Self-Made ft. Tara Isabella Burton: The History & Future of Self Curation

Today, self-creation is no longer something some of us can do to set ourselves apart from the people we see as the masses, the crowd, or ‘la foule.’ Instead, it has become something that all of us ‘must’ do in order to maintain our financial and social position in a culture that sees reality as up for grabs, to garner the attention central to so mu

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The Banality of Online Recommendation Culture

A recent surge of human-curated guidance is both a reaction against and an extension of the tyranny of algorithmic recommendations.

By Kyle Chayka

October 30, 2024

Illustration by Ariel Davis

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In the 2010s, affiliate marketing became a dominant strain of online business models. The Wirecutte... See more

Eichhorn uses the potent term “content capital”—a riff on Pierre Bourdieu’s “cultural capital”—to describe the way in which a fluency in posting online can determine the success, or even the existence, of an artist’s work.

“Cultural producers who, in the past, may have focused on writing books or producing films or making art must now also spend con... See more

Clearly the cultural pressure to achieve a unique self is old, strong, and not unique to hipsters, so why did the authenticity drive spin out of control after CE 2000? One possible reason is that the hundreds of studies on authenticity in tourism and subcultures have also been read and in many cases sponsored by business thinkers who directly influ... See more