This video isn’t about VSCO girls, this is about a VSCO-nspiracy . . . yeah, that
didn’t work.
But I’m going with it anyway.
//roll intro A lot of you may be wondering what a VSCO
girl is, but that’s probably the easiest part to explain out of all of this.
VSCO is a reverse Instagram.
It’s primarily a photo-editing app, but it also lets users upload their photos publicly.
Because the focus is on photography first, VSCO looks a lot more artsy than the average
Instagram feed, and thus, it was quickly labelled a hipster app for people who were “trying
to look aesthetic”.
A label which I resent because I use VSCO to edit literally all of my photos.
But combine that VSCO aesthetic with a casual, very casual environmental-friendly lifestyle,
add in a dash of retro fashion, and a couple hundred dashes of internet-flavored sarcasm,
and bam, you got yourself a VSCO girl: The Gen-Z teenage girl who wears puka shell necklaces
and oversized T-shirts and scrunchies and wants to save the turtles with her metal straws
and reusable water bottles.
She says things like “and I oop” and “Sksksk”, because they’re funny memes for relatable
teens.
Now on the surface, there’s nothing to dislike about VSCO girls, but there is definitely
a negative aspect to this whole trend.
If you haven’t noticed, it’s a bit . . . materialistic, it’s a bit of a flex, right?
Look how many scrunchies I have.
Look how good of a job I’m doing for the environment.
And if you look at any of the VSCO Girl Starter pack memes, or read any of the, you’ll quickly
notice that every item is name brand.
Now, it’s not like you’re wearing Gucci from head to toe, but it’s . . . subtly
expensive, and it adds up quick.
But you know what, I’ve got to spend the budget for this video somewhere.
So I’m going to follow the VSCO girl starter pack.
Oversized T-Shirt!
$10.
Yeti?
No.
Hydro Flask.
Yes.
$45.
For a gosh darn cup.
Pack of metal straws $6.
Scrunchies!
One?
No.
Two?
No. 20-pack!
$7.
It was actually a really good deal, not going to lie.
Puka Shell choker!
$10.
Flip flops?
Gross.
Birkenstocks?
Perfect.
$125.
Or you could just use Crocs, which is good cuz I already own Crocs.
Airpods, latest version.
$145 except I’m overbudget.
Fjallraven Kanken backpack.
$80!
Teaching myself how to pronounce Fjallraven Kanken: free.
Mario Badescu facial spray.
$7.
Thankfully I don’t need it my skin is already really clear.
Disposable camera for your aesthetic pictures.
$50.
And last but not least, friendship bracelets!
I didn’t make any cuz I don’t—I don’t have any friends, but—Friendship bracelets!
Priceless.
Except the kit is like $15 on Amazon.
And then of course you just gotta download the VSCO app on your phone, which is of course
free.
Except they lock all of the good filters behind a $20 payment.
So, there’s that.
And that, ladies and gentleman brings us to a cool total of . . . just over $500.
To look like this.
At least I got some Instagram photos out of it.
So, VSCO girls are showing off price tags left and right, but doing it under the guise
of “oh it’s just comfortable” and “save the turtles”.
Like what does your $80 backpack have to do with the environment exactly?
As harmless as it all is, it’s hard to deny that it’s a little bit shallow, and a lotta
bit disingenuous, and I think that was the key factor in making the internet collectively
lose it’s mind, because that’s what happened as soon as this trend took off.
Oh my God, you’re not wearing a big tee but do not fret, I actually brought an extra!
Here you go, you can keep.
Don’t even worry.
These initial TikToks featured girls making fun of VSCO girls’ weird mix of environmental
activism and straight-up poor-shaming.
You know what, after school, I’ll take you in my white Jeep and we can go buy one!
It’s okay, I’ll pay for it.
Anything to save the planet, sksksk.
Then, the internet caught hold of those TIkToks, failed to realize that they were complete
irony, \started making fun of those.
But those aren’t VSCO girls.
These are girls making fun of VSCO girls, and thus purposely making them seem as annoying
and exaggerated as possible.
And boy did they do a good job.
In other words, people didn’t get the joke but they still got mad.
Welcome to the internet.
So like I said, explaining what a VSCO Girl is?
That was the easy part.
Explaining where they came from though?
That’s where things get tricky.
Now, we can all agree that the VSCO aesthetic is a hodgepodge—I don’t know why I’m
trying to be nice.
We can agree that VSCO girls just stole everything from Twitter and Tumblr, right?
But I wanted to pinpoint the starting point.
So I started by looking for the term “VSCO Girl” across the entire web in 2018.
Believe it or not, I only found it in one real context.
In May 2018, an artist named Young Dice released a song called: VSCO Girl.
It’s kind of a bop, kind of trash at the same time.
My favorite kind of music.
But, it’s worth noting that he doesn’t actually say “VSCO girl in the entire thing,
and there’s no Hydro Flasks or scrunchies.
He’s moreso using the VSCO aesthetic for the music video.
So I'm not really going to count that as the start of the VSCO girl trend.
I continued my search into 2019, and again, nothing really came up.
There was a couple mentions, there was a video in January from a YouTuber named Greer Jones.
So, over the past couple of months, I've been on this app called VSCO.
But as you can see, she’s talking about acutal girls who use the VSCO app, not VSCO
girls per se.
I also found an rticle from May, it was published in a school newspaper, but again, its just
referring to the app.
So, from the dawn of human history all the way up until what, like June?
There's no mention of VSCO girls anywhere.
But then June happens and all of a sudden they're everywhere.
I confirmed this by doing a quick search on Google trends.
Then June, and boom.But unlike most trends that leap into the mainstream, there was something
a little bit fishy about this, to me anyway.
For example: hype-beasts.
While they definitely wear a lot of Supreme, a hype-beast doesn’t mean “somebody who
wears Supreme”.
Gamers for example.
Mountain Dew has now become associated with gaming, but a gamer is not “somebody who
drinks mountain dew”.
So why does VSCO girl literally mean “somebody who carries a hydroflask, puts their stuff
in a Fjallraven Kanken backpack, sprays their face with Mario Badescu, and wears Birkenstocks?”
How did this trend just come out of nowhere but also show up with a bunch of very specific
and arguably very overpriced brands attached?
This is where the VSCOnspiracy comes into play.
So, I did a search on YouTube.
skimming over all 600+ videos that have been uploaded with VSCO Girl in the title.
All the recent ones are pretty harmless, but if you start from the beginning, things start
to get a little weird.
Now, the very first video uploaded that has VSCO girl in the title was actually from 2018.
But, they mention VSCO girls in the entire video, and I’m fairly certain that they
changed the title after the fact.
Then, 8 months ago, we have Greer’s video, and as we discussed, that really doesn’t
count either.
So, as you can see, everything started four months ago.
See the first five videos from the VSCO girl boom were all from smaller YouTubers.
But then BAM.
Video number 6 is from a one million sub YouTuber, out of nowhere.
Hannah uploads her video as a collaboration with Haley Pham, another pretty big YouTuber.
Now, that wouldn't be weird in and of itself, but if you go to the comment section you can
see that VSCO, the actual app, commented on their video.
"Thanks for being part of the VSCO Community, Hannah and Haley.”
Now, on top of that, the description says “P.S.
This was not a sponsored video.”
So not only do we have VSCO interacting with these people, but they're also like "oh by
the way guys this isn't sponsored” even though it's literally just free advertising
for VSCO to over a million people.
Now, after that giant video and all the TikToks started popping off, the rest is history.
And that brings us to the present where VSCO girls are seemingly everywhere.Who created
the blueprint for VSCO girls in the beginning?I'm going to say that the brands did.
Now now now now, hear me out.
Fjallraven is owned by the company Fenix Outdoor International.
Look how their company performed over the stock market over the past year.
They spiked in June, which is literally when these VSCO girl videos started hitting the
internet.
Hydro Flask is owned by Helen of Troy, their stock started going up in June as well.
VSCO, or Visual Supply Co as they started off, doesn't trade publicly.
But they're still worth $550 million.
And I found this Forbes article from July, which is of course the month after the trend
happened, saying that VSCO is trying to expand.
And honestly, what better way to raise some more money than, you know, the $90 million
they already got from investors, than by turning VSCO not just into an app, but into a lifestyle
with several hguih-end brands built into it, all in the course of about what, a week?
A month tops.
It's literally a mix of our two favorite things: being environmentally conscious, and just
completely flexing on everybody online.
How did these two things perfectly come together and then all get wrapped up under the VSCO
umbrella . . . accidentally?
The fact that VSCO is a mix of Twitter with the "sksksk and i oop" which pretty much made
it go viral, and a mix of tumblr which has a built-in audience already; really, if the
data is anything to go off of, it was a very recent invention.
In the end though, this is literally just me theorizing.
The girls obviously aren’t to blame either way, and all the hate they’re receiving
online?
Completely out of hand.
But that’s just another day on the internet.
I just find it interesting that while these girls are taking all the flak, the companies
are doing nothing but profiting.
And that, is the VSCOnspiracy.
Anyway, looks like I’ve gotten ten minutes of content out of this, so leave a like, tell
me what you think and subscribe if you haven’t already.
Thank you for watching and a big thank you to my 218,000 subscribers.
Okay bye.