Full interview with Lucy Blakiston

From three friends starting a blog in a Victoria University Political Studies lecture, to three million Instagram followers, Lucy Blakiston’s bestselling book “Make It Make Sense” tells tales of growing up, emotional management, and online experience. Lucy spoke with William Woodworth about her ongoing work, world and online experiences, and why being a proud Marlburian has helped her along the way.

Compared to your world-renowned blog ‘Shit You Should Care About” – which covers international and national news, current events community engagement and ‘mundane polls’ – going from quick online content to longer form writing for ‘Make It Make Sense’, was a book always in the back of the mind?

I never wanted to write a book. I love writing for the internet and thought I would never do anything else. You and I both grew up at the time where we had our childhood without the internet, then adopted it in our teenage years and I became obsessed with it. I was a massive One Direction fan, active in all the fandom forums, and it felt like my second home. The whole book is about how they screwed me up as a teenager, but then also provided a great life for me now and really a job that I'm so privileged to do.

I met co-author Bel in 2020 through our shared office space while running SYSCA with my Blenheim besties Ruby and Liv, and as a published poet and a copywriter she had this way with words speaking with me but got sucked into the corporate world. I had publishers in my inbox from ages ago asking if I'd ever considered a book, and it quickly moved on from being “How can I help a young woman writer publish a book”– we found we had the same vision from the get-go and it’s all sort of worked out quite nicely.

SYSCA and ‘Make it Make Sense” unashamedly promotes women being fans of things that women fans about while also being globally aware. How did you find the transformation from online writing to writing the book?

I felt really brave in the book, because there's no comment section, so I had time to really think about what I wanted to say. and didn't feel worried about getting trolled. I was nervous at the start, but because books are tangible and fair while the internet is fleeting but it gave me the chance to call out all the things that I hate about the internet. No crisis ever got solved in the comment section. There's a whole piece in the book called ‘What you learn when you have 3 million followers’, which was my exhale of everything I thought over the last six years, it was so therapeutic.

Especially as more people turn off national and international news, is being able to approach news in a serious but informal manner as you do always been an interest?

SYSCA was one of the first people on Instagram doing the news, which I'm proud of. But now so many have popped - it's so great because it means we're reading the news, but it's so bad because I don't know any of their accreditation I can only trust that I'm trying my best. I'm so lucky that people care about what I do - sharing news not just for young people, but informally so people aren’t so intimidated by it. It’s a lot of responsibility turning off from news and coming to SYSCA, but I rely on the journalists on the ground - we need to fund them more than we fund influencers with a hot take. Maybe I'm taking some of those viewers, but it's an ecosystem - I'm between brilliant journalists that have feet on the ground and consumers, while trying to make them interested in the journalists. And so being informal is a huge part of what we do, because it's what gets people interested. But it's not the be all and end all, we direct readers to read the background. Duncan Grieve wrote an amazing piece in the Spinoff about how New Zealand always tries to start things for young people, but they never follow through with them. Following off SYSCA, Stuff started Newsable, a daily news podcast and newsletter which I was so proud of seeing a lot of SYSCA similarities - but the day we're speaking, they announced that they're closing Newsable so it’s just another example.

How was the difference going from putting a post up on online and put a little caption underneath to these fully fleshed out essays about personal experiences and growing up as a young woman from a small town in this world?

I love it. The content that I put in the book was almost the easy part - don't get me wrong, it was really hard to write a book and kind of ruined my life. But, working on something for two years, trying to sell and market it is the bit that I don't like, because I've never tried to sell anything I care about. I don't like doing ads - it's why I'm not a millionaire. It’s just not my vibe, I’m almost too earnest or something. The idea that I had to market and sell something felt icky until I saw the physical book and thought no, I'm actually so proud of this, and how it just became a New Zealand best seller. People see that you have 3 million followers but that does not translate into dollar signs or even people caring about you.

In multiple different senses of the word, there seems to be a big underlying line of resilience through your work?

I feel I'm quite a resilient person, but I'm lucky to have a family that every time something feels terrible, I can collapse into them.  I see the worst things imaginable, but through a screen - I'm not having to live it, which is the biggest privilege of all time – and I get to feel like I'm doing something about it by writing about it, posting about it, and getting so many people to be informed about it. I also have amazing people in my online life, so many people sending me their own stories living through the most terrible things. So I owe it to them. It doesn't stop people from going ‘why are you from New Zealand posting about this?’ but the reason I can stay so resilient is, honestly, because I feel good about what I'm doing. 99% of the time I love my job, and I can do that because I've got really amazing boundaries. I have a lime green e-bike that I get on all the time and force myself to touch grass and not be on my phone.

How much of your following is New Zealand,amazingink that you get different responses coming from small town New Zealand?

50% of our audience is in the States, because the US has so much stuff going – the it’s quite equal with Canada, Australia and the UK and New Zealand is fifth. So kind of small, but probably big in terms of New Zealand. New Zealanders are the most engaged audience though – both online and with the book. I am such a Kiwi that you can tell even when I'm writing a caption that I'm from New Zealand. I don't have favourite audiences, but the Kiwi’s are loudest. I've only recently become more public about who I am and where I live, and I think that has really made a lot of people happy to see because the gift of the internet that you can do something so big from somewhere so small. I think it's nice for small town people to see you don't have to be obsessed with getting out. If I could choose anywhere to live in the world, I'll choose Blenheim time and time again. In fact, I keep returning back. It's the place I love the most, where I can do my job the best, and I ride hard for small towns, I will never be a girl that shuns where they came from, I'm obsessed with where I came from.  People always consume media from New York or London, getting on night busses and going to gigs and writing about your fun experience there. Well, I was going to the skate park and trying to figure out how not to be intimidated.

Do you find value in working in different places leading you to think about different topics?

Yeah, where I write does determine what I think about and how well I can write about things I still think I write the best in Blenheim, because I think it's like my brain is the most relaxed When Bel and I went to Lisbon, I found that really hard and really lonely, and that's where I wrote the best pieces for the book, which is crazy. She knew I was having a really hard time, but said “we shouldn't be tortured artists, you shouldn't have to be tortured to write great stuff”. But she also told me the pieces are the best things I had written so far. So maybe I needed to feel so far away and uncomfortable to be vulnerable. There's a piece in there about my little brother, who I lost, and we grew up camping down south at Lake Aviemore, and it's where his ashes are scattered. To write about him, I went down there in the middle of winter on my own, sat by the lake, and wrote about him which was amazing and therapeutic for me.

Was there always sort of an intention to write for that next generation as well, or do you think the lessons you sort of write about just attract that?

Certainly the latter, we don't just have a younger audience, and most of the audience is just growing up with me which is so cute. Media organizations waste so much time and money like trying to crack a magic code to reach the young people where they could just get young people to talk to young people. Stop trying to hack things, be comfortable serving the audience that you have and do a really good job of that. I've never been interested in trying to grasp a young generation, which is why I'm not making 20 TikTok’s a day. I’m more interested in serving the people we already have, and if other people along the way join, that's kind of a bonus. Just two days ago I got sent a version of my ‘daily edish’ that was written by a year 12 girl who’d used all my lingo about meeting us at the book launch. Seeing someone in year 12 have the gumption to be that creative, that's so me at that age and I think that's so special because it's exactly what I would have wanted in high school.

How did you come up with the title Make it Make Sense?

Our editor thought it needed to be snappier from our original names, I was sitting in the Marlborough Sounds texting Bel with ideas, wanting it to feel internety, but not cringe. I text it to her along with a list of others and both knew this was the one. Bel and I have never disagreed on anything when it comes to the vision of the book.

Is there any piece that you either think had the most impact on you or on readers when they open the book?

It’s a collection of many different things, and everyone will take something different out of it. I’m proudest of our chapter on grief, because first, I hope no young person can deal with grief but it’s hard to deal with and I had nothing that I can relate to about grief. I didn't set out to write the defining thing, I wanted to dedicate this to my little brother without having to write like a dedication to him and avenge him in my way, which is writing. Writing James's story helped me, and hopefully helps young people conceptualize grief in a way that shows it's not going to ruin your life, but here's what happens in the months, the years after - you will have good and bad times after it, and it will take a long time. Bel writes poems in each chapter, and for the grief chapter, she got me to just say everything I'd felt in the years since losing James, and she put it into this beautiful poem “Moving Through Losing”. I read it at a signing the other day and everyone was crying, it was so cute. For me, the most important thing I wrote about was grief, but I've also heard from multiple people that the most about was becoming friends with jealousy. Instead of having that feel like a really ugly emotion, the green-eyed monster, it was total tone switch. So, I wrote about becoming friends with jealousy and instead of hating it, let it show you what you want. I was a kid that was reading magazines and being so jealous of those writers, but it really showing me what I wanted – it’s not a scary emotion.

Have you noticed there’s been an uptake from people reading the book and wanting to learn a bit more about the person behind it?

Yeah, I was running this anonymously – people knew my name but didn’t know my face, because it wasn’t important. With the book tour, I thought would be nice for people to see that the person that wrote it is just like them.  Now I’m out there talking about grief, growing up on the internet, and your relationship with your body, never being in love and all these things, I felt it would be nice for people to be able to see that I'm literally a small town girl. I don't know if it's sold more books, per se, but I think it has helped people connect with it more getting messages saying love seeing you stepping into your power and we love seeing your smiling face.

I think it was good that I did this now, because I’m mentally at a place where I don't care about the trolls, I can put myself out there. I'm good to go. But if I'd done this when I was 22, God, I would have just been so self-critical. I love who I am. I'm really proud of what I've built, and I want other people to be like she's just like us - she rides a bike to coffee catch ups and sends letters at the post shop in Blenheim to her friends. She's not some crazy sheEO and a pencil skirt and high heeled shoes.

What are your thoughts on the idea on online performative activism?

I think it's been bad for the Internet and the world that we expect every single person with a platform to have a stance on everything. Why are we asking our favourite musician to tell us who to vote for? I understand endorsements, and I understand if they have these views, it's part of who they are and stand up what you believe in, share it. As readers, we need to bring back critical thinking and using our own brains. I can't speak for anyone else, but I have a rigorous fact checking process, which everyone should. There was this period where performative activism was just going crazy. I will not sit here and say that we weren't a catalyst for that, taking stories that people submitted and posting them, then having celebrities share them from us. It was an easy way for celebrities to feel they were doing something.

I always talk about this because it blows my mind, but an infographic that was going around viral - Justin Trudeau shared it, lot of politicians sharing it, news outlets, celebrities. People were in my DMs, like, Lucy, why you're not talking about this? Your silence is deafening etc. I did one simple Google search about whether this was true, and all I found was two tabloid news sources that had just cited the infographic with no backing facts.  In response I wrote a whole newsletter about why we need to fact check, and why you shouldn't be in my DMs bullying me about something that you haven't even gone and looked at yourself. I try to be the antithesis now of people that are trying to have the first hot take, with really reactionary posting.

Today, I wrote a newsletter about Chappell Roan, how she's not endorsing a presidential candidate, and how we should bring back nuance. The Twitter account took her words out of context, and made everyone basically turn on her. And with one look at The Guardian, you can see that like she donates money to Palestine and trans rights. I feel strongly that we need to be using our own brains, and with SYSCA you are not just going to get someone that blindly posts and cancels people, you're going to be challenged in what you're posting which is me growing up. My dream is that I can challenge people, and if I get trolled for it, I don't care. I lose followers on Instagram. I don't care. Instagram does not pay me anyway.

How do you think that different age groups, different places around the world consume obviously your social media differently?

Young people are so much more politically aware and active. I'm obsessed with them. When I was at high school, I said I was loving One Direction online which has taught me skills to be a media business owner. This young generation looks at issues and says “let me do something”, marching and standing up what they believe in, really loudly.

I am blown away by it, because it's that's so different for when I was at high school but I think because of the way technologies move so quickly, especially with AI., It's so boring to talk about fake news, but even I see stuff and have to check if it’s real or fake - I studied it, I've worked in it and it’s still hard. 16-year old’s are forced to be discern what's real and what's fake without any of that. There's so much pressure for a young person, and I don't blame them if they accidentally get things wrong, but the internet will blame them if they get things wrong, because the internet doesn't forget. They’re growing up at such a hard time, as while young people can see issues in black and white, they're just doing their best to care. It's just a shame that they're having to do that in the public eye. We didn't have this big digital footprint following us around, but young people these days have figure out how they feel about things and who they are in public, because everything's like a performance. But, they are doing amazing for what they're having to deal with.

How do you think that young people experience earnestness and cringe on the internet differently now?

Young people are not cringe anymore - they’ve had access to makeup tutorials, skincare, beauty, how to dress cool, Whereas with us coming before growing up with the internet, we felt around and figure out who we were while being really cringe. But now I'm really glad for that, as I wrote this don't kill the part of you that's cringe, kill the part that cringes. I think it's hard to be different now making Tiktok videos every morning of how to get ready with me, you're performing in a way and using all the products that all the other girls are using, It's still hard out there for a kid.

Is there any grand plan going forward, or any other personal things that you're wanting to sort of branch out into?

I have this thing where I don't plan, because one of my mantras is to be ready to say yes to things. If I had a five-year plan, when I started, TikTok didn't exist. So, I barely even plan two months ahead, because I’m always ready to say yes to the next thing. And so I'm prepared,but I just don't like planning. Plus, I work in news, everything changes every day - I didn't know two years ago that I'd be putting a book out into the world.

A final piece of advice for the young Marlburian wanting to not necessarily follow in your footsteps, but looking to you as inspiration?

Going forward, be really loudly and unashamedly obsessed with whatever you're wanting to do,. Don't let anyone make you feel shit about being obsessed with anything awesome.