There are books that you can understand without knowing the content: They are accessories. They protrude inconspicuously out of jacket pockets or jute bags, seemingly always at hand – and yet never read. Most suitable are those from Reclam Verlag or, even better, from “stw”, the Suhrkamp science series. One knows and locates them more in the analog: in cafés, lecture hall corridors or picture galleries.
So where people with horn-rimmed glasses often hang out. Recently, however, they have also been available in the digital hallway – more and more books are appearing in the feeds of social networks, on Instagram or Tiktok, in short clips or on carefully arranged photos.
While lessons and lectures were held online – if at all – a digital subculture has formed that celebrates the style of the educated and presents itself as if it came from the academic milieu of the past century. Her followers: inside are college-aged, present themselves with classics of existentialism, underline their videos with Vivaldi or Beethoven.
They mix different epochs of cultural history into a trend called “Dark Academia” which has been viewed almost a billion times on Tiktok so far.
More than a million posts were uploaded to Instagram under the hashtags #darkacademia and #darkacademiaaestehics. Popular motifs are Gothic buildings, bookshelves made of acacia wood with dusty leather-bound writings and long corridors reminiscent of Harry Potter’s mystical Hogwarts.
The recordings are covered with grainy filters, the atmosphere seems as if there is no electric light, only candlelight. The associated clothing style looks like one would imagine the intellectual upper class in the 19th century. The focus is on classics: high-quality jackets, expensive watches, fine leather shoes – everything in brown, black or dark green. To appear pretentious seems to be catching on.
Parallel to this trend, series such as “Reunion with Brideshead”, films such as “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and Donna Tartt’s novel “The Secret Story” are making a comeback. The stories revolve around a young bohemian who is elitist and attends established educational institutions. The Dark Academia community rejects the usual trendy Tiktok look. Your content exudes melancholy.
As if they just didn’t want to be associated with the funky dances and mock pop songs that are otherwise shared over the network. Instead, they show themselves carefully, looking thoughtfully into the camera. Quotations are shared: “I am a forest and a night of dark trees: but if you are not afraid of my darkness, you will also find rose slopes under my cypress trees”, quotes a user Friedrich Nietzsche. 820 others like this.
While the elderly have refurbished their bookshelves in recent months and moved them around the apartment in order to casually reveal their cultural capital in home office video conferences, the dark academias have created an aesthetic that uses colors and filters, clothes and literature express an attitude towards life that is otherwise missing in lockdown – that you absolutely need in your early 20s: It’s about feeling adventurous, visiting exciting places, experiencing special moments, rolling thick books – and thus understanding the world a little better. Or at least find out who is how around you and whom you would like to resemble.
Nostalgia doesn’t go down well everywhere
The Dark Academias glorify and celebrate the analog – in the digital: In Youtube tutorials, paper is stained with black tea in such a way that it looks old and porous and could be mistaken for a love letter from the century before last. Envelopes are provided with sealing wax in the candlelight and labeled with curved, black letters.
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Nostalgia doesn’t go down well everywhere. In internet forums and comment columns, users complain about the lack of diversity in movement. The accusation: The binary middle class teenagers would convey a Eurocentric view of art, literature and architecture online. Her glorification of the elite upper class is problematic, says sociologist Sarah Burton.
As early as February she pointed out in the British Guardian: “I think the disturbing thing is that Dark Academia revolves around symbols of whiteness, economic and cultural privilege, conservatism and nationalism.” As long as that is not reflected, they encourage Aesthetics the repetition of the status quo.
The trend has meanwhile developed further
The community has received some of the criticism, and the trend continues to develop. There are now “Queer Academia” whose followers wear the same outfits as the Dark Academias, but show themselves at Pride parades and recommend books that reconstruct the history of the queer community.
Another style is called “Progressive Academia”: Newer university buildings are depicted here, simple construction methods and lecture hall corridors flooded with daylight are celebrated enthusiastically.
It could initiate the emergence of the long lockdown: Dark Academias that peel themselves out of their dark study world and plunge into the analogue version of the 21st century. So into real life. Outside, sunshine, electric light, different people and unique moments await again. There are places where you can feel that you are there. With clammy hands, palpitations, fits of laughter – and real enlightenment.
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