Mimetic Desire 101 - Anti-Mimetic—A Field Guide to Mimetic Desire

Social media is a mimetic machine. What we typically call ‘social media’ is really social mediation – the mediation of desires. All day, every day, desires are being modelled to us through people we barely know. Mimetic desire is the hidden engine of these platforms.

The first step is to identify the models of desire who are influencing what you want. These are the people who serve as your models, or mediators, colouring what you consider to be desirable.

His ideas do not magically make us stop being mimetic. The mimetic theory gives us a framework to avoid situations that inspire debilitating desires; what type of person to avoid and who to keep close

Mimetic desire is the idea that people desire something because someone else desires it, or that one person's desire mimics another's . Concept developed by French philosopher René Girard, who observed that people's desires don't come from within, but rather they mimic what other people want.