essays i've read about consumer identity and pop culture

I did post this on tumblr a while ago but I wanted to put it here for posterity, partly because there are a couple of these that I still think about sometimes and partly because more than once I've wanted to send one to someone and lost the link. 

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over the past couple of days i've read some really interesting articles about brands, "lifestyle", consumer identity, etc., but found all of them to be kind of vague or too nonspecific and i chalked it up to me not really being part of these conversations before and therefore not being overly familiar with the context behind each term (like, i know what "lifestyle" is, but i don't know what "Lifestyle" is. same goes for words like vibe or mood or whatever) especially since they've been coined relatively recently, and have attempted to pinpoint a relatively amorphous cultural meaning. i also assumed these were written by marketers or cultural observers or those who have undergone relevant higher education to these fields and for them only, and gave it that concession as well, leaving wikipedia open in another tab.

anyway, i got to an article and realised every writer i had been reading was an american, living in a place like brooklyn, and talking about their specific cultural experiences as though they translate wholesale to the entire anglosphere (and by extension, western world) simply because these phenomena also presented themselves online.

if spending close to a decade on tumblr and reddit has taught me anything it's that posts of any kind need a giant made in america sticker smacked onto them. i cannot be conned into reading political or cultural theory just to find out it's all because of some election or marketing trend from some big city or another that should never hit my shores, but inevitably will, because media illiterates will see anything written in english that slightly expands their feeble scope of the world, and without considering nuance, thinking it to be enlightenment in its purest form, take it as dogma.

the articles i read (that i ended up sending to people- the rest are lost to my phone browser history, locked away in another room), in no particular order:

Mattel, Malibu Stacy, and the Dialectics of the Barbie Polemic

this went viral on tumblr and is about how marketing has infiltrated itself into our lives for us to align our culture with, rather than to add to it. it implores for us to become more critical of what we see instead of indulging in consumerism just because it is fun.

In Defence of Critique: Let People Enjoy Not Enjoying Things

by the same blogger, about why being critical about media is healthy, as no piece of media is apolitical. by analysing the messaging of media in a cultural context we are able to prevent ourselves from being sold to, manipulated, and/or deceived- and also to see the deeper beauty in the meaning of art, too.

I'm Real When I Shop My Face

an analysis on hyperpop and what it means in a cultural context as a reflection and subversion of the analytical, flawless world of consumer art in capitalist society. comes with a playlist!

Life After Lifestyle

capital L lifestyle. long as shit and read it when i was really tired but it's basically about how brands have shifted from adding to a culture to being the culture, now that brands are no longer involved in production logistics etc., they're just putting their names on products that already exist- people are getting excited for the culture surrounding the product, rather than the product itself (think supreme shirts).

https://href.li/?https://www.jennyodell.com/museumofcapitalism_freewatch.pdf

you know those instagram brands that sell "just pay shipping!" items and their whole shop is vaguely tailored to an "aesthetic" and they use bot accounts to dm you saying they want you to promote their brand and all that other crap???..... yeah anyway this person tried figuring out where an identical watch that appeared on many of these brands "for free" actually came from.

BLURRED VIBRATIONS

not the worst thing i've ever read. about "moods" and "vibes" and other vaguely-coined stuff, framing it around a movie about billie eilish. ultimately i took more pleasure in seeing that their dogshit nfts that were being spruiked every few paragraphs hadn't been sold once. in fact there's an "nft essay" on this website. i will never visit this stupid website again. essay is alright though and i assume there are people who will get more value out of it than i did.

After Authenticity

i read this this morning in a just-awoken brain fog but it begins with how "sellout culture" has pretty much disappeared, and with the rise of hipsterism in the early naughties we've drunk the "authenticity" branding coolaid. pairs nicely with the life after lifestyle article i posted earlier by the same author.

My partner's take on it: "This is what’s so astonishing about reading American political discourse where they try and diagnose “global populism” or “democracy in retreat” - they’re not entirely wrong but nevertheless they’ve completely to see that the crisis they’re experiencing isn’t by any means universal"

Thanks for reading! I've subscribed to the evilfemale substack since I've written this, and though our views and lifestyles differ slightly, I always enjoy what she has to say. As for the NFT essay I still think of it with scorn.