*shakes my fist* back in MY day you young whippersnappers woulda been writing about actual aesthetics or doing actual studying! none of these FAKE aesthetics smh and also don't mind what i just said about me not doing too well in school when i was younger—

I do see where you're coming from, and I agree with the points that you have made about shortening attention spans, over-simplified politics, and how everyone here seems to want to be spoon-fed information. However, I don't want to be rude, but this seems excessively jaded. While yes, 12-year-old are annoying, they're still going to exist and bug everyone around them with stupid questions. And your comment about people being overly categorical seems kind of ironic seeing how this wiki's entire purpose is to be overly categorical.

And of course, I am quite miffed that you called the fashion page I wrote overly materialistic. But how else does one participate in an aesthetic? You mentioned the good old days of Polyvore edits, but isn't the whole purpose to be a shopping app? Did movie tickets and magazines not cost money? Is it not human nature to want to collect shiny things?

Part of it is that young people are constantly bombarded with images of pretty people and TikTok stars with sponsored wardrobes, and that tween fear of being lame has grown exponentially in the internet era. Except instead of basic Seventeen, they get us, I suppose.

Anyways, I definitely feel that this blog post articulated a lot of pet peeves that I had as a non-named aesthetic lesbian and tumblr user who predates the -cores and academias. But it seriously seems kind of insulting when the creator of a wiki who participated in aesthetics as a teen slams teens participating in aesthetics. Reading this made me feel like a middle child entering the reclusive and angsty older sister's room. And a lot of the stuff detailing philosophy, art history, and politics seems to be overly condescending since a lot of the people you're talking about just started To Kill a Mockingbird at school. Relax, they will learn as they grow older.

^!! THAT. THAT RIGHT THERE. GRAVIPHANTALIA YOU'RE SO VALID YOU SAID WHAT I MEANT BUT IN SMART WORDS

@Graviphantalia

Those are good points, too, and very eloquently expressed.

@Graviphantalia

I AM jaded - I think it's allowed and that my thoughts are valid 😅 I'm not even shading your page just on fashion, I just think a lot of the userbase are coming here for consumerist purposes or to find a new identity rather than to learn what these things are and how they erupted, which was the wiki's original purpose. It's useful to have information about the fashion industry as it should be part of each aesthetic profile.

I don't mean that tweens should act precociously and somehow know everything about art history to participate here or to be involved in aesthetics. What I'm saying is that quite a lot is being lost if they can't use this time to explore unmediated culture themselves and to investigate things that interest them themselves, in an organic environment, which is a central part of growing up.

@LivVirtual

This wiki was created to document cohesive aesthetics that already existed and could be extracted from social media platforms, fashion, film, TV, books, etc. It's not that young people aren't allowed to make up their 'own' aesthetics, but these usually exist for the sake of it (ie taking a thing you like and adding '-core' to the end) and just don't meet the standards of inclusion for the wiki - maybe they will do in a few months or years when others latch on! On Wikipedia, you can't make articles about musicians who haven't yet been recognised by major bodies or had some success. This doesn't mean they're bad musicians or that people aren't allowed to listen to them! It's just a basic guideline for cultivating a database of information. The same should apply here.

Yes, I didn't do well at school when I was like 12 - but a) I wasn't paying for my education and had no risk of debt, because I was 12, b) I didn't base my entire identity around an 'academic' online aesthetic or pretend to enjoy studying, which makes that fact totally irrelevant. I'm now working on a degree and am an assistant on a research project, ie. in actual academia. I'm scared that impressionable young people will end up with a skewed view of academia (which is expensive, demanding and very competitive) because of the way it's glamourised in this kind of community, and could be going into needless debt if they don't have genuine academic interests or capabilities, I think this is a totally reasonable criticism to make.

Basically a) yeah my post was jaded but that part was very much exaggerated and kind of not totally serious lol, which I think should be clear when I compared myself to an octogenarian Mae West, b) I don't think you should dismiss someone's concerns in the 'ok boomer' fashion just because they're older and dislike modern culture, since they could still be valid

okay but if you think there are 12-year-olds on this wiki (which goes against FANDOM's ToU) who are gonna be so easily influenced by an academia :sparkles: ~ a e s t h e t i c ~ :sparkles: :sparkles: that they're LITERALLY gonna go into debt because of it, where exactly do you think they're getting money from? like as someone who was once 12, i can confirm that you're not exactly making a ton of cash at that age, and i guess even if you were, you wouldn't go into debt because as a 12 yro you're most likely gonna be living with your parents? who should be able to provide for you financially? and if you're a 12 yro who's parents CAN'T do that, then i'm pretttty sure you're gonna try to focus on more important things than your :sparkles: ~ a e s t h e t i c ~ :sparkles: :sparkles: like trying to figure out a way to take care of yourself

if you really have such a problem with the new articles being made then lock the editing option on what you want to keep and delete the unnecessary pages. its kinda weird that you come here talking about your blogpost about why you think this wiki's gone downhill, when you, as the founder, hold a TON of power that could just basically erase whatever you don't want here. like you can just make an announcement like "hey guys, this isn't an actual aesthetic, im gonna get rid of it because it clutters up the wiki" and then delete whatever it is if it bothers you so much.

you're working on a degree rn aren't you still tecnically an "impressionable young person" or whatever. like idk, 19-24?? something like that?

WAIT BRO YOU'RE ACTUALLY 19 THATS HILARIOUS YOU'RE IN THE SAME GENERATION AS ME

@LivVirtual

I've known plenty of people who are more like 17-18 and want to go into academia because they like the sound of and supposed aesthetic of the degree more than the content itself - not talking about 12-year-olds there. Some of the 'studytubers' in my country are a great example although of course I'm not mentioning anyone by name.

Also yes I'm currently thinking about ways to cut down on existing pages and impose more rigorous standards on the wiki content. I know there are inevitably people who have worked hard and are excited about them and that a whole culture has built up here, so I wanted to outline my problems with the wiki first so this didn't sound unreasonable. I have deleted some of the worst pages here before.

As I've mentioned in the post I've been in online circles for years and years now and been part of some of the earliest Tumblr aesthetics - so yes I'm probably impressionable in some ways, but not in respect to online communities.

eyes see. very interesting.

okay one last question that i really want to know the answer to before i leave to do stuff: why were you trying to find your crush's livejournal from 2006? like isnt that stalking

Oh, I definitely get why you're jaded and I don't blame you for that. I am from the Lolita community and am also just tired of all of those complaints of the expense or nitpicking over finding shoes that match the exact shade of cherry on the border print. But after complaining and being in drama groups, I find that it's only going to toxically affect your mindset and make it seem as if everyone is incompetent and the fashion/aesthetic is just a source of bitterness. I find that if you just tune it out, think back to your childhood self, and put your head down and create what you want to see in the world, then everything will be alright.

I see this wiki as being in the part of the Breakfast Club where everyone is segmented off into their little cliques and thinking that their future is going to be defined by who they sit with at lunch. But they'll grow up and realize that they might just like tweed and hate Aristotle. I doubt that they will be majorly negatively impacted by a two-year fad, and they'll just know themselves a little better after the aesthetics are all done.

I do think that people need to go out and organically experience fiction and watch movies to discover themselves and their aesthetic, but I'd argue that this wiki is hardly any different from a catalogue or shopping mall. The sense of wonder is lost since the lack of information is lessening with each entry, but I'd rather that someone find their aesthetic now than find an aesthetic they'll love when they're 40 and the culture has died out.

As for the process of making an entry, I 100% agree with you on that. So many pages here seem kind of silly to me, like Cryptid Academia or Carcore. But again, it's just the contemporary equivalent of someone making up their own collage and pasting it in their copy of Vogue. Creative expression this way seems to come from the bottom up, which I don't blame them for. I am categorizing aesthetics to rectify this issue.

One of the problems is that the internet is just naturally ephemeral. I spent an entire day trying to find the traumacore before traumacore where everyone just tagged it creepy, cute, and vintage, but they all died in the tumblr purge. So we're all just left with wisps of memory and can't really make something as thorough as something on Wikipedia or TVtropes.

As for the Academias, I genuinely think that there doesn't seem to be a problem. I don't agree with posting out-of-context quotes and learning a bajillion languages on Duolingo at once, but they'll eventually be filtered out when they enter university and apply for research positions. Academia is not going to die because a few teens spend their time making moodboards instead of studying. In fact, I think it's actually good that people are made aware of Richard Siken and Greek tragedy in a casual and non-judgemental environment.

But all in all, I just think you're generalizing the aesthetic community too much and seeing it as a university student who already learned the intricacies of German Expressionism and Coppelia cinematography instead of as an insecure teen who just started The Dead Poets' Society. I am putting in a "Helping You Help Yourself" page, and that would honestly address a lot of points without lauding the fact that you have read Classic literature over people who don't know JSTOR exists. Stepping down from the ivory tower and interacting with the beginners fosters a greater sense of community and would be received warmly instead of the ok boomers you're getting.