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Whoa! Vice is heading for bankruptcy!

That magazine was a big chunk of my teens and 20s—for which I had a love/hate relationship.

Hipsterism is officially dead.

theguardian.com/media/2023/may

The GuardianVice Media reportedly headed for bankruptcyBy Mark Sweney

It’s wild how every defining media and cultural brand of my generation is dead or dying.

Vice is going bankrupt.

BuzzFeed News is dead.

American Apparel is dead.

Pitchfork is a shell of itself.

I mean, at least the Boomers still have Rolling Stone.

Chris Trottier

In hindsight, though, I feel like my generation (Millennials) stopped giving a damn about earnestness and authenticity—and instead chased aspiration and performance.

Because that’s what Vice, BuzzFeed, American Apparel were really about.

They weren’t cultural creatives as much as media properties that tried to define themselves by acquiring and assembling culture—seeking status through taste.

Vice and BuzzFeed are dead or dying because their whole value was in being cultural gatekeepers.

But now social media algorithms have killed cultural gatekeepers.

Cultural gatekeeping has moved to a human endeavour to one that’s automated.

I have a feeling that my generation (Millennials) will be the last to define themselves by consumption.

We bought the Yeah Yeah Yeahs t-shirt, acquired the Basquiat print, ate the famed avocado toast.

But everything is becoming more ethereal nowadays. People don’t own things. We don’t even rent them.

We do something even more impermanent: we stream.

@atomicpoet@mastodon.social Side remark: I'm a (German) Gen-X and my partner is a (Italian) Millennial. A few weeks ago she turned to me and said "my generation has been lied to". What she meant was that Millennials, who were coming of age in the early 2000s, were told that you are the product, the one-person corporate, out on the market, competing with everyone, and if you do that hard enough, you become the number one and a star. Work hard, party hard, and all that bs. And she realized that her generation had been lied to because she's teaching young people at uni and they are totally different in their outlook and place much more emphasis on their life and their relations instead of work work work.

@atomicpoet
It's not really automated though, is it? Someone is always making the rules. In the best case, like here, we can make the rules ourselves.

@atomicpoet hmmm, they should google "2030 own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better" and hopefully rethink their path.

@atomicpoet@mastodon.social

«I have a feeling that my generation (Millennials) will be the last to define themselves by consumption.»
unfortunately, no ...

@atomicpoet Not if the corporations that run this world have anything to do with it. Either that or they will find a way to own the air that you breathe. Do not touch the money of the ultra wealthy in this world. They will find a way to make you pay...like for lifesaving medicine. Consumption will never stop. What future generations consume will change but not likely by their choice but by what they can afford.

@atomicpoet
🎼 play on Fortnite on Twitch free
🎼 just watch all night and tell me you’ll boost me
🎼 while I’m at home with fans watching me
🎼 stream a little stream of me..

@atomicpoet you’re right, but i take a more optimistic view.

Things are changing & we lose some aspects and gain others. Using music as an example, sure I don’t own the music I love listening to any more, but I have discovered so much more music then ever before & experience far wider styles.

In reality everything is impermanent. One day we each die leaving a bunch of “stuff” we held onto. We are all ethereal, ultimately.

Media vanishing off platforms is a real issue though.

@atomicpoet Digital content is consumed and "rented" via ads free #subscriptions to streams.

The #productivity due to technological leaps is so outstandingly high already and is still growing if only humanity manages to NOT get Darwin-awarded while conducting it. #Business'es are going to be more and more based on artificial restriction of goods/services to adjust markets & prices.

@atomicpoet @BlackAzizAnansi Around the time Adobe got away with making all of their apps subscriptions, all hell broke loose.

Mercedes now sells you a $100K EV, then wants $90/month to “unlock”extra speed. BMW wants $30/month to “enable” the heated steering wheel you bought.

@atomicpoet I would say that streaming is the ultimate form of consumption.

@atomicpoet people don’t "own" things anymore because now the people themselves are owned. Owned by the systems they suddenly rely on. (e.g. music, social nets, Amazon Fresh deliveries, search engines, youtubes, cashless coffee shops, et al)

enjoy your pampered, coddled, existence until it's taken away, or worse.

Of course it doesn't FEEL like you're owned if you don't think too hard about it. Something I feel people are a little too good at.

@atomicpoet@mastodon.social vice was always terrible to the people who worked there. Lowest pay by a long way