New year, new aesthetic: Reflections on today’s ‘perf’ culture

Have you fulfilled your New Year’s Resolution? This columnist is willing to bet the average resolution has by now met its untimely end in the realm of its performer’s willpower and the desolate bottom of their jar of dedication. ‘Lifestyle’ has been marketed as something readily changeable and entirely reliant on the individual. Lately, this affinity for the individual has led to a paradoxical turn for assumed aestheticisms, a predominantly ‘perf’-ormative nature – one I have deemed to be not so much ‘pop’ anymore, but indeed ‘perf’ in its ‘pop’-ularity.

New Year’s adrenaline has expired, and with it, the month of January has been witness to resolution junkies and their mediocre performance. Performative culture has surged in the current social sphere, becoming a phenomenon among lonely men and a broader commentary on the inauthentic pandemic that has tragically marked the years preceding it.

Why is this the case, reader? Partaking in this mindless thought, I fell down a rabbit hole, only to realise just how exhausting a journey of self-discovery truly is. This journey marks a rite of passage in everyone’s life, so why is it so inauthentic for today’s average teen?

This article wishes to engage in this conversation and consider the reasons for the overwhelming lack of originality in the current market, driven by a performative quest for an individual, unique image that ultimately confines the originator.

‘Perf’-Culture instead of ‘’Pop’-Culture
So what has changed, reader? I dare say the devil is in the details. Recent developments in culture do not reflect those of the past. Met Galas, movie premieres, red carpet glorifications. All events that previously marked the next year’s fashion, movie, and media vogue now fail to reach the same standards that they once did. Celebrity attempts to stir up culture and create ‘moments’ of social suspension fail to stay relevant, even with Zendaya-levels of costume-dressing, red carpet tributes, or Timothée Chalamet levels of hype.

Nothing is exciting, reader. Nothing poses questions that echo and shatter the mass environment of recurring and ever-changing online culture. No one stops to smell the roses anymore. The equivalent amounts to the sharing of TikTok clips and the submission to 15-second-long trends. Nothing bears any element of constancy or permeating relevance. Nothing becomes true, popular culture in the wider space.

Momentary engagement or limited-time performance with what is situationally relevant is the current status quo

Instead, a performative culture is what we are left with. Distinction does not lie in mere cynicism, reader, but in the detonation of permeance and everlasting impact. I do not recall the trends of last week, let alone the ones of last year. Labubus were the pinnacle of 2025, and yet I have not seen a single one out in the wild. Thus, momentary engagement or limited-time performance with what is situationally relevant is the current status quo.

Fatigue with Aesthetics
A generation is left wondering as to why that has become the case. I could perpetuate the narrative that it is simply ‘those damn phones’. But the issue deserves greater sympathy and consideration than that.

In the most gruelling exposition of realism, it cannot be denied that the insertion of short-form content through the likes of TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels has massively contributed to and decimated our field of creative and attentive vision. Probing into several spheres of knowledge, culture, and media, in moderation, is an essential source of life and sustenance to the soul of any living human. However, this form of content has consequently perverted our dopamine regulators and has foreseeably ruined our distinction of originality.

A ‘trend’ no longer has everlasting impact. Fashion trends are said to be recycled every 20 years – as can now be seen with the resurgence of Y2K trends – whether horrendous or not. What our generation cannot claim is that in 20 years, we will be looked upon as a distinct landmark for fashion and the creation of cultural phenomena. Though I wish not to discredit the far and few wide-reaching sources of creative vision that manage to shine through the vastness of mediocrity, the temporal cycle of trends has been repeatedly violated by short-form media.

We have been told by recycled trends that there’s a need to adopt a specific mould predetermined for us

TikTok trends and the speed at which that cycle reaches completion make the quest of personality-pursuant teenagers all the more difficult. One could argue that the pursuit is made easier by the mass array of aesthetics one can choose from and acquaint themselves with. I would agree, but where the issue lies, reader, is in the shallow performance teens equip themselves as fit to execute. A journey is only defined as such by steady development and the reach of an endpoint. Through the perversion of such an idea, we have been told by recycled trends that there’s a need to adopt a specific mould predetermined for us.

It is easy to be directed toward a certain path when one does not have directional awareness or entirely lacks any sense of where they are meant to go. Thus, these trends funnel set ideas and views of commonality in the minds of young people who likely identify with certain elements and fall into the trap of fully acclimating to the entire aesthetic. In reality, it is not just those select few categories under which one may find or develop interests, fascinations, and determinants of future life. Yet, it is what mass media consumption of this kind proposes and perpetuates.

What this generative farce of uniqueness seems to appeal to is the desire for a formulated identity while still representing a unified commune of relatable culture. Otherwise put, we all want friends and community: people we can identify with in the quest to discover ourselves. This experience, some may argue, is only reminiscent of the natural growth all generations have gone through before – we are becoming intensely and misleadingly obsessed with an identity or phase that is soon outgrown. While this may seem to be the case, the modernised approach of trend followers is poisoned by its inauthenticity. Goths existed and persist, as do Grunge, Emo, or other alternative identities that characterise a specific aesthetic or era. Current aesthetics like ‘clean girls’, ‘coastal cowgirls’, or ‘e-girls’ are not a social subculture that has or will last the ages and waves of change. All these short-lived costume changes – particularly targeted at young girls – are not phases indicative of interest-searching or character-growth, but a mocking adoption of what algorithmically is deemed to be popular, and thus necessary to perform.

2026: The Year of Galloping Change?
The end of last year and its collision with the present have appeared hopeful, as rising concern over this issue has made its voice ferocious enough to be widely heard.

The demonised form of content, TikTok, has also been a vehicle through which change has been proposed and advocated. Certain trends have been shown in the limelight, necessary to again popularise the consumption of longer-form media, critical observation of content, and generate creative resurgence.

What needs to be prioritised is the enjoyment of this content at an extended level of appreciation

Such trends in recent years have been the thrifting and upcycling of second-hand clothing and the rekindled love of reading. Both hobbies have proven to be an old-timey but effective source of sustainable entertainment and a form of media that actively engages its participants. No screen erosion, no blue-light exhaustion, no confined perspective. These activities are characterised by a vast array of potential and creative expressionism, as well as a general appreciation for past cultural sensations, like fashion trends of yester-year and literary pieces of the classical persuasion.

Preferred content does not have to be offline to be deemed authentic or true. Long-form media such as podcasts, video essays, gameplays, movies, and series are all media that can and should be consumed so as to be appreciated.

It can, however, only be executed properly once a healthier environment of non-performativity is established. That may sound circular, ambiguous, or infeasible, but what needs to be prioritised is the enjoyment of this content at an extended level of appreciation, and for that to happen, a much-needed distance should first be established from the recurrence of creatively short-lived and critically indigestible products.

New Year, New Me
Hence, it is why this writer, in honour of the new year and combating these concerns, has made the personal effort of upkeeping her love for literature, engaging with movies more critically, and reading the wider scope of critique around her consumed media, as well as keeping her eyes and heart open to unexpected pastimes, like tea-musings and article writing.

I hope my latter preoccupation has made you, reader, consider the ways you have been engaging with today’s media and helped you determine the ways in which performativity may have seeped its poison into your life. I hope we will all collectively try to honour the new year with an ode to authenticity and individual truth.