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a couple months ago, a fellow millennial colleague and I tried to explain the & #39;whimsy& #39; fad of the early 2000s to our gen Z colleague. we were like, you don& #39;t understand how bad it was. we participated in public pillow fights — we did graffiti that said & #39;you are beautiful& #39; —
I realized we were both talking about it with palpable shame and disgust, like we& #39;d been in the stanford prison experiment or something
I said it was a time marked by popular belief in the beauty and serendipity of strangers. it was the era of amelie poulain, michel gondry, free hugs, flash mobs, manic pixie dream girls, leaving a hand-annotated book on a bench and someone finds it (??) and you fall in love (??)
to this day I cringe when I see something with the same spiritual circuitry as that fad, like & #39;little free libraries& #39; or strangers in opposite high-rise buildings sending messages to each other via signs in their windows
I think that fad feels shameful to me because it& #39;s a confluence of things I don& #39;t believe in anymore — pushing intimacy instead of letting it grow at its own pace, performing community/connectivity instead of building it, seeing boundaries as obstructive instead of protective etc
it was also a time in which *performing* spontaneity was seen as an act of spontaneity. like, you could be & #39;spontaneous& #39; by acting out a pre-rehearsed skit in a public place
if I had to sum up the whimsy fad, I& #39;d say it was a failed mass attempt to make reality itself into a movie
anyway https://twitter.com/pangmeli/status/1139019851463307265">https://twitter.com/pangmeli/...
lots of people dunking on garden state but to be clear, I have reclaimed garden state https://twitter.com/pangmeli/status/1024676914395525120">https://twitter.com/pangmeli/...
someone just argued that & #39;little free libraries& #39; may make people & #39;feel more connected& #39;. I agree that acts of civic whimsy give some people the sensation of being connected. but by contrast, actual libraries — big free libraries, if you will — *actually make* people more connected
