The Aesthetic Lifestyle
When online and offline blur
As someone who regularly posts on social media about the value of a simple life, scrolls through “cozy core” aesthetic content and creates reels praising literature and life’s softer, quieter heroines, I could be said to fit into a niche, an aesthetic as you will. It’s something online life and social media promotes. From a marketing perspective, there’s nothing wrong with this.
What is strange is when this crosses over into real life. It’s inevitable, of course, that what we continually engage with virtually will affect our day-to-day lives, and it’s not odd to want your home, your wardrobe or your life to have a unified style or appearance. But there’s something surreal about Pinterest aesthetics like light academia or fairycore becoming a whole lifestyle.
Maybe this ties back to the issues that everyone has been discussing since the advent of online life, things like social media intensifying an already image-focused world and the dangers of virtual connections replacing real relationships. Since I find online life to be useful, I’d prefer not to jettison it completely, which means I have to deal with the disadvantages it brings.
All the same, I don’t want my life to be boiled down to an aesthetic. Sure, my Instagram feed or Substack could be described in those terms - you signed up for meditations on literature and thoughts on archaic ideas like virtue, not recipes or political analysis - but outside of that, in my actual embodied life, I don’t want to become a walking Pinterest board, my experiences just fodder for the ‘gram.
Yet it’s easy for that to happen. I get used to typing “subject of choice aesthetic” into the search bar and scrolling through curated content. Everything at my fingertips, every idea condensed into an infographic, every lifestyle distilled into a TikTok influencer aesthetic.
Real life isn’t that simple. Trying to live out an aesthetic or treating the influencer version of a philosophy doesn’t work out too well. Kinda like attempting to live by inspirational memes. It’s nice to see one pop up in your feed, but inadequate if taken as a complete concept.
Sometimes it’s nice to forget the aesthetic and the ‘gram and just take a picture for the fun of it, to remember a special moment without having to look perfect.
Sometimes it’s nice to go to a concert and forget to take photos because you’re wrapped up in the moment.
Sometimes it’s nice to stop scrolling and read a book and not care if it’s on-trend or would make a good post.
Really, the same sort of common sense ideas that people have been saying over the last few years as we sort out how we’re going to live today, with its unique challenges that, at the core, are the same as people have always faced.
Disconnect from the online world. Connect with the real world. Learn to focus moment-by-moment and appreciate little things.
Just simple stuff like that.