration stories emphasise the gap between you and the dream and promise transformation to get there. Reality stories emphasise how close you are and how it’s within you to do it. Reality is solidarity. And that feels right for this day and age.

I’m drawing on social media examples to illustrate this, so the last word goes to a tweet that made me smile, but at heart is a simple image that shows how even The Rich can ’be real’ and therefore effortlessly cool. If there’s one take out for brands in all of this it’s ‘be more McCartney’.

Ben Tan is founder and strategy director at 2050 London