The Mesoculture
What Comes Between the Macroculture (Hollywood) and the Microculture (TikTok)? Nothing. That's the Problem.
We knew this day would come. The day when TikTok would not be a reliable home for pro-Palestinian creators. More and more of them are being shadowbanned. Some creators are even saying there may be a need to boycott TikTok entirely.
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TikTok was a great home for these creators because TT was not in bed with US politicians like Meta is. But it is in bed with US companies that advertise on its platform. And TikTok is about fast trends. It gets uncomfortable when something remains popular for more than a month, especially if other apps have newer trends. Perhaps in October being the app that had the biggest Free Palestine community meant that your app had a vitality the others didn’t. Now, with X banning content using words like “decolonization” and Meta censoring pro-Pali content, TikTok has a real fear that it might be wearing fall fashion in the winter.
Speculating on their reasons for turning on these creators is pointless. The point is that TikTok has been and always should be a temporary home. Same for any app. Platforms come, platforms go. This is the way of the Microculture.
Right, what is the Microculture? At the beginning of the month,
wrote about the war between the Macroculture (Hollywood) and the Microculture (TikTok). As I read it, I found myself rooting against Hollywood. I didn’t find myself rooting for TikTok though. Why?Besides the obvious reasons enumerated above, no matter how much a platform has its finger on the pulse, it is still in the attention economy. The Microculture has always targeted and created micro-attention. TikTokers see it themselves. Here is one by Ricky Montgomery explaining why TikTok will not give us the next Radiohead.
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Needless to say, the macroculture isn’t doing so hot either. Wonka is a hit, but celebrity culture has been met more with disillusionment than rapt attention. Most celebrities seem out of touch with today’s problems. There is a vacuum for musicians and artists that reflect the current zeitgeist. Where will they come from though? Clearly not the microculture.
In the ‘00s, when the microculture was in its infancy, there was something I like to call the mesoculture. This was the culture in between the macroculture and the microculture. What was the mesoculture in the ‘00s? Indie rock, small press literature, pretty much anything that was too small to be macro, too IRL to be micro.
So if it’s so important, why isn’t it discussed more? It was strong in the ‘00s and weak in the ‘10s. When it emerged in the ‘00s, it wasn’t considered the mesoculture because…it was the microculture.
In the ‘00s, Internet culture was too new. It needed to draw from pre-existing sources, so it did. One reliable well was ‘80s nostalgia, which was held dearly by first-wave Millennials. Another source: hipster culture. A culture that was centered around indie rock shows, literary magazines, anything but the macroculture. The Internet ran with the hipster meme so that the macroculture couldn’t help but notice. Music blogs helped Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s self-released, self-titled debut album become a major force. Big enough that the song “Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth”was on The Office.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
OK so we now understand that there was no mesoculture before the ‘00s because anything that wasn’t macroculture was micro before then. What about the ‘10s? Funny you say that: in the ‘10s, a little something scurried in called poptimism. For the one reader I have who is not aware of what poptimism is: throughout the '10s, anything indie was coded as “rockist” and thus as racist and sexist. Whereas pop music was coded as female friendly as well as gay friendly. The indie movement of the ‘00s made way for the celebrity stan culture of the ‘10s. The microculture was a reflection of the macroculture. Any time you railed against the macroculture, you were a snob. The macroculture repaid the love and strength it got from the Tumblr/Twitter idpol community by wokewashing every property they could.
So now here we are: a war between a macroculture and the microculture it so clearly does not represent anymore. There couldn’t be a better time for a return of a vibrant mesoculture of live performances, small presses, even microbudget films. The microculture thrives on shock and stimulation. There couldn’t be a worse time for this level of engagement. The attention economy has gone through hyper-inflation to the point where now there is virtual fame, which is nowhere near as potent as fame fame.
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Many have talked about the community of pro-Palestinian creators supporting each other. Except of course it isn’t a community. Musicians in sweaty bars build communities. Poets in steamy coffeehouses build communities. Platforms like TikTok build revenue. Just like Hollywood does. The difference between Hollywood and creator-centered platforms like X and YouTube is the difference between Broadway and Las Vegas. Both make money; one of them is built on the fantasy that you too can have a taste of the pie.
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It seems the pro-Palestinian creators understand all this when it comes to activism. In every city, there are protests. If it weren’t for these massive protests, it would be all too easy to write off the movement as an extremely online phenomenon. Perhaps the reason protests are so attractive: there is an increasing backlash to tech. A year and a half of lockdown got many eager to not stay inside and watch Netflix. But they are bypassing the multiplex and staying in the streets.
It is easy to forget that all this — by this, I mean the rift between the macroculture and the microculture, where a mesoculture can grow — happened less than three months ago. Activists are people too. They can only boycott Disney and Taylor Swift for so long with absolutely nothing to fill that void. The clock is ticking. 1
Get it? Tik Tok? It’s a free Substack get fucked.
Mo, I think that footnote is going to tick some readers off.
Great piece!