First launched as a WordPress blog by three Kiwi best friends, Shit You Should Care About discusses important news stories while sprinkling in pop culture anecdotes. The platform now includes daily newsletters, two podcasts and a whopping three million Instagram followers.

Shit You Should Care About (SYSCA for short) has transformed into a global phenomenon that has amassed a wide array of admirers – including the likes of Daisy Edgar Jones, Ariana Grande and other celebrity fans. We were lucky enough to share a chat with the head honchos behind SYSCA – Lucy Blakiston and Bel Hawkins – who gave us the 411 on how this project first came to be, as well as the making of their new book, Make it Make Sense. 

Tell us a bit about yourselves and how Shit You Should Care About came to be. Lucy: OK, so like any good origin story, Shit You Should Care About started because I was bored and confused. I was three years into my university degree, sitting in the back of an International Relations lecture theatre in 2018, not understanding anything, so I sent my two best friends from childhood, Ruby and Liv, these texts:

Lucy: so i’ve had an idea that i want you and liv to start with me as a TRIO

Liv: EPIC TRIO

Lucy: a blog called “stuff you should care about” for people who don’t have time to figure out the things that they should care about so we write little pieces so they don’t have to go and search for it themselves

Ruby: OMG

Ruby: I would LOVE

Lucy: do you think we’d be able to call it “shit you should care about?” like with a swear word? coz that’s edgy

Liv: Yes!!

Lucy: like I’m just sitting in my lecture buzzing…. we can write in our own styles or whatever and have to answer to NO ONE

Liv: This could be so cool OMG

Lucy: it’s so OPEN and you can write about ANYTHING that you should care about

Liv: yes i LOVE that

Ruby: Would actually be so cool. I already have an idea. When and where. For meeting

Lucy: what you up to today / this arvo / tonight / bring notebooks / and ideas

From there, we launched a blog – this was 2018 remember – and then quickly realised that no one was reading blogs anymore. 

What we did next didn’t seem groundbreaking at the time – we started repurposing our content and posting where we knew everyone was hanging out: Instagram. That December, we reached 1,000 followers. Midway through 2019, we had 20,000, and by the end of that year, we had 61,000.

Then, 2020 hit. Everyone was desperate for information but in the simplest and least depressing form possible. It was that year that we launched our first podcast, The Shit Show, having raised the money to buy a podcast microphone by selling tote bags online. The year after that we launched our second podcast Culture Vulture, and during our second lockdown in 2021 I sent out our first ever newsletter (cutely referred to as 'the newsy').

This is where Bel comes in. We met in the shared office SYSCA had since grown into and immediately bonded over our love for words and our addictive work and pop culture tendencies. Most days, we’d collide at the front door at 9am, both having been up since five, Zooming or pitching or working on something, coffee in hand and putting one dream down (writing) to chase another one (paying the bills). One Thursday afternoon in the car park outside our local pub, she said something to me I’ll never forget: “I’ve had the most terrible time lately,” she replied after I’d asked her what she’d been up to. “But you know the best thing that comes out of it?” Her eyes glinted in the winter sun. “Meeting people like you. They help you come alive again. They help you phoenix."

And so, she joined the SYSCA universe. We turned that word into one of her first columns (aptly named "Bel Chimes In"), and the scope of our work grew from not only helping explain the shit people should care about externally but also what was going on inside of them. Bel taught readers new words for things that we all felt but didn’t know how to describe, explored how not to rob ourselves of joy and how to move through loneliness and examined how all of this is intrinsically bound up with the way the world works around us both online and offline. Her words started to generate a kind of reverb in our community we’d never seen before. We knew we’d hit a nerve. And that’s how we got here.

We’d been approached to consider writing a book before, but it wasn’t until I met Bel that I truly considered it. She’s the best writer I’ve ever met, and she gave me the confidence to feel like I had something to say (in long form.) So in short, that’s how we got here.

What news specifically do you seek out to share online and why? L: Honestly, the great and terrible thing about working in the news is that it’s different every day, so I don’t ‘seek’ anything out – it happens, and then I report it. Often I hear about things from our audience members which is my favourite way to learn about the world.

What is it like navigating the news in a primarily digital space? L: It’s really fucking hard because sometimes it can feel like a race – which is terrible for the media. I hate the idea that the first person to have an unqualified hot take will likely get the most attention or be the most ‘viral’ and therefore be spread the farthest. But, it’s also such a privilege to have a bigger reach than a lot of traditional media sources, which is why I take it so seriously. 

What's something that you reckon more folks should know about? L: The TV show Pen15. 

You mention that SYSCA offers a daily round-up of news that "won't leave you feeling like shit." How do you navigate discussing heavy and dark topics while still having positive viewpoints? L: I think it all starts with me being really solid and happy, which is such a Gen Z thing to say. If I’m on my hinges, it helps me to be able to live and breathe the news – no matter how dark or doomed it can feel. The way I see it is, if you want to go looking for news that will make you feel like shit, you can basically open any news publication – so that’s not my job. My job is to make it make sense without sugar coating it, but also sequencing it so that you should always leave feeling a lil hopeful.

What are some of the topics that you’ve found your audience are most concerned with? L: Climate change and fangirls not being taken seriously.

SYSCA also has a bright and colourful design. What inspired this design? The design was brought to life by my best friend and co-founder (Liv) and is now being evolved by one of my other best friends (Abby), is literally like a peek inside my brain. It’s really important for me to work with people who know me intimately so that SYSCA always feels like an extension of me (because that’s what it is at this point).

What inspired the creation of Make It Make Sense? Bel: I’d been carrying around the idea for this book for years – travelling all throughout my 20s and collecting stories, drawing lessons from them and hoping I could someday use them to inspire other young women (cringe? self-entitled? Oh well, it’s true). Plus, I’ve always been really obsessed with the internet and how it’s changing us. Then Luce and I met and started working together and it felt like the perfect place for this idea to develop and take on a life of its own. The idea that young people don’t like tangible, analogue things isn’t right, I don’t think. I think the physical act of turning the page, slowing down, and being in real life is something we all crave and need and are becoming increasingly aware of.

What do you hope readers get out of Make It Make Sense? B: That it becomes something young women give to each other when they’re going through a time where they’re not so sure about the world or life. And that they take a pen and scribble all through the margins at parts they want to refer back to.

What did you learn the most about yourselves making this book? B: I think for both of us it’s that co-writing a book with someone you love so deeply and are so in sync with can be one of the best experiences of your life. We write a lot about how platonic relationships are more important to us than romantic ones, and I think Bel and I are a living breathing example of that. It’s so special to share in the stress, the joy, the success, and the small moments of dreaming with someone else.

Make It Make Sense is a book written by Lucy Blakiston and Bel Hawkins, published by Hatchette Australia. You can order a copy for yourself here.