New York: desperate people unconsciously swimming towards symbols of influence and power like insects in the countryside at night, hovering around a light.
One of the reasons I think cultural trends pass so quickly is because they're all so mediocre. Culture is just what’s was socially useful, and profitable to be, to promote, to project, to exemplify. From 2016, the expectation was that you were an activist— outspoken, even accusatory: the well-credentialed progressive crusader. Then, from about 2020 on, the ‘vibe shift’ happened, and it became much cooler to be transgressive, Nietzschean, ironic, whatever (we’ve all read the think pieces). But underneath, people aren't really changing; they're not better or worse; they probably haven’t actually changed core beliefs. They adopted opposing cultural modes at different times for the same thoughtless reasons; they were herded; it felt good. I think ‘libs’ and ‘trads’ for instance are just two different versions of ideology consumers—Pepsi and Coke.