For the Sake of Enjoyment: The Economics of Fun for Kids these days
After a long winter and a fast-paced first half of spring semester, college students across the United States of America were just about ready for the spring break, when Coronavirus (read: Ms. Rona) was officially declared a pandemic. But that didn’t stop vacationers who had already planned and budgeted their itineraries since thanksgiving, from hitting the beach in March for spring break raves.
In those early days for the pandemic, global anxiety about the alarming rate of infections stoked by a panic-driven media became the clearest indication that America was unprepared to deal with the spread of coronavirus. Fake news and conspiracy theories thrived online, a chunk of Americans were also alarmingly ambivalent about Ms. Rona.
“If I get Corona I get Corona”, are the iconic words of one the respondents from a CBS news report featuring interviews with spring breakers in Miami. It was a viral highlight of how dissociated vacationers who just wanted to turn up were, from how COVID-19 would immediately affect life as they knew it.
The words on everyone’s lips seemed to be “When this is all over”. But all over the world, the numbers continued to rise with stricter enforcements of government restrictions. First, it was spring break, then summer 2020 in all its glory started to fade away, one cancellation after the other. From airlines being grounded to jobs halted to graduations, weddings, important global festivals, and conferences being postponed or hosted virtually.
Recently, pan-African music festival Afronation, officially began issuing refunds, after months of getting canceled with tickets essentially being redshirted for 2021. For kids these days, a refund may be great, but the real heartbreak is the experiences and memories that will not be created, posted or thrown-back to someday in the future, for the gram.
From nightlife in Lagos to boat tours in Santorini and everything in-between, enjoyment experiences are to social media, what the Mona Lisa is to the Louvre; spectacle exhibits to be posted, liked, shared and retweeted. To paraphrase a famous quip from Nigerian twitter, ‘If you don’t give them, how will they take?’ Or how else will you give fans, friends and (or) haters a chronic case of FOMO?
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In the last few years, corporate money has boosted influencer marketing culture, taking FOMO from just a harmless expression of personal tastes to shaping big marketing campaigns and cross-interest online tribes with their own languages and subcultures. From beauty and fitness to travel and photography to fashion to sex-positivism and mental health to everyone’s favourite baby chef, we are constantly surrounded by catalogs, for what to do, where to go, and what to spend money on. We don’t really think about how these impact our lifestyle choices, because, in addition to aggressive advertising, we also see everybody online doing it and don’t want to be left out.
“It is very easy to feel like you’ve missed out on things or places” Simi Badiru, a 22-year old lifestyle and entertainment podcaster based in Lagos says. “I don’t pick places I go to only based off of where I’ve seen people go. Because it looked good one night does not necessarily mean it’ll look good the next night” she adds.
Lagos has a wild party culture, but the city is also an overpopulated, urban and infrastructural nightmare. As such, considerations must be made for security and safety for nights on the town, especially when you’re a woman. For Badiru, her priority is comfort over fun. “Some of the best nights I have had in Lagos were either at 57, or The W bar”, she says. “If a place is popping but it’s not a venue I’m comfortable with or I don’t know the people hanging out there, I would not ‘pull up’”. According to her, finding the best spots, is a combination of word of mouth and choosing the right ‘vibes’.
What determines the definition of enjoyment, is also sometimes directly influenced by socio-cultural capital, geographic location, and even our personal identities. When you’re a 20-year old in the midwest of the United States like myself, ‘fun’ experiences may range from spontaneously walking to a coffee shop downtown in the middle of winter with a very sweet mango smoothie in hand, to attending a free entry space-themed poetry reading for astronomical ‘vibes’.
Last year, I had to renew my Nigerian passport. I remember seeing the $1200+ price tag for a sleeper car on a train to Washington D.C, and nearly having a heart failure. I felt it was too expensive. But my parents convinced me to value the experience over the cost, saying “Since you came to college you haven’t taken a trip for yourself so look at this as a fun trip and the embassy is just another stop on your itinerary”. On that trip, I got to live like a tourist from a moving train, which was a perfect way to meditate through the last days of summer just before my senior year in college.
Diran, a 27-year old, student and entrepreneur based in New York says he never really has to do too much planning because the city has a lot to offer, and something new is popping always up each day. New York, brings in an average of 65 million people per year, offering everything from tourist attractions to nightclubs where some of the most famous people in the world have partied. In Diran’s words “It has made me lackadaisical in seeking fun because fun is always seeking me”.
If you have a go-to friend group, Diran’s experience may not sound so strange to you. In the last few months, friend groups have virtually huddled together to survive the loneliness caused by the lockdowns. Group chats and social media have helped these tight-knit relationships become even closer due to the heightened urgency of a pandemic overhead, but perhaps the real glue that has kept them together are the memories they share.
“Most of the group holidays I’ve been on have been on have been with childhood friends,” Ayoade says “It’s special because more often than not you drift away or grow apart but some of these trips have been a great reminder that even though we don’t live in the same place or we don’t talk every day, we still love each other” the writer based in London continues, as she reflects on the personal factors that influence her outlook on fun.
Holidaying in a group with new people also offers its perks, thanks to innovative apps and services. According to Ayoade, trips with new friends is a slightly different atmosphere but nevertheless, it has served as a means of self-reflection with a new sense of understanding about herself after each weekend away. On one of her recent trips to the countryside, for a friend’s birthday, she only knew about 4 people out of a group of 10. However, the initial fear of everything that comes up when group trips are mentioned i.e splitting bills, sleeping arrangements, etc were all coordinated through a group chat to communicate as well as an app called KittySplit to help divvy up expenses.
Thanks to coronavirus, the world is becoming stranger, remote work is now the norm and the line between work and play has never been more blurred. Breaks and relaxation have become not only necessary but essential to living wholesome lives. But as countries around the world are starting to open up again, young people must also contend with the need for discretion in a world where much of our choices and experiences are largely curated by capitalist media.
A few years ago I met a college couple who broke the bank to fly to Bali together during one of our school breaks; I have a friend who enjoys road trips and has been to Canada and back in one day; I have friends who would rather meet up for food and parked car conversations, and I have friends who would pick skydiving over being at a poetry reading. All these ‘fun’ experiences are all relative to budgets, convenience value, and personal choices. As seen most recently on twitter, “try dey enjoy, problem no dey finish”. What’s paramount, is to remember to have fun in a manner that most connects with who you are (and what you can afford, obviously).