Danielle Vermeer

The system itself — which, like so many corners of the American labor market, still assumes the support of a partner that does not work full-time outside of the home. If you have that support, you will excel. If you don’t, you either have to make enough money to buy it, or you will (perhaps in slow motion, but inevitably) drown.

What might be most impactful for students is a value shift away from today’s culture of waste, where we buy more clothes than ever but never keep them for long.

Signaling and counter-signaling are hidden methods of communicating with each other. We do it all the time as a way to “prove” we are who and what we claim to be.

Customers say they want to be ethical consumers, buying vintage and upcycling on Depop. Reformation calls itself the most sustainable option other than being naked, while Eileen Fisher has pledged to use “sustainable materials” in 100 percent of its products. Yet what sustainability actually means in this context has become increasingly nebulous. 

Automated curation will not replace human curators. Despite Skyscanner’s powerful algorithms, Jack’s Flight Club has 1,500,000+ members and ~$800,000 in revenue.

“When you look at the history of the internet,” says Jeremy Morris, associate professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “a lot of the early spaces for communities also became places where people would either trade or barter.”