Saved by Eli Allan and
The Disbeliever's Guide to Authenticity
For those without maker skills, consumer connoisseurship of “craft” commodity categories like previous hipster mainstays coffee and denim became a popular choice of hobby and profession. This in turn contributed to the hundreds of restaurants and brands that all claimed to be part of the movement towards “local,” small production scales, heritage, ... See more
subpixel space • After Authenticity
Yet appearing authentic while conforming to external values produces for the self-creating self an endlessly contradictory task of reconciling incommensurable values. How does this self, caught between a newly expanded sense of interiority and faced with an increased demand that it shape itself for the marketplace, render itself “authentic”?
Micki McGee • Self-Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life
Everyone’s Existential Crisis
palladiummag.com
Brands and commodities therefore need to be considered and critiqued on the basis of the specific cultural and economic contributions they make to society. People co-create their identities with brands just as they do with religions, communities, and other other systems of meaning. This constructivist view is incompatible with popular forms of post... See more