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- Hacker News
- Never heard of Lady Gaga's Oreos until now, don't even care about Lady Gaga, but someone telling me not to eat them is kinda making me want to try.
As for the point of the article, the problem isn't that people are eating the Oreos, it's that Lady Gaga sold out. Doesn't matter how well they sell.
by frollogaston - I thought this was going to be some anecdote about how a rival (or maybe a group of rabid fans) found a bowl of Oreos backstage at a Lady Gaga concert and ate them all just to spite her.
One of the reasons why I knew the video game Mixtape was made by phonies, most of whom did not understand actual 90s culture and may not have been alive during the 90s, is because while the main characters adopt grunge aesthetics, they do not have that hyperawareness of authenticity (or lack thereof) that characterized being a teenager back then. Which is kind of fitting for a game made during an era where everything is boiled down to an "aesthetic". Being a kid in the 90s was a stance of mind, it wasn't just about what you wore or what bands you listened to. A lot of us thought we were Holden Caulfield back then, able to spot phonies and waging a quiet, desperate struggle against them for our own minds.
by bitwize - I don't care who has their name on the package. I just enjoy the different flavors. The Selena Gomez ones were great. I appreciate the different flavors occasionally, and buy them from time to time if I see them.
I realize most people aren't like me. But that's even more reason to not bother to tell people this. People who like Lady Gaga are going to feel inspired to buy her Oreos, no matter what you say. They know she's already mega-rich, and they are happy to keep giving her money. You aren't going to stop that.
by wccrawford - I 100% agree with you. It looks like multiple people (including me) were typing comments about how good the Selena Gomez Oreos were at the same time as you.
The post seems to have found a strange niche of HN, or maybe the Selena Gomez Oreos had wider appeal than I thought.
by parsimo2010 - The author describes a world that existed not that long ago where similar tie-ins would still be popular, but where engaging with them would be seen by some people as a guilty pleasure or beneath you. I don't think you're going to stop Lady Gaga fans from buying Lady Gaga products, but a resurrection of some anti-consumerist crowds would be a welcome sight, because they don't seem to really exist anymore.by tavavex
- I have a problem with artists doing commerce under the guise of art. I listen, I read, and I watch because I want to inhabit, even if just for a moment, the mind of another human. I want to feel what it’s like to be them, and in so doing, I want to better understand what it’s like to be me. But if I journey to the center of someone’s psyche and all I find there is a billboard for Pizza Hut, I’m turning around.
Kind of sounds like they have a bigger problem with what everyone else is doing when they listen to popular music. One can simply not listen to Lady Gaga; I've succeeded at that for decades.
by tptacek - I like the premise. However i think there's an angle about the death of religion. It happened before most people were ready to stop being religous. Energy went to sports teams, heretical charismatics and celebrities. I do worry that jake paul or mr beast or someone like that will become president. Oprah probably could have if she'd tried.
People read one person's opinion now almost as much if not more than people read the news.
I do think its on the nose about belief, people want to believe they want to be famous and can be famous and people feel less like they can be rich.
I also wonder if its just counter culture though and we're due another cycle. I find it upsetting that so many people aspire to be digital beggars.
by Quarrelsome - > I do worry that jake paul or mr beast or someone like that will become president.
Not that I'm happy about it or want it to continue, but we're already there, have been since 2016.
by georgemcbay - I actually don't think we should expect artists to be something bigger or more than their art. He is right that the fix needs to be consumer driven, but I think it just needs to be that we care a lot less about celebrities of all kinds outside of whatever it is that made them famous. We shouldn't be arguing about whether whatever thing an artist or sports star did or said that wasn't related to their art and/or sport is good or bad....we should all just collectively not care. Read the book, listen to the music, watch the game, and beyond that treat these people like any other stranger: someone whose actions and opinions you do not care about.
Celebrity themed oreos shouldn't be a thing, but not because we demand our celebrities think of themselves as above crass commercialism, but because no one would consider "celebrity themed" to be anything even remotely close to a selling point for oreos, and that therefore there is no value in them being hired by Nabisco.
But I may as well be pissing in the wind. Celebrity worship seems to be incredibly deeply ingrained in human psychology. Maybe he's right that we can't get rid of it, we can just change the norms around it.
by MostlyStable - Well, you are for sure right that the root of the problem is celebrity itself, but I do wonder if that's really unfixable. Are there cultures that celebrate celebrity less than others, I wonder?by techgnosis
- Ten years ago, around the time Instagram started allowing influencers to monetize their posts, I remember thinking that the bar for “selling out” had suddenly been drastically lowered. In the past, companies had to weigh a lot of factors before selling out, usually for millions of dollars. Now, an individual gig worker may, out of economic necessity, have to sell out for $500.
As people become brands—or aspire to become brands—every meaningful aspect of life, from intimate family moments to vacations, is pushed toward commodification and monetization. The craving for fame becomes intertwined with that process, with each reinforcing the other. And when you're a modern equivalent to a hunter and gatherer, there's little time or (incentive) to step back and reflect on the system that led you and your cohort to this bleak place.
by siavosh - > The only thing that’s unprecedented about these craven cash-ins is how well they seem to be working. Selling out no longer carries a stigma—if anything, fans are excited for tie-ins between their favorite bands and their favorite brands, no matter how shameless.
I feel like this only really makes sense in contrast to specifically the 90s? This wasn't some eternal cultural rule that changed in the 2000s, it's just two pretty recent trends in mainstream culture. You can still find people who are snobby about Drake compared to Kendrick or Taylor Swift compared to Chappelle Roan nowadays anyway. That mindset isn't gone?
by nemomarx - No, but it was big in the 90s. Anti corporate and anti commercial rock and grunge was really big.
It really was “I hate success. Down with consumerism, buy my t-shirt”
by wodenokoto - I also think it's important to distinguish selling out from participating in culture and making things people may enjoy. The pendulum often swings between extremes before settling on reasonable middle ground.
Having fun colors for one of the world's most popular cookie brands is pretty low on the scale of harm compared to, say, actively promoting people to go use online gambling services or buy snakeoil supplements.
by Tadpole9181 - Right! Even in the 90s this doesn't make sense. If The New Kids on the Block had sold branded Oreos, they would have flown off the shelves. There have always been mainstream pop culture figures with dedicated fandoms that don't care whether they have "sold out".
But I do think there is a real difference here. I just think it's a media difference. It's true that in the 90s (and I would say longer than that) culture writers would pretty universally scoff at "sellouts" and lionize auteurs. But those gatekeepers have lost all their power to control the message. I think that's the real difference.
by sanderjd - Author is way off base. Might as well tell me to stop breathing air, except they stopped selling air 6 years ago and I’ve been gasping ever since.
Chromatica Oreos were absolutely wonderful (as far as mass produced garbage that is unfit for human consumption is concerned) and I miss them dearly. Telling me to stop eating them is like telling me to stop seeing a boyfriend who died tragically years ago.
Worse, it brings up painful memories of when Oreo Coke (actually good, unlike Coke Oreo) came into my life, showed me that true love is possible, then disappeared forever in barely a month. I’m still reeling.
Edit: boo, hiss!
by nxc18 - This post was great satire! Respect!by xg15
- You should try Nerd Clusters!by mhb
- "it brings up painful memories of when Oreo Coke (actually good, unlike Coke Oreo)"
Epic
by pbrum - I really liked Selena Gomez's Oreos, but I would prefer that Oreo brought them back as "horchata flavored" or "cinnamon cream flavored" so I didn't have awkward conversations every time I accidentally said, "I like Selena Gomez flavor" and people would ask how I knew what Selena Gomez tasted like.by parsimo2010
- There is a premise in the "selling out" scenario that assumes the artist is accepting money from a company so that company can sell more of the same -- or even a WORSE -- product using the artist to market the product. This CAN be true, and humans have a cogitative bias to remember negativity over positives. So we remember the times when the artists screwed over their fans... and hence we boo them.
When marketing collaborations are used to inform people of something actually good, then they can actually be great for everyone. The best example is Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream collaborations. It's hard to communicate "no, it's hard to understand, but this blend of candies is especially worth trying," so the best way to do that is to have a celebrity vouch for it. And, what do you know, those collaborations have been wildly successful. It's hard to convince people that "putting ice cream cone in the ice cream" is surprisingly good, but if you just put Stephen Colbert on the label with a big thumbs up, most people will give it a try.
Marketing can be manipulative, but it can also be very, very helpful to customers who don't have perfect information. This is exactly the point of Rory Sutherland's book Alchemy: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26210508-alchemy
by scoofy - > when Oreo Coke (actually good, unlike Coke Oreo) came into my life
Sometimes I think Americans are completely lost to the rest of us, residing in a haze of consumerism and political divide as they do. Then sometimes I read something like this and I cannot deny a certain curiosity as regards the finer differences between Oreo Coke and Coke Oreo.
We have coke in my country (of both the Coca Cola and cocaine varieties, and even the pure carbon variety used for steel smelting) and also Oreos are readily available in most supermarkets. Can any of the US based HN visitors enlighten us about the exact mixture required to produce Oreo Coke (but not, preferably, Coke Oreo)?
by WJW - Definitely a fun read, I almost spit out my coffee after reading about Gen Z thinking nirvana is a clothing brand.
But I don’t follow with the whole premise. The mobility hypothesis is interesting, that people no longer see rich people as something attainable. But becoming famous through influencing or something on that vain. But famous people have been sellouts for far longer than i can remember. Kate bush did some weird promotion for a Dutch theme park called de Efteling and we have been messing with millennials for the past 20 years that nirvana is headlining the biggest Dutch music festival every year. “Ooh yeah i love that song”. And as far as I know Paris Hilton played half of the world into thinking that she was dumb as a rock.
Think that brands have given up on old school advertising. Just god lazy to give people a big bag of money for exposure. For how long will that work until people get bored of that? Yes, a music artist aligning themselves with Pantone as a color once is novel. But how many times does that really stay interesting? Just lazy advertising what only work for a couple of years until the larger crowed stops caring about the next branded Oreo deal.
by winkelwagen - The author is a superb writer. Actually made me lol:
"I have a problem with artists doing commerce under the guise of art. I listen, I read, and I watch because I want to inhabit, even if just for a moment, the mind of another human. I want to feel what it’s like to be them, and in so doing, I want to better understand what it’s like to be me. But if I journey to the center of someone’s psyche and all I find there is a billboard for Pizza Hut, I’m turning around. If your art is just one node in your business empire, if your albums are merely commercials for your cologne, if you’re trying to turn your first billion into your second billion, you are no longer an artist at all. You are a credit default swap with a discography attached."
by pbrum - I don't know if I buy this framing. The intro Pearl Jam story is only noteworthy because it's unique. Cobain wasn't one of a million examples of counter-culture; we still talk about him today because it was uniquely his brand (to be incredibly famous while seemingly rejecting the fame).
Michael Jackson's hair caught on fire filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984. Bill Cosby famously hawked Jell-O Pudding. Sports stars were on Wheaties. Ronald Regan (the actor!) was a spokesperson for GE.
But that being said, celeb endorsements aside... I do think that the author is right that everything these days "feels fake/contrived" and almost nothing exists without an angle to make money somehow.
Everyone now has the ability to go viral and make it big financially, so it does feel like much of our actions (even if that's not our goal) are shaped that way. A random person may not want to be a rich, famous Instagram influencer... but that doesn't stop them from acting similarly (posting photos for likes).
Humans have always had versions of trying to monetize their lifestyles (tupperware parties?); now we all have the tools to do it at scale.
by gkoberger - Yeah I tend to agree. What is the thesis here? Is it that being indie and not selling out was mainstream and now it's not? I don't think that adds up. It wasn't mainstream then either, that's what was notable about it...
So is it that there is no culture that feels this way about selling out in the present? I'm pretty skeptical of that! Is it really true that if I went to a high school or university right now and asked every kid there what they think about selling out and consumerism, that I wouldn't find a subculture there that feels that way? I suspect I would find that subculture.
So is it just that this subculture is smaller now? Ok, maybe so. But this seems like a much weaker thesis?
Or is it actually that this subculture is less visible now? This seems the most plausible to me. Kurt Cobain and Pearl Jam were interesting and frequently reported upon. But then this is a more boring phenomenon: things that are interesting become less novel and less interesting over time.
I do very much like the section in this essay pointing out that the masses in the US have changed from temporarily embarrassed millionaires to temporarily embarrassed celebrities. That resonates!
by sanderjd - Michael Jackson, Bill Cosby, and Ronald Regan are all great examples of people who were considered sellouts at the time. It didn't hinder their mainstream commercial success, but there were a large number of people that definitely did not consider them cool.
Sellouts have always existed at some level, but now it's different, I don't even think a lot of kids know what "sellout" means.
- > Everyone now has the ability to go viral and make it big financially, so it does feel like much of our actions (even if that's not our goal) are shaped that way. A random person may not want to be a rich, famous Instagram influencer... but that doesn't stop them from acting similarly (posting photos for likes).
This is a good point. Though I think I'd phrase it as: the ubiquity of the revenue streams means all behavior plausibly looks like profit seeking behavior. I don't mean to be nitpicky, but I think the problem or danger lies in the effect it has on the observer, rather than the actor. To me, it's not so bad that someone might engage in profit seeking, as a little treat or way of life, but that this seems indistinguishable in social media means I engage skeptically to what could be genuine social behavior. "The only winning move is not to play" if you want to avoid being a pawn in someone's profit game. But this comes at the cost of killing the social game, the reason I'm on the app to begin with! Of course, I could just log-off; but also not playing the (profit) game could mean ignoring goal, while still making moves in the social game.
by ear7h - I think it's cyclical. Punk in the early 80s was a reaction to the excesses of 70s superbands (e.g. Johnny Rotten's "I hate Pink Floyd" t-shirt). Then things built up again to "monsters of rock" arena tours, The Spice Girls, and hair bands before getting torn down again by the likes of Nirvana.
(Hell, rock and roll was born as an anti-establishment thing in the 1950s)
Maybe we're just due for another one of the inflection points where being anti-cool will become cool again.
by mosburger - I also generally think it's not that different today.
There's no numbers there to show that disliking fame was bigger than compared to now. Billie Eilish has written big hits about not being happy as a result of fame or the downsides of it.
Also, look at the amount of anti-AI/anti-big-tech memes/commentary/activity today. You can draw a straight line from No Logo to that. And I don't think it's that hard to extend that line MUCH further back than Naomi Klein. Open Source itself has plenty of adherents and is inherently a don't-sell-out movement and mentality.
"Selling out" as a concept back then only came about because everything felt fake and contrived (to some people). Just like today, not everyone would agree that everything is fake and contrived - look at how many people are still listening/watching some of the "nepo babies" or suspected"industry plants"...
The pop-culture part of this article is just "I have nostalgia for this thing I remember and knew a lot about" while ignoring the pre-existing-and-continual Michael Jackson / New Kids on the Block / Vanilla Ice / N Sync / Britney Spears mega-stardom super-celebrity mainstream hype machine that was also massively successful through the whole period.
by majormajor