Trends in fashion and dating

Let's put it differently. Love commitment long-term partnerships increasingly become privileges in a world where social friction is low, where the cost of starting something with someone new isn't too big. Any fault, any error, mistake can be seen as unforgivable, there's always someone better you deserve more, a better match.

Nauseating, gut-retching romance becomes highly desirable. Where everyone is transactional, the idea of someone loving you for the entirety of you, blemishes and all, despite (or perhaps because of them) all your faults, and isn't using them as a way to skip to the next relationship, seems like a fantasy. The potential of escaping the cycle of romance, relationship, disappointment, breakup, sadness, is alluring. Compromises become attractive. Transactional relationships thrive still but the equilibrium shifts. And the cycle repeats again. Because of reduced friction in relationships as well as instant communication, this cycle can get faster than you would believe. Over a period of a regular persons dating lifetime, the cycle could repeat itself several times. The final equilibrium results in those seeking stability making more compromises than they would have originally made, as those who don't desire stability get increasingly more unmoored. After a point, no compromise is worth making, nothing makes up for all those lost years. The younger generation looks at the follies of the sad sacks of the past, and adjusts expectations accordingly, with their priors valuing stability and long-term commitment more, not understanding the trade-offs that were made originally.

And when all arts become visual, the importance of visual impression increases disproportionately high. The market shifts to fulfill that need -- makeup products, hairstyling, clothing, and general knicknacks sell. The problem is, everything turns into a fashion cycle at that point. Not only do you now have to change your clothes and hair every year, but your couch has got to go, so do your wall decorations, lights, your entire lifestyle really. The gradual fashion changes accelerate and the cycle becomes as small as a few years. However with limited income for the young, the impossibility of changing everything with changing fashions, those formerly fashionable realize they cannot keep up with the times. Even accounting for age, the original fashion trend that was started by a particular medium tends to stick around, changing completely only when a new medium takes over. To put it differently, the 'lumberjack hipster look' that has taken over the world will be the defining fashion trend of this decade, and will not quickly adapt internationally. In the end it all comes down to class. If you're rich, you can and will adapt to fashion trends globally. If not, things remain the same more or less. This is nothing new, has been the same for decades, millennia. It's important to note this because it's easy to assume with the proliferation of quick two-way visual communication spanning the globe, that trends are more flexible and things shift faster. And it's true in some sense, such as seeing phones as disposable. But the trends will buck just as they bucked when the transistors came over. When the technology stabilizes, it's not cool anymore, it's just yet another thing you buy in your life. The excitement is gone, until the next interesting thing comes over. And despite youtube, the next big thing won't instantly take over the world -- it'll be faster than what we're used to seeing, but not that much more, it's always about the shifting of the equilibrium, not individual choices.

The final question here: will the increased obsession with the visual medium change, or is it here to stay? Podcasts are just making their way out to the world -- an argument that the visual medium may not always rule. It's not unlikely after global politics becomes boring again (and we can sure hope that happens in the next few years!) that text as the primary medium of communication on the internet becomes the norm. What will happen to the instagram influencers then? Will they start writing, or will they go the way of the dodo bird, generally. It's unclear, considering how much corporate interests have influenced general trends in recent years -- however, with the EU/US breaking up Facebook in the foreseeable future, it's imaginable that the insta-craze will give way for a consideration-rage. We will see...