What happens when our most nostalgic season vanishes?
The romance of decay and the hype around fall aesthetics
“There’s Autumn where you are, and you’ll still travel to where there’s better Autumn.”
–Josh Johnson, “White people’s favorite season.”
I was reminded of comedian Josh Johnson’s hilarious bit about Autumn today because I’m sitting here typing this at home in rainy Brooklyn and not in a quaint hotel in the Berkshires where we had planned to go leaf peeping. We’re in a bit of a drought again, but a Nor’easter ruined the only Fall weekend we had travel plans. Because, of course.
Anyway.
I heard that this year’s foliage is dull and muted because of the warmer night temperatures and the lack of rain. Just last week I was griping about the weird dissonance of October nights that still feel like summer. Mid-70s muggy temperatures at 7 p.m. when it’s already pitch-black. But then, it happened overnight. I stepped outside Thursday to weather that was cool enough to reach for a jacket. I spent the morning reveling in that deliciously crisp, early fall air. I could have cried.
Autumn is paradoxical. It’s death and decay, but it disguises the biological process of chlorophyll breakdown as beauty in a rage of colors. It’s also the season we most romanticize.
We can largely blame social media for that. Fall is arguably the most commodified of all seasons. “Cozy” is lucrative business. I used to throw myself into it because we were in the business of selling cookies and hot chocolate mixes back then. Fall is peak cookie season, so we’d drive to picturesque locations to photograph shots like these:
I look back at these images and laugh. All those hours spent manufacturing something that was meant to look spontaneous now seems absurd—but hey, I was a one person marketing department and it worked to sell cookies for a while.
Out of curiosity, I opened Instagram and scrolled for the first time in months. I think I’m still stuck in whatever I remember IG to be years ago when my feed would have been filled by now with carefully crafted flatlays. You know, cups of beautiful latte art with an open book styled on round marble cafe tables. Hashtagged #autumnfeeling #fallingforfall.
I was surprised to see nothing of that sort on my feed. Not even one selfie with a chunky knit cardigan cupping a steaming hot beverage with both hands. Where are the images of cozy socks on sheepskin rugs? Where are all the braided apple pie crusts? Are they just buried in the algorithmic feed of ads and reels or am I really so out of touch that I’ve missed the memo that over-curated Fall aesthetics on Instagram is over?
Turns out, the content is there if you go looking for it (#autumnaesthetic), but one look at the grid and it looks weirdly dated, overly precious, and ridiculously contrived. It’s not helped by any AI slop weaved in.
Of course, it was contrived back then too. One of the most ubiquitous trends was the mass-market co-opting of hygge, the Danish concept that embodies coziness in shared moments and the enjoyment of quiet pleasures. Everyone on Instagram ran with it in the late 2010s and we lapped up every image of hot cocoa by the fire and reading books curled up in blankets.
It’s not all influencer culture either. Fall was romanticized in movies (“You’ve Got Mail”) and T.V. (“Gilmore Girls”) way before we started posting flatlays on Instagram. New York never looked more romantic than in a Meg Ryan movie.
There’s nothing wrong with being deliriously enthusiastic about Fall. I love Fall. I love that it fills all our senses with childhood nostalgia and rewards our instincts to burrow into rituals of comfort. We should cherish it, especially now when the world is filled with so much ugliness.
Where it all goes wrong is when trends and aesthetics feed into the capitalistic machine by merchandizing an entire season to sell products and an aspirational lifestyle that few of us can achieve. Goblincore and whimsigoth? Dark Academia and Witchcore? All to sell gilded mushroom candle holders, tweed blazers, and black Danish cone candles?
But I get it. It works because there’s something about Fall that makes me want to spend. Maybe it’s the psychological association of fresh school year beginnings, but I find myself at the art store buying up tubes of paint to replenish the ones that my kid takes to college with her. Mindless surfing leads to an impulsive jacket purchase I can’t resist, even though I probably have mere weeks in an ever shortened season to wear it before pulling out my winter coats.
That austere pause on spending in the first half of the year unravels when the air shifts into a nostalgic blend of simmering apples and cinnamon. I’m complicit in this particular cycle of consumerism.
But I’m also human. And now that my kids are grown, I realize that I’m not really nostalgic for my own childhood, but for theirs.
Fall activities wasn’t really a thing growing up in my immigrant household. Fall was less sentimental and culturally more about transient cosmic cycles. I never went apple or pumpkin picking or grew up in a house where the smell of pie wafted seductively through the kitchen. That wholesome American experience wasn’t my American experience, so when I had children I dove in with an enthusiastic desire to experience it all: the apple cider donuts, the corn mazes, the yearly visits to pumpkin patches and apple orchards—all of it to give my kids a baseline of childhood memories.
So what happens when our most nostalgic season vanishes? When we have to wait longer and many weeks beyond the fall equinox for temperatures to drop and the air to cool? The internet loves Fall but we’re seeing the leaves turn later and an overall shorter, truncated Autumn. Yes, climate change is ruining the internet’s most aesthetic season.
Which is why it’s slightly unsettling that Fall content is pushed in our faces earlier and earlier. It feels like a desperate plea, with one wary eye on global warming, to preserve what we know and love about Fall as it slowly contracts each year. Maybe we’ll get more AI generated photos of brilliant foliage on our feeds because the complex ecosystems required to turn leaves red and gold are getting short-changed; shorter seasons result in muted colors. Or maybe foliage tourism will turn even more competitive and crowded as the peak season windows contract. Leaves will fall faster after they burn out in color. Will the sensory memories of Fall fade for future generations?
I know it’s a dark, dystopian take. The erosion of seasonal rhythms messes with our internal senses of time and seasonal habits.
But cozy culture isn’t going anywhere. It’s our ritualistic way to cope with impermanence and to reclaim comfort in a world that is absolute chaos and sometimes depressing. I’m just glad the highly curated Instagram aesthetic of Fall is over.
So get excited for all the pumpkin spice products that’s exploded at your local Trader Joe’s if that makes you happy. In the future, we may have to rely on more consumer-driven fabrications of Fall to trigger our seasonal nostalgia.
Related reading
A roundup of links & recs
To read:
What sleep is. It is our biggest blind spot, a bizarre experience that befalls us every day, and can’t be explained by our need for rest. (Aeon)
Is sleep one of humanity’s greatest mysteries? Coming off my last newsletter around sleep, this long-form essay was an interesting, theoretical follow-up read on sleep.Is ‘Going Viral’ Dead? (NYTimes)
“Each user’s feed is hypertailored to them, meaning no one sees the same version of the internet.”
Never thought about it in this way, but how true. Silly sidenote: the first time any post of mine went viral was on Twitter years ago when I posted a photo of a dog dressed up as Bob Ross on Halloween.To raise fertility rates, it’s not women who need to step up — it’s men. New research found that countries where men do more housework and child care have higher fertility rates. (19th News)
I mean…isn’t this obvious?Patreon CEO Jack Conte Wants You to Get Off of Your Phone. The man who cofounded Patreon is tired of influencers making content to get clicks. He’d rather creators earn lifelong fans—and he has a plan for that. (Wired)
Timely read as Liz Lenz of Men Yell At Me just announced that she has left Substack for Patreon.The return of the ‘OG Instagram’ aesthetic (Dazed Digital)
I had to read this to remember what the OG aesthetic was.Betting on the Creator Economy, Syracuse University Opens Academic Center for Podcasters and Influencers (Art News)
Uh, do kids really need college (plus a 90k a year tuition) to be influencers?‘Save Our Signs’ Preservation Project Launches Archive of 10,000 National Park Signs (404 Media)
This administration likes to make things (and people) disappear. It might just be up to us to act like archivists. “Save Our Signs” is a crowdsourced archive that aims to preserve over 10,000 national park and monument signs nationwide—especially those at risk of removal under political directives.
A book I just read: (heads up, an affiliate link)
Julie Chan is Dead (Liann Zhang)
Speaking of influencers, I zipped through this zany novel last weekend because it was a wildly entertaining satire on the influencer world (though the second half of the book resembled a TV series that takes a turn for the weird).
An exhibition worth seeing if you’re in NYC:
The Creator of ‘Humans of New York’ Has Transformed All of Grand Central Into a Public Art Installation (Artnews)
“For the first time in living memory, every inch of Grand Central’s advertising has been replaced with art. More than 150 digital screens—typically reserved for commercial ads and transit announcements—now display thousands of portraits and stories from Humans of New York’s vast archive.”
Going to catch this before it closes this weekend.
To make and eat:
Potato Gnocchi With Sage-Butter Sauce Recipe (Serious Eats)
This is one of Mark’s Fall comfort foods whenever the temperatures dip. I didn’t have gnocchi until I was well into adulthood. As such, I have no associations with it so I’m just along for the ride.
To buy and snack on:
Currently obsessed with these Trader Joe’s products:
1. Trail Mix Crackers: mung beans, sesame seeds, raisins, pumpkin seeds, and cashews on a cheesy cracker. Serving size says four crackers. I could eat a whole bag.
2. Dark Chocolate Almond Butter Cups, the 2 pack variety for better almond butter to chocolate ratio (can’t find a link on the TJ’s site). I have a weakness for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and every Halloween I’d get a bounty of them from the kids’ trick-or-treating stash. Kids are gone, so I have to buy them myself now, but I think I prefer these as my go-to candy of choice.
Wow, that line about feeling nostalgic not for your childhood but for your kids’ really hit me! Really feeling that one right now!
Thank you for articulating something that has been brewing around in my head for a while....