Millennial lifestyle spending doubled as coping and self-advertisement for future success

Evidence

But building a personal brand required more than professional achievements. It also demanded a curated aesthetic across social media feeds—foreign travel, rare goods, and perfectly plated meals—while quietly omitting menial aspects of life like flying in economy. Older generations often mistook this conspicuous consumption as pure avarice, but millennials often justified it as a coping mechanism for being priced out of cars, homes, and children. Others saw their lifestyle spending as advertisements for themselves: Establishing a vision of present success would lead to even greater success in the future. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 311

Categorization

• XREF: The lifestyle-as-investment logic mirrors Veblen’s conspicuous consumption but inverts it: display is not proof of attained wealth but a down payment on future opportunity — connects to the omnivore-monoculture status mechanism argument.
• QUESTION: If curated feeds omit ‘menial’ reality, does the resulting flattened, aspirational image itself explain why the era reads as culturally blank — everyone performing the same curated success?