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koiketto

honestly i think the main problem with aesthetic subculture today as opposed to other subcultures is how much it focuses on appearance as opposed to beliefs or values. like, the way that people refer to their lifestyle as an "aesthetic" (ie concerned with beauty/appearance) should be pretty emblematic as to exactly what part of the culture is valued. and honestly i see this as a real pervasive problem that makes me kind of fucking mad.

i've already heard opinions like this tossed around and seen people been called "elitist" for this viewpoint but truthfully? i feel the way aesthetic culture stands right now is more elitist than anything else and frankly incredibly consumerist. the entire movement is based on appearance and cultivating a "look," and when you apply that that to a literal lifestyle, then it becomes inherently shallow. aesthetic culture is a fashion movement cosplaying as a culture, and one that requires money to properly emulate.

as someone who has put in effort to appear "dark academic," it takes money to buy enough aesthetic clothes to make aesthetic outfits. it's takes money to buy enough items to turn your room into an aesthetic space. aesthetic culture is inherently materialistic because it focuses so much on building a look. and there wouldn't be a problem with just having fun and trying to create a cool look for yourself if it didn't so persistently try to define itself as a culture. people will try to do things they associate with being "cottagecore" or "dark academia" without putting any thoughts behind the origins or values of these movements. when you try to emulate a look without putting any thought into values, it proves to be very limiting because you want to act in a way that helps your look, and no one's personality is entirely one aesthetic.

cottagecore is derived from freedom from societal constructs and an eco-conscious mentality, but most people into cottagecore think it's more "being soft and wearing pretty dresses and baking bread," essentially taking away most of the movement's value. the purpose of dark academia is to pursue knowledge and enlightenment through the humanities and arts, but people will take it as "looking cool and dark and mysterious" without actually reading works of art that inspire deep thought.

aesthetic culture is shallow, materialistic, and unsustainable, as the default approach to it is to simply emulate a "look" rather to put any deep thought behind a culture. everyone always acts like gen z are the new revolutionaries when frankly, our subcultures and countercultures don't even hold a candle to previous movements; especially those of the 50s and 60s (which, i remind you, was the generation of the hippie-to-reagan pipeline), and aesthetic culture is quite frankly the worst of it.

i'm not going to sit here and say aesthetic culture is inherently bad; obviously, practicing the values emphasized by these subcultures and counter movements brings value to the movement as a whole, but just going through the motions of something that looks pretty is shallow and limiting and frankly, pretty embarrassing.

tl;dr: aesthetic culture is cool if you try to actually find the value in what the aesthetic stands for and we should bring back the word "poser"