The New Face of Capitalism and Crisis?

With a new generation, anything long forgotten comes with new marketing. My own hobby while studying at the Riga Design and Art Secondary School (RDMV) was embroidery, which I later also pursued in my bachelor’s degree as a profession. Even back then, I would often hear the usual: “But do young people even embroider?” and “My grandmother used to embroider too.” And when a guest lecturer once taught me to mend clothes through the lens of care and of maintaining the wearer/object relationship, my mother’s and grandmother’s jaws dropped. What in Soviet times was a stamp of survival and poverty could now become a messenger of philosophy.

Last autumn I decided to return to knitting. The last time I had knitted was also back in my RDMV days. I knew how to knit a sweater, match yarn, and count stitches—the skills were there, though a bit rusty. But what drew me back wasn’t the skill itself; it was the new way it can now be done—knitting patterns. You find a designer whose work you like, browse their website as if it were COS or Arket, and for €10 you buy something like an IKEA-style instruction manual, tailored to your size, for making the garment. Once my social media algorithms caught on to my new interest, my feeds filled with so many cool, fresh designs that quickly made their way onto my “to-knit” list.

As soon as I started knitting with patterns, the algorithms began showing me all kinds of related content—tutorial videos mixed with funny clips about endless unfinished projects, overflowing yarn stashes, and hatred for purl stitches. Then came the “premium” content—luxury knitting needle reviews, high-quality yarn tests, encouragements to treat yourself. “You and your sweaters deserve it!”

And just like that, a simple hobby that noticeably helped me manage anxiety in my daily life started taking on the shape of unattainable self-care. I soon realized that the hobby was being aestheticized, hence hobbycore. That’s of course (I speculate) the work of social media, where content and documentation always run ahead of the actual practice. One video shows off a shiny new set of needles here, another rushes to cast on the latest trendy sweater there, add in a recap of “how much I’ve knitted this month” and suddenly it’s several (!!) sweaters. Quickly it becomes a competition, a performance, a trend. Not a bad trend, necessarily—but it begins to overshadow your joy in knitting that one jacket that takes longer, or using the old needles that felt fine, until you start to feel you need to keep up. And “keeping up” often doesn’t mean knitting faster, but buying more—the fancy needles, the trendy pattern PDFs piling up in your queue, the expensive yarns. Suddenly the hobby turns into a performance: showcasing your purchases, promising future outcomes, and forecasting your next season’s wardrobe. Of course, this flavor of capitalism isn’t comparable to the endless Shein packages—it’s not as destructive or exploitative—but it does sneak in quietly and finds exactly the right words to make you knit the way everyone else is knitting.

The contrast between how hobbies exist across generations is easy to spot. In my family, for instance, a relative has knit her whole life with black, tarnished, bent needles and rough Limbaži Tīne wool, scratchy just like in childhood. Meanwhile, modern knitters use merino, add a touch of mohair for softness, rely on “stitch markers” (special clips to mark important spots), and document their projects on Ravelry—a site that brings together designers and knitters.

Another hobby of mine for years has been watching YouTube video essays on contemporary culture, everyday life, big and small processes, pop culture, and analyses of our reality through various concepts. There, too, the algorithm began feeding me perspectives on knitting culture in social media. What caught my attention was the idea that overconsumption is evident even at the hobby level—normalizing yarn buying in quantities that would take years to knit up, or collecting vast libraries of patterns unlikely to ever be fully used. What I found most striking was how hobby content accelerates this cycle: content gets rewarded with views and engagement, so the faster you knit, the more you consume, and the more you produce—often influenced by trends without weighing whether there’s truly space or need for those garments in your wardrobe. The fiercest debates are about synthetic yarns—because if production is high, but the fiber is unbreathable, hard to care for, and short-lived, the need for creation is satisfied, but without a sustainable product. On the other hand, natural fibers are expensive and often financially inaccessible, bordering on making the hobby elitist.

As you’re reading, you realize—it’s not just knitting anymore. Hobbies serve particular functions, and for me, practicing any of mine is about enjoying the process. If the outcome is enjoyable, that’s already a bonus. I want to relax and not think—or deliberately process what has piled up. If I add in the content-creation element, it starts to feel like work (and I work in marketing daily). I might snap a picture or two of the process and the finished piece, but truly, this is something I do for myself. As I mentioned earlier, knitting helps me balance my daily anxiety. At one point I got so carried away I planned to knit my entire wardrobe, and then came the stress—because the goal was no longer the process, but tenfold productivity.

Hobbies, even in this digital age, still serve a role—to reduce screen time. They also create community, offering a space to belong, participate, and grow. There’s also the element of fashion—something becomes “in” again, and more people want to try it. But for me, the most important aspects remain growth and confidence-building through learning new skills in a relaxed environment and at my own pace, as well as some form of self-regulation for my well-being.

But what about the crisis? As I said at the beginning—with new marketing you can cover up almost any larger reality. For example, mending, once a symbol of financial hardship, can be reframed as part of the zero-waste movement or a lifestyle philosophy. In the same way, my knitting—if you want that high-quality wool sweater but your account balance doesn’t allow it, you just knit it yourself. This can be packaged as conscious creation or as a way to afford a garment you wouldn’t buy in a store, but in both cases the root cause is the same—lack of money.

Pop culture has long been talking about crisis, as my algorithms remind me. One example is recession pop—fast-paced dance music with catchy melodies and lyrics that promise escape from daily financial struggles. In short—it’s everything you heard on the radio back in 2008. While the name points directly to its cause, the phenomenon’s escapist idealism resonates closely with the aestheticization of hobbies. It’s the aspiration to a privilege—to remain untouched by reality. And yet hobbies also shape identity—what does it mean, for instance, to be a “knitter”? They also give us the illusion of control, even when social and political processes can feel paralyzing.

The sad news is that both recession pop and hobby culture prove the same thing—even pleasure and escape are fruits of capitalism. When your hobby, once only for you and wholly analog, becomes monetizable content and a personal brand—you feel the difference, don’t you? We’ve gotten used to “monetization” and “content” and “branding,” but isn’t it absurd to describe a hobby in such terms? And what follows is that simply practicing a hobby becomes work: deciding between pleasure for yourself or imagined productivity in the digital space.

People like to joke about hobbies too—that one person’s hobby is sewing, while another’s is just buying fabric and living in potential. But I would wish for us not to get lost in the perfectly curated hobby world of social media. Every showcased dress has a crooked seam, every weeded garden bed has a corner where plants are dying, every knitted sweater has miscounted stitches, and every embroidered brooch has beads spilled on the floor.

Author: Elīza Māra