#100: New idea trending

Here are the first two sentences of Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle: “In post-industrial societies where mass production and media predominate, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly experienced has been replaced with its representation in the form of images.” He wrote that in 1967! Imagine wh... See more

Those of us who participate in this dance understand it’s not necessarily building to anything. It’s odd to see movements like anti-capitalism and Catholicism treated with the same frivolity. They’re in, they’re out, you try them on like low-rise jeans. In the process, ideas get watered down.

Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle: “Debord introduced the concept of recuperation: the process by which subcultural ideas and images become commodified and reincorporated into mainstream society,” she writes. In other words, ideas that subvert the establishment tend to get adapted by the establishment in their most docile forms, and are thu... See more

In politics, cosplaying as the type of person you’d like people to think you are is the same thing as being that type of person. Plenty of us critique that sort of thing—call it electability politics—but when we absorb and regurgitate orthodoxy because we want to belong, to be centered, to be seen as moral and good, we’re performing the same trick.

Like clothes or memes or slang, we try ideas on for a while—put them in shareable graphics, temporarily link them in bio, express them via viral tweet or op-ed, maybe print them on a T-shirt—before putting them aside for something more relevant.

There are five stages of a fashion trend. First there is introduction, then rise, then acceptance, then decline, then finally obsolescence. By the final stages a trend is “considered outdated and out-of-fashion by mainstream fashion wearers, who have moved on to newer trends in the introduction or increase stages.” Typically we don’t think of ideas... See more

The ideas as expressed seem urgent. We weigh in, hearts pounding. And then nothing really happens beyond the superficial or representative. We move on—not from resolution, but from fatigue.

per Max Read, “The main purpose of social media is to call attention to yourself.” As he points out in this essay I still love, the fact that anyone can join social media and publish an opinion lends the industry a democratic air while it profits off of our every spare thought. We’re lulled into a stupor and call it participation. “Each new byte of... See more

What politicians promise in campaign speeches, for example, is laughably different from what they do when they’re elected into office, and that’s because political speeches are about signals. Like wearing a Nirvana t-shirt from Forever21, the signifier is more important than the object or act it signifies.

Online discourse has an impressive ability to die on the vine, reaching its apex of visibility—and value—before it’s put to any discernible use.