The Cave #4
The Cave attended Allegory’s launch party last night.
As such, The Cave asks that you please read this week’s edition - which covers terror plots and terrible weather, OnlyFans debt relief, and the joy of language - q u i e t l y.
The Cave thanks you.
N.B. The Cave was written a little earlier this week for this exact reason.
Comms
Terror plots, terrible weather, and key messages
In January, a caravan with explosives and antisemitic material was found in Dural, sparking fears of a terrorist attack. Critics accused police of delaying disclosure, but authorities defended their caution as necessary.
This week, the subsequent investigation found the caravan was a staged plot by organised criminals.
The incident led to election-fuelled political clashes, with the Coalition criticising Prime Minister Albanese’s response, and the government hitting back over "reckless" statements from the opposition.
The path to be walked between transparency and security has always been razor thin, and opposing positions on this topic often have the rare distinction of being both subjective and meritorious.
But with the accelerating collapse of trust in institutions (the most overused but undoubtedly vital insight of the past few years), things start to get very messy. Do we trust the police to make the right call? Do we trust the media to report without a broader agenda? Do we trust our leaders to respond in the interests of national security and not their own ambition?
The answers to all three are increasingly resounding no’s.
This has real world impacts. Not only in the risk of fear and antagonism in Australian communities (as with the caravan plot), but in encouraging life-saving behaviours among citizens.
Behaviours like evacuating (or not) when a cyclone is hurtling towards your home. And in maintaining that sense of urgency and action when initial predictions about the pace and severity of said cyclone are revised.
Treading that razor thin path as the walls of doubt, distrust, and disinformation close in isn’t going to get any easier. But as the world settles into an era of immense uncertainty and change, it’s only going to get more important.
Culture
OnlyFans debt relief
This week, Harry Potter actor Jessie Cave (no relation) announced she was starting an OnlyFans account offering “the best quality hair sounds”.
More interesting (just) than this snippet of news is the reason why - debt relief and financial security.
Cave is far from the first celebrity to turn to the often-explict platform to help pay their bills (although her business plan of hair content being “a fetish, I think. I hope” is perhaps the weakest).
Sopranos actor Drea de Matteo prevented her home from going into foreclosure through revenue generated through the platform.
But it’s singer Lily Allen’s response to being called out for sharing feet pics that point to the real issue here, with the hitmaker saying “imagine…having nearly 8 million monthly listeners on Spotify but earning more money from having 1,000 people subscribe to pictures of your feet.”
In the age of fractured channels, decentralised content, and the end of the mainstream, feet-by-subscription now seemingly outcompetes the long tail royalties of bangers like ‘Smile’.
Allen’s quandary is the subject of Mood Music, a new book by music journalist Liz Pelly (which, ironically, you can listen to on Spotify from today).
Then again (and calling back to the previously discussed importance of historical context), this isn’t new.
Musicians have spent time as nurses during the pandemic (Georgia Maq of Camp Cove), tattoo parlour artists and high-end food marketers (various members of Los Campesinos!), and much more. It was common for sports stars of yesteryear to have entirely separate careers they’d return to every off-season.
It doesn’t mean there aren’t ongoing structural challenges in building a career in the arts. But the move to OnlyFans may just be the 2020s reflection of a longstanding trend.
Curiosities
On the joy of language
Being a comms agency, we’re unsurprisingly a little obsessed with language - we wrote a style guide before we wrote a marketing plan (this is, apparently, not recommended).
As with so much these days, it’s impossible to ignore the Trump of it all when it comes to this topic. Ogilvy UK’s vice-chairman and beloved raconteur Rory Sutherland presents an interesting take that the US President, in the lineage of history’s populists, succeeds in reaching audiences by rejecting the “technocratic, Ivy-Leaguish measured style of established politicians” (or communicators for that matter).
Balancing the necessity of writing (and speaking) in a way that actually meets an audience where they are with the joy, artistry, and, (let’s be honest) ego of truly beautiful language is a daunting and daily task.
So, it pays to call out examples of those who have done it well.
First, Sally Rooney (of Normal People and Intermezzo fame) wrote an essay about snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan. The piece is insightful, often unexpected, and accessible, combining surprisingly breezy paragraphs on the rules of the sport with lines such as “snooker dramatises obsession in a very pure form, hyper-fixation made visible.”
Secondly, and perhaps less expected, is the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications and the Arts’ report on the Australian live music industry, Am I Ever Gonna See You Live Again?.
The language used by legislative bodies is notoriously abstruse, but the Chair’s summary from outgoing Member for Lyons, Brian Mitchell, sounds like a human, and what’s more, a human who cares about the subject matter. We’d like to buy him a beer.
As for our style guide? There’s a fair few rules in it (mostly related to parenthetical elements), but we’ll end with our favourite:
We believe if you’re good enough to have made a career from language, you’ve earned the right to play with it. Just a little.