This idea that life should imitate art is a phenomenon among teenagers on social media websites, and most prominently tumblr. The idea of “doing it for the aesthetic” is not an extremely new topic, it pays direct homage to the Aesthetic movement, and one of it's most known members: Oscar Wilde. Through the internet, all forms of art being available at one’s fingertips at any time of the day. Due to this fact, many teenagers and young adults are being exposed to more art forms that a lot of other generations simply to the accessibility of the information. This constant accessibility to art has had a great deal of influence on teenage culture, which is the most recent wave of Aestheticism.
This has caused a visible increase in teenager's interest in art and social issues, which again, links directly to Oscar Wilde and his views on Aestheticism. He specifically felt that art should be beautiful but shouldn't necessarily take attention away from the social issues that are going on. In Wilde’s The Poets & The People, he talks about the intellectuals ignoring actual people in poverty and continue to write things that are simply hard for people who aren’t part of the literary aristocracy to understand, he specifically criticized a fellow writer for this in his essay. “Mr. Browning is living in the nineteenth century and has no such excuses for banging his intellectual tin kettle while a fourth part of his fellow-countrymen are struggling against poverty, and are weighed down by the gloomy outlook towards the future.” (Wilde, Poets & The People)
The exact same thing happens on the internet, specifically the platform of tumblr. It's obvious that due to the exposure we have, when world news happens we can't ignore it even if you try, and some people try, this has been combatted with the idea of entitlement with the loose quote of "to be able to have the choice to ignore this is entitlement, just because it's not happening to you and not affecting you it doesn't mean it's not important, stop reflagging pictures of pretty white girls and stop ignoring real life issues [referring to Gaza, Ferguson, and Mexico - as well as Eric Garner & Tamir Rice in recent news]." (unknown blogger, tumblr) This goes to say that a lot of the bloggers on tumblr share the same ideals as Oscar Wilde without even realizing it, the parallels are obvious and interesting.
The basic idea of the newest version of Aestheticism, which is prominently on the internet, is that things in everyday life, and on the internet are meant to be aesthetically pleasing at all times. For example, blogs dedicated to posting photos of beautiful things with no posts about political affiliations is a version of the newest version of Aestheticism. Another example of this could be the fascination with Windows 98 because to some, it creates a sense of nostalgia attached with being younger and not having to worry about politics and grotesque things in the world, and also because the look of the older Windows model is more pleasing to look at compared to the most recent versions of it.
Lastly, the most modern version of the Aesthetic movement correlates greatly with the broader ideals of the first movement, that political influence shouldn’t be paid attention to inside of the art and that the moral side of art was not as important as the actual beauty of it. Through the vast differences, similarities, and correlations of the different waves of this movements, we can see how the mindsets of individuals versus the majority of the movements differ, and how those mindsets can help to shape the many other versions of the movement, which helps it to be able to be continued. In the future, perhaps bloggers will stop being seen as frivolous, superfluous, and not knowing what they're talking about Art is important, as well as the political and social issues going on in the world around us, and to turn a blind eye to that is wrong because you're not JUST turning a blind eye to it, you're going out of your way to turn a blind eye to it. It's not just ignorance it's a disdainful act against everybody involved.
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