PJ Kirby: Citing your Internet sources is very demure, very mindful
There is a very thin line between celebrating a culture’s influence and just claiming it for yourself, writes IMAGE.ie columnist PJ Kirby.
Every Monday, Apple sends me a weekly screen time report to let me know how much time I spend looking at the little screen you’re probably reading this article on. Each week I’m shocked by the fact I spend roughly seven hours a day on my phone. That’s forty nine hours a week. That’s 2,548 hours a year or 106 days. Shocking, I know.
I’m not going to hop on my stories announcing a social media detox that nobody cares about but I should really stop scrolling on my phone as I walk down the street. There’s nothing more humbling than walking into a pole because you couldn’t pull yourself away from watching Billie Eilish on Chicken Shop Date. In these moments I come face to face with my addiction but what can I say, the algorithm has got me gal.
As a result of being in the grips of Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Shou Zi Chew, I can speak fluent Internet, making me a hit with my nieces and nephews. My niece Tess was unsure of her communion dress but when I hit her with a “you’re slaying, queen,” her eyes lit up and I was hitting my contactless card off the machine at the dress shop in Cork quicker than you can say Charli D’Amelio. While doing the Apple dance to Charli xcx as her mam fetched the car, I began to wonder… does she even know where the word ‘slay’ comes from? She didn’t, which I thought was a bit ignorant – but then I remembered she’s eight, so it was my job as the guncle (gay uncle) to educate. School was in session and thank Gaga I happened to be serving a Miu Miu-inspired look for the occasion.
In a world of doom scrolling and virality, a flicker of interest can spread to a worldwide forest fire of obsession in a matter of days. Going viral is great for a lot of creators and can change their lives but when a word or phrase goes viral, a lot of the time the people who originally made the word popular get forgotten about. Words like ‘Slay’, ‘Yas Queen’ and ‘It’s giving’, for example, all originate from the Black and Latinx LQBTQ+ Ballroom scene of the 70s and 80s in New York City. One viewing of Jennie Livingston’s documentary Paris is Burning which chronicles this time can give so much context and help you respect the origins of the slang. I don’t think a trans woman could have predicted that a word she used to describe her sister slaying a performance at a ball in 1980s Harlem would be used by an eight-year-old girl from Ireland in 2024 to describe the way her dad plated up her chicken nuggets. That’s the power of TikTok.
I don’t think a trans woman could have predicted that a word she used to describe her sister slaying a performance at a ball in 1980s Harlem would be used by an eight-year-old girl from Ireland in 2024 to describe the way her dad plated up her chicken nuggets.
We’ve seen this happen more recently with the ‘Very Demure, Very Mindful’ trend. Creator Jools Lebron’s videos of her ironically being ‘demure’, ‘mindful’ and ‘cutesy’ in everyday situations took off. This was quickly adopted by other people online and later by brands, after the marketing teams struggled to explain the trend to the more senior higher-ups but finally got approval on a post just when it was too late and now a bit cringe. Aw, the trend cycle. However, as Jool’s star continued to rise, a man by the name of Jefferson Bates tried to trademark the term “Very Demure, Very Mindful” before Jools could, which may now result in a legal battle. Add it to the numerous times when a white person tried to take from a minority group. To use a phrase from 1980s Ballroom – it’s giving greed.
Over the many hours I spend tethered to my phone, I’ve noticed that a lot of the trending phrases start within the LGBTQ+ community and many of them are created by trans women. It’s interesting to me that the people who are dragged through mainstream media are the ones who are shaping pop culture. The Internet will continue to spit out trends quicker than a sea swimmer will tell you they’ve just been for a dip, but we must investigate the origin of these trends. There is a very thin line between celebrating a culture’s influence and just claiming it for yourself. A little investigation into a trend will help us credit our sources and could even show us if it’s culturally inappropriate to partake in the trend. To quote Jools, it’s very demure, very mindful.
Photography by Arman Jose Galang, @arman.jose.galang.
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