I recently wrote a post about the situation with youth culture in NZ. How such a brilliant country that does so much right is failing its youth at an epic level.
Not all is its fault.
It is a small country, far from other nations with an incredibly small population so for many brands – especially more youth culture focused – it is a market that offers little profit potential or industry influence so it is a very low priority to go there.
Hell, if IKEA or Amazon aren’t here, you can be sure Supreme etc won’t be.
So what this means is what is in NZ is – in many ways – the very same things that have always been in NZ … resulting in a belief among youth, there’s not much here that is specifically for them, reinforced by the internet allowing them to see what is happening in other countries, which all contributes to a feeling of isolation, a lack of opportunity and pressure to conform.
While this is not the only reason for the terrible statistic of being the number 1 country in the World [per capita] for youth to die by suicide, it is one of them … and when I wrote about this a while back, the beautiful and generous Nils from Uncommon sent me the brilliant poem above by Philip Larkin, which pretty much sums up the issue NZ needs to deal with.
Because whether for protection or control, wires make your World smaller, which eventually will make a smaller World for everyone.