The Age of Conceptual Masturbation
How fake depth replaced authentic experience
Everything has become a concept, a journey, and a feeling.
Art, hotels, restaurants, websites, fashion brands, cars, wellness, real estate, coffee: it’s all ‘a concept’ nowadays. I’m convinced that 80-90% of luxury goods and services in 2025 are like this.
I thought of the idea of conceptualist masturbation when a coffee brand ‘for aviators, by aviators’ followed me on Instagram this week. While a brand story in itself is not kitsch, this brand was horse shit packaged as uniqueness. Fake and forced, like every concept.
A concept is an idea or invention to help sell or publicise commodities.
Concepts give a sense of (false) belonging. People can ‘get’ the concept and its paradigm. I’m not a neurologist, but I know for sure this feeling is equivalent to a mental orgasm. I used to be the first one to visit every new restaurant, shop, hotel, etc. Concepts make people feel sophisticated and immersive.
But they’re not…
