Filling in the shipping details of my 21st issue of the Buffalo Zine, I thought about whether print media was really dying, as the pioneer of digital media Roger Fidler once argued. But after discovering that Jeff Bezos and his now wife Lauren Sanchez would be the main sponsors of this year’s MET Gala (an A-list exclusive costume party dress-up event held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York), instead of the usual Conde Nast, I started to think that maybe it’s not print media but the brand. Interestingly, Conde Nast (a global media company that owns Vogue, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Wired) was listed in second place to Bezos as gala sponsor. Quite a plot twist, considering that this brand has had a chokehold on all things cultural, fashionable and highclass for at least the last 30 years.
Back to answering my own question. No. I think print media is back, and only rising in popularity. But Conde Nast’s influence seems fleeting. So, I started to wonder: who dictates taste today? Who dictates authenticity and new cultural trends or desires? Does such a thing as authenticity still exist? For the next few pages you can explore me pondering on how influencers and independent print media create authenticity.
WHO DICTATES TASTE TODAY?
It’ll come to no surprise that social media radically shifted the dynamics of taste-making and fashion influencing through print media. But I’d argue that essentially, the vessel of the message hasn’t changed at all. As per Terry Gross’ remarks, Vogue was set up by a select few, self-appointed experts from the New York elite who one day said: “Here are the rules for being an elite person in New York City, an elite in America at the turn of the 20th century.” Seems familiar? Yeah, because today people’s voice and opinion is bought by brands to influence your consumption practices. Hence their name – influencers. Both influencers and vogue editors could be labelled as self-proclaimed fashion gurus that give advice. Myself included. Or maybe I’d fit into another category of influencers, those being niche, non-chalant and authentic. Those influencers present themselves as ordinary people disinterested in having their opinions be purchased for cultural influencing. At least that’s their online image.
More and more influencers are propagating the desire for authenticity, away from Pinterest and internet trends. The Internet’s gift of endless content variety has overwhelmed the consumer. If years prior it was cool to share and repost, today there is an increasing number of gatekeepers and niche micro-influencers that have come to hold greater value over the ‘trendy’ mainstream content producers. It seems that big fashion bosses have underestimated their micro-influencer dummies, as tension rises between the fashion empire and its minions, who started gaining more popularity than fashion empire megalodons like Vogue itself.
Recent research suggests that social media users trust people with less followers more than large companies, due to their increased brand and marketing awareness (here are two more research examples by Kim & Kim, 2021, and Walter et al., 2024). That’s probably one of the reasons why there’s a disconnect between large conglomerates like Conde Nast and its consumers. People are more likely to interact more with ads in micro (ordinary) influencers than those marketed in large brand empires.
With Anna Wintour stepping down as editor in chief, an era ends. We are observing what I can only describe as an attempt of independent print media revolution; underground culture rising like Lazarus into the ‘cool’ mainstream. With magazines like Buffalo zine opening up about the hardships of running a print magazine and challenging the glitzy image of fashion magazines, and with Violet Papers rearticulating our online consumption practices into tangible paper play, it is confident to say that authenticity//analogue//reality-based consumption is the new big thing.
I saw an instagram post by the mercer edition that said something along the lines of: taste is created over time and something you keep to yourself.
AUTHENTICITY? WHERE? HOW CAN I BUY SOME?
But in this social struggle for authenticity, is there a single truth? Two words. Cultural capital. Buying independent print media today is a luxury. It’s hard to know where to look since you can’t access their contents online. And, if you can afford to buy it, you feel good because only you among your many followers have exclusive access to knowledge you can flip through with your fingers and store on your shelf to gather dust. Actually, I’d say it’s not so much the content within the magazines that is appealing, as the aesthetically pleasing idea of what the print magazines represent for consumers today.
In our age of curation, it’s not difficult to imagine people performing authenticity through their sharing of their consumption practices. It’s no longer about dictating taste through literal command language and magazine recommendations but rather “this is what I’M CONSUMING and if you want to be cool like me you can too.” Consuming products for their social, economic or cultural value could be described as a form of conspicuous consumption, a term used to describe consumption patterns dictated by consumers’ desire to publicly stand-out and appear more important, or have a greater social status.
In another sense, popularizing analogue media is connected to nostalgia, a longing of a time, an idea of coolness- an aesthetic. Not in a sense of visual consistency but in an internet aesthetic sort of sense. Internet aesthetics are inconsistent in their visual language. People who want to emulate a certain vibe based it off of their own definition of what fits into this aesthetic. There is no distinct visual dictionary or obvious yes and no categories for aesthetics. Instead, internet aesthetics are categorized through repetitive association of cultural objects with hashtags and other platform-specific interface options. These categorizing tools help create a seemingly apparent connection between cultural objects and visual language, a set of feelings or vibe associated with these objects in groups or separately. To feel like you are part of an aesthetic, community or something bigger, it’s enough to buy into it.
Internet aesthetics are a visual expression of subcultural identity that is formed around fandom practices, materialized through appearance or ordinary objects, which eventually gain a symbolic meaning with repetitive association with an aesthetic. Hebdige (1991) wrote extensively on this. I can also recommend further readings by Sklar et al. (2022).
Historically, aesthetically consistent groups and subcultures, like hippies, punks and rockers, have represented proud underdogs, intentionally manifesting resistance to dominant cultural values and norms of the social ‘bourgeoise’ (for further reading please see Webb, 2020; Hebdige, 1991, Sklar et al., 2021). Aesthetics were used as overt tools of resistance to the mainstream ‘look’. Even though internet aesthetics don’t have a clear political agenda as subcultures, they nonetheless propel certain narratives through their image.
SOME FINAL THOUGHTS
Maybe subconsciously we want to distance ourselves from the overstimulating and overwhelming internet feed, or reject our responsibility as consumers and active members of society, by focusing on cosplaying authenticity? Even though aesthetic consumers might not consciously engage with politics through their consumption or association with the aesthetic, the aesthetics themselves have political implications. Regardless of intentions, internet aesthetics have political weight within the unique contexts that they are situated in- be it unique online interfaces or groups, or in real life.
Now, users and influencers are paid to advertise certain lifestyles and consumption practices to evoke an impression of authenticity which, as I’ve tried to explain, costs more these days than having a massive trust fund, apparently. Hence, the IDEA of a certain je ne sais quoi becomes linked to objects like symbols. So, by consuming independent print, you can suddenly transform yourself into an authentic cool person that stands out from the crowd of Conde Nast fashion-wanna-be zombies. At least that’s the message I’m reading.
And as for the MET Gala, themed “Costume Art,” many speculate to see lots of nude, or ‘naked’ dressing, and internal body focused fashion to flash paparazzi on the red
carpet to the MET this May. With Bezos’ sponsorship of a cultural event of such scale (need I remind you that ‘who wore what at the MET’ always comes up in the top 5 breaking news each May), I cannot help but question the authenticity and independence of cultural institutions. I mean, I understand that with decreased public funding of the cultural sector worldwide you’ll have connoisseur billionaires donate their wealth for clout, but what are the implications of this? How is culture and taste affected when the pillars those ideas stand on are bought out?
