Instagram representations of coziness are primarily about safety and comfort, but they are also about order and control. Everything in its right place. The house is cleaned, the candles lit. No unexpected intrusions can disturb the feeling. Just as important as what we see — the couch, the socks, the candle — are the things we don’t see: Mess, disorder, the unpredictable reality of the world outside.
Instagram does a bad job of representing the actual experience of being human… what’s being attempted is the commodification of the uncommodifiable.
Cozy season on social media might be a cry for help. We all want so badly to belong somewhere, and the perfect artefacts of coziness can’t help us achieve that feeling. Collect a bunch of cozy-projecting objects and you’ll just end up working to maintain your stuff, when what you really need is for your stuff to maintain you.
Buying our way to the feeling of safety, comfort and control via aesthetic. My husband calls it nesting when I do it… it’s totally a way to exert some control over some part of your life. To make things look nice in hopes they’ll feel nice too.