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two years pass...
epic tl;dr rant by ayesha siddiqi is vintage hipster studies
https://ayeshaasiddiqi.substack.com/p/memento-millenial?s=r
i don't agree with everything (probably most?) of what she says (at time she succumbs to what i feel are tired cliches about millenials and also blurring the boundaries between bush, obama era, and post-obama era. i'm also less sanguine about gen z) but she's so great at this type of stuff and it's a pleasure to skim through a master going off at length
first third is Sally Rooney discourse which is very skippable
quoting two long chunks i found provocative
When Millennials complain about Gen Z not being as pop culturally literate, I feel we canāt really blame them. They donāt have TV the way we did.Thereās so much I learned, even as an immigrant, through like, The Simpsons, because thatās what was on air after school. It forced us to become fluent in the perspectives and references of the generations preceding usāāalbeit the very narrow perspectives and references of upper middle class white men. And this is not a defense of that era, any movement diffusing its influence is an improvement. But there was some linearity to inheriting knowledge. Itās not like those same people arenāt still the ones writing the majority of TV. Only theyāre now showrunners telling their token staff writers of color to write dialogue in the style of Twitter threads. Which isnāt to discount all the real talent that managed to still break through from the internet, like Issa Rae, Quinta Brunson, Zack Fox, so many other creatives; itās to recognize that things didnāt magically get as easy for them as it may appear. Every person who originally found an audience online had to be more than original: they had to be talented in multiple creative fields simultaneously, and still only just made it by being at the right place at the right time. Gen Z has a completely different relationship to popular and digital culture. Those blonde TikTokers whose names are always some combination of two first names donāt represent Gen Z the way we were told Mischa Barton and Adam Brody ārepresentedā us. There are social media celebrities with millions of followers whose names no one reading this would recognize. What weāve finally reached now is the end of any possibility of monoculture.
The atomization of the cultural experience over the last two decades has significant consequences good and bad; itās the subject of my book. But what weāve gained is a generation relieved of a lot of bullshit and preciousness about aesthetics, with a greater awareness of how the digital can be just as fake if not faker than the mainstream. It started with the post hipster embrace of Lana Del Rey; itās ending with ambivalence over Sally Rooney. Itās the same authenticity test our generation applied to āindie musiciansā when the tide first started turning. With conversation around whether Rooneyās books are diverse enough, leftist enough, sincere enough.
Gen Z is better able to treat culture as a playground with less self-conscious dissonance because itās not as central to their identity formation as it was for us. For them, the digital is the mainstream. And itās disposable. Being āalternativeā doesnāt have the same currency since itās an identity accessible to anyone.
We only achieved these pyrrhic victories over ārepresentationā politics once they were more thoroughly divorced from actual political victories. And that scales across the culture industries. Hollywood productions are finally hiring fresh talent scouted online, but only once the streaming wars were already eroding union power. Media companies are hiring more writers of color, but once it was no longer a financially viable career. Itās visible across Instagram influencers desperately mining themselves for content, completely beholden to a platform they donāt own and an attention stream they canāt control. A few years after trans women began appearing in fashion magazines, the legislated violence against them has gained more ground. Isnāt it such a scam, replacing material assets with opportunities for clout for all different body types? A few years ago, being someone who creates social media for a living was being hailed as the new normal. But the full time influencer/content creator was just a trend that benefitted a handful, not a sea change. It didnāt represent the emergence of a new economy; it was the death throes of an old one. The actual legacy of the ācontent creatorā boom is the rise of individual traders on apps like Robin Hood, itās crypto culture and NFTs. Itās asset production in the age of hyper devaluation of labor. In short, itās the affirmation of the ability to āmake it big.ā
People are chasing what they mistake to be paradigm shifts in a more democratic direction, when theyāre just attempts to escape the strain of living as neoliberal subjects in failing states spiraling towards reactionary fascism. It was obvious back then too. The platformization of everything, the emergence of the āgigā economy, did not challenge old models of employment. It accelerated and entrenched wealth gaps by pretending there was an escape valve. And there was, for a few. Less than half of one percent of Youtubers make money. Even fewer make enough money to quit whatever else they may be doing or have to. Of all the top earning podcasts with big audiences, not a single one is new. Itās been the same top earning productions for a decade now. They were the exception not the rule. As a friend recently said to me, all pyramid schemes need to pay a few people tons of money to get free labor from everyone else. And thats what social media users do, they create value for free. Iām not saying social media is a pyramid scheme, Iām saying the same capitalism that exists off of it has been more effectively reproduced on it. Eventually, people will catch on to the fact that ādecentralizationā doesnāt solve the problems of centralization. It just spreads them across a more atomized landscape with less regulatory power. If it matches the timeline of when the pundits catch on to things I post theyāll write their op eds on the subject about five years from me saying this.
But if you ask me if I think we live in a worse world, I wouldnāt hesitate to say no. We live in a better one. The effect of the internet on the world doesnāt uniquely harm the world as much as it exposes and amplifies what was already wrong with it. Racism, sexism, misinformation. Sure, there is a misinformation crisis, but thatās exactly what Fox, CNN, and NYT produced in the lead up to the War on Terror too; they continue to produce that world. The internet accelerates and it fills in the gaps. Nothing thatās gotten worse in recent years was something new or unprecedentedāāit all had historical points of origin. Meanwhile, a lot of what is better about the world now is new. It is unprecedented. Weāve made so many gains.
And every genuine gain facilitated by social media I credit to people, not platforms. I credit it to people building digital alternatives to what was missing in the physical world; spheres of influence, access, connection, empowerment. I think of people who made it possible for sexual violence to have social consequence. I think of the students using Discord to organize school walkouts. I think of all the people getting help through therapists posting on Instagram and life coaches on Tiktok. Sure, the quality varies, but thatās true of the healthcare system too. ADHD and autism is under-diagnosed in girls and people of color. These individuals have been better able to access life improving guidance online. Some of the best culture writers today came up on tumblr and Twitter; we wouldāve missed out on so many valuable perspectives without them. Iām sure the people reading this can think of many more examples. The work I do now is with people who are trying to build better digital tools. Theyāre asking what furthers the public interest and how to meet needs of expression, connection, knowledge production and entertainment.
And to think amidst all this people want to talk about āindie sleazeā as an aspiration towards 2004 decadence rather than away from 2014 neuroticism. Itās so pathetic. Itās people wanting to discover the next ānormcoreā ahead of time. The āphenomenonā of indie sleaze is connected to us only in that its a reaction to the neuroses of painstainkingly tidy āmillenialā aesthetics. Pastels and mostera plants. Immaculate bathroom tiles with pristine ātop shelfsā of prestige beauty brands. āCleanā lines and āminimalismā. Ultra white Stan Smiths and Common Projects.Amongst all else Gen Z is dealing with Iām so thrilled theyāre not also pressed about getting their white shoes (Air Force 1s) dirty. āGeriatricā millennials misidentifying any of this as something that has to do with them are so desperate and arrogant. Itās likeā¦millennials, , stop flattering yourselves. No one wants to recreate your college era looks. You looked bad. We donāt need to look to Gen Z to represent nostalgia for our youth; we already embody it. Iām happy for us to retire with our romantic little novels and leave pop cultural relevance to those the coming era belongs to.
The people that canāt handle not being the most interesting people at a party are always the least interesting anyway. And the people most defensive of their views usually donāt have a very strong case for them. Whether itās about a particular cultural object being popular or not, or what that might mean.
Aesthetic analysis is about nothing deeper than consumption habits; but consumer habits reveal public appetites and the interests of capital and the state and that..can run deep.
― flopson, Saturday, 12 March 2022 18:47 (two years ago) link
Itās likeā¦millennials, , stop flattering yourselves. No one wants to recreate your college era looks. You looked bad. We donāt need to look to Gen Z to represent nostalgia for our youth; we already embody it. Iām happy for us to retire with our romantic little novels and leave pop cultural relevance to those the coming era belongs to.
it's like ... millennials, look at history and reflect on how cringe it was when the baby boomers were doing this (and probably still are tbh)
Aesthetic analysis is about nothing deeper than consumption habits; but consumer habits reveal public appetites and the interests of capital and the state and that..can run deep.
i still think it's cool that a lot of this "discourse" has entered the mainstream, as opposed to being cloistered in academia as it was when I was a teenager and reading Bourdieu et al in college. it's like being able to buy a new fleece sweatshirt with the image from Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures on it ... in that, while it's cool that it is readily accessible at discount prices in a size that fits my middle-aged body, it also is awkward in that what it represents has shifted a bit (you can get one in white ... also tie-dyed) and the "rigor" has lessened. There is way more writing (and other media) that talks about these issues that does so in a lazy way, or a non-intellectual/theory way. But that raises the question -- does it have to be rigorous? Does the Unknown Pleasures shirt have to be a black t-shirt, and can only be a black t-shirt, or maybe, a long-sleeved t-shirt, but not fleece, not in colors other than black, and not on clothing made for plus-sized women?
― sarahell, Saturday, 12 March 2022 20:05 (two years ago) link