Big Autumn: Making Love of Autumn a Personality Is a Social-Media-Driven Consumer Con
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/chloe-hamilton. "The hill I will die on: Pumpkin-spiced latte is a con. It’s time to put an end to Big Autumn | Chloë Hamilton | The Guardian." October 11, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
The author argues that loving autumn has become a personality shortcut pushed by Instagram and Pinterest, hiding the damp, dark reality of the season. She thinks this trend is really a way to get people to spend money on lattes and sweaters, and that people are being played without realising it. She admits at the end that she might just hate drizzle.
Conclusion
The cultural trend of treating a love of autumn as a defining personality trait is a social-media-fuelled, commercially exploited phenomenon ('Big Autumn') that people should recognise and resist, rather than the season being something that warrants such devotion.
Premises
- Autumn-themed enthusiasm (pumpkin-spiced lattes, golden-leaf memes, cosy fireside aesthetics) appears earlier each year and is broadcast incessantly by those who feel a need to tell everyone how much they love the season.
- The popular image of autumn is driven by a curated brown-and-orange aesthetic pushed on Pinterest and Instagram, which omits the often grim realities of the season: grey drizzle, shorter days and mud.
- Defining oneself by a preference such as loving autumn is part of a broader social-media-perpetuated compulsion to construct and curate personalities rather than simply inhabit them, painting ourselves in broad strokes instead of with human nuance.
- Because spending and social media go hand in hand, the autumn-as-personality trend works as a way of getting people to spend money they do not have (e.g. pumpkin-spiced lattes, new-season knitwear).
- As a result, autumn has become a lifestyle and a commodity rather than simply the passing of one season to the next, and enthusiasts risk unknowingly playing into the hands of commercial interests ('Big Autumn').
Assumptions
- Enthusiasm for autumn on social media is substantially driven by or serves commercial interests rather than being genuinely felt.
- Defining oneself by preferences is shallow or reflects a 'lack of imagination' rather than being a harmless form of self-expression.
- Social media aesthetics are the main cause of the trend, rather than longstanding cultural associations with autumn.
- People who participate in autumn culture are largely unaware of being manipulated into consumption.
- Seasonal consumer spending is harmful, especially to financially stretched people.
- The author's own experience of autumn (mud, drizzle) is more 'real' than the idealised version, so the idealised version is a distortion.