The Flyer

Officially moving to Thursdays....

Generally, I try to refrain from current events in this publication. There’s a sufficient supply of every take imaginable on every topic imaginable, given by my equally unqualified peers here on the Substack. So this is in no way about this past Sunday’s Timothee Chalamet look-alike competition in the East Village. It’s instead about what exactly brought 2,000 Elio enthusiasts to Washington Square Park, begging to be called by Mr. Chalamet’s name. To put it simply…it was 100 slices of copy paper with words and a photo. Ladies and gentlemen it was a flyer. What once populated cork boards of coffee shops, middle schools, and churches, brought together 2,000 Timothee Chalamet look-alikes, the police, every journalist alive, and most importantly Timothee Chalamet himself - causing a media firestorm that was surely more interesting than the event itself.​ At first, I believed this was a triumph of physical media…but then I looked closer and realized it was instead a social media marketing masterclass. And instead of a great revival, the flyer might just become the point and shoot camera of self promotion. Vintage inspired and seemingly far more innocent than what’s fed to us online. That is until you see a photo of a flyer online…

So what does this mean for the actual flyer? An information gathering device that spread news of wanted murderers out west and sold guitar lessons from Dan Smith.

I’m not exactly sure. I’d still like to hope we’ve unlocked the great free advertising tool from our past and pioneered it for the present (unfortunately with Partiful QR codes). But I’m not yet ready to celebrate and put up flyers for this very newsletter on every lamp post in Santa Monica. The Chalamet flyer may have only worked because it was ironic, such as that guy who invited his neighborhood to watch him eat his 40th rotisserie chicken in 40 days.

And what’s ironic is only ironic because it's unexpected. So while I appreciate these brave men following the mission statement of The Pioneer - subverting the congested algorithmic epicenters of information (our phones) and putting their message directly in our faces, I’m worried about confusing the irony of nostalgia with actual purpose.

Besides, these flyers all came to my attention, not through physical contact, but instead Twitter - the very medium it was used to circumvent. It was shared just about everywhere. Then, it came to the attention of magazines. GQ, Esquire, and Complex had boots on the ground, covering an event that seemed to be designed in a laboratory by pop culture scientists. Finally, the real Timothee Chalamet arrived proving not only the power of the internet - this we know - but more surprisingly, the power of the flyer. A vessel of information that need I remind you, once aided thousands of futon sales, the capture and killing of John Wilkes Booth, and now suddenly the career of a marketing coordinator who helped host a Timothee Chalamet look-a-Like competition. A marketing coordinator I HAVE NOT split overpriced roasted Brussels sprouts with but is #opentonetwork.

Hi LinkedIn…quick life update. I made a flyer.

So as the dust settles on this rather obscure moment of virility, I cannot declare the piece of paper itself as officially being back. This event did not truly catch fire through word of mouth. As you can see, it was instead masterminded by a digital marketing coordinator and popular Youtube vlogger (see Anthpo). Good for them. Because therein lies the flyer’s fickle physical beauty. The QR code has replaced the pull tab. Word of mouth has migrated online. But the message, whether that is a look-alike competition or rotisserie chicken ceremony, can still at least begin to spread through the supposedly archaic piece of paper. After all, those cork boards and lamp posts are now mostly vacant, anxiously waiting to be taped and pinned on. Just make sure you know your audience.

Because we’re going to see a lot more flyers out on the street. While most will be posted by self-obsessed fad chasers, praying their message is spread blindly online to the masses, some will learn from old western US Marshals, Dan Smith, rotisserie chicken guy, and Paige the marketing coordinator. Some will use the flyer to reach a hyper specific group of people. A small group of people just like us. Because until we’re wearing goggles all day, what’s important to us must break through into the physical world. It’s why I own a collector’s edition DVD boxset of National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets. It’s why you have those 1 hour photos from your point and shoot on your refrigerator. It’s why flyers in the East Village attracted a crowd of people who’re super into Timothee Chalamet.

So go out there and use the flyer. Just don’t use it for vintage inspired purposes. Don’t do anything for vintage inspired purposes. Don’t even say the words vintage and inspired in the same sentence. The flyer was never inherently cool and it’s definitely no longer funny. But such as anything else that’s stood the test of time, maybe it’s still useful.