Super-affluent hedonism produces a pervasive melancholy about itself

Evidence

A secret sadness lurks behind the twenty-first-century’s forced smile. This sadness concerns hedonism itself, and it’s perhaps in hip-hop — the genre that has been most oriented to pleasure over the past twenty-odd years — where this melancholy has registered most deeply. Drake and Kanye West are both morbidly fixated on exploring the miserable hollowness at the core of super-affluent hedonism. No longer motivated by hip-hop’s drive to conspicuously consume — they long ago acquired anything they could have wanted — Drake and West instead dissolutely cycle through easily available pleasures, feeling a combination of frustration, anger, and self-disgust, aware that something is missing, but unsure exactly what it is. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1306

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Fisher’s recurring theme of capitalist realism and the hollowing out of desire — ‘hedonism without meaning’ as symptomatic of late capitalism. — connects to: The gap between subjects’ investment and viewers’ indifference gives old photos their melancholy charge. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 361; Extreme affluence produces a distinctive melancholic hollowness in its enjoyers — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 455; Pop hedonism’s forced uplift masks a depression it cannot dissipate — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1305 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Super-affluent hip-hop stars expose hedonism’s intrinsic hollowness #exemplifies (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1306
• Marcuse’s account of self-recognition in commodities prefigures the postmodern structure of feeling #expands (0.75) — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited, 148
• Pop melancholy marks the moment a commodity achieves selfconsciousness #qualifies (0.72) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 454
• Ad-driven desires are false needs producing euphoria in unhappiness #qualifies (0.72) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 114