a dude came into the library stoned out of his mind and was like, “do I need a library card to look at books?” And I said, “to take books home, yes. To look at them, no” and he looked so relieved. bro was staring at a fish encyclopedia for like an hour and then just left.
i think it is very depressing that like every aesthetic people try to emulate are of people doing things but they themselves are incapable of being somebody that does things… the mall goth 2005 aesthetic revived in 2022 but nobody goes to the mall to be annoying and weird and nobody lets themselves be cringe… the cottagecore aesthetic but nobody knows how to raise gardens or live self sufficiently … the dark academia aesthetic but nobody actually reads books…. The obsession of looking like you are a type of person who does something without actually doing anything … the Instagram effect
we need to bring back the word Poser
ohhhh my fucking god this isn’t about hipsters and mainstream culture or fucking whatever . This is about how we’re living in an age that is so dependent on social media identity that it is more important to curate yourself as someone who appears as though they are competent and substantial through their appearance rather than their actions . Where your identity and sense of self is entirely dependent on your consumption
to anyone who has a knee-jerk reaction to this, i encourage you to do two things, two very small things, to see whether they resonate:
1.) spend one month without publicly sharing any pictures of your outfits, home, whatever it is that you’ve curated to said aesthetic. absolutely catalog and record them if you like, but keep those pictures in your library- record that makeup look or outfit you like, show your irls, but don’t post them on social media. see if you feel hollow about it when no one is responding to it. see if it still feels good.
2.) pick up a private interest or hobby that you don’t share online. it can relate to your aesthetic! if you like vintage things, try out vintage photography or restoration of old items you thrift. if you like cottagecore, try growing some seedlings. read a lot of books. go through ancient geocities pages with tutorials and lists of resources. again, keep this off social media. don’t post about it. talk to your friends if you like, but don’t share it.
do you still feel enriched? do you still love these things you’re collecting? congratulations! this isn’t about you! you have built a sincere interest in something, and you can now broaden your horizons with more hobbies and interests related to your sincere aesthetic!
if you DO feel hollow, or you start to long for interaction, or you feel a loss of interest when you can’t post - if you find you miss seeing people praise your tastes, your curation, your collection- i encourage you to examine your relationship with social media. rinse and repeat until you’ve hit the above option and you feel good about doing things when no one is around to see them.
Shout out to Quinton Reviews for giving himself intense psychic damage to do the public duty of talking and archiving every aspect of
Dan Schneider’s fetish fueled bullshit
Imho the idea of ‘cruelty free’ products or food shouldn’t mean that nothing died to create it, but rather that anything and anyone involved in the creation process hasn’t been exploited or harmed.
Leather is good actually. Veganism isn’t the end all be all to morality and consumption. The issue isn’t that a chicken died for those nuggets, but that while the chicken was alive, it’s life fucking sucked. Vegan chocolate means little if the cocoa that made it was gathered by child slave labor.
Factory farms, abuses of the people who pick the fruit and vegetables we eat, the focus profit and productivity over all else - that’s the fucking issue here. It’s capitalism folks.
