Chasing the ‘underground’
Our culture is obsessed with freshness - the idea of pulling brand-new aesthetics from the ‘underground’. As you descend down into the internet’s aesthetic well, the further you go, the more you believe that the originality of its characters contained within the well will rub off on you. Eventually one may reach the bottom, composed of the esoteric and whimsical. Yet, when saturated with enough esoteric-ethereal girls content and have cherry picked habits from niche subcultures, you can’t say that you feel more original than when you began scrolling. Instead, what is reinforced is your own inadequacy, brought to the forefront and held sharply in comparison to their glory. You resurface gripping tightly on a medallion of melancholy: a reward of devotion and pain, both stemming from a fundamentally passive position.
Terry Eagleton writes: ‘At the heart of power lies the contradictory phrase “free bondage”, of which the aesthetic is a vital symbol. The greater the freedom the deeper the bondage.’
Written to describe the 1800s, it still rings true now and the imaginary freedom to roam the internet’s layers does not liberate individuality. None of it can be retained because it is built on flat illusions and cannot reflect the cracks and wrinkles of the whole self.
The original relies on its predecessor
John Cale thought that, for The Velvet Underground, they were mixing folk rock with avant-garde classical music. Every sound that feels revolutionary was built on learning and tastefully stealing the structures of another, and the same can be said of visual art. Renaissance artists learnt in the shadow of a master painter for years in workshops, many stayed for ten to fifteen years. A pupil would start by tracing drawings and paintings before moving onto sketching live models. They could be original because they first looked at what came before. The word masterpiece stems from this system: the final work of an apprentice, presented to their guild for approval before they could earn independence.
What the internet does to influence
The internet fundamentally throws chronology into a blender. We consume references and internet aesthetics without knowledge of their roots, sidestepping nuance and important history. A sound or look arrives stripped of its predecessor, and we mistake the novelty of our encounter for the novelty of the thing itself. As Bowie noted, we are all thieves and it is our individual choice in what we steal, and the way we thread the pieces together, that creates something present and individual.
Yet, at the precise moment we should be turning inward to build the pathways that guide such choices, the internet pushes us obsessively outward, and we eagerly submit to surface level aesthetics with no supporting structure beneath them. Why is that?
As Eagleton observed, ‘submitting to authority is a source of delight for us’, and the power carried by a trend is no different. Its lack of depth and volatility grant it space to be filled with personal illusions, and hoping these will materialize, we quietly obey it.
The excitement of a sustained perspective
What excites someone is newness, rather than a refined look or sound. However, it is the expression of their interiority through familiar forms that can be described as originality.
Think of the online figures that have built strong enough communities to outlast the summer seasons’ virality. Their presence does not feel addictive in the way a trend does, because there are no gaps begging to be filled with our own projections. Everything is already on the table; you know what they will feed you, and you can sit down beside them as a companion and receive it. The table of viral trends, however niche, misses a person.
Internet aesthetics are glorified into unflawed completions, placing you in the position of a suffering courtly lover with unfulfillable expectations, or, more simply, in a state of constant hunger.
