Curated consumption makes being online exciting again
Mindful consumption is the conscious consideration of the consequences of consumption on oneself. For years, mindful consumption has had prominence as a wellness trend, under the broader umbrella of the wellness mania that has existed within the online media zeitgeist since the mid-2010s. Except, like much of the wellness trends of the 2010s, the practice of mindful consumption feels patronisingly contemptuous towards the rugged reality of a modernist's everyday. It's antagonistic, partly due to its assumptive phrasing—as if consuming in an era of mass production has always been out of our control and beyond our responsibility to regulate.
Recently, within the past two years, people online have instead celebrated the authentic reality of existing online in a similar form that we have been for over a decade now—that being online today means sometimes watching things we shouldn't, following trends none of our friends know about, or accounts they would have no interest in. The enormous amount of content production means that we can now all exist within different self-constructed silos of the internet dominion. Forget mindful consumption—we have entered a period of curated consumption.
Accelerated by the rise of AI, the production of computer-generated or assisted content and responses to online queries is completely oversaturated. As a result, habitually curating your own media consumption is the new mass practice—and for many, it can finally make being online exciting again.
Spanish award-winning recording artist Rosalía recently released her new studio album "LUX." The album features 13 languages, blending classical influence with operatic inspiration, utilising live studio recordings of orchestras. The album, in her words, was created consciously in the context of a specifically characteristic "human album". The album has maintained an almost perfect score on Metacritic since its release on November 7th. It has already garnered buzz as the best album of the year, not to mention over 40 million streams on its first day on Spotify. People are attracted to the concept of radical authenticity in the face of thought technification.
Meanwhile, brands are flocking to the anti-AI trend to their advantage, selling products anchored in messaging authentically and wholly crafted by humans. And it's working. Major brands like GAP, Burberry and Nike are using handheld, film and early digital cameras in their seasonal campaigns to communicate a deliberately crafted distinction between their brand identity and other overly manufactured campaign imagery. Authenticity is the new communicator of luxury. In a world of easily accessible technical media production, laborious, handcrafted design indirectly communicated luxury and skill.
An album like Rosalía's, arguably, wouldn't have had the same effect had it come out even a year ago. Its specialness lies in its breathtaking, unexplainable magic which cuts through the chaos of the oversaturated media mind and, like an ice block, cools it to relief. It soothes the chaos-conditioned mind, temporarily severing the tether to acclimatisation to the unoriginality of media.
Until recently, the formula for a successful piece of media included the best marketable invention, the most investment, and the most innovative way of meeting a need, whether a variation of it was already in demand or not. Of course, that will always be a valuable measure of audience availability. But the needs have changed. Our needs have changed. A need for innovative repurposing of the opera musical genre is a need (conditional and imagined, of course) that is unique to the animalistic human need for radical authenticity at this time. Radically authentic craftsmanship, refined thinking, and creation that must in one way or another be intangibly recognisable as human-driven, or at least is received in that way.