In the 2010s: a Trend of Upper Class Escapism Wrapped in the Ethos of Nihilistic Self-Care
America was probably always on this path.
Late Stage Capitalism (a term used to describe the time before the next bubble bursts and the economy inevitably collapses in on itself, as always happens in an unregulated capitalist society) was destined to be a place where we sell the idea of complete insulation from capitalism (via consumerism) to the highest bidders, or, as we might see, the most upper-middle class bidders?
I Went To Las Vegas Once
In December, 2009 Aria Hotel & Casino opened.
Arriving there a few years later, the effect of the fabricated ambiance was profound.
What I saw there I had only started to sense in the city I traveled from: the soft lighting and fast casual decor of certain sections of The Mall Of America.
The soft gold lighting, the small pathways created by whirring machines on one side, and walls of dining areas/lights/TVs on the other, always uniquely designed for the space they are in, always equally designed to blend into everything else around them, had a pleasantly dimming effect on my usually-too-loud conscious: the insular, cozy-but-cave-like universe softened my skepticism into following the next ringing bell, the next blinking marquee.
Vegas is a mash up of comfort and over-stimulation that works as well at lulling you into the warm, heroin embrace of consumerism (“spending money feels good, you should spend more of it”, the walls whisper) as their floors do of alternating soft carpet and shinny marble, keeping the feet moving, everything just pretty enough, just different enough, just familiar enough, to dull the mind into contentment.
In these spaces, as once in the womb, there are no problems.
Everything we need is taken care of, for us.
The Walking Alive
Watching these gifs now I can feel the weightlessness returning.
Everything in Vegas, and on a smaller scale, The Mall Of America, is far away from everything else.
Everything looks close by in Vegas, but that’s because the buildings are so over-sized that a street level pedestrian is almost incapable of judging their distance.
The Vegas Strip is simply on a scale the homosapien brain has not evolved quickly enough to catch up to.
And just like The Mall of America, the walking makes your brain happy and body tired.
You want to sit down, perhaps eat, drink, gamble.
Why not sit down here, right by these machines?
We’ll bring you a drink.
Take your mind off things…like how far away you are from your hotel, and how much money you said you wouldn’t spend.
When I returned from Vegas I started seeing this interior design trick everywhere.
In the lighting of a Chipotle and in the simplicity of its menu’s font.
In the Macy’s store design with its rows of clothes that look easy enough to navigate but sure enough, are just as easy to find yourself turned around in.
In the landscaping of the outdoor malls popping up at the edges of America’s major metro areas (the once thriving Bayshore Town Center outside Milwaukee, the Shops At West End outside Minneapolis).
The latter examples being proof that white people will do anything not to go back into America’s cities.
Who needs a pedestrian-oriented downtown with character when you can treat downtowns as highways to your job and fabricate the rest just outside of town, full of your favorite chain businesses?
While there are certainly other reasons – besides white flight – for shopping centers like these to open up in suburbs, there is something to be said about the manufactured comfort these self-contained consumer arenas were built to emote: get all the consumer things you “need” in the coziness of a pre-fabricated, sterile-but-soft, predictable environment that gives you that brief feeling of existing in an aesthetically pleasing space.
Aesthetically pleasing spaces, if you drive around any major American city, are expensive to live in. Shopping in them, less so.
Months ago I wrote about how Taco Bell was the same-but-opposite as Starbucks.
Even as I was writing that, Taco Bell was rolling out plans to fancy up their interior.
XXYYXX and The Lo Fi Revolution
Around the time I went to Las Vegas, or, who knows, possibly years after or before that trip (time is a flat circle now), I came across a mysterious playlist on youtube.
XXYYXX by XXYYXX.
The video on youtube was a 1 hour + collection of songs with a static image.
The songs felt as if they had fallen into a youtube algorithm generator meant to mash up random samples and put them to soothing instrumentals.
I would find out only later that this was the work of a Florida based producer Marcel Everett, aka XXYYXX, who made this album WHEN HE WAS 17 YALL.
According to his Wiki, the track “About You” was the breakout hit of the album, but, on that first listen, if felt almost impossible to differentiate the songs as they glided between silence, spaced-out synths, and random TLC samples.
That lack of clarity around the artist and the music seemed to be a feature of an emerging genre. A classic album cover + bio + staged photo wouldn’t allow the listener to float through the gravity-light ether created by these instrumentals.
The key elements of the album were elements that were starting to pop up in a new genre:
- umami-heavy drum kits that crackled behind
- lofi synthetics and
- samples chopped to the point of near un-intelligibility.
Flying Lotus probably became the figurehead of this Lo Fi movement, with many other notable artists rising to prominence, among them Clams Casino, and on the vocal side, James Blake.
Lo Fi is in almost every Casey Neistat or Nerdwriter video now.
It even has a You Tube offshoot with its own aesthetic: young anime girls studying in their rooms.
Hold onto your pearls, grandma, the youth are out here studying to chill instrumental videos with animations of other youths studying in them.
Just put “lo fi” into youtube and this video will be at the top of the list.
So what does this have to do with Las Vegas and Chipotle?
These beats, with their rise to prominence in the early 2010s, feel soft, safe, insulated. Some of the drums have a muted tone, as if you’re hearing them through a large wall of muscle, mucus, and tissue.
They’re beats I think a fetus would really relate to.
The soundscape is soothing, like a non-creepy version of ASMR.
Put these in your headphones, walk around an upscale mall or hotel/casino, and tell me you don’t feel like you’re floating.
As the world got more and more uncertain (a decade long war raging, the rise of the Tea Party, the 2008 crash) and music production got more and more egalitarian – one option that became more appealing was retreat, back to the safest place we know.
While these artists came across this aesthetic relatively organically, mega-corporations seized on it to make it’s consumers feel care free and comforted – the easier to slip their dollars from their pockets – right as the economy was rebounding from the 2008 crash.
Novacane, Novacane
(but for real, Xanax and CBD)
“Novacane (sic)” was a breakout hit from Frank Ocean’s breakout mixtape Nostalgia Ultra, released in 2011.
It’s lyrics – and a key theme of his masterpiece follow up album, Channel Orange – were those of numbed indulgence.
Even when I’m fuckin’ Viagra poppin’, every single record autotunin’
Zero emotion, muted emotion, pitch corrected, computed emotion
He put into words what the music world – that he would become a formidable figure within – was going through: zero emotion, muted emotion.
Novocaine, baby, baby, Novocaine, baby, I want you
Fuck me good, fuck me long, fuck me numb
Love me now, when I’m gone, love me none
Love me none, love me none, numb, numb, numb, numb Novocaine for the pain
Kid Cudi, whose debut album was released in 2009, also brought this mix of emotional non-emotion to his songs.
While “The Prayer” (from his mixtape A Kid Named Cudi) – drifts through a Band of Horses sample with the rapper sing-rapping, “I’m ready for the funeral”, and almost every other song talking about smoking weed, on “Ashin’ Kusher” from his second major label album he addresses his numbness directly,
Even if I do something unruly, I be like “Fuck a nigga I was probably zooted”
Off the top, honestly, the kush and goose combination harmful G
This uptick in desensitized drug content wasn’t without its real world corollary.
In 2019, NPR reported on a study that found a “Steep Climb In Benzodiazepine Prescribing By Primary Care Doctors”
The percentage of outpatient medical visits that led to a benzodiazepine prescription doubled from 2003 to 2015
And while benzodiazepines are best for short-term use, according to physicians,the new study found that long-term use of these drugs has also risen. From 2005 to 2015, continuing prescriptions increased by 50 percent.
For those unfamiliar, benzodiazepines,
…act as positive allosteric modulators on the gamma amino butyric acid (GABA)-A receptor.
GABA is the most common neurotransmitter in the central nervous system, found in high concentrations in the cortex and limbic system. GABA is inhibitory in nature and thus reduces the excitability of neurons. GABA produces a calming effect on the brain.2
Benzos like Xanax and Klonopin are often prescribed for panic attacks but long story short, they calm you down, zone you out.
Chance The Rapper – one of the biggest breakout stars of 2010s Hip Hop – got addicted to them and didn’t put out music for years after his breakthrough album Acid Rap.
I had the pool. I had the movie theater. I had the basketball court. I was doing it real big. I was Xanned out every fucking day. I was just fucking tweaking. I was a Xan-zombie, fucking not doing anything productive and just going through relationship after relationship after relationship. Mind you, this is six months. So think about, like, how could you even do that?
A couple years ago the New York Times ran this headline.
Why Is CBD Everywhere?
Cannabidiol is being touted as a magical elixir, a cure-all now available in bath bombs, dog treats and even pharmaceuticals. But maybe it’s just a fix for our anxious times.
And even Forbes said CBD was “More Popular Than Jesus, Kanye West, The NBA, Taylor Swift, The Beatles…”
The only catch? Popularity, in this case, is measured in Google Search volume between 2017 and 2019.
Still, hard numbers aside, CBD is having a moment.
For anyone reading this in the some faraway, unforeseen future?
When you think of the rise of CBD in the late 2010s, think of the rise of Pogs in the mid 90s.
Yea, that important.
Nihilism For The Now
In 2014, Radiolab did a piece on the rise of nihilism in art and culture.
On The Media‘s Brooke Gladstone, summed up the episode, as follows:
Numbed by the absurdity of our democracy in action we’ll now spend the rest of the show visiting two stories that wrangle over the nature of nihilism.
and the year 2013, as
Then the news was especially grim. Ebola was raging in West Africa, beheadings were still a hideous novelty.
All this to say, there was a rise in nihilism being documented in 2014.
Nihilism has a long history, and seems to take the form of the times it is in.
Brooke Gladstone, again,
The 70s — what with the Vietnam War, Watergate, a listless economy, rampant crime and streets steeped in the sour funk left by the spoiled ardor of the 60s– was a prime decade for Nihilism. And punk was its medium. Iggy Pop, Sid Vicious, Jonny Rotten, Richard Hell and the Voidoids…
Now, that was a far cry from the ecstatic Nihilism of the late 50s and early 60s, which was a rebuke to the stifling conformity of the Eisenhower era, and a finger flung at the likely prospect of nuclear annihilation.
We live in a time where the numbness, the nothingness, of nihilism has an attractive comfort.
Numbness seems unforgiving, but it can offer up a last resort for the pained, a place where joy is exchanged for the promise of painlessness.
Our numbness is a medicated, consumer numbness; an insulated nihilism where we seek the tuned-out bliss of being taken care of, exacerbated by feelings – through our lack of healthcare – of not being taken care of at all.
Euphoria & A Cyber Punk Conclusion
I’m not proving a causation between an increase in Xanax prescriptions and a rise in what feels like escalating uncertainty on a geo-political world stage.
All times were probably pretty uncertain while they were happening (except maybe the year 1997? For some reason that feels right).
But there was a reason “Treat Yo Self” felt so catchy when Tom Haverferd and Donna Meagle indulged themselves at the local mall near Pawnee, IN in 2011.
There is a reason Lo Fi is resonating in a time of high-tech.
With consumerism slowed down by a virus, those feelings of comfort-while-spending, of pre-fab cocktails at mid-upscale chains in mid-upscale malls, of wearing a Snuggie, are textural memories that only now stand out due to their absence.
Ok, we can still wear Snuggies.
Guess what year they debuted?
2008.
The year the stock market crashed.
While the economy started feeling more uncertain than it had in, perhaps, decades…
…and the cost of building materials continued to decrease…
…and the rich were back on track to getting richer…
the largest retail and hospitality corporations in America poured their money into creating an environment that felt completely safe.
While the cost to produce music reached new lows…
…and the aforementioned uncertainty made political statements feel unsafe…
a generation of musicians turned to cozy instrumental beats that sampled guttural moans from previous generations’ emotive outputs.
While the news seemed to get crazier every year…
…more and more people were prescribed drugs that calmed anxiety.
In the premiere episode of Euphoria the main character narrates her own birth, which occurred on 9/11.
She was born, as Questlove dissects in the below post, into a world of constant news.
This world of constant news led, the show (sometimes heavy-handedly) argues, into a mind prone to anxiety for which drugs seem the only relief.
But the opening to Euphoria was a decade plus in the making.
Socio-culturally at least. It didn’t take that long to shoot, I assume.
Euphoria is heightened, to say the least.
Among the many takeaways from the series: a main character growing up anxious and depressed, in a crazy world, turning to hard drugs at an extremely young age, is itself a way for us to live vicariously through a character who gets to give the zero fucks we wish – to an extent – we could also (not) give.
Ours Is An Expensive Womb
All this retreat back into the womb comes at a price, that, like many a dystopic sci-fi film has foreshadowed, can only be afforded by the rich, at an increasing expense to the poor.
A Xanax prescription, a trip to Vegas or a day eating, drinking, and shopping at the mall, enough time on your hands to dig into a new genre of meditative low-fidelity music, is more than most Americans can afford.
At the risk of quoting How Millenials Became The Burnout Generation in every article, all this self-care is mostly marketing.
The media that surrounds us — both social and mainstream, from Marie Kondo’s new Netflix show to the lifestyle influencer economy — tells us that our personal spaces should be optimized just as much as one’s self and career. The end result isn’t just fatigue, but enveloping burnout that follows us to home and back. The most common prescription is “self-care.” Give yourself a face mask! Go to yoga! Use your meditation app! But much of self-care isn’t care at all: It’s an $11 billion industry whose end goal isn’t to alleviate the burnout cycle, but to provide further means of self-optimization. At least in its contemporary, commodified iteration, self-care isn’t a solution; it’s exhausting.
This exhaustion with self care is certainly an upper-middle class concern.
But selling bits and pieces of this retreat is all that’s needed to turn a profit.
A weekly splurge at a Chipotle, a yearly shopping trip for new school year clothes, a honeymoon to Vegas, the seconds of possibility between purchasing the scratch off and scratching it off, lets a large majority of Americans taste the upper-middle class luxuries we all feel a certain expectation to be able to afford.
What musicians can be said to have naturally tapped into is an impulse this $11 billion industry that corporations pursued strategically.
And it’s aesthetic is burgerlounge.
I am not immune.
Last week I mowed the lawn, then took a Miller Lite into the shower while playing Nebraska out of my Samsung, the high-pitch wail of Bruce Springsteen’s harmonica, from his analog masterpiece of an album, working ironically well on the treble-only smartphone speakers resounding off the bathroom walls.
The relaxing – enveloped in the pleasant – effect was not unlike scrolling through and curating my Pinterest page called “Cozy Future Cyber Punk”.
As Paul Walker-Emig wrote in “Neon and corporate dystopias: why does cyberpunk refuse to move on?” for The Guardian,
Why is it that cyberpunk still looks like it did in the 80s? Perhaps there has been no need for it to change: it continues to resonate with us because the world it depicts is the one we live in.
Nobody has yet imagined a way out of the typical cyberpunk dystopia, however, which is surely a symptom of a creative block. It is no coincidence that cyberpunk came of age in the era where capitalism was moving towards global dominance, culminating in its symbolic triumph at the fall of the Berlin Wall.
As a result, cyberpunk is being stripped of any political power it once had.
I would argue one further reason these images have persisted, is that we like them.
It is possible, that in my love of these images, I have forgone the intended dread inducement (Dr Dredd reference in there somewhere) their creators imagined, and skipped straight to acceptance, and the coziness of a compartment high above the gloom.
Source for Vegas Strip, Night Time Driving gifs
Source for Aria Walk Thru gifs