Premium mediocrity is a transitional civilisational state, that lies between industrial modernity and digital post-scarcity. It is also a state that reflects a pattern of consumption signalling upward social mobility, while living in a reality of anxiety-ridden downward mobility.
In short, premium mediocrity is a state of potential social mobility. A self-aware pretense to both boomer parents and building-the-future technocrats to keep them happy. You want parents to think you made it, and you want leaders to keep building The New Economy.
That inventing the future means showing up to help sustain the fiction while it is being built out. It means taking risks to make money, meaning, or both.
This is the tense, fragile, calm of a social order pretending furiously that it is not unraveling
The alternatives:
- The pursuit of artisan skill and the denial of financial unsustainability - named Molly Millenial by Venkatesh Rao (meaning no money)
- The pursuit of arbitrage profits and the denial of other meaning - named Max Millenial by Venkatesh Rao (money no meaning)
In comparison, premium mediocre Maya Millenial acknowledges the script change (society-is-scripted) and bets for both meaning and money.
In a system where culture-is-a-service, Premium Mediocrity can also be seen as a collective hallucination where everyone aspires towards imagined future ideals and culture. It is the slice of the cultural pie that serves the disappearing middle class.
Other Related Meanderings: under-the-api just-in-time-person authenticity-is-in-decline