Aesthe-sick

Against my better judgement, I recently broke my two year streak of being off of Instagram, and with that, gone was one of my main personality traits. Admittedly, quitting in the first place wasn't some noble act of digital minimalism but rather because the algorithm worked a bit too well. Here I'm going to make the mortifying admission that my 12th birthday was Pinterest themed…no your honor, I will not be submitting any photographic evidence. Back then, a new word entered my vocabulary: aesthetic. 

In its earlier internet incarnation, aesthetic was a perfectly curated image or item, often involving heinous amounts of saturated filters and DIY (do-it-yourself) tutorials which mostly consisted of hot-gluing together items that were probably best left as is. Back then, a thing could be aesthetic. However, somewhere along the way it stopped describing things and started describing people. Adopting an aesthetic now means adopting a consumable identity: a baptism of allegiance to whichever algorithm-approved deity you'll serve for at least one micro trend, or two if you're feeling particularly devout.

Online vocabulary has followed suit: we now speak in "cores" -  tomato girl core or chic eclectic coastal grandma core or even John F. Kennedy Jr. core. In theory, a “core” presents itself as a lifestyle, but in reality it functions more like a shopping list. Each aesthetic arrives with an implicit starter pack of purchases to truly embody that aesthetic, and importantly, channel it to the rest of the world. Identity becomes increasingly consumption-centric, assembled less through genuine taste than through the acquisition of recognizable signifiers.

Corporations, of course, noticed. However, while brands have always underpinned aesthetic culture, the model has recently shifted: rather than simply selling us the signifiers behind the scenes, they started becoming them. Companies like Duolingo or Ryan Air have begun adopting a Gen-Z inspired chronically “online” personas, blurring the boundary between corporation and individual to the point where the relationship genuinely feels personal. The brand no longer sponsors someone with a personality- the brand itself has a personality. 

This results in a strange feedback loop: brands become more human, while humans increasingly construct themselves through brands. For me, this is epitomized in the rise of corporate tote bags: the bag is less about endorsing the company and more about proving that you fit its target demographic- showcasing taste, values, lifestyle, and cultural awareness. The bag becomes emblematic of this alignment: to carry it is to say, without saying, “this brand reflects who I am.” When the bag hits the sweet spot between niche enough to signal taste and recognizable enough to be legible - bonus points for slight irony -  the bag becomes a status symbol of cultural capital. 

In more extreme cases, the tote becomes a status symbol precisely because of its exclusivity. Scarcity, it turns out, remains just as effective a social motivator as it was when we were hunter-gatherers, except now instead of fighting over food, people are fist-fighting over pastel Trader Joe's mini tote bags.

After a month of Instagram, I decided to log off permanently again. As I became more aware of trends online, I also became more aware of the social signaling people participate in and the cultural capital of certain brands offline. Suddenly, ordinary objects carried a double meaning: tote bags signalling insider knowledge of the “right” cafes and a carefully cultivated low-effort intellect, headphones as proof that someone thought they were “born in the wrong generation”, or scarves as evidence of being an expert at Vinted’s algorithm. With that awareness came the unsettling realization that I had started wanting things not necessarily for my personal utility, but for what they communicated about me – I recently caved and bought my first corporate tote bag, and damn it, I revel in the slight pretentiousness. Once you learn the language of aesthetics, it becomes difficult not to speak it.

Marisca Westerhof is the winner of the 2026 Campus Columnist Competition. She has been selected among almost 50 candidates to write a column on DUB's English page every three weeks in 2026.