A twenty-something year-old's take on a twenty-something year-old magazine

I’m not the only twenty-something who's learned that the flats with the most maintenance problems are new builds, and the outfits that fall apart first are the ones fresh off the high street. Likewise, some tenements stand tall after a hundred years, and the longest lasting clothes in my wardrobe came from a charity shop with decades of wear and tear effortlessly brushed off. The past is a foreign country, one with a competitive marketplace, a high standard of craftsmanship, and something called 'value for money'.

Enter a certain free magazine. I wasn’t around at The Skinny’s launch – I was growing up in the suburbs, probably watching Doctor Who at that exact moment – but I imagine none of its founders could have predicted how anachronistic it might one day seem. In the 21 years since its launch, austerity, Brexit and COVID have taken their toll on the arts. Things were bad in Blairite Britain, but a community-minded project like The Skinny could organically thrive. Now? The country is shrinkflating, the internet is undergoing enshittification. New art from new places is the only tonic for late-stage capitalism.

Part of my job is proofreading almost everything that goes on theskinny.co.uk – years of our writers' work, their visions of Scotland and dreams for its future. I grieved when I thought that I, and all of my colleagues, would be out of a job. It’s wonderful that we’ve been given another chance, but that grief wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling, more like something I’ve been raised to expect.

Your twenties are hard; it's crushing to learn and relearn what the world really is and who you really are, no matter which way you romanticise it. You always feel behind, and often feel hopeless. But this month more than ever I’ve remembered the lesson that those articles taught; there are a hundred albums that will change your life, and you probably haven’t heard half of them yet. The most important film you will ever see is years away from being made. There are people out there right now that will become your closest friends, and you don’t even know they exist.

The Skinny won’t always be around – but while it's here, there are lessons to be found in its pages that might stick with you for the rest of your life.