I am watching The Odyssey and I am crying. I don’t cry during the film; the tears come later, at home, while S* and I have our usual debriefing session. As usual, we light a cigarette by the kitchen window and prepare to dissect what we’ve consumed [*disclaimer: these discussions aren’t reserved for so-called art, commercial or otherwise; no form of media is safe from our verbosity — Love Island, The Odyssey, Community. A cigarette is not required either, just an element that allows us to time our conversation. A clock without hands].

Everything can be overthought if you commit to it. Genre, length, or substance are insignificant. I only care about what S* has to say. When I inhale, it’s his turn to speak, then mine. My lungs would complain if they had a voice, but I drown their objections with a glass of frozen water. Between poem/film comparisons, pretentious suggestions for improvement, and analyses of Nolan’s fears, I cry. Despite the safety of the ritual and the familiarity of the gestures and conversations, the words remain knotted somewhere in my throat. Their physicality hurts, and I can’t swallow. I retreat into myself, go silent, try to understand the feeling at the centre of the tangle. No matter, we’ll come back to it.

My mum comes to visit a few days later. I don’t often have guests [*travelling has become expensive, prices never really went down after COVID, and I’m the one who left — it’s only right that I’ll be the one to return]. When people stay with me, I feel responsible for their impressions of the city. I spend time putting together personalised city tours: bookshops for the former literature grad student, local hang-out spots for those who’d like to pretend they live here for a day.

She loves history, my mum, but she’s told me not to worry about taking her anywhere, that she’s come to see me, that the city will always be here as long as I stay. But we’ve never been to the Panthéon together, and it might just be what we need on a hot Parisian summer day: the refuge of a crypt’s cooling stone in the company of Émile Zola, Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas.

Walking through the corridors, reading the inscriptions, I feel the same way I did in the kitchen. Only this time I don’t cry. I turn to my mother and tell her about what happened and her eyes ask me “But why?”

Two days earlier, I couldn’t find the words to explain it to S* without feeling ridiculous. Perhaps I don’t have the vocabulary to express the emotion without resorting to the pedantry these subjects seem to demand. I know, however, that this experience is not uniquely mine. It connects me to the reader of these words, to Zola, Nolan and Homer. Remarkable as we think we are, we all eventually become aware of the same unbearable fact: we will die. This knowledge drives us to leave something behind: a sentence, a story, an image, an archive of our own. Some trace of having been here. We look for meaning in the words of another, while attempting to make something that might outlive us. Creation is a spectre that holds me in my solitude and keeps me company in this imposed nothingness.

Three thousand years ago, the words of an individual [*or a group of people, or orators, re-writers — the who is inconsequential, the desire to narrate is all-encompassing] told the story of Odysseus’ (mis)fortunes and trials on his journey home. Against the backdrop of adventure, the speaker gives voice to the same uncertainties we carry today: the need for the divine to provide moral grounding and meaning, the desire to be remembered, the torture of past mistakes, and the surprising domesticity of it all, intertwined with the most extraordinary events in life.

Two hundred years ago, Zola depicted a Paris similar to mine: messy, evolving, popular. The face he outlined with his pen is one I still recognise in the streets. The problems he uncovered have not disappeared. Art is communion, and it is company. It forces me to look within, and reconcile myself with the transitoriness of my being here. It does not answer the questions that haunt me, but it brings me face to face with people who are long gone. Through me, through you, their words continue to exist. The work is read, and they aren’t alone.

Homer could have never imagined me crying in my kitchen in Paris after watching a director’s interpretation of his narrative. Zola walked the same streets of Paris or, at least, streets not entirely dissimilar to mine.

I find consolation in knowing that none of us are as exceptional as we’d like to believe. We have always had the same questions and responded in similar ways: writing them down, dissecting them together. The flesh is gone, but the ideas remain as long as we exist to read them.

The underlying idea is that I don’t use my TikTok account in the same way I once used Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. I’m old enough to remember when these platforms first started, and when we created accounts before we had fully grasped what they were for, or what the long-term consequences of sharing our lives online might be.

Like many of my friends growing up, I posted every photo from an average night out, unfiltered and uncurated but with a clear purpose: to let others know I was out, having fun, and that, most importantly, I had friends. I also shared updates about where I would be going to university and when the academic year would start. At the time, I gave it little thought. But the flow of likes and the curiosity expressed in the comments just felt gratifying. It made me feel like people cared and like they wanted to follow my life. I got all the attention and validation that my sixteen-year-old brain needed. It was an addictive, dopamine-inducing, and ego-boosting experience that I didn’t want to give up. And yet, despite all this, I struggled with social media’s never-ending demands, often taking weeks-long breaks before inevitably coming back.

With TikTok, however, the dynamic was different. I’ve never wanted my friends to follow me, nor am I particularly interested in what they post. I’ve no desire to upload a day-in-the-life mini-vlog or give any clues as to what my real life looks like outside the platform. Unlike my other experiences with social media, I’ve always been aware I have no control over who can access the content I share on TikTok. Its algorithm makes it impossible to predict whether a video will be seen by two people or by thousands—an unpredictability I’m not comfortable with and that pushes me to want to restrict access to my real self.

There was, however, a period during which I consistently tried to create BookTok content. I shared book hauls, discussed recent reads, and even put out videos that attempted to make literary analysis accessible. In these videos, I channelled and shared a lifelong passion, but my enthusiasm for this type of content quickly shrank. The algorithm imposed excessive demands, wordlessly but loudly showing me that I had to post more to be “visible.” I always knew that I didn’t want to produce for the sake of producing, but the bigger issue, for me, was that uploading that content meant admitting I was actively participating (and promoting) the very neoliberal dynamics I wanted to resist: unrestrained consumerism, reducing complex ideas to bite-sized fragments to make them palatable to the 20-second attention span brain, marketing myself and, ultimately, becoming a product. In accepting these conditions, I was not only adapting to the logic of the platform, but actively reinforcing it.

I stopped creating and logged in only to watch others’ content to stop thinking. So, yes, I am far from being “offline”, but I’m no longer online in the same way I once was. Contradictory as this might seem, I take my own incongruity as an opportunity to interrogate myself, try to see where all of this originates and what it might reveal about possible ways forward.

Many others are talking about logging off and turning to analogue media, but I’d like to think about it from my own lens. I’ve read pros and cons and praises and critiques and, while there are valid critiques of what some describe as a “performative” approach to disconnecting, we shouldn’t ignore the tensions and questions that this same performativity reveals:

1. Why this change, and why now? Why would people want to escape the same platforms that, until recently, seemed essential to their everyday lives?

2. How can we talk about these experiences differently to resist corporatocracy’s attempts to capitalise on our renewed interest in the real world?

I Am Yours to Consume

Being offline is no longer possible. I may want to rely less on my phone or be more conscious of my screen time, but the world before smartphones we’d like to come back to no longer exists. We look at the physicality of that past and admire how rich in in-person activities it was, our eyes veiled with the nostalgia of a present characterised by the gradual dematerialisation of our lives. Our livelihoods now depend on whether we see a job offer at the right moment; securing an apartment is already challenging enough, but it becomes nearly impossible without access to the very platforms that place us in direct competition with hundreds of others. Our finances are in the palm of our hands — a mere swipe away from paying the bills. We depend on our phones in ways that aren’t always entirely visible, so making the distinction between being offline and logging off is not only important for our peace of mind but also for understanding how we can change our behaviour.

Understanding these nuances, and distinguishing between what we genuinely need and what we have learned to want, can help us become more critical of our own habits and patterns. Social media platforms are designed to exploit our emotions and vulnerabilities, and the less aware we are of the strategies they use, the easier it is for those strategies to shape our behaviour. One of the most evident and successful ways in which they do so is by transferring a substantial part of our social interactions into this realm of non-space and non-time: the Internet.

It’s never been easier to keep up with our friends or even those we’ve only met once; to make distance more bearable through a simple video call after moving abroad; or to share a random thought with close friends via text in the middle of the day. Giving up this illusion of constant closeness can feel like isolation, as the fear of being replaced or forgotten quickly creeps in. I used to believe that leaving social media would translate to no longer being part of my friends’ lives. But the same could be said about my decision to move to another country. In both cases, I had to understand that I would no longer occupy the same space in their lives, and that maintaining those relationships would require deliberate effort.

Thanks to social media, we not only feel as though we’re omnipresent; we are expected to be. Otherwise, the fear of missing out on others’ achievements and even intimate moments takes over. The reality is that, while the Internet has become essential to many aspects of our lives, social media is not. What we are now witnessing may simply be the next stage in what I’d call a form of collective consumer burnout: the voyeuristic patterns we have adopted are beginning to exhaust us, as the constant pressure to watch, share, and keep up becomes increasingly difficult to sustain.

What was once an effective communication tool for bridging distances has turned into an imposition to be constantly visible. Our profiles have become windows into our alter egos. Through these idealised versions of ourselves, we capture the moments we deem worthy of sharing and emphasise only the traits we want others to see. We reduce ourselves to one-dimensional representations and cease to exist as we are, becoming instead projections of who we would like to be. There is no real subject behind the artifice, only a collection of carefully selected features that we hope will lead others back to the “real” us. This process is reminiscent of Jean Baudrillard’s concept of “hyperreality,” developed in his 1981 essay Simulation and Simulacra. Baudrillard describes a process involving “the generation by models of a real without origin.” Much like the representations we construct through our online profiles, the person I portray no longer necessarily leads back to me. Although this persona bears my likeness, it is not a faithful representation of who I have ever been. For many of us, social media platforms have created the possibility of constructing alternate versions of ourselves: more intelligent, more creative, more beautiful, and seemingly endowed with more fulfilling lives.

But what happens when the illusion we have created begins to crumble? What happens when an intense discomfort takes its place? How can our sense of identity be reconstructed when we’ve not learnt to exist outside the non-space and non-time of the Internet? Who am I if I am not perceived as being?

We try to work our way around these questions by quantifying our existence: we track our daily habits, using apps that help us understand how many hours of sleep we got, how many calories our food has, and how many minutes of exercise we managed to cram in. We become real only when we can measure our worth with predetermined metrics. What once started as something we did for ourselves is now something to keep us addicted to producing our online personas, ready to be consumed.

We are productive machines in which numbers determine our self-worth. Consciously or not, we are constantly being pushed towards becoming the ultimate, optimised versions of ourselves: sleep better, but less; meditate so that you can keep going in times of stress; read more books so you can log them on an app. In seeking new ways to portray ourselves as the people we would like to be, our identities cease to be integral to who we are—individual and independent of the market—and become products in themselves.

When we first started signing up to social media, we did so with curiosity and excitement, but with the advent of the smartphone, socialisation moments that used to happen sporadically became ubiquitous. At first, we made plans to log in to MSN on the family computer to catch up with friends. Then, we had to be accessible at all times through messaging apps. Finally, there was no need to speak: the few photos we’d post on our stories would serve to update others on what we were up to.

Many others have talked about how our attention is now more valuable than ever. In 24/7: Late Capitalism and the End of Sleep, Jonathan Crary echoes the words of Dr Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011: “The dominant global corporations would be those that succeed in maximising the number of ‘eyeballs’ they could consistently engage and control.” When Schmidt made this observation, the pervasiveness of (social) media platforms was not yet a reality, just a capitalist dream in the making. History, however, has proven him right, and those “dominant global corporations” have succeeded in their quest for our eyeballs. At the time of writing in 2013, Crary pushed this vision further, adding: “Corporate success will also be measured by the amount of information that can be extracted, accumulated, and used to predict and modify the behaviour of any individual with a digital identity. One of the goals of Google, Facebook, and other enterprises […] is to normalise and make indispensable, as Deleuze outlines, the idea of a continuous interface—not literally seamless, but a relatively unbroken engagement with illuminated screens of diverse kinds that unremittingly demand interest or response” (emphasis mine).

We are effectively both the consumers and the goods to be consumed. Trying to resist this reality would be futile, but I refuse to give these structures more power than they ought to have. I refuse to flatten my identity to cater to the algorithmic whims of technological corporatocracy and, above all, I refuse to talk of people’s desire to exist outside of those boundaries as a “trend.” To do so would be to accept the same language that is imposed on us by the same companies that, seeing the pushback to digital-first-everything, now want to capitalise on our online exhaustion.

Two months ago, Forbes published an article titled “Why Offline Is the New Luxury.” The author provocatively claims that existing outside of the algorithm is a privilege. On that, we agree. He continues to talk about how “offline experiences will go mainstream the same way vinyl records did: as a niche luxury marketed as authenticity.” Three lines below, he adds: “Brands are tapping into the cultural capital of being offline.” I will ignore the fact that he is using the term “cultural capital” completely wrong (sorry, Bourdieu), and that he must be assuming (in a clearly incorrect, “cool marketing kid” way) that it means something similar to “trend,” or “aesthetic.” He then continues to list brand initiatives in the “real world:” book clubs, cafés, and pop-ups, and ends with one of my particular triggers, the claim that “physical books and intellectualism are the ultimate status symbols.” Beyond the tone, the imprecision of the article, and the way it employs sociological terms while stripping them of their meaning, the text points to something key: the commodification of free time, hobbies, and third spaces.

When we post about the things we enjoy, brands are listening and strategising how to turn this offline behaviour into direct sales. Recently, Coach launched their “Explore Your Story” campaign on social media. An unknown poster captured a seemingly unaware Elle Fanning reading Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility in the subway and, suddenly, comments started pouring in. At first, users believed the content to be organic because, after all, it’s not all that uncommon to bump into actors in NYC. However, it was later revealed that it was all part of a book charm collection whose campaign claims to invite “readers to think about storytelling as both a personal and cultural anchor.” Regardless of how they attempt to frame this as a conversation to rethink “how books continue to shape identity, creativity and community in a landscape dominated by short-form media and digital acceleration” (my emphasis), the objective is clear: to differentiate Coach from its competitors by pioneering corporate presence in the offline world and financially exploiting third spaces.

WGSN, a leading global trend forecasting agency, recently published a report under the name “New brand strategy: the new consumer hang-out spot.” In it, they state: “Consumers will be craving more connection in 2026, making IRL third spaces more important. How can your brand provide opportunities for socialising, and leverage them to aid product discovery and conversion in an organic way?” (my emphasis). Again, this is nonsensical and oxymoronic fluff. A third space is, broadly speaking, a space where we’re allowed to exist without an obligation to consume, or where consumption becomes secondary. Its primary purpose is to bring people together and foster community. Third spaces provide opportunities to share knowledge, spend time with others, and develop a sense of belonging. They are enriching and essential to the social and communal life of any community.

Brand-led initiatives are not concerned with fostering these communities so much as with converting the affective value of belonging into economic value. The same brands that position themselves as culturally aware—claiming that “books continue to shape identity, creativity and community”—are, in practice, expanding their sales channels while preemptively compensating for potential losses among consumers growing tired of “short-form media and digital acceleration.”

Our attention is valuable; that much is obvious. That we are not directing it towards the right things is also evident. I am ashamed to admit the number of hours I have wasted scrolling through my FYP, bored by the same formulaic content and yet unable to look away. Everything else requires effort, and sometimes it is easier simply to let my brain “rot.” But alongside that shame is the fear that I am wasting not only hours, but my life, on a social media feed. I am scared for future generations who will never know anything other than this reality, and of what it might do to their brains.

But what if resisting the algorithm did not mean picking up new hobbies only to document them and turn them into inspiration for others? What if it meant making intentional choices every day in solitude, without expecting anyone else to see, share, or validate them?

In How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Jenny Odell poignantly writes: “Nothing is harder than to do nothing. In a world where productivity determines our value, many of us find our every last minute captured, optimised, or appropriated as a financial resource by the technologies we use daily.” We have forgotten how to be bored, opting instead for constant waves of stimulation and never allowing our brains to be still—it is almost as if we were afraid of spending time with ourselves.

These past few days, I have been looking for content that offers solutions to ‘brain rot’ to write this essay. One of these videos recommends “ambient learning:” “Keep your brain engaged and stimulated as much as you can. When I’m on the go, I’m listening to a podcast about anything, ‘cause I’m learning about effective dialogue and just generally learning about the world, which makes me a more engaged global citizen.” But why are we so afraid of silence? Why are we afraid of stepping outside this constant process of becoming better, more productive versions of ourselves? Does listening to podcasts really make us “more engaged global citizens”?

A great deal has been written about the fact that we were never meant to process as much information as we currently do. Again, this is not an argument for becoming oblivious to the world or choosing to disengage from it. Rather, it is an opportunity to be more intentional about how we listen to the world and where we direct our (precious) attention. In her book, Odell recalls the words of Gilles Deleuze, who wrote in 1985:

“We’re riddled with pointless talk, insane quantities of words and images. Stupidity’s never blind or mute. So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves; what a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying.” (my emphasis)

Non-Conclusions

I haven’t reached a conclusion about our use of social media. I’ve been disenchanted by it for a long time, all while recognising its usefulness. I look around and see its dangers: how it has contributed to the rise of fascism in the twenty-first century, how messages of hatred are simplified and spread across borders and languages, and how it contributes to the flattening of thought. I’d like to advocate for a healthier way of engaging with social media, but I don’t know how to do so on the very platforms that turn us into products to be consumed and benefit from our ignorance.

It has taken me months to write this essay. Not because the ideas were unclear in my mind, but because when things got busy at work, it was still easier to open TikTok and “turn my brain off.” I don’t have a solution, but if I can recommend something, it is boredom, and learning to live without witnesses to our existence. To get bored is to get creative, to think, to stimulate our minds without needing the input of another. To live without posting evidence of our lives is to exist for ourselves: to learn to know ourselves before needing to craft an identity separate from who we are, and to let ourselves simply be.

Going back to the beginning: How can our sense of identity be reconstructed when we’ve not learnt to exist outside the non-space and non-time of the Internet? Who am I if I am not perceived as being?

2025 has been good to me in many respects - except for reading. I’ve spent nearly a year reading very little, making repeated attempts to engage with different books but often failing to finish them. Sometimes, when I did manage to read, my choices were predominantly non-fiction. I find it easier to actively engage with the text, and I enjoy the almost-effortless process of learning. With fiction, however, I tend to lose focus when my mind is not in the right place. Pages pass, but my thoughts drift elsewhere. Fortunately, November brought with it plenty of good reads that I’m eager to share with you.

Right-Wing Women, Andrea Dworkin (1983)

Have you ever wondered why women support movements that work against their own interests, seek to curtail their freedoms, and ultimately sustain their oppression? If so, Andrea Dworkin might have the answer to understand this phenomenon. Right-Wing Women (1983) addresses this question directly, alongside others such as “The Politics of Intelligence,” “Abortion,” and “The Coming Gynocide.” Granted, the book is a product of the 1980s, and some of its premises inevitably feel (and are) outdated. Nevertheless, it remains a valuable point of departure for interpreting many of the political and cultural dynamics we still see today.

One section I found particularly resonant is Dworkin’s discussion of surrogacy. Her position closely aligns with one I’ve held for a long time and which, while relatively common where I’m from, remains controversial in more liberal anglophone settings:

“[T]he state has consgtructed the social, economic, and political situation in which the sale of some sexual or reproductive capacity is necessary to the survival of women; and yet the selling is seen to be an act of individual will—the only kind of assertion of individual will in women that is vigorously defended as a matter of course by most of those who pontificate on female freedom. The state denies women a host of other possibilities, from education to jobs to equal rights before the law to sexual self-determination in marriage; but it is state intrusion into her selling of sex or a sex-class-specific capacity that provokes a defense of her will, her right, her individual self—defined strictly in terms of the will to sell what is appropriate for females to sell.”

Girl, Woman, Other, Bernardine Evaristo (2019)

Girl, Woman, Other (2019) had been on my shelves for a couple of years. It followed me from Spain to France, and from France to the UK, yet I never managed to pick it up. Part of my hesitation stemmed from the mixed reviews I’d seen; another reason was my worry that it wouldn’t live up to my expectations. Needless to say, it exceeded them.

Evaristo’s novel contains all the elements I appreciate: it’s polyphonic, unconcerned with a single, linear plot, and driven instead by character and voice. The action itself is secondary to the intricate collection of lives it portrays: a vivid and resonant depiction of the experiences of different black women across London. If I had to summarise it in a single line, I would describe it as a novel built on contradiction, a narrative element I love, and something I personally appreciate as someone who always recognises living in contradiction and who thrives in this space.

Structured into four chapters, each divided into three sub-sections, the novel follows several narrative nuclei. Each section foregrounds distinct themes and perspectives, yet all are connected by the impossibility of reconciling different lived experiences. One storyline I particularly appreciated is that of Shirley. Without revealing too much, it explores social mobility and its implications - not only at the socioeconomic level but also in deeply personal terms. It examines the distance one develops from one’s own background, and how the effort to adapt to a new social position can require a simultaneous estrangement from everything that once shaped her.

It is a fast, fascinating read, with plenty of themes woven throughout - and one that made me want to read more from Evaristo. Next on my list: Mr Loverman.

“What matters most to me, is that I know how I feel, and the rest of the world might catch up one day, even if it’ll be a quiet revolution over longer than my lifetime, if it happens at all”

The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O’Farrell (2022)

Again, one of those books I’d been meaning to read for a long time and only finally did so once it was gifted to me. I’d previously read Hamnet and loved it, so my expectations were high when I first heard of the premise of The Marriage Portrait: set in 16th-century Italy, it follows Lucrezia de Medici after her forced marriage to the Duke of Ferrara - a marriage that marks the beginning of the end for the young Duchess.

Though entertaining, I must admit that I didn’t find it particularly “good.” The narrative structure felt overly constrained, the metaphors somewhat basic, and the exploration of character rather shallow. Still, it was what I needed to keep reading and to avoid falling, once again, into a reading slump.

“You shall not look at me, she wants to say, you shall not see into me. I will not be yours. How dare you assess me and find me lacking?”

Une Femme, Annie Ernaux (1988)

I simply can’t conceal my admiration for Ernaux’s memoirs, her narrative style, and her incisive sociological sensitivity. I’m gradually making my way though her body of work, this being my third after La Place (1983) and L’Événement (2002): the former, centred on her father’s death, examines how social mobility irrevocably altered her relationship to her origins; the latter recounts her abortion, narrated with restraint and distance while remaining uncompromisingly raw and real.

In Une Femme, Ernaux reflects on her mother’s death and the definitive rupture of the maternal bond, but also on the disappearance of an entire social world: tose with whom she grew up. The guilt of absence, the complexity of the mother-daughter relationship, and the meditation on becoming recur throughout the text. Quite simply, and as ever, it’s perfect.

“I believe I am writing about my mother because it is my turn to bring her into the world.”

The Gender of Sound, Anne Carson (2025)

I picked this up at the last minute during my last trip to London. I spotted it at Foyles and couldn’t resist: everything Silver Press has published so far has been consistently excellent, the title is straightforward, and (inevitably) that colour was designed to catch my eye.

In The Gender of Sound (2025), Carson does precisely what you might expect. She explores the ways in which sound has been gendered in Western culture and the implications of that process: the masculine is associated with quietness, control, and the public sphere, while the feminine is constructed as its inverse - loud, high-pitched, and hysterical. Drawing on Greek myth alongside contemporary cultural references, Carson offers a compelling feminist reading of something as seemingly natural, and yet deeply ideological, as sound.

“Aristotle tells us that the high-pitched voice of the female is one evidence of her evil disposition, for creatures who are brave or just (like lions, bulls, roosters and the human male) have large deep voices…. High vocal pitch goes together with talkativeness to characterize a person who is deviant from or deficient in the masculine ideal of self-control. Women, catamites, eunuchs and androgynes fall into this category. Their sounds are bad to hear and make men uncomfortable…. Putting a door on the female mouth has been an important project of patriarchal culture from antiquity to the present day. Its chief tactic is an ideological association of female sound with monstrosity, disorder and death…. Woman is that creature who puts the inside on the outside.”

Ending the Year With:

I’m not one to set reading goals, and I find the December habit of recommending short books merely to meet annual goals particularly unappealing. Still, there are a few books I’m currently reading that I’d like to finish before the year ends, as well as one I intended to savour slowly over the holidays (or, more than “savour” I actually need the time because I know it’s going to be a struggle).

• NW (2012), Zadie Smith: I’m almost finished with it, and it’s my second Smith. Once again… I do love a polyphonic structure, and I’m consistently inspired by her narrative strategies. Thoroughly enjoying it, but so far, White Teeth remains my favourite.

• The Last Neoliberal: Macron and the Origins of France’s Political Crisis (2021), Bruno Amable and Stefano Palombarin: I originally picked this up years ago through my Verso Books subscription, but without an e-reader I never quite got around to reading it. I’ve now been working through it on my computer whenever time allows, and I find it an essential read as someone who has been living in France for an extended period and who actively engages with the country’s political life.

• Nana (1880), Émile Zola: this is my personal challenge of the year - my first classic in French. I will report back if I survive.

What have you been reading? Have you read any of these? Let me know!

Nevertheless, during this time of not “producing” anything, something beautiful has happened: so many of you have read, loved, and commented on my Aesthetics of Fascism post. You’ve subscribed and shared your own thoughts on the topic, starting a conversation with the text, with yourselves and, of course, with me. That’s always been the reason I started this newsletter in the first place: to talk to others, to express my thoughts, to hopefully help people discover new texts or ideas they hadn’t encountered yet, and to keep this part of myself alive as I left academia.

My goal was never to produce for the sake of producing or to keep up with an editorial calendar that promises quantity over quality. I wish I could say I’m the kind of person who commits to delivering an article every week and sticks to it, but I’m not. And maybe that’s why taking my time to publish this new article has been the most productive thing I could’ve done. The idea has had time to “marinate,” as I like to say. What started as an undefined draft has finally taken shape. It was initially conceived as a single text, but as it grew too long, I decided to turn it into a series of three instalments, all connected by a common thread: the aesthetics of ultra-conservatism, how they manifest in online communities, and what real-life implications they have.

Although the analysis was completed months ago, I kept feeling like something was missing. I was exploring how these online narratives and aesthetics serve to reinforce gender categories in defense of capitalism’s survival. But the more I thought about it, the more i wanted to push the analysis further - to connect it to the forces that emerge when this system is under threat. That connection has never felt clearer than it does now, given what 2025 has brought (since Tump’s return to office and its global impact, the time when I first published Aesthetics of Fascism) and where we find ourselves today.

I hope I’ve communicated my thought process clearly, and that the deep interconnections between what may appear to be mere trends and the rise of far-right movements across the world come through.

Let’s get into it.

1. Who taught you to think like that?

I don’t usually put myself at the forefront of these essays, but if there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I’ve spent the last two years researching queerness. Not just queerness as a sexual or gender identity, but as a political category: one that exists beyond predetermined identity labels and opens up a new way of understanding the world.

Queerness, as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick puts it, is a space that “hold[s] all kinds of resistances and fracturing and mismatches that have little or nothing to do with sexual orientation. [...] Queer [as] a continuing moment, movement, motive–recurrent, eddying, troublant… Keenly, it is relational and strange.” Queerness, then, is liberation from the structural binaries imposed on us since birth - binaries we’ve often meekly accepted as divine truth. It’s queerness experienced as a verb, not a noun: an active agent, not a passive recipient of meaning.

Understanding (my) queerness in this way awakened me to a deeper awareness of my place in the world and in relation to others. It wasn’t about being anymore, but about understanding why we are. As simple as that may sound, it allowed me to re-engage more critically with the very same ideas I had spent years exploring. I began to focus more intently on the structural interconnections between systems of oppressions and how they manifest in what we think, see, consume and even eat, and their role in quietly shaping our identities, ideas, and selves.

Gilles Deleuze, one of the foundational philosophers in my research, beautifully describes this as the “rhizomatic” understanding of the world as opposed to the “arborescent” structures the Western world has tried to impose. Put simply, these models represent the dichotomic relationship between a horizontal, decentralized, and interconnected view of existence versus the top-down, hierarchical and controlled narrative embedded in Western thought. Think of the tangled, sprawling roots of a tree versus its singular trunk and branches; or of the way in which most of nature appears to us.

“A rhizome,” Deleuze writes, “as a subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radicles. Bulbs and tubers are rhizomes. […] The question is whether plant life in its specificity is not entirely rhizomatic. Even some animals are, in their pack form. Rats are rhizomes.” The rhizome points to life on the margins: it is fluid, collective, empathetic and anti-hierarchical.

In turn, arborescent structures of power shape how we think, communicate and perceive the world. They operate through “centers of significance and subjectification, central automata like organized memories.” In these models, he continues, “an element only receives information from a higher unit, and only receives a subjective affection along preestablished paths.” That is, the arborescent structure precedes our existence and positions us in our “allotted place” whose hierarchical structure relies on our unquestioning attitudes and submission to it. In this way, we end up reproducing the same rigid, inherited frameworks that pre-exist us, thus reinforcing narratives that confine us to unnatural ways of being.1

Of course, acknowledging that these ways of thinking exist doesn’t make us immune to their influence. They are as present in the overtly political aspects of our lives as they are in the mundane activities of the everyday. They follow us from our places of work to our moments of leisure. If not, take a moment to think about the content you’ve consumed on TikTok in the past week. Have you noticed the rise of “skinny-tok,” or the sudden collective enthusiasm for “running clubs” and marathons? Or perhaps the fixation on the "lutheal phase” of cis women’s menstrual cycles? And what exactly is a “clean girl”? Clean as opposed to what, exactly? What lies behind these terms? They are not innocent trends to replicate using a popular sound. They don’t just “emerge” organically; they are shaped and circulated to reinforce the very hierarchical structures (and values) from which we want to liberate ourselves.

2. Pretty, Polished and Oppressed: Tradwives for Fascism

Arborescent structures transcend abstraction and materialise in law, culture and even desire. Rigid, binary thinking permeates every aspect of existence: from policy to digital trends and even in the aesthetics we consume and unthinkingly reproduce.

A little over a year ago, Ballerina Farm’s Hannah Neeleman and Nara Smith became viral sensations on TikTok for their idealised portrayals of domestic life. They presented themselves as perfect wives: young women caring for their children, cooking elaborate meals from scratch, having their husbands taste-test their recipes, all while maintaining a polished appearance and speaking softly to the camera. Suddenly, the embodiment of the perfect woman was on our screens: a loving housewife, devoted mother and supportive partner; a self-sacrificial figure willing to exist so that others might realise their potential as she suppresses her own.

Of course, neither woman escaped controversy. Viewers quickly noted that both are members (or adjacent members) of the Mormon Church, a religious institution with clearly defined views on gender roles and the structure of the family unit. “A woman,” Belle S. Spafford of the Relief Society once stated, “should give her greatest priority to her home: her husband, her family, and the opportunity to child-bearing. That is her divine mission.”2 In this light, what may appear to some as wholesome content (an expression of these women’s to choose a conventional lifestyle, and one that they enjoy at that) begins to resemble an ideological performance that weaponizes the past through nostalgia - one of fascism’s most powerful tenets.

In his “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” Walter Benjamin reminds us that “history is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogeneous, empty time, but time filled with the presence of the now.3 That is, historical revisionism allows fascist forces to glorify a past that never existed in order to legitimise the oppressions of the present (or those still to come). If we are made to believe that women were happier in the 1950s as housewives, mothers and wives, why wouldn’t we attempt to return to that?

The tradwife as a cultural phenomenon is simple: it’s led by women who embrace the role of the mid-twentieth-century woman, showcasing (and at times openly celebrating) submission as empowerment, a return to “natural” roles, and the rejection of feminism in favor of so-called simpler times. While it may appear, on the surface, to be a mere aesthetic revival, its implications are far more calculated. Its nostalgic undertones for a “better” past serve as an attempt to uphold capitalist and patriarchal ideals, feeding into the fascist narrative that seeks, above all, to reassert total control over society.

But there is nothing natural about the “American Dream” of the 1950s. It was a deliberate post-war strategy: a domestic ideology forged by the establishment and reinforced through both media and policy. It cemented the nuclear family as we know it today, selling a vision of the adults’ role in the home: the man provides, the woman reproduces, cares for the household members, and sacrifices her individuality for the well-being of the family structure. This was, of course, never neutral - just a necessary manufacturing of what was the correct order of things to sustain a system in crisis. And now we see it again.

Tradwife content is meticulously curated, from their outfits, always emblematic of femininity, to their soft, affectionate voices and the careful preparation of food. An ordinary working woman would scarcely have the time to make mozzarella from scratch as part of her daily routine. So even if it’s never explicitly stated, the content presents their situation as a form of privilege: they possess the time, space and economic stability to dedicate such devotion to domesticity. These “freedoms” are made possible precisely because they have husbands that enable them.

We must never lose sight of the fact that gender is always instrumental. It’s been extensively discussed in relation to the establishment of patriarchal ideology and as a mechanism to ensure the survival of capitalism, but far less attention has been given to its direct ties to the rise, preservation and success of fascism. Andrea Dworkin, in Right-Wing Women, incisively examines how women often become some of the right’s most fervent defenders with a simple explanation: “No one can bear a meaningless life. Women fight for meaning as women fight for survival: by attaching themselves to men and the values honoured by men. By committing themselves to male values, women seek to acquire value. By advocating male meaning, women seek to acquire meaning. Subservient to male will, women believe their subservience itself is the meaning of a female life.” “The Right,” she continues, “offers women a simple, fixed, predetermined social, biological, and sexual order. Form conquers chaos. Form banishes confusion. Form gives ignorance a shape, makes it look like something instead of nothing.”4

In a world that is essentially devoid of meaning, existence can easily become a burden. Fascism, however, provides the illusion of purpose through the rigid structures it so carefully constructs when systems (patriarchal order, capitalism and others) begin to crumble. You no longer have to determine what being here means to you; you are now living for a greater purpose: to ensure the continuation of the social order. As a woman, you will bear children and forgo your own place in the world, too occupied with caring for others to care for yourself. As a man, you will provide for and defend women of those who come from outside. As a white person, you will safeguard your culture, language and history - all presumed infinitely superior to everyone else’s. Each of these roles is part of the same fascistic machinery that reinforces pre-established arborescent systems of thought through deeply affective techniques of control.

In his succinct essay “Ur-Fascism,” Umberto Eco outlines the characteristics that ought to exist for a fascist regime to begin taking shape. Traditionalism, according to the Italian writer, often manifests as a rejection of modernity and an idealisation of the past, a point we’ve already discussed. Yet there are other, more insidious traits: dissent, for instance, which under such regimes is equated with betrayal. “Dissent is moreover a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a Fascist or prematurely Fascist movement is a call against intruders.”5 Although Eco was referring primarily to the racist and nationalist foundations of fascism, enough time has passed for us to expand his framework. Intruders don’t need to come from outside national borders to be perceived as threats. They can just as easily be those who embody deviation: women who reject traditional roles, queer individuals or anyone whose existence undermines the coherence of the idealised social order.

The logic of exclusion that we experience today is made visible through political decisions: the demonisation of immigrants, the persecution of bodily autonomy and the restriction of rights that threaten the established order. But it also persists in more subtle forms, infiltrating our most private spheres through social media, where seemingly innocent trends and accounts contribute to the normalisation of oppressive logics. Both operate under the same premise: the identification of deviation as a threat and of conformity as virtue.

In a manner reminiscent of Benjamin’s reflections on historical revisionism, French feminist Monique Wittig identified what she named “The Straight Mind,” that is, “a totalizing interpretation of history, social reality, culture, language, and all the subjective phenomena at the same time [...] The straight mind is clothed in its tendency to immediately universalize its production of concepts into general laws which claim to hold true for all societies, all epochs, all individuals.”6 In other words, gender and sexual identities are instrumental for the establishment, used to justify its own existence and survival through processes of naturalisation.

That’s precisely why queerness, in its most political conception, remains such a radical threat. Queerness possesses the power to disrupt the tidy narrative of binary gender and heteronormative domesticity - some of the pillars that sustain capitalist power. If there is no fixed way to be a man or a woman, no inherent desire to marry, bear children, or maintain the household, then the foundational logic of capitalism begins to shake. Here’s where fascism finds its fertile ground: it appears as a mechanism of restoration, a reassertion of the illusion of coherence that both capitalism and patriarchy require to sustain themselves.

As Wittig reminds us, “Discourses speak about us and claim to say the truth in an apolitical field, as if anything of that which signifies could escape the political [...] These discourses of heterosexuality oppress us in the sense that they prevent us from speaking unless we speak in their terms.” Even language, then, conspires to erase alternative modes of existence. On TikTok, it appears in the form of “clean girl aesthetics,” “skinny-tok,” exaggerated nighttime “peeling” routines, “I’m just a girl” content, and the tradwife revival. All of these trends have one thing in common: they promise fulfilment through beauty, order and submission. But these performances carry sharp ideological weight: they reinforce the idea that a woman’s worth continues to depend on her femininity, her ability to be quiet, good and subservient. They are modern performances of very old constraints, repackaged under the guise of freedom and choice.

As the tradwife movement and its ideological siblings attempt to restore hierarchical coherence, seeing the world through the less of queerness (or through rhizomatic thinking) reveals alternative futures that these arborescent structures cannot tolerate. There is an active effort to achieve the homogenisation of society through the flattening of difference and the subjugation of individual identities to narrow norms. But make no mistake: this unification is not incidental. It’s the natural consequence of systems that rely on predictability and control. Aesthetic trends, social media performances, and gender roles are mechanism of ideological reinforcement, ones we often accept and reproduce without question. They cultivate consent, normalise conformity, and discipline behaviour, ensuring that the boundaries of acceptable thought, desire and action remain policed.

The queer rhizome (my term, representing the way I conceptualise these dynamics) challenges the naturalisation of essentialism in all its forms. It consciously pushes for alternative ways of being. It exposes that gender roles were never natural, only internalised and normalised. Resisting them is not merely personal, but profoundly political. Dissident bodies and identities will continue to be controlled and ridiculed because they reveal the fragility of a system that depends on our adherence to its rules and the ongoing performance of its internal linguistic, cultural, social and affective cues.

I am never satisfied with conclusions, because I always wish I’d written more, made myself clearer or provided more examples. But if there’s one thing you get from this post, let it be this: advocate for queer rhizomatic ways of thinking, challenge everything, every day, and question the ways in which you present yourself.

I pause. That’s interesting, I think. I actually published something about this over a year ago. Let’s see what she’s focusing on.

As the video goes on, I realise (to my surprise) that she’s using the exact same book I had chosen as an example: Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. That’s fine, I tell myself. After all, I didn’t “discover” the book either, and Austen is, of course, a brilliant lens through which to examine the eighteenth century and its gender norms.

But then she continues, building her case for the gendering of literary genres by drawing on historical resources without citing a single source. At the same time, her phrasing starts to sound eerily familiar: almost word-for-word what I had said in my own video.

For a moment, I wonder if I’m being paranoid. But no. I know my own work, I know the intellectual exercise behind it, the way I connected each dot, the very specific examples I chose. And I know the time it took me to write that paper. Because, yes, before it was a TikTok video, it was a paper for my Master’s thesis, one I was extremely proud of because it had taken me a great deal of effort to put together, especially given how limited the available secondary sources were.

Of course, I don’t have a big TikTok audience, and I could’ve passed it as a coincidence were it not for the fact that she follows me, and that recently she’s been trying to pivot away from template-style BookTok content toward something more informative, educational, and politically engaged. That shift is, in itself, commendable. But what isn’t commendable is passing off someone else’s ideas as your own, and then accepting praise in the comments for work that you didn’t actually do.

Writing essays like the ones I have previously published here (or have drafted for future publication) takes time, effort, and care. I am always meticulous about citing my sources, acknowledging inspiration when it exists, and offering recommended readings for those who wish to delve deeper into a given topic.

And if you are still wondering why I am certain these were my ideas, the answer is simple: there were no existing sources that directly developed the analysis I carried out. Her structure follows the same one as my video, which I’d constructed by weaving together multiple secondary sources, and deliberately avoiding the well-trodden discussions of Gothic parody and gender satire in Northanger Abbey. Instead, I wanted to move beyond that, showing how Austen critiques something much broader: the systemic impositions placed on women, and the ways in which men sustained their dominance by policing and diminishing certain forms of culture (among many other things).

To frame this, I set Austen in direct conversation with Richardson’s Pamela, which offers a diametrically opposed ideal of womanhood, one Austen undoubtedly knew well. That juxtaposition allowed me to ground my analysis historically, highlighting how literary forms reflected, and sometimes resisted, gendered power structures. In the end, what I produced was simply a cultural studies approach to a narrative, which is precisely the kind of work I have always been committed to in my academic life.

For some time, especially since leaving academia, I’ve wondered whether it’s worth publishing my papers (slightly adapted) here for anyone to read, with open access to the materials. But my relationship with the Internet changes every day. Yes, it’s an advantage unlike any other in history: we have almost limitless knowledge at our fingertips (if we know how to use it), and yet it also exposes us (our ideas and our work) to circulation without context, to misinterpretation and something to outright appropriation.

In the end, the reason I like to write here is simple: I like to yap. I like having a space to write down my ideas, that can be stimulating both for me and for those of you who choose to read my posts, and because in a world where misinformation runs free, I’d like to believe that there are some corners of the internet where we can create meaningful conversations, share ideas freely, and learn free of charge.

And so, if she truly found my work inspiring, I’m glad. That’s what ideas are meant to do: to spark thought, to be built upon, to be shared. But they’re not meant to be stripped of their origins and passed off as someone else’s. Recognition matters—not out of vanity, but because intellectual labor deserves to be acknowledged. After all, if we want to build a culture of knowledge that is free, accessible, and genuinely collaborative, it has to begin with honesty about where those ideas come from.

I am 27 years old, and all I remember is political and economic instability paired with a persistent sense of hopelessness for the future. I’ve spent this time wrestling with conflicting thoughts: pursuing what I love versus what I should do, weighed against what feels like a plausible, “intelligent” path forward. It hasn’t been easy.

Humanities are under attack worldwide, defunded and dismissed as mere entertainment—something to enjoy in your spare time but devoid of societal value. Meanwhile, STEM is heralded as the only worthwhile pursuit, the attention economy competes relentlessly for every moment of our waking hours, and the relentless push toward accumulation—of wealth, status, and conspicuous consumption—has become the unspoken mandate of modern existence. We have created a culture where many have forgotten their social position and believe that through the relentless support and emulation of their favourite celebrities and billionaires, they will become one of them.

The loss of interest in the humanities has led us to a new dark age, one governed by the rise of anti-intellectualism. Critical engagement with media is waning, and the refusal to acknowledge that politics permeates every facet of existence (yes, even if you are a straight, white, cisgender male) has become alarmingly common. Though unsurprising, this trend remains shocking. It leaves me feeling powerless and frustrated, watching as these changes escalate while many turn a blind eye to the inevitable consequence of our current trajectory.

Did we need to wait for Elon Musk to openly perform a Sieg Heil to confirm his role as a neofascist who wields dangerous control over media channels and has spent years manipulating information? And even when this happens, do we need to endure the same media outlets and other organizations insisting, a day later, that we have misinterpreted what we saw with our own eyes? How much longer can we ignore the reality that Musk and the rest of the tech-bros are orchestrating the politics behind Trump’s façade?

But this isn’t just an American problem—it concerns all of us. We must stop patronizing the American population, pretending as if the rest of the Western world isn’t witnessing the same patterns unfolding in our own countries. Take France, where I’ve lived for the past five years: why were neither the President nor the Prime Minister present at Trump’s inauguration, yet it was attended by leaders of the the country’s far-right? And I’m not talking about vague political leanings—I mean direct descendants of literal World War II Nazis.

Already in 1936, Walter Benjamin wrote in his epilogue to The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction that:

“Fascism seeks to organize the newly emergent proletarianized masses without touching the property relations that those masses are so urgently trying to abolish. Fascism sees its salvation in allowing the masses to find their voice (not, of course, to receive their due) […] Fascism seeks to give them a voice in retaining that structure unaltered. Fascism leads logically to an aestheticization of political life. The violation of the masses, which in a leader cult it forces to their knees, corresponds to the violation exercised by a film camera, which Fascism enlists in the service of producing cultic values.”

Trump and his allies have achieved what similarly fascistic movements have done in the past: appealing to the working class and lower-income groups by making them believe they share the same interests and class identity. Never mind that billionaire wealth grew by $2 trillion in 2024—equivalent to $5.7 billion per day—while the number of people living in poverty has remained largely unchanged since 1990, as reported by Oxfam. They have successfully crafted the illusion of possibility and the American Dream: you, too, can be like them (that is if you have access to the generational wealth built on imperialism and colonialism, which enabled their ancestor’s success in the first place).

They even offer the illusion of empowerment, giving you a sense of participation and expression through social media (aren’t they nice?): post your anger, but stay online. Do not take it to the streets. Do not organize in real life. Do not form actual communities of care. As long as you’re confined to the metaverse (literal or not), you can say anything you want. And we’re content with this arrangement, even if it means achieving no real justice, equality, or material gains.

Yes, they have given us a “voice,” but it’s one that ultimately serves fascism by reinforcing the existing system. Our discontent is channelled into controlled expressions, diverting energy away from genuine revolution or structural change. We have TikTok to post our rants, and that gives us the illusion of doing something against the system. But are we really? Have we achieved any meaningful change in recent years?

I’ll admit, I partake in these activities—I enjoy doomscrolling and everything else—but I also believe these tools should be used to further organize outside the Internet. The Internet has a short attention span and even shorter memory. Publishing political statements without accompanying real-life action is meaningless. I hope this becomes increasingly obvious as we witness the CEOs of these platforms (including Shou Zi Chew, who just one day prior, performed the hollow gesture of thanking “President Trump” for “working with them on a solution to reinstate TikTok [after its “ban”] once he’s in office”) bowing down to Trump.

Trump himself called January 20th 2025 “Liberation Day.” In a preliminary interview for Le Quotidien, a French political television show, his British ally Nigel Farage emphasized the significance of attending the day when “the leader of the free world is going to be sworn in.” These messages are far from casual. They evoke the historical propaganda of liberal democracies, particularly during the Cold War, spearheaded by the United States against the so-called “red scare.”

Such rhetoric should alarm anyone who recognizes the parallels with a not-so-distant past. And I do. I come from a country that endured a forty-year fascist dictatorship—a regime that devastated the nation and left wounds we are still struggling to heal. My grandparents lived through a civil war and its aftermath, fighting for their ideals and paying the price with imprisonment. My parents were born under the dictatorship, and even though Franco died a decade later, his influence still looms large today.

But fascism has always excelled at wielding media and propaganda to create an idealized, almost mythical image of the leader and the regime. Its allies understand how to appeal to the leader and consolidate their own power within the government. Take Mark Zuckerberg, for example, and his absurd embrace of hypermasculinity. Over the past year, Zuckerberg has undergone a deliberate image transformation—from tech “geek” to “manly man,” from perceived “loser” to respected businessman. This culminated in his interview with Joe Rogan, where he claimed that corporations have been “neutered” and need more “masculine energy.”

This is about more than pandering to a male audience. Zuckerberg’s message upholds traditional power structures to ensure the survival of a capitalist system. It reinforces binary thinking—male/female, self/Other, master/slave, etc.—and denies people’s rights to bodily autonomy, submitting them to those in power. It emboldens those who feel their societal status—illusory as it may have been—has eroded in the wake of social progress.

Fascism’s appeal is undeniable, and history shows us why. It turns politics into spectacle and performance, emphasizing grand symbols, rituals, and visuals: an endless stream of propaganda, parades, uniforms, and the appropriation and resignification of national values. This “aestheticization” appeals to emotions rather than reason, distracting from substantive political issues and solidifying authoritarian control.

This phenomenon extends far beyond Trump. We’ve seen it with Javier Milei in Argentina, who is infamous for his chainsaw-wielding performances—and is now the country’s president. What once seemed laughable from the left’s position of moral superiority has become a reality: leftist movements have failed, and the new fascist regimes are taking power.

Propaganda thrives in the society of the spectacle we inhabit today. With an endless stream of emotionally charged images at our fingertips, critical thinking often takes a backseat. Fact-checkers feel obsolete when the Internet constantly dictates what to think and how to act. We are led to believe we are part of an elite, even while struggling to make ends meet. Yet this illusion is by design. The “cultic” production of these images dehumanizes the masses, reducing us to passive spectators of the spectacle rather than active participants in shaping society.

In his 1967 The Society of Spectacle, Guy Debord writes: “As part of society, [the spectacle] is that sector where all attention, all consciousness, converges. Being isolated—and precisely for that reason—this sector is the locus of illusion and false consciousness; the unity it imposes is merely the official language of generalized separation.” He adds, “Understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the outcome and the goal of the dominant mode of production. It is not something added to the real world (…) [T]he spectacle epitomizes the prevailing model of social life. It is the onmipresent celebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production, and the consummate result of that choice. In form as in content the spectacle serves as total justification for the conditions and aims of the existing system.” Most importantly, he argues that the spectacle “governs almost all time spent outside the production process itself.”

What Debord describes is a distorted view of reality created by media, alienating us from our true social and material conditions. Trump supporters, for example, believe that by embracing his apparent values, they too can rise to the level of their leader. They accept the fabricated enemies of their political party—immigrants, women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals or the so-called “the woke”—without recognizing these as deliberate distractions. These enemies, though powerful in their emotional resonance, divert attention from the supporters’ actual struggles.

Meanwhile, leftists may fall into what Mark Fisher describes as “interpassivity,” a phenomenon where consuming political analyses or witnessing protests via social media gives the illusion of active participation. By observing others’ efforts, they feel as though they, too, are contributing, which in turn fosters passivity. If someone else is already doing the work, why should they act themselves?

Importantly, the spectacle is not separate from reality; it is the dominant reality. It shapes how people live and relate to one another under capitalism, organizing experiences and interactions through the logic of commodification. It renders us incapable of meaningful action. And so far, it is working. As Debord notes, even beyond our working hours, our leisure time is colonized by the spectacle—whether through traditional media like television or modern platforms like social media. These platforms reinforce the values and logic of the capitalist system, leaving little room for authentic autonomy or meaningful critical reflection.

In the words of Benjamin: “This is how things are, given the kind of aestheticization of politics that Fascism pursues. Communism’s reply is to politicize art.” We must politicize our presence on social media: delete your Meta and X accounts, hold TikTok accountable for its actions, politicize the content you create on BookTok (because reading is political, regardless of what some creators may say), politicize conversations with your friends and family members, politicize every sphere of life in the wake of fascist governments across the world. But remain hopeful. Be hopeful for the future, or rather, actively choose not to be hopeless. Hope, as Byung-Chul Han beautifully articulates, lives in the future but “creates a narrative that guides action” in the present. Whether through community building, fostering critical engagement, or reclaiming our shared spaces for genuine dialogue and activism, we must resist the spectacle’s domination and its aestheticized forms of control. To do so, we must rebuild collective efforts grounded in care, community, and justice—not in isolation and individualism.

[Meritocracy] is a comforting narrative that leads us to believe that if we don’t succeed, it’s because our projects weren’t good enough, or we lacked the necessary skill—not because the system is designed to favour those who start off with built-in advantages.

Nepotism has been pervasive for decades, but in recent years, it has become a renewed topic of debate. We often recognize the names of celebrated actors echoed in their children, nieces, or nephews, knowing that while they may be talented, they also benefit from the power of a Good Family Name. Nepotism in Hollywood is blatant, and until recently, few tried to hide these family connections. On the contrary, having a recognizable name is often seen as a badge of honour—a legacy that grants access and influence. But beyond the entertainment industry, other fields continue to sell us the dream of “meritocracy,” insisting that success is purely a matter of talent and hard work. It’s a comforting narrative that leads us to believe that if we don’t succeed, it’s because our projects weren’t good enough, or we lacked the necessary skill—not because the system is designed to favour those who start off with built-in advantages. And if we do succeed, the myth of meritocracy strokes our egos, reinforcing the idea that we’ve earned our place, while those who didn’t make it simply weren’t on the same level.

For those of us who weren’t born into wealth or didn’t have connections to pave our way, the belief in possibility still lingers. We hold on to the idea that success is within reach if we just have enough talent, put in the effort, and maybe catch a little luck. This belief comes with an expectation: we feel entitled to every opportunity that comes our way because we’ve invested time, money, and energy into doing everything “right” and pursuing our passions relentlessly. But is that really how it works?

Who gets to tell stories?

Recently, I’ve found myself delving into the backgrounds of contemporary writers to better understand what underpins their success. While I’m not looking to become a writer myself, I’m curious about the material conditions that are necessary to become a respected author and what really shapes the opportunities they receive, covertly influencing the industry’s decisions about which stories are deemed worth telling—and selling. More often than not, the answer is rooted in a single factor: class privilege.

One useful concept here is cultural capital, a term coined by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. It refers to the skills, qualifications, and tastes that society deems legitimate and valuable—such as prestigious degrees or aligning with the cultural elite’s preferences. In the literary world, the amount of cultural capital a writer possesses often determines how easily they can navigate the publishing industry. Authors like R.F. Kuang or Ottessa Moshfegh, for example, have significant cultural capital. Both attended top-tier schools that provided not only formal qualifications but also access to influential literary networks, which acted as a “fast pass” to publication and critical acclaim.

Bourdieu also introduces the idea of educational capital, which refers specifically to formal qualifications, like degrees from Ivy League universities. However, this is only part of the picture. People from privileged backgrounds often inherit intangible advantages, such as a “nose” for spotting the right opportunities, giving them a strategic edge. This is evident in examining how writers from wealthy or well-connected families frequently find their way into elite institutions and, subsequently, into prestigious positions in the literary world.

This ideal of meritocracy, which defends that merit outweighs money and that class, race, gender, disability, and other facets of identity are secondary to raw skill, is an appealing story—yet ultimately a fantasy.

Consider the case of R.F. Kuang. Admittedly, I haven’t read her books, as they aren’t the kind of literature I gravitate toward, though Yellowface has piqued my interest. The novel’s satirical portrayal of a publishing industry that often favours white authors over authors of color is timely and necessary. However, despite its critique, Yellowface appears to inadvertently reinforce the idea of meritocracy: that if you get published, it’s because your talent has triumphed over all other obstacles. This ideal of meritocracy, which defends that merit outweighs money and that class, race, gender, disability, and other facets of identity are secondary to raw skill, is an appealing story—yet ultimately a fantasy.

Kuang’s educational background tells a different story. She attended Greenhill School in Dallas, Texas—a prestigious prep school where annual tuition runs from $31,800 to $39,770 for grades K-12. As YouTuber WithCindy pointed out in her video on Yellowface and the publishing industry, Kuang’s attendance at Greenhill reflects her family’s financial stability and ability to invest heavily in her education for over a decade. To suggest that this didn’t give her a competitive advantage throughout her academic and professional career would be disingenuous. Unsurprisingly, she went on to study at Cambridge, Oxford, and now Yale—some of the most elite institutions in the world. While Kuang may credit her success to literary skill alone, this view overlooks the crucial role of financial stability and institutional access in shaping careers.

Ottessa Moshfegh, another favourite among BookTok readers, also comes from a background of considerable privilege. She attended Commonwealth School in Boston, a private preparatory school with a small student-to-teacher ratio (around 155 students and 35 faculty members), a stark contrast to overcrowded, underfunded public schools. A Commonwealth education, however, comes with a price tag of $57,625 per year.

Moshfegh’s path followed the well-trodden route of the literary elite: a BA in English from Barnard College and an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University. While her talent for exploring the grotesque and pushing the boundaries of contemporary fiction is undeniable, it would be naïve to ignore how access to these educational institutions facilitated not only her literary development but also her ability to network, eventually paving the way to her success in publishing.

Talent, of course, isn’t exclusive to upper-class writers. Nor is the opportunity to get published. However, writers who don’t fit the default social category of Western society (male, white, well-off) are often expected to foreground their marginalization in their work. Their value in the industry is frequently tied to offering a voyeuristic lens into struggles, pain, or resilience for an audience that exists outside those realities. For writers with the “right” background, however, the creative landscape is far more open; they are free to write about anything and explore the depth of their imagination.

Rooney’s Quiet Radicalism

Sally Rooney has often been criticized for the apparent lack of explicit politics in her novels, despite her self-identified Marxist ideology. Critics argue that her characters seem more absorbed in their personal relationships than in broader political struggles —something one of her characters admits to doing in Beautiful World Where Are You? (2021). Yet, it is in this very subtlety that Rooney offers a powerful critique of class disparities and the inescapable distances they create, a kind of marginalization that she has both experienced and seen.

Rooney’s work, especially in Normal People, vividly portrays a society where class and gender inequalities persistently shape even the most personal interactions, exposing how these dynamics permeate shared spaces and relationships—no matter how close or personal.

In Normal People, Rooney challenges capitalist individualism and scrutinizes meritocracy. Connell and Marianne both attend Trinity College Dublin, an institution renowned for its literary legacy. However, their experiences within this elite space are starkly different. Connell, who worked part-time during high school, feels out of place among his wealthier peers. In contrast, Marianne, despite her affluent yet abusive upbringing, moves through Trinity with relative ease, thanks to the cultural and social capital she’s inherited. For Connell, his lack of economic and social capital begins to be replaced by cultural and symbolic capital, assets he quickly recognizes as essential to navigating the academic and social landscape. Despite Marianne and Connell’s deep connection, the unbridgeable gap between their class backgrounds remains, illustrating how these elements shape even the most intimate relationships. Rooney’s work, especially in Normal People, vividly portrays a society where class and gender inequalities persistently shape even the most personal interactions, exposing how these dynamics permeate shared spaces and relationships—no matter how close or personal.

Connell’s moment of triumph comes when he receives a scholarship—a hard-won opportunity, one that he cannot afford to pass up. Marianne, on the other hand, stays in Dublin, settling into a “normal” life only after her mother withdraws financial support. This divergence highlights the pressures of economic insecurity: for Connell, every opportunity must be seized, while for Marianne, who comes from wealth, there is the luxury of choice, even if that choice leads to a seemingly mundane existence. Much like R.F. Kuang and Ottessa Moshfegh, whose cultural capital opened doors in the literary world, Marianne’s privilege allows her to navigate life with a freedom that Connell cannot afford. The meritocratic system, as illustrated in both fiction and real life, rarely accounts for the deeper inequalities at play.

Rooney’s work demonstrates her intimate understanding of the cruelty of a system where opportunities are unevenly distributed, often determining one’s path before they even have the chance to choose it themselves.

Although R.F. Kuang and Ottessa Moshfegh are real authors navigating the contemporary literary landscape, while Normal People is a work of fiction, the novel offers a striking reflection of the realities that individuals like Connell face in the real world. I’m not oblivious to the fact that these two writers are real people, with complexities and challenges beyond the generalizations made here. Rooney’s work demonstrates her intimate understanding of the cruelty of a system where opportunities are unevenly distributed, often determining one’s path before they even have the chance to choose it themselves. Her portrayal of class struggle, cultural capital (or lack thereof), and the weight of privilege reflect a deep awareness of a society that is fundamentally structured to benefit those who possess it. Rooney’s fiction, in this way, exposes the deep inequalities embedded in even the most personal choices and relationships, something which this article has hopefully also achieved.

Dismantling the meritocracy myth

I haven’t examined the backgrounds of contemporary writers to imply that they’re not talented or underserving of their success. They absolutely are, and their works are deserving of publication and recognition. Instead, I’ve highlighted these examples to illustrate how entrenched class privilege remains within the arts—and how it’s still (mostly) the same groups who receive the bulk of opportunities. While narratives of meritocracy are continuously promoted, the reality is that access to opportunities in the literary field (and elsewhere) is unevenly distributed, heavily skewed in favor of those who possess cultural, social, and, most importantly, financial capital.

This systemic imbalance calls for a more critical approach to understanding how talent is both cultivated and rewarded, and who we choose to elevate in these spaces. It’s not enough to celebrate the success stories without acknowledging the barriers that prevent others from even entering the conversation. As long as class continues to shape access to education, mentorship, and the time required to hone one’s craft, the ideal of meritocracy will remain elusive—a dream far removed from the lived realities of those struggling to carve out a space in literature.

Confront the myth of meritocracy and push for more equitable structures that provide true opportunities for those outside the traditional power structures. Only then can we talk of a literary work that is equal to all.

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