RIP NYC

Honestly while we're having this conversation about influencers and their impact on society, I have to talk about New York. Having a conversation with my friend the other day and she said something that stopped me in my tracks. She said, New York used to export culture and now it exports content. And it's true. New York was like the taste maker for the rest of the world. The fashion, the art, the music, the culture poured out of its streets. I went downtown the other day, I went to the West Village, which I know has been a hot topic. Seeing it in person and reading about it are two very different things. At one point my husband who grew up in New York City looked at me and said, what the hell is going on? Because as we were walking down the street, there was a street fair. The street fair wasn't full of artists and creatives, it was selling repackaged shit from Alibaba. At the point where there is a bouncer on a Saturday for a coffee shop, lost the fucking plot. Group think is a problem. The loss of culture is the bigger problem. Loss of individuality, loss of taste, loss of being able to happen upon something yourself as opposed to what TikTok tells you to go see, eat, do. Feels like a city that I love so much and that used to reward being weird and unique is now rewarding conformity. I guess you could say that the artist economy has been replaced by the creator economy. Creating is just another form of art, but the difference there is artists give back. Your creators in the sense that they're creating something outside of themselves. Influencers are rewarded for documenting their own lives as opposed to creating something beyond this platform. It's happening everywhere. The fact that Blank Street, which is private equity owned, is a destination place. I don't know what's more depressing. When it's happening here, no places is saved. Let me know your thoughts.