In a generation where everything must mean something, let this mean nothing

Long time no post, Cinebloggers

I've been thinking for a bit—not that I don't think but I've been more so thinking about the choices we as people make. And these choices are based on common shared efforts to appear a certain way, to show the kind of person we are. There have been countless TikTok videos where they all teach one how to be chic or what movies/books to consume in order to be that intellectual girly. I leaned into it at some point, I thought: yeah this is what I want, it's mature and effortless. But why? why do we need approval or checkpoints to be deemed intellectual or "disgustingly educated"? What happened to whimsy curiosity that never ceases to fade? There maybe was never a before, but there surely is a difference in the intent behind doing certain things now. 

The word chic is a french word meaning, stylish and elegant.

I've heard a wave of this word, which—don't get me wrong—isn't the issue. 

It's like the resurgence of polka dot as the pattern itself. A domino effect where it blows up on a creator's page and suddenly the woman who bakes bread on instagram is also in a similar polka dot top, then the girl who posts legal advice is silently preaching the same, and before you know it, you realize what's in motion—the internet and on every five videos you scroll, monochrome spots are staring back at you. And nobody cares if you have been wearing the pattern before it became a "trend" because now it's in every retail store you can think of and you look the same as those shopping for the newest polka dot drop. Then, the more you're exposed, it subconsciously tickles the part of your brain that makes you eventually join the wave. You can't deny it, but you can coast by it.

This is less about micro-trends... in fact, it's not about them at all. It's about our need for validation and status symbols. For a social currency defined by the girls in monochrome grays and blacks who embody the carefree, detached attitude of the 90s, calling it "intellectual." We can't avoid it, it's ingrained, it's never-ending. 

So the practice to be more intellectual by consuming more sleep-inducing media that you would never, ever once decide to pick if you were isolated from social media, is what's eating us up—or you, or me, or them? Who? Some.

Take social media out of the equation and suddenly we read things that we want to read. We watch films to have a good time, to itch that fantasy within ourselves. We learn because we have the urge not because we want to be seen as cerebral or chic in our ways. We become "disgustingly educated" because we have nothing to chase but our desires and most definitely not because there's someone putting classic literature into a chore bucket that says, "read to be that disgustingly educated girl."

That is why we go back in time to mold versions of iconic decades where nothing but originality existed, originality stemmed from inevitability. Recreating styles from the 80s because it's far more innovative than trying on our own sometimes. And I'm not saying trends weren't a thing in the past. I'm saying: never listen to the girl telling you to read Sylvia Plath so the world will know once and for all that you're intellectual, smart, educated, chic, or effortless. 

Do things for you, like it's life or death. Don't let your curiosity become a costume.

Oh, you want to be intellectual? Chase what that means to you. Not the world. 

M.S.
The Cineblog ringleader