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

Scalpers and resellers in any hobby really do just need to eat shit and die.
Yeah. They ruined my thrift store escapism dammit. Now there's all these con-men/hustlers out there with shopping carts with either their ebay or Amazon app, scanning anything that isn't bolted down.

At my job I literally watch old men go from Savers, straight to us and stand out in the parking lot peeling off the thrift stickers before they come in to try and sell whatever it is they found that day.

Problem is: Old/Recognizable ≠ Valuable.

A lot of these scalpers and resellers get pissy when you explain that just because someone on ebay is asking $120 for 4 old MAD Digests, doesn't mean they will sell at $120 and it certainly doesn't mean that we will buy your torn, moldy, foxxing, MAD books you found in the thrift store dumpster.

I once had a guy bring me 4 boxes of books that had been left out in the rain and when I inquired about them he said "I just saw them on the road as I was driving home and thought you guys could give me money for them."

Video Game/Boutique Movie customers always get upset because they always wanna be the one to find the heckin hidden gem that is valuable and get it for $2 instead of $20. They all want to be the person that walks into a second-hand store, find something for $1 and then get home to find it's worth a Bajillion Million dollars. They never think employees might also research things. They just want to be the person to game the system and find a loophole.

To be clear, you can always tell when a customer is pumped they found a video game they genuinely want and are excited to find, and when the customer watched some YouTube videos and finds a video game he just recently learned is worth money.

If collectors would stop paying extortion prices on ebay, second-hand store/thrift stores would stop trying to compete with it.
 
To be clear, you can always tell when a customer is pumped they found a video game they genuinely want and are excited to find, and when the customer watched some YouTube videos and finds a video game he just recently learned is worth money.
Yes you can, and I refuse to help educate the latter when it comes to my hobbies.
 
Yes you can, and I refuse to help educate the latter when it comes to my hobbies.
As you should. "Gatekeep until they prove you wrong" is what I always say. If they're seriously interested about the hobby, they'll learn themselves. Keep the entertainment entertaining.

One of the worst things you can wish upon a person, imo, is that their darling hobby/fascination goes mainstream because the quality of their escapism will, without fail, go down in quality.

Shoutout to Warhammer and D&D, you swam too close to the stream.
 
Sorry it's late but saw something few pages back that kind of grinded my gears a bit about women consooming mainstream smut "literature"/porn and degeneracy similar to men, namely the denial of it. Necessary disclaimer I guess: I think men and women are both just swell and equal and shit. BUT. Women most certainly have definitely been degens as long and as varied as men have. Let's not say women don't metaphorically fart or that men are worse so end convo or whatever. I mean firstly we're on a site where all races, creeds, and both genders are shown as sometimes cool or batshit insane unless you remain willfully ignorant.

Anyway for context and fun, we'll jump in and start with like our grandparent's times. Grandpappy would read little books about cowboys that were self inserts that did cool crap, struggled but persevered, yadayada, and most likely a buxom woman falls in love with them and is a ride or die. Depending on the author you'd also get some banger sex scenes too, yeah. A lot do end there, but grandmammy? You ever seen the sheer *thousands* in small areas, of small books, a cover of which with what on a male-centric book would be conan with his ho-of-the-week? Or like casanova holding a big titted, scantily clad, red haired chick? Those were for women. "Bodice rippers", ho! Of course there's some in Christian book stores etc, same for male centric, but the majority were not wholesome puritan books where a fair maiden is courted and then a big marriage and fade to black sex scene, no, grandmammy supported and wanted to read a chick, self insert, sometimes strong/independent sometimes a cinderella type, do cool crap struggle but persevere yadayada BUT MOST CERTAINLY get her back blown tf out in new and exciting scenarios by not-conan or not-braveheart or not-prime arnold that saw self insert and knew she was his eternal love, and upon her death he will flat out ACK himself.

Yes men have weird porn or hentai or niche fetishes, but I respond with PARANORMAL ROMANCE, also known as the pretty popular subgenre of your Twilight type stuff, your vampires etc but also furries ranging from man that growls to full on dog, sometimes dog on dog or dog on woman depending on the author/plot. It's straight up female centric monstergirl/boy hentai in written form. further down the rabbit hole we get mpreg etc but that'd probably be brushed off as too small a normie sample size. but maybe you say "no, twilight was only popular with a small group and nobody got invested into it or thought it wasn't crap". your honor, item b. COLLEEN HOOVER. incest, abuse, explicit sex scenes. and theres also books like by hannah grace with icebreaker, with like a kid comic cover but with explicit sex scenes straight with men going for that ass. those aren't in erotica aisles either those are at walmart beside harry potter or lotr. and you know what? none of those books have adult content advisories. zero. ive only ever seen advisories on women centric books in dark corners of book stores with women centric paranormal romance with a focus on basically danger close furry/actual bestiality-lite where it's just basically occassionally a wolf no were like wolf tales by kate douglas.

And THAT'S funny because I've read both men and women-centric books, and since hentai was brought up, let's say you enter any books a million/other book seller, let's say you go to the manga. EVERYTHING has parental advisory when there's so much as a tit. vast majority of stuff with it is at highest point very softcore porn, like a modern beach, but of course that's actual imagery. even light novels though, images included, almost always avoid explicit sex. yes there's loopholes, mc falling into a girls buttcheeks slightly offscreen etc, but actual explicit stuff is actively difficult to acquire, and what's on shelves with actual explicit content is mostly stuff that's fully plastic wrapped and takes it quite seriously like A Girl By The Shore or Berserk. Stuff like manga and light novels, american comics too for that matter are regulated very seriously and measures however light are taken to reduce chances a 10 year old or something reads the berserk eclipse or horse scene, no such measures are take with female centric romance novels at all, they're just not stigmatized at all besides stuff like people noticing them or their related works in school libraries.

but besides weirdly limited advisories and restrictions, of course in general it's fine, man or woman has a hard day or week or however long, they deserve to be able to read about chad or stacey self inserts beating evil, or when older, smashing or being smashed. it leads to biased and hypocritical mockery or insults though when you've got women that will check out your Icebreaker or latest Christine Feehan or JR Ward to read about a stacey trying to fit the sport's captains 9incher in and since there's no real knowledge of the writing or it's just kind of blanked out people react to it like they watched gone with the wind content wise. like a prospective male coomer will have to come up to the register with CAUTION ADULT CONTENT and a pink haired chick bending over sure, but a woman can walk up with "Ugly Love" in artsy font with water droplets or a half eaten apple, or a ice skater wholesomely talking to a hockey player, and yet that shit's got just as much cooming.

tldr the market speaks, and men enjoy being a james bond or a conan taking names and banging tf out a hot af blond spy love interest, and women enjoy being that woman. men and women also love real heavy literature with tons of paragraphs on existential dread, with or without smashing, but sometimes you need your fifty shades or your hentai or game of thrones even, a outlet for sexy shit, and that's ok. to deny that and to flip randomly in any romance book is to be willfully ignorant.
 
Yes men have weird porn or hentai or niche fetishes, but I respond with PARANORMAL ROMANCE, also known as the pretty popular subgenre of your Twilight type stuff, your vampires etc but also furries ranging from man that growls to full on dog, sometimes dog on dog or dog on woman depending on the author/plot. It's straight up female centric monstergirl/boy hentai in written form.
I saw an interesting video the other day about BookTok, because apparently several of these women are straight-out saying that they skip "long paragraphs" or sometimes anything that's not dialogue, because they want to get to the romance and the sexin. And of course they consoom all the shiny limited editions of exactly the same book.
 
women are straight-out saying that they skip "long paragraphs" or sometimes anything that's not dialogue, because they want to get to the romance and the sexin.
>Entire community centered around reading
>Look inside
>They don't read

That aside I noticed this sort of attitude is more and more common in most hobby communities these days
"Yes I'm an artist and I'm PROUD to say I hardly make art!"
"I'm a gamer and I play all my games on super easy, cinematic mode, aim assist enabled with boss skip!"
"I'm a film critic and I don't even like films, and it's time we normalzied that!"
What the shit is going on? I mean, I'm sure it's largely, at least in part, just posers trying to cement themselves a place in a community they don't belong in, but when did we as a society reach a point where this is not only acceptable but only super common and a point of pride?
 
I always think that people who have this FOMO mentality don't have self-control. Like, just buy something else to cope with not getting that item instead of engaging in what seems to be a highway robbery or make a childish rant on how you didn't get your toy like a spoiled child. Scalpers will always exist as long as suckers are willing to pay anything or even give one of their kidneys to the black market.
A lot of the time the toy is only worth something to them WHILE it's big and trendy, they want it because everyone else wants it, if they wait a while for it to go down in price it also won't be HOT HOT HOT
FOMO in any form is usually never worth paying extra or whatever it costs to have a "limited run" item. usually you can find almost anything related to collecting on eBay, and even then, if it's not at a price you like or an auction is going crazy, you can wait and be patient. Anything I've bought that I collect as I too am a collector of plastic bullshit I don't need, wasn't worth FOMO hype and I was able to find it at a price I was comfortable paying by simply waiting. Another trap I see a lot of consoomer types or someone addicted to being "on the latest trend" when it comes to collecting is just collecting everything, no matter if they actually want it or not. The golden rule of collecting, no matter what it is, is only collect what you want. It's that simple.
 
What the shit is going on? I mean, I'm sure it's largely, at least in part, just posers trying to cement themselves a place in a community they don't belong in, but when did we as a society reach a point where this is not only acceptable but only super common and a point of pride?
They wrap all this up as being "more accessible" and "gatekeeping bad"/"gatekeeping is bullying". So it's not just that it's acceptable to do things on easy mode, it's existing within a whole ecosystem of weakness as virtuousness.
 
>Entire community centered around reading
>Look inside
>They don't read

That aside I noticed this sort of attitude is more and more common in most hobby communities these days
"Yes I'm an artist and I'm PROUD to say I hardly make art!"
"I'm a gamer and I play all my games on super easy, cinematic mode, aim assist enabled with boss skip!"
"I'm a film critic and I don't even like films, and it's time we normalzied that!"
What the shit is going on? I mean, I'm sure it's largely, at least in part, just posers trying to cement themselves a place in a community they don't belong in, but when did we as a society reach a point where this is not only acceptable but only super common and a point of pride?
They wrap all this up as being "more accessible" and "gatekeeping bad"/"gatekeeping is bullying". So it's not just that it's acceptable to do things on easy mode, it's existing within a whole ecosystem of weakness as virtuousness.
And this is why gatekeeping a hobby should still be enforced, more or less. It's superficial if you only joined the hobby just to be a part of the "kool kidz klub" in the first place without knowing what the hobby is about. Even worse if someone injects their socio-political beliefs in the hobby itself.
Another trap I see a lot of consoomer types or someone addicted to being "on the latest trend" when it comes to collecting is just collecting everything, no matter if they actually want it or not.
Content creators are more or less guilty of this, they want viewers to know that they already got the latest item for popularity points and engagement.
 
They wrap all this up as being "more accessible" and "gatekeeping bad"/"gatekeeping is bullying". So it's not just that it's acceptable to do things on easy mode, it's existing within a whole ecosystem of weakness as virtuousness.
This is a microcosm of current society. It's not seen as a positive trait to take charge of or protect what you care about in general.
Content creators are more or less guilty of this, they want viewers to know that they already got the latest item for popularity points and engagement.
I'll give them a pass on this honestly, it's a calculated investment in their case. It's a lot harder to justify when you don't routinely make a profit on this behavior.
 
It's superficial if you only joined the hobby just to be a part of the "kool kidz klub" in the first place without knowing what the hobby is about.
Ironically its these people who end up gatekeeping the most in the end, telling original hobbyists how they are also totally heckin valid because of this rule, this rule, and that rule that they've pulled out their ass to justify their poserism.
 
Ironically its these people who end up gatekeeping the most in the end, telling original hobbyists how they are also totally heckin valid because of this rule, this rule, and that rule that they've pulled out their ass to justify their poserism.
That is absolutely also a thing. I have seen more than a handful of people who are real sticklers for the rules to the detriment of the activity. (e.g. People who play tabletop games "by the book" and don't just not have "house rules", but who will adamantly reject them if proposed.)
Strangely, it reminds me of old video games. During the fun times of games like TF2, you had whole servers of people just dicking around and hanging out and having fun. You didn't have to play the game "as intended" you were just there to play. Now with all things being either ranked or matched or whatever, it's less fun.
 
If collectors would stop paying extortion prices on ebay, second-hand store/thrift stores would stop trying to compete with it.
Most of that shit is a giant scam of sellers bidding up their own listings to inflate prices.



Also some retard actually bought all those shitty Brian Herbet "Dune" novels;

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Creepy tranny hoarding Wedding Crashers DVDs, a film he's apparently never seen:
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Most of the comments were roasting him not for consooming, but for being late to the movie hoarding game, and not being as fun or excessive like others who did it first like the guy who has thousands of copies of Shrek on VHS.

We could do a whole separate thread on these guys. I became aware of people doing this about 10 years ago with video games, not worthless ones but ones that were starting to become valuable like conkers bad fur day on N64. I knew a guy who had hundreds of copies of it, and I believe he was collaborating with a couple of other people to rig the market on the game.

The good news is that some attempts at this have failed before. Someone tried to meme the diamond vhs Disney releases from the 1990s as valuable when actually they were just the standard Disney video releases of that era that they made thousands if not millions of.
 
>Entire community centered around reading
>Look inside
>They don't read
Homestuck was one of the first to fall to this shit. Already been brought up countless times but the current fandom" is just gatekeeping troons and zoomers who never read the actual comic or the comics and just went off video essaysist "explanations" of the "deep themes" and shit before going in with pre baked opinions long after basting in the "community" for some amount of time if they ever actually get around to reading the comic. But oh no! They might see a SLUR! YIKES! Don't worry ,they have ANTI SLUR EXTENSIONS for that now! Can't consoom if I see a naughty bad word like say uhhhhh FAG!
I keep getting reminded of this shit in part because of my running gag of having a pfp of one homestuck character for inside joke reasons completely untied to homestuck itself, and also the fact I watched it happen due to being a guy that read homestuck back when it was coming out with some friends that introduced me to MSPA a few years beforehand. Current crop of supposedly "media literate" types don't even understand lil cal's name is a Gary Coleman reference. Feels bad man. Consoomer homestuck material was attempted several times as it was milked to try and satiate these people, but I think it's just patreon now with no aggressive merch pushing save for that cafe they rented out the last two years in California for some exclusive event.
 
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Homestuck? Moar like homosuck amirite?
Ah yes, the classic webcomic gay joke. I mean there were others but that one seems to have had the most staying power for a number of reasons.
Also I looked up "homestuck funko pop" on image search engines out of morbid curiousity it seems people on twitter and reddit REAAAAALY want more for their wall. Maybe that's why the vinyl art figures that got made like 10or more years ago of the characters randomly started getting scalped in the $200 range. They've become "proxy funkos".
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I've seen them call these "ugly" despite wanting them so much but then they go and draw the characters as obese with vitiligo and scars all over so I don't fucking get it.
 
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Homestuck always seemed strange to me in that it had very little merchandise irl. It had a huge presence at conventions in its heyday, but almost 0 merchandise available for purchase. Fanart was also disallowed by the creator so there wasn't even fanart for sale. It was very weird, I can't think of another fandom in a similar situation.
 
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