Andrew Reeves
@reevesy
Andrew Reeves
A publication is not content it’s the exploration of an idea
The Distance Model of Status and Brands: Columbia Professor Silvia Bellezza came and spoke to us at Exposure.. It's the idea that old status signifiers used to go upmarket (more money, more access, more time) but when all of that has become democratized, our new model of status is about gaining distance from the mainstream. It so eloquently
... See moreThroughout the history of human civilization, luxury was premised on being expensive, meaning it resulted from investing an unreasonable amount of work, material or other scarce resources into the making of a thing.
But today’s rich [...] wear $500 cotton t-shirts with inscrutable references and visual motifs pulled from a smörgås-moodboard that
... See more
“Sludge” videos are characterized by the simultaneous playing of multiple clips at once — Family Guy, ASMR slime, and Subway Surfer are some of the most common.
It’s worth calling out the utility of this sludge. The purpose is to offer a more pleasing, dopamine-heavy augmentation to the original content. It’s a sugarcoat to make the “bland” go down.
The bottle service club today pitches Goffman’s “action” to the world’s new elite; it encourages the rich to flaunt their riches, to display wealth for display’s sake. Bottle service clubs are predicated on conspicuous consumption, a term coined, in 1899, by Thorstein Veblen, the quirky Norwegian American economist.
Ashley Mears • Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit
My overarching thesis is that we are at the early stages of a multi-decade super-cycle of retail empowerment driven by the fact that “consumption, culture and community” are now tradeable assets. Consumption is no longer ephemeral, but persistent. No longer private, but communal. No longer limitless, but scarce. Consumption is, for the first time,... See more
Richard Kim • Thoughts at the Intersection of Web3 and Creative Culture
Collapse of culture and commerce
Celebrity, even the modest sort that comes to writers, is an unhelpful exercise in self-consciousness. Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being ‘somebody,’ to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his over animation. One can either see or be seen.
... See more