005: Is anyone else haemorrhaging money?
How the internet made ostentation cool again.
This week’s topic is something we’ve both been wanting to write about for a while but have been struggling to put words to: money. More specifically, how everyone is affording all of this? (gestures wildly)
An increasing compulsion to spend money, and the anxiety around doing so, is something we’ve both experienced moving from Sydney (an expensive city) to London (a more expensive one). A friend summed up the phenomenon pretty well after a trip to New York (the most expensive of them all!!): “Every time I step outside and, like, breathe air, I spend $40 USD.”
Whether you’re scrolling past an teen influencer’s $1000+ outfit on TikTok, or contemplating the menu of the latest small plates restaurant on your ‘list’, or just making an innocent effort to go outside and touch grass ($10 for a little treat)... it can feel like the pressure to spend is insurmountable.
Is this because of intergenerational inequality and rising debt? Is it the housing crisis? Are all influencers and social media platforms in a conspiracy to accelerate lifestyle creep? Does everyone else feel like this or are we just too materialistic?! Let’s discuss…
What’s been on our minds this past fortnight…
Diana: For me, lifestyle creep—the compulsion to buy new stuff, or the perception that I need things that five minutes ago I would’ve considered luxuries—has really accelerated. It kicked off when I started following more influencers. I’ve always loved a good hate-follow, but until recently, I didn’t really follow any accounts that were aspirational. Then, when I moved to London—and this is maybe an embarrassing admission—I genuinely didn’t know how to dress in the cold. So I started following more Northern Hemisphere fashion influencers. Now, I still don’t know how to dress in the cold. But I’m plagued by deranged thoughts like, “I need a mohair balaclava.”
Divya: Yes! In the last two years or so I feel like we’ve seen the transition of social media to more and more explicitly… a marketplace. So many people’s feeds are just scrollable, aesthetic, deceptive billboards. Each minute of your attention is a little portal of opportunity for a brand to whisk you away to someone’s TikTok shop or LTK or Amazon Marketplace, right? We’re bombarded with sooo many recommendations, all the time.
I’ve spent a LOT of time on my phone lately post-surgery (my Screentime notifications are just taunts at this point) and I can feel myself wanting things I never have before. And for sure don’t need. I’ve had this tab for a 3-pack of special Korean exfoliating gloves open for days. Days!!
Diana: And I love a brain-soothing browse as much as anyone. But I do feel like the more we look to third parties to tell us what to wear or where to travel or what to order, then the less confidence we have in our own taste.
Divya: Yes. I’ve definitely had to ask myself, especially when I was working in fashion, whether I really liked something or I’d just seen it enough times on someone thin and photogenic. I did often expand my personal Overton Window beyond what I would have expected.
Diana: It makes me think of this article I read in the New York Times a while ago about ‘The Tyranny of the Best.’ Basically, it’s the idea that, because the internet has made reviews and recommendations so accessible (from average punters on Google reviews, to celebrity tastemakers like Goop), we now labour under the illusion that there’s a ‘best’ of everything. I do that, too! And I’m especially conscious of it when I’m traveling. Like, I need to know where the best cafe is in every city.
Which is all fine and probably means I drink better coffee. But I think the problem is when recommendations create desires, rather than helping us fulfil them. Rather than being like: I’m hungry, what do I feel like? I’m like: Apparently the croissants near here are the best. I have to have one! And to bring all that back to spending, I guess it makes our tastes and desires very susceptible to external influence.
Divya: And it goes back to what you said about following influencers—I think people forget that influencers make their actual living by encouraging you to want things you don’t have. Like, she’s not just a slightly cooler friend whose life you could almost have, if only you had more free time and better hair. She gets a direct kickback off of that multi-product hair tutorial!!
There was a really good Substack on this (beautifully titled ‘How the f💰💸k is everybody living like this?’) which used the example of those stretchy pants? I don’t know if you’ve seen them?
Diana: No, but I’m scared.
Divya: They are by a brand called High Sport and they are 860 USD!!! And these women in Whatsapp groups and comment threads are talking about wanting them, styling them, etc., like that’s just a normal thing to buy. I feel like we’re blurring the lines between what is a crazy luxury item that only 1% of the population could (should?) ever afford, and what is a normal thing to consider saving up for. Like, people are going into debt for those pants. It’s wild to me that that’s become a normal thing to covet.
Diana: I know it sounds counterintuitive but… I think people are compelled to spend more because there’s a cost of living crisis. Surely this is all a response to economic precarity?
Divya: They actually made that point in this Substack. Ok let me find the quote…
“I understand intimately how when you have no money and lots of debt, it is almost easier to spend money on things that you think will feel good in the short term, just to get by — clothes that will make you feel like the put-together career-person that you are, decor that’s going to make your workspace better so you can make more money, clothes for the life you’re going to have when you’re successful.”
I guess it’s that well-trodden idea that we spend on ‘small’ luxuries because the big necessities (houses etc) are out of reach. The latest Guardian Full Story podcast series—Who Screwed Millennials?—is very good on this.
But when it comes to those small luxuries… I think the issue is that some people are doing it from a place of ease and comfort. And some people are doing it knowing that it’s all of their disposable income… like, going into debt or putting themselves under a lot of financial strain.
Diana: It strikes me as weird and potentially dangerous that these two things are happening at the same time: society is becoming more unequal, and being seen to be ‘rich’ or engaging in ‘rich person’ indulgences like those crazy-expensive clothes and fancy holidays is so… normalised?
Divya: I guess when society was more stratified and we didn’t have a middle class or even an aspirational middle class—when there was no social mobility—being very rich was associated with greed and hoarding. But yeah, you’re right—I don’t think there’s as much of a stigma around being obscenely rich, and flaunting that, as there once was. At least, on social media. It’s funny because it’s also at a time where the ‘privilege’ conversation is very top of mind. Is it a reaction to that?
Diana: It’s like the aspiration is to have all the benefits of being rich without having to accept any kind of moral responsibility. I mean, in one way it’s a good thing that we’ve abandoned the idea of being a class traitor. As you said, in societies with no social mobility, you were just born into a class and trying to enjoy the lifestyles of a different one was seen as hubristic and, like, immoral. But I worry we’re just entrenching class divides by obscuring them. Like, to your point, these lifestyles only appear more accessible.
Divya: Yes, because they’re not actually. Of all the people who choose to buy the expensive pants, or take the multiple international holidays, because all of that just seems normal—some of them will come out of that unscathed, with intergenerational wealth propping them up, or because they’re in the minority of very high income earners. But others will do that knowing that that’s their savings, gone.
I guess that’s the trap of influencers being relatable online and seeming like your best friend or whatever… their whole career is made out of you trusting them and feeling like they’re just like you. There’s been some version of the pressure to Keep Up With the Joneses etc. for generations, but this isn’t just about comparing yourself to your neighbour anymore. You start to internalise totally unrealistic standards of, like, being in Italy five times a year.
Diana: I don’t know what the solution is… except to call it out? Like to recognise that luxuries are luxuries. And if I give myself a ‘little treat’ every single day then I need to recognise that’s not a treat—that’s become a necessity?
Divya: I would hate for the takeaway to be that you shouldn’t treat yourself though! Or should feel ashamed when you do. I think it’s more… to remember, in this online world which seems to spiral ever more and more out of touch with reality, that when that ‘treat’ is recommended to you—in the form of a pastry, or the exxy handbag—that you are allowed to excuse yourself from wanting it. It’s okay to be close enough to smell the best croissant in the city… and just keep walking?
OTHER FUN LINKS
Lauren Greenfield, a photographer, who does amazing work documenting shameless consumerism in the 21st Century. We’d love her take on TikTok and influencer culture.
When Melissa Broder (of The Pisces and Death Valley fame) writes, we read. The first two lines of her latest piece for Harper’s Bazaar on wellness culture are perfection: “It appears that the vagus nerve has hired a publicist. A brief foray on TikTok reveals that the previously introverted nerve, said to assuage anxiety when activated (a claim often made through injected lips in a hushed vocal fry) is having its day.”
Is there anything more to say? It’s Obviously the Phones.
What we’ve loved this past fortnight…
Diana
Object: Given the above musings, I decided to think about times I’ve stubbornly clung to the old and resisted the pressure to buy something new. So this is a shoutout to my corded headphones. I love not owning AirPods! The corded ones are less fiddly, harder to lose, cheaper to replace if you do. In this case, I don’t want the best.
Experience: I can’t remember the last time I read a contemporary book as good as The Bee Sting. It’s long (650 pages) and has lots of flourishes (whole sections without full stops) but it’s one of those rare books where every single technical choice serves the drama. It’s up there with The God of Small Things for an intricate, complicated book that you makes you want to applaud when you turn the last page. I now want to read Prophet Song, not only because Divya sang its praises in the last edition, but also because I find it impossible to imagine a novel being better or more Booker-worthy than The Bee Sting.
Taste: I’ve recently become a stock person. Amazing how far you can make a chicken carcass go! And with surprisingly little effort.
Divya
Object: I can’t in good faith recommend anything to you after this week’s discussion, so let’s both just admire how beautiful and unnecessary these egg cup plates by Henry Holland are. I will not be buying them, but I will respectfully ogle them.
Experience: Another book! This week, it’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, set during the Sri Lankan civil war, and written from the perspective of a man in the afterlife, who suspects he was murdered. Perhaps surprisingly, given that precis, it’s the funniest novel I’ve read in recent memory.
Taste: Moonlight, if ever you find yourself in the fairly specific situation of both being a) in Byron Bay and b) in the mood for delicious, buttery, finger-lime-squeezed scallops.
See you in two weeks!
Divya and Diana xx
@diana Can’t wait for u to read Prophet Song - I think it’s the most well written / executed book I’ve ever read 📚😎