Icon. Mogul. Global DJ. A triumvirate that’s feels about as overhyped and stale as the person it’s describing: Paris Hilton. On Monday, X (née Twitter) announced a collaboration with Hilton as a way to promote the platform’s live shopping feature. For a company losing revenue, users, and relevancy, I can’t imagine bringing in a nepo baby whose cultural cache peaked in 2003 will do much in the way of reviving anything. But, you know, good luck!
The two-year deal between X and 11:11, Hilton’s production company, will require the heiress to create four video programs per year for the site in hopes of boosting ad revenue and brand partnerships, and elevating X as an “everything app,” as Elon Musk has described it. Financial Times reported that the videos will focus on “topics such as Halloween, music, motherhood, and cooking.” Certainly seem like the topics someone who has no real focus would cover!
Hilton tweeted out, “Officially in my X era #Sliving,” along with an audio message over a still image to promote...her video deal. #Sliving is the “fetch” that Hilton is desperately trying to make happen—a portmanteau of “slaying” and “living your best life,” neither of which it seems like anyone making business deals with Musk’s company in 2023 is doing.
“While watching a livestream with Hilton on X, users will be able to browse through a catalog of products and then click through to the site to make a purchase via the service’s in-app browser,” Variety reported. If that sounds disastrously overwhelming to do all at once, considering Elon’s track record, it probably is! What is the opposite of #Sliving?
Linda Yaccarino, the ill-fated CEO of X, borrowed the hashtag for her own post announcing the collaboration, which included a montage of what seems to be non-X-generated footage of Hilton calling her an “Icon. Mogul. Global DJ.” I’m no film buff, but you’d think an original video content deal aimed at reviving and luring people to a platform would have, how should I say, original video content?
“The queen of pop culture, music, business, and TV...,” Yaccarino’s post begins. Despite having 16.6 million X followers, I don’t know if Hilton can lay claim to sovereignty in a single one of those verticals—pop culture, music, business, or TV—in 2023. In any case, what value do X followers even hold anymore?! It’s like living next door to a cemetery and saying you have a lot of neighbors.