You Are Not a Thought Daughter: On Intellectualism, Consumerism, and the Flattening of Identity
I’m extremely wary of the cult of contemporary self-making, and the fact that it’s become an expected part of life in the attention economy for middle-class workers.
From the college essay – the first time many of us are required to tell a selling story of ourselves in the service of social capital – to the dating website to Twitter or Instagram,... See more
From the college essay – the first time many of us are required to tell a selling story of ourselves in the service of social capital – to the dating website to Twitter or Instagram,... See more
Tara Isabella Burton • Self-Made ft. Tara Isabella Burton: The History & Future of Self Curation
- "the concrete practices of the tech industry now structure identity and individuality in ways that support its own hegemony. While it presents endless avenues for expression, it sees us as wholly reducible to market logic, where we are real to the degree that our consumption habits are rational. This vision of selfhood promotes uniformity and... See more
Emma Stamm • Who Can It Be Now — Real Life
There are plenty of well-documented reasons to distrust Instagram — the platform where one is never not branding, never not making Facebook money, never not giving Facebook one’s data — but most unnerving are the ways in which it has led me to distrust myself. After countless adventures through the black hole, my propensity to share, perform, and... See more