“how do i attain this aesthetic” do ya’ll not know how to be yourselves like wtf lol
The way modern social media has reified “aesthetic” as something more than just people looking a certain way seems to have really fucked up a whole lot of people’s perceptions of what self-expression is and how to go about it, making it no longer just a matter of doing and being who you want but a performative presentation of the semi-fabricated self-as-object for consumption by some hypothetical audience.
Subculture has always been a thing but it began as a means of expressing and indicating shared ideas and interests, whereas now it seems commodified to the point where all any modern subcultures are expressing is what products and internet trends participants prefer to consume, and that’s not identity so much as marketing.
