CATCHING FIRE: Alysa Liu, North West's girl gang and Becca Bloom's pivot
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Hello from London where it appears consequences are alive and well. Over to you America!
In today’s letter we’re taking the temperature of the Gen Alpha dictator-in-waiting, a TikTok divorce announcement, the fire horse frenzy, female Olympians winning on their own terms, the new Moo Deng, live shopping, Threads’ vibe shift and the cringe death of jestermaxxing but before that a word on highly flammable’s favourite “relatable billionaire,” Becca Bloom, and her fascinating strategy shift…
RichTok pivots to paid
Last year she conquered TikTok by posting bank-busting designer shopping hauls, breathless updates on her big-budget Lake Como wedding and engagement-baiting claims that her cat eats caviar for breakfast, and this year Becca Bloom has her sights set on a new platform — Substack.
Rather than repeat the ultra-consumerist content that made her a star on TikTok, Bloom is now dishing out self-help advice in her new eponymous newsletter, and charging fans for some of her insights.
Bloom, real name Rebecca Ma, has dropped nine posts in just 13 days with headlines like What To Do When You’re Feeling Left Behind and Perfectionism Is Holding You Back. It’s more Mel Robbins than come with me to the mall, and it clearly has an audience as she’s nabbed over 11,000 subscribers in just two weeks.
The 27-year-old describes her newsletter as “Building the Bloomprint,” and not only is it a savvy way to diversify her brand and content pillars, she’s also joining a broader shift in the creator economy towards subscription revenue — a more reliable income source than platform payouts and sponcon.
Bloom’s move also comes as Snapchat announced it was bringing in a paywall option for creator content, joining YouTube and Instagram who have similar schemes.
To me it also signals that Bloom is looking to make content creation her primary business. Whether she can acquire enough paid subscriptions to leave the, presumably well paid, job she has in fintech is an open question. And I wonder if fans will readily hand over their cash to someone who has flaunted their riches so exhaustively.
All creators deserve to be paid for their labour, but wealth-flashing imagery like this will be an interesting test for that theory…
Everyone’s talking about
North West… after the 12-year-old daughter of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, and her extremely swaggy friends, took over the Alexander Wang store in New York City last week…
Her shopping spree with her coordinated girl gang - who, I repeat, are aged around 12 - came as North West made a series of moves that suggests she’s laser focussed on fame.
In the past month she’s:
Signed a deal with the record label Gamma, days after releasing her first single Piercings on my Hand, which has racked up over 870,000 streams on Spotify
Submitted applications for three trademarks under the brand name NOR11 across clothing, accessories, jewellery and bags
Hit two million followers on Instagram
Begun home schooling with a curriculum that sees her spend eight hours a day in a music studio producing and writing, as well as taking summer courses at the prestigious Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City
While it was never likely that North would live an anonymous life, striking out before hitting her teens is going to be wild to watch. As will the advent of Gen Alpha nepo babies.
World War Mog and the mainstreaming of Clavicular… So last week I told you all about the 20-year-old streamer who describes himself as looksmaxxing’s “cultural leader,” and warned that his viral fame was normalising a deeply problematic self-improvement belief system.
A week on, not only has looksmaxxing fully broken containment from the dark corner of the internet it once occupied, but Clavicular has become its acceptable face after he:
