Chronically Online
Today more than ever, we find ourselves in the ‘influencer era’—almost every piece of content we consume online is curated and created by content creators and their respective teams. Ultimately, this leads to a monotone, unoriginal intake of content and information from which we rarely benefit and often promotes non-viable ways of life.
Addison Rae photographed by Richard Kern, shared via Dazed © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
Finding healthy ways to navigate the social media landscape in 2024 has become quite tricky, as the majority of the content we consume encourages unrealistic ways of living. Performative behavior encapsulated as 'Day In My Life’ or ‘What I Eat In A Day’ TikToks contribute further to the viewer’s need to become a certain archetype.
At the moment, 70% of individuals using TikTok are between the ages of 18-34. These are adults in the beginning stages of setting up their future lives, the time where they create core habits and adapt lifestyle choices which stick with them forever. To an extent, they could be considered even more impressionable than teenagers. These audiences are consuming an obscene amount of unhealthy content, portraying unrealistic ways of life.
A big portion of this distorted online reality are “luxury” content creators. In approximately the past two years, this subcategory of fashion, beauty, and lifestyle content creators has established itself as one of the fastest-growing and most watched, especially among young women. Most of these individuals, showcasing opulent lifestyles (not attainable to 95% of the world's population), did not grow their audience by displaying their 9 to 5 corporate jobs. Rather, their growth can be attributed to more than just a well-rounded grasp of how the TikTok algorithm works.
One of the main reasons why social media holds such a high standing in entertainment today is because it enables access to immediate escapism. As social media and our access to it have developed into what it is today, passive forms of escapism have taken over almost everybody’s lives. In the simplest terms, by scrolling through Instagram or TikTok as a means of passing your time in a waiting room (while simultaneously replacing that as a coping mechanism for anxiety), we all engage in passive escapism.
Most of the time, the aforementioned content creators don’t provide any original content per se, but rather it’s the usual content within the corresponding niche, with a luxury take. A Chanel shopping vlog, a travel day to Gstaad or St-Tropez, or a casual stop at Van Cleef & Arpels during their daily vlogs are all examples of the luxury spin on usual lifestyle content. However, the precariousness of consuming such content lies in the very escapism which we all crave, or rather the glimpse into something unattainable.
Unattainability and exclusivity are what establish something as luxurious. This is exactly why a byproduct of the rise in luxury content is the increased demand for Hermès bags among viewers. These have always been exclusive, widely sought-after pieces in the luxury fashion industry, but the influence of TikTok has brought Hermès a whole new audience. Increased brand visibility, alongside numerous trends on TikTok, has restored the cultural significance of these pieces even outside the fashion industry. This can be observed with multiple luxury brands that rely on exclusivity as one of their core marketing strategies (Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe, etc).
Alarmingly, increased awareness around the existence of such products and lifestyles begins to fuel a detrimental need for becoming the archetype one observes daily on their phones. Social norms begin to disfigure, and suddenly an upper-middle-class woman expects a Birkin bag as a push present. An interesting example of this is the “Stay At Home Daughter” archetype, very often portrayed by young women in their late teens to early 20s on TikTok. Young women who continue to consume such content begin to have improbable expectations for their future, as well as begin to develop the most shallow aspects of their personalities.
Many lifestyle content creators promote mindful ways of spending your time such as reading, journaling, meditating, as well as being your most authentic self. Social media has always been, despite futile attempts, the embodiment of the most shallow features of humanity. Ironically enough, the constant need for authenticity in younger generations leads to its continuous erosion. Authenticity cannot coexist with superficiality. The more we continue to promote lifestyles full of superficial sources of dopamine, we begin to lose our humanity which is the source of our authenticity.
