PERFORMATIVE

Wired earbuds, a CD player, reading a book that may or may not be something akin to feminist literature, something you might associate with the preformative man, but really we all have fallen victim to creating our identity through consumerism. Capitalism has created a system where we constantly have to keep up with the new trends, a constant, overarching pressure through social media, peers, and people in general to buy, buy, buy, and constantly change our appearance to fit in to impress others. This is nothing new though, it is simply a sign of something that was always bound to happen, late-stage capitalism. Late stage capitalism by definition is “an advanced, highly inequitable phase of capitalism where market logic permeates all aspects of life, creating absurd, dystopian, or deeply unfair outcomes”  In our time now, everything has become privately owned and controlled by corporate overlords who can decide on a whim to remove your favorite movie or put your favorite podcast behind a paywall.  This, alongside the desire for people to revert back to a simpler time has led to a physical media revitalization. Physical media includes things like DVD’s, CD’s, records, and they are physical copies of music, TV shows, movies, and other types of content that you actually own as well as being able to listen whenever you want without needing to pay for the “luxury” of not hearing ads.  When everything is owned and privatized and taken away from the public, they can and will find a way to continue enjoying what they love.  Physical media, using simpler technology, like wired earbuds, and reading a book, even if it’s to impress somebody else, are all ways to protest the way that these corporations hold our access to art over our heads while simultaneously using our art to profit of of us, and feed their generative AI models that are destroying our environment and raising prices nationwide.  The wired earbuds and the CD’s, even though they are yours to fully own, and listen to, still feed into the capitalist market. CD and record prices are outrageous, though this may just be due to simple supply and demand.  Hyper-consumerism and a desire to be different in a society where everything is really one in the same, has created an epidemic of changing who you are to try and be different while simultaneously fitting in with the masses. We are all victims of creating our self image through a hyper-consumeristic lens, but is there any way to combat this, or is ultra curated senses of self our soon-to-be future?