THROWBACK, Summer 2021 by Glasgow University Union's Official Magazine

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From the Editor Vaccines, lockdown easing, summer starting. In DAWN we looked to the near future and the idea of beginnings. Amidst the hell that has been this year, it is really important to look to the future, to remember that everything can and will be better. But what is equally important is remembering our own recent past. Hannah Montana, Youtube drama, Hozier, Hipster vibes. Embrace the Throwback vibes, go back to a time when all that mattered was vine compilation videos and looking cool on Facebook. You need not look back to escape from the present, look back because it’s fun. Watch an old movie you loved, listen to the OG Justin Bieber, maybe find “flattering” pictures from your teenage years. This is my first magazine as the Editor-in-Chief of G-You Magazine and I am so excited to bring you guys more incredible issues! To me, THROWBACK means sitting at home as a 12-year-old, playing Minecraft and listening to Imagine Dragons. I personally enjoy pondering my cringe-y childhood memories because it’s so interesting to compare how much I’ve changed since then. Am I more or less mature? Has my fashion sense improved? Would younger me be happy with the person I am now? Massive thank you to the editorial team that will leave this as their last G-You edition and who’ve worked so hard throughout the pandemic. If you want to get involved with G-You and meet the new team, follow our Instagram @gyoumagazine and like our new FB page @TheGYouMagazine. I hope you all enjoy the magazine! Fuad Kehinde

Table of Contents 2. From the Editor - Fuad Kehinde 3. Throwback Mixtape 4. Choose 2013 - Catherine Bouchard 5.Macklemore: Not As F**cking Awesome As You Might Think James Yates 7. Sounds of 2013 - Radoslav Serafimov 13. I’m Just a Teenage Dirtbag, Baby - Samyukta Vidyashankar 17. The Dystopian Reality - Imogen James 23. What Happened to Youtube Rewind? - Zoë Gemmell 25. Celebrity Quiz - Olivia Swarthout & Catherine Bouchard

G-You Team Fuad Kehinde - Editor-in-Chief Catherine Bouchard - Co-Editor-in-Chief Ana Negut - Production Officer Olivia Swarthout - Graphics Editor Nina Munro - Events Coordinator Duncan Henderson - Campus Editor

Lina Leonhard - Arts Editor Erin Jane Graham - Lifestyle Editor Radoslav Serafimov - Science Editor Samyukta Vidyashankar - Politics Editor Evan Colley - Showcase Editor

3 spotify! listen on

Choose doing it all in the land of the smiles, and

Throwback.

Choose 2013. Choose the overbearing warmth of Thailand’s lunchtime heat. Choose teenage make ups and break ups. Choose laps soaking up the sun in your pool. Choose glamorized black and white images of girls smoking cigarettes. Choose afternoons soundtracked by Flight Facilities playing on Triple J. Choose the naivety of walks to school past local markets. Choose me, pick me, love me. Choose 45 baht noodle bowls. Choose the trauma of community and realising the speed of gossip. Choose reruns of mythbusters on the only channel your television can pick up. Choose skin tight dresses and heels you can’t walk in. Choose lectures on what it means to be an alcoholic. Choose that eight minute intro to Ride by Lana Del Rey. Choose the year of the snake(s). Choose the stress of life at fourteen and learning how to fucking work. Choose realising you like girls. Choose the mall cinema Mark Ruffalo cut-out selfie. Choose your first mojito and jazz bars. Choose hours on treadmills in an air conditioned gym. Choose third generation Skins. Choose the snack bar toasties and lemon iced tea breakfasts. Choose Christmases in Malaysia and fathers you see twice a year. Choose spending too much money on spiral bound Typo notebooks. Choose jokes about Trotsky and developing a class consciousness. Choose your best and only friend. Choose a life you look back on only in snapshots of clichéd poetry.

Choose 2013. Catherine Bouchard

MacklemorE: NotAs F**CKing Awesome As You Might Think From the outset, the Throwback edition of G-You was designed to celebrate the coming of age experience a lot of us felt in the early 2010s. Looking back at our interests and hobbies with a certain nostalgia and wry humour reminds us not to always take ourselves too seriously and to just live life. We want to celebrate the legacy of 2013 and the defining impact it had on our lives, whilst also reconnecting a bit more with the zeitgeist of the period. At G-You we’re especially proud of the hard work of our past committees, and what better way to remember this than by looking at the ghost of G-You past - back in the days when it was called GUUi! Without further ado, and in true throwback style, enjoy this article on the complex dynamics of Macklemore’s stance as an indie artist from March 2013 - as the article starts, it was a great year for music...

2013 has been a good year for music so far. Beyoncé impressed at the SuperBowl. Adele impressed at the Oscars. And Macklemore impressed on YouTube. Yet Macklemore has gone further than appearing in our suggested videos list, with his music video for ‘Thrift Shop’ reaching 140 million views before going on to sell 2.2 million copies in the US, leaving us walking down University Avenue subconsciously singing ‘What… What…What…What…’ and very much curious for more. Despite making it big this year, Macklemore a.k.a. Ben Haggerty, from Seattle, has been making music for 13 years, releasing an EP in 2000 under the name Professor Macklemore. By 2005, he had dropped the ‘Professor” and released his first studio album ‘The Language Of My World’. However, it wasn’t until his comeback in 2009 with ‘The Unplanned Mixtape’, after 4 years of substance abuse, that Macklemore started making waves, leading to the beginning of a collaboration with producer Ryan Lewis that has lasted ever since. More EPs followed, some with iTunes Hip Hop Chart success, giving us notable songs such as ‘And We Danced’ and ‘Can’t Hold Us’, until the release of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ latest album ‘The Heist’. Released in October 2012, the album reached #1 on the iTunes album chart within the space of hours. Including previously released songs from past Eps, ‘The Heist’ gave birth to the internet phenomenon ‘Thrift Shop’, reviving business in vintage stores worldwide. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, in line with the entire hipster image they portray, pride themselves on the fact that they got to #1 unsigned, showing that you don’t need a major record label to make it to the top. As Macklemore tweeted soon after reaching #1, ’78,000 sold independently. I could never have dreamed this. Thank you

all. #sharkfacegang’. In fairness, the last artist to reach this feat was Lisa Loeb in 1994. However, as revealed in a recent report by Planet Money, this feat wasn’t achieved by Macklemore as much as he makes it out to be. Yes, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis started off with small shows in Seattle, spreading the word with Facebook, Twitter Tumblr and YouTube, making enough money to hire a booking agent, who with strategic bookings, spread the word about the two. By this point, they had received interest from major record labelsac, but made the decision to not sign and use the money from touring to fund the making of their album, something much easier today with the software available on a MacBook. Although Macklemore & Ryan Lewis made the album independently, even with mediums like iTunes and YouTube, they needed help to get on the charts. It was at this point where they signed to Alternative Distribution Alliance, who would distribute the album for a cut of the profits. Despite sounding like a quasi-independent company, ADA are actually a branch of the Warner Music Group, one of the largest record labels in the world, representing signed acts such as Bruno Mars, Green Day and Wiz Khalifa. Don’t get me wrong, I would be one of the first to put Macklemore on the Beer Bar jukebox. It would be naïve to think that someone can get 2.2 million copies sold through the power of social media and a good song. However, as Gary Trust from Billboard says, ‘You really cannot get a radio hit at this point wWithout major label backing’. If anything, this says a great deal about the power artists have in today’s music industry. To record a #1 album with your own money, is still f**king awesome. By James Yates

Top 5 Songs of

2013 1. Thrift Shop

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

2. Blurred Lines Robin Thicke Feat. T.I. & Pharrell

3. Radioactive Imagine Dragons

4. Harlem Shake Bauuer

5. Can’t Hold Us

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Feat. Ray Dalton 6

My father and I never really got along. I don’t really know who’s to blame for that, but the fact remains that growing up, our relationship was strained...

There were a few things that always managed to bridge the gap between us though – books, movies, videogames and above all else, music. He is a natural-born musician (a trait I did not inherit) and an avid music lover (one that I did). His taste was largely informed by the massive wave of classic hard rock that crashed over the East once the Iron Curtain fell in my father’s early university years. Being deeply immersed in the music scene at the time, he naturally fell in love with the hits of the 70s, 80s and 90s. It was this inherited love of classical rock-and-roll, of heavy metal and hardrock ballads that initially informed my own tastes. We would spend long roadtrips banging our heads furiously and screaming out the lyrics of a Manowar song, much to my mother’s annoyance. In retrospect I find it rather funny that some of my favourite songs as a tenyear-old spoke of glorious battles, of murder, rape and pillage. I was brought up to love “the classics”, to disdain pop music, but above all, to value good music deeply. I felt it necessary to give this background of my music taste in order to be able to explain exactly why 2013 was such a special year for me. Music held a deeply cherished spot in my heart, but I had never truly come in contact with it on my own terms. This all changed when my own little “Wall” fell as I was given the old family laptop to keep in my room and work on. For the first time ever, my

selection of music wasn’t limited by my father’s expansive, yet stylistically narrow digital library, but by the unreachable confines of YouTube. And my first step on developing my own taste, and with it my own self, was taken when I hit the link for the Arctic Monkeys’ new hit single, “Do I Wanna Know?”. My world turned upside down. As that heavy bass riff revibrated through my whole body and Alex Turner’s crooning voice spun images of a desperate, spurned lover I felt things I had never felt before. It would be quite a few years yet before I fully grasped what that music made me feel and why, but even my 12-year-old self knew that this was something dark and sweet and tempting and I couldn’t possibly deny it. So I dived headfirst into any and all alternative rock that YouTube would offer. Franz Ferdinand, Parquet Courts, The Fratellis, Welshly Arms and many, many others quickly replaced the old, worn 70s and 80s rock I used to be so enamoured with. Three bands stood above all others in my mind however – the bluesy, dirty Black Keys, the more mellow and deeply touching Cage the Elephant and the smooth, sexy and rough Arctic Monkeys - specifically the incredible work that is AM. 2013 was a special year for me specifically thanks to these exciting discoveries, but it was also a very special year for the wider musical landscape. Unbeknownst to me, the Arctic Monkeys had been an exciting presence in the British music scene since 2006. Cage

“That rock’n’roll, it seems like it’s faded away sometimes, but it will never die. And there’s nothing you can do about it.” Alex Turner, 2014

With their catchy riffs and effortless aura of cool, Arctic Monkeys quickly became the poster children for early 2010s music. Left: lead singer Alex Turner. Opposite: Live in concert at the Royal Albert Hall

the Elephant and the Black Keys were also bands that had been around for more than a few years at this point. Yet, 2013 was the year a shift occurred in the musical landscape. Spurred on by the explosion of streaming platforms and the playlist-centred listening style they lent themselves to, bands that had been inhabiting the underground were quickly gaining recognition and showing the world that it wasn’t all just the pretence and plastic materialism of the 2000s, but that originality and artistic vision were more alive than ever. In 2013, the alternative became mainstream, the hidden indie became the exciting new alternative and the mainstream of the time began its descent to a long-awaited grave. With albums like AM and Melophobia solidifying acts like the Arctic Monkeys and Cage the Elephant as the new faces of rock-and-roll, and Vampire Weekend’s incredible work Modern Vampires of the City showing that the genre still had a lot of freshness and excitement to offer, you couldn’t help but feel the wind of change blowing. Pop was taken by surprise

by albums like Lorde’s Pure Heroine and Daft Punk’s retro-inspired Random Access Memories, which stood just as big, if not bigger than the raunchy, yet bland hits of the year such as Miley Cyrus’ Wrecking Ball or the deeply uncomfortable Blurred Lines. And the newest genre that I’ve found an obsession for – hiphop – was also not spared the shakeup, as acts like Childish Gambino, Chance the Rapper and Earl Sweatshirt exploded from the underground with intricate rhymes, interesting ideas and an earnestness that a scene obsessed with self-image, glitz and glamour desperately needed. 2013 was the year that saw a young Bulgarian boy cooped up for hours on end loudly and atonally singing AM (I still know every single lyric on the record) and the wider musical scene moving into a new era of streaming, originality and excitement. Things have changed a lot since then, but my father and I will still sing in the car from time and occasionally he’ll surprise me by knowing the lyrics to one of my favourites just as well as I do.

anatomy of a trend

the hipster If you owned a typewriter, polaroid camera, or record player, you might have been one of them. The hipsters. Maybe we’ll never know why, for a few years in the early 2010s, trying too hard was the coolest thing you could do. Why beards and mustaches were lifestyle choices and everyone’s instagram looked like a sepia-tinted Wes Anderson B-roll. Why lumberjack chic was the look of choice for sitting in your neighbourhood’s third wave coffee shop and drink a £4 flat white. But we don’t have to understand why to recognise the inesccapable hold hipsterdom had on fashion, media, and lifestyle.

Hipster Films:

Lost in Translation, Her, Ruby Sparks, Amélie, anything Wes Anderson, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Hipster Music:

The Lumineers, Mumford and Sons, Neutral Milk Hotel, Modest Mouse, Radiohead, the Smiths, Belle & Sebastian

Hipster Hobbies:

film photography, spinning records, knitting, brewing your own beer, home fermentation, blogging, yoga

The hat: Fedoras and beanies are the most iconic, but a hipster of either gender might also opt for a bowler, porkpie, or even a wide-brimmed straw boater hat.

The facial hair: For a male hipster, there’s no greater shame than going barefaced.

The glasses: By far the most iconic element of the hipster wardrobe, even hipsters with perfect vision might sport a pair with the lenses punched out. The tattoos: Conform to hipster norms by choosing something minimalist, geometric, nature-themed, or floral. The shirt: For men, stripes, flannel, or a faded band shirt are your best options, though women can also get away with a cropped vest or some florals.

The jeans: The skinnier the better, for either gender, although a hipster woman might also go for leggings or a skater skirt. Optionally held up by some purely decorative suspenders.

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ABY

2013

starter pack

remember when you couldn't go anywhere without your sparkly lip gloss and you couldn't wait to go to high school to meet your own Troy? Here's a list of essentials you may recall from that bygone era...

BY IMOGEN JAMES Do you remember when everyone wore their hair in a side braid? Or when they used to volunteer as tribute for high school PE? Or when they would whistle those four weird notes for no reason? That was the effect of being a 14-year-old when the iconic Hunger Games was released. As if the books weren’t good enough, they then cast Liam Hemsworth as Gale and suddenly everything was even better. The loveable and not-like-other-girls Jennifer Lawrence was an idol overnight, I would watch ‘Jennifer Lawrence funny clips’ on YouTube 17

with my friends and dream of being her. You would go to your friend’s sleepover, drunk on 3 for £1 sweets, and stay up all night watching the whole series of films, braiding hair, singing songs, crying. Then came Divergent, Tobias Eaton, and the quizzes for which faction you’d be in. What is it about dystopian fiction that is so appealing? Why did it shape so many years of my life? Why do I still watch the films with my best friends and get sucked in every time? I think we all know that love won’t be kissing a divergent at night in a weird, abandoned building or having bread thrown at you in the rain, but we can dream. The onscreen romances undoubtedly drew in young lovesick girls, as did

the attractive male cast. However, it cannot just be love that makes these stories so good. I think it lies in the reality of the stories. Both franchises carry important messages: anti-greed, anti-capitalist lessons about government, trust and the division of society. The way they masterfully intertwine everyday life, showing the government as the root of the problem, shows how close this reality is. It’s easier to love than an alien film, because you know very well that one day something like this could happen. There is a mystery and an excitement that you could be the main character saving your civilisation from a terrifying power-hungry Jeanine Matthews and getting the hot guy at the same time. You are brave like Katniss, and strong like Tris: there are parts of you in a character that will never be real, but you long so much that one day it will be. So, instead of moving on and growing up and laughing at how bad the films are, they’re still so close to many of us. Don’t get me wrong, I still get excited for Tobias and Tris’ first kiss, but now I ponder more, about the reality of the world we are in now, and how close we may be getting to what seemed a faroff dystopian reality. The extravagance of the capital is inching closer and closer, the poor discarded in camps and borders, the rich getting richer. It is no longer just a teen film, but something relatable in a much deeper, scarier way. That is not to say that we should base our reality around them

“I think we all know that love - the films won’t be kisshave a long ing a divergent way to go in at night in a their preweird, abandictions and doned buildrealities. But ing or having there is defibread thrown nitely something there, at you in the to be learned, rain, but we to not be igcan dream“ nored.

I think that is what makes dystopian fiction the dystopian reality. They are never too far away. You can see it in your everyday life. Each year as I watch them, they still have something that I can relate to, or think about, or understand. They age with us, and one day, hopefully, they will stop doing that because then we will be in trouble. 18

Gallery: The Fandom Edit Never mind whether the images or text were strictly related to the franchise in question, photo edits were the bread and butter of early 2010s fandom tumblr. Though some displayed impressive levels of photoshop skill, the most basic simply consisted of a quote or song lyrics superimposed over a filtered photo or collection of photos. While artistically, they might not all hold up to the test of time, there’s no doubt that edits allowed an easy way for countless young teenagers to bridge the gap from passive consumer to active content creator.

What Happened to Zoë Gemmell

In days long since passed, YouTube Rewind was revered as the true bastion of creativity- the jewel in the crown that marked YouTube as the king of creative platforms. This yearly release brought together the top creators across every genre of YouTube; from gaming to beauty, from comedy to music - it did not matter! If you were known in the YouTube sphere, you were invited along to take part in the glorious uproar which entranced nations! I distinctly remember my younger self and my brother watching it the second it was released. Our eyes were wide with awe and excitement as we frantically pointed out our favourite creators within the mess of visual effects. There was something so organic about the flawed chaos. The creators could do silly, stupid, and

downright bizarre gags to an admittedly better-than-it-needed-to-be remix of the years hit songs. Though as the years went on, something changed. The fun-loving edge seems to have been steadily eroded, revealing the face of an ugly corporate beast pulling the strings of the act. This culminated in the most disliked video in YouTube History: YouTube Rewind 2018. There are numerous reasons why this may have occurred; from the constant apathy and indifference shown towards the controversies which marred YouTube’s image; to a change to feature more niche creators outside of those most prominently featured. It certainly did not help that the most recognisable faces in this Rewind were, in and of themselves, polarising

figures, with many wrongfully ignored controversies of their own. Furthermore, the YouTube team seemed to be choosing favourites, prominently featuring the likes of James Charles while snubbing others like Pewdiepie. The external talent in the form of Talk-Show hosts also felt like a step further away from the YouTube creators. Though outside of the tarnished gold crown, it seems the jewel itself had cracked. Over time, a greater emphasis was generated around seasonal fads or topics that could only appeal to one subsection of the community: including Kpop, ASMR, and the infamous “Yodelling kid”. There is indeed nothing wrong with said topics, simply that they simply do not appeal to or

represent the majority. I assume the aim was to acknowledge this wide, intricate, and complex span of communities- but quite the opposite effect was generated. Desperation oozed from the video rather than a sense of unity. As if a hundred flailing hands had reached out to any famous or somewhat relevant topic. Each trend was then forced together into an abstract wreckage, little regard given for their original context, charm, or longevity. And yet, perhaps this failure was but a simple inevitability. As the original viewers grow older and the younger generations begin to join the platform, surely there is a tipping point in which “pleasing everyone” and “uniting the platform” is

no longer possible. The longer YouTube exists, the wider and wider this generational gap grows. Entertainment to us older folk may very well be confusing or frightening to those younger than us, and entertainment to them may be boring, childish, & foolish to us. Channels covering disturbing or complex topics have boomed in popularity, and yet it is only those which appeal to the PG audience - or younger - receive any recognition. By this point, is it even possible to bridge this ever-growing gap alongside the ever-diversifying set of communities? What solutions are present? Creating two YouTube Rewind videos- one for a younger audience, one for an older audience? The financial burden of such a thing would be astronomical!

Yet, appealing to one side has been shown to be ineffective, as evidenced by the childlike nature of YouTube Rewind 2018. However, despite all of this, what I find more personally insulting than corporate creativity is a complete lack of creativity. YouTube Rewind 2019 felt like the final nail in the coffin for the series. A simplistic top 10 recap. No creative gags. No collective of creators. No fun music. No Unity. No attempt at unity. Nothing. YouTube now stands less like an esteemed monarch and more like a disgraced royal, picking through the rubble of what once made them great.