Remember last year when that guy said that a vibe shift was coming, but then didn’t say what it was?
Instead, he threw a few looks around - “American Apparel, flash photography at parties, and messy hair and messy makeup”. The vibe shift was given a name; Indie Sleaze.
Middle-Class Opulence
It’s post-pandemic, it’s social re-emergence, it’s picking up smoking again, it’s buying ‘bagnums’ (plus-sized bags of goon), it’s wearing Chanel to the dumplings joint next to Coles.
It’s middle class masked as opulence. It’s a return to Millennial youth.
(Please read the below like that scene in Rules of Attraction where that guy describes his trip to Europe. IFKYK)
$1 pots. Smoking in clubs. Indie dance clubs. No Ubers or 24-hour trains so you have to stay out until morning. No smartphones. Multigenre music festivals like Big Day Out. Arts/Law degrees. Torrenting HBO. Thriving off youth allowance and two retail shifts. $8 a night hostels in Europe. Graduating into a global recession.
And I’m here for it. Because someone once told me that your 30’s are like your 20’s but you have more money. Millennials can afford their youth again, at a $220 price tag to see Blink 182 in a sports stadium.
But a new vibe shift is coming. Culture experts like Ana Andjelic and Michelle Weis have suggested that we will continue to turn away from aspiration and move toward social realism.
Cultural content like Triangle of Sadness, White Lotus, and Kylie Jenner getting dragged for posing in front of her private jets on Instagram, are suggesting that society is done with rich people doing rich people things.
The Fitzroy Garage Party
We’re seeing this play out at a local level in Melbourne with the Fitzroy Garage Party - a viral TikTok video of some guys showing the world how cool their garage party was in their converted Fitzroy warehouse turned sharehouse.
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There was a green fishing vest (aka the ‘green vest pest’) that really rubbed everyone the wrong way. There was someone getting their head shaved. There was someone fist-pumping the roller door. There was only one gender. And there were multiple angles uploaded (for all those asking to see it from different angles. True story).
Some personal favourite comments:
“Is this like some kind of private school Contiki tour visit to Fitzroy?”
“Reckon I can sell them a bag of baking soda for 400$”
“the kevin blazers suit you better boys”
“ever hear of a really underground band called sticky fingers?”
It couldn't just be the boys having a good time. Melbourne, and then the world, decided that this was private school boys living in Daddy’s tenth investment property. They were also drinking Double Lemons which are the more expensive tinnie from Japan. Everyone knows that real students with no money drink Little Fat Lambs because they’ve done the math on the cheapest $1 per standard drink in a slab.
46.3M TikTok hashtags views later and the Fitzroy Garage Party became the pinnacle of white privilege and gentrification of a working-class area. Ignoring the fact that the median house price in Fitzroy is $1.5m and a rundown two-bedroom house costs around $650 a week to rent - the main thing is that Fitzroy was working class once upon a time, and so was the whole of Australia.
But now we’re not all the same and these boys throwing a party in what used to be a warehouse for the working class to work in (which likely has a $3M~ price tag) is the reason why there is a growing class gap.
And that green fishing vest. And the Carharrt. That’s workwear for the working class.
And that Nike. That’s sportswear for athletes.
It’s wealthy people cosplaying the poor. Or, my new favourite term; champagne socialists.
Thousands commented on the video and made their own. This likely happened on their $1200 mobile from a bed covered in 100% linen after a day of working in the office, flicking between work and Depop for some fUn ThRiFtS, while breathing in purified air from some device off Amazon.
We are all the problem.
The real twist - the main characters of the Fitzroy Garage Party don’t even live in Melbourne. They had come from the Gold Coast and Adelaide to visit some mates. They didn’t know anything about Fitzroy. They were just there for the cool clothes and Glamorama (...and aren’t we all?).
Remembering the middle class
Every cultural shift is a response to the decline of the middle class because, as Ana Andjelic puts it so simply:
Culture is stories that we tell ourselves to make sense of what’s happening in economy and society….
When there was a strong middle class, the ideology - and practice - of consumerism powered aspiration.
But in Australia, the numbers show that our wealth gap widens by age purely because of the housing market. Those that have paid off their mortgages are likely to be 50+ and sitting on housing valuations that are 500% more than what they paid for it. This is where Australia’s growing wealth gap comes from, and where it will continue.
Because the wealth gap is generational, younger generations will always be aspirational. Despite the assertions from Andjelic and Weis made earlier - this is the reality for Australia.
A quick look at Google’s Top 100 trending products for 2022 proves that aspiration isn’t going away anytime soon on our shores.
The products listed below scream aspiration. They aren’t products with basic functionality. They are products with aspirational functionality. They make the consumer look healthier, look like they have money, and are mostly used to relax. Those who can relax have time. And those who have time, have money.
Underdesk treadmills
Moissanite earrings
LED face masks
Lab-grown diamonds
In-home saunas
Egyptian cotton sheets
Magnetic eyelashes
Therapy massage chair
All of these products have been peddled by the wealthy.
They taketh our dreams, but do not giveth reality. They giveth Instagram squares and Reels to show that we too can be free just like them if we have this one thing in our lives.
Department stores give us knock-offs so we can live our best lives at an affordable price. No one’s gonna know. No one’s gonna know.
But in some corner of Reddit, someone has created a 3D render of a guillotine and said we need to eat the rich.
We don’t rally with pitchforks. We aspire on Instagram, we accuse in TikTok comments, we give a hot take on Twitter, and we dox on Reddit. We use two-way communications to shout into an echo chamber and then go on to consume the very things we complain about.
We ended 2022 focused on some dude in a green vest fist-pumping a roller door. We made it mean capitalism.
We begin the year bracing for a recession. We make it mean all-night raves, ciggies, and Veuve on special.
Coming soon to a garage in Essendon, Parramatta, Logan, and a social media user waiting for more TikToks and Reels to weigh in on.
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