A New Kind of Conspicuous Consumption
wired.com
wired.com
It inspired me to create a food blog on facebook. Every week I would upload something tacky and anti-yuppy. My posts included Choco Tacos, Wendy's hamburgers, and cups of ramen.
Now I'm thinking of posting my experiences at the grocery story, Home Depot, etc.
Conspicuous nonconsumption [0], as I call it, is all the rage in SF and among engineers. That's why everyone wears hoodies and tshirts: to show that they're different from MBAs and the suits and the bankers. But that's just another way to show your status: you are the member of an exclusive club that doesn't need suits to have high status.
And so with your blog. You're identifying as part of a group that's too good for status symbols. You're explicitly saying "I'm not like you" and implicitly saying "I'm better than you because I don't need whatever things you find valuable".
You're showing off your non-consumption for high status, in exactly the same way that they're showing off their consumption for high status. At the end of the day, you're both just showing off for high status! [1]
[0] See also "stealth wealth"
[1] No judgement here, btw: in tech, I think we all do this, me included.
In the meantime, you should consider setting up shop as a recruiter. You could probably place your Washington friends in jobs at startups here fairly easily. If they can memorize a few words/acronyms (Angular, MVVM, etc.) and are willing to show up to the interview with an axe for good measure, you'll be cashing checks in no time.
Also, lumbersexuals have fancier hair. Grunge has more spiritual similarly to t shirts and hoodies, a rejection of expensive fancy fashion, than the fancified hipsterism that chased after it.
So it's the 1990s again? Cool, cargo pants must be coming back, too. I wonder if it has anything to do with the rise of Portland in pop culture. Portlandia's got it right: it's still the 90's in Portland (I'm from the area, it's pretty much true).
Perhaps if conspicuous philanthropy found its way down to everyday people, that would be a nice addition too.
Compare Burners who fly a helicopter into camp, vs people who go for a hike in the city park.
That's a really weird conclusion to come to. I wear hoodies and tee shirts because 1) my job doesn't require more, 2) my hoodie and tee are comfortable and easily adaptable to changing temperature, and 3) clothing shopping is a chore, an extreme annoyance.
Well-fitting "slob" clothing looks better than poorly-fitting mid-range "nice" clothing, particularly when one doesn't fit the body type of the target audience for the latter.
'Well-fitting slob clothing' not only signals that you're not subject to some sort of onerous dress code imposed by your employer (within reason), but also that you can afford to spend money on what most people could consider leisurewear. Further, while you may genuinely not be interested in clothes, picking them out in the morning, looking at other peoples', or shopping for them - and while I can sympathize with your disinterest - that very indifference is itself a mark of affluence. Most people work hard at that stuff because they feel obliged to create a certain image to get employed, get laid, and maintain their self-respect. If they don't care about clothes and they choose not to spend money on them, and they don't happen to put out certain other socioeconomic signals, then they will just be dismissed as scruffy bums.
If anything, that signifies low status. The vast majority of people in hoodies and tees are not six figure engineers and designers.
but also that you can afford to spend money on what most people could consider leisurewear.
Oh, come on. Hoodies and tees are cheap. Really cheap. And versatile.
Give me a couple of basic color tees, one hoodie, and two pairs of jeans, and that's my wardrobe. I don't need to cycle my shirt colors and patterns, monitor my tie usage, iron my clothes, etc.
I don't buy your argument at all.
i like choco tacos but wendys and ramen cups are pretty tereible.
The idea of "showing off" with vacations, weekend events or even professional accomplishments seems preposterous to me. How is this socially acceptable is beyond my comprehension.
Likewise, I'm probably only interested in knowing where 10 or so people spent their vacation, and even then, only when the narrative is directed at me or a small number of friends. I can't understand how a public parade of general info and photos can be anything other than utterly shallow and boring.
Needless to say, I don't get Facebook.
I don't see people doing anything like this. Maybe I'm selective but really next-to no friends share their consumption. I think the share-your-sunsets-and-dives-into-waterfalls is the movie version of Facebook. We wind up sharing cats, snark and sad moments.
i'm 33, sf now oregon raised, and i'd say in general i see less fb usage by my friends, but those that still do use it, it's almost all positive, brag-ish sharing.
people i know with kids, especially, it seems almost impossible to imagine sharing 'cats, snark, and sad moments'.
Deleted my FB account but copped a hiding from the silent majority for being 'hard to get in touch with' and feel a bit guilty about this but overall life is better without FB or any other form of social media.
True experientialism is being there in the moment, not standing outside carefully curating the moment for others to gawk at.
Edit: *experientialism not experimentalism
Yeah, the people who don't use Facebook much do the "here's a picture of my ski trip thing" but they seem like such the minority.
Anyway, I can at least tell you that once your kids actually grow up, you just might have time to once again waste time online.
Are you in the Bay Area? The Bay Area is obsessed with travel. Not that there's anything wrong with that, since I do feel that travel is great, but many in the Bay Area have no idea what it's like to come from a background where it's not even considered a possibility.
When I lived and worked in Arizona, the only "travel" anyone was interested in were weekend trips to Mexico, or maybe visiting an iconic American city (e.g. SF). If I'd brought up Thailand, they wouldn't even have known enough to make ladyboy jokes.
-- Francis Bacon
Let's put it this way, if all the people, no matter what their income, just took their income, spent it on the basics and then saved or invested the remainder, we'd all pretty much end up poorer. No titans of industry (who would buy consumer goods in a if consumption was avoided), few service workers, few skilled jobs, fewer blue collar jobs. Mostly we'd have government employees and people in essential services (farmers, physicians, educators, etc).
No work at Starbucks, or Amazon, or Google or Tesla. I mean, who would need to buy anything beside the basics from Amazon, and since commerce would be de-emphasized, no need for advertising (adwords) on google.
I guess we could live pretty retro lives, living like we were all Amish or similar, but is that what would be best?
Certainly disposable consumerism is arguably bad, but what if we all decided quality was paramount and instead of buying ten cheap things, we bought one expensive but durable thing costing the same as the ten cheap things?
Anyway, our economic system, neo-liberal capitalism, (and others as well) depend on consumption, frugal wealthy people would impact the economy negatively.
Look, I dislike Hollywood (it's cheap, base, and unimaginative, rarely is there "Art") for various reasons, but, at the same time, I understand that overpaid actors mean that lots of ancillary jobs in Hollywood exist due to their opulent, unfrugal, spednthrift lifestyles.
Just one example. Everyone cooked at home. No restaurants. No cooks, chefs, sole proprietors, severs, etc. in the restaurant industry. There would be no restaurant industry. We could go on. Extending this, "getting rid of conspicuous consumption" might hide things, which, I understand, it makes us feel better, but solves nothing by itself.
Now, of course that isn't what people actually do, but that's how we've aligned everything: If you "go out" but you don't do work or buy something while you're out, you're transgressing the cultural rules. But if we design spaces and situations that are only for buying, we cut off other avenues of experience.
An idea I recall from a well-known chef, which I'm probably butchering a bit, is that a high-end restaurant experience isn't there just to be everyday consumption, but to inspire one's own cooking as well. That's very different from the purpose of going to a McDonald's, and the simplistic branding wars of "McDonald's vs. Burger King" or "Coke vs. Pepsi." It's the latter type of thing that anticonsumerism really seeks to stamp out.
They have an issue with people who show off their wealth --like buying apple products in the face of cheaper (better?) alternatives. Here the opposite happens, they at times praise the companies but bash the consumers for showing off.
I just learned this myself recently as I was kindly corrected for using the term improperly. I then had to do the research to verify and found that THRIFT (thrive) in this case refers to success or prosperity. A SPENDTHRIFT is someone that wastes (SPENDS) their success (THRIFT). In modern usage it is someone wasteful with money. This is contrary to the assumed or obvious "being thrifty with spending" where thrift=frugal.
You are so right, hold on a sec while I just step out of the economy we live in, into a the next economy. Because it is so easy to do. Why bother trying to change anything, when all we have to do is to take a single step into the new better economy?
Because we have no choice. If I choose not to pollute, I am still going to die from everyone else doing it.