The Weekly Roundup (week of 5.13)
Move aside Soho House, there's real members clubs to obsess about.
1. Why Members-Only Clubs Are Everywhere Right Now
An excellent article about the growing demand for members-only clubs in New York City.
from Feed Me spent 3 months doing research for this GQ article. I’m super jealous, this was a really fun read and goes to show how far the demand for exclusive third spaces goes. I feel the most intense shame about my lowly Soho House membership hearing about spots like Zero-Bond (oft mentioned on How Long Gone). My ever-growing status anxiety and shameless need to be validated by other people was only made worse by reading this piece, but I don’t care, I know who I am. It’s the ultimate bourgeois pursuit, and though it seems like an archaic relic of the past, members-only clubs don’t seem to be going away anytime soon. Read here.2. You are not a commercial for yourself
I tend to think about clothes-rocking as a cultural form like any other: subject to shifting values and vogues, cycles of staleness and freshness, conservative retrenchment and avant-garde repudiation — in other words, locked in a prison of trends. Trends don’t just change the way we see clothes, after all, but the way we taste food, hear music, see paintings, read fiction, laugh (or don’t) at comedy, etc. And so I draw a distinction between mindless trend-hopping and making / enjoying things that feel meaningful & exciting as relates to a specific cultural moment, whether it’s a novel or an outfit. Because as much as IG style influencers and “10 Perfect T-Shirt” listicle publishers would like you to think otherwise, there is no such thing as “timeless” style.
BANGER. Read here.
3. Do We Really Need More ‘Creators’?
I guess I am “creative” for a living, so I am technically part of the problem. But I have always been jealous of people who are good with numbers and spreadsheets. It is a tangible and viable skill. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, and plumbers are all admirable professions. But because of social media and idea peddlers like breathwork-loving super producer Rick Rubin, young people who just want to film themselves getting dressed and drinking out of Stanley mugs can think of themselves as “creatives.” Meanwhile, there is no shame in being an Excel wizard or a physician's assistant.
Chris Black is at his best in this piece lambasting the cultural fixation on being a “creative”. We’ve got too many fuckin “creative directors” and vibe curators and not enough plumbers. Society is cooked. Read here.
4. How the Language of TV is Influencing How We See Ourselves
A similar thesis to the Everything Is Bravo piece from SSENSE last week, this article dives into TV’s impact on social media and life itself. “You see a lot of this on TikTok now: videos that describe ordinary life using the language of television. Scroll through, and you’ll find users charting the different “seasons” of their lives or highlighting the emergence of plot “arcs.” You may find users referring to the people in their lives as “casts” — including both passing encounters with “paid extras” and recurring appearances by “guest stars.” Our collective narcissism grows by the day. More and more we see Christopher Lasch’s “The Culture of Narcissism” vindicated. Read here.