HOARDICULTURE 008
HOARDICULTURE is a series celebrating hoarding as a modern malady of collecting so much research and claiming it as a cultural trend.
“Hoardiculture: Collecting so much junk there are piles of random shit cluttering everywhere possible and then claiming it’s a cultural trend.”
(Urban Dictionary)
A selection of the past weeks’ insightful treasures, amassed from our constant research, that signal social-cultural change.
Artificial intelligence obstructs gender equality, according to two recent studies from Denmark and Norway. Women use ChatGPT between 16 and 20 percentage points less than their male peers—even when working the same jobs or studying the same subjects—due to a lack of AI experience and a self-imposed tech exile.
Nick Susi’s essay, The Multitude of Self (Atemporal zine, p. 15), dissects the fragmented, commodified self, tangled in the compression, dysmorphia and digiphrenia of identity.
032c Gallery’s inaugural exhibition, Productive Narcissism, explores the production of the contemporary persona in a society that has morphed “into an exhibition space.”
“Sorry—I’m Not Demure or Brat Enough” states Karen Laura in a piece decoding how social media and the perpetual renewal of cultural bandwagons fuel a FOMO-driven identity crisis: “there seems to be a constant unspoken pressure to conform to one aesthetic after another, forcing us to limit our self-expression and fit into the trendiest identity category.”
Data-wise, a trend (“de-influence”) is not a meme (“demure”).
In Resist Fashion Popcorn, Ilia-Sybil Sdralli calls for fashion brands to push back against an all-encompassing entertainment mentality and reinfuses “what’s missing from today’s zeitgeist: clever, knowledge-induced reflections on the past and fiercely passionate, delirious imagination to shape the future.”
Fashion brands are hitting the panic button—activating their “in case of emergency” modes to reclaim the OG fanbase, grow their users, and weaponise nostalgia.
Technology delivers nostalgia on demand. But nostalgia is also bidirectional, as Sean Monahan muses on our revivalist decade.
Hyperniche audiences hide in subcultural overlaps. Think Synth-Heads colliding with Medievalists in the realm of Medieval Techno, as observed by Rob Stevenson.
Last month, we unveiled The Sober Self & The Opulent Villain, an opinion piece on the battle where “the Opulent Villain cannot be defeated without a winning Sober Self proposition.” In the same vein, a conversation between journalist Hannah Steinkopf-Frank and book critic Becca Rothfeld dives into opulence, excess, and the liberation of maximalism.
British-Nigerian designer Yinka Ilori’s collaboration with The North Face is a celebration of chaos—transforming bad weather (rain, cold, storms) into resilient delight.
Intensifying the position of makeup as an artistic and romanticising act for consumers to escape our chaotic times, e.l.f. Cosmetics dropped “Get Ready With Music, The Album, a Soundtrack of Self-Expression”.
Startup Neko Health is already rewriting the future of preventive healthcare with the public launch of an AI-powered body scanner.
Reflecting on the 2019 discovery of an ancient Chinese immortality elixir, editor Manasee Wagh interrogates our modern race towards longevity—a race that seems destined for exclusionary progress.