What’s at the root of modern American consumerism? It might not just be competition among the brands trying to sell us things, but also competition among ourselves.
An easy story to tell is that marketers and advertisers have perfected tactics to convince us to purchase things, some we need, some we don’t. And it’s an important part of the country’s capitalistic, growth-centered economy: The more people spend, the logic goes, the better it is for everybody. (Never mind that they’re sometimes spending money they don’t have, or the implications of all this production and trash for the planet.) People, naturally, want things.
But American consumerism is also built on societal factors that are often overlooked. We have a social impetus to “keep up with the Joneses,” whoever our own version of the Joneses is. And in an increasingly unequal society, the Joneses at the very top are doing a lot of the consuming, while the people at the bottom struggle to keep up or, ultimately, are left fighting for scraps.
It is funny a few weeks ago I was reading Henry David Thoreau's Walden, and he was pointing out how by even the 1830s, consumerism was a big thing, so much that it wasn't uncommon for families to regularly pile up their broken furniture and other detritus and have big ol' bonfires. Nowadays, while farmers and rednecks still do the bonfire thing, ordering up dumpsters for purges is a regular thing.
I was listening to the news this morning, thinking how much money crime and terrorism bring into local news stations, thanks to the engauge viewership from riveting crime and terror stories. Those viewers, often feeling sad and disconcerted about the direction of our country, are prime markets for advertising.
If the promotion of terror and crime on television is so profitable to local news, then it makes perfect sense for local news to give back profits to communities they harm by promoting violence, by placing a tax on advertising. A slice of the profits made by advertising should go directly back in supporting law enforcement.
Dan Nosowitz was scrolling through Instagram when he saw it: an ad for a cooking device whose sole function was to heat up raclette cheese.
“I had to click through because I had no idea what it actually was,” he explains. “Finding out that an algorithm believed I would be interested in a discount ‘traditional Swiss-style electric cheese melter’ is sort of comfortably bumbling. It’s like watching a Roomba bonk into a wall.”
Whether the humor inherent in the ad comes from the fact that the gadget is so oddly specific, or because raclette is an incredibly high-maintenance cheese and therefore hardly a common grocery item for most people, is difficult to say. What we do know, however, is that the complicated set of algorithms that serve targeted ads on social media are the most brutal, most incisive owns of our time.
I sure get tired of all those green energy scams advertised on my social media feeds … 💡
It seems they can’t find enough ways to try to push solar panels, electric cars, and ground-source heat pumps on folks. The advertising is non-stop. While I am interested in some of the technology, I am skeptical and I am certainly not in the market to buy solar panels or an electric car today. When I own my own land, I think I would like to have a simple — in other words not complex — solar system for minimal energy uses but none of these massive-grid tied arrays for the energy hungry suburbanite lifestyle.
My sneaking suspicion that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is advertising to QAnon supporters …
I’ve been noticing that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is increasingly advertising on Facebook feeds and prepper and homesteading websites. I couldn’t help but think they are going for the QAnon crowd, trying to raise donations from conspiratorial minded individuals, who think the government prostituting children. Maybe it’s a good thing — redirecting funds that might otherwise be used for buying merchandise supporting the bizarre conspiracy theory, but it sure seems exploitative of individuals that are suffering from delusional, conspiratorial thinking about their government.
