special interests withering away
i haven't felt much enthusiasm for my special interests lately. that's partially due to depression consuming every last bit of my life right now, but recently, a few other reasons crossed my mind.
you may or may not know this about me already, but i really love makeup. i've written about it before, but to summarize my feelings about it succinctly here: i think of makeup as an art medium first and foremost. i like to decorate myself with color combinations that are interesting to me. my collection is considered "small" by most makeup enthusiasts, but to me, it is the perfect assortment of art supplies.
however, i am very disconnected from makeup communities online. this is, for the most part, intentional. these spaces are primarily dominated by cis women - i don't think i have to explain why - and it is exhausting to have to continuously remind everyone else that trans/nonbinary/gender-nonconforming people exist. but in addition to my feelings about gender, the heavy focus on consumerism in makeup communities makes me viscerally uncomfortable.
here's the thing. the makeup industry is obviously an industry. it thrives on finding new ways to entice people to buy more. this isn't a secret to anyone. to outsiders who don't wear makeup, they probably assume that advertising is centered around shaming people into wearing makeup to feel beautiful or whatever. but saying that part out loud in the 2020s is passe and a little too on the nose. rather, one of the driving forces to incentivize people to spend money on new products is "The Fear Of Missing Out".
FOMO can take shape in a variety of different ways. for example, how long will "limited edition" products last on shelves: will it sell out in a month, or will it linger around for two years, before eventually becoming a standard part of a brand's product lineup due to high sales numbers? most likely, this uncertainty is a deliberate marketing choice. companies can and will prey on people's desires to collect products.
there's also unpredictable flash sales, creating a sense of urgency to buy something now. this one particularly drives me insane, because i try to be very deliberate about what i buy, and resist impulse buying things that i won't get much use out of. so i spend a lot of time planning and critically thinking about what items to add to my collection, and purchase them when it makes sense for my budget. "i have the money at the moment, but what if it costs less three weeks from now?" having to weigh this constantly sucks. it makes me feel anxious, like i can't willingly spend money on my hobbies on my own terms, but rather whenever a company decides it is convenient to.
i am, unfortunately and unavoidably, a human being who is susceptible to weaknesses. I Am Not Immune. however, it's easier for me to resist external pressure if i limit my exposure to the things that make me feel worse. herein lies the third reason why i have intentionally disconnected myself from the makeup industry and community: social media.
the vast majority of makeup enthusiasts post on either Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or Reddit. i used to use Instagram to keep up with makeup artists that i liked. but the experience of actually using Instagram, even just to browse, made me deeply miserable. i despised the lack of control i had over my feed. it felt like there were more sponsored ad posts than actual posts by people i followed. or there's the fact that everyone ends up posting to "Instagram Stories", which self-destruct after 24 hours unless they go out of their way to archive them. oh, they forgot to do that? i guess you will never have context for the thing that other people are referencing now, unless someone is kind enough to provide a screenshot for you.
but you know what was my actual breaking point, of all things? well. in addition to littering your feed with sponsored ads, the amount of "suggested" posts from accounts you don't follow started to grow. at some point, Instagram decided that i must be a really big fan of accounts that crosspost r/AmITheAsshole Reddit posts for some reason. maybe i clicked through to a link out of morbid curiosity once, and now that doomed me to a feed of nonstop over-the-top heterosexual drama. very little of my feed was from anyone i actually followed. and that broke me. it was no longer worth it to me to keep up with artists i liked.
Instagram is also very dedicated to making their service as opaque as possible. it is nearly impossible to view posts unless you're logged in. i already tried making an account "just to browse", and i was pretty pissed off about how that ended up. it seems like a lot of online services have followed in their footsteps, too, because more and more websites are requiring users to log in just to view anything.
needless to say, i am not even considering TikTok as an option, lmfao. oh, yeah, let me just sign up for the video-and-algorithm centered platform that is somehow even worse in nearly every regard. PASS. i don't really like watching most makeup-centered YouTube accounts anymore - it's usually the consumerism that bugs me - and people on Reddit tend to get on my nerves. so ... that's kind of it.
i'm in a Discord server of other people who are like-minded about makeup, but ... if i'm being honest, i've been feeling very isolated there as of late. it's not out of malice or lack of support or anything - i sincerely appreciate the community there for a lot of reasons - but it's because that every day, i am reminded of the collapse of the modern web. i can't get context for anything that people talk about unless i ask for screenshots, because it's all on online platforms that i cannot access without putting myself through misery. and as the community's interests drift towards more niche brands that are even more difficult to research on my own, like artsy, import-only Chinese cosmetics, i am left even more out of the loop. it is what it is.
so. between all of that and my own struggles with depression, i've been feeling pretty unmotivated and disillusioned to experiment with makeup lately. which makes me sad. it's been a big special interest of mine for years, and yet i can barely muster the motivation to look through my collection and experiment with some interesting ways to decorate myself. it's like there's a part of me missing, and every time i go to look for it, i am just reminded of more things that depress me.