It makes me feel like an insane cave-dwelling salamander man. It's all just empty symbols. It's all just gesturing towards ideas that only exist in the data center between the poster and the viewer. Everybody styles the same cheap crap in the same way to check the box on a commodified identity. Even the actual aesthetic property of the fashion is secondary to the performance of aesthetic. The function is to be itemized as this commodified identity more than living through its aspects. It's all social marketing, not conversation. And it works. It drowns out anyone who actually gives a shit about any of these things they're aping. I feel like I take these things too seriously and I'm making myself weirder by thinking about it so much, but I've realized authenticity is ultimately the only thing worth caring bout. Our present cultural landscape, because of how high-volume social media functions, is outright opposed to authenticity. All of this, the amount of social reward for this kind of empty performance, the amount of individual demand created for it by our media environment, is the atomized form of it. I'm going crazy. Does anyone actually do anything cool anymore?