As journalism becomes copywriting and the boundaries between marketing and entertainment become blurred, could we see a backlash against millennial dream-mongering?
Today’s slogans are you can be and have whatever you want, so long as you work hard to achieve your authentic dreams. But remember, to achieve these dreams you need to market yourself authentically. Never sell your dreams but selling yourself is key.
If you don’t have a side-hustle – you’ll fall behind. And in today’s concrete jungle, the hunter mindset is prized above the common good.
Today’s society is for hipsters – for trying so hard to appear effortless; for “ethical” consumerism that is obsessed with image.
It makes us pine for the sixties when flower power ruled, and the cool kids wanted to stick it to the man. Or even for the eighties and nineties when Ferris Bueller made slackerism chic and Nirvana made Oscar the Grouch, sleek.
The podcast Life Online and Death in Reality with Laurence Scott and Russell Brand discuss how neoliberalism has created the “erosion of public space that is free from commercial intent.”
When it’s harder to make a living than ever before, people are resorting to selling themselves to get by. Money has become the idol and if your identity can be shaped and shifted through Instagram, then all the better.
Scott paints the situation clearly when he said:
“My big hope for the next generation is that they’ll find all of this, slightly embarrassing… it may be a sort of reversion to a slackers 90s pendulum swing which is more of wanting out then this quite needy attention like maybe I’ll get sponsors if I get enough followers, maybe Starbucks will give me free coffee, if I mention them.”
Do you think the online sphere is becoming ridiculous? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
