Defanged Minimalism

A review of "The Minimalists : Less Is Now"

There is a new documentary out on Netflix at the moment called The Minimalists : Less Is Now. In a lot of ways, it’s unremarkable; A classic New Years documentary that features ominous, ambient music, lots of high-definition B-Roll of swarming cities and Amazon deliveries and narrative thru lines about enlightened guys who realised that having too much stuff was simply stressing them out. After what’s been the most stressful year most of us have experienced (though I imagine we’ll be nostalgic for it this time next year), it makes sense that Netflix would release this now, and, while being one of the highest valued entertainment companies in the world, would tacitly endorse the message of : Why own, when you can simply rent it indefinitely?

Finding out about The Minimalists came from a browsing habit I’d developed during Lockdown. Somewhere toward the middle, as I was struggling to keep on top of an impossible workload, recovering from personal life traumas and taking stock of what close to 5 years of non-stop working had done to my body, I became obsessed to self-improvement videos on YouTube. What started as a way of trying to simply learn how to use my Google calendar better led me into a rabbit hole of optimization strategies , that ranged from using multiple pieces of software to organise my thoughts , how to maintain motivation at all times , minute managing and so on. There are a ton of these videos on YouTube, and they’re some of the platform’s most popular - including one of Productivity Youtube’s OG’s - Matt D’Avella. D’Avella is the director of The Minimalists and is known for being an evangelist of minimalism. I found his videos refreshing, not least because he was one of the few who advocated for things like making a checklist rather than having a complicated, multi-synced ‘productivity system’ that was entirely Cloud based, or in some cases, trying to hide that you can definitely be more productive if you’re able to outsource your admin tasks. If you watch enough videos from the productivity/study space of Youtube, you’ll also find that most basically copy of D’Avella’s aesthetic. D’Avella is a filmmaker by training, and really incorporated concepts like adding original B-Roll, dim-lit interior shots and the lo-fi music that’s now a staple for anyone looking to become a ‘Study Influencer'.

Anyone familiar with D’Avella’s Youtube channel will then see how it informs the aesthetic choices of the film. In this particular case, it’s interesting to see how minimalism as an ideology is characterised between both platforms, and what that suggests about audience; The highly personalised, individualised and, most importantly, commercialised Youtube platform is ideal for D’Avella’s minimalist-influenced self development strategies. As a platform that is less about entertainment than a discourse subsidiary, the best kinds of Youtube content are those that appeal to the hidden insecurities and desires of the viewer as a participating consumer. The story arcs that work well on the self-development section of Youtube are modelled on a remixed hero’s journey: The participant, eager eyed, flawed but ambitious, seeks wisdom, encounters challenges, realises that the biggest obstacle was, in fact, themselves, and in doing so, transforms to a better (and in this case, more ‘productive’ person). Youtube videos tend to be watched passively, and so such content doesn’t require emotional investment. Simply, the participant has to accept their flaws (being unproductive) and agree that the resolution is hacks, side-hustles, passion projects and experiences.

But I’m not convinced it quite works on Netflix, a platform that, while sharing much of the same audience, operates in a way that, for now, is far less individualised and not particularly axiomatic in relation to wider online discourse. The film is just shy of an hour, and follows Minimalist Influencers Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus use their scripted (and poorly acted out) life stories to make the case for owning fewer things, followed by a mixture of talking heads (including the fairly controversial Dave Ramsey) describe how Americans (though this could be projected elsewhere) became obsessed with “buying stuff” and “mindless consumption” (Ramsey uses is frequent example of Americans insisting they buy bigger cars or bigger houses, without any acknowledgement of a banking system that incentivises and even penalises people for being prudent on spending). Throughout the film, there are meek, vague gestures to broader structural problems, including how consumption can be respite for poor Americans who can’t afford things like healthcare and time off work, and how advertisers and corporations actively exploit this. But it doesn’t take long before we go back to advocating decluttering and getting rid of things as a means of pursuing the feeling of alleviation, a lightening of the load, and, most importantly, a way of “managing” oneself.

In this sense, this minimalism isn’t a radical act of emancipation, nor is it a rejection of the oppressions of global capitalism. Rather, it’s a capitulation of the destructive tendencies of the system, and a tacit acceptance that most of us will never experience any materialised fulfilment, and we should simply accept that. Basically, it’s the WEF’s “Youll own nothing and you’ll be happy” thing that got a lot of QAnon people mad last month:

Finally, there’s also one very obvious blindspot that the film doesn’t really address, but it blatantly obvious as the film’s underlying logic. Without any form of radical trajectory, defanged minimalism is little more than a reproduced identity within capitalism - one that embodies an aesthetic of anti-materialism, but without any sort of structural critique of the system, and thus becoming something of an aesthetic satire, that can also be a site of commodification.

Funnily enough, this is the case made in an obscure social sciences paper written in the 1990s by, uh, BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti (full disclosure, my former boss, although I was too low in the company to be meaningful). Peretti, who built the internet’s biggest advertising machine argued in "Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Contemporary Visual Culture and the Acceleration of Identity Formation/Dissolution" that capitalism doesn’t really produce material goods as it does identities, and that for capitalism to survive, it will have to keep producing and reproducing identities, where materials operate more like signifiers. “Capitalism needs schizophrenia, but it also needs egos," he writes. "The contradiction is resolved through the acceleration of the temporal rhythm of late capitalist visual culture. This type of acceleration encourages weak egos that are easily formed, and fade away just as easily."

There’s also an interesting part of Perretti’s paper that praises “slackers” for buying into the culture of consumption vis-a-vis identity formation, but slowing its advance by not buying anything. He suggests that this could be harnessed by radical and revolutionary groups to form anti-capitalist identities, but it’s probably fair to say that it wasn’t a particularly well-regarded message when it was published in the late 90s. But what’s interesting is the way in which this brand of minimalism comes the closest to realising Perreti’s vision while also illustrating its natural and inevitable limits. In minimising and at times even forgoing consumption, the minimalists pose a direct challenge to the trajectory of capital, but the absence of structural critique renders them little more than a bland, unthreatening and, most crucially, aspirational aesthetic- one that inadvertently assists the project of capital through the gig jobs that power the rentier economy.

Maybe The Minimalists was never supposed to be a manifesto, or set out a radical societal vision. But it’s that lack of ambition that causes it’s universally agreeable messages to end up getting lost in the ether - drowned out by the financial scolding and ‘inspirational’ life advice that makes me think that I just watched a very long Youtube video.