The Mystery of The New Hot Internet Girl: Charli XCX's "360" Music Video

Charli XCX "360" Music Video - YouTube

I’m a little late on this one, but this has easily become one of my favorite music videos of all time. I didn’t think straddling a dead guy on a stretcher could be such high art! What Charli does so brilliantly with this video is make fun of the audience for our arbitrary proclamation of the next hot internet girl. Whether that’s demarcating Julia Fox’s bleached eyebrows as “so c*nt” or, as Charli says in her lyrics, “that city sewer sl*t” vibe” as the uniform of the moment, it seems that deviations from the norm from people with enough confidence to own it suddenly become MOTHER.

While Charli embraces the fact that she’s one of the internet girls of the moment through her lyrics like “When you're in the mirror, you're just looking at me” and “I'm everywhere, I'm so Julia”, she also mocks the fact that she can do the dirtiest, most distasteful things and have people regard them as honorable. We’ve become cult followers, convincing ourselves we’re OBSESSSSSSEEED with any move that our favorite it-girls make. So back to straddling a dead guy on a stretcher… Charli can do just that, and disturb a wholesome family, and destroy cars, AND still feel like THE SHIT.

She brings in other famous it-girl faces to drive the message home - Chloe Sevigny can smoke a cig in a car and throw it anywhere she wants; Julia Fox can press the stop button on an old man running on a treadmill and make him face plant; And, Emma Chamberlain can steal an iced coffee out of the hands of an innocent pedestrian because she… wants to. People will bow down to it-girls, even going to the lengths of punching a hole in the wall with a chair so Charli can effortlessly walk through it. Charli simultaneously owns and revels in her it-girl status while poking fun at how ridiculous it is for culture to obsess over every move these it-girls make and try to emulate it.

This paradox is perfectly staged at the beginning of the video when the it-girls around the table are tasked with fulfilling the prophecy of finding the new hot internet girl. After they identify the waiter taking their order as the new random it girl of the moment, Rachel Sennott says my favorite line of the video - “totally waiter vibes”, humorously aiming at how anything can be turned into an aesthetic if the word ‘vibes’ proceeds it. Other it-girls chime in with Julia Fox telling the waiter to have a certain “je ne sais quoi”, (which is super helpful feedback) and Richie Shazam adding that you need to be “known but at the same time unknownable”. The comedy of how arbitrary the aesthetic and personality of it-girls have become shines through in this perfectly curated scene.

I love the fact that Charli is leaning into being ‘the moment’, but also laughing at the people who think there are any real qualifiers for having that status. Can’t wait for the album !!