Gripe
Magazines.
I have stopped reading magazines for about 2 years.
Singapore magazines are full of useless shit, and very uninspiring. Useless stories about other people's sex lives, relationship woes, gossip on Singapore's not very exiciting entertainment personalities. Dull. Boring. Prententious.
Then there are the ads. Pages after pages after pages of women posing with bags, shoes, perfumes, lipstick, mascara, shampoo, trainers, watches, jewellery. Fair enough, for business reasons, one cannot have a magazine devoid of glossy mind numbing ads. Still. Finish flipping though the initial ad pages and you're about one third way through the magazine till you hear a 'Hello' from the editor-in-chief. And it doesn't end there. They work on a ratio of one story is to 4 ads, thereabouts. Ludicrous
April 2003, it was the last semester of undergrad. Didi, a housemate in an all girls christian boarding house, fruit of the single child policy and starving for anything underground, forbidden and taboo. I spent a few afternoons in her room with fairy lights listening to Muse, Vines and Jack Johnson. She was also the one that gave me my first nylon, which I later repaid with a MOFO button. Nylon. Nylon anti gloss. Nylon the independent. Nylon 2003. It became my staple, the one and only frivolous paid magazine I would indulge in every month. Vice, which was free, also indie and completely anti glitz, was the other frivolity. I still keep Volume one issue 2. My one and only, the others were lost whilst moving.
As with any independent publication that starts out with a divine mission statement working towards the promotion of independent music, underground artists, online shops, obscure joints, they often sell out to the lure of ka-chiing. The magazine gets thicker, the ads increase, the price inflates. Nylon cashed in on their 'indie' label. I have since stopped buying Nylon.
With the growing population of pseudo 'Anti-Establishment' gen X sometimes Y kiddos/yuppies, it's suddenly cool to be indie. SCREW indie I say! Why do you like indie? Do you actually like the music? Or has it become a status symbol that you wear proudly when you go to one of those parties to try and integrate into the scene? I'm so sick of commercial indie, everyone wants to be anti-mainstream. Disgusting. Especially people who go to concerts and proudly turn to you and tell you 'Acutally I don't know why I came. I only know one song!'. Indie is no more, indie is dead.
The revolution has begun, we are the face of the new generation.
Magazines.
I have stopped reading magazines for about 2 years.
Singapore magazines are full of useless shit, and very uninspiring. Useless stories about other people's sex lives, relationship woes, gossip on Singapore's not very exiciting entertainment personalities. Dull. Boring. Prententious.
Then there are the ads. Pages after pages after pages of women posing with bags, shoes, perfumes, lipstick, mascara, shampoo, trainers, watches, jewellery. Fair enough, for business reasons, one cannot have a magazine devoid of glossy mind numbing ads. Still. Finish flipping though the initial ad pages and you're about one third way through the magazine till you hear a 'Hello' from the editor-in-chief. And it doesn't end there. They work on a ratio of one story is to 4 ads, thereabouts. Ludicrous
April 2003, it was the last semester of undergrad. Didi, a housemate in an all girls christian boarding house, fruit of the single child policy and starving for anything underground, forbidden and taboo. I spent a few afternoons in her room with fairy lights listening to Muse, Vines and Jack Johnson. She was also the one that gave me my first nylon, which I later repaid with a MOFO button. Nylon. Nylon anti gloss. Nylon the independent. Nylon 2003. It became my staple, the one and only frivolous paid magazine I would indulge in every month. Vice, which was free, also indie and completely anti glitz, was the other frivolity. I still keep Volume one issue 2. My one and only, the others were lost whilst moving.
As with any independent publication that starts out with a divine mission statement working towards the promotion of independent music, underground artists, online shops, obscure joints, they often sell out to the lure of ka-chiing. The magazine gets thicker, the ads increase, the price inflates. Nylon cashed in on their 'indie' label. I have since stopped buying Nylon.
With the growing population of pseudo 'Anti-Establishment' gen X sometimes Y kiddos/yuppies, it's suddenly cool to be indie. SCREW indie I say! Why do you like indie? Do you actually like the music? Or has it become a status symbol that you wear proudly when you go to one of those parties to try and integrate into the scene? I'm so sick of commercial indie, everyone wants to be anti-mainstream. Disgusting. Especially people who go to concerts and proudly turn to you and tell you 'Acutally I don't know why I came. I only know one song!'. Indie is no more, indie is dead.
The revolution has begun, we are the face of the new generation.