Abstract

With this final project, I initially wanted to address the topic of our society's emergent narcissism, but I decided a better way to tackle the ideas present would be to address consumerism and consumer dependency. The topics I address under the umbrella of consumerism (consumption of virtual goods, reality television, and anti-consumerism) tackle the alienation from reality and consumer dependency is creating and the response against this dependency. For the creative portion of my project, I documented my own consumption and judged its merits. When my consumption is not particularly telling, I tackle other elements of consumerism that I felt were left unaddressed otherwise but deserved attention nonetheless. The consumption web log is in reverse chronological order.

The Research Paper

Nick Kogan

4/27/11

SPCM 2360

Final Project- Essay

Consumerism: An American Tradition

Introduction

Merriam-Webster defines consumerism as “the theory that an increasing consumption of goods is economically desirable,” and living in the extremely capitalist country of the United States does little to diminish this notion. In this paper I would like to examine consumption in America through the lens of reality television, testing how we consume simulations, virtual consumption, which tests how we consume in simulations, and the currents of anti-consumerism available.

Reality TV: The Dead End of Western Civilization?

Reality television initially emerged as a realm for the audience to view standard normal behavior, weaving plotlines from non-scripted interactions. The next generation seeks to generate interest by manipulating a few lucky people’s external reality by throwing material objects at them that are sure to guarantee happiness (Dixon 53). On Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, a deserving family is chosen to have the interior of their house completely replaced. Each member of one family gets their own flat screen television, and the mortgage is ritualistically burned in the conclusion, guaranteeing the family will live in hyper-consuming bliss in to eternity (Cherrier 260-265). All of the signposts of happiness for the families in the rebuilt homes are the objects representing status they are now provided with. How could a family be happy without eight flat screen televisions with which to watch reality television? And of course the entire series is sponsored by Sears, essentially offering pornography for home improvement enthusiasts, while the stories of down-on-their-luck families serve as emotional pornography for the rest of the audience. Not to mention that many of the families involved could not afford their new property taxes and had to sell their houses, putting them back at square one.

MTV’s I Want a Famous Face presents an even more horrifying scenario. In this reality series, people surrender their identity for the opportunity to look like their favorite celebrity. Though potentially doomed to serve as simulacra of their famous counterparts at convention centers across the country, a majority of the subjects are pleased with the results. One, named Sha, believed that by achieving the look of Pamela Anderson, she would subsume the other positive traits of Ms. Anderson- style, charm, business acumen. She purchased her body and identity at the same store. Much of these pursuits lie in the name of achieving the “perfect body,” a pursuit which can only lead to dehumanization as one reaches for an unconscious archetype instead of developing oneself to their ultimate potential.

Virtual Consumption

As a strange tangent to the pervasive consumerism in day to day living, the virtual world of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) are experiencing a boom in these tendencies as well. In purchasing an RPG, the consumer implicitly understands they are spending money on a product that allows them to experience to acquire wealth and simulate more spending in a fantasy, creating a hollow cycle. Now, a strain of gamers seek to make money by playing the games to what many would call excess in order to hoard items to which they sell to other gamers using real world cash. Besides creating issues regarding the ownership and taxation of virtual goods, many argue that young gamers are being preyed upon and that they are experiencing a detachment from reality (Lehdonvirta et al 1060).

However, it is hard to presume that an activity enjoyed by so many would completely avoid monetization. Sweat shops now exist in China where workers play games in 12 hour shifts to sell items and entire characters to Western consumers. In a method under much less scrutiny, the social networking website Facebook.com sells virtual trinkets to its members to be given as virtual gifts to other members for special occasions. These economies can operate similarly to Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS), where they serve as alternate to the larger economy, though the interweaving use of sites such as eBay interrupts this dichotomy.

Further, does this even count as consumption? Miniscule amounts of content are being created, and no wasteful byproduct exists afterwards. However, not all goods depreciate in value, and the context behind the content can change over time. Also, many businesses serve as middlemen between other corporate entities, seeing goods and stock as only numerical representatives of goods, removed from any physical manifestation or byproduct. Services rendered do not require creation and waste, only cash. Structures such as Facebook also serve as commodity and media, where information is exchanged and each user metaphorically owns a slice of the media portion, but must pay their way in to the commoditized portion.

Custodians

To give additional perspective, we should note that anti-consumerist undercurrents do exist. One manifestation of this is a group who call themselves custodians (Cherrier 261). Instead of the neo-Transcendentalist mode favored by many anti-consumerists, custodians favor the notion that humans are inseparable from our material reality, so denying the influence of products and brands amounts to rejecting our own identities as well as tangible reality. The action of protesting consumer culture cannot exist outside of the consumption paradigm, and thus the best way to protest is to utilize the products themselves.

A great deal of the consumer culture invokes waste and a lack of sustainability. The average American consumer generates over 4.4 lbs. of waste a day, compared to 2.7 in 1960. Custodians attempt to moderate this wastefulness, by any means necessary. Some are designated by their desire to hoard items, anticipating future re-use, while others are dedicated to repairing and extending the shelf-life of what they already possess. This allows for a broader of definition of anti-consumerist behavior that allows less entitled citizens to participate outside of standard displays such as protests, boycotts, and festivals.

Conclusion

Examining consumerism through these various instances, we know that it is not an isolated phenomenon, nor is its vice-like grip due to weaken anytime soon. It is also necessary to acknowledge that not all aspects of the culture are negative, and that opposition does exist in multiple forms. Technology allows people to create new fantasies, remove themselves from disappointing reality, and recreate themselves in someone else’s vision. However we cannot refute all products in and of themselves, and our reality will always be reflected in our choices of how and what we consume. The desire to consume is merely the cog in the wheel of capitalism, and our material welfare is dependent on the consistent base desires of our peers. For the system to thrive people must overspend and waste, damaging ecosystems and creating jobs, and balance can only be restored when we stop fantasizing about perfection, or at least something better than what we have right now.

Work Cited

Cherrier, Helene. “Custodian Behavior: A material expression of anti-consumerism.” Consumption, Markets & Culture, Sep2010, Vol. 13 Issue 3, p259-272

Dixon, Winston Wheeler. “Hyperconsumption in Reality Television: The Transformation of the Self through Televisual Consumerism.” Quarterly Review of Film & Video, Jan2008, Vol. 25 Issue 1, p52-63

Lehdonvirta, Vili; Wilska, Terhi-Anna; Johnson, Mikael. “Virtual Consumerism.” Information, Communication & Society, Oct2009, Vol. 12 Issue 7, p1059-1079

Aftermath

4/28/11

Parental Allowance: +$515

Gilt Groupe: $55.95

Chik-Fil-A: $9.38

And then the bubble burst. The payments will not show it on this date, but I can remember it easily. I nearly got evicted and had to pay my roommate's rent. That roommate no longer lives with me. My car insurance went up to $170 (!). My rent went up by an additional hundred dollars. I can no longer offer people whatever they like. After the credit card debt is paid, I will have as much money in my account as I did at the beginning of the month, just without credit card debt. And that is nice. Has anything really changed? My credit card debt is microscopic compared to my impending college loan debt. I have a spare room in my house and a lease to break. I also apparently subsisted on food from my work at Barberitos and Chik-Fil-A, which is not a terribly palatable implication. I have made credit payments, bought flashy technology, fancy clothes, meaningless candy, and all manor of other things that I will likely never give a second thought. My consumption certainly made sense at the time.

Heaven is a Place On Earth

4/25/11

Yoforia: $9.23

The Globe: $14.23

Oak Street Package: $19.25

Agora: $21.40

Shell: $45.28

Agora: $80.25

Wal-Mart: $95.17

Gamestop: $380.18

Easter Check: +$50

I officially hit the consumerist jackpot! Naturally I felt entitled to spend nearly ten dollars on a deluxe serving of frozen yogurt in the nouveau riche section of town. Yoforia allows you to place whatever you like in a cup, be it fruit, nuts, candy, or cookies along with your choice of eight yogurt flavors. They weigh it, you pay it.

I also bought a handle of vodka. One would think this would be a decently sound investment that could conceivably last a little while, but I have three roommates and somehow doubt this.

I spent over a hundred dollars at a vintage clothes store on a pair of boots and a designer shirt. I have a pair of frye boots, designer boots, and work boots, but I did not have cowboy boots yet. Some reason always emerges to buy something, even though odds are I am not going to be in a rodeo any time soon.

The best purchase was probably the combined Mother's Day/Father's Day gift from Gamestop. While I bought my parents a game, I bought myself an entire $300 Playstation 3 videogame system. This seemed excessive, but I thought this would last (it plays Blu-Rays!) and I needed comfort food.

I reached spending nirvana, where heaven could be a place on earth, supposedly. But was I happy? My lunch at the Globe was decent, not great. I'm too busy to play the videogames. My boots give me blisters (should I wear two pairs of socks?).

The Good Times Are Killing Me

4/22/11

Credit Card Payment: $436.82

Kroger: $26.37

Chick Piano: $25.67

When a large sum of money is acquired, you immediately think you have found a certain security. And then you look around, and see the debt you have acquired. That credit card payment does not even make for a third of my total debt. At least the interest is a little lower. Party on credit until you do not enjoy partying anymore.

Who's That Chik

4/21/11

Chik-Fil-A: $13.88

Paycheck Deposit: +$204.98

More money pours in, but there is very little in the way of notable purchases outside of more fried chicken. I'd like to tackle instead the nature through which we consume celebrity, and I would like to use Rhianna as the prime example. American's favorite narrative to embrace is that of redemption, and our current favorite female pop star is flush as the manifestation of schadenfreude. A few years ago, Rhianna broke up with her fellow pop star boyfriend Chris Brown shortly after images leaked of her battered face. Rhianna's lurid photographs were inescapable from tabloids, and her narrative was written before it could have been executed. Rhianna was momentarily humanized as we knew she felt highs and lows equal to our own, but then she was immediately dehumanized as she was subsumed under the larger banner of battered women. As a celebrity, she must be a symbol, and not a person. Though the goals of these two dimensions are not mutually exclusive, they are entitled to different emotional depths. As a symbol, Rhianna immediately created product for us to consume, namely two albums within a year. The first album was darker and dealt more specifically with the trauma, but by the second album she had returned to her dance-floor goddess sex kitten persona in full. Rhianna will always have a contingent of support because the burden of abuse, but now as a celebrity she is required to always be discussed in that dichotomy, and with that baggage.

Whatever You Like

4/20/11

Grandfather's Inheritance: +$2000

The inheritance from my grandfather put me in a position relative to my life station that is not terribly common: I wanted to throw around money. We are conditioned to think that money can solve our problems, and in many ways it can. In this music video, the rapper T.I. offers a bevy of things to women, particularly jewelry and expensive tequila. Are the women attracted to his money, or his ability to make money? Does this money guarantee things in all social strata? Now that I had the funds to buy the majority of things I would want, how would I be affected?

Orange Juice

4/19/11

Kroger: $40.12

I do not remember everything I purchased at Kroger, but I do remember a good deal of orange juice was involved. As is mentioned in the song, I am counting calories, and I paid for orange juice with only 50% the normal amount of calories. It only later occurred to me that I was likely paying a corporation to put water in my orange juice. I could not decide if that bothered me or not so I kept buying the same brand.

This music video raises larger questions than that of watered-down orange juice, however. Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All is an emerging teenage shock-rap group from Los Angeles who is gaining steam by capitalizing on the remnants of what is still considered taboo in America. Combining a love of junk culture with adolescent rape fantasies, avant technological use, and professional musicianship, Odd Future is gaining critical acclaim while inciting a good deal of controversy. Leader Tyler the Creator recently came out with statements supporting the Columbine killers. We know that the plurality of hip-hop consumers are young white men, and we also know that horror themes have succeeded on a mass-scale before by white hip-hop performers such as Eminem and the Insane Clown Posse. This is the first instances of African-American performers seeking to tread this ground, almost challenging older generations to recall Reefer Madness, where young black men smoked marijuana and were thus inspired to rape white women. This presentation either exhibits a unity within hip hop culture where everything is fair game under the broad umbrella of internet freedom and racial harmony, or another instance of the expression of intelligent young black men subsumed under their own controversy venting smoke cloud.

Fried Chicken

4/15/11

Withdrawal: $30

This was another withdrawal at a Beechwood ATM that I would immediately spend on Chik-Fil-A. Unlike many fast-food entities, the Chik-Fil-A brand is far more direct in what it represents, displaying southern religious routes and a slightly higher dedication to quality and slightly higher price point than their peers. Chik-Fil-A begs the question: How much do we care about aligning our brand with that of our vendors? This is the crux of advertising in the latter half of the 20th century and early 21st century, dressing people in the fabric of the corporations they feed from. Chik-Fil-A goes against this in many ways, closing on Sunday and losing business a good chunk of business. This also indicates their religiosity, which does not harm them in the South, but appears strange to other regions and demographics they would eventually seek to expand in to. Chik-Fil-A features likeable advertising with their displays of crafty cows seeking to be spared from the slaughterhouse. Despite the religious implications, I, an avowed atheist, have no problem eating there twice a week. That fried chicken is irresistible at student discount prices.

Coffee and TV

4/14/11

Walker's Pub: $5.50

Coffee is an enormous industry that furthers our ability to produce and consume. On this particular drink I tipped $1.50, as I can not reasonably complain about my own poor tips at work without tipping excessively. Outside of exhibiting opposition to the mega-corporation Starbucks, buying coffee shows little in terms of buying a brand or lifestyle, instead indicating one would like to buy time, a chance to be in public doing something with the opportunity to people-watch, run in to acquaintances, or legitimately do freelance work. Coffee shops are places for extroverts with less to do than you think.

Rita Meter Maid

4/13/11

Wendy's: $8.75

Downtown Parking Tickets: $53

Downtown Parking: $1

In urban environments, we are willing to spend in order to have the privilege to consume. One dollar will get you two hours of time in the most desirable consuming location in town. The expiration of this time will cost you dearly, as evidenced by my three tickets totaling over fifty dollars, a fee ten times the value of my overspent parking due. This essentially values you as a consumer as someone expected to pay at least $10/hour you spend downtown. All things considered, this is not an unreasonable expectation. The ticket increases exponentially, as the opportunity cost of your parking spot becomes more costly for city commerce. In this manner, government controls the utility with which you spend your money, as we willingly offer our money for the privilege of spending our money, with the looming threat of losing our money anyway. But man, three coffee shops on one city block sure is convenient.

Candy

4/12/11

Shell Gas Station: $6.92

Many businesses exist only because they prey on our basest cravings for instant gratification on impulse. This small purchase was devoted to candy. Candy is never essential, and generally only has utility as sign posts for romantic tradition. Part of this tradition is reinforced corporately, as expectations are created that you need to buy your lover Russel Stover chocolate on Valentines Day, that you need to buy your children Easter candy, and nothing will make you happier during a hot summer day or after a painful breakup than eating ice cream. These empty tokens offer a brief reprieve, but are gone all too quickly, leaving us after a brief sugar high with two hundred more calories to run off on the treadmill.

Rent

4/11/11

Agora: $21.40

Paypal: $25.99

Withdrawal: $30

Shell Gas Station: $35

ACC WBO: $58.74

Rent: $255

When it comes to meaningful relationships, what is our money worth? My rent went through today, as did the water bill. During this time one of my roommates was not paying his bills, and my roommates and I had to compensate. That roommate was unemployed, and subsisted almost entirely on Ramen noodles and the food I brought home from Barberitos. He also played drums in my band, and I was willing to look the other way at the lack of rent. This changed with the threat of eviction. Colin had escaped the cycle of consumption, but mere subsistence is not always enough.

Just Got Paid

4/8/11

Credit Card Payment: $100

Withdrawal: $90

Paycheck Deposit: +$206.12

Consumption has become such a standard procedure that we celebrate the exact moment that we can partake in the consumption ritual, namely getting paid. Though this represents moment our hard work is rewarded, and the moment we receive just reprieve from the stress of our bills, that is not our first impulse. We just got paid, and we have "a pocket full of change." That is spending money, not money we are giving to creditors. Celebrating the precursor to spending creates a cycle where we anticipate spending our money, we deplete, and then we are only held aloft by the knowledge we will soon get paid, essentially recreating the high and hangover of drugs.

Tax Man

4/4/11

9Ds Bar: $12

Dickey's BBQ: $8.56

Parental Transfer (tax benefits): +$250

Grandparents' Allowance: +$200

Withdrawal: $100

The first taste of bank account excess has entered the fray, and early ventures in to more elaborate buying are hinted. A hundred dollars were withdrawn in cash, yet a twelve dollar bar tab exists, meaning the earlier cash was likely already spent. 9D's Bar is a prime example on the monetization of nostalgia. Most of the customers at 9D's Bar are between the ages of 18 and 22, namely people hardly out of their stroller when most of the songs played in the club were made popular. The idea of a 20 year pop culture cycle has recently been posited, and in this instance certainly rings true, particularly as the bar is the sibling of 8E's Bar, which benefited from similar nostalgia when it opened. The duration of this cycle is certainly questionable, but the visions of nostalgia will always be marketable as consumers reminisce of simpler times.

Keep On Keepin' On

4/1/11

Withdrawal: $10

UGA PAC: $1o

A withdrawal of $10 would indicate the desire for a menial item, in this case cough drops.

Papa's Got a Brand New Bag

3/31/11

Parental Allowance: +$525

I, along with many in my generation, are (and may sadly remain) dependent on our parents for partial or full monetary support for sustained living. Approached with this prospect, parents have options for how closely they monitor how their former money is spent. In this instance my parents barely monitor at all, and withhold all judgment of my consumption of moderately priced sandwiches from post-fast food restaurants. This allowance pays for rent and bills, and all other money in the picture will be gravy for my consumptive mashed potatoes. Gravy will follow shortly.

Train Kept a Rollin'

3/30/11

Keba Grill- $10.85

Fairly unspectacular purchase. Keba is a restaurant that has gone through three different names while I have lived here, and experienced multiple ownership changes, indicating this may be more about a lack of consumption. In going from KBOB, to Uncle Otto's, to Keba, the restaurant has gradually downplayed its ethnic origins, instead favoring the air of a chain restaurant. This presents a sort of homogenizing regression to the mean, where the restaurant now has barbecue sauce and chipotle ranch alongside its more traditional European sauces.

Another One Bites the Dust

3/29/11

Athens Clarke County Water Business Office: $71.18

Credit Card Withdrawal: $10

Credit Card Payment: $18

Today's consumption is mostly an indicator of how debt is the modern condition of the Young American. People are willing to legitimize living with their debt as long as they make minimum payments (i.e. $18)and continue to spend. The iGeneration will wait the longest of any generation to get married, mostly based on the desire to have a career first, which is hardly guaranteed by our debt-riddled country, which spends as precariously as we do.

Surfing On a Rocket

3/28/11

Rocket Salon: $31

Shell Gas Station: $30

Quiznos: $11

For the creative portion of my project, I wanted to engage myself in the nature of my own consumption. I have taken a one month sampling of my traceable purchases and will attempt to gauge the value of how I spent. I wanted to consider the values of cost-efficiency, long-term and short term value, and how I my expenditures reflect the lifestyles promoted by our culture at large. Hopefully these reflections will give a solid perspective on the cycles of consumption and why we consume as we do.

My first day of consumption would not seem to indicate a great deal. I enjoyed an overpriced sandwich with little health value. I bought increasingly expensive gas to power my car that I mostly use to drive to my menial job in the food service industry. I also purchased a disappointing haircut from supposedly "the most fashionable man in town." So far, my purchases seem misguided.