Shannon Turlington

I recently came upon this bit of wisdom, from In the Woods by Tana French:

To my mind the defining characteristic of our era is spin, everything tailored to vanishing point by market research, brands and bands manufactured to precise specifications; we are so used to things transmuting into whatever we would like them to be that it comes as a profound outrage to encounter death, stubbornly unspinnable, only and immutably itself.

The marketing, packaging and branding of just about everything is one of the most insidious evils of modern life, I think. I get so tired of absolutely everything I encounter being something I have to purchase and consume. There seems no motivation to do anything anymore, not even make art, without coming up with a way to commodify it. We can’t even just be people anymore. Everyone has to have a personal brand these days, and a presence on Twitter to support it.

No wonder death outrages us. It’s the one thing we haven’t yet figured out how to sell.

PS If you click the link above, you can buy a copy of French’s book and send a few shekels my way. Yes, I appreciate the irony…