optimization culture
the results of hyper onlineness
To no surprise, I always have a running and never-ending dialogue in my head. Ideas are constantly looping through my mind, but when something tangibly inspiring strikes, I hesitate to build on it. This year, instead of letting my head accumulate a million half-baked thoughts, I plan to spend more time working through them and sharing them with you all. I hope you enjoy this random brain dump on optimization culture - sorry for all the run-ons and typos, this is just a thought dump <3
Unless you have been lucky enough to spare yourself from the horrors that our online culture currently depicts, you are destined to join your peers in experiencing a life controlled by your screen. With a few exceptions, it is hard to argue against the fact that the majority of millennials and gen z/alpha spend their offline lives dictated by their online lives. And you really can’t blame any of them/us for it, it is how we’re conditioned to be at this point - it has become nearly impossible to resist this way of being if everyone else in our society is doing so. Not only do you see the obvious filming on the streets and scrolling during any awkward downtime, but people are literally optimizing their bodies and appearances for their phones. Hyper-fashion trends manifest so quickly among many that their life cycle is too short to resist fast fashion. Cosmetic surgery has become the norm amongst women and girls, seeping into their teen years in such a dangerously usual manner. Diet culture and GLP-1s and their cousins are easier to access than ever. If you can now change your face and body to be what others view as “perfect,” then why not go for it? This is all to say that, as women in this time, our screens are making it so that we have no excuse but to be the most optimized, perfect human, and as soon as we possibly can, with full evidence of manifesting this reality.
Whether one wants to face the reality or not, hyper-digital culture has propelled society to expect such a maximized existence for everyone. Not only are we pressured to show our physical bodies in ways that tightly fit the preferred, but our achievements are also pressured to be streamlined and to occur often and regularly. As the accomplishments of content creators and young achievers are presented at such young ages, it is tough to avoid the feeling that you’re behind in some way. Constantly seeing others’ successes every other scroll, most times without any evidence of the hard work behind the scenes, is nothing but a fatal sentencing of the mind that tells you that you are not doing enough- that you are not sufficient. Women inevitably become the main target of it all as our bodies, minds, and entire beings are constantly monitored, speculated, and often expected to exist in a particular way.
There was (or I guess is) a brief moment when a massive push for “authenticity” started to trend as a retaliation to AI slop and perfection. However, like anything else online, I really find it hard to believe something is authentic and raw when it is inevitably curated. While it makes sense that realness should be prioritized and praised, over time, it has become yet another “trend” and a form of self or product-marketing. Thus, we’re back in the optimization trap, forced to confide in yet another way of being and presenting.
I don’t mean for this to come across as cynical. Still, I do believe that, as consumers of internet culture and beyond, it is incredibly crucial to be critical of this sometimes subtle manipulation. If you took it all away, there would truly be no timeline, no standard, no type that is the perfect optimized form to strive for. Once you’re able to (even for a moment) see beyond that, you can access some of that authenticity and rawness that allows you to enjoy the flow of your existence.
What I’ve been consuming lately: I started reading Sophie Gilbert’s book Girl on Girl, which discusses late-90s and early-20s pop culture, specifically the hypersexualization of women in media and beyond. First off, I highly recommend this quick read, especially for Gen Zers like me who only gained full consciousness after the fact. Gilbert investigates the treatment of women in the Y2K era in such a concise, eye-opening way that it forced me to think about how this evolution has shaped the way hyper-viral media treats women now. Alongside this, read during my extended break from classes, I have been indulging in an obsessive rewatch of Mad Men. Those who know anything about the show or the 1960s can understand the display of perfect rage bait for someone like me. The women in the workplace and at home face the collateral of the textbook fragile male ego- not that this is no longer the case, but back then it was much more clear-cut, normalized to treat women like trash. Consuming Gilbert’s book in between episode binges of Mad Men and moments spent online has been predictably thought-provoking to say the least.