Consoomers / Consoomer Culture - Because if it has a recogniseable brand on it, I’d buy it!

[Elysian]

that aside, anyone got any videos on the matter?

 

[WelperHelper99]

ve thought a lot about this stuff before and genuinely have come to believing that all this minimalism in all fields from furniture down to logos is to make people stop thinking or some shit. It's just all so sterile and artificial-looking.

It's like they took the FUTURE ideas from the 50's, and took all the soul out of them. Your home should look lived in, not like a trash pit but a home that is yours and no one else's. That's just a pod. I'm expecting them to install a bug juice dispenser at this point

 

[NoReturn]

these are the people constantly shopping for the most shiny looking new gadget so that they can throw out their old "cluttered" one, rearranging their sofa, bookshelf and one plant once a day, and just GOTTA have that pointless ceramic pineapple on the edge of their desk to complete "the look"

It goes to expendables, too. People who don't want "tools" cluttering up their space, and maybe that's a wealth thing. You don't need tools because if you have a problem you hire someone to do it for you, you don't have cleaning supplies because you have the maid do it, etc.

 

[Cuntspiracy Man]

It goes to expendables, too. People who don't want "tools" cluttering up their space, and maybe that's a wealth thing. You don't need tools because if you have a problem you hire someone to do it for you, you don't have cleaning supplies because you have the maid do it, etc.

yup, its easy to think of owning things as a rich man's hobby, but for a rich man, its easy to throw out what you own and buy new regularly
its poor people who have to make use of everything they have, and are more likely to buy things thatll last them ages

that is, thats how it used to be
the defenitions of poor and rich are blurring now and with disposable cheap items being the norm, its harder and harder to tell whos doing something because they have to do it, and who simply likes "the aesthetic"

speaking of rich and poor people, i thought about this today when i asked myself why so many rich people, who own so many THINGS- houses, land, items.... call themselves poor.
and i realize now, when they say theyre poor they dont mean thay HAVE nothing. they mean they simply have no money on them at that very moment. they dont see the value in what they have, they dont understand how they can make something from property or land, they only understand cash in the way it buys them things. "i ran out of money for the month by buying myself things, and now i have no more and cant buy myself that starbucks drink... im poor!"
maybe thats how minimalists can allow themselves to constantly buy things and throw them out- once it goes from being money, to being an item, they no longer register its worth
a sort of selective amnesia to cope with not holding oneself responsible

 

[NoReturn]

"i ran out of money for the month by buying myself things, and now i have no more and cant buy myself that starbucks drink... im poor!"

You've stumbled on to a very real, very true thing.
It's also why you see some wealthy people making statements like "Why don't you just buy that in bulk?" or "Why don't you just buy a nicer car to begin with?"
They're conceptualizing money as getting a big chunk of it, or having a big chunk of it, then you allocate that money to different things, then you have nothing liquid anymore for a while until you can repeat the process.

 

[Chuck McGill]

It's like they took the FUTURE ideas from the 50's, and took all the soul out of them. Your home should look lived in, not like a trash pit but a home that is yours and no one else's. That's just a pod. I'm expecting them to install a bug juice dispenser at this point

This is the part that I don't think gets enough attention. Taken as individual pieces, none of the furniture photographed there is all that bad. It's just that minimalism is the pinnacle of "trying hard to look like you don't care". It's entirely performance. Take that end table there, the one on the left with those thin-ass excuses for legs. One of these days your drunk ass is going to trip and that flimsy piece of crap is going to break. If you're a normal person you shrug and drive down to a furniture store and pick up something a bit sturdier. If you're a bugman you open up Amazon and lay down $850 for a carbon copy of that heckin' sleek and heckin' minimalistic end table that ties the room together.

Basically minimalism is the home style equivalent of that chick that claims she's into spirituality, Buddhism, inner peace and all that nonsense, but she regularly gets into hair-pullout fights in parking lots and screams at the slightest bit of unanticipated traffic.

 

[PandaChai]

Is it possible to hide a thread, or maybe be banned from one so I can't see it? This thread just makes me feel bleakly existential but like a dog returning to his vomit I keep reading it.

 

[John Titor]

The Minimalism thing reminds me of the hipster stereotype: buying expensive shit just to pretend to be poor.

 

[Cuntspiracy Man]

Is it possible to hide a thread, or maybe be banned from one so I can't see it? This thread just makes me feel bleakly existential but like a dog returning to his vomit I keep reading it.

surely you wont see it if you just unwatch it
its not like kiwifarms has a homepage, you just look up threads you like and everything else is a void outside your window

The Minimalism thing reminds me of the hipster stereotype: buying expensive shit just to pretend to be poor.

trying too hard to pretend like you didnt try is still alive and well, from intentionally ripped and distressed clothing and the 2-hour perfected "messy hairbun", to the way some people conduct their whole personhood and personality
not caring is a big trend, but these people stil care... a lot... and theyre secretly afraid of doing it "wrong" and being silently excommunicated from the kool kids klub for caring too much about not caring or not caring enough about caring to make it look like you dont care

i swear, the modern world is just a bloated version of 6th grade

 

[WelperHelper99]

This is the part that I don't think gets enough attention. Taken as individual pieces, none of the furniture photographed there is all that bad. It's just that minimalism is the pinnacle of "trying hard to look like you don't care". It's entirely performance. Take that end table there, the one on the left with those thin-ass excuses for legs. One of these days your drunk ass is going to trip and that flimsy piece of crap is going to break. If you're a normal person you shrug and drive down to a furniture store and pick up something a bit sturdier. If you're a bugman you open up Amazon and lay down $850 for a carbon copy of that heckin' sleek and heckin' minimalistic end table that ties the room together.

Basically minimalism is the home style equivalent of that chick that claims she's into spirituality, Buddhism, inner peace and all that nonsense, but she regularly gets into hair-pullout fights in parking lots and screams at the slightest bit of unanticipated traffic.

Exactly. The individual pieces are fine, but there is no style, no coherence once you put them together. It looks like something out of a post apocalyptic movie in some hospital. You're supposed to have life in your house, not have everything perfectly ordered with no books on the shelves or cups on the coffee table. It doesn't help, as you said, it looks like most of this stuff is about to fall apart. I get buying something temporary if you need to, but that's what upgrading is for, so you have something permanent that stands out.

 

[Cuntspiracy Man]

Exactly. The individual pieces are fine, but there is no style, no coherence once you put them together. It looks like something out of a post apocalyptic movie in some hospital. You're supposed to have life in your house, not have everything perfectly ordered with no books on the shelves or cups on the coffee table. It doesn't help, as you said, it looks like most of this stuff is about to fall apart. I get buying something temporary if you need to, but that's what upgrading is for, so you have something permanent that stands out.

that makes perfect sense tho, why these people never "upgrade"
they dont need to, they dont get to that point, theyre constantly buying and redecorating so theyre just always getting new crap

funnily enough, a common reasoning people give for buying more expensive items is "well its better made, its higher quality, itll last longer" and thats the most respectable reason you can possibly have for paying more money or seeking out a higher end brand - which is probably why its been adopted as an excuse for people who dont truly care about longevity
how can you possibly argue for it when youre replacing everything you own within months

i assume we talked about "fast fashion" itt at some point
it feels like we did
but that applies to other trends too, like decor and even hobbies

before the 2010s the only time you'd see a "fidget toy" was either in the hands of a genuine sped, or on the desk of an overworked businessman
now 20-something easy-babysitting-major college women who spend their days organizing their stationary and sipping starbucks just "GOTTA HAVE EM" because theyre "SOOO STRESSED", despite most of them not even having fidgeting habits and forgetting that the thing is in their drawer after a week unless they run some kinda instagram page where they show the crap off to sell it to even more likeminded people
on one hand its embaressing, but on the other hand i know autists who say theyre a lil happy that fidget spinners and squeeze toys became such a normie thing, it may be lame as hell but at least theyre no longer looked at funny for playing with one

EDIT: now that i think about it
how many things that common society used to mock about autists, are now seen as cutesy little trends for the same people who bullied em years ago to enjoy?
hell even autism itself is being co-opted, the very same perfectly adjusted normal people who wouldve kicked your ass as far as 10 years ago for being a weird autist and now self diagnosing with autism, and they dont feel any cognitive dissonance over the fact that theyre, most likely, still bullying autists, because they officially decided that real autists "dont count"
>no no, im the real autist here because im uhhh quirky and like reading books
>that guy over there who barks or flaps his hands or keeps trying to talk to me about medieval swords? thats not reeeeal autism thats just weird, im perfectly justified in continuing to bully him

 

[WelperHelper99]

before the 2010s the only time you'd see a "fidget toy" was either in the hands of a genuine sped, or on the desk of an overworked businessman
now 20-something easy-babysitting-major college women who spend their days organizing their stationary and sipping starbucks just "GOTTA HAVE EM" because theyre "SOOO STRESSED", despite most of them not even having fidgeting habits and forgetting that the thing is in their drawer after a week unless they run some kinda instagram page where they show the crap off to sell it to even more likeminded people
on one hand its embaressing, but on the other hand i know autists who say theyre a lil happy that fidget spinners and squeeze toys became such a normie thing, it may be lame as hell but at least theyre no longer looked at funny for playing with one

Fidget spinners and cubes were a plague at my school when I was a teenager. Then they mostly died out, but I fully believe that Speds still hang onto them. If you're stressed out, go on a walk. It'll do a lot more for you than some toy. All it'll do is collect dust if you aren't a sped anyway.

 

[Cuntspiracy Man]

Fidget spinners and cubes were a plague at my school when I was a teenager. Then they mostly died out, but I fully believe that Speds still hang onto them. If you're stressed out, go on a walk. It'll do a lot more for you than some toy. All it'll do is collect dust if you aren't a sped anyway.

speaking of dust collecting hobbies
there was something very entertaining about watching how fast the succulent trend died out
not to powerlevel much but i absolutely adore succulents, and seeing them come into the public eye was... interesting... for a while it was great because it meant suddenly more and more people know what they are and are easier to find in shops and yards that i can nick em from but then it started dying out very, very quickly.... to the point where the only time you ever see em in a trendchaser's house is in the form of one veeeery easy to care for succulent on the desk, or more likely a plastic plant

it took me a while to realize why this trend died faster than the rest
succulents are alive, you cant just dump em in a drawer and get more, you have to KEEP them alive

normalfags couldnt be bothered
thats what i call a self-gatekeeping hobby

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

Fidget spinners and cubes were a plague at my school when I was a teenager. Then they mostly died out, but I fully believe that Speds still hang onto them. If you're stressed out, go on a walk. It'll do a lot more for you than some toy. All it'll do is collect dust if you aren't a sped anyway.

If fidget spinners had been a thing when I was a teen it would have been just another thing to steal from the sped's hands and yeet across the parking lot.

 

[WelperHelper99]

If fidget spinners had been a thing when I was a teen it would have been just another thing to steal from the sped's hands and yeet across the parking lot.

Brother it was a plague, like the pokemon cards and rubix cubes that came before; even if you yeeted one into the stratosphere, there's 200 more. There was no winning move except to wait the retardation out, which is what happened when it got memed to death.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

Brother it was a plague, like the pokemon cards and rubix cubes that came before; even if you yeeted one into the stratosphere, there's 200 more. There was no winning move except to wait the retardation out, which is what happened when it got memed to death.

I can imagine, but I had to deal with emos and the rise of hipsterdom so I get it my man.

 

[UnsufficentBoobage]

Quote won't work, but, aside from minimalism being unliveable, that "aesthetic" probably can not be maintained if you do not live all alone - I just learned that "decluttering" popularising Mary Condo literally admitted her methods do not work once she got married and had a child.
So white room with a potted plant is nothing but one more bugman thin, just like its seeming opposite of hoarding.

 

[glass_houses]

Quote won't work, but, aside from minimalism being unliveable, that "aesthetic" probably can not be maintained if you do not live all alone - I just learned that "decluttering" popularising Mary Condo literally admitted her methods do not work once she got married and had a child.
So white room with a potted plant is nothing but one more bugman thin, just like its seeming opposite of hoarding.

I have a large amount of respect for Marie Condo; I am chronically disorganised and always late, and I regard people who are extremely organised and always seven minutes early with a certain sense of awe. That said, the whole 'spark joy' concept is intrinsically flawed. Just because something doesn't 'spark joy', or maybe even causes distress, doesn't mean that it's not important or won't spark joy in the future. Example: my nan's nan gave her a colourful pottery swan long before I was born, and my nan kept it all her life. I loved that swan when I was a little kid. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. When we visited my nan and pop, I'd always have to say hello and goodbye to the thing. Well, my nan died, and left me it, and I couldn't bear to look at the thing because every time I saw it I missed my nan. I asked my mother to pack it away for me and she did. It took a decade or two, but eventually I learned to cope with my grief, and now the swan is sitting on my bookshelf. Every time I see it I remember my nan and pop and it does indeed spark joy. I have several heirlooms in my possession that technically belong to other relatives, and I am storing them for similar reasons to why I asked my mother to store the swan. 'Important' and 'joyful' are very different things.

 

[Yaks]

I have a large amount of respect for Marie Condo; I am chronically disorganised and always late, and I regard people who are extremely organised and always seven minutes early with a certain sense of awe. That said, the whole 'spark joy' concept is intrinsically flawed. Just because something doesn't 'spark joy', or maybe even causes distress, doesn't mean that it's not important or won't spark joy in the future. Example: my nan's nan gave her a colourful pottery swan long before I was born, and my nan kept it all her life. I loved that swan when I was a little kid. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. When we visited my nan and pop, I'd always have to say hello and goodbye to the thing. Well, my nan died, and left me it, and I couldn't bear to look at the thing because every time I saw it I missed my nan. I asked my mother to pack it away for me and she did. It took a decade or two, but eventually I learned to cope with my grief, and now the swan is sitting on my bookshelf. Every time I see it I remember my nan and pop and it does indeed spark joy. I have several heirlooms in my possession that technically belong to other relatives, and I am storing them for similar reasons to why I asked my mother to store the swan. 'Important' and 'joyful' are very different things.

I think the "spark joy" this is an over simplification due to translation issues, both culturally and linguistically. It's more to apply to your 50 pairs of shoes than specialty items.

 

[Cuntspiracy Man]

speaking of, not this, i've been scrolling thru this thread to find something specific and, altough i didn't, i found something that i've determined to be one of the gayer forms of consumerism- consuming products for aesthetics that are actively anti-consumerist

everything from the tie-dye and hand painted acessories of hippie culture which was born as a rejection of modern sensibilities and popularized the trend of handmade fashion,
to the "witchy" aesthetic which is modeled after the actively rebellious and antisocial practices of old witchcraft yet can be bought at Target for 9.99$, (and really, the whole punk movement in general. its not particularly counterculture if your patches are mass manufactured in china and your boots cost several hundred dollars at a brand name store)
to "Cottegecore", an aesthetic emulating farmhouses and simple living where one owns whatever they can build or get their hands on, yet now seems to neccesitate buying a very specific and expensive matching set of cutesy decor...
all these "aesthetics" are built on cultures that actively resisted common society at the time, yet are now being marketed to the masses
rule of thumb, if your whole movement can shop at Target and Forever 21, youre probably not counterculture