Trev is evolving | University’s Severance package | Rundle Mall fan dancer goes digital
This week, InSider questions a certain bee mascot’s metamorphosis, wonders what the University of Adelaide is trying to tell us and becomes one of Bobo’s first 200 followers.
You can’t bee what you can’t see
After questioning a performance of objectification at an International Women’s Day event last Friday, InSider scurried along to an IWD luncheon where our most hated mascot infiltrated the hive.
RAA’s Chief People Officer Laura Schonfeldt was on a panel addressing a room of SA’s business community and shared that naturally, she was on the stinging end of Trev fodder throughout the day.
“That’s our bee, if you haven’t seen Trev,” Schonfeldt told the room.
How could anyone miss him? Try as we might, there is no escaping the hideous thing. He’s only an affront on bus stops, trams, billboards and LinkedIn, jump-scaring South Australians everywhere.
“Trev came out and we said ‘oh my goodness he’s a white middle-aged bee man’!”
Schonfeldt put it mildly, because there is a visceral sense of dread seeing Trev for the first time. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: the half-man, half-bee, very hairy Trev is a slight against nature itself.
Trev is the name, horrifying is the game.
But then Schonfeldt said something so ominous it rocked InSider to the core.
“So you know, behind every great man there is a superpowered woman so I’m waiting for Bev, or whatever her name is going to be, standby,” she said.
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InSider is not unreasonable, we’ll give credit where credit is due because the RAA did win the Governor’s award for workplace gender equity at the end of last year and has a 50/50 gender split in its leadership team. But dare we say, Bev the Bee is feminism gone too far.
We couldn’t possibly handle two of them. And if the implication is that Bev is Trev’s girlfriend we must write the obvious: how could anyone love him?
It got us thinking though, what would a world with Bev instead of Trev look like?
Would she be a softer, perhaps even loveable, iteration of the mascot? Would she still, like her terrifying male counterpart, have eyebrows that would make Frida Kahlo weep? Would her wings shine brighter?
Not to worry, InSider is an equal opportunity hater.
If Bev, like many gender-swapped rebrands before, is slimmed down to lose any semblance of rotund bee pride and forced into pink Converse rather than black, we would be just as cruel.
University has Severance on the brain
As a lover of zippy social media content from 150-year-old tertiary institutions, InSider had to stop mid-doomscroll this week when @uniofadelaide posted a riff on the hit Apple TV show Severance.
The show, which stars former student Dichen Lachman, follows workers at a mysterious company that has pioneered a special chip that splits workers’ personalities in two: their normal self arrives at work, and another alternate personality clocks on, with neither retaining any memory of the other half.
In the Instagram post, university academic and bioengineer Dr Luis Toronjo-Urquiza broke down the real-life feasibility of the process, from suppression of the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex to preventing the brain from naturally rewiring — TLDR, it’s pretty much only possible in science fiction.
Which is a relief, because in the show, any efforts to undo the severance process – a dangerous, clandestine process known as ‘reintegration’ – can lead to the subjects bleeding from the nose, collapsing and even dying.
It’s still unclear what Severance is actually about, but InSider can only hope that it’s not a hidden metaphor for a big, complicated university merger.
Snaps for Bobo
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Also in our Instagram endeavours this week, we made a much more wholesome discovery that an Adelaide icon has joined the social media platform.
You’re not an Adelaideian if you don’t know who Bobo is. If you don’t remember her by name, then you will instantly recognise her as the adorable woman who dances in Rundle Mall with fans.
Bobo is in her early 70s and is still groovin’
Rain, hail or shine, Bobo moves with the wind in Rundle Mall with Chinese fans for her late husband and dancing partner Max Gordge. With every person who passes her and makes contact, she replies with a smile or a polite ‘thank you’, refusing to break her dance routine.
For the hardcore Bobo fan (of which we are guilty), it’s a struggle to know exactly when she’ll be dancing in Rundle Mall. She’s an anonymous girly and pops up when she pleases.
But fear no more, as she’s officially on Instagram fittingly under the handle @fan_lady_rundlemall. We hope she’ll constantly update us on her whereabouts and when we can find her next.
She’s only posted six things over two weeks, yet she’s already at 154 followers, a list we proudly joined. She only follows 15 people though – ah what it must be like to have such a decluttered feed, a peace that InSider will never know.
Perhaps the influencer life is Bobo’s next career move. What will be next, then? Maybe partnerships with every fan company? A makeup line exclusively at Sephora, or something even more original, a tequila brand? Who knows! Whatever happens in Bobo’s future, we hope she’ll be dancing her way through it.
The little parking fine that couldn’t
Redditors were left aggravated this week when the threat of a parking violation hit windscreens around town. The crime? Lacking in style.
A new streetwear clothing brand decided that scaring people with the black-and-white notice of defeat under your wiper was a great way to drum up interest in their online-only retail offering.
Imagine, you’re already having a bad day and one of these bad boys has been shoved on your dash. This picture: via Reddit
The post garnered 255 comments with the mood varying from bothered, with comments like “I’d rather have the fine” to a cocktail of victim blaming and missing the point; “I’m curious as to what you were wearing for someone to leave a note like that”.
The top comment really says it all: “Wow, what a brilliant first impression. Nothing screams ‘we’re marketing geniuses’ like pissing people off with a fake fine before they’ve even heard of your business.”
In fairness to the wannabe influencers behind New Realm Clo and this stunt, they did have a disclaimer that said “this is not a real parking violation, nor is this notice issued by or associated with the City of Adelaide or any official entity”.
What didn’t make sense to us though is people saying they found the notices on their cars that were parked at Tea Tree Plaza, not at spots actually in the City of Adelaide. Tea Tree Plaza falls under Tea Tree Gully Council. The marketing minds clearly aren’t very clued into council boundaries.
A City of Adelaide spokesperson did confirm to InSider that no complaints had been received by the council, nor had the council taken any action.
Looks like New Realm Clo, who clearly went to the school of any publicity is good publicity, got off with only a charge of internet hate comments.
