Our Fear of Freedom: American Fashion and Fascism (Part I)

Prompt No. 59: Those Tech Bros Signal Something Far Worse than Cringe

Mark Zuckerberg’s new style includes gold chains. (Source: Wall Street Journal)

In early January, columnist Rebecca Shaw wrote an opinion piece for The Guardian lamenting the fact that “losers” had taken over the world. With the newly elected president came a couple of tech billionaires whose appearance reeked of desperation. “I knew one day we might have to watch as capitalism and greed and bigotry led to a world where powerful men, deserving or not, would burn it all down. What I did not expect, and don’t think I could not have foreseen, is how incredibly cringe it would all be,” Shaw explained. “I have been prepared for evil, for greed, for cruelty, for injustice – but I did not anticipate that the people in power would also be such huge losers.” The article sparked chatter online. Content creators piled on, going so far as to substantiate Shaw’s points in the name of Pierre Bourdieu. It was clear Americans had grown comfortable with status emulation – too comfortable, in fact. In the face of autocracy, no one seemed to notice the absurdity in expressing disgust over the tastes of the ruling class, that caring at all tacitly reinforced the expectation of esteem for the wealthy. Had Shaw really prepared for evil and those TikTok creators actually understood Bourdieu, the presence of bad taste at the top would have been more cause for alarm than revulsion. Instead, their reaction confirmed something far worse: our obsession with taste hastened our social, political, and cultural downfall. Perhaps now that we have slid face first into fascism we are finally willing to contend with taste as the silent tool of white supremacy and the many ways in which we choose compliance and conformity over meaningful self-expression.