When alumna Lucy Blakiston sent a text to her friends while sitting at the back of a lecture theatre a few years back, she never imagined it would lead to building a community of more than three million followers and a web series.

In fact, Lucy still can’t believe people want to interview her about it.

At the time, Lucy was studying for a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Media Studies at Te Herenga Waka, and found it was difficult to absorb all the information in her reference material.

“It felt like there were too many words and too much jargon. So I texted Ruby and Liv, my two best mates, and asked them if they wanted to start something called Shit you should care about, and luckily for me, they were into it, and now here we are.”

Shit You Should Care About, or SYSCA as it’s known, is an Instagram feed started by the three then students, Lucy, Ruby Edwards, and Olivia Mercer, in 2018—and it’s gone from small, to big, to huge in a very short time.

They use Instagram as a news channel to share simple, attention-grabbing coverage of international politics and social issues to people under 30—and those older folk who can handle a swear word or two—who want to know what’s going on in the world in a quick, easy, and accessible way.

But for the three alumnae, it’s not about individual fame—they’re not trying to be ‘influencers’ in the social media sense of the word.

“We made a conscious effort when we were starting SYSCA to keep our faces out of it, so there’s a beautiful divorce between me as a person and the platform,” says Lucy.

“People might feel like they know my voice or how I feel about things, which I love, but I’m certainly not an influencer.

“I guess what motivates me is there could be a future where more people are standing up and saying, ‘I don’t know about this but, damn, I want to know about this’ rather than us all pretending we know it all, because we just don’t.

“There’s an intense pressure to seem or to be insightful, but I think if we all spent a little less time trying to be insightful and a little more time just being human, then we could really get on with making the world—or at least the media industry—a little more accessible and understandable.”

Although Lucy was studying media, someone suggested not to work in the media because “no one makes any money”, which, she says, still influences her today.

But that was the motivation she needed, and she says maybe she wants to prove wrong whoever told her that. “Or maybe it was to advocate that we probably should figure out how to pay those who work in the media.”

The SYSCA team is finding some answers to that question and others as they’re being funded by NZ On Air to start Extremely Online, a web series and podcast they’re producing with Hex Work Productions that’s all about the weird corners of the internet. Extremely Online—made with Instagram as its primary distribution platform—is focused on what is happening on the internet. Each episode covers a different “freaky, intellectually and culturally fascinating part of life online”.

“It’s been so great to learn how to write, produce, envision, and create something so out of our comfort zones.” Lucy describes it as one of the biggest learning curves they’ve been on.

And to those still learning and hatching plans at the back of those lecture theatres, Lucy has some advice.

“If you think your plan is a good one, it is certainly worth giving it a go.

“And don’t listen to people who say you’ll lose credibility if you post about Harry Styles. You won’t.”