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HIPSTER RUNOFF -- I am Proud to Be An American. We Got Him. We Killed Osama Bin Laden.

"I'm feeling pretty inspired. I'm feeling pretty rejuvenated. I feel like maybe Osama Bin Laden had a deeper psychological impact on me over the past ten years than I'd like to admit. I know I usually try to run from my problems and hide behind things. I'm just a bro in suburbia making consumer decisions. You see, Osama Bin Laden, you want the same things I want. I want to be famous. I want to be rich. I want to be controversial. I want to live in some sort of multimillion dollar compound. I want to be so buzzworthy that I have to go underground to preserve my authenticity and to preserve my life. I want to be remembered forever. I want people to remember that I believed in something even if what I believed in was totally wrong and I totally messed up. I just wanted people to know that there was a moment in time that I believed that I can make the world a better place, that my vision of the world was worth imposing on everyone else. I'm just trying to be an all-American Chill Bro."

HipsterRunoff america unwarrantedselfimportance terrorism! statism consumerism displacement poisoncontainer psychohistory satire from delicious
may 2011 by adamcrowe

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Ribbonfarm -- The Gollum Effect

'...a process by which regular humans are Gollumized: transformed into hollow shells of their former selves, defined almost entirely by their patterns of consumption. The ring only allows the ghost of Smeagol to persist because it brings with it the capacity for cunning, deception and trickery, which it needs to further its own objectives. The ring itself though, remains unchanged by Smeagol-Gollum, even as it transforms and consumes him. It is important to note that the One Ring does not actually destroy Gollum till its own end is imminent; it keeps Gollum alive to serve. ...consumerism is not about humans consuming products. It is about products consuming humans. ...visit a Vegas casino and wait for someone to win reasonably big. You will see the exact same applause and encouragement from the staff. And the applauding front-line service employees in both cases aren’t faking it. They genuinely believe the little guy has “beaten the house” rather than provided it with cheap marketing.'

consumerism addiction selfobjects kipple casinogulag theadvertisedlife from delicious
april 2011 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- NMAWorldEdition: Are Groupon deals worth it?

'As social marketer Groupon prepares for an IPO, some businesses are starting to wonder whether giving away their stuff at such huge discounts is such a great idea after all.' -- These are not the customers you are looking for.

consumerism gluttony zombies from delicious
march 2011 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- RussiaToday: Credit card exorcisms for American shopaholics

'RT's Anastasia Churkina met Reverend Billy - a man with a mission to break the American addiction to shopping.' -- "Woo!"

america consumerism shopping from delicious
december 2010 by adamcrowe

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NMA.tv -- World pins hopes on Black Friday

'Black Friday is the most important shopping day of the year in the United States. Big bargains are to be had and the one-day extravaganza brings out the competitive spirit in American consumers. So much so, that Black Fridays past have been marred by violence. Fueling the hype are media that give relentless coverage to Black Friday in their efforts to discern the mood of the American consumer and, thus, economy. Of course, Black Friday is enormously important to Asia and its export-dependent economies.'

america china consumerism shopping lulz from delicious
november 2010 by adamcrowe

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Terra Nova -- An Exodus Recession? by Edward Castronova

Wondering when this guy is going to spot the power cord snaking out of the back of his 'virtual' computer. There is no such thing as a free virtual lunch. -- '...there’s some evidence that an exodus from the real to the virtual is not only already underway but that’s it’s gotten big enough to affect our sense of a whether the real economy is healthy or not. What if real world consumption refused to grow not because people were becoming hippies, but because they remained selfish materialists who had, however, come to enjoy virtual matter? If an exodus recession were underway, what would the world look like? There’d be no sign that people had given up on the idea of buying and selling things. Are people now spending enough time fiddling around with digital stuff that their interest in physical stuff has weakened to the point that it catalyzes an ongoing cycle of economic pessimism? Perhaps not. But some trends certainly point in that direction.'

virtualworlds digital consumerism virtuality technoutopianism economics fallacy from delicious
november 2010 by adamcrowe

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Psychology Today -- The Sad Science of Hipsterism

'Nobody likes hipsters, not even hipsters. ...any people who legitimately enjoy all the trappings on hipsterhood must psychologically distance themselves from the demographic group of which they are so clearly a part. And so their subconscious brains have to work double time so that they can convince themselves that the things they buy do not reflect on their true character. The deeper irony is that those who try to assert their independence from the commodification of identity wind up tapping into another marketplace myth, what the authors call "the myth of consumer sovereignty." This is the idea that by assiduously selecting from all the identity markers available for purchase, a person can assemble one that authentically reflects their true self independent of the marketplace.'

consumerism hipsters homogeneity consumering identity authenticity status irony signalling retribalization globalvillage
september 2010 by adamcrowe

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Adam Curtis Blog -- MADISON AVENUE

Norman B. Norman: "The philosophy of our agency is... empathy." -- 'The widespread fascination with the Mad Men series is far more than just simple nostalgia. It is about how we feel about ourselves and our society today. As we watch the group of characters from 50 years ago, we get reassurance because we know that they are on the edge of a vast change that will transform their world and lead them out of their stifling technocratic order and back into the giant onrush of history. The question is whether we might be at a similar point, waiting for something to happen. But we have no idea what it is going to be.'

documentaries history advertising planning madmen consumerism nostalgia theadvertisedlife AdamCurtis from delicious
august 2010 by adamcrowe

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Adam Curtis Blog -- LET THEM EAT PLASTIC

'...the machinery of credit was used politically to try and manage and retain control the structure of power in the world. It was not a conspiracy, it was simply those in power taking the line of least resistance. -- I thought I would put up some of the films from the BBC archive from the time when there was moral disapproval by those in power of the "lower orders" wanting to "live beyond their means". The programmes are quite extraordinary and riveting in their tone of patrician sniffiness about people borrowing on the "Never Never" and Hire Purchase. And not just from the bankers who are interviewed - it is also in the commentary. But if you peer through that, you can see something else emerging in the ordinary people interviewed. It is a powerful desire to borrow money - so they can have what those above them in society have. The good life. And beyond that there is a growing envy and resentment.'

economics uk consumerism status envy credit debt documentaries AdamCurtis from delicious
august 2010 by adamcrowe

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HIPSTER RUNOFF -- CHILLWAVE OIL SPILL: When Natural and Man-Made Forces Collide To Form an Indie Disaster

'As consumers, we try so hard to ‘manage our personal brands’, and make educated decisions about relevant bands. We try to predict trends. We do our best to invest in buzzbands before they are mainstream bands. We ask ‘Why?’ We feel entitled to know ‘How?’ When a buzzband ‘breaks thru’, we want to understand the flow of data + information from band –> blog –> consumer, and how that creates a sustainable business model. We need to stop asking ‘why?’ and learn to trust Mother Indie again. There is no explanation for the natural wonders of the buzzosphere. I feel scared. I feel like some1 is going to cause an oil spill into chill waters. It will be some sort of ‘man-made’ force, trying too hard to create a new trend/band. Maybe a blog oil spill, leaking an album before it is in high quality format. Maybe a mainstream indie band buzz tanker will ’spill’, contaminating the chill waters. Maybe a business that is ‘trying too hard’ to reach alts will cause a Mountain Dew/soda/liquor/oil spill'

HipsterRunoff authenticity consumerism theadvertisedlife lulz satire from delicious
june 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Onion -- Area Man Unsustainable, Experts Warn

'"Decades of irresponsible consumption, as well as the plundering of vital emotional resources have reduced this once-thriving human being to almost nothing," said Phillip Bowman, coauthor of the report and a professor of ecology at Stanford University. "The very future of Doug Mahoney is in jeopardy," said preservationist Barbara Schean, adding that Mahoney has eroded at an alarming rate since the realization that he is almost 40 set in last May. "By our calculations, his most nutrient-rich layers will be washed away by the end of the decade, leaving little more than a desiccated, middle-aged wasteland." Throughout his life, experts say, Mahoney has been repeatedly exploited and cut down by those in search of personal gain, most notably asshole bosses, manipulative friends, and several ex-girlfriends. Still, the rampant abuse of the 39-year-old continues, with recent findings indicating that it may not be long until Mahoney is wiped off the face of the earth.'

TheOnion consumerism theadvertisedlife zoology lulz satire
june 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Onion -- Report: $14 Trillion Spent Annually On Trying To Look Cool

'Asked about ways the $14 trillion might be better spent, Professor Ian Thorson, a sociologist at Georgetown University, suggested the funds be used to combat poverty, but acknowledged that donating to charities was not always effective, as even those Americans in need often spend much of the assistance they receive on trying to look cool. "The whole thing ends up being a vicious cycle," Thorson said. "The only way this situation will ever be remedied is if people just relax and try to be themselves, you know? I mean, that's cool, man." Added Thorson, "Right?" Thorson said his current research indicates that true coolness may in fact come from not caring what other people think—a finding he hopes to submit to his peers for review before publishing it in a journal admired by students and colleagues alike.'

TheOnion status consumerism cool theadvertisedlife lulz satire
march 2010 by adamcrowe

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Murketing -- Imaginary brand variations

Building out the Museum of Consumerism one storefront at a time? -- '...the installation of fake storefronts make downtown Tynesdale look less moribund than it really is.'

recession halflife consumerism spectacle fake simulacra liminality
march 2010 by adamcrowe

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HIPSTER RUNOFF -- Is Retail Terrorism the Future of Alt Consumerism?

'I feel shaken up by these recent acts of consumer + retail terrorism, like the idea of being anti-government + anti-consumerism is ‘back’, and I might have to ride that wave in order to be considered an ‘interesting person with a relevant opinion.’ I like the way things are now, where I just have to keep up to date on buzzbands to be interesting. I think being a self-aware American is fun and chill, since we sort of just get to ‘cope’ with other ppl abt how we are trapped, but then just watch viral videos and forget about it. Worried I might have to ‘backpack bomb’ a local suburban mall or something in order to be alt + authentic.'

HipsterRunoff terrorism! consumerism apathy learnedhelplessnes lulz learnedhelplessness satire
march 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Oil Drum -- Status and Curiosity: On the Origins of Oil Addiction

'...the premise [is] that Americans are genetically/culturally more prone to risk taking, impulsivity, novelty-seeking, and therefore addiction... -- The brain has been fooled into ‘thinking’ that achieving [any] high is equivalent to survival... -- If the rush is tied to something that society rewards we call it ambition, if it's attached to something a little scary, then we label the individual a ‘risktaker’ and if its tied to something illegal – then they are an ‘addict’ or substance abuser. So it seems culture has voted on which drugs are 'good' to pursue. -- In order to overcome addictions, it is usually not enough to argue about which year the drug supply is going to begin its decline. It's a better path to understand the addiction, admit it before one hits rock bottom, and either begin the cold turkey process or become addicted to something else. -- ...when an addict (broadly defined) is exposed to higher prices, conventional economic theory will not hold.'

* evolutionarypsychology psychology evolution neurobiology dopamine addiction status risk competition novelty hedonism culture consumerism america energy oil peakoil
february 2010 by adamcrowe

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Marginal Utility -- It’s all one big plastic hassle

'Reflexively defiant consumers are just the avant-garde producers of new consumerist meanings within the code. The sovereignty they convince themselves that they have earned by pseudoresistance is actually more bound up than ever with consumerism. “Authenticity” becomes nothing but a marketing concept; it can no longer serve an an orienting ideal. It is “becoming extinct.” Worse, we confront sovereignty inflation: "To feel sovereign, postmodern consumers must adopt a never-ending project to create an individuated identity through consumption. ...we are in the midst of a widespread inflation in the symbolic work required to achieve what is perceived as real sovereignty." -- ...the contrivance of pseudo-authenticity is limitless, and the absorption of millions of new mini-brand managers on social networks and the like serves to manufacture new ruses at an inexhaustible rate. We have become the brainstorming consultants for corporations, only they don’t have to pay us for the labor.'

consumerism consumering identity authenticity precuperation immateriallabour theadvertisedlife
february 2010 by adamcrowe

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Marginal Utility -- Pleasure procrastination

'Baudrillard begins his essay “Concerning the Fulfillment of Desire in Exchange Value” with a memorable anecdote: “There was a raid on a U.S. department store several years ago. A group occupied and neutralized the store by surprise, and then invited the crowd by loudspeaker to help themselves. A symbolic action! And the result? Nobody could figure out what to take.” -- We like deadlines, which make us decisive and prompt us to action. Advertising, marketing, sales—all these seem to work best when they make it seem like we must “act now!” Maybe the details of the pitch and the dubious emotional associations they cultivate are ultimately irrelevant; maybe only the pressure they put on us forms the real substance of ads. Free of priming we may find it a hassle to have to want stuff. We postpone consumerist pleasures not out of protestant-ethic guilt but because they actually aren’t all that compelling to us when isolated from their marketing.'

consumerism advertising desire temperance boredom scarcity now
january 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Onion -- Average American Consumes 34 Gigabytes Daily

'Doug Fischer, Systems Analyst: "Wow. And to think, there are data-starved children in Africa who subsist on just kilobytes a day."'

TheOnion gluttony consumption consumerism culturalcapital culturalcapacity data #storage
december 2009 by adamcrowe

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Brave New World – 2009 by Jim Quinn

'The public has been duped into believing thrilling falsehoods rather than unexciting truths. Huxley explains how the propagandists have stolen our freedom: "In their anti-rational propaganda the enemies of freedom systematically pervert the resources of language in order to wheedle or stampede their victims into thinking, feeling and acting as they, the mind-manipulators, want them to think, feel and act. An education for freedom (and for the love and intelligence which are at once the conditions and the results of freedom) must be, among other things, an education in the proper uses of language." -- "Do we really wish to act upon our knowledge? Does a majority of the population think it worthwhile to take a good deal of trouble, in order to halt and, if possible, reverse the current drift toward totalitarian control of everything?"'

socialengineering consumerism propaganda theadvertisedlife bravenewworld 1984 dystopia totalitarianism irrationality
december 2009 by adamcrowe

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Generation Bubble -- The Order of Things: Consumerism’s Grammar of Desire

'Life under conditions of global capital has shown us that there’s no way to consume our way out of the traps of consumerist conformity, no matter how alternative or distinctive our consumption practices are. We simply can’t stop ourselves from producing the terms of our own exploitation. -- ...the various sensual satisfactions that goods might supply have all been supplanted by the overarching satisfaction of having our identity, as expressed through a particular consumption act, recognized and validated. Then we know it mattered, that it meant something. -- Our desire, though it makes our own identity, is someone else’s capital. Though it registers to ourselves as integrity and psychological complexity, it is at the same time an impersonal measure of our productive capacity as immaterial laborers. We can’t prevent our consumption from serving as immaterial labor, and anything else we do is easily translated into a sign, into consumption.'

usevaluevssignvalue consumerism consumering identity performance signalling status socialcapital culturalcapital immateriallabour theadvertisedlife
december 2009 by adamcrowe

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AlterNet -- Are Americans a Broken People? Why We've Stopped Fighting Back Against the Forces of Oppression

'For victims of the abuse syndrome, the truth of their passive submission to humiliating oppression is more than embarrassing; it can feel shameful—and there is nothing more painful than shame. When one already feels beaten down and demoralized, the likely response to the pain of shame is not constructive action, but more attempts to shut down or divert oneself from this pain. It is not likely that the truth of one's humiliating oppression is going to energize one to constructive actions. -- When people get caught up in humiliating abuse syndromes, more truths about their oppressive humiliations don't set them free. What sets them free is morale. What gives people morale? Encouragement. Small victories. Models of courageous behaviors. And anything that helps them break out of the vicious cycle of pain, shut down, immobilization, shame over immobilization, more pain, and more shut down.' -- Morale. Start here: Starve The Beast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUoPFxcbRzE (07:04)

psychology america debt drugs consumerism theadvertisedlife predation parasitism pathocracy dependancy abuse shame morale
december 2009 by adamcrowe

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The Onion -- New Device Desirable, Old Device Undesirable

'"The new device is an improvement over the old device, making it more attractive for purchase by all Americans," said Thomas Wakefield, a spokesperson for the large conglomerate that manufactures the new device. "The old device is no longer sufficient. Consumers should no longer have any use or longing for the old device." "Not only will I be able to perform tasks faster than before, but my new device will also inform those around me that I am a successful individual who is up on the latest trends," said Rebecca Hodge. "Its attractiveness and considerable value are, by extension, my attractiveness and considerable value." "True, it appeals to my most basic insecurities, but this new device will ultimately be replaced by a newer device, rendering it completely undesirable and utterly repellent to my personal tastes," device-enthusiast Ryan Janosch said. "Also, I should start saving my money for the next latest device which will replace the newer new device a couple months after that."'

TheOnion selfobjects liminalobjects objects consumerism plannedobsolescence lulz satire
december 2009 by adamcrowe

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Guardian -- Top 10 green living myths

'#Turning off the lights saves CO2 #Buy a greener car #Going veggie cuts emissions #Don't overfill the kettle #Use more efficient appliances #Sign up with us, we provide 100% renewable electricity #Wood fires are green #Use eco detergents #Reusable nappies are better for the planet #Buy local' -- What they don't tell you

green consumerism carbon energy sustainability
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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Marginal Utility Annex -- Technologies, narratives of self

'...digitalization makes the reproduction of the permanently insecure self more integral to the reproduction of consumerist social relations. The capacities and networks of the internet permit an archived self that becomes a subject's most important piece of property ... "reputational capital," the sum total of connections and actions produced within the social space online. This self subsists on postitive affirmation and metrics that establish the visiblity of its activities online. Being is transformed into "presence," which can be measured and ranked ...a self will need to be grounded in commercialized, corporatized discourse before we apprehend it ...narratives of subjectivity are even more impoverished by the restricted classifications of digital data possible within these platforms. The self we are compelled to produce online is smaller, with less potential for growth and less curiosity, the more we produce it and add to the archive that will dictate our future choices.'

internet web consumerism data quantifiedself selfservers self selfobjects taste reputation whuffie immateriallabour subjectivity circumscription theadvertisedlife
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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Marginal Utility Annex -- Predictive search's black box, horizons of identity in social networks

'Web 2.0 platforms want to tell us what we want before we know we want it... Because these predictive systems aren't openly disclosed, we can't know if the ways in which they prescribe our identity are benign, in our best interests, or if they are producing subjects (and subjectivities) suitable for a system engineered to exploit them. -- "...there is no contradiction anymore between the marketing of user information and the subjective enrichment of users..." -- ...all transactions are deeply personalized and specific, and thus seem identity-validating. ...consumerism is now the inverse, hyperpersonal identity mongering, with the "unique identity" as the perpetual product being sold and resold to the same individual subject. Web 2.0 is letting us sell out before our authentic self even exists. Selling out becomes the prerequisite for having an authentic seeming self, validated by the predictive systems online and fixed in illusory flux of social networks.'

socialnetworking socialmedia consumerism self selfservers identity authenticity subjectivity circumscription blackboxes #specialization theadvertisedlife
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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Marginal Utility -- Fast-fashion culture

'...market turnover has become identity turnover, and that identity turnover proceeds whether or not it remains a market imperative. The cash economy democratized consumption, but social networking,etc. is resocializing it within a commercial matrix. Our self-publicized consumption is more susceptible to fast-fashion acceleration, as the signifying power of consumption gestures is relative to who else has made similar gestures and so on. The meaning in the gestures therefore have only brief shelf life. Identity needs more and different things to consume and display more rapidly—it needs more things to share. Yet the alibi of sharing hides how voracious the appetite for novelty has become.'

consumerism consumption identity selfservers statusupdates status selfobjects socialobjects theadvertisedlife
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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Marginal Utility -- Where Nobody Knows Your Name and They Never Know You Came

'...what happens when markets become non-anonymous is that we become reliant on consumption more than ever to mediate our relations with others, so that friendships happen only within the context of brand communities and branded social networks and shared affinities for the same products. “Social networking, blogging, etc. have created a huge incentive for people to put themselves on display, when previously they may have just kept their opinions mostly to themselves.” It is that incentivizing that worries me ... its conflation with commercialized self-display and personal branding. Social networks keep score of attention in measurable ways, heightening the stakes, and our physical isolation erodes the traditional mitigating forces of courtesy (which is where the stigma against performing, of hogging attention, arose from in the first place). The danger is that performance as a gift, a carefree act of self-forgetting, instead becomes an ongoing requisite act of self-definition.'

* socialnetworking behaviours attention whuffie reputation consumerism consumering identity selfservers performance signalling masks status sharing socialcapital culturalcapital cults immateriallabour theadvertisedlife
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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Marginal Utility Annex -- More on "Consumer Emancipation"

'One must invent a community, an adoring audience, in order to imagine that self-expression is a gift. and things like Facebook serve to make that fantasy easier to sustain, by making positive feedback thoughtlessly implementable. The ordinary impersonal markets ... are suspended to force participants to sell their own "radical self-expression" instead as a self-conscious product, for approval and attention and status and a stable position in an emerging social hierarchy. This is allowing identity-driven consumerism to supplant capitalist consumption. -- The market is an atavistic structure that works against the sort of self consumerism exalts -- markets prefer anonymous subjects engaging in exchanges ruled entirely by rationality rather than the vagaries of social relations and social/cultural capital. -- ...social networks seize upon the mechanisms Burning Man evinces for creating a community built on coercive sharing, but tosses out the impermanence that excuses the coercion.'

* socialnetworking attention whuffie reputation consumerism consumering identity selfservers performance signalling masks status sharing socialcapital culturalcapital cults immateriallabour theadvertisedlife
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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Generation Bubble -- Public Image Unlimited: Consumerism and Anonymity’s End (3)

'The main purpose of social networks ... is to guarantee us a place to display our consumption. The point is to discourage online anonymity, to get us invested in the notion of reputational capital. We begin to publicize every purchase, to authenticate every choice by broadcasting it. We strengthen our communal ties with every singularized transaction. We will have reason to believe that everything we buy has an impact on our reputation, on how we are seen, on who we really are. We will respond accordingly, stylizing and designing the most mundane commodities so that they can elucidate some aspect of personality. If we share, we contribute information, we add value to the network and we know that our voice has been aggregated. Our drop was added to the demographic data pool, but more important, our own personal archive has been enriched. We become more findable. We can begin to keep score of how often we’re found, how real we are to the world.'

socialnetworking attention whuffie reputation consumerism consumering identity selfservers performance signalling masks status sharing socialcapital culturalcapital cults immateriallabour theadvertisedlife
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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Generation Bubble -- Public Image Unlimited: Consumerism and Anonymity’s End (2)

'Rather than entering into an exchange with a stable identity, we become ourselves through the public transaction, which provides us with a self only for as long as it is approved in the interaction process. The exchange is “singularized,” its uniqueness supplants that of the people involved. They fade into the communal backdrop, waiting to emerge again in another dramatic moment of “sharing.” And every effort at sharing will be judged, fixing our place within a status hierarchy. We can fantasize about finding the status hierarchy we could dominate — maximizing our “subcultural capital.” But this involves doubling down on personalized exchange, moving further away from the capital that circulates with no questions asked (money) and reinforcing the value of contingent capital that has worth only in particularly circumstances. So at that point, we would be dealing in an even more obscure personal currency, begging for people to accept it, exchange it into acceptance and attention.'

attention whuffie reputation consumerism consumering identity selfservers performance signalling masks status sharing socialcapital culturalcapital cults immateriallabour theadvertisedlife
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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Generation Bubble -- Public Image Unlimited: Consumerism and Anonymity’s End (1)

'In order for consumption to be meaningful ... it must be publicized in some way. -- Kozinets notes that though Burning Man “has many similarities to a Disney theme park,” he found that — unlike at Disneyland, I would venture to say — “people indicated that they were constantly judging others in terms of the degree of their participation in the event” in order to identify outsiders to be derided as inauthentic. Of course, these poseur “tourists” serve to structure the authenticity of these self-appointed judges’ own participation, and by extension, their identity. Kozinets suggests that Burning Man participants’ “use of these passive, isolated consumer-as-dupe comparisons may point to the higher cultural capital” denoting the festival goers’ belonging to an “educated intelligentsia.” They engage in “building strong communal ties and using the ancient practice of vilifying the outsider.” Communal relations are indeed reestablished, by the palpable and immediate threat of exclusion.'

* consumerism authenticity consumering identity selfservers performance signalling masks status sharing socialcapital culturalcapital cults immateriallabour theadvertisedlife
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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The Onion -- After 5 Years In U.S., Terrorist Cell Too Complacent To Carry Out Attack

'"We remain wholly committed to the destruction of America, the Great Satan," al-Sharif said. "But now is not a good time for us. The season finale of Lost was such a cliff- hanger that we have to at least catch the first episode of the new season. After that, though, death to the infidels." "Probably," added al-Sharif, who noted that his nearly $6,000 in credit-card debt from recent purchases of a 52-inch HDTV and a backyard gas grill prevents him from buying needed materials for the attack.'

TheOnion america consumerism apathy terrorism! satire lulz
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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Max Keiser -- Mish: Where the hell is the outrage? (Comment)

Comment: Chenjeshu: '...a person fights when they have nothing left to fight for. Let me explain. There’s a saying that there is no one more dangerous that someone with nothing left to lose. Its true in fiction, the family man robbed of his wife, kids, home and dog, finally lets go and fights the bad guy. But while he had something, just 1 thing left to lose, he rationalized his cowardice and avoided conflict. Thats a huge part of the problem, cowardice has been institutionalized for Americans. Rather than fight WHILE they have something left to lose, they will wait till it is all gone. The animals, trees, environment, coastlines, money, freedoms, houses, credit rating, cheese doodles, soda, satellite tv, community, health, happiness, they all have to go into the fire first. Because only then, when Americans have nothing left to fight for, then they might fight. Just as they’ve been trained by countless ‘revenge’ movies, comic books and literature.' -- A MUST READ comment.

* america stockholmsyndrome consumerism individualism apathy cowardice
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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OnTheCommons.org -- The Health Care Crisis Few of Us Recognize

'We have moved far past the Affluent Society and its marketing-aroused wants. Now it‘s real life problems – from traffic to disease – that the economy creates and then sells remedies for. In theoretical terms, environmental problems are a genre of what economists call “externalities”, which are unwanted side effects of consumption otherwise assumed to be benign. Now we are entering the realm of what might be called “internalities”—which is to say, dysfunctions inherent in consumption itself. This is a black hole to the conventional economic mind. Economists don‘t even have a language for it; the reigning vocabulary is encoded with the production imperative. An economy consists of goods and services. There are no bads or disservices—no negative products of any kind. How can economists say consumption is good when the consumers themselves think it is bad?' -- Blame cheap credit.

economics credit consumerism consumption gluttony boredom
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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I work in marketing. I work on the streets. I represent a brand. This is my job.

'I would avoid hiring young people, since they tend to ‘look ashamed’/'disinterested’ in holding up the sign, since they unintentionally outsourced their brand. It seems better to have a ’serious old person’ who thinks they have a real job, or possibly a ‘crazy old man’ who will wave to people and be a jovial extension of your brand. It is important not to hire a krazy homeless man, since he might scare customers away, even if he has tons of experience in professional sign holding. -- Always remember that you have to ‘go to the streets’ to reach real people. While internet advertising ‘looks kewl’, sometimes u have to reach low-end consumers with your low-end product. I believe in the power of holding up signs on the side of the road.'

HipsterRunoff theamericandream consumerism advertising marketing work attention brandmodels affectivelabour recession poverty theadvertisedlife
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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Los Angeles Times -- Beijing loves IKEA—but not for shopping

'Welcome to IKEA Beijing, where the atmosphere is more theme park than store. Every weekend, thousands of looky-loos pour into the massive showroom to use the displays. Some hop into bed, slide under the covers and sneak a nap; others bring cameras and pose with the decor. Families while away the afternoon in the store for no other reason than to enjoy the air conditioning. Visitors can't seem to resist novelties most Americans take for granted, such as free soda refills and ample seating. Purchasing anything at Yi Jia, as the store is called here, can seem like an afterthought. "We want to be modern. I think IKEA stands for a kind of lifestyle. People don't necessarily want to buy it, but they want to at least experience it." -- A group of university graduates recently donned caps and gowns for photographs by the checkout aisles as if to capture the moment they matriculated to the middle class.'

china IKEA experience sampling consumerism shopping narrativeobjects objects narrativeenvironments simulation windowshopping themepark retail publics
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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New York Times -- Consumed: This Joke’s for You

'10,000 cases and counting of Brawndo have sold online or via convenience stores in the Northeast and other regions. This happened not because of a movie-studio marketing brainstorm. It happened because of an “Idiocracy” fan in Oakland named Pete Hottelet. A graphic designer with very particular pop-culture tastes, Hottelet has started a business devoted to bringing to life certain products from movies. His business is called Omni Consumer Products, a name borrowed from the fictional megacorporation in “Robocop.” -- “I watched ‘Idiocracy,’ and I was like, ‘O.K., we’re in,’ ” Kirby says. “Based on how things are going on in the world, and especially our country right now, this is a shoo-in.” He laughs as he says this, so I wasn’t sure what he meant. Are we already living “Idiocracy”? “Absolutely,” he says. “It’s all about overcommercialization.”'

transmedia narrativeobjects liminality liminalobjects objects productnarratives productplacement metabrands defictionalization merchandise simulacra consumerism satire
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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Spotify playlist: End the Debts; End the Wars

System addicts gots to haves its.

consumerism entitlement credit debt government war music playlists
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Guardian -- Do we want to shop or to be free? We'd better choose fast

'We consume to sustain life, but over the last 30 years we have become turbo consumers. Many people recoil at being told that, like me, they live their life like glorified soldier ants in an army whose purpose is to reproduce a social system over which they have no say. They genuinely feel they follow no fashion and live a free life. -- ...we feel compelled to keep up on the consumer treadmill for fear of being defined as abnormal; as failed consumers. We end up in a vicious negative feedback loop; we shop literally for retail therapy, to make us fleetingly feel better because we live such narrow monocultured lives. But the very act of finding compensation for a truly free life through consumption further closes down the space for real alternatives. And so it goes on. [Politicians like] every other consumer they represent only themselves and their own private dreams. -- There is still time to choose – just. Shoppers of the world unite – you have nothing to lose but your chain stores.'

criticism consumerism precuperation theadvertisedlife via:jonhoward
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Marginal Utility -- Reified design

'Designy-ness, like so many consumerist products, lets us consume ourselves. ...designy-ness is an ideological sheen on consumerism, redeeming commodification while furthering it, permitting mass-distributed designy-ness to supplant genuine heterogeneity: the chance that we might really redeem the promise of individualism—that we will be able to garner social recognition for being ourselves, and recognition could be separated from being judged or taxonomized. But designy-ness and its off-the-shelf aesthetic (often prepared by lauded gurus) militates against that. However much we enjoy our own tastes in such stuff privately (solipsisticly) we become typecast when we exhibit those tastes publicly. ...we are isolated by our tastes and the goods whispering our ersatz uniqueness to us, and we gloat in our transcendence until the loneliness overwhelms us, and we are driven to participate in society, which we can do only on those same terms, at the level of our tastes in everyday goods...'

criticism design designwank reification precuperation usevaluevssignvalue consumerism consumering signalling status selfobjects objects self individualism delusion solipsism taste curation theadvertisedlife
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Marginal Utility -- Soviet Consumerism

'I tend to take it for granted that brands of products function only to help individuals brand themselves, to allow them to project certain traits along the lines described in the previous paragraph. (For producers, brands allow for the elaboration of differences between competitors’ commodities where there are more or less materially indistinguishable.) But Red Moscow suggests that brands could be contrived to close off avenues for the development of a superficial self. Nationalist brands would enlist users into helping complete the ideological project of the state, not the self—a state that may not allow for an autonomous self. Such brands would demonstrate conformity and obedience in a much more direct way than our brands.. Consumerism is soft coercion in that sense; it allows for a space where conformity can comfortably coexist with rebellion—the revolution is reduced to continually turning over one’s personal affect within a game whose rules are thereby protected from change.'

russia branding consumerism communism nationalism statism ideology propaganda realityprogramming metanarratives narrativeobjects objects
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Fake Steve Jobs -- I'm really thinking maybe I shouldn't have yelled at that Chinese guy so much

'Have you ever been to China? We have. We've been to China. We know what goes on there. We know how they open your mail, and listen to your phone calls, and let their factories pollute like crazy and exploit workers, all in the name of progress. And we turn a blind eye to it. We let them know when we're coming to visit, and they give us a tour and put on a little show of how great things are, and how wonderful the dorm life is, and afterward we pretend to keep an eye on them -- but it's all theater. It is. We know it. What's more, you know it. Everyone knows it. -- We all know that there's no fucking way in the world we should have microwave ovens and refrigerators and TV sets and everything else at the prices we're paying for them. There's no way we get all this stuff and everything is done fair and square and everyone gets treated right. No way. And don't be confused -- what we're talking about here is our way of life. Our standard of living.' -- Consume in haste, repent at leisure.

economics china america deindustrialization consumerism theadvertisedlife technoutopianism lulz
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Marginal Utility -- Consumption display; or, against sharing

'Perhaps I’m too old to appreciate how “showing off” has now become “sharing.” If I made an effort to let people know what I was listening to, I would only be able to see what I was doing as trying to score points, trying to beat out whoever was paying attention by one-upping them with something cooler than what they were listening to. Maybe that kind of competition is a contemporary potlatch, but to me it just seems weird. It seems to supplant the pleasures of me in my apartment listening to the music, which should theoretically be enough, with a different and more uncertain pleasure of showing others up—I mean, sharing with them my superlative tastes. But pop culture consumption ultimately has little to do with sensual qualities and more to do with signaling, with participating in a zeitgeist, with nailing down one’s social identity for a particular moment in time. -- Poseurdom is too seductive and useful an opportunity; it lets us deploy cultural capital without risk.'

consumering consumerism signalling sharing identity lifecasting selfservers #bandwidth #socialization
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Marginal Utility -- “The era of frugality” redux redux

'I’m generally skeptical about proclamations of the “new frugality,” because I’m not convinced that we know what to do with ourselves if we are not shopping. Consumerism, as an end in itself, has infiltrated most activities, sapping away their intrinsic appeal and making them seem reliant on consumerism, rather than vice versa. Deliberate frugality has a certain novelty appeal... Maybe we will set about romanticizing the thrill of discovery in our own closets rather than in retail world. But for all that stories about the joys of frugality, I’m not convinced this is actually happening. It still seems that saving is regarded as “painful” and that increased spending will be regarded as a return to health, both for individuals and for the macroeconomic picture.'

consumerism collecting foraging shopping boredom
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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BBC -- A trip through China's economic crisis (Part Two)

'Paul Mason continues his journey through China by train and car to see how the country is being affected by the world's economic crisis.' -- Government-encouraged raves

economics china consumerism documentaries
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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BBC -- A trip through China's economic crisis (Part One)

"Part One of Paul Mason's journey across China to see the effects of the economic crisis on the world's biggest exporter." -- The beginnings of a mass consumer culture.

economics china consumerism pollution documentaries
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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The New Republic -- Spent: America after consumerism

'...regulation cannot be the linchpin of attempts to reform our economy. What is needed instead is something far more sweeping: for people to internalize a different sense of how one ought to behave, and act on it because they believe it is right. What needs to be eradicated, or at least greatly tempered, is consumerism: the obsession with acquisition that has become the organizing principle of American life. This is not the same thing as capitalism, nor is it the same thing as consumption. ..when the acquisition of goods and services is used to satisfy the higher needs [self actualiation], consumption turns into consumerism--and consumerism becomes a social disease. But it is not enough to establish that which people ought not to do, to end the obsession with making and consuming evermore than the next person. Consumerism will not just magically disappear from its central place in our culture. It needs to be supplanted by something.'

economics consumerism status ponzi ethics communities meaning idealism
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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New York Magazine -- Some Dark Thoughts on Happiness

'...the explosive interest in positive psychology is, like so many cultural curiosities involving self-obsession, a boomer phenomenon. ...the psychology of positivity and productivity were a perfect fit for the ethos of the bubble years. -- ...maximizers, in practically every study one can find, are far more miserable than people who are willing to make do (economists call these people satisficers). “My suspicion is that all this choice creates maximizers.” -- ...our beliefs that money and children will make us happy are super-replicators—without them, civilization wouldn’t survive. -- “Happiness is fine as a side effect. But I think it’s a cruel demand. It may even be a covert form of sadism. Everyone feels themselves prone to feelings and desires and thoughts that disturb them. And we’re being persuaded that by acts of choice, we can dispense with these thoughts. It’s a version of fundamentalism." ...happiness [is] “the most conformist of moral aims.”'

* psychology memes happiness experience self narcissism hedonism optimism hype fundamentalism delusion consumerism choice gluttony theadvertisedlife
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Life Inc The Movie (Book Trailer)

"In Life Inc., award-winning writer, documentary filmmaker, and scholar Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from a convenient legal fiction to the dominant fact of contemporary life. Indeed as Rushkoff shows, most Americans have so willingly adopted the values of corporations that theyre no longer even aware of it." -- Lamenting The Advertised Life

corporatism consumerism individualism entitlement narcissism self status theadvertisedlife documentaries books mercantilism
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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Hipster Runoff Exegesis: "People who wait in line overnight to buy shit."

'Carles notes, in a somewhat Socratic ruse, that he wrestles with the question of value, of which he pretends to know very little: "Sometimes it is hard for me to evaluate what I truly value, and how much I value it." What he's suggesting is that desire is experienced as a kind of demonic possession, inhabiting our consciousness and allowing us no point from which to assess it objectively. As a result we rely on the social mirror. We know our desires from the reflection we see of them in the desires of others. Hence the formation of lines, lines of desire between one another in physical queues, with the lines making a kind of net within which to catch fleeting moments of eternity. The moment of utter satiation in possession which can suspend death. However, this net is rent by the competitive impulse that capitalism introduces into society, in the social mobility that prompts invidious consumption...'

HipsterRunoff consumerism status hierarchy desire commodityfetishism socialproof time death
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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People who wait in line overnight to buy shit.

"Sometimes it is hard for me to evaluate what I truly value, and how much I value it. Do I value having new products in my possession? Do I value ’shit like Apple products’/'cell phones’/'the right to say that I was one of the first people to see an adventure action movie that is part of a trilogy’? I saw these bros sitting outside of an urban boutique waiting to purchase the Kanye West sneakers. I wonder ‘what is so important’ about a shoe? Is there some sort of ‘technology’ that will make their lives’ better, or do they just want the right to the experience/right to purchase the shoe for $1000, or the right to sell the shoe on eBay to the ‘highest bidder’? Wonder if I could ‘bond’ with the people who wait in line for new products, since we basically value the same stuff. Feels weird when ‘everything feels like a toy’, but there are still these adults who ‘really want to buy a kewl new toy that will make people think they are kewler.’

HipsterRunoff consumerism status hierarchy power commodityfetishism time death lulz satire
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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Escape from the Zombie Food Court by Joe Bageant

'More than any other people I have met, Americans fear loss of uniqueness. Yet you and I are not unique in the least. Despite the American yada yada about individualism, you are not special. Nor am I. Just because we come from the manufacturer equipped with individual consciousness, does not make us the center of any unique world, private or public, material, intellectual or spiritual. The fact is, you will seldom if ever make any significant material or lifestyle choices of your own in your entire life. If you don't buy that house, someone else will. If you don't marry him, someone else will. If you don't become a psychologist, lawyer or a telemarketer, someone else will. We are all replaceable parts in the machinery of a capitalist economy. "Oh but we have unique feelings and emotions that are important," we say. Yet I venture to say that none of us will ever feel an emotion that someone long dead has not felt, or some as yet unborn person will not feel.' -- *gulps a gritty red pill*

* economics psychology spectacle immateriallabour corporatism paternalism propaganda control consciousness stockholmsyndrome mimicry hegemony ideology mythology consumerism narcissism individualism delusion hologram theadvertisedlife debt slavery feudalism reality compassion empathy truth gaia one
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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Marginal Utility -- Commodfied intelligence

'... the improving raw numbers of cultural consumption matter mainly to entrepreneurs in the culture industries. Consumers care more about what their cultural consumption signifies. The new emphasis on the quantity of culture consumed and the signals it can be deployed to send has led to the development of a widespread collector’s mentality toward culture: Quote: George Balgobin: 'Facebook is devoted to cataloguing this cultural rebirth. Here people curate their personas and project them at the world. Characteristic of the younger generations, the mood strains for the eclectic while feigning nonchalance. The alchemist arranges lists in search of gold... Status updates remind you that a friend has just returned from an “HD Mozart Opera” while another is “getting into Herzog films”. This is an achievement panopticon; the participants are its prisoners.' -- The key question ends up being whether we believe that performing our appreciation of something means we don’t really appreciate it.'

culture consumerism behaviours consumering performance collecting curation objects selfobjects socialobjects status experience poseurism semiotics usevaluevssignvalue #bandwidth #ubiquity #specialization
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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MetropolisMag -- Within the Product of No Product

'... what if the aspiration is purely not to buy? How might designers participate in an economy of no product? Could product design focus on concepts of “one for life” tools and objects, tech devices that can be infinitely upgraded with a minimum purchase, methodologies for assembling new products out of surplus leftovers from the binge years? Is there a product of no-product aesthetic that would let consumers tangibly track how one purchase actually eliminates the need for a range of other products, in the same way that the archaic 20th-century notion of the “labor-saving” device motivated the purchase of appliances? Design might create the “purchase-saving” appliance and link objects into permanent one-for-life relationships, under which users could cheaply modify external colors and textures to personalize products over long arcs of time.'

product design productnarratives objects spimes consumerism via:chromacomms
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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Marginal Utility -- The Attention Economy (13 April 2006)

"... status games are perhaps an inherent part of humanity, they are also the engine that drives consumerism. If adults dismiss such games, it’s not because they see them as juvenile, but because their experiences of such games were probably humiliating and horrible for them, and they are now hoping against hope and prevailing cultural tendencies to grow out of such preoccupations, rather than internalize them. -- If people cease to blog for the pleasure of existing in public space, and begin to demand something more tangibly beneficial (power, connections, money), then it will probably turn into a giant MySpace where one parleys the attention of marketers into some paltry excuse for self-esteem and one congratulates oneself not for the substance of one’s contribution to public debate, but for how many others whom, by virtue of your connections, you can feel superior to. In short, it will reflect the society that already persists in real space."

criticism authenticity status attention consumerism identity theadvertisedlife
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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Reason Magazine -- Why aren't opponents of consumption happy about the recession?

'Proponents of voluntary simplicity, critics of excessive consumption, localists, sustainability advocates, and other mild-mannered critics of consumer culture have a lot to brag on these days. Greedy financiers, scheming moneylenders, and ignorant American fatsos are all getting their comeuppance, oozing bad debt, punished for living beyond their means. Affluenza has been cured. Its related ailments—shopoholism, work-life imbalance, expenditure cascades, status anxiety, positional externalities—are in remission. Only the Live Simplers can say with straight faces that they told us so. But gloating has never been their style. The Live Simplers seek a change not in people’s fortunes but in their hearts, and that’s a recipe for eternal disappointment. “Affluenza hasn’t been solved,” says David Wann [co-author of 'Affluenza'], “because there’s still this assumption that now we’re down, but as soon as we can we’ll get back up again.”' -- Still addicted to those credit crack pipes.

economics consumerism affluence entitlement denial
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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Harpers -- Faustian economics: Hell hath no limits by Wendell Berry

"... once greed has been made an honorable motive, then you have an economy without limits. It has no place for temperance or thrift or the ecological law of return. It will do anything. It is monstrous by definition ... the commonly accepted basis of our economy is the supposed possibility of limitless growth, limitless wants, limitless wealth, limitless natural resources, limitless energy, and limitless debt. The idea of a limitless economy implies and requires a doctrine of general human limitlessness: all are entitled to pursue without limit whatever they conceive as desirable... this credo of limitlessness clearly implies a principled wish not only for limitless possessions but also for limitless knowledge, limitless science, limitless technology, and limitless progress. And, necessarily, it must lead to limitless violence, waste, war, and destruction. That it should finally produce a crowning cult of political limitlessness is only a matter of mad logic." -- Supersize We

* economics debt ponzi criticism consumption consumerism delusion denial insanity virtuality reality freedom friendship ethics trust loyalty empathy communities civility ecology sustainability austerity humanity philosophy religion art life
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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Seeking Alpha -- The Shallowest Generation

'Our claim to fame is living way beyond our means for the last three decades, to the point where we have virtually bankrupted our capitalist system. Baby Boomers have been occupying the White House for the last sixteen years. The majority of Congress is Baby Boomers. The CEOs and top executives of Wall Street firms are Baby Boomers. The media is dominated by Baby Boom executives and on-air stars. Baby Boomers had the time, power, and ability to change our course. We have chosen to leave the heavy lifting to future generations in order to live the good life today. Ultimately, it is up to the Baby Boom generation to change our country’s course. The oldest Boomer is 62 years old and the youngest 45. It is time for Boomers to take a hard look in the mirror and rethink their priorities. The Baby Boom generation has one last chance to change the course of U.S. history, keep us from wrecking in a storm of debt on the approaching jagged reef and shed the title of “Shallowest Generation”.'

economics debt demographics babyboomers self status entitlement decadence lifestyle individualism consumerism greed ethics hubris
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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Telegraph -- World's largest market falls silent as China suffers

'A propaganda campaign has been launched, with politicians announcing that “spending money is patriotic”. Li Zhe, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference announced in Beijing: “Everyone and every institution should spend what they make in one year just on buying things. In the southern town of Hangzhou, the local government has announced civil servants will receive one-tenth of their pay in shopping vouchers in order to set an example.”' -- The Chinese: Spend money on that junk we export all around the world?? No thanks.

economics china consumerism trade
february 2009 by adamcrowe

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Nextopia -- What is Nextopia?

"Nextopia is our evolutionary drive to strive for the next thing. The next anything will be the best one, a utopian hope that affects lives today." -- Reach exceeds grasp.

evolutionarypsychology psychology intermittentvariablerewards optimism happiness plannedobsolescence consumerism lawofdiminishingmarginalunity productnarratives prototyping horizonscanning diminishingmarginalutility
december 2008 by adamcrowe

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NY Daily News -- Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede

'"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," said Wal-Mart worker Jimmy Overby, 43. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me."' -- If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a Wal-mart employee—forever. (What have we become?)

economics consumerism walmart america food scarcity shopping 1984 "capitalism"
november 2008 by adamcrowe

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Hossli.com -- When I Grow Up…

'In Wannado Ciy no one is unemployed. The choice of profession is free and the middle class is intact. Outsourcing doesn’t exist. Wannado City presents itself as a city without any ideology. As in real America, different ethnic groups mix in the workplace. ‘In Kids We Trust’ is the motto in the courtroom. Children’s heads, not presidents, adorn the bank notes. Only the American flag next to the judge, as well as a picture of George W Bush in the courtroom testify to everyday life. Officially the children are here for fun – child labour is frowned upon. “We call it real play, not working,” says the press spokesperson.' -- Work = Shopping = Citizenship. Grim.

children work shopping ideology simulacra themepark consumerism evil via:diemkay
august 2008 by adamcrowe

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Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog -- I love you, co-consumer

Quoting a liked article: "what drives modern marriage? We believe that the answer lies in a shift from the family as a forum for shared production, to shared consumption ... the key today is consumption complementarities - activities that are not only enjoyable, but are more enjoyable when shared with a spouse. We call this new model of sharing our lives 'hedonic marriage.' ... As consumption increases, so too will the demand to have someone with whom to share these pleasures."'

consumption consumerism theadvertisedlife relationships marriage sharing
august 2008 by adamcrowe

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Umair Haque -- America's Addiction and the New Economics of Strategy

"It's not just cheap oil we're addicted to: it's cheap everything. And the world we're entering isn't really of Peak Oil as it is one of Peak Consumption. In a world where consumption itself must slow, the boardroom faces tough choices. Does it continue to hawk stuff that ‚'satisfies' largely artificial needs? Or does it choose to do something authentic, meaningful, and purposive– something that makes us all radically better off than we were before?"

consumption backlash economics marketing strategy consumerism materialism nihilism myopia growth #ubiquity #storage sustainability change UmairHaque
august 2008 by adamcrowe

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Madeleine Bunting -- Eat, drink and be miserable: the true cost of our addiction to shopping

"...what's disturbing is how we continue to shop when it doesn't make us happier... hyperconsumerism is a response to insecurity, a maladaptive coping mechanism. The more insecure you are, the more materialistic; the more materialistic, the more insecure"

* ecology sustainability psychology depression shopping consumerism individualism materialism economics feedback relationships communities empathy happiness "capitalism"
july 2008 by adamcrowe

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Madeleine Bunting -- The hidden toll we all pay

"Care is seen as passive and ineffectual, while our culture is intoxicated with independence and self-expression. The care ethic is not just about children and the elderly... but also, crucially, care of the self."

caring nurturance work happiness consumerism "capitalism"
july 2008 by adamcrowe

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Madeleine Bunting -- Why aren't we taking our time?

"The more pressured you are, the more impatient you become of what you perceive as distractions, rather than understanding them to be opportunities. Time consuming skills: empathy, patience and perception become rare: we emotionally deskill ourselves."

work emotionalintelligence productivity lifestyle time consumerism "capitalism"
july 2008 by adamcrowe

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Madeleine Bunting -- Pressure of work

"... the conclusion is that the single biggest achievement of American managerialism has been to make people work harder... How has America done it? Quite simple: it is Big Brother transferred to the workplace. Use fear, trust no one. "

work management economics america consumerism "capitalism"
july 2008 by adamcrowe

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Madeleine Bunting -- Consumer capitalism is making us ill

"The church has lost sway, and the state has retreated behind the single rationale of promoting economic competitiveness... That leaves the market a free rein to describe happiness and to manipulate our insecurities around status."

happiness health policy religion consumerism instrumentalism competition education measurement status theadvertisedlife "capitalism"
july 2008 by adamcrowe

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Madeleine Bunting -- In our angst over children we're ignoring the perils of adulthood

'Facing media-fuelled consumer-driven ridicule by their kids, many parents can't face their responsibilities... The universe conjured up [by kids marketing] is one of "kids rule", in which children are "empowered into an adult-free space".'

adulthood parenting children relationships authority responsibility representation archetypes advertising marketing consumerism instrumentalism meritocracy reality ideology failure happiness theadvertisedlife
july 2008 by adamcrowe

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Madeleine Bunting -- This cynical ideology of individual selfishness is a relic of the cold war

'"...the main emotion behind most people's politics was hope..." That sentiment has now been replaced, he argued, by indignation. "People are more interested in bearing witness to their personal moral righteousness" than in engaging in open-minded debate.'

cynicism pessimism existentialism individualism consumerism ideology theadvertisedlife status angst entitlement self politics civility socialcapital AdamCurtis
july 2008 by adamcrowe

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Madeleine Bunting -- The big question

"The highly unequal, competitive, materialistic and individualistic cultures of neo-liberal economies produce emotional distress; they cultivate the insecurities which drive hyper consumerism ... and thus they make us ill."

melancholy depression happiness psychology health consumerism individualism competition ecology emotionalintelligence "capitalism"
july 2008 by adamcrowe

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The New Atlantis -- Playgrounds of the Self

Christopher Caldwell: “I also begin to understand for the first time what an addiction is... It’s a desperate need to simplify. An addiction is a gravitation towards anything that plausibly mimics life while being less complicated than life.”

addiction gaming identity self distributed roleplay virtualworlds mmorpg literacy readerlywriterly education learning simulation reality virtuality cognition synaptics play consumerism thegamingofeverydaylife parenting womb psychology
april 2008 by adamcrowe

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Mediamatic.net -- Art and Advertising, Peter Fend 1994

"I did not understand sufficiently that Advertising is directed to people who would like to live at least somewhat like the Leisure Class, and that if you want to succeed in Advertising you must -- as adman David Olgilvy wrote – believe in the products and lifestyle sought by the Leisure Class. I did not sufficiently believe in most of the products, or attendant lifestyle being offered then by people in Advertising. I was going to that meeting, in 1973, talking about believing in ecology."

* advertising art consumerism ethics ecology PeterFend quotes
january 2008 by adamcrowe

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Fast Company - Retail Therapy

"Selfridges's department store in London even describes itself as a theme park where customers are encouraged to buy souvenirs of their visit."

retail environments space shoping consumerism via:chromacomms
january 2008 by adamcrowe

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Terra Nova - Do virtual worlds liberate us?

Great comments: 'It's not "freedom from", it's "freedom to".'

* virtualworlds virtualgoods consumerism freedom rearviewmirror themediumisthemessage augmentationistsvsimmersionists worldvsplatform culture reality virtuality simulation JeanBaudrillard usevaluevssignvalue symboliccapital semiotics media
november 2007 by adamcrowe

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SFGate.com - In online worlds, the thought and the gift are social currency

"... what happens if a site is one day turned off? How do users retrieve the goods they paid for?"

virtualgoods virtualworlds selfservers economics consumerism gifts grooming behaviours socialcapital socialobjects
november 2007 by adamcrowe

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BBC - Virtual worlds threaten 'values'

"Lord Puttnam fear[s] that all children will learn from these virtual spaces is that they are first and foremost consumers." Hypocritical %*@$! Go sell some ads!

virtualworlds virtualgoods children learning consumerism
november 2007 by adamcrowe

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The Advertised Life

"The Advertised Life, an emerging mode of being in which ... one expects and looks for advertising, learns to lead life as an ad, to think like an advertiser, and even to anticipate and insert one-self in successful strategies of marketing." - Thomas Frank

theadvertisedlife advertising cognition criticaldistance criticism feedback consumerism consumering attention fame celebrity immateriallabour vernacular reality freedom panopticon * "capitalism"
november 2007 by adamcrowe

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CNET - What kids learn in virtual worlds

"I would be much less concerned about things like online predators or violence, then I would be about the conflation between consumption and citizenship. Because our kids are being taught that to be a good citizen you got to buy the right stuff"

consumerism virtualworlds theadvertisedlife civility citizenship children
november 2007 by adamcrowe

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