As we return to, or begin work this summer, we’re often confronted with shifts and changes to how we operate in our day-to-day lives. How we schedule our day, what we prioritize, how we manage our time and, rather controversially, how we dress and present ourselves may change.  

The office siren aesthetic is a pop culture lightning rod causing recent scrutiny toward young women in the workplace. An edgy, feminine and sometimes sultry take on corporate dress, the aesthetic has been popular with digital natives and fashion influencers alike in the past couple of years. 

The aesthetic is based upon femme fatales, incorporating bold, often dark makeup looks that make features pop, and can attract attention in ways that may be antithetical to the mode of dress it imitates. 

It’s more of a cosplay of an office worker than an actual work-appropriate office uniform, as many have pointed out. This quality is played up to varying degrees. Some claim their takes on the office siren are work-friendly, while others parade around in their almost costume-esque reimagining of romanticized corporate America. 

As the content surrounding it is made mostly by influencers who may very well have or will never step foot in an office, it has a certain quality that cannot be ignored. It has the same energy as putting on a grown-up outfit for the first time as a young girl, playing with your mom’s makeup or wobbling around in heels for the first time. A more mature and sleek adaptation of a corporate Barbie outfit.

It’s refreshingly hollow, not preachy or self-defining. It’s a new way to aesthetically present as a woman in the workforce without being overly referential or proving one’s right or worthiness to be there. 

The office siren aesthetic doesn’t infantilize the wearer, but breathes new life into a style of dress that’s often associated with stiff or uptight qualities. 

The office siren does not show up early or late, she just looks a certain way. It’s as simple as opening a catalog. It’s not moralistic in either direction. The clothes and makeup pointedly do not interfere with or express anything about the quality of work done while in them.

It has faced backlash, unsurprisingly, for its impracticality in a more professional setting, with varying degrees of criticism, mainly for its more risque dress elements. Whether it be more skin shown, more edgy looks or more form-fitting attire, it does toe the line, creating ambiguity behind its actual degree of wearability. 

The more avant-garde and editorial, as well as the more scandalous iterations, have also faced backlash, in that they are somehow misappropriating office wear, or giving young women the wrong idea of what’s appropriate to wear to the workplace. 

But there is no real evidence to justify the large backlash. 

Ruby Nancy, associate professor of business communication at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, said she teaches dress code in her classes from a nuanced and multifaceted perspective, acknowledging students’ reality and the consequences for not adhering may entail. 

“I think that it’s a lot less important than it used to be, but there are still some spaces where it’s just as important as it always has been,” Nancy said.

For as long as women have been in corporate spaces, their bodies have been a point of contention. 

Nancy said that at the beginning of her career in the ‘80s, she experienced dress codes that placed almost Victorian-esque scrutiny on women. 

“There was an expectation that, no matter the heat and whether or not a building was air conditioned, that women professionals wore pantyhose so that the bare skin of their legs and feet was not visible,” Nancy said. “Because, for some reason, that was considered not appropriate for the workplace.

Nancy said at the beginning of her career in the ‘80s, she experienced dress codes that placed almost Victorian-esque scrutiny on women. 

“There was an expectation that, no matter the heat and whether or not a building was air conditioned, that women professionals wore pantyhose so that the bare skin of their legs and feet was not visible,” Nancy said. “Because, for some reason, that was considered not appropriate for the workplace.”

The cases of young women getting fired for taking inspiration from office siren lookbooks online are all almost entirely speculative, or expressed in comment sections with no real factual backing. According to Her Campus, dedicated time and effort were spent identifying mystery employees who faced termination as a result of their siren-esque indiscretions, with no findings.  

It’s just not happening in the epidemic proportions that we’ve been led to believe. The content critiquing these lookbooks seems to far outnumber the amount of actual content documenting this style, turning it into yet another opportunity to completely divert from the actual point in workplace etiquette and guidelines, which should be productivity.

If someone’s behind a cubicle, who cares if their skirt is an inch too short, or if their calf might be exposed? Beyond basic norms of decency, it doesn’t make sense to get so wrapped up in something that’s ultimately inconsequential and so determined by arbitrary lines in the sand. The main factor in dress that influences productivity is the degree of comfort and self-assurance that someone’s outfit provides them. 

Young women, who are surpassing men in college attendance and graduation, and joining the workforce in rapidly increasing numbers, are intelligent enough to know the difference between playing dress-up and going to work. 

Most women aren’t trying to turn heads anyway, and it’s a rather niche style category. Those who are trying to emulate an office siren aesthetic have the wits to keep it at a minimum. 

People are getting worked up over nothing in the preservation of norms that have little or no bearing on productivity or work itself. Common sense isn’t extinct after all, and our generation seems to be keeping up. We can recognize the difference between clubwear and work attire.

As we return to, or begin work this summer, we’re often confronted with shifts and changes to how we operate in our day-to-day lives. How we schedule our day, what we prioritize, how we manage our time and, rather controversially, how we dress and present ourselves may change.  

The office siren aesthetic is a pop culture lightning rod causing recent scrutiny toward young women in the workplace. An edgy, feminine and sometimes sultry take on corporate dress, the aesthetic has been popular with digital natives and fashion influencers alike in the past couple of years. 

etic is based upon femme fatales, incorporating bold, often dark makeup looks that make features pop, and can attract attention in ways that may be antithetical to the mode of dress it imitates. 

It’s more of a cosplay of an e  office worker than an actual work-appropriate office uniform, as many have pointed out. This quality is played up to varying degrees. Some claim their takes on the office siren are work-friendly, while others parade around in their almost costume-esque reimagining of romanticized corporate America. 

As the content surrounding it is made mostly by influencers who may very well have or will never step foot in an office, it has a certain quality that cannot be ignored. It has the same energy as putting on a grown-up outfit for the first time as a young girl, playing with your mom’s makeup or wobbling around in heels for the first time. A more mature and sleek adaptation of a corporate Barbie outfit.

It’s refreshingly hollow, not preachy or self-defining. It’s a new way to aesthetically present as a woman in the workforce without being overly referential or proving one’s right or worthiness to be there. 

The office siren aesthetic doesn’t infantilize the wearer, but breathes new life into a style of dress that’s often associated with stiff or uptight qualities. 

The office siren does not show up early or late, she just looks a certain way. It’s as simple as opening a catalog. It’s not moralistic in either direction. The clothes and makeup pointedly do not interfere with or express anything about the quality of work done while in them.

It’s faced backlash, unsurprisingly, for its impracticality in a more professional setting, with varying degrees of criticism, mainly for its more risque dress elements. Whether it be more skin shown, more edgy looks or more form-fitting attire, it does toe the line, creating ambiguity behind its actual degree of wearability. 

The more avant-garde and editorial, as well as the more scandalous iterations, have also faced backlash, in that they are somehow misappropriating office wear, or giving young women the wrong idea of what’s appropriate to wear to the workplace. 

But there is no real evidence to justify the large backlash. 

Ruby Nancy, associate professor of business communication at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, said she teaches dress code in her classes from a nuanced and multifaceted perspective, acknowledging students’ reality and the consequences for not adhering may entail. 

“I think that it’s a lot less important than it used to be, but there are still some spaces where it’s just as important as it always has been,” Nancy said.

For as long as women have been in corporate spaces, their bodies have been a point of contention. 

Nancy said that at the beginning of her career in the ‘80s, she experienced dress codes that placed almost Victorian-esque scrutiny on women. 

“There was an expectation that, no matter the heat and whether or not a building was air conditioned, that women professionals wore pantyhose so that the bare skin of their legs and feet was not visible,” Nancy said. “Because, for some reason, that was considered not appropriate for the workplace.

Nancy said at the beginning of her career in the ‘80s, she experienced dress codes that placed almost Victorian-esque scrutiny on women. 

“There was an expectation that, no matter the heat and whether or not a building was air conditioned, that women professionals wore pantyhose so that the bare skin of their legs and feet was not visible,” Nancy said. “Because, for some reason, that was considered not appropriate for the workplace.”

The cases of young women getting fired for taking inspiration from office siren lookbooks online are all almost entirely speculative, or expressed in comment sections with no real factual backing. According to Her Campus, dedicated time and effort were spent identifying mystery employees who faced termination as a result of their siren-esque indiscretions, with no findings.  

It’s just not happening in the epidemic proportions that we’ve been led to believe. The content critiquing these lookbooks seems to far outnumber the amount of actual content documenting this style, turning it into yet another opportunity to completely divert from the actual point in workplace etiquette and guidelines, which should be productivity.

If someone’s behind a cubicle, who cares if their skirt is an inch too short, or if their calf might be exposed? Beyond basic norms of decency, it doesn’t make sense to get so wrapped up in something that’s ultimately inconsequential and so determined by arbitrary lines in the sand. The main factor in dress that influences productivity is the degree of comfort and self-assurance that someone’s outfit provides them. 

Young women, who are surpassing men in college attendance and graduation, and joining the workforce in rapidly increasing numbers, are intelligent enough to know the difference between playing dress-up and going to work. 

Most women aren’t trying to turn heads anyway, and it’s a rather niche style category. Those who are trying to emulate an office siren aesthetic have the wits to keep it at a minimum. 

People are getting worked up over nothing in the preservation of norms that have little or no bearing on productivity or work itself. Common sense isn’t extinct after all, and our generation seems to be keeping up. We can recognize the difference between clubwear and work attire.

Can our consumption and surveillance of celebrity news and gossip ever really be justified? If not, at the very least rationalized?

The first column I ever wrote for the Minnesota Daily called into question our odd parasocial relationships with celebrities, who are, functionally, brand mascots. When broken down, the construction of these cultural icons is ridiculously derivative and formulaic.

Yet, we take the bait every time.

While I still stand by my point that authenticity is commodified in Hollywood and among public figures in general, there are nuances here to be explored.

Despite criticisms of vapidity and lack of substance, celebrity news prevails. Why do large sectors of the population care so much about what a minute subset of artists, movers and shakers get up to in their free time?

It seems there are two camps under which consumption of such content falls: those who make attempts to intellectualize this preoccupation and those who embrace it as a guilty pleasure.

These are less disparate categories and more of a Venn diagram or spectrum. Anyone who encounters, interacts with, or consumes celebrity or pop culture news operates somewhere between intellectual and cultural criticism and guilty pleasure, or train-wreck sadism.

Where we’re getting it wrong is the mutual exclusion of these two lenses through which we peer into the lives of these figures.

Privy to Elle Woods’ increasingly glorified sensibility of fusing high and low culture and feminizing academia, I grew up watching video essays. These YouTube videojournalism pieces dissected the sociological implications of the Kardashians, “Love Island,” Megan Fox and, of course, Britney Spears’ conservatorship, among other hot-button issues.

These major pop culture events were and are lightning rods for public debate. They’re ripe for repeated, accessible dissections of academically inclined concepts under frameworks we may not have otherwise been made aware of.

Many individuals lived to read Perez Hilton’s scathing remarks toward Spears, and then his half-hearted apology, as well as Fox’s re-emergence into the limelight following her harsh treatment by the press.

Through these deconstructions, we can parse through the layers of context that inform our society in unduly prescient ways.

We use these happenings as case studies, as we watch the dynamics of our time unfold in front of us. Baby’s first sociology, if you will. We’re pushing Barbie Dolls together and pulling them apart, manufacturing and reacting to drama using these unreal figures that are celebrities as a proxy.

Ruth DeFoster, an assistant professor who teaches media and popular culture at the University of Minnesota, said she’s observed fascinations with celebrity figures throughout history and in most civilizations.

“I think there’s a core human fascination with celebrity that we’re just drawn to,” DeFoster said. “Whether it’s a wealthy king, whether it’s the landed gentry and the noble classes, whether it’s the gladiators or Olympians, we’ve always been drawn to those people as opinion leaders. So it just seems to be something that humans just do.”

It’s voyeuristic and surveilling in a way that feels cathartic to us. How we regard these figures as unreal makes it not only morally justifiable, but morally imperative that we dig beneath the surface to understand what they’re up to.

They personify beauty, excess, success and aspiration.

Maggie Hennefeld, professor of cultural studies and comparative literature at the University, said we use the unreal quality of celebrities, as well as their extreme adherence to societal ideals of personhood, to negotiate and wrestle with our place in the world.

“I think it’s a way of negotiating some kind of ambivalence about where we fit in relation to that larger fantasy, like, do we identify with these celebrities?” Hennefeld said. “Do we want to destroy them because they model ideals that are, to some extent, completely impossible? I think both at once. It’s also so easy to exploit that kind of mass volatility regarding our relationship to these celebrities.”

What we take note of in celebrities is a good indicator of where we are societally, whether that be on a purely aesthetic or behavioral level or a deeper moral interrogation. A niche example of this is the wane of Anne Hathaway’s popularity in the early 2010s, because of beauty standards reflecting the recession-era ideal of round-faced authenticity. 

This can be extrapolated. 

Maybe our fascination with the Kardashian-inspired plastic surgery trends of the 2010s reflects a greater reckoning with technology and its effect on society in one of its most visceral ways. 

Maybe our reactions to Chappell Roan’s unique stance on performance and responsibilities of fame challenge our changing relationship with the workplace, or our generation gaps regarding twentieth-century-informed etiquette expectations. 

Celebrity gossip gives us a framework through which we are once removed and able to witness the defining ideological battles that define our generation. Not without bias, but aware and able to fully go through the motions of why we think the way we do, using accessible, widely-proliferated case studies to examine ourselves from a view that’s closer to a bird’s-eye. 

Through the social mores of our time, we may express competence in the moral battlegrounds that will come to define us in a greater historical context unconsciously. We may express competency without comprehending the true gravity of what we’re unlocking with our casual scrolls through the Daily Mail or our phone conversations with a friend. 

Celebrity news provides all of this and more. Or, it can simply ease our sorrows, cure malaise and temporarily suspend boredom. 

It’s a necessary distortion of the human condition, which in and of itself is complex and multifaceted.

Summer can seem so transient. Whether in the form of pleasant weather and clear skies, or the distinct flavor that each passing summer occupies in our collective consciousness.

The latter has become especially apparent lately. Perhaps it’s a post-COVID-19 fear of missing out that makes us so intent on maximizing each summer’s potential according to seemingly random aesthetic and cultural criteria.

Each summer has its distinct category now, immortalized in our collective memory by its pop culture backdrop.

As evidenced by Eurosummer, Barbie summer, Hot Girl summer and the most recent Brat summer, large sectors of popular culture tend to push the agenda that we should all aspire to some ultimate summer vision dictated by niche internet hyperfixations or funnelled into our feeds by guerrilla marketing campaigns.

Now that last year’s Brat summer has been officially and rightfully put to rest, where do we go from here? What kind of summer can we anticipate and prepare for? What kind of summer can we engineer, create or manifest? After all, the sky’s the limit, at least until the sun sets on Sept. 22.

The summer bucket lists that we grew up aspiring to, making and fulfilling are no longer birthed out of pure childhood or young-adult whimsy, cobbled together using crayons and craft glitter. Instead, we’re cross-coordinating spreadsheets, Canva presentations and Pinterest boards dictated not by our pie-in-the-sky sensibilities, but by dry, detached digital valuations of what’s worth our fleeting time in the sun.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

This isn’t to say that aesthetically pleasing hobbies and experiences aren’t worth exploring or chasing. It just takes more effort to escape the increasingly convoluted impulse to perform a good summer rather than truly experience one. The two can, and often do, bleed into each other, but there’s more to a good summer than an Aperol spritz or a good sunset picture.

Cole Blackett, a copywriter at Backpack Communications, said we need to engage with these trends on our terms so as not to get swept up by them, in that their intended purpose is to enrich and not subsume our memories.

“We live so much of our lives online that if you’re not intentionally trying to go out and make summer memories, then yeah, what you’re going to remember from the summer, whatever you were seeing on the internet,” Blackett said.

We use summer to gauge time. Unlike the other seasons that slog on for at least one point or another, it’s summer that we anticipate and revel in the most. We eagerly await the lengthening days, watch the trees return to their green and shed our layers accordingly.

From the get-go, at least in the U.S., we tend to see summer as analogous to youth. It represents the freedom of having no school and no responsibilities, the limited time we have to truly enjoy what life has to offer before we’re bogged down with responsibilities.

Nature is in its prime at the same time we are, full of life and light. We can only follow the breeze where it carries us for so long before it turns into a whipping wind, and we’re forced to reorient so as not to freeze or get truly carried away.

Summer is almost utopian, occupying the space between our expectations and reality. It exists in a limbo state somewhere between the memories of summers past, the fervent excitement for the summers to come and the seemingly dwindling returns each coming year brings.

We don’t remember the mosquitoes as well as the sunsets, the sticky heat doesn’t leave as lasting an impression as the cool lakeside breezes, and we don’t recall the sunburns as well as the tans they leave behind.

When we’re in it, though, we take in and experience all of this. We bask in the heat on a high UV day as much as we despise the way our thighs stick to park benches or how often we reapply sunscreen.

We want to make our limited number of summers count, though. It’s easier to remember and reorder them according to the sum of their parts, which is where the nostalgia comes from.

So we quantify and differentiate them, categorizing them for our sake, because they’re limited. We want to have a summer to travel the world, a summer to party, a summer to get our life together, a summer to turn pretty.

Marketing takes advantage of this. It’s preemptive and anticipatory. We romanticize in retrospect. The composite image that this process leaves us is hazy and light-leaked, leaving room for preconceived notions and extrapolated nostalgia.

Jaelynn Jackson, general manager of Backpack Communications, said summer presents unique challenges to ad agencies, especially given the pace of trend forecasting on social media.

“When you think of social media and that kind of marketing and advertising tactics, you kind of have to be quick on your feet,” Jackson said.

This is likely what contributes most strongly to the overly curated, contrived and hyper-specific feel behind some of these trends, like the tomato girl, coconut girl or any of the various coastal aesthetics, from cowgirls to grandmothers.

This gives brands an in. Not only are we now provided with how-to guides, mapping out itineraries for the best years and seasons of our lives, but we’re also equipped with starter packs and accessories. 

It can all go according to plan, which is incredibly comforting. Who doesn’t want to assuage their existential dread and fear of missing out, while living their best, most aspirational life?

At the end of the day, we need to contend with what we want to show for our lives. A few mementos bought from TikTok shop? 

We may only hope to begin our summers with a bucket list and end with a highlight reel. Throw in a couple of good Instagram posts, and you’re living the dream in the season that “cannot be.” 

We don’t need to tailor our lives to narrative, because it nearly never quite fits in the parameters or checks the boxes we need it to. A framework, goals and a vision board are good. 

I implore us to look beyond what’s readily available and walk the extra mile home in the 80-degree heat. 

Break out the crayons, close out your tabs and start anew.

H.A.G.S.

Consider this a eulogy for music as we know it, as Coachella takes its last breaths. The most tragic and culturally relevant happening of the past week.

In a desert utopia, flower crowns adorn the beach-waved masses, whose fringe outfitted bodies writhe and flow as one beneath the palms. This is where culture is born, love is free and music reigns. The festival of a generation that will go down in history, an inspiration etched into the annals of the American musical tradition. 

Its legitimacy and importance cannot be overstated, it’s incredibly necessary that celebrities, both micro and macro, niche and mainstream alike, parade around in strips of iridescent fabric, unenthusiastically lip synching in the crowd while taking photos on their G7x’s. Without such an important cultural landmark, how will Urban Outfitters stay afloat? How will our economy survive? What will happen to the fate of music itself?

I will not begin to entertain ideas of it being somehow shallow or not important, because the gravity it has held cannot be denied. What may just be an odd couple of days in April for most people is akin to the Super Bowl or a Pilgrimage to those who are truly plugged in. 

It takes a true genius to be able to comb through the heaps and hordes of clips and media from Coachella to get to the bottom of it all. To truly grasp what makes a good festival fit, versus what’s poser-y. To accurately predict and identify Kylie Jenner’s festival fashion influences and predict her future outfits is a feat of 21st-century precognition equivalent to whatever Nostradamus was on about. I’m sure he said something about Beychella somewhere. 

To those who know, the decline of Coachella is devastating. Perhaps the single most important event of the past couple of weeks. Undeniably so, to be completely realistic here. 

While Coachella as an entity still exists, it’s a shell of itself. Forever lurking in the shadow of its former glory. We’ve lost the true meaning of Coachella, and its importance is being forgotten. We need to believe in it again, or else it’ll lose almost all of its magic entirely. 

If one were to be nuanced, they’d say it’s difficult, if not nearly impossible, to pinpoint the exact day the music died. However, we are in dire straits. Nuance is out of the question now. While we may not know what exactly killed it, it can certainly be narrowed down. 

Video killed the radio star and hubris may have killed the pastime of our favorite niche internet microcelebrities. 

To figure out what killed music’s most important festival, past or present, we must let the whodunit begin. Veneered public figures may fall to the wayside one by one, until there are none left at the fairgrounds. A site akin to Pompeii, if not slightly more consequential. Coachella historians will have nothing left but sepia-toned Instagram archives and the beaded pieces that inhabit thrift stores big and small. 

Was it the Sugar Bear Hair controversy that blew the online beauty community wide open? Was it the disappointing re-emergence post-pandemic? The waning of Coachella’s cultural power can’t be explained away by one event, but rather by a series of small incidents. As Neil Young might say, it didn’t burn out, but rather faded away. 

However, one key event confirms my long-held suspicion and worst waking nightmare. Vanessa Hudgens didn’t even go this year. 

Just a few short years ago, Vanessa Hudgens, patron saint of Coachella herself, saw it worthy to sacrifice the lives of millions of Americans to experience such a cultural event. It was a life-or-death necessity, where the risk of widespread and inevitable death had to happen, to ensure equilibrium for culture and art. Now it’s not even worth a little extra walking in her eyes. 

The Coachella aficionado put it in her plea to reinstate the canceled 2020 festival that pandemic deaths were inevitable, so Coachella should still happen. Except it wasn’t as important as we were previously led to believe, because Hudgens was markedly absent for the second year in a row. The death knell for music as we now know and understand it. 

What is music without Coachella, and what is Coachella without Vanessa Hudgens?

It’s just not the same. It’s not even that the hype is gone; all that remains is hype. The idea of what once was, a desert mirage of Aztec prints, strappy sandals and cutoff shorts, fades into the background. 

It’s undeniably losing relevance. The oasis that was Coachella is slowly fading from our pop cultural visage. It’s just not the same anymore, regardless of any half-baked 2010s larps. The chunky belts on the hips of the new generation of festival-goers are not indicative of or reflective of a true spirit or vibe anymore. 

What does this even mean for culture? Is there anywhere to move forward, given the collapse of possibly the biggest cultural phenomenon in the history of music?

What is more authentic of an expression than performative music festival attendance, of long days spent in the sun curating the optimal outfit picture, of odd mingling and networking at Revolve Festival Weekend? 

Isn’t music meant to be shared? How else will we proliferate and spread the art form, if not through a select few social media entities in hyper-specific, uniform garb in the form of sponsored content? 

We should weep for what the future of music and festivals holds in store, because it’s certainly not any better. Music is dead, all because we didn’t feel like walking the extra mile. The sky isn’t actually falling, but it may as well be. 

The Queen of Coachella is abdicating the throne, leaving behind a nation in ruins. Her kingdom may be abandoned, but the fall of Coachella will be remembered, and its cultural legacy immortalized.

It seems we’re using science fiction as a roadmap to make our dreams, and more often nightmares, come true. Why is it that we manufacture a nightmarish future and refuse to heed the warnings so clearly outlined by creators of such iconic works as “Interstellar,” “Wall-E,” “Westworld” and “Frankenstein?” 

It’s as if we are actively treating these creative works as a blueprint for our own worst-case scenarios, reinforcing and creating self-fulfilling prophecies, and ensuring that life will imitate art against our better instincts and judgments. Why is it that we fear the future so instinctively? It’s almost as if we set ourselves up for moral failure. 

For better or for worse, our rendering of the future is clouded by sci-fi depictions. It’s important to deconstruct our cognitive dissonance surrounding technological advancement because, if we can’t see the real boogeymen, we may fall into the same traps that we so fear. 

Iconic works of science fiction are not only analogous to, but often directly influential on, our collective imagination and renderings of the potential that new technologies may allow for. To reach a better understanding of our complex relationship with the futures that lie just beyond the horizon, it’s paramount that we deconstruct and fully interpret what exactly it is that we fear and hope for. 

Maybe what terrifies us most isn’t killer robots, alien overlords or reanimated corpses. We don’t fear the potential that technological advancements bring; we fear what havoc they may wreak when placed in the wrong hands. 

We fear an encroachment on our rights and freedoms, a shoving of new technologies down our throats. What we dread most is inevitability and inescapability. 

Jennifer Alexander, an associate professor of the history of science, technology and medicine at the University of Minnesota, said our fears revolving around technology can generally be boiled down to two categories, which can best be explained through the case studies of the inventions of the automobile and now artificial intelligence. 

People actively choosing to drive was terrifying to people back then, Alexander said. Today, people’s fear of AI is that it will proliferate without our consent. Alexander classifies these as two different kinds of fears that occur in the wake of a new invention.

To a large extent, we fear our human potential, not great intellectual feats, alien machinery or a whole new world. We fear our potential for great evils and indiscretions against our flesh, whether that be against our fellow man or our instinctual nature. We fear our potential to subjugate or be subjugated by our fellow man through the vehicle that technology may provide. 

We fear our ability to pervert nature’s limitations and see the potential in any invention as bringing us one step closer to the forbidden fruit. Our ambitions toward a better life serve as the snake, urging us to eat the apple that is further knowledge and play god through our relentless tendency to optimize and innovate. 

We’re able to separate our material reality from crude notions of some transhumanist dystopia to an extent, but some issues cross lines that exhibit such a visceral reaction from us that we have no choice but to revel in just how far we’ve come. 

Some notable examples as of recently include panics around vaccinations and gender-affirming care. We fear the unnatural and unfamiliar, and draw lines in the sand of what exactly is immutable to our human spirit and material reality. Because if one may subvert what is most sacred and fundamental, what is next? More importantly, what is real?

The birth of science fiction came from these exact fears, from a biblically-rooted, pseudo-instinctual apprehension to knowing too much, or subverting our true nature. Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is considered by many to be the first true science-fiction novel. 

It deals with fears of cheating death through the story of a scientist who, in his delusions of grandeur and unabashed disregard for human life and all things sacred, creates a literal monster. There are many allusions to Genesis in the novel, cementing its place as a cautionary tale we would never grow tired of continually applying to an ever-modernizing world. 

Alexander said a central theme of “Frankenstein” is misunderstood. Shelley’s cautionary tale of unfettered ambition also serves as a cautionary tale of senseless superstition, warning us to loosen our tight grip on what we’ve always known. 

“In the story itself, it’s so fascinating,” Alexander said. “I think she’s more saying, if we do modern science, whatever was modern science in 1818, we’ll be safer. What’s worse is to go back to this older science, which was mixed with magic.”

Maybe the true lesson we should take away is that we shouldn’t act as necromancers for old ways of life against our better judgment or common sense. The legacy cemented by “Frankenstein” lies not only in the realm of horror, but it has also indirectly saved lives. 

Dr. Luis Felipe Eguiarte Souza, a curator at the Pavek Museum, said the concept of using electricity to bring someone back to life via a pacemaker was inspired by “Frankenstein.” 

“Mary Shelley was inspired by the new inventions and discoveries around electricity, the Galvani effect, where they moved the little frog legs and Volta’s battery, and she was like, ‘What if that unlocked the keys of life, and we can bring someone back from the death with that?’” Eguiarte Souza said. “That later inspired one of our founders of the Pavek Museum, Earl Bakken, to create the wearable pacemaker.”

Maybe it’s a good thing that life can imitate art in this way. 

Science fiction, in its most charitable and optimistic interpretations, can render concepts that most may not even dream of, creating entirely new avenues for thinking about the potential and limits of what we may do to advocate for the betterment of society.

Eguiarte Souza said that science fiction often creates a feedback loop for innovation. 

“There’s a little device in the ‘Star Trek’ original series called the tricorder,” Eguiarte Souza. “It’s a little device that they hold and they can learn about what makes you sick or what’s happening to any living organism. And apparently, the creator of the MRI machine was inspired by that.”

It’s best to embrace nuance in our depictions and interpretations of technology and its future implications. We need to see not only the potential but the drawbacks, and not shy away from what we so truly desire. 

In the wrong hands, these technologies can be weaponized, but instead of halting all progress to our own detriment, why don’t we examine the exact ways we can prevent the worst from happening? 

Maybe a rewatch of “Wall-E” is a step in the right direction toward truly grasping what governs our elusive present and future. As always, media literacy is paramount, as is advocacy for what is right and just.

It seems we’re using science fiction as a roadmap to make our dreams, and more often nightmares, come true. Why is it that we manufacture a nightmarish future and refuse to heed the warnings so clearly outlined by creators of such iconic works as “Interstellar,” “Wall-E,” “Westworld” and “Frankenstein?” 

It’s as if we are actively treating these creative works as a blueprint for our own worst-case scenarios, reinforcing and creating self-fulfilling prophecies, and ensuring that life will imitate art against our better instincts and judgments. Why is it that we fear the future so instinctively? It’s almost as if we set ourselves up for moral failure. 

For better or for worse, our rendering of the future is clouded by sci-fi depictions. It’s important to deconstruct our cognitive dissonance surrounding technological advancement because, if we can’t see the real boogeymen, we may fall into the same traps that we so fear. 

Iconic works of science fiction are not only analogous to, but often directly influential on, our collective imagination and renderings of the potential that new technologies may allow for. To reach a better understanding of our complex relationship with the futures that lie just beyond the horizon, it’s paramount that we deconstruct and fully interpret what exactly it is that we fear and hope for. 

Maybe what terrifies us most isn’t killer robots, alien overlords or reanimated corpses. We don’t fear the potential that technological advancements bring; we fear what havoc they may wreak when placed in the wrong hands. 

We fear an encroachment on our rights and freedoms, a shoving of new technologies down our throats. What we dread most is inevitability and inescapability. 

Jennifer Alexander, an associate professor of the history of science, technology and medicine at the University of Minnesota, said our fears revolving around technology can generally be boiled down to two categories, which can best be explained through the case studies of the inventions of the automobile and now artificial intelligence. 

People actively choosing to drive was terrifying to people back then, Alexander said. Today, people’s fear of AI is that it will proliferate without our consent. Alexander classifies these as two different kinds of fears that occur in the wake of a new invention.

To a large extent, we fear our human potential, not great intellectual feats, alien machinery or a whole new world. We fear our potential for great evils and indiscretions against our flesh, whether that be against our fellow man or our instinctual nature. We fear our potential to subjugate or be subjugated by our fellow man through the vehicle that technology may provide. 

We fear our ability to pervert nature’s limitations and see the potential in any invention as bringing us one step closer to the forbidden fruit. Our ambitions toward a better life serve as the snake, urging us to eat the apple that is further knowledge and play god through our relentless tendency to optimize and innovate. 

We’re able to separate our material reality from crude notions of some transhumanist dystopia to an extent, but some issues cross lines that exhibit such a visceral reaction from us that we have no choice but to revel in just how far we’ve come. 

Some notable examples as of recently include panics around vaccinations and gender-affirming care. We fear the unnatural and unfamiliar, and draw lines in the sand of what exactly is immutable to our human spirit and material reality. Because if one may subvert what is most sacred and fundamental, what is next? More importantly, what is real?

The birth of science fiction came from these exact fears, from a biblically-rooted, pseudo-instinctual apprehension to knowing too much, or subverting our true nature. Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is considered by many to be the first true science-fiction novel. 

It deals with fears of cheating death through the story of a scientist who, in his delusions of grandeur and unabashed disregard for human life and all things sacred, creates a literal monster. There are many allusions to Genesis in the novel, cementing its place as a cautionary tale we would never grow tired of continually applying to an ever-modernizing world. 

Alexander said a central theme of “Frankenstein” is misunderstood. Shelley’s cautionary tale of unfettered ambition also serves as a cautionary tale of senseless superstition, warning us to loosen our tight grip on what we’ve always known. 

“In the story itself, it’s so fascinating,” Alexander said. “I think she’s more saying, if we do modern science, whatever was modern science in 1818, we’ll be safer. What’s worse is to go back to this older science, which was mixed with magic.”

Maybe the true lesson we should take away is that we shouldn’t act as necromancers for old ways of life against our better judgment or common sense. The legacy cemented by “Frankenstein” lies not only in the realm of horror, but it has also indirectly saved lives. 

Dr. Luis Felipe Eguiarte Souza, a curator at the Pavek Museum, said the concept of using electricity to bring someone back to life via a pacemaker was inspired by “Frankenstein.” 

“Mary Shelley was inspired by the new inventions and discoveries around electricity, the Galvani effect, where they moved the little frog legs and Volta’s battery, and she was like, ‘What if that unlocked the keys of life, and we can bring someone back from the death with that?’” Eguiarte Souza said. “That later inspired one of our founders of the Pavek Museum, Earl Bakken, to create the wearable pacemaker.”

Maybe it’s a good thing that life can imitate art in this way. 

Science fiction, in its most charitable and optimistic interpretations, can render concepts that most may not even dream of, creating entirely new avenues for thinking about the potential and limits of what we may do to advocate for the betterment of society.

Eguiarte Souza said that science fiction often creates a feedback loop for innovation. 

“There’s a little device in the ‘Star Trek’ original series called the tricorder,” Eguiarte Souza. “It’s a little device that they hold and they can learn about what makes you sick or what’s happening to any living organism. And apparently, the creator of the MRI machine was inspired by that.”

It’s best to embrace nuance in our depictions and interpretations of technology and its future implications. We need to see not only the potential but the drawbacks, and not shy away from what we so truly desire. 

In the wrong hands, these technologies can be weaponized, but instead of halting all progress to our own detriment, why don’t we examine the exact ways we can prevent the worst from happening? 

Maybe a rewatch of “Wall-E” is a step in the right direction toward truly grasping what governs our elusive present and future. As always, media literacy is paramount, as is advocacy for what is right and just.

We’ve elected an iconoclastic, womanizing president who’s filled his cabinet with friends and associates, racking his administration with scandal. On top of this, we’re living in a world newly reawakened from a pandemic, causing a unique and controversial youth culture.

I, like many, have tried to draw my own surface-level conclusions based on commonalities between the 1920s and the 2020s.

They are less of an exact lens or one-for-one comparison and instead more of a funhouse mirror of our current administration and socio-cultural environment. We are at once more and less debaucherous than we think and thought, and at the same time revert to basic instincts to cope with alarmingly similar and absurd times. 

It’s reassuring to know that, in many ways, absurd times have a precedent for being met and matched culturally. 

Our historical imagination and collective memory have failed to capture the true nuances of the era, leading us to mimicry and reenactment unbeknownst to us. A closer examination is necessary to ensure we don’t fly blind. 

Our linkages to our nation just a century ago may be more informed by misinterpreted satire and gossip, leading us to miss the conclusions staring us right in the face. 

The ‘20s marked a shift from Victorian ideals, yet most people did not abandon these until later. This plays a pretty significant role in our misremembering of the era. 

A figurehead for this misremembrance is former President Warren G. Harding. 

Drawing parallels between him and President Donald Trump is almost overkill. It’s low-hanging fruit, even. The two have had some of the most controversial and scandalized administrations in our nation’s history. From the appointment of close associates with disputed qualifications in cabinet positions to sex scandals, these two seem to be most similar in their salacious public personas. 

However, under any critical lens, Harding doesn’t seem to even come close to Trump in that regard. 

Jayne Kinney, a fifth-year history PhD student at the University of Minnesota, said that while Harding’s personal life made some clutch their pearls in the 1910s, it wasn’t nearly as sensational as some may think.

“His scandals are that he has mistresses and that he drinks, and that his wife was divorced and has a child from her previous marriage,” Kinney said.

Trump, on the other hand, has scandals on that level every news cycle. He’s had three wives, one of whom he buried on his golf course, was found liable for sexual abuse and has been impeached twice. 

It seems as if Harding and Trump have more in common on the policy front, which isn’t nearly as interesting. Both presidents had heavy involvement and support for the implementation of tariffs. 

Scott Laderman, a history professor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, said Harding built upon the pre-existing tariffs during his time as president, skewing the economy in favor of the wealthy. 

“He used tariffs as a means of bringing in revenue, and in doing so, cutting taxes,” Laderman said. 

Laderman also said there are comparisons to be drawn between Trump’s and Harding’s views on taxation, which both favored the wealthy. 

“Harding oversaw the taxes for businesses and wealthy individuals,” Laderman said. “And Trump, of course, is attempting to do the same. He did it during his first term with the tax cuts, which were his major achievement during the first term. And of course, is setting the ground for something similar.”

It seems as if we only remember the most sensational aspects of history. This is a common thread as far as public perception of the 1920s goes. 

This misremembering of history is in no way uncommon and may stem from a marked significance of the subcultures that dominated the period aesthetically. The iconography of the 1920s has transcended its time, leading to a legacy and impact that is almost overstated. The average American was not a flapper, to put it simply.

Kinney said we often forget the flappers and the Gatsby-esque glamor was a countercultural movement and wasn’t the mirror to the culture it’s sometimes attributed to. 

“When we look at the musical ‘Chicago’ image of the ‘20s or like the ‘(Great) Gatsby’ movie that really focused on the glitz and glamor of that story, we forget that for your average person, that’s not the case during the ‘20s too,” Kinney said.

A large part of the satire behind Gatsby specifically is forgotten, according to Kinney.

“The writers and the things that endure, like Fitzgerald and stuff, both idolize that culture because they’re part of it, but also critique it,” Kinney said.

These sub and countercultures operated in opposition to the middle American, agreed-upon ideals for decency, as all sub and countercultures do.

However, youth culture should in no way be discounted.

Kinney said the ‘20s, in some element, originated a lot of the consumer culture we’ve become familiar with today. 

“Yeah, we today have the ability to get just about anything at the tips of our fingers,” Kinney said. “In the 1920s, coming off of the war, there is a level in the U.S., a level of prosperity, that allows people to have a consumer culture.”

In addition, one of our many generational cognitive dissonances is in no way unique to us. 

Kinney said that both the 1920s and 2020s youth exhibited a simultaneous disillusionment as reflected by absurd humor and surrealist aesthetics, paired with emerging consumer cultures made possible by emerging technologies. 

“I’d say that’s one of the big similarities, both at hyper-consumption and also cynicism and nihilism,” Kinney said.

It’s reassuring to know that on so many levels, we’ve been here before.

It’s nice to think of history as an enclosed feedback loop or a hundred-year circuit. Parallels can be drawn, but upon further inspection, we should be mindful of the gaps between our collective memory of this time in our country and now. 

The devil is in the details, which we often seem to forget in the larger composite image of our nation’s history. 

On closer inspection, we should all take a closer look at what really defines our time, so what matters most to us may not be lost to the sands of time.

I can’t be the only one whose Instagram reels feed was overwhelmed by 2010s nostalgia just a couple of weeks ago. At its peak, Kyle Gordon’s “We Will Never Die” was inescapable, with seemingly every niche of the internet needing to weigh in on their cringeworthy or prescient stylings from ten years ago.

The focal point of this trend was the obsession with millennial burger joints. The internet collectively came together to make fun of the presence and legacy of these restaurants that began in the 2010s.

We continually lambast them for their overpricing, faux-hipster ambiance and mediocre, needlessly complex recipes. At the same time, we revel in their aesthetic timeliness, expressing a removed nostalgia for stripped wood, mustache motifs and carefree folk overtures.

The satire of the millennial burger joint has only increased in fervor and decreased in originality since its first appearance. Its focus has shifted as well, evolving from a criticism of a niche hospitality archetype to an all-out exploration and revisitation of millennial hipster culture. 

Many have remarked upon pop culture’s recent fixation on millennials. Whether it’s the resurgence of indie sleaze, our collective rewatches of Lena Dunham’s “Girls” or the glorification of 2014 Tumblr fashion, we’re increasingly nostalgic for a period that wasn’t all that long ago. 

I suspect a full-on hipster revival is in the works, not that it isn’t already in some circles. A twee renaissance — adjacent to the millennial burger joint of it all — is supposedly already happening. 

It’s only a matter of time before it becomes a serious aesthetic reclamation. We saw this with low-rise jeans, skinny jeans, the trashy Y2K aesthetic and now Isabel Marant and other 2010s fashions that most of us would’ve never dared wear just a year or two ago. 

As our collective fascination with this particular aesthetic niche both intensifies and broadens, the original irony will eventually be lost in translation. The opposite of love is not hate, but apathy. Whether we love or hate these obsessions, they will eventually subsume us. While we claim to gawk at them from afar, our gaze only intensifies and an unexpected fondness often festers. Short-form trend forecasting and satire seem to lend themselves exceedingly well to a brand of stylistic Stockholm syndrome. 

We cannot be trusted with ideas put into our lexicon organically. Regardless of the degree of seriousness or lack thereof behind them, everything will come back to bite. 

This is because of our tight grasp on anything that approximates meaning. In our postmodern internet, we perpetuate and resurrect what we are most repulsed by because the line between love and hate is growing thinner by the day. 

More importantly, we can’t differentiate very well between the two. We overthink and pseudo-intellectualize even the most trivial matters and aesthetic movements (à la bimbo core) because anything can be mined for profit and content. 

We’re all irony-poisoned, whether we want to admit it or not. It seeps into our brains and bloodstreams, it’s inseparable from our current internet and, by extension, the world we inhabit. 

We’re overwhelmed by imagery and concepts, both new and old, on social media due to the sheer volume of content it allows for the production and publication of. We’re quite simply running out of ideas, leading us to amalgamate unrelated, absurd and nonsensical concepts in the name of innovation because we cannot keep up with the flood of information we’re simultaneously creating and consuming. 

Ruth DeFoster, an assistant professor who teaches media and popular culture at the University of Minnesota, said the speed at which memes and cultural phenomena occur has sped up exponentially since the beginning of the internet, in that trends take mere weeks or days to cycle through. 

“You’ve already seen every iteration of jokes that could be made about it,” DeFoster said. “It’s already been reposted. It’s been commented on. It’s been liked, right? It’s been shared, and by the time you’ve seen it 50 or 60 times, you’re tired of it. But for us, those 50 or 60 exposures would have been spread out over six months or a year.”

Trend cycles, as we know them, have transformed right under our noses thanks to the supersonic speed of the internet. 

They are now less cycles and more superspeed conveyor belts, exponentially increasing in speed and sucking us all in. They operate like whirling blades, moving so incredibly fast that they look complacent, in that the forces of culture move in ways that are now undetectable and indecipherable to the naked eye or casual observer. 

Some hypothesized the shortening of the 20-year trend cycle a few years ago, purporting that it would continue to shorten and collapse within itself forever, but is it possible that through its publication and proliferation, it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy? To stay one step ahead, some are going to the lightly expired fashions of the recent past. 

It’s really hard to look particularly out of place on the internet because everything seems to have its own niche and reference point. The more saturated the internet becomes, the more it speeds up until everything is referential to anything and everything else. Everything is derivative, nothing is original. 

Jolena Davannavong, a second-year student at the University, said she’s observed more style regression in part due to internet oversaturation. 

“I noticed that as social media has expanded, I noticed that we’ve been going back into older fashion trends and more of a minimalistic vibe as well.”

As soon as another trend or concept bites the dust, it springs back up again. The zombies of trends’ past are becoming more and more invincible, having been supercharged by the corporate enterprises that just throw anything at the wall to make a profit. In this model, innovation occurs through mere happenstance and luck. 

The Frankenstein monster that is boho chic arose before its gravestone was even completed. The beginning of this year saw calls to bring back 2020 alternative and e-girl styles before they even went cold. The fast-fashion vultures circle over us all, waiting for their next meal because in this economy, it’s what’s required of us. 

We’re unknowingly harvesting the parts for the next big thing. We wear them like a crumbling exoskeleton made of lead, polyester and rayon. Fashion isn’t sowing the seeds to its destruction because we outsourced that a long time ago. 

We are allowing millennial style back into existence. We have nobody but ourselves to blame, so we may as well sit back, enjoy our aioli burgers and twirl our collective mustaches. 

The snake that is trend forecasting is eating its head. We should bite the hand of the market that feeds our strange obsessions.

I don’t understand why more of us aren’t goth. 

The subculture celebrates humanity and human nature in a way the mainstream can’t ever really approximate or grasp. 

It celebrates and embraces life and death for all they have to offer, translating the most confusing, passionate and complex pieces of the human experience into art that defines generations. The gothic tradition embraces innovation, creativity and nostalgia to create connections, sewing links between and across generations, one lace glove at a time. 

The sterile distancing between us and our humanity that mainstream culture keeps us at is more disturbing than anything that goes bump in the night or lurks in a cemetery. 

The brand of feigned, blind optimism that more or less runs polite society is feeling more hollow with each passing day. Forced optimism and bright, minimalist aesthetics are especially nauseating. 

The blatantly facetious nature of mainstream pop culture will never cease to amaze me. It’s less of a critique of optimism, positivity or anything along those lines and more of an open question of why this particular way of expressing ourselves, or lack thereof, has become so commonplace and dominant. 

Human nature is complex and fascinating, yet in polite society, these aspects are rarely celebrated in lieu of sanitized narrative and cold recollection. A lot of it feels plastered on when placed in the greater context of the human condition.

There’s no need to poeticize the mundane when what we view as mundane lies in the melodramatic. We face death every day, endure relationships and heartbreak and have unique, colorful lived experiences. Why don’t we revel in that? 

Instead, we read sappy trope-based romances, listen to formulaic algorithm-driven pop and wear polyester microplastic garbage in a rather uniform manner. 

Goths aren’t Satanists, edgy teens or death-worshippers. It’s sick and twisted that a subculture based around reverence of the human spirit and open embrace of life is so heinously misunderstood. Our moral-panic-induced misunderstanding of goths is harming us in the long run. There’s a lot that we can learn and embrace from goth subcultures for the better.

The goth subculture spans everything from the fashion and aesthetic realm to literature to music to radical political ideas. It’s anything but monolithic. As with any subculture composed of multiple subdivisions and established over multiple decades, there are bound to be offroads, adjacent viewpoints, squabbles and divisions. 

This has its advantages, though. Namely, it can’t be boiled down to a single look, sound or attitude. It’s more of a loose philosophy that revolves around self-expression, community building and an open embrace of humanity not in spite of, but for its eccentricity and simultaneous novelty and universality. 

The general consensus above most of this is that what most of us think of as goth is more or less stemmed from and centered around the music. The music itself originated from punk in the ‘70s. The most cited and beloved examples of goth music pioneers include but are not limited to, The Cure, Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Bauhaus. 

However, goth music often defies and transcends genre. There is goth pop, goth folk, goth rock and so forth. 

Henry Jonas, technical director for Radio K at the University of Minnesota, said darker, heavier sounds and synths define a lot of early goth music sonically, partially resulting from music technology in the late ‘70s and ‘80s. 

“You couldn’t sequence like a super complicated synth part or anything,” Jonas said. “So it was, like, the same four bars over and over and over again to be very hypnotic in that sense.” 

Goth music is a great vessel through which the ails of human consciousness can be channeled. It’s well known for its aesthetic landscape, transcendental qualities and danceability. In one song you can find spiritual fulfillment, poetic lyricism and a good time — three birds with one stone. 

You can’t talk about goth music or culture without talking about death. This fascination with our mortality pervades almost every component of the goth movement as we know it, but is perhaps most iconic and memorable in the symbolism and visual language it provides. 

Jackson Werner, a web administrator at Radio K, said this fascination heavily dictates much of the music as far as aesthetics go.

“You think of a lot of like, fascination with death, the undead, our mortality,” Werner said.

Goth music is based largely around worldbuilding, Werner said, in that it creates an atmosphere through its sonic landscape and lyricism. 

“I think goth music is also very good at creating a good atmosphere, a little bit more of like, it’s a little bit more vibe focused,” Werner said. 

There is also a case for goth music and culture as not only a world itself but rather a lens through which to observe and romanticize our simultaneously futile, beautiful and tragic reality. 

Perhaps it’s best to think of it less like wearing sunglasses indoors, darkening everything needlessly, but instead of wearing rose-colored glasses, albeit ones slightly tinged with dirt, dust and debris from generations of wear. 

Goth music, while often clinging to the extremes of the human life cycle and emotional experience, does a beautiful job of capturing the more in-between feelings and longings as well. 

Edward Wilson, a volunteer at Radio K, said goth music is often reduced to tropes that it doesn’t always follow, meaning that people miss a lot of its more universal themes outside of death. 

“I feel like a lot of people don’t give goth music the benefit of the doubt, or enough of a try,” Wilson said. “They kind of all assume that it’s very just kind of sad music. For example, The Cure, a lot of their songs is just Robert Smith kind of talking about how much he loves his wife.” 

Goth culture poeticizes beyond the mundane, which is why it holds such gravity and authenticity alongside its spiritual and transcendent qualities. Suffering is integral to the human experience, but so is yearning, and the emotions between love and grief. 

I’m of the mind that some of the most loving, positive and beautiful things a person can experience are fashioning their unique look out of safety pins and old lace, listening to unearthly and otherworldly music and confronting what matters. A love for life is a full acceptance of what it entails, not merely an avoidance of anything that isn’t sunny or advertisable. 

Nobody understands this more than goths.