A Penthouse Made for Instagram
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
This penthouse is not real; rather it exists beyond reality. The fantasy it expresses is what we imagine luxury and the good life looks like, rather than how such a life actually looks. But now that this penthouse does physically exist—now I can go take pictures of myself in it and now that people are actively decorating their own luxury apartments to look like it—how can you say that it is not real? How can you claim that it does not accurately reflect what luxury and the good life really are?
This whole hot take is basically a regurgitation of some of Baudrillard's ideas btw. I keep coming back to his concept of hyperreality because it seems so relevant today, and this is an area that I hope to keep exploring. Ahh, if only I could reserve a photoshoot there...
Adam Curtis's "Hypernormalisation": https://thoughtmaybe.com/hypernormalisation/
Megalopolis: Contemporary Culutral Sensibilities By Celete Olalquiaga https://www.celesteolalquiaga.com/copia-de-megalopolis
Some great Baudrillard interviews and books here: http://www.researchpubs.com/list-of-publications/
I think about that quote a lot, it’s seared in my memory. At the time I remember it was a rallying cry, people used it to define themselves as in “the reality based community” online a lot back then.
But now that I am a little clearer on what he was actually saying, and how true it was, it’s taken on a darker tone.
I’m fairly sure that history will almost instantly forget them, because they exist to be disposable, to be replaced, and as interest and attention moves on their “mark” on history will be exceedingly shallow. Maybe that’s the difference between this constructed “reality” and... reality. Something real can be lasting, while this cotton candy version of reality only seems substantial from a certain angle, for a little while. It’s a kind of shallow “reality” for shallow people with minuscule attention spans.
In this case though, the set is not even a reproduction of anything real. It is just a construction of symbols that recreates what a "trendy millennial luxury penthouse" represents. Maybe not even that since the community itself defined which values a "trendy millennial luxury penthouse" should have and how certain symbols signal those values.
Take millennial pink. It's not a real thing. Millennials do not have some biological attraction to that specific shade. The color started as a way to show that you had a specific set of values, say: uniqueness and authenticity. At some point however the color came to stand-in for these values; I am unique and authentic because I own a millennial pink chaise. Now the color doesn't even convey that so much as the idea of millennial, or more likely some ironic take on the idea.
Influencers make an easy target. My point though was never that influencers are the problem, just as porn is not the problem, rather I think they both capture how we are moving farther towards a hyperreal existence. In my view, the "reality TV" realities they offer are different from more traditional media because they are not just simple reproductions and because, more and more, they are constructed in the air.
Are you seriously trying to present aspirational marketing as some new, "hyperreal" thing?
This is like the media comprehension version of "Each generation thinks it invented sex". We're not moving farther toward anything. We've been there since the nineteenth century.
I'm curious if, similar to the dislike many have for the unrealistic airbrushed images of the human form, we will arrive at a place where these sterile, fatastical spaces are no longer in vogue. In many ways, it encourages a similar level of unhealthy pursuit of the unattainable.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb-aesthetic-...
I've seen claims that Youtube makeup tutorials have effectively created a "look" of their own, too.
Instagram is no longer a platform for uploading amateur photos. It's become its own industry now and we should be treating it as such, and not just shaking our heads.
"The average person" doesn't make a living doing stealth advertising for lifestyle brands. This is a marketing service; it's not about accessibility.
This is the same thing. This is people deliberately creating an unrealistic scene and trying to play it off as real.
People can do whatever they want, but I'd much rather follow someone who showing their own home instead of faking it to this extent. (And that goes for the people who rent a hotel room or pose in furniture stores, too.)
If anything the NY Times have just bought into the owner's marketing hook, line and sinker and have regurgitated a press release on their behalf.
Or is this presented here for our daily social media 2 minutes' hate?
Advertising: It’s the same. But different. But still the same.
I imagine it was somewhat similarly weird when the first film companies were building studios, and the infrastructure for making movies.