62. Are we original and unique? Or is that the Internet's job.

Almost like a personal stylist and trend spotter that feeds you visuals all day every day.

Here’s a hard pill for me to swallow: we never really are original and we believe so deeply that we are. 

As I watch friends change and shift from one group to another, I see the patterns repeat. One guy begins to follow Aimé Leon Dore and starts wearing NB 550, starts carrying tote bags around and begins to drink speciality coffee. Another friend begins to become a barista, share videos of latte art on his story and read the Perfect Daily Grind and complain about coffee shops. Another one shifts his music taste to techno, shaves his eye brow, gets kinki tattoos and piercings and begins to take cool-kinki style blurred photos. 

This is not a judgement, it’s an observation.

We, I included, think we’re ourselves and original when in reality, what we’re doing is fitting into the social group we identify with at each moment. Mine has changed over the years as I look back, as does most people’s. I’m now in that writer with a newsletter who reads loads of books, drinks flat whites with oat milk, eats sourdough bread, wears baggy-straight trousers with hoodies and blazers, paired with running shoes as “ugly dad shoes” and lives in the countryside homesteading. It’s actually embarrassing when you say it out loud. I’m not original, I’m mixing my favourite groups of people into myself. My tastes are curated by the internet’s algorithms and I follow them blindly, filling my subconscious with images I collect each day and store somewhere. Then, when I go to Muji or to a vintage shop I tell myself that “I’m so lucky, I’ve been looking for this item forever!”, I buy it, feeding that aesthetic more and more, making it stronger and more my own. 

He who said that “he’d never wear Birkenstocks” now wears them with the type of trousers he also swore to never wear: baggy jeans. Mixed with that “posh academia” look depending on how he feels that morning. Is this normal? Don’t we all constantly change and evolve? Don’t we all feel the constant need to align our inner self with our outer self? Is it funny how with just a quick glimpse we can identify our peers by looking at their latest Instagram photos? It’s hilarious, but in some way natural nowadays. 

Never say never. I used to adore Justin Bieber in my early teens, then he was “uncool” so I stopped listening to him and then my rather cool guitar teacher and friend explained in detail why he loved Justin Bieber (and why I should too) so I gave him another chance, turns out he’s not that bad. 

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See you next Monday at 7:34 a.m.