Everything's an ad, so what's even real?

The Atlantic recently described a phenomenon called “grocery store simping,” where our identities are basically reduced to what we buy.

“I’m a blue-blooded American and therefore can only consume Grass-fed beef and if I come within a 5 mile radius of seed oils I WILL combust” type beat.

And honestly, it tracks. Because it’s not just about shopping habits. It’s about what happens when culture, creativity, and even relationships get completely fkn hollowed out – with nothing but brands to fill the space.

“I shop therefore I am” hits a little harder these days.

Because it is our reality. Our curse. Every purchase, every post, every preference has to signal something about who you are. And since culture has run out of juice, advertising has happily stepped in to replace it. Everything is an ad, and ads are everything.

Look at celebrities: no one is just an actor or musician anymore. They’re also a tequila tycoon, a skincare mogul, a podcast host, and a fast-food menu item. Even The Cut had to admit that Hollywood has reached brand-deal saturation. And here’s the kicker: billionaires don’t need side hustles. We do. But they cosplay as hustlers anyway, while the rest of us grind just to cover rent.

Gen Z and digital natives are expected to monetise every second of our lives.

Posting UGC, dropping affiliate links, turning hobbies into content, doing unpaid “volunteer work” for brands in exchange for exposure. Meanwhile, the President of the United States is out here, quite literally selling Bibles with his face on them while franchising golf courses around the world.

This is what I believe is ad-based psychosis: nothing simply exists.

A sweater isn’t just a sweater, brunch isn’t just brunch, even downtime is monetised into content. Everything stands for something, and that “something” is usually a brand. Identity has been completely colonised by commerce.

This isn’t new, but it is different.

Of course, culture and commerce have always been intertwined. Andy Warhol’s soup cans blurred the line between art and advertising in the 1960s. The consumer boom of the 80s and 90s gave us brand obsession as a lifestyle (hello, Nike.) But what’s different now is absolute scale and saturation. Advertising does not influence culture; it has eaten the whole damn thing whole.

There’s no alternative scene, no refuge, no “outside.” Everything folds back into a monetisable moment.

Living in this environment means constant performance.

If everything you do might be branded, you start acting like your own marketing director. Even rest!!!! Rest isn’t freaking rest anymore!!!! God save us. It’s a chance to post, optimise, monetise. “3 things I do to wind down with This Brand of Matcha in this Lounge Set.”

The result is exhaustion, anxiety, and the creeping suspicion that nothing is ever authentic. If everything is strategy, what’s left of sincerity?

Fashion, music, film, and media used to be cultural spaces first, commercial spaces second.

Now, they’re just marketing arms. TikTok trends double as shopping lists. New music drops are announced alongside alcohol collabs. Even memes are designed to sell. What we used to call “culture” is increasingly indistinguishable from advertising campaigns. Or anything else for that matter.

It’s a big giant nothing soup.

What’s left when everything is an ad?

If art, community, and even politics have all been absorbed into branding, what remains untouched?

Can anything carry moral weight if it’s also a marketing opportunity? Maybe that’s why politics feels indistinguishable from influencer drama, merch drops, celebrity endorsements, meme campaigns.

In the end, the cultural recession isn’t just about boredom or recycling old aesthetics. It’s about living in a vacuum where identity has been completely replaced by commerce.

Kiss being a consumer goodbye. We are now walking billboards. Marketing collateral, drafted into advertising whether we like it or not.

And that’s the curse of this era: everything stands for something, but nothing ever just is.

-Sophie Randell, Writer