PopCo

by Scarlett Thomas

  ‘Furbies, Beanie Babies and your own brand, Finbar’s Friends.’ Pause. ‘What do these brands have in common? Well, we found that they inspired love, loyalty and recognition in a very large percentage of the girls in our sample. Love. That’s a strong word, but it was the word most often used by these girls. Here are some other comments. “I just adore my Beanie Babies.” “If my house was on fire and I could rescue one thing, it would be my Finbar.” “I am physically incapable of seeing a new Finbar’s Friend and leaving the shop without buying it.” “I have a collection the same size as my friend Marie, and that makes us, I don’t know, even better friends.”’

  I have ended up sitting next to Esther.

  ‘I think I am going to be sick,’ she says under her breath.

  ‘Jesus,’ I hiss back, and we exchange a smile.

  David Furlong presses a button on a hand-held console and some images come up on the plasma screen at the front of the room. They are pages from websites, a second or two for each. Furlong speaks over them.

  ‘Here we can see fan-sites created by girls around their collections. Most of them are Japanese girls’ sites and most of them, you will no doubt be pleased to hear, are sites devoted to Finbar’s Friends. Outside of the entertainment industry and websites connected with the cult of Ana – the pro-anorexia sites – these are the most high-visibility sites created by teenage girls.’ He presses another button and a different image appears. It’s a plain-looking bedroom. ‘This is wrong, isn’t it? If I told you that this was a teenage girl’s bedroom, you wouldn’t believe me.’ He’s right: there’s nothing in it. ‘We asked these girls – using a variety of research methods – which things were most important to them. On the basis of their responses, we can add to the room. Most important was clothes, of course, and then music.’ He presses a button and the room now has a stereo and a haphazard pile of CDs. The bed, chair and floor are strewn with clothes and fashion-brand carrier bags. ‘Items connected with music or celebrities came next.’ Now there are suddenly posters and gossip or style magazines in the room. ‘Next were cosmetics.’ A hairdryer, make-up, hair products and bottles of various cleansing fluids now appear. This room is a bit messy now. ‘Then mobile phones.’ In the picture, a small top-of-the-range mobile appears next to the hairdryer, connected to a charger. ‘Next, however, very high on the list, were soft toy products.’ A few people in the room sort of clap when the picture changes again to include teddy bears, Beanie Babies, Finbar’s Friends and other branded plush toys. ‘Teenage girls placed their collections of soft toys far higher on their priority list than games consoles, dolls, books, computer equipment, televisions and other accessories. So, what does this tell us?’

  He puts down the little console he’s been using to change the images and walks across the room.

  ‘Well, firstly, girls in this age group value motherhood a great deal and aspire to it in a lot of cases. We found many fantasies connected to caring and responsibility. Many girls carry a soft toy around with them on a daily basis. They put them in their school lockers, use them as key rings or attach them to rucksacks. We observed an emerging trend for girls to have rucksacks or small handbags which in themselves look like soft toys. This trend looks set to continue. Traditionally, Japanese culture favours the “cute”. Here in Europe, the use of soft toys was often combined with accessories and clothing derived from the aesthetic we would recognise as belonging to punk, or sub-cultural movements now known as post-punk and ska. In other cultures, notably in Japan and some Scandinavian cities, the soft toy would be juxtaposed with technology – mobile phones and MP3 players mainly – creating something of a mother-cyborg, a girl trying to embrace her natural urges as well as her urge to consume the latest products. Girls, then, will combine teenage rebellion and consumerism with a genuine – or in some cases ironic – nod to motherhood and caring. Soft, cute, lovable, huggable, dinky, sweet, tiny, adorable, baby, fragile. These are all positive words for this age group. On various levels we also found that these were words that girls would like to use about themselves. Are they just caring for their cute, miniature toys or do they identify with them as well? As I am sure you are aware, one of the only toy crazes ever to affect teenage girls was the Tamagochi craze of the 1990s. This addressed the teenage girl’s need to care for something, although there were problems with this craze, as it didn’t last. In friendship patterns, too, we observed a need to care, far more than a need to be cared for. “I want to be there for my friends when they need me” was a typical sentiment expressed by the girls in our sample.’

  Esther glances at me. ‘I am so bored I am going to kill myself,’ she whispers. Dan is busy taking frenzied notes. I look behind me and see Ben and Chloë, who both have expressions of extreme concentration, although Chloë is frowning.

  ‘An interesting fact about these girls is that they are noncompetitive, as a rule,’ Furlong says. ‘This may seem counterintuitive. Teenage girls are known for being bitchy, for bullying others and for going to all lengths to get a decent boyfriend. What our study shows, however, is that in terms of priorities, girls from all cultures placed friendship above all else. For them, friendship was about sharing items of clothing and make-up, telling secrets, trust and so on. For boys, friendship did not have the same priority level, and was based far more on competition and ‘fun’, thus the importance of videogames and sport for boys, these being the two most popular ways to combine competition and fun.

  ‘The word “sharing” was very important for girls. Hardly any placed any importance on the word “winning”. This is perhaps why toys based around competing or swapping have never taken off with girls in the same way. Girls do not want to be seen to be trying to be better than their friends. Thus the comment earlier from the subject who wanted to own as many Finbar toys as her friend and no more. Younger girls will swap and even squabble over items. Older girls, however, are more interested in lending, sharing and giving. These are the ways they gain acceptance in their peer groups. These are also the ways that products proliferate in this consumer group. Something that can be lent, given or shared – or is connected to lending, giving or sharing – will do well with these girls. Note how much marketing to this group emphasises sharing a drink or a portion of fries or a day at the beach. Of course, girls do compete – to be the thinnest or the most popular – but, crucially, they will never admit that they are engaged in competition. Girls will try to refine their identities to further their more general aims: to have important social relationships and find a “perfect man”. It is around these desires that product-gaps can certainly be found.’

  Furlong bounces on his toes for a couple of seconds and crosses the room again. The image from before is still on the screen and he points to the mobile phone.

  ‘Communication is also of vast importance to this group. Hotmail is a brand which has particular significance for them. MSN Messenger is something used by 79 per cent of girls who are connected to the Internet. Hotmail and its sub-brands, like MSN, have achieved the same global recognition as Coca Cola in less than five years. This is a very visible brand. We asked the girls what they liked about e-mail and instant messaging. “It’s easy.” “I can stay in touch with my friends when we’re not at school.” “No one can overhear an e-mail.” “My parents don’t know what I am doing and that’s cool.” These are just some of the responses. Mobile phones are very important to this age group. Closeness and telling secrets are such an important part of these girls’ experience that the family landline phone – often placed somewhere where the rest of the family can overhear – is just not good enough. Boys, traditionally lovers of gadgets, didn’t have the same recognition around phone and e-mail technology. Too tied to their game consoles as usual!

  ‘Over 50 per cent of the teenage girls in our study owned a mobile phone. SMS text messaging is the most popular way for these girls to keep in touch, however, with e-mail in second place. Communicating using text in this way reinforces the need girls have to exchange message
s perceived as ‘secret’. It is interesting to note the ways in which all teenagers use some form of code in their communications. This goes beyond what you may recognise as ‘text speak’ and into the heart of language itself and the way it is used. Words like ‘evil’ have positive and negative connotations for these teenagers. English-speaking kids have their own grammar, as well, inspired by American TV shows, videogames and pop music. “I’m so, like, over him,” is the way one teenage girl in our study articulated her dislike of the Harry Potter brand. Many teenagers in the study showed a profound level of brand and consumer awareness. They are aware of fads, phases and product cycles. “Move on”, “So last year”, “Get over it”, and “Bargain basement” were phrases with a high level of recognition and their own analogous uses within the language of these teens.

  ‘What I was asked to do here today was to present you with an overview of the results from our study that would be applicable to the market for toys and interactive entertainment products for teenage girls. As you know, not many brands from these categories currently have much success with teenage girls. The few that have achieved recognition with this group involve activities to do with exercise, karaoke, and updated versions of fashion crafts. These girls love making their own T-shirts, for example, or weaving friendship bracelets. As you know, the small company Lucky Dog has had a great success with its Friendship Loom, which girls can use to create friendship bracelets in a fraction of the time it would take to make them by hand. In fact, at the rate these things are selling, lots of little Asian children will probably be out of a job by the end of the year.’

  He laughs in the way people do when they have just made a slightly risqué joke. No one else in the room joins in, though. I’m trying to digest what he has said, and wondering whether it was as offensive as it sounded, when a chair scrapes at the back of the room. I look around. It’s Ben.

  ‘You disgust me,’ he says to Furlong, before leaving.

  A few minutes later, the rest of us are sent on a break. Dan, Esther, Hiro, Chloë and I all head for the West Wing kitchen, looking for Ben. It’s another hot afternoon and the still, thick air doesn’t clear my head at all as we walk around the main hall to the residential wings.

  Ben’s there, drinking black coffee. Hiro gives Ben an odd look that I can’t read and then puts on the kettle.

  ‘Vive la revolution,’ Chloë says to Ben in a rather intense way.

  He glares back at her. ‘Come on. I couldn’t bear any more of that. That guy could be straight out of ZoTech.’

  Now she visibly softens. ‘You know that’s not what I mean.’

  ‘What’s ZoTech?’ Esther asks. ‘Are they like the evil baddies in a game or something?’

  ‘Yeah, pretty much,’ Chloë says.

  ‘What’s the game?’ asks Dan.

  ‘It’s called The Sphere,’ says Ben. ‘It’s what we would be working on if we weren’t here.’

  ‘Are you having trouble, you know, switching it all off?’ I ask Chloë. ‘For all this teenage girl stuff, I mean.’

  She frowns and sips the coffee Hiro puts in front of her. ‘Yeah, totally. I mean, you get so … crazy with it. Up until this weekend we were just living in Terra all the time – that’s the game-world. Now … I don’t know. Planet Earth and all the fucked-up ideas people have about it. I don’t like it here as much.’

  ‘Terra,’ says Dan. ‘Earth.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s a bit obvious,’ Chloë says. ‘But it fits with the concept of the game.’

  ‘It’s an RPG?’ says Dan.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Ben.

  RPG. Role Playing Game. I think about the worlds in which I lost myself when my grandfather was so ill. I think of brightly coloured landscapes, somewhere beyond the past and the future, in which death was only temporary and in which your virtual friends fought by your side, everyone with different skills. A young kid with a big sword (like Dan’s drawings from the other day, but more), a female healer, a female mage, with dark powers. I ache, as I think of it. There’s something so comforting about being a hero in a fantasy world, with a big bag of chocolate raisins and lots of tea, still on the sofa at three in the morning.

  I hadn’t played any videogames at all when I discovered RPGs. I remember a Saturday, rainy and sad; I was standing in the local Woolworth’s, trying to choose something to go with the new console which I had bought, literally, to console myself. I remember thinking this, weirdly. Console. Console. As the words sing-songed in my head, and as the rain pounded the dirty south London street outside, I rejected game-concept after game-concept until there was only one game left I could buy. Ideas that would have been three or four years in the making, which had extensive marketing plans and favourable focus group results; I rejected them all in a second. Too American. Too childish. Not childish enough. I thought of Japanese otaku kids in their bedrooms, hiding from the world, and since this was closest to the experience I wanted to emulate, I picked the game that looked most like it would appeal to this kind of alienated, agoraphobic, sociophobic Japanese kid. I picked the game with the most sweet-shop colours – rubber-duck yellow, mint green, baby pinks and blues – and spiky-haired heroes and pictures of strange other-world animals on the back. Soon, I was so busy customising weapons and armour and learning to ride around on these strange yellow birds that I couldn’t worry any more. My world was now two-dimensional, fifteen inches squared, and I never wanted to switch it off.

  The others are still talking about Ben and Chloë’s game.

  ‘So what’s ZoTech’s evil mission?’ Dan asks. ‘Presumably they have one.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Chloë says. ‘It’s like …’

  ‘It’s the usual stuff about taking over the world,’ Ben interrupts. ‘ZoTech are this corrupt corporation who control Terra. They’ve developed these dangerous chemical weapons because they want to colonise space, but the weapons programme has unbalanced Terra. ZoTech don’t care about this very much. The natural resources on Terra are pretty much spent anyway, especially since ZoTech started mining for the Lost Elements and using them in their weapons technology …’

  ‘What are the Lost Elements?’ Hiro asks.

  ‘Fire, water, air, electricity, ice, earth, dreams, spirit and magic,’ Chloë says, in her gentle voice. ‘The story goes that humans living on Terra abused powers they were given at the dawn of time and as a result these powers have been taken away or hidden. Magic was the first to go, then spirit. It’s set in the future, obviously, and by this time all the natural elements are gone, too: ice, fire and air and so on. The game is called The Sphere because Terra has basically become just that: a central sphere and various interconnected bubbles in which people live and work. The Spheres are powered by dreams. Although the ability to dream was lost by humans a long time ago, one ancient mutant tribe still has the power. No one in Terra particularly cares that this tribe, the Maki, was captured by ZoTech long ago, and that its members are now bred like farm animals and forced into perpetual sleep, drugged in such a way that their dreams become even more powerful. This dream power is harnessed, and used as fuel for the spheres. When the lights flicker in the spheres, you know that one of the Maki has died, or woken up. If a Maki wakes up, he or she usually dies from the shock anyway, and the lights flicker even more.’

  ‘How does the game start?’ Dan asks.

  ‘One of the Maki has escaped,’ Chloë says. ‘He has been dreaming of this beautiful girl all his life, and at first, his mission is to escape from the Maki Dream Lab and find her. Of course, it turns out that the destiny of the escaped Maki and the girl from his dreams are intertwined. When he finds her, and she hears what has happened to him, they join forces to fight against ZoTech, using his special dream powers, and her magical healing powers. They meet more comrades along the way but I won’t say any more in case I spoil it …’

  ‘Is it pretty linear?’ asks Dan. ‘Or do you get to do your own stuff in the game-world?

  Chloë sips her coffee. ‘It’s not as nonli
near as we would have liked,’ she says. ‘It’s all been a bit of a nightmare, to be honest. Marketing people don’t like “nonlinear”. It’s a bit too challenging for them. They don’t want cult. They want mainstream. It’s the same old story.’ She sighs.

  ‘But what about the online games?’ Dan says. ‘You know, EverQuest and Ultima and all that …? They’re nonlinear, aren’t they? I was talking to that guy Kieran yesterday about all the virtual-world research his team are doing. Apparently they have a completely free reign to develop virtual products for these virtual worlds. I mean, PopCo must know that nonlinear environments are where it’s all happening, surely?’

  ‘Not in the console market, apparently,’ Chloë says.

  ‘Someone actually has a job here inventing virtual toys?’ I say, disbelievingly.

  The door squeaks open and Grace sticks her head around the door. ‘The second half’s started,’ she says. ‘I was told to come and find you.’

  ‘Shit. I wasn’t going to go back,’ Hiro says.

  ‘No, come on, we’d better go,’ says Chloë.

  Although I’ve been avoiding catching his eye, I now look at Ben. He briefly shifts his inky eyes to the left and then back to meet mine. He raises his thick eyebrows and I nod. Message received. We let everyone else filter out of the kitchen and then we follow them at a distance, going only as far as the archway before we double back and go to my room.

  He kisses me as soon as the door is closed, and we fall onto the bed, his wiry, strong arms pushing me down, and his hands removing only the most critical items of my clothing: knickers, T-shirt, bra. He leaves most of his clothes on, just pulling down his trousers at first, only pausing for a moment to put on a condom. This soon becomes blurry, unreal sex, perhaps the kind of sex videogame characters would see in their dreams. I am on my back on the bed, then, suddenly, on my front with my skirt up around my waist. Oh, God. I like this but is it too much, too soon? I can’t move anyway, so I let myself enjoy the sensation until it becomes overwhelming. Then I push Ben onto his back and climb on top of him, noticing the big scar breaking up the pattern of hair on his chest. I run my finger down it but he grabs my wrist and moves it away. Then I am on my back again and his thrusts are suddenly more violent. Blurry sex, with fingers and scratching and more hair-pulling and then it’s over, for both of us.