Why Doesn't Anything Feel New Anymore?

I think we're stuck in a reference loop

I walked past a small grocery shop with a fruit stand outside and paused to take a picture of some citrus bathed in sunlight. I looked at the photo—not my finest work. I condemned it to just a story post. When I looked up from my phone a girl emerged from the shop door. She looked lovely, a white cotton dress and a basket hanging in the crook of her arm, propped up by her hip. I sighed. I knew the exact reference she had been inspired by: Jane Birkin. If I hadn’t known the reference, if I hadn’t once carried a damn basket myself, I would have perhaps seen her for who she was and been able to live in the moment. Instead, my mind was flooded with images of Jane Birkin and then the hoards of influenced girls, myself included, who have since uncomfortably lugged a basket down to the shop after pinning that photo on their “style” board.

It’s no one’s fault, it’s not a criticism, if anything it’s more of a criticism of myself or the state of fashion. I just think it’s an annoying reality that we all seem trapped in a reference loop. Stuck with the same algorithms and inspirations, we’ve become pastiches of each other, of the past. Nothing feels genuine or new. A basket is no longer a basket. A cardigan is no longer a cardigan— it’s some coquette, ballerina core, Carrie Bradshaw reference. A pair of glasses have become a symbol that triggers thoughts of the 90s, office siren core, and Miu Miu dupes ringing through my head. Nothing feels fresh, nothing seems to say anything about anyone. No insight into our own personalities, only our algorithms.

I suppose it’s a symptom of the internet, globalization, and capitalism. All of our shops, algorithms, influencers are the same. But sometimes I wonder what it was like to experience something truly and completely new. Like when people talk about rock or disco and what it felt like to actually hear or see something for the first time. I can conceptually understand that it was new to see a rebellious punk on TV in leather and safety pins and dyed hair and how shocking it would be to a stuffy world, but I’ve never felt that shock. How radical it would be. In many ways I think the hyper referencing has robbed this generation of it’s own cultural movement, its own distinctive moment in time. It feels as if we’re bombarded with so much stuff all the damn time that I’m not sure the human mind even has capacity to think or accept anything new.

Sometimes I’m tempted to think it’s not even possible. Maybe we’ve crossed every boundary, perhaps we’ve explored everything, and we’re left to just keep rehashing what we already know. But maybe that’s not true, maybe there could be new stuff but our brains have become so clogged with the stuff we’ve seen that we actually aren’t interested. Incapable of comprehending something that doesn’t fit into our narrow view of the world. What if we were hit with some new instrument or new undiscovered item of clothing or strange art form? I think we might just discard it as too different, too foreign, too weird. So we’re condemned to just keep looking back into the void of what we know.

You would think being stuck in a reference loop would mean we’d end up stagnating, that people would eventually lose interest and just wear what they already have. In reality it’s the exact opposite, it’s made us keep pushing more and more to try to run away from feeling the same as every other person with a Pinterest. Stuck on a treadmill constantly trying to outrun each other to no avail. Trying to differentiate ourselves from each other in whatever small way we can. The trend cycle has turned into the micro trend cycle because it’s all that left, picking apart what we already know and exhausting it for a fleeting moment. Seeking out some forgotten sneaker that has existed for decades so we can recontextualise it and feel alive, all in an attempt to be slightly different. Left to argue over what cut of jeans is cringe, what style of Adidas shoe isn’t overexposed, whether bows are done or timeless. These are details but they’re all we have. Are we not just buying pretty much the same shit over and over again, just repackaged?

When I saw the girl with the basket I felt foolish, exhausted, like I was just another victim of the algorithm. In a split second I quietly resolved to never wear a basket out again because it would no longer be unique. But if I put my basket away I have to find something new, when I find something and then inevitably see someone else wearing it, the cycle will repeat. So maybe in the quest for being individual and finding one’s own personal style we are all becoming a homogenous blob of the same references. Ironically, maybe if we stopped being annoyed by looking like everyone else, stepped away from the obsession with appearing timeless and having a distinct personal style we’d actually develop one. If people just kept wearing their sambas or speedcats, slicked back buns and big frilly scrunchies, maybe our minds would begin to open up. Maybe we’d chill out and be able to think of something new. In a world of spiralling endless feedback loops maybe standing still is the answer.