Recently, I found myself thinking about things that should probably have nothing to do with each other: Dua Lipa’s seemingly endless wedding-related coverage, Kanye West walking around Art Basel, Formula 1 becoming the whole conversation for a week and then almost disappearing, the World Cup already turning into a global attention machine, luxury travel, celebrity lifestyles and the strange speed at which culture now appears, peaks, vanishes and gets replaced.
It feels as if nothing has enough time to become memory anymore. Everything becomes content first.
Social media has made visibility easier. That part is obvious. Artists, brands, institutions and individuals no longer need to wait for traditional gatekeepers in the same way. In many ways, this is a good thing. But I am less interested in what social media has done to visibility, and more interested in what it has done to desire.
The problem is not that people want success. People have always wanted success. They have always wanted money, beauty, admiration, recognition and a better life. Ambition is not new. What feels new is that millions of people now seem to want the same life: the same moodboards, the same hotels, the same weddings, the same summer, the same face, the same body, the same tables, the same “soft life,” the same language of abundance, freedom, beauty and wealth.
