of the United Kingdom’s capitol city.
A day in the life of a self-employed creative professional, slow-month version:
You begin your day writing cold emails to rebuild your client roster, and you hate yourself a little bit more every time you press send, questioning whether your proactive outreach actually reeks of desperation. You click over to Substack and your algorithm tells you that your subscriber count has plateaued and that you should follow a DTC brand founder who puts their personal musings and curated recommendations from The RealReal behind a paywall. You find yourself shelling out $5 a month for their random musings on life and their affiliate links.
You then find yourself empathizing with u/Mindless_Cheek_7555, who vulnerably asks on the Hermès Game subreddit whether the sales assistant at the brand's Madison Avenue boutique is merely busy or trying to politely stonewall them. You complete an unpaid writing assignment, which you realize, after you submit it, is a way to exploit free labor from eager writers. You might then decide to venture to the Taiwanese dumpling institution Din Tai Fung, which has a waitlist equivalent to an end-game dungeon. Not only does it entail a mandatory intermediate checkpoint (floor 1, basement, waiting room, buzzer), but it is unlocked only under certain conditions — specifically, being physically within a one-mile radius. After entering the location-restricted digital waitlist at 4:40 p.m. for a prospective seat at 7:30 p.m., you’re effectively seated at 9:10 p.m., only to be rushed out as soon as you sit down.
This isn’t just a normal, productive day for an independent creator; it’s a day fueled by humiliation rituals. And the scary thing is that we’re not functioning despite them, but because of them. In fact, we have come to expect them, even crave them, as part of our daily lives, especially in our interactions with brands and commerce.
Humiliation rituals such as complex reservation systems and “high-luxury” in-store experiences are the consumer-culture equivalent of a humiliation fetish. As Phil Leask wrote in Psychodynamic Practice, humiliation is a “demonstrative exercise of power against one or more persons, which consistently involves several elements: stripping of status; rejection or exclusion; unpredictability or arbitrariness; and a personal sense of injustice matched by the lack of any remedy for the injustice suffered.”
The term “fetish,” in this case, is used as a synonym for “penchant” or “preference.” In its actual sense, it refers to an erotic practice. “In an erotic context where someone gets off on humiliation, the experience of being made to feel small is itself the source of arousal and meaning,” explained Dr. Justin Lehmiller, senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and host of The Sex and Psychology podcast. “They want to feel that way, and it’s consensual.”
The Audemars Piguet x Swatch drop is the most recent humiliation ritual to reach peak social media virality. Indeed, consumers fetishized the experience. People worldwide sprinted to stores, camped out overnight on city streets, and threw their fists to get their hands on the Royal Pop Collection. They were recorded by the media and analyzed by social media critics. They were turned away from store doors, empty-handed. And some paid top dollar to get their hands on the collection at triple, even quadruple the price.
They experienced relentless turmoil and ridicule, only to be told that this was not a limited-time drop, and that there would be plenty of inventory for everyone. The collection’s resale value has since plummeted, but the cultural impact remains. Mainly because it reaffirms what we all know deep down: the basic exchange of goods is no longer enough, and we must now suffer for the things we want, simply to prove we deserve them.
The Media’s Humiliation Obsession
Do we truly want to feel this way? Based on the apps and devices we use daily, the elements of power, discipline, and (relative) chiding abound. Think of all the cues coming from a smart tracking device that judges your vitals and metrics, such as your “sleep score.” Consider any distraction-curbing app on the market, such as Opal, which threatens to break your “streak” (oh noooo) if you stray from its rules. Even the aforementioned publishing-and-social-media hybrid platform Substack has a sadistic obsession with leaderboards, growth charts, and rankings.
We are surrounded by games, rules, and triggers that aim to keep us in line. If we stray, we are called out and, in some cases, punished. The media in particular loves a good humiliation story. In fact, 2025 was bookended by two tales of humiliation fetishes. In January, New York Magazine’s Brock Colyar wrote “The Cruel Kids' Table,” an exposé on the inauguration parties and balls of young right-wingers, who said things like “…a queer.”
Pairing young conservatives with Colyar, who uses they/them pronouns and presents in an androgynous manner, created a strong narrative because of the stark contrast between the two groups. As a consequence, the initial humiliation narrative eventually became a glorious showcase of Colyar’s wit. On the other hand, the young conservatives were positioned as a cultural force that, whether you agree with them or not, carried increasing weight, influence, and power. The year closed with the culmination of the Nuzzi/Lizza/Kennedy triangle, in which every main character degraded and was degraded. One was essentially cast as a femme fatale who brought down her entire world and career, another as a cuck; the politician as a failed erotic poet with some paraphilic preferences.
Three perversely delightful novels released between late 2025 and early 2026 are also parables of humiliation, mixed with elements of crime and punishment. Paul Gilmartin’s The Award, Canwen Xu’s Boring Asian Female, and Kirsten King’s A Good Person all feature anti-hero protagonists who are routinely humiliated by their life circumstances and by their own interactions. While these plot points are not out of a horror film, they routinely make you want to cringe, look away, or curl into a ball because they’re reminiscent of watching a car crash in extreme slow motion. But because these characters bring many of their misfortunes upon themselves, the humiliation is cringey but also too enjoyable to look away from. It’s schadenfreude with a touch of empathy.
Humiliation as a KPI
In the world of commerce, the humiliation fetish takes on another dimension.
“In the consumer context, people generally aren’t seeking to feel small. In fact, they’re often trying to avoid that feeling by chasing status or seeking prestige, but they’re only doing that because brands are cultivating and exploiting insecurity,” noted Dr. Lehmiller.
In media, literature, and habit-tracking apps, power asymmetry and restriction can lead to rewarding outcomes. But in the consumer world, Dr. Lehmiller notes that these same dynamics “are employed to manufacture a feeling of insecurity and scarcity, making people feel that certain brands or products are worth chasing.”
If humiliation rituals are the mechanism by which brands manufacture scarcity, then "tasteslop" is the product of that manufacturing process.
Emily Segal, who defined the term, says tasteslop is "curation in the absence of a social body," a hollow, AI-generated aesthetic that mimics the tokens of good taste without the idiosyncratic human context that gives them meaning.
When we stand in line for a "merkin launch," we are participating at once in ritualistic humiliation and in the creation of tasteslop, reinforcing a hierarchy where we believe we are buying ‘taste’ when we are actually just buying leftover debris; the slag of an automated system.
Indeed, for humiliation tactics to be effective in marketing or customer experience, there must be a marked inequality between the person who endures this dynamic and the person or entity that perpetuates it. As Leask explained: “The exercise of power consistently involves rejection and exclusion.”
In January 2026, The Strategist published an overview of the punitive line system outside “normie” stores in downtown New York. The article’s description reads like an excerpt from a hazing ritual:
"Closer to Houston Street, locals and tourists wait to try on $300 jeans in one of the two fitting rooms at Still Here (268 Elizabeth St.) before emerging to look in the store’s singular mirror.”
Brands are now embedding humiliation into their broader growth playbooks, leveraging access and status in marketing, product development, and even in the act of commerce itself.
SKIMS pulls stunts like its Hannibal-Lecter-esque face wrap and merkin launches, using social media scarcity to program people into believing they actually want these things. Dear Media’s “The Skinny Confidential,” the marquee podcast brand that mainly targets Millennial and Gen Z women, delights in selling products that would be at home in looksmaxxing and conspiracy-theory forums, such as mouth tape for better sleep (and a better-defined jawline?), chemical-free toilet paper, and disposable face towels that cost $24 each.
Even Starbucks’ “Bearista” cup launch was a humiliation ritual on full display. Not only was there a two-cups-per-person cap, but the release was met with such anticipation that people were lining up outside their local Starbucks stores as early as the night before. Lining up outside a store works when you have significant deals on major purchases, such as appliances, furniture, or, heck, even a jewelry warehouse sale, but this cup retailed for $29.95. Arguably, the cup resembles a standard plastic honey bottle and is not much different in quality from the random objects anointed as covetable in elementary school. And yet, the cups functioned as proxies for status and as power-wielding talismans.
It’s the normie-adjacency that turns these launches into humiliation rituals. When Gwyneth Paltrow used to release things like candles that smelled like her vagina, a $1,200 golden dildo, and questionable wellness objects such as Shiva Rose’s jade eggs, the elite origin of those products allowed them to be read simply as items hawked by a rich, kooky woman. Despite the moderate outrage generated by the media at the time, the clearly legible camp staved off any actual exclusionary behavior or humiliation kink.
Ultimately, this exclusion-humiliation game is gatekeeping done wrong. Despite having been the subject of online discussion for the past two to three years, trend-forecasting agency WGSN named gatekeeping as one of the top trends for 2026. The reasoning is that exclusivity is making a comeback.
In the past, we saw “curation as service,” where platforms told you exactly what to do when you went to a place. But individuality and exclusivity now matter more. “[Creators and influencers] are guardians of their shopping and travel tips, as opposed to doing ‘get ready with me.’ They’re choosing what to share,” explained consumer forecaster Cassandra Napoli in the WGSN podcast Lives of Tomorrow. “They’re protecting the products and spaces that reflect their identity and trying to avoid copycats.”
This is especially true because creators and influencers are also seeking to monetize their knowledge. It stems from a concern about one’s taste only up to a certain point.
Stepping Off the Hedonic Treadmill
After considerable reflection, I’ve come to view humiliation in consumer culture as a structural condition rather than a failure attributable to an individual brand or person. These individual entities are caught between gatekeeping pressures, brand mythologies, and a hedonic treadmill in which the promised dopamine rush rarely justifies the labor of constant self-optimization.
We are encouraged to present a curated narrative of our product, our career, our life — a highlight reel of sorts — while simultaneously attempting to shield what is most private and meaningful from public consumption. In this bind, acts of degradation, whether self-directed or imposed on others, serve as a form of cultural absolution. A way to momentarily resolve the contradiction by making exposure feel earned, even redemptive. Whatever helps us sleep at night.
There is a way out of these sad humiliation games. Replace “gatekeeping” with “catering to an intended community.” Let go of the “you can’t sit with us” mentality, and instead encourage curiosity and exploration.
Coach is exemplary in its expansion into gaming and hospitality while retaining its status as a heritage, everyday luxury staple. Stores labeled Coach Play, for example, are highly experiential and localized. They speak to consumers in specific markets, so they can connect more deeply to these communities.
“The next few years are going to be years of what I call ‘experience maximalism,’ where literally new things are going to be mundane because consumers are so much more connected now on social media, and they see what’s going on,” Giovanni Zaccariello, Coach’s SVP of Global Visual Experience, shared in an episode of the Future Commerce podcast. “It’s about the consumer talking to us instead of Coach talking to the consumer. It’s a much deeper dialogue.”
And let’s give credit where credit is due: Hermès’s perverse “game” is counterbalanced by active artist outreach, both for scarves and other silks, as well as for digital assets. Annie Choi’s illustrations and animations, for example, carry equal weight at Hermès, where she turned the Paris flagship into a Japanese puzzle box, and at Gap, where she transformed Sandy Liang’s capsule collection into the building blocks of a potential Majokko (magical girl) series we would all watch. This is a dialogue that brands can use to build beyond the limits of the price tags slapped on their products.
When you lack dialogue and insist on manufacturing scarcity, you’re forcing your clientele through a gauntlet of humiliation. As a result, the only appropriate comment is — and I am quoting a Redditor — “[Your product/brand] is a fucking cronut.”
Do people even go to Dominique Ansel’s bakery anymore?
A day in the life of a self-employed creative professional, slow-month version:
You begin your day writing cold emails to rebuild your client roster, and you hate yourself a little bit more every time you press send, questioning whether your proactive outreach actually reeks of desperation. You click over to Substack and your algorithm tells you that your subscriber count has plateaued and that you should follow a DTC brand founder who puts their personal musings and curated recommendations from The RealReal behind a paywall. You find yourself shelling out $5 a month for their random musings on life and their affiliate links.
You then find yourself empathizing with u/Mindless_Cheek_7555, who vulnerably asks on the Hermès Game subreddit whether the sales assistant at the brand's Madison Avenue boutique is merely busy or trying to politely stonewall them. You complete an unpaid writing assignment, which you realize, after you submit it, is a way to exploit free labor from eager writers. You might then decide to venture to the Taiwanese dumpling institution Din Tai Fung, which has a waitlist equivalent to an end-game dungeon. Not only does it entail a mandatory intermediate checkpoint (floor 1, basement, waiting room, buzzer), but it is unlocked only under certain conditions — specifically, being physically within a one-mile radius. After entering the location-restricted digital waitlist at 4:40 p.m. for a prospective seat at 7:30 p.m., you’re effectively seated at 9:10 p.m., only to be rushed out as soon as you sit down.
This isn’t just a normal, productive day for an independent creator; it’s a day fueled by humiliation rituals. And the scary thing is that we’re not functioning despite them, but because of them. In fact, we have come to expect them, even crave them, as part of our daily lives, especially in our interactions with brands and commerce.
Humiliation rituals such as complex reservation systems and “high-luxury” in-store experiences are the consumer-culture equivalent of a humiliation fetish. As Phil Leask wrote in Psychodynamic Practice, humiliation is a “demonstrative exercise of power against one or more persons, which consistently involves several elements: stripping of status; rejection or exclusion; unpredictability or arbitrariness; and a personal sense of injustice matched by the lack of any remedy for the injustice suffered.”
The term “fetish,” in this case, is used as a synonym for “penchant” or “preference.” In its actual sense, it refers to an erotic practice. “In an erotic context where someone gets off on humiliation, the experience of being made to feel small is itself the source of arousal and meaning,” explained Dr. Justin Lehmiller, senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and host of The Sex and Psychology podcast. “They want to feel that way, and it’s consensual.”
The Audemars Piguet x Swatch drop is the most recent humiliation ritual to reach peak social media virality. Indeed, consumers fetishized the experience. People worldwide sprinted to stores, camped out overnight on city streets, and threw their fists to get their hands on the Royal Pop Collection. They were recorded by the media and analyzed by social media critics. They were turned away from store doors, empty-handed. And some paid top dollar to get their hands on the collection at triple, even quadruple the price.
They experienced relentless turmoil and ridicule, only to be told that this was not a limited-time drop, and that there would be plenty of inventory for everyone. The collection’s resale value has since plummeted, but the cultural impact remains. Mainly because it reaffirms what we all know deep down: the basic exchange of goods is no longer enough, and we must now suffer for the things we want, simply to prove we deserve them.
The Media’s Humiliation Obsession
Do we truly want to feel this way? Based on the apps and devices we use daily, the elements of power, discipline, and (relative) chiding abound. Think of all the cues coming from a smart tracking device that judges your vitals and metrics, such as your “sleep score.” Consider any distraction-curbing app on the market, such as Opal, which threatens to break your “streak” (oh noooo) if you stray from its rules. Even the aforementioned publishing-and-social-media hybrid platform Substack has a sadistic obsession with leaderboards, growth charts, and rankings.
We are surrounded by games, rules, and triggers that aim to keep us in line. If we stray, we are called out and, in some cases, punished. The media in particular loves a good humiliation story. In fact, 2025 was bookended by two tales of humiliation fetishes. In January, New York Magazine’s Brock Colyar wrote “The Cruel Kids' Table,” an exposé on the inauguration parties and balls of young right-wingers, who said things like “…a queer.”
Pairing young conservatives with Colyar, who uses they/them pronouns and presents in an androgynous manner, created a strong narrative because of the stark contrast between the two groups. As a consequence, the initial humiliation narrative eventually became a glorious showcase of Colyar’s wit. On the other hand, the young conservatives were positioned as a cultural force that, whether you agree with them or not, carried increasing weight, influence, and power. The year closed with the culmination of the Nuzzi/Lizza/Kennedy triangle, in which every main character degraded and was degraded. One was essentially cast as a femme fatale who brought down her entire world and career, another as a cuck; the politician as a failed erotic poet with some paraphilic preferences.
Three perversely delightful novels released between late 2025 and early 2026 are also parables of humiliation, mixed with elements of crime and punishment. Paul Gilmartin’s The Award, Canwen Xu’s Boring Asian Female, and Kirsten King’s A Good Person all feature anti-hero protagonists who are routinely humiliated by their life circumstances and by their own interactions. While these plot points are not out of a horror film, they routinely make you want to cringe, look away, or curl into a ball because they’re reminiscent of watching a car crash in extreme slow motion. But because these characters bring many of their misfortunes upon themselves, the humiliation is cringey but also too enjoyable to look away from. It’s schadenfreude with a touch of empathy.
Humiliation as a KPI
In the world of commerce, the humiliation fetish takes on another dimension.
“In the consumer context, people generally aren’t seeking to feel small. In fact, they’re often trying to avoid that feeling by chasing status or seeking prestige, but they’re only doing that because brands are cultivating and exploiting insecurity,” noted Dr. Lehmiller.
In media, literature, and habit-tracking apps, power asymmetry and restriction can lead to rewarding outcomes. But in the consumer world, Dr. Lehmiller notes that these same dynamics “are employed to manufacture a feeling of insecurity and scarcity, making people feel that certain brands or products are worth chasing.”
If humiliation rituals are the mechanism by which brands manufacture scarcity, then "tasteslop" is the product of that manufacturing process.
Emily Segal, who defined the term, says tasteslop is "curation in the absence of a social body," a hollow, AI-generated aesthetic that mimics the tokens of good taste without the idiosyncratic human context that gives them meaning.
When we stand in line for a "merkin launch," we are participating at once in ritualistic humiliation and in the creation of tasteslop, reinforcing a hierarchy where we believe we are buying ‘taste’ when we are actually just buying leftover debris; the slag of an automated system.
Indeed, for humiliation tactics to be effective in marketing or customer experience, there must be a marked inequality between the person who endures this dynamic and the person or entity that perpetuates it. As Leask explained: “The exercise of power consistently involves rejection and exclusion.”
In January 2026, The Strategist published an overview of the punitive line system outside “normie” stores in downtown New York. The article’s description reads like an excerpt from a hazing ritual:
"Closer to Houston Street, locals and tourists wait to try on $300 jeans in one of the two fitting rooms at Still Here (268 Elizabeth St.) before emerging to look in the store’s singular mirror.”
Brands are now embedding humiliation into their broader growth playbooks, leveraging access and status in marketing, product development, and even in the act of commerce itself.
SKIMS pulls stunts like its Hannibal-Lecter-esque face wrap and merkin launches, using social media scarcity to program people into believing they actually want these things. Dear Media’s “The Skinny Confidential,” the marquee podcast brand that mainly targets Millennial and Gen Z women, delights in selling products that would be at home in looksmaxxing and conspiracy-theory forums, such as mouth tape for better sleep (and a better-defined jawline?), chemical-free toilet paper, and disposable face towels that cost $24 each.
Even Starbucks’ “Bearista” cup launch was a humiliation ritual on full display. Not only was there a two-cups-per-person cap, but the release was met with such anticipation that people were lining up outside their local Starbucks stores as early as the night before. Lining up outside a store works when you have significant deals on major purchases, such as appliances, furniture, or, heck, even a jewelry warehouse sale, but this cup retailed for $29.95. Arguably, the cup resembles a standard plastic honey bottle and is not much different in quality from the random objects anointed as covetable in elementary school. And yet, the cups functioned as proxies for status and as power-wielding talismans.
It’s the normie-adjacency that turns these launches into humiliation rituals. When Gwyneth Paltrow used to release things like candles that smelled like her vagina, a $1,200 golden dildo, and questionable wellness objects such as Shiva Rose’s jade eggs, the elite origin of those products allowed them to be read simply as items hawked by a rich, kooky woman. Despite the moderate outrage generated by the media at the time, the clearly legible camp staved off any actual exclusionary behavior or humiliation kink.
Ultimately, this exclusion-humiliation game is gatekeeping done wrong. Despite having been the subject of online discussion for the past two to three years, trend-forecasting agency WGSN named gatekeeping as one of the top trends for 2026. The reasoning is that exclusivity is making a comeback.
In the past, we saw “curation as service,” where platforms told you exactly what to do when you went to a place. But individuality and exclusivity now matter more. “[Creators and influencers] are guardians of their shopping and travel tips, as opposed to doing ‘get ready with me.’ They’re choosing what to share,” explained consumer forecaster Cassandra Napoli in the WGSN podcast Lives of Tomorrow. “They’re protecting the products and spaces that reflect their identity and trying to avoid copycats.”
This is especially true because creators and influencers are also seeking to monetize their knowledge. It stems from a concern about one’s taste only up to a certain point.
Stepping Off the Hedonic Treadmill
After considerable reflection, I’ve come to view humiliation in consumer culture as a structural condition rather than a failure attributable to an individual brand or person. These individual entities are caught between gatekeeping pressures, brand mythologies, and a hedonic treadmill in which the promised dopamine rush rarely justifies the labor of constant self-optimization.
We are encouraged to present a curated narrative of our product, our career, our life — a highlight reel of sorts — while simultaneously attempting to shield what is most private and meaningful from public consumption. In this bind, acts of degradation, whether self-directed or imposed on others, serve as a form of cultural absolution. A way to momentarily resolve the contradiction by making exposure feel earned, even redemptive. Whatever helps us sleep at night.
There is a way out of these sad humiliation games. Replace “gatekeeping” with “catering to an intended community.” Let go of the “you can’t sit with us” mentality, and instead encourage curiosity and exploration.
Coach is exemplary in its expansion into gaming and hospitality while retaining its status as a heritage, everyday luxury staple. Stores labeled Coach Play, for example, are highly experiential and localized. They speak to consumers in specific markets, so they can connect more deeply to these communities.
“The next few years are going to be years of what I call ‘experience maximalism,’ where literally new things are going to be mundane because consumers are so much more connected now on social media, and they see what’s going on,” Giovanni Zaccariello, Coach’s SVP of Global Visual Experience, shared in an episode of the Future Commerce podcast. “It’s about the consumer talking to us instead of Coach talking to the consumer. It’s a much deeper dialogue.”
And let’s give credit where credit is due: Hermès’s perverse “game” is counterbalanced by active artist outreach, both for scarves and other silks, as well as for digital assets. Annie Choi’s illustrations and animations, for example, carry equal weight at Hermès, where she turned the Paris flagship into a Japanese puzzle box, and at Gap, where she transformed Sandy Liang’s capsule collection into the building blocks of a potential Majokko (magical girl) series we would all watch. This is a dialogue that brands can use to build beyond the limits of the price tags slapped on their products.
When you lack dialogue and insist on manufacturing scarcity, you’re forcing your clientele through a gauntlet of humiliation. As a result, the only appropriate comment is — and I am quoting a Redditor — “[Your product/brand] is a fucking cronut.”
Do people even go to Dominique Ansel’s bakery anymore?
A day in the life of a self-employed creative professional, slow-month version:
You begin your day writing cold emails to rebuild your client roster, and you hate yourself a little bit more every time you press send, questioning whether your proactive outreach actually reeks of desperation. You click over to Substack and your algorithm tells you that your subscriber count has plateaued and that you should follow a DTC brand founder who puts their personal musings and curated recommendations from The RealReal behind a paywall. You find yourself shelling out $5 a month for their random musings on life and their affiliate links.
You then find yourself empathizing with u/Mindless_Cheek_7555, who vulnerably asks on the Hermès Game subreddit whether the sales assistant at the brand's Madison Avenue boutique is merely busy or trying to politely stonewall them. You complete an unpaid writing assignment, which you realize, after you submit it, is a way to exploit free labor from eager writers. You might then decide to venture to the Taiwanese dumpling institution Din Tai Fung, which has a waitlist equivalent to an end-game dungeon. Not only does it entail a mandatory intermediate checkpoint (floor 1, basement, waiting room, buzzer), but it is unlocked only under certain conditions — specifically, being physically within a one-mile radius. After entering the location-restricted digital waitlist at 4:40 p.m. for a prospective seat at 7:30 p.m., you’re effectively seated at 9:10 p.m., only to be rushed out as soon as you sit down.
This isn’t just a normal, productive day for an independent creator; it’s a day fueled by humiliation rituals. And the scary thing is that we’re not functioning despite them, but because of them. In fact, we have come to expect them, even crave them, as part of our daily lives, especially in our interactions with brands and commerce.
Humiliation rituals such as complex reservation systems and “high-luxury” in-store experiences are the consumer-culture equivalent of a humiliation fetish. As Phil Leask wrote in Psychodynamic Practice, humiliation is a “demonstrative exercise of power against one or more persons, which consistently involves several elements: stripping of status; rejection or exclusion; unpredictability or arbitrariness; and a personal sense of injustice matched by the lack of any remedy for the injustice suffered.”
The term “fetish,” in this case, is used as a synonym for “penchant” or “preference.” In its actual sense, it refers to an erotic practice. “In an erotic context where someone gets off on humiliation, the experience of being made to feel small is itself the source of arousal and meaning,” explained Dr. Justin Lehmiller, senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and host of The Sex and Psychology podcast. “They want to feel that way, and it’s consensual.”
The Audemars Piguet x Swatch drop is the most recent humiliation ritual to reach peak social media virality. Indeed, consumers fetishized the experience. People worldwide sprinted to stores, camped out overnight on city streets, and threw their fists to get their hands on the Royal Pop Collection. They were recorded by the media and analyzed by social media critics. They were turned away from store doors, empty-handed. And some paid top dollar to get their hands on the collection at triple, even quadruple the price.
They experienced relentless turmoil and ridicule, only to be told that this was not a limited-time drop, and that there would be plenty of inventory for everyone. The collection’s resale value has since plummeted, but the cultural impact remains. Mainly because it reaffirms what we all know deep down: the basic exchange of goods is no longer enough, and we must now suffer for the things we want, simply to prove we deserve them.
The Media’s Humiliation Obsession
Do we truly want to feel this way? Based on the apps and devices we use daily, the elements of power, discipline, and (relative) chiding abound. Think of all the cues coming from a smart tracking device that judges your vitals and metrics, such as your “sleep score.” Consider any distraction-curbing app on the market, such as Opal, which threatens to break your “streak” (oh noooo) if you stray from its rules. Even the aforementioned publishing-and-social-media hybrid platform Substack has a sadistic obsession with leaderboards, growth charts, and rankings.
We are surrounded by games, rules, and triggers that aim to keep us in line. If we stray, we are called out and, in some cases, punished. The media in particular loves a good humiliation story. In fact, 2025 was bookended by two tales of humiliation fetishes. In January, New York Magazine’s Brock Colyar wrote “The Cruel Kids' Table,” an exposé on the inauguration parties and balls of young right-wingers, who said things like “…a queer.”
Pairing young conservatives with Colyar, who uses they/them pronouns and presents in an androgynous manner, created a strong narrative because of the stark contrast between the two groups. As a consequence, the initial humiliation narrative eventually became a glorious showcase of Colyar’s wit. On the other hand, the young conservatives were positioned as a cultural force that, whether you agree with them or not, carried increasing weight, influence, and power. The year closed with the culmination of the Nuzzi/Lizza/Kennedy triangle, in which every main character degraded and was degraded. One was essentially cast as a femme fatale who brought down her entire world and career, another as a cuck; the politician as a failed erotic poet with some paraphilic preferences.
Three perversely delightful novels released between late 2025 and early 2026 are also parables of humiliation, mixed with elements of crime and punishment. Paul Gilmartin’s The Award, Canwen Xu’s Boring Asian Female, and Kirsten King’s A Good Person all feature anti-hero protagonists who are routinely humiliated by their life circumstances and by their own interactions. While these plot points are not out of a horror film, they routinely make you want to cringe, look away, or curl into a ball because they’re reminiscent of watching a car crash in extreme slow motion. But because these characters bring many of their misfortunes upon themselves, the humiliation is cringey but also too enjoyable to look away from. It’s schadenfreude with a touch of empathy.
Humiliation as a KPI
In the world of commerce, the humiliation fetish takes on another dimension.
“In the consumer context, people generally aren’t seeking to feel small. In fact, they’re often trying to avoid that feeling by chasing status or seeking prestige, but they’re only doing that because brands are cultivating and exploiting insecurity,” noted Dr. Lehmiller.
In media, literature, and habit-tracking apps, power asymmetry and restriction can lead to rewarding outcomes. But in the consumer world, Dr. Lehmiller notes that these same dynamics “are employed to manufacture a feeling of insecurity and scarcity, making people feel that certain brands or products are worth chasing.”
If humiliation rituals are the mechanism by which brands manufacture scarcity, then "tasteslop" is the product of that manufacturing process.
Emily Segal, who defined the term, says tasteslop is "curation in the absence of a social body," a hollow, AI-generated aesthetic that mimics the tokens of good taste without the idiosyncratic human context that gives them meaning.
When we stand in line for a "merkin launch," we are participating at once in ritualistic humiliation and in the creation of tasteslop, reinforcing a hierarchy where we believe we are buying ‘taste’ when we are actually just buying leftover debris; the slag of an automated system.
Indeed, for humiliation tactics to be effective in marketing or customer experience, there must be a marked inequality between the person who endures this dynamic and the person or entity that perpetuates it. As Leask explained: “The exercise of power consistently involves rejection and exclusion.”
In January 2026, The Strategist published an overview of the punitive line system outside “normie” stores in downtown New York. The article’s description reads like an excerpt from a hazing ritual:
"Closer to Houston Street, locals and tourists wait to try on $300 jeans in one of the two fitting rooms at Still Here (268 Elizabeth St.) before emerging to look in the store’s singular mirror.”
Brands are now embedding humiliation into their broader growth playbooks, leveraging access and status in marketing, product development, and even in the act of commerce itself.
SKIMS pulls stunts like its Hannibal-Lecter-esque face wrap and merkin launches, using social media scarcity to program people into believing they actually want these things. Dear Media’s “The Skinny Confidential,” the marquee podcast brand that mainly targets Millennial and Gen Z women, delights in selling products that would be at home in looksmaxxing and conspiracy-theory forums, such as mouth tape for better sleep (and a better-defined jawline?), chemical-free toilet paper, and disposable face towels that cost $24 each.
Even Starbucks’ “Bearista” cup launch was a humiliation ritual on full display. Not only was there a two-cups-per-person cap, but the release was met with such anticipation that people were lining up outside their local Starbucks stores as early as the night before. Lining up outside a store works when you have significant deals on major purchases, such as appliances, furniture, or, heck, even a jewelry warehouse sale, but this cup retailed for $29.95. Arguably, the cup resembles a standard plastic honey bottle and is not much different in quality from the random objects anointed as covetable in elementary school. And yet, the cups functioned as proxies for status and as power-wielding talismans.
It’s the normie-adjacency that turns these launches into humiliation rituals. When Gwyneth Paltrow used to release things like candles that smelled like her vagina, a $1,200 golden dildo, and questionable wellness objects such as Shiva Rose’s jade eggs, the elite origin of those products allowed them to be read simply as items hawked by a rich, kooky woman. Despite the moderate outrage generated by the media at the time, the clearly legible camp staved off any actual exclusionary behavior or humiliation kink.
Ultimately, this exclusion-humiliation game is gatekeeping done wrong. Despite having been the subject of online discussion for the past two to three years, trend-forecasting agency WGSN named gatekeeping as one of the top trends for 2026. The reasoning is that exclusivity is making a comeback.
In the past, we saw “curation as service,” where platforms told you exactly what to do when you went to a place. But individuality and exclusivity now matter more. “[Creators and influencers] are guardians of their shopping and travel tips, as opposed to doing ‘get ready with me.’ They’re choosing what to share,” explained consumer forecaster Cassandra Napoli in the WGSN podcast Lives of Tomorrow. “They’re protecting the products and spaces that reflect their identity and trying to avoid copycats.”
This is especially true because creators and influencers are also seeking to monetize their knowledge. It stems from a concern about one’s taste only up to a certain point.
Stepping Off the Hedonic Treadmill
After considerable reflection, I’ve come to view humiliation in consumer culture as a structural condition rather than a failure attributable to an individual brand or person. These individual entities are caught between gatekeeping pressures, brand mythologies, and a hedonic treadmill in which the promised dopamine rush rarely justifies the labor of constant self-optimization.
We are encouraged to present a curated narrative of our product, our career, our life — a highlight reel of sorts — while simultaneously attempting to shield what is most private and meaningful from public consumption. In this bind, acts of degradation, whether self-directed or imposed on others, serve as a form of cultural absolution. A way to momentarily resolve the contradiction by making exposure feel earned, even redemptive. Whatever helps us sleep at night.
There is a way out of these sad humiliation games. Replace “gatekeeping” with “catering to an intended community.” Let go of the “you can’t sit with us” mentality, and instead encourage curiosity and exploration.
Coach is exemplary in its expansion into gaming and hospitality while retaining its status as a heritage, everyday luxury staple. Stores labeled Coach Play, for example, are highly experiential and localized. They speak to consumers in specific markets, so they can connect more deeply to these communities.
“The next few years are going to be years of what I call ‘experience maximalism,’ where literally new things are going to be mundane because consumers are so much more connected now on social media, and they see what’s going on,” Giovanni Zaccariello, Coach’s SVP of Global Visual Experience, shared in an episode of the Future Commerce podcast. “It’s about the consumer talking to us instead of Coach talking to the consumer. It’s a much deeper dialogue.”
And let’s give credit where credit is due: Hermès’s perverse “game” is counterbalanced by active artist outreach, both for scarves and other silks, as well as for digital assets. Annie Choi’s illustrations and animations, for example, carry equal weight at Hermès, where she turned the Paris flagship into a Japanese puzzle box, and at Gap, where she transformed Sandy Liang’s capsule collection into the building blocks of a potential Majokko (magical girl) series we would all watch. This is a dialogue that brands can use to build beyond the limits of the price tags slapped on their products.
When you lack dialogue and insist on manufacturing scarcity, you’re forcing your clientele through a gauntlet of humiliation. As a result, the only appropriate comment is — and I am quoting a Redditor — “[Your product/brand] is a fucking cronut.”
Do people even go to Dominique Ansel’s bakery anymore?
A day in the life of a self-employed creative professional, slow-month version:
You begin your day writing cold emails to rebuild your client roster, and you hate yourself a little bit more every time you press send, questioning whether your proactive outreach actually reeks of desperation. You click over to Substack and your algorithm tells you that your subscriber count has plateaued and that you should follow a DTC brand founder who puts their personal musings and curated recommendations from The RealReal behind a paywall. You find yourself shelling out $5 a month for their random musings on life and their affiliate links.
You then find yourself empathizing with u/Mindless_Cheek_7555, who vulnerably asks on the Hermès Game subreddit whether the sales assistant at the brand's Madison Avenue boutique is merely busy or trying to politely stonewall them. You complete an unpaid writing assignment, which you realize, after you submit it, is a way to exploit free labor from eager writers. You might then decide to venture to the Taiwanese dumpling institution Din Tai Fung, which has a waitlist equivalent to an end-game dungeon. Not only does it entail a mandatory intermediate checkpoint (floor 1, basement, waiting room, buzzer), but it is unlocked only under certain conditions — specifically, being physically within a one-mile radius. After entering the location-restricted digital waitlist at 4:40 p.m. for a prospective seat at 7:30 p.m., you’re effectively seated at 9:10 p.m., only to be rushed out as soon as you sit down.
This isn’t just a normal, productive day for an independent creator; it’s a day fueled by humiliation rituals. And the scary thing is that we’re not functioning despite them, but because of them. In fact, we have come to expect them, even crave them, as part of our daily lives, especially in our interactions with brands and commerce.
Humiliation rituals such as complex reservation systems and “high-luxury” in-store experiences are the consumer-culture equivalent of a humiliation fetish. As Phil Leask wrote in Psychodynamic Practice, humiliation is a “demonstrative exercise of power against one or more persons, which consistently involves several elements: stripping of status; rejection or exclusion; unpredictability or arbitrariness; and a personal sense of injustice matched by the lack of any remedy for the injustice suffered.”
The term “fetish,” in this case, is used as a synonym for “penchant” or “preference.” In its actual sense, it refers to an erotic practice. “In an erotic context where someone gets off on humiliation, the experience of being made to feel small is itself the source of arousal and meaning,” explained Dr. Justin Lehmiller, senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and host of The Sex and Psychology podcast. “They want to feel that way, and it’s consensual.”
The Audemars Piguet x Swatch drop is the most recent humiliation ritual to reach peak social media virality. Indeed, consumers fetishized the experience. People worldwide sprinted to stores, camped out overnight on city streets, and threw their fists to get their hands on the Royal Pop Collection. They were recorded by the media and analyzed by social media critics. They were turned away from store doors, empty-handed. And some paid top dollar to get their hands on the collection at triple, even quadruple the price.
They experienced relentless turmoil and ridicule, only to be told that this was not a limited-time drop, and that there would be plenty of inventory for everyone. The collection’s resale value has since plummeted, but the cultural impact remains. Mainly because it reaffirms what we all know deep down: the basic exchange of goods is no longer enough, and we must now suffer for the things we want, simply to prove we deserve them.
The Media’s Humiliation Obsession
Do we truly want to feel this way? Based on the apps and devices we use daily, the elements of power, discipline, and (relative) chiding abound. Think of all the cues coming from a smart tracking device that judges your vitals and metrics, such as your “sleep score.” Consider any distraction-curbing app on the market, such as Opal, which threatens to break your “streak” (oh noooo) if you stray from its rules. Even the aforementioned publishing-and-social-media hybrid platform Substack has a sadistic obsession with leaderboards, growth charts, and rankings.
We are surrounded by games, rules, and triggers that aim to keep us in line. If we stray, we are called out and, in some cases, punished. The media in particular loves a good humiliation story. In fact, 2025 was bookended by two tales of humiliation fetishes. In January, New York Magazine’s Brock Colyar wrote “The Cruel Kids' Table,” an exposé on the inauguration parties and balls of young right-wingers, who said things like “…a queer.”
Pairing young conservatives with Colyar, who uses they/them pronouns and presents in an androgynous manner, created a strong narrative because of the stark contrast between the two groups. As a consequence, the initial humiliation narrative eventually became a glorious showcase of Colyar’s wit. On the other hand, the young conservatives were positioned as a cultural force that, whether you agree with them or not, carried increasing weight, influence, and power. The year closed with the culmination of the Nuzzi/Lizza/Kennedy triangle, in which every main character degraded and was degraded. One was essentially cast as a femme fatale who brought down her entire world and career, another as a cuck; the politician as a failed erotic poet with some paraphilic preferences.
Three perversely delightful novels released between late 2025 and early 2026 are also parables of humiliation, mixed with elements of crime and punishment. Paul Gilmartin’s The Award, Canwen Xu’s Boring Asian Female, and Kirsten King’s A Good Person all feature anti-hero protagonists who are routinely humiliated by their life circumstances and by their own interactions. While these plot points are not out of a horror film, they routinely make you want to cringe, look away, or curl into a ball because they’re reminiscent of watching a car crash in extreme slow motion. But because these characters bring many of their misfortunes upon themselves, the humiliation is cringey but also too enjoyable to look away from. It’s schadenfreude with a touch of empathy.
Humiliation as a KPI
In the world of commerce, the humiliation fetish takes on another dimension.
“In the consumer context, people generally aren’t seeking to feel small. In fact, they’re often trying to avoid that feeling by chasing status or seeking prestige, but they’re only doing that because brands are cultivating and exploiting insecurity,” noted Dr. Lehmiller.
In media, literature, and habit-tracking apps, power asymmetry and restriction can lead to rewarding outcomes. But in the consumer world, Dr. Lehmiller notes that these same dynamics “are employed to manufacture a feeling of insecurity and scarcity, making people feel that certain brands or products are worth chasing.”
If humiliation rituals are the mechanism by which brands manufacture scarcity, then "tasteslop" is the product of that manufacturing process.
Emily Segal, who defined the term, says tasteslop is "curation in the absence of a social body," a hollow, AI-generated aesthetic that mimics the tokens of good taste without the idiosyncratic human context that gives them meaning.
When we stand in line for a "merkin launch," we are participating at once in ritualistic humiliation and in the creation of tasteslop, reinforcing a hierarchy where we believe we are buying ‘taste’ when we are actually just buying leftover debris; the slag of an automated system.
Indeed, for humiliation tactics to be effective in marketing or customer experience, there must be a marked inequality between the person who endures this dynamic and the person or entity that perpetuates it. As Leask explained: “The exercise of power consistently involves rejection and exclusion.”
In January 2026, The Strategist published an overview of the punitive line system outside “normie” stores in downtown New York. The article’s description reads like an excerpt from a hazing ritual:
"Closer to Houston Street, locals and tourists wait to try on $300 jeans in one of the two fitting rooms at Still Here (268 Elizabeth St.) before emerging to look in the store’s singular mirror.”
Brands are now embedding humiliation into their broader growth playbooks, leveraging access and status in marketing, product development, and even in the act of commerce itself.
SKIMS pulls stunts like its Hannibal-Lecter-esque face wrap and merkin launches, using social media scarcity to program people into believing they actually want these things. Dear Media’s “The Skinny Confidential,” the marquee podcast brand that mainly targets Millennial and Gen Z women, delights in selling products that would be at home in looksmaxxing and conspiracy-theory forums, such as mouth tape for better sleep (and a better-defined jawline?), chemical-free toilet paper, and disposable face towels that cost $24 each.
Even Starbucks’ “Bearista” cup launch was a humiliation ritual on full display. Not only was there a two-cups-per-person cap, but the release was met with such anticipation that people were lining up outside their local Starbucks stores as early as the night before. Lining up outside a store works when you have significant deals on major purchases, such as appliances, furniture, or, heck, even a jewelry warehouse sale, but this cup retailed for $29.95. Arguably, the cup resembles a standard plastic honey bottle and is not much different in quality from the random objects anointed as covetable in elementary school. And yet, the cups functioned as proxies for status and as power-wielding talismans.
It’s the normie-adjacency that turns these launches into humiliation rituals. When Gwyneth Paltrow used to release things like candles that smelled like her vagina, a $1,200 golden dildo, and questionable wellness objects such as Shiva Rose’s jade eggs, the elite origin of those products allowed them to be read simply as items hawked by a rich, kooky woman. Despite the moderate outrage generated by the media at the time, the clearly legible camp staved off any actual exclusionary behavior or humiliation kink.
Ultimately, this exclusion-humiliation game is gatekeeping done wrong. Despite having been the subject of online discussion for the past two to three years, trend-forecasting agency WGSN named gatekeeping as one of the top trends for 2026. The reasoning is that exclusivity is making a comeback.
In the past, we saw “curation as service,” where platforms told you exactly what to do when you went to a place. But individuality and exclusivity now matter more. “[Creators and influencers] are guardians of their shopping and travel tips, as opposed to doing ‘get ready with me.’ They’re choosing what to share,” explained consumer forecaster Cassandra Napoli in the WGSN podcast Lives of Tomorrow. “They’re protecting the products and spaces that reflect their identity and trying to avoid copycats.”
This is especially true because creators and influencers are also seeking to monetize their knowledge. It stems from a concern about one’s taste only up to a certain point.
Stepping Off the Hedonic Treadmill
After considerable reflection, I’ve come to view humiliation in consumer culture as a structural condition rather than a failure attributable to an individual brand or person. These individual entities are caught between gatekeeping pressures, brand mythologies, and a hedonic treadmill in which the promised dopamine rush rarely justifies the labor of constant self-optimization.
We are encouraged to present a curated narrative of our product, our career, our life — a highlight reel of sorts — while simultaneously attempting to shield what is most private and meaningful from public consumption. In this bind, acts of degradation, whether self-directed or imposed on others, serve as a form of cultural absolution. A way to momentarily resolve the contradiction by making exposure feel earned, even redemptive. Whatever helps us sleep at night.
There is a way out of these sad humiliation games. Replace “gatekeeping” with “catering to an intended community.” Let go of the “you can’t sit with us” mentality, and instead encourage curiosity and exploration.
Coach is exemplary in its expansion into gaming and hospitality while retaining its status as a heritage, everyday luxury staple. Stores labeled Coach Play, for example, are highly experiential and localized. They speak to consumers in specific markets, so they can connect more deeply to these communities.
“The next few years are going to be years of what I call ‘experience maximalism,’ where literally new things are going to be mundane because consumers are so much more connected now on social media, and they see what’s going on,” Giovanni Zaccariello, Coach’s SVP of Global Visual Experience, shared in an episode of the Future Commerce podcast. “It’s about the consumer talking to us instead of Coach talking to the consumer. It’s a much deeper dialogue.”
And let’s give credit where credit is due: Hermès’s perverse “game” is counterbalanced by active artist outreach, both for scarves and other silks, as well as for digital assets. Annie Choi’s illustrations and animations, for example, carry equal weight at Hermès, where she turned the Paris flagship into a Japanese puzzle box, and at Gap, where she transformed Sandy Liang’s capsule collection into the building blocks of a potential Majokko (magical girl) series we would all watch. This is a dialogue that brands can use to build beyond the limits of the price tags slapped on their products.
When you lack dialogue and insist on manufacturing scarcity, you’re forcing your clientele through a gauntlet of humiliation. As a result, the only appropriate comment is — and I am quoting a Redditor — “[Your product/brand] is a fucking cronut.”
Do people even go to Dominique Ansel’s bakery anymore?
A day in the life of a self-employed creative professional, slow-month version:
You begin your day writing cold emails to rebuild your client roster, and you hate yourself a little bit more every time you press send, questioning whether your proactive outreach actually reeks of desperation. You click over to Substack and your algorithm tells you that your subscriber count has plateaued and that you should follow a DTC brand founder who puts their personal musings and curated recommendations from The RealReal behind a paywall. You find yourself shelling out $5 a month for their random musings on life and their affiliate links.
You then find yourself empathizing with u/Mindless_Cheek_7555, who vulnerably asks on the Hermès Game subreddit whether the sales assistant at the brand's Madison Avenue boutique is merely busy or trying to politely stonewall them. You complete an unpaid writing assignment, which you realize, after you submit it, is a way to exploit free labor from eager writers. You might then decide to venture to the Taiwanese dumpling institution Din Tai Fung, which has a waitlist equivalent to an end-game dungeon. Not only does it entail a mandatory intermediate checkpoint (floor 1, basement, waiting room, buzzer), but it is unlocked only under certain conditions — specifically, being physically within a one-mile radius. After entering the location-restricted digital waitlist at 4:40 p.m. for a prospective seat at 7:30 p.m., you’re effectively seated at 9:10 p.m., only to be rushed out as soon as you sit down.
This isn’t just a normal, productive day for an independent creator; it’s a day fueled by humiliation rituals. And the scary thing is that we’re not functioning despite them, but because of them. In fact, we have come to expect them, even crave them, as part of our daily lives, especially in our interactions with brands and commerce.
Humiliation rituals such as complex reservation systems and “high-luxury” in-store experiences are the consumer-culture equivalent of a humiliation fetish. As Phil Leask wrote in Psychodynamic Practice, humiliation is a “demonstrative exercise of power against one or more persons, which consistently involves several elements: stripping of status; rejection or exclusion; unpredictability or arbitrariness; and a personal sense of injustice matched by the lack of any remedy for the injustice suffered.”
The term “fetish,” in this case, is used as a synonym for “penchant” or “preference.” In its actual sense, it refers to an erotic practice. “In an erotic context where someone gets off on humiliation, the experience of being made to feel small is itself the source of arousal and meaning,” explained Dr. Justin Lehmiller, senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and host of The Sex and Psychology podcast. “They want to feel that way, and it’s consensual.”
The Audemars Piguet x Swatch drop is the most recent humiliation ritual to reach peak social media virality. Indeed, consumers fetishized the experience. People worldwide sprinted to stores, camped out overnight on city streets, and threw their fists to get their hands on the Royal Pop Collection. They were recorded by the media and analyzed by social media critics. They were turned away from store doors, empty-handed. And some paid top dollar to get their hands on the collection at triple, even quadruple the price.
They experienced relentless turmoil and ridicule, only to be told that this was not a limited-time drop, and that there would be plenty of inventory for everyone. The collection’s resale value has since plummeted, but the cultural impact remains. Mainly because it reaffirms what we all know deep down: the basic exchange of goods is no longer enough, and we must now suffer for the things we want, simply to prove we deserve them.
The Media’s Humiliation Obsession
Do we truly want to feel this way? Based on the apps and devices we use daily, the elements of power, discipline, and (relative) chiding abound. Think of all the cues coming from a smart tracking device that judges your vitals and metrics, such as your “sleep score.” Consider any distraction-curbing app on the market, such as Opal, which threatens to break your “streak” (oh noooo) if you stray from its rules. Even the aforementioned publishing-and-social-media hybrid platform Substack has a sadistic obsession with leaderboards, growth charts, and rankings.
We are surrounded by games, rules, and triggers that aim to keep us in line. If we stray, we are called out and, in some cases, punished. The media in particular loves a good humiliation story. In fact, 2025 was bookended by two tales of humiliation fetishes. In January, New York Magazine’s Brock Colyar wrote “The Cruel Kids' Table,” an exposé on the inauguration parties and balls of young right-wingers, who said things like “…a queer.”
Pairing young conservatives with Colyar, who uses they/them pronouns and presents in an androgynous manner, created a strong narrative because of the stark contrast between the two groups. As a consequence, the initial humiliation narrative eventually became a glorious showcase of Colyar’s wit. On the other hand, the young conservatives were positioned as a cultural force that, whether you agree with them or not, carried increasing weight, influence, and power. The year closed with the culmination of the Nuzzi/Lizza/Kennedy triangle, in which every main character degraded and was degraded. One was essentially cast as a femme fatale who brought down her entire world and career, another as a cuck; the politician as a failed erotic poet with some paraphilic preferences.
Three perversely delightful novels released between late 2025 and early 2026 are also parables of humiliation, mixed with elements of crime and punishment. Paul Gilmartin’s The Award, Canwen Xu’s Boring Asian Female, and Kirsten King’s A Good Person all feature anti-hero protagonists who are routinely humiliated by their life circumstances and by their own interactions. While these plot points are not out of a horror film, they routinely make you want to cringe, look away, or curl into a ball because they’re reminiscent of watching a car crash in extreme slow motion. But because these characters bring many of their misfortunes upon themselves, the humiliation is cringey but also too enjoyable to look away from. It’s schadenfreude with a touch of empathy.
Humiliation as a KPI
In the world of commerce, the humiliation fetish takes on another dimension.
“In the consumer context, people generally aren’t seeking to feel small. In fact, they’re often trying to avoid that feeling by chasing status or seeking prestige, but they’re only doing that because brands are cultivating and exploiting insecurity,” noted Dr. Lehmiller.
In media, literature, and habit-tracking apps, power asymmetry and restriction can lead to rewarding outcomes. But in the consumer world, Dr. Lehmiller notes that these same dynamics “are employed to manufacture a feeling of insecurity and scarcity, making people feel that certain brands or products are worth chasing.”
If humiliation rituals are the mechanism by which brands manufacture scarcity, then "tasteslop" is the product of that manufacturing process.
Emily Segal, who defined the term, says tasteslop is "curation in the absence of a social body," a hollow, AI-generated aesthetic that mimics the tokens of good taste without the idiosyncratic human context that gives them meaning.
When we stand in line for a "merkin launch," we are participating at once in ritualistic humiliation and in the creation of tasteslop, reinforcing a hierarchy where we believe we are buying ‘taste’ when we are actually just buying leftover debris; the slag of an automated system.
Indeed, for humiliation tactics to be effective in marketing or customer experience, there must be a marked inequality between the person who endures this dynamic and the person or entity that perpetuates it. As Leask explained: “The exercise of power consistently involves rejection and exclusion.”
In January 2026, The Strategist published an overview of the punitive line system outside “normie” stores in downtown New York. The article’s description reads like an excerpt from a hazing ritual:
"Closer to Houston Street, locals and tourists wait to try on $300 jeans in one of the two fitting rooms at Still Here (268 Elizabeth St.) before emerging to look in the store’s singular mirror.”
Brands are now embedding humiliation into their broader growth playbooks, leveraging access and status in marketing, product development, and even in the act of commerce itself.
SKIMS pulls stunts like its Hannibal-Lecter-esque face wrap and merkin launches, using social media scarcity to program people into believing they actually want these things. Dear Media’s “The Skinny Confidential,” the marquee podcast brand that mainly targets Millennial and Gen Z women, delights in selling products that would be at home in looksmaxxing and conspiracy-theory forums, such as mouth tape for better sleep (and a better-defined jawline?), chemical-free toilet paper, and disposable face towels that cost $24 each.
Even Starbucks’ “Bearista” cup launch was a humiliation ritual on full display. Not only was there a two-cups-per-person cap, but the release was met with such anticipation that people were lining up outside their local Starbucks stores as early as the night before. Lining up outside a store works when you have significant deals on major purchases, such as appliances, furniture, or, heck, even a jewelry warehouse sale, but this cup retailed for $29.95. Arguably, the cup resembles a standard plastic honey bottle and is not much different in quality from the random objects anointed as covetable in elementary school. And yet, the cups functioned as proxies for status and as power-wielding talismans.
It’s the normie-adjacency that turns these launches into humiliation rituals. When Gwyneth Paltrow used to release things like candles that smelled like her vagina, a $1,200 golden dildo, and questionable wellness objects such as Shiva Rose’s jade eggs, the elite origin of those products allowed them to be read simply as items hawked by a rich, kooky woman. Despite the moderate outrage generated by the media at the time, the clearly legible camp staved off any actual exclusionary behavior or humiliation kink.
Ultimately, this exclusion-humiliation game is gatekeeping done wrong. Despite having been the subject of online discussion for the past two to three years, trend-forecasting agency WGSN named gatekeeping as one of the top trends for 2026. The reasoning is that exclusivity is making a comeback.
In the past, we saw “curation as service,” where platforms told you exactly what to do when you went to a place. But individuality and exclusivity now matter more. “[Creators and influencers] are guardians of their shopping and travel tips, as opposed to doing ‘get ready with me.’ They’re choosing what to share,” explained consumer forecaster Cassandra Napoli in the WGSN podcast Lives of Tomorrow. “They’re protecting the products and spaces that reflect their identity and trying to avoid copycats.”
This is especially true because creators and influencers are also seeking to monetize their knowledge. It stems from a concern about one’s taste only up to a certain point.
Stepping Off the Hedonic Treadmill
After considerable reflection, I’ve come to view humiliation in consumer culture as a structural condition rather than a failure attributable to an individual brand or person. These individual entities are caught between gatekeeping pressures, brand mythologies, and a hedonic treadmill in which the promised dopamine rush rarely justifies the labor of constant self-optimization.
We are encouraged to present a curated narrative of our product, our career, our life — a highlight reel of sorts — while simultaneously attempting to shield what is most private and meaningful from public consumption. In this bind, acts of degradation, whether self-directed or imposed on others, serve as a form of cultural absolution. A way to momentarily resolve the contradiction by making exposure feel earned, even redemptive. Whatever helps us sleep at night.
There is a way out of these sad humiliation games. Replace “gatekeeping” with “catering to an intended community.” Let go of the “you can’t sit with us” mentality, and instead encourage curiosity and exploration.
Coach is exemplary in its expansion into gaming and hospitality while retaining its status as a heritage, everyday luxury staple. Stores labeled Coach Play, for example, are highly experiential and localized. They speak to consumers in specific markets, so they can connect more deeply to these communities.
“The next few years are going to be years of what I call ‘experience maximalism,’ where literally new things are going to be mundane because consumers are so much more connected now on social media, and they see what’s going on,” Giovanni Zaccariello, Coach’s SVP of Global Visual Experience, shared in an episode of the Future Commerce podcast. “It’s about the consumer talking to us instead of Coach talking to the consumer. It’s a much deeper dialogue.”
And let’s give credit where credit is due: Hermès’s perverse “game” is counterbalanced by active artist outreach, both for scarves and other silks, as well as for digital assets. Annie Choi’s illustrations and animations, for example, carry equal weight at Hermès, where she turned the Paris flagship into a Japanese puzzle box, and at Gap, where she transformed Sandy Liang’s capsule collection into the building blocks of a potential Majokko (magical girl) series we would all watch. This is a dialogue that brands can use to build beyond the limits of the price tags slapped on their products.
When you lack dialogue and insist on manufacturing scarcity, you’re forcing your clientele through a gauntlet of humiliation. As a result, the only appropriate comment is — and I am quoting a Redditor — “[Your product/brand] is a fucking cronut.”
Do people even go to Dominique Ansel’s bakery anymore?
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