My issue with these aesthetics and micro trends is they rely solely on appearance, brand, and what you can buy to fit into said aesthetic.
It’s all about consuming, and because a lot of these micotrends only last a few months, they create a lot of overconsumption and waste.
Not only that, but a lot of these are established fashion trends/Subcultures repackaged with a new name.
We are literally tying hyper consumerism to our identities and individuality.

As a gen Z myself, imma just ask Why is everything an aesthetic these days?

Our generation can’t stick to one subculture for too long 😭 shit goes out of style (or boring) waaay too quickly, so the solution is aesthetics right? Like you can’t switch a subculture as often as you can change an aesthetic.

We need to bring back the term “POSER” 🤣 that was the worst thing you could be back in the day and we need to bring it back!

I find it childish tbh. All the "dark academics" and "clean girls" are gonna look back one day and wonder "why did I slap a cool-sounding label on myself just because I like old books and autumn tones??"

a big problem with these microtrends and aesthetics is that there’s no real substance behind them other than the look itself. they’re all powered by strictly consumerism. there’s no actual culture. the punk subculture, for example, has an extremely rich history, and the look is only one aspect of the subculture. but with these microtrends the ONLY aspect is the look. they’re designed to get you to buy things, not to be an actual community.

It’s like another form of consumerism. We can’t get satisfied with the things we have so we move on to the “next best thing”

No joke, in the 90s there were shows on network tv that nearly everyone watched so if say you went to work or school the day after a new episode of like cheers or martin or something, everyone would be talking about it. It created a shared culture that could feed both communities who loved that shared culture and communities of those that chose to reject that shared culture. The more splintered and hyper specified our interests become the less we can connect with people who like different things.

I do feel like there is a real disconnect with those of us on TikTok and those of us not. Imma be real, I don’t have TikTok. I figured I’ve got enough tailored algorithms and didn’t need to add another to the mix. But like…. My friends who all are on TikTok, I don’t understand half of what they’re talking about most of the time. I feel very out of the loop. Like being a TikTok user or not being one is it’s own personality trait at this point 😅

I feel like gen z doesnt even really care about personalities anymore. All they talk about is looks and it's really sad

Honestly I don’t think the whole aesthetic thing is new to gen z - rather I think they’re an expansion on earlier groupings like jocks, hippies, yuppies, scene kids, goths, skaters, stoners, preppies, fashionistas etc. The niches are just getting more specific and the groups smaller and more targeted

When I tell you I had NO IDEA Taylor swift was the yt peoples Beyoncé…. I had NO CLUE the girl was so big. That’s how far removed from whatever part of the internet has her in it.

Why does everything have to be an aesthetic? Like you can’t just dress any way you want, live a certain lifestyle, or change it up whenever you want? It's suffocating to be forced into all these different categories.

I hate that Spotify keeps recommending me music (most of the time music I don't like), I keep having to take these out of my playlists or not listen to them at all it's highly annoying

i remember the first time i heard my younger cousin use the phrase “that’s so aesthetic” and i felt so badly for her bc she seemed not to know how to use the word. but turns out i was the one out of the loop

I’ve been avoiding my feeds on Instagram because they’re too personalized. 😂 I only check stories on my home page and any DMs I receive. If I look at my feed, I am going to be on there for hours scrolling through the content because Instagram is way too good at knowing what I like.

As a millennial, i thought i was just getting out of touch (lets be clear, I am lol) but i hadn't realized how intense it had become. I work hard checking individual pages instead of relying on algorythm feeds.

It concerning me to hear that folks aren't worried about not having control over their feeds if the algorythm is "good". The fact that there is no choice to have both or to opt out means that folks are being influenced by in ways they may not realize.  Like you said, micro trends, or... other things less fun.

I hope more folks become more critical of not just the media they see, but why/when/how they are seeing that media and why they may not be allowed to have direct control of it.

For example, It's a well known secret that tech companies created the " endless scroll" instead of using numbered pages, because it keeps people on the app siginificantly longer, thus making more money for the company. Even at the proven effect of creating depression/ hopelessness/isolation in users who use apps with endless scroll.

I love how Rumi calls us his Rummates lmao 🤭

Seriously tho, I never understood the micro-trends and the crazy amount of aesthetics. 😅 Its one thing to try and figure youself out by trying different things out every so often but some people legit just dont want to be themselves anymore and would rather follow these trends to feel something and be someone else. For awhile now, I had been saying that all many people want to do now is copy each other and not appreciate being unique in some way. So many people have the same look and style, which if thats genuinely what the person likes thats fine but too many people are just following others to fit in somewhere.

this also goes hand in hand with the idea that no one can just feel any emotion nowadays without it being “diagnosed” and then having said diagnosis be an aesthetic. depression, “daddy issues”, and other mental issues are also aesthetics now.