valley of the dull
I want to preface this by saying that I am NOT an arbiter of taste or style or anything in that realm. It's just difficult not to notice the group of college kids sitting across me in this Starbucks and how they're all dripped like they just stepped out of the same hyper-curated zoomer Pinterest board. But the effect is strangely dull. What's meant to signal individuality ends up reading as imitation or repetition. Playing up the effort to look extremely cool, almost polished, but with zero sauce. Individuality today feels more like an idea than something we actually see. The concept of being “unique” still exists in language, but in practice, it has become increasingly difficult to identify. These days when you look around, people tend to appear strikingly similar, mirroring each other in style, habits, even behavior. Instead of standing out, most of us fall prey to quiet uniformity. But this shift isn't accidental. A big part of this comes from how we consume informat...