PINEWIND

"what aesthetic is this?"

I try to not look at Reddit too much nowadays, but I still end up there more often than I'd like to. One of the subreddits that keeps showing up in my feed is r/AestheticWiki, probably because I've joined the similar r/BooksThatFeelLikeThis.

I've read and watched many condemnation of the "microaesthetic" trend. My personal stance towards it is relatively neutral - I think pulling together some more or less disparate elements and trying to unify them under a shared label or umbrella can be a fun exercise to explore one's sensibilities or a personal style.

However, I do get a tiny bit ticked off some times when I see an r/AestheticWiki recommendation with a title like "what aesthetic is this?", where people searching for a label to put on something like a picture of a small European town with half-timbered houses and a castle in the distance. I think what annoys me with these posts is the passivity, the assumption that there's already a readymade "aesthetic" out there that you just have to find and adopt instead of building or figuring out something for yourself. I think most of the fun lies in collecting things and figuring out something that's at least somewhat new, unique, or doesn't fit neatly fit under a pre-established label. Once you're done and put a definitive name-stamp on it, most of the excitement is gone.

#aesthetics #creativity