Concern with a particular term

But what made me cringe is the term “aesthetic” as applied in “no secret that social media revolves around aesthetics.”

Using this word as the singular dimension of social media, negates the profound and multidimensional, positive and substance-based, lasting impact of social media. This requires no proof, is a postulate and axiom upon which the fast changes of modernity are founded. And in that meta assessment, aesthetics are a high-brow word as misplaced as, for instance “aesthetics attracted Papua-New Guinea cannibals at the Age of Great Discoveries.” What attracted them in the trinkets were shiny in form and had no substance, or practical use.

What Ms. Koenig had in mind, is the uselessness of form, beyond being necessary as part of the substance of a book. Take the Bible as a hyperbole — this fountain of wisdom and history, in its canonical and common editions is of simplest form. But the substance.

Ms. Koenig’s column is well-written and shows substance and depth, maturity and rhetorical skills in taking a strong position. But using “aesthetics” subtracts from her arguments and in fact legitimizes the shallow trend she exposes.

Mikhail Drabkin

San Mateo