Slayyyter Old Technology

Although most of the videos that Slayyyter has released thus far for her upcoming third album, WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA, would be right at home in the Harmony Korine universe (though “DANCE…” is more Keshacore), it is her latest, “Old Technology,” that finds her at her most, shall we say, Gummo yet. And maybe that film reference is also appropriate considering it came out in 1997, typically billed as the first year of Gen Z. Slayyyter, instead, just missed that cutoff, born in 1996 (the year when Spice Girls’ debut was released, ergo millennials once retroactively being referred to as “the Spice Girls generation”). Thus, caught somewhere in between two generations. Both of which lust after “old technology” for different reasons.

In millennials’ case, things like MSN Messenger and AIM, T9 texting on Nokia phones or VHS and DVD players represent a simpler, more innocent time (even though plenty of fucked-up shit went down on those instant messaging systems, as Lizzie McGuire could tell you). In Gen Z’s case, as it has been made increasingly apparent based on many a TikTok trend, possessing nostalgia for a time they didn’t even experience (at least not at a sentient level) has only augmented the more that they’ve realized the ways in which technology (specifically, the internet) has robbed them too soon of their innocence, in addition to robbing them of their ability to actually “be present in the moment.” Not to mention the many once garden-variety experiences that the internet has effectively stamped out over time (this includes something as simple as being able to go to the video store and rent a movie, with this lust for tangible media also gaining a recent resurgence thanks to newfound interest in it on Gen Z’s part). So yes, it makes sense for Slayyyter to express a certain yearning for old tech, even if in her usual brash sort of way.

Of course, what Slayyyter considers “old” is relative, with that much made apparent from the opening verse, “You heard the song straight, straight off my iPod/Straight off the Tumblr blog, I am a God, yes sir/Keepin’ my money stacked up on the dresser.” Other allusions to “old” forms of tech include her flex, “You copy-paste the vibe/I never chase the vibe.” Even though, if she’s being honest, WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA is all about chasing the vibe of being more of a success than she has been in the past. Instead always relegated to a “bubbling under” category. Indeed, as she told Zane Lowe in a brief interview released after “Old Technology” premiered, “I’m turning, like, thirty this year and I started doing this when I was, like, twenty-two, and I feel like I was, like, a hair salon receptionist and then slowly as people started to tap into my music, you kind of want to feed your audience rather than making what you like, which is why you even started doing it in the first place… so yeah, I feel like with this project I was, like, you know, I’m like almost thirty and I can’t, like, my ninth year on, like, the up and coming list, like, I can’t do it.”

So yes, she is chasing a vibe with the singles that have been released thus far off the album. And “Old Technology” is very much the “no fucks given” vibe (while simultaneously, as mentioned, very much giving a fuck). What’s more, Slayyyter has cleverly found a way to associate old technology with doing drugs. For the two are similarly antiquated in the sense that Gen Z is now known for being the least drug-addled generation (at least when it comes to non-prescription drugs). This making Slayyyter decidedly in the camp of being a millennial, as her birth year insists. To boot, it’s carrying on the Kesha tradition to say something like, “Bitch look alive, I’m doin’ drugs tonight/Ones that I’m not prescribed, yeah,” along with, “What do you want from me? I’m havin’ fun tonight.”

And it seems Slayyyter knows how to have plenty of fun all by herself as well, with the accompanying video, shot in black and white (and once again directed by Slayyyter), continuing the motifs of her previous visuals in terms of offering up white trash aesthetics in spades. For example, a mattress on the floor, an old TV, a weightlifting bench and a light-up Santa Claus all occupying the same basement-looking space. Harmony Korine-approved, to be sure.

In another part of the “domicile,” there’s even a bathtub that Solomon (Jacob Reynolds) from Gummo wouldn’t mind eating his nasty-ass pasta in. In between “primping”—if that’s what it can be called—in the bathroom, Slayyyter also finds time to traipse through the footprint-pocked snow with a baseball bat and, back inside, writhe around in an antler bra. The “drugs” she refers to doing in the song, however, materialize only in the form of her taking a few hits from a questionable bong. So no, not exactly the “hard drugs” one might have hoped she was alluding to.

In other moments, she’s dressed in a Playboy Bunny kind of look (bunny ears included) or as a deadbeat prom queen with her tiara accessory (which, of course, has been done to death ever since the OG white trash princess, Courtney Love, did it during her Live Through This period). She’s also often shown filming herself (using an “old” video camera, obviously—because it’s all about old technology) with a person in a rabbit costume (the rabbit image being a running constant throughout her WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA videos). One who sits or lies on the mattress not looking entirely conscious. Again, a very Harmony Korine sort of scene.

As for one of the most indelible scenes, it’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment of Slayyyter holding an iPod in prayer hands mode while kneeling on the ground and wearing a bondage-y kind of black veil. All in service, perhaps, of mourning the loss of old technology. Which, while easily “mockable” to many people now, represents a time in human existence when it wasn’t all so nihilistic.