Hot Take Tuesday: The Algorithm Would Have Missed Michael Jackson, The City Wasn’t Booked for Your Wedding, and Everyone Is in the Same Rhinestone Bodysuit
Visibility beat talent, stage presence became a template, and charisma got optimised out of the building.
Happy heatwave wherever you might be experiencing it!
I’ve managed to cut two main typing fingers so if this letter ends up being slightly shorter, you can blame it on my unique ability to always inflict maximum damage on myself.
Last week, Emma Näpänkangas and I did a live, with some pretty hot takes on Eurosummer, the European way of travel vs the North American one, and many variations of old ladies from the continent.
In case you missed it, you can catch up here:
And with that, let’s dive into some hot takes around visibility, uniformity, money and how they tend to get in the way of originality.
This Week on Hot Take Tuesday:
The Algorithm Would Have Missed Michael Jackson. When visibility matters more than talent, even the greats need a strategy deck.
Everyone and Their Rhinestone Bodysuit. Stage presence has a template, and individuality is the first thing to get cut.
The Inoffensive Doll Look. We traded magnetism for safety and called it being “well put together.”
The City Wasn’t Booked for Your Wedding. Private Wealth, Public Shutdown
The Algorithm Would Have Missed Michael Jackson
To escape the heat, I went to the cinema to watch Michael the other week, and as the movie went on, I kept thinking that I don’t think Michael Jackson would have become the King of Pop in 2026.
Moving past the fact that we’ve reached the point where people self proclaim greatness so much that it becomes a very Boy Who Cried Wolf situation, and nobody takes anyone seriously anymore.
In a sea of noise and hustle, it’s hard for raw talent to get you far anymore. Now we reward being loud, we reward entrepreneurship, we reward all sorts of things that have nothing to do with the actual ‘gift’. Most of the greats were artists before they were marketers or businesspeople. Sure, they had a knack for all of those things but we’ve moved to rewarding visibility and not craft. And quite frankly, this is something that happens in most fields.
I used to work with someone whose incompetence has yet to be surpassed, but because they were loud, knew people and inserted themselves into every conversation, they somehow ended up Head of Marketing. Thankfully the skill, or lack thereof managed to shine through, but it’s worth remembering that this person got picked over a lot of more competent candidates.
The irony is that we’re more connected and have more options than ever, but there is actually less opportunity. So unless Michael Jackson would have upped the hustle, I don’t know that he would have even made it on the global radar. And who knows how much brain space he would have had left to come up with the things he came up with. Who knows if he would have even been allowed to.
Because I have so many post-movie thoughts, I’m writing an actual piece on this which will be coming later in the week.
Everyone and Their Rhinestone Bodysuit
Staying on the topic of realisations that came while watching the Michael Jackson movie: musicians used to have a pretty distinguishable looks. Used to.
If I say Prince, you have a very clear image of what he looked like. Freddie Mercury as well. Madonna was incredibly unique and innovative for the longest time. Guns N’ Roses definitely had a look.
Let’s fast forward to today and I really want you to think hard and tell me: which big female singer does not wear a variation of a bedazzled bodysuit while on tour? I am fully aware that the stage outfit needs to look as stagely as possible, but when did we decide a swimsuit with rhinestones was what everyone needed? Most outfits worn on most stages could easily be interchangeable between performers.
The early 2000s were a good decade for the midriff (Janet Jackson won that one by a mile!) but why did we go from that to a shiny shrunken romper? Few people had the incredible stage outfits that Britney had, and never once did she wear an underwear adjacent style. I’m saying it is possible to look amazing while performing, without looking like everyone else.
While early 2000s stars wore outfits that felt reflective of accessible, real-world street fashion (like low-rise cargo pants or crop tops), today's uniform is highly commercialised. Almost every mainstream female performer wears the exact same high-cut leotard, and it feels like an industry-mandated corporate standard of sex appeal. You can’t tell me these people move more than Britney on stage and as such need a more athletic cut.
I don’t know whether that standard represents a powerful form of "stage armour" or a commercial regression into a passive, uniform gaze but I think it’s worth wondering why we’re all pushed to look the same. Starting with the most visible members of our society.
The City Wasn’t Booked for Your Wedding
Speaking of visible members of our society who wear leotards: one of them got married last week, messing up travel on one of the busiest weekends of the year, in one of the busiest cities in the world.
Let me clarify a few things: yes, the city gets shut down for movies, for events, for all sorts of things. But the city does not get shut down for any of those things in the eve of a major holiday.
Film crews for example, avoid filming in high-traffic hubs during national holidays because the city permits are harder to justify.
Local business owners and bars near Madison Square Garden complained that the security barricades choked off their holiday foot traffic, costing them thousands of dollars on what should have been one of their most profitable weekends.
When a city shuts down blocks for a parade, a marathon, or a movie shoot, it is generally framed as a public, cultural, or economic event that the community can witness or benefit from.
Renting out the world's most famous arena for three days, deploying over 130 NYPD officers daily, and closing down 11 streets in Midtown Manhattan ain’t it. It’s also not what someone who claims to want privacy would do.
The worst thing about this is that in a big city, public resources and civic infrastructure are increasingly treated as commodities that can be rented out to the highest bidder. While the wedding was taking place, Con Edison was forced to shut off power to thousands of everyday New Yorkers in residential neighbourhoods to protect the city's straining power grid.
Buy all the tacky expensive things you want with your billions, but no amount should buy you the right to disrupt the basic movements of a functioning society.
The Inoffensive Doll look
Recently, I walked past a girl on the street where I instantly thought “she’s cute!”. But the thing is, everyone is kinda just cute. Inoffensive doll cute.
It's a very polished kind of attractiveness. Very pleasant, very well put together. Designed to be liked by absolutely everyone and memorable to almost no one.
"Cute" is algorithmically rewarded because it's difficult to hate.
I grew up with feral sexual energy from Sharon Stone and I’m not saying we need to flip over into that, but there used to be women whose entire presence felt adult. Not pretty, necessarily. Just comfortable with taking up that kind of “I am a grown woman” space.
We lost a whole vibe category to what I assume is self-protective invisibility. We completely traded raw charisma for safety. Now, everything is optimised to be universally liked online, which means the element of mystery has totally vanished into a sea of flawless, very similar looking faces.
People are so terrified of being judged or singled out by anonymous online lurkers that they preemptively dull their own edges before they even step outside. It’s a massive cultural retreat where we've traded individual defiance for a comfortable, crowd-pleasing uniformity.
By trying so hard to protect themselves from scrutiny, a whole generation accidentally starved the culture of its most interesting people.
One last thing:
At the intersection of pettiness and a methodology sits this man:
We all know exactly who drains our energy in any office, but having actual biometric proof is next-level corporate warfare. Also because, how are you going to argue with it? It’s data. This man quite literally automated his intuition!
The sheer amount of engineering effort it took to prove that "engg_1" is a "prime suspect" for causing him high stress is the most passive-aggressive form of productivity imaginable. He stressed himself out more just to scientifically prove who is stressing him out. Which is a very tech bro move.
On a serious note though, imagine if corporate HR gets ahold of this technology and uses it to track who the stressful people are.
That’s all we got for today, hope to see you next week!
Girl I’m so bored of the rhinestone bodysuits!!!! I think Zara Larsson and Pinkpanthress are doing something interesting and nostalgic with their clothing
No notes- this was SUCH an entertaining read.