Evil doesn’t die; it reinvents itself.
an explainer on how culture gets commodified, and why.. in the end.. we all end up paying for it.
Market Position is home to trademarked’s long-form case studies— the place where we treat culture like an economy and desire like data:
1)Our frameworks are steeped in hegemonic patterning, philosophy, sociology, economics, and psychology. 2)Our focus is unpacking how identity and status function as a rotational force— actively reorienting consumer behavior. 3)And for you, we’re surfacing culture’s critical inflection points— giving you a demystified lens on where consumption is moving next.
TLDR… a [zillennial] thinktank, if u will ;).
editor’s note: i refuse to dumb things down because, well, i respect you. i hope you enjoy the read :).
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As we discussed in great depth earlier this month (per Emily Sundberg, where we spun data into threads of gold), analogue—culture’s obsession w/ being “offline”—has officially gained momentum. How do we know for sure? Because of the ways it’s being culturally commodified. The term now signals taste, restraint, and discernment— perhaps it could even become the gen alpha vocal stim that finally displaces gen z’s use of the word chic.
And per our last chat, analogue has hit enough of a tipping point to show up as both a status symbol and a status object— a thing you can be, and a thing you can buy. This is happening through commodified signals (cough, brick users) that exist within a bubble of shared cultural language— think the advent of ‘closing rings’ via apple watches. Thus, what was once consumed implicitly (we’ll cover this in the next one) is now being consumed explicitly. This is the process that creates opportunity for a term to become singularly resonant as both clickbait and buybait.
If you’re a marketer, that might sound like walking through a field of tulips to you, but for those of us who have lived through the agitating, grating voice of dominant algorithmic consumption before…. analogue’s rise presents… kind of a crisis?
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Acutely, the kind of crisis that I don’t think we (as a culture) have done a great job of articulating, economically or philosophically. So imagine my surprise when I was filming the video above, and my brain spun into a critical parallel that hit me like a ton of bricks: analogue’s rise in 2026 mirrors the rise of quiet luxury in 2022–2023.
So much so that it’s the cleanest way I can explain why analogue does (and more importantly WILL) matter. And because I can’t help myself, I also created and visualized a model to drive a larger, dare i say breathtaking, thesis home [note: NOT analogue specific… more systemic];
If you’re a brand, investor, or simply the sexiest form of consumer (academia pilled)….. i only threw this party 4U ;).
