I rely on my 20-year-old son for most of my slim connections to contemporary culture. He alerted me to the "Dark Academia aesthetic," which has been making the rounds of social media this year. It seems to be inspired by Harry Potter, Oxbridge, "Dead Poets Society," and a desire for a college experience at a time when it's hard to get.
So what do I find in a search for Dark Academia imagery?
According to a New York Times story:
In the halls of Dark Academia, nostalgia and a world free of modern technology reign .... Laura Piszczatowska, a history student in Norway, runs the Dark Academia Instagram account Geminnorum (over 28,000 followers), where she posts photos of old Spanish buildings by night, the flicker of a candle and typewriters. ... Evelyn Meyer, a 20-year-old who created the “Dark Academia check” sound in September 2019, often favors clothing from the men’s section of Goodwill in her videos, as well as the pages of books tacked up on her wall, a typewriter she owns, and paperback novels by beatniks and transcendentalists.
I bet Dark Academia fans would be glad to sign up for my imagined Analog College.
it is a great
ReplyDeleteAnother subject for me to dive into. Anything with old must be good.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Dead Poet's Society, I had an English teacher who acted just like the one in the Movie decades before the movie.
Weird, we used to call this Frosh-Goth. :D
ReplyDeleteI have been waiting 40 years for my tastes to be considered mainstream.
ReplyDeleteI was going to bring up Donna Tarrt’s _The Secret History _, but a quick “google” search show the “dark academians” already well ahead of me. Don’t remember any typewriter references in the book, but there was several mentions of Montblanc fountain pens.
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