pallih

Five tempting flavors

magicmolly:

Minute written accounts of other peoples’ daily routines are fascinating. Any piece beginning with “A Day in the Life of” or its variants will always be an interesting (if disposable) read, for one of two reasons.

1. If the subject leads a desirable life (a celebrity, e.g.) the piece offers a vicarious pleasure.

2. If the subject leads an undesirable life (a prisoner, e.g.) the piece offers internal satisfaction by way of comparison.

The former category of ‘Day in the Life’ pieces operates a bit like a Facebook profile in that it does not provide a truthful account of someone but rather the account that they’d like to project, which is a less complicated project and sometimes a more interesting one.

Websites like the selby— which photographs the apartments of wealthy creative types—provide an equivalent, with the signifiers being possessions rather than habits.

A website or magazine combining the two things (written daily routines and select photographs of stuff that people own) would be unbearably fascinating, philosophically sad and extremely American.