I've been struggling for quite some time now to come to terms with what is happening to my adopted hometown. Farmland has briskly given way to housing developments and two-lane country roads are now bottlenecked with increased traffic. Once beautiful rolling fields are now filled with endless rows of identical housing. Outside of town the same thing is happening in the way of "estate lots"- fancier homes plopped on larger lots and packaged as a form of luxury while essentially still a subdivision. Even our little dead end road that is tucked way back in the middle of the countryside has had a few densely wooded lots give way to new construction. It is heartbreaking to me that it will never be what it once was. And of course, I am part of the contradiction. Eleven years ago, I was one of the people who arrived because this place offered something I wanted. There is no morally pure position from which to complain about the people arriving after me.
And yet at the same time of all of this explosive growth, many local small businesses have been crying out that they are struggling. On the surface it doesn't make logical sense at all. One would assume that growth equals more consumers and more consumers equal a thriving, vibrant local economy. To witness the opposite leads me to believe that something else is at play. Something that I have felt but struggled to name.
The technology that is at our fingertips and literally in our hands has encouraged the vast broadcasting of our lives. We share almost everything now- there is almost nothing that remains taboo to discuss and almost every proverbial rock has been overturned. Sharing our discoveries has become a form of social currency. Increasingly, what we discover isn’t simply something to enjoy; broadcasting the discovery becomes part of how we tell the world who we are.
Places and objects are signals of relevance, belonging and newer ideas of "community". Towns aren't merely places to live, farms aren't just places where food is grown, shops aren't merely just places where objects are sold, and restaurants are no longer simply places to eat- they have become signals. They communicate something about people. It's how the world has always worked. Someone buys that pair of running shoes to signal their athleticism. The handbag, the car or the neighborhood that is chosen to live in signals the status people want to be perceived as being part of. It is the battery that runs the inner clockwork of commerce. It happens so naturally we don't often consider the mechanics behind the system.
Physical places have become social currency. We see this in all of the "viral" and influencer culture and in the lines, the overcrowded resort towns, and hordes of tourists in a trendy place. We race to share the "hidden gem" - tell everyone about the secret spot no one knows about- and the more likes and views the better. It's a hilarious thing when you consider the scope of sharing that with the whole wide world and then six months later seeing the complaints that it is "ruined". Well...yes. Discovery became extraction.
Once enough people arrive to a place primarily because it communicates something about them, the economics of that place begin to respond accordingly. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the things that made the place interesting get replaced by representations of the things that made it interesting. The quaint downtown that people fell in love with turns into shops geared more toward tourists than locals and the minimal parking available supports that focus.
People are attracted to authenticity but demand causes commerce to reproduce whatever attracted the demand. Reproduction creates sameness. Sameness destroys authenticity.
Everyone starts looking for the next authentic place. It is an extractive cycle of culture. We consume authenticity until authenticity can no longer afford to exist. That's the irony. Growth equals increased rents that the quirky local shopkeeper can no longer afford. Someone with capital takes that storefront and opens a beautifully branded shop selling a version of what that quirky shop used to sell. Eventually the whole place becomes a highly polished simulation of the authenticity that originally attracted everybody. It's tragic.
This isn't a matter of commercialism vs art either because those two things have lived together forever- its intrinsic creation versus performative creation. The result? Everything starts to look the same. Individuality becomes an aesthetic category rather than individuality. Ironically, the qualities that make somewhere desirable are often the qualities that cannot ultimately survive everyone arriving because it is desirable.
This also complicates that lovely modern ideal of "community". A crowd isn't necessarily a community. An audience isn't necessarily a community. Ten thousand people consuming the same content aren't necessarily connected to one another- or even responsible for the thing they are consuming. Actual community contains some element of reciprocity and obligation. You don't just take from the place, you participate in it. You tolerate its inconveniences. You know its people. You support it when it isn't fashionable. You don't demand that it reorganizes itself around your expectations. That's entirely different from arriving because somewhere has become culturally desirable. Maybe that's where restraint starts looking less like elitism and more like care.
The term "gatekeeping" has gained such a negative connotation- as though withholding access is inherently selfish. But what if some forms of gatekeeping are actually stewardship? There are things whose value depends partly upon not being subjected to unlimited scale. Perhaps some gates exist to protect what we love from the relentless demands of a consuming marketplace. Maybe the gate isn't saying, "you cannot come in". Maybe it's saying, "not everything here is available for consumption."
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