The Round-Up 013: 3 Big Stories You Need This Week
Last week, a Gallup poll revealed the major roadblock in the eradication of a COVID-19 could be distrust in vaccines.
In real-time, many countries appear to be at varying stages of returning to a semblance of normalcy. In Asia, China was the first to re-open its borders to the world last year, but the virus continues to wreak havoc in India, where a new COVID strain has just been discovered. In Africa, precisely Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya, mass vaccinations are languidly underway, albeit amidst logistical problems. In Europe, France has projected re-opening its borders to American travellers from June, however Germany, Spain and Portugal are still under multiple levels of lockdown, but last night, Britain braved the odds to reopen pubs, cinemas, museums, sports stadiums and other public spaces. This mix of realities across the world, tells us a win in this battle against COVID-19 may stagger, but surely a post-COVID world is on the horizon.
For The Round-Up 013 this week, check out 3 big stories you need.
Like many people who restlessness pushed to start a new venture or experiment with a new business idea during the lockdowns, Jacquelle Amankonah Horton, founder of fan-to-fan (F2F) app, ‘Fave’ began working on her new music start-up last year. Now Fave has just announced closing a $2.2 million seed round, backed by Female Founders Fund, HYBE, Sony Music, Warner Music, Concord Music, Quality Control, Right Hand Management, Techstars Music and Betaworks. Jacquelle, whose past experience includes a 7-year stint as a product manager at Google, will be bringing her experience working with Google Assistant and YouTube for Creators, to build a virtual community for artists, creators and music fans alike.
Fave is broken down into fan communities and designed to help superfans connect, through shared content, artworks and merchandise. Creators and fans will be able to generate revenue through a virtual marketplace where goods or fan-generated content can be sold. Horton hopes the potential for revenue generation will lure in artists and creators, but her main focus is on fans looking to connect with like-minds who share similar interests. And of course, creators who wish to connect with fans directly, via a somewhat personalised experience. While speaking to TechCrunch on the inspiration behind Fave, Horton said “I was the girl in her bedroom who knew every lyric of every song, how many freckles they have, and fell asleep to the movie every single night just to hear the sound of his voice,” said Horton. “But I wasn’t able to go sit front row at a concert or spend $70 on a sweatshirt so the artists got nothing from me despite my deep passion.”
Despite coming down on hard times in recent months, (no thanks to spaceman, Elon Musk), the crypto world hasn't stopped doing weird things. Last year, an NFT (non-fungible tokens) craze took the art world by storm, starting with collectable platforms like NBA Top Shot, and peaking, earlier this year, with the sale of Beeple, a piece by digital artist, Mike Winkelmann for $69 million.
NFTs have continued to carve a niche in the crypto world, but now, more literal pop-culture symbolisms like memes are witnessing an NFT renaissance of sorts. The latest trend features early-to-mid 2000s memes getting sold on blockchain. One of such on track becoming an NFT, is the classic “Charlie bit my finger - again !” video. The iconic video featuring two baby brothers unintentionally went viral back in 2007 and has since become the most viewed viral video on the internet. Its creators are now auctioning it off. They have also announced that following the end of the auction on May 22nd, the original upload which has amassed over 800 million views on YouTube will be scrubbed off the internet permanently. Some memes that have already been auctioned off on blockchain in a similar fashion include, “The Nyan Cat”, which sold for around $590,000, the “Disaster Girl” meme sold for $500,000, and the “Deal With It” glasses which sold for $23,000 amongst others.
[by Edwin Okolo] On June 19th, global streaming giant Netflix released ‘Disclosure’. A long-awaited documentary, tracking the history and exploitative representation of transgender persons in Hollywood over the last 100 years. It also featured a number of working transgender actors, some of whom have managed to transcend poor representation and advocate for roles that don't portray them as stock characters, sexual or moral deviants or victims of violence or assault. Freed of the restrictions of mainstream media, streaming giants like Netflix, Apple TV, Hulu and HBO have championed a different kind of storytelling for queer people, one where queer people of all orientations are invited to do the storytelling behind and in front of the camera.
Much like racism, queer representation in media and culture was codified as deviance and used to contrast ‘acceptable’ heterosexual culture. Depictions of transness were used as comedic relief or as a plot device to move narratives along. Queerness was hypersexualized or codified as dangerous and ‘resolved’ with either the death, punishment or restitution of the queer person, a nasty trope that persists in Nigerian cinema and mainstream media. This growth can be directly attributed to the democratization of media consumption and the enduring power of queer culture to receive mainstream acceptance. Read the full feature here