âIt is what it isâ vibes on the best and worst of the tech hype cycle
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Late last week, a mysterious vibe swept social media platforms. A few dozen influential young techies added a string of emojis forming an uncanny face to their Twitter handles. A blank website featuring the emoji popped up, ominously teasing: âIt is what it is.â
At typical Internet hyperspeed, others jumped on the bandwagon, mostly unsure where it was actually headed. What was âIt is what it isâ? A joke? A startup emerging from âstealthâ? The hottest new social app since TikTok?
Katie Zhu, a product manager at Instagram, felt the FOMO acutely when the emoji started popping up among techie friends late Thursday.
âI said, What is this? Let me in!â says Zhu. âI fell for the prank. It probably took me a good two hours to figure out what was happening.â
âTheyâre like, There is no app.â
The secret came out publicly late Friday: It was a joke, a stunt, a prank. Its virality didnât lead to anythingâŚuntil it did.
The young, ethnically diverse team who had pulled âIt is what it isâ together started directing the thousands of eyes they had attracted with the tease of tech hotnessâincluding a few venture capitalists hoping to make bank off the excitementâto instead donate to groups affiliated with racial justice and transgender rights, including the Loveland Foundation, the Okra Project, and the Innocence Project. As of Tuesday, the group says it has raised more than $200,000.
Though organizers chose to wield their clout for racial justice, the hype cycle of the project itself explored a different (though related) issue: the increasingly troubled relationship between society and Silicon Valley.
Zhu is now one of the 60 âIt is what it isâ team members who half-jokingly refer to themselves as âcofounders.â Zhu, who is also an artist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, says the project arose from the best possibilities of the Internet and tech culture and became a critique of its worst excesses.
The concept and execution of the project emerged organically, she says, from a group of online friends âjust dicking around on the Internet.â The eye-mouth-eye emoji itself, and the phrase âIt is what it is,â were memes picked up from around the web. There was no clear plan in mindâthough Zhu gives particular credit to Freia Lobo for setting the projectâs tone on Twitter.
âIt really, to me, is the purest expression of what we wanted the Internet to be,â says Zhu. âOn the Internet, you can find your community, your tribe. I really, really believe that.â
But the rapid pile-on fueled by mystery and big reveals exposed darker aspects of tech culture and the tech business. Zhu says she was recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and that both as a tech user and a tech worker, an obsession with novelty and exclusivity has held serious risks for her.
âHype, and what that means in terms of validation, Iâm realizing thereâs something there that might not be healthy for me,â she says. âI would be like, âI want an invite to this thing, because I hate myself!ââ Research has increasingly shown that social media and the quest for online clout are contributing to a full-blown mental health crisis, particularly among teens and young adults.
Zhu draws parallels between âIt is what it isâ and the hyping of exclusive social media app Clubhouse. The app generated immense interest early this year before many details were revealed and attracted $12 million in investment with only around 270 daily users, many of them famous or influential.
And in fact, venture capitalists were similarly attracted to âIt is what it is,â as predictably as flies to honey. Organizers say VCs started knocking on their virtual doors late last week, hoping to get in on the new hotness. More surprisingly, the offers kept right on coming, even after the fact that it was a stunt was revealed. Without a product or even an idea for one, investors nudged the team to form a real company to build somethingâanything.
The âIt is what it isâ Twitter account mocked the frenzy: âall you people know is âmonetizedâ âseed roundâ âgrowth hackâ like relax havenât you ever just had fun online while vibing with your friends and donating to The Okra Project.â
The VCsâ lust will go unrequited. And while the loose âIt is what it isâ team are weighing options for how to move forward, Zhu says theyâre leaning toward winding down the project. In part thatâs because they want to recognize their own privilege as well-paid tech workers, instead of leveraging it for their own further benefit.
âThis canât be a moment, it needs to be a movement,â says Zhu. âWe are one part of the movement, and the movement is Black Lives Matter.â