00:00The cast, so why are so many people talking about Travis Scott's veneers?
00:05Yes, the teeth, the teeth.
00:07One pop culture podcaster said they have no place in Ithaca.
00:11They didn't have those, but...
00:13And that's, like, are they wrong? I don't think so.
00:16It was a little distracting. I saw the movie, yes.
00:19People have too much time on their hands.
00:21Bloomberg Businessweek senior reporter Amanda Moll lays it out in a new piece about the optimization backlash.
00:27There's more to this.
00:28She writes, if people really are sick of influencers, is it possible the kind of perfection they've so effectively sold
00:34is beginning to fall out of favor, too?
00:39All right.
00:40Sounds like, yeah.
00:40All right, yeah. Amanda, come on in on this, man. This is just, like, right up your alley, kiddo.
00:46I think Joe's perfect. I think Lisa's perfect. But is perfection getting a little boring?
00:52Yeah, I think that people spend so much time looking at Instagram, looking at TikTok, looking at, you know, famous
00:59people in movies and streaming shows that we are, I think, as a culture, getting sort of sick of looking
01:06at, like, over-perfected, unmoving, smooth faces.
01:10I think people want a little bit of humanity back.
01:14Amazing.
01:14Does that mean wrinkles, Joe?
01:16Well, take a look. I'm all for it.
01:19It means a little bit of wrinkles.
01:21A little bit of wrinkles. Yes, get Botox and say, leave a little space in there for wrinkles.
01:25But why is this? Is it because of, you know, maybe we've seen too much of it? Like, maybe it
01:30was too easy to get. You know, it's easy to get, you know, all these things that people wanted so
01:35much.
01:35And is that one of the reasons? I'm still trying to figure it out.
01:38Yes, I think part of it is that we just spend too much time looking at people who seem to
01:43have the same face as the person we were just looking at in the previous video.
01:47I think that, you know, it's not only cosmetic procedures and things like that, but the types of filters that
01:52get used on social videos are often sort of, like, bring everybody to this sort of, like, flattened average of,
02:02like, a perfect face.
02:02And I think we're sick of that. But then also, I think we see it more and more in the
02:06people around us because the number of Medi-Spas in the United States has ballooned since the pandemic.
02:14Thousands of new, you know, places to get Botox and filler and things like that have opened in every strip
02:22mall in the U.S., it can seem like sometimes.
02:24It's terrifying.
02:25Yes, yes.
02:26The dentist, anybody, right?
02:29Yes, yes.
02:30Yes, my allergist offers Botox and filler.
02:35You know, for doctors, it's a really good business.
02:38It's a cash pay business.
02:39People are excited to get it.
02:40So you can get this stuff anywhere now, and that makes people a little bit nervous about it.
02:44It just went overboard, though, right?
02:45The numbers that this explosion between, as you point out, 2019 and 2024, the number of non-surgical aesthetic procedures
02:54performed worldwide jumped more than 50%.
02:57So, like, half the world is talking and their face isn't moving.
03:00Are we going to see a backlash where it goes back down 50%?
03:06Well, I don't think we're necessarily going to see these procedures decline.
03:11I think that people have too much access.
03:13It's too good of a business for health care practices.
03:16But I think that perhaps the nature of some of these procedures is going to change.
03:21What we have heard is that, you know, doctors who do cosmetic injections are hearing patients go, I want my
03:28forehead to move a little bit.
03:29I don't want to get rid of all of the wrinkles.
03:31I want to look my age but better instead of trying to, you know, turn the clock back so far.
03:37So people want to look a little human.
03:38All right, full disclosure, I have, you know, done Botox at times.
03:42But I've gotten rid of, like, the furrowed brow.
03:44And my husband's like, that's my early warning sign that you're pissed off, basically.
03:48He's like, you cannot get rid of that.
03:51I'm just saying.
03:52I'm just saying.
03:53I don't know.
03:54You know, I feel like this crosses your world, too, in politics, right?
03:56Amanda, we've talked about the Mar-a-Lago face.
03:58Oh, God, yeah.
03:59And I mean, is there a political component to this?
04:04Yes, I think that this is one of those things that when you see any trend go really, really broad
04:09and start to move into communities of people, whether that's class communities, race communities, whatever, geographic communities, that were originally
04:17not part of a group of people that participated in a trend, that can turn off the original group of
04:23people who started the trend.
04:25So when you see, you know, immovable foreheads, very long hair extensions, overplumped lips become associated with, like, a particular
04:33political ideology, people outside of that political ideology or who are, like, vehemently opposed to it get really turned off
04:41at the prospect of emulating that or looking like they might be someone who has beliefs that they don't have.
04:47So this is how you see trends, like, move through culture and move through society, because they collect, you know,
04:53political valences and things like that that early adopters are like, okay, I'm moving on.
04:58So no more duck lips, Lisa?
04:59No duck lips.
05:00But does it move on from beyond the looks, right?
05:03Is it also about luxury?
05:05Like, I know there are so many Instagram influencers or whoever who support luxury and do all these luxury products.
05:12Those white kitchens.
05:12And now what do they do?
05:13Those white kitchens.
05:14Now what do they do?
05:16Yes, I think that sort of at base what this is is a tech backlash because the optimization available to
05:24us through AI, it creates images of people and images of homes that are sort of, like, glowing and lit
05:30from within and poreless and flawless.
05:33And so you look around and everything just looks sort of hyper real, looks too fancy, too nice.
05:39Those open shelves in the kitchen, they never work.
05:42I'm sorry.
05:43No, they don't.
05:44Sorry.
05:44They don't.
05:44They look good in a photo on Instagram, but if you use your kitchen, as most people do, they don't
05:49work.
05:50So, you know, people see all of these things and they become increasingly just ridiculous-seeming.
05:55Because anybody that uses a kitchen knows those open shelves don't work.
05:58Yeah, wow.
05:58So, like, dingy kitchens in style again?
06:00Come on.
06:01You need a divorce.
06:01More broadly, though, the sort of backlash to digital and AI.
06:05Young people, they're collecting vinyl, they want to look like real people.
06:10As you write, part of the backlash to AI means finding novel ways to distinguish yourself.
06:15This is about individualism, right?
06:17Yeah, I think that ultimately, especially young people who have spent their entire lives online and who are growing up
06:23into a world where they feel like they, you know, maybe don't quite fit into the standards that they've understood
06:31to be applied to them for all that time,
06:33are looking for ways to feel a little bit more human, to connect a little bit more straightforwardly with other
06:40people, and feel a little bit less alienated and a little bit less, you know, under pressure from digital standards
06:46that we see on Instagram and TikTok.
06:49So, people are collecting physical media.
06:51You have a lot of young people buying vintage digital cameras that, you know, not everything lives on your phone.
06:57My dad has done that.
06:58Maybe it lives in a separate camera.
06:59Yeah.
07:00You see, there's a huge trend, and has been for years, of secondhand shopping.
07:04People want older clothes, things that aren't, you know, so perfect or so widely available.
07:09I think people are looking for experiences that feel a little bit more human.
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