Oat milk and such

Kyle Chaika has a perceptive piece out called ‌Making Memes for the Global “Oat Milk Élite”:

In early 2020, Jonas Kooyman, a journalist from Amsterdam, started an Instagram account called @havermelkelite, Dutch for “Oat Milk Élite,” as a way to share his writing about local cultural trends. He had interviewed the author Elizabeth Currid-Halkett about her concept of the “aspirational class,” a demographic that uses nontraditional consumption habits to signal its identity, and he wanted a similar label to describe Amsterdam’s young urban professionals. At the same time, Kooyman noticed a trend at his local coffee shop in Hoofddorppleinbuurt, a gentrifying area just outside central Amsterdam. “Within a couple of months, maybe seventy or eighty per cent of the people before me in line—they would start ordering oat milk instead of regular milk,” Kooyman told me. The choice, he added, was a way to “project a certain image to the outside world”—a conscientious consumerism and a cosmopolitan good taste. (emphasis mine)

It’s curious how identity has shifted from mostly things you can’t buy, at least not directly, to just another part of consumer culture.

And the conclusion:

For millennials and Gen Z-ers, material gain is more about these small, semi-expensive life-style choices—oat milk in your latte—than about bigger ones such as buying a house or having children, which are much harder to achieve in the absence of economic stability. “They are small moments of ownership and enjoyment,” they said. Kooyman told me, “If I post something with Aesop”—an expensive Australian minimalist soap brand—“it’s always a hit.” Kooyman’s book follows his experience growing up in Amsterdam and watching as the city has gone from weird and bohemian to hyper-gentrified, just another hub of international capitalism. He enjoys catching his audience hoping, but failing, to be unique, but at the same time, he admitted, “I’m part of the ecosystem.”

At least the consumption habits of previous generations tended towards capital that would form the basis of generational wealth. In short: buying a house and putting the kids through university. That’s been exchanged for buying nicknacks for social media likes.

If you’re not familiar with Chaika, I recommend his work. He focuses on how modern culture, particularly social media, is homogenizing and leveling uniqueness around the world. Welcome to Airspace is the best place to start.