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

[Ultrapenguin]

This is a slightly different example, but a few people have brought up music equipment.

The late Eddie Van Halen had a favorite guitar he played on constantly that was referred to as "The Frankenstrat". This sad looking piece of shit:


The thing has scratches and cracks all over the finish, the middle pickup slot is occupied by an actual nonfunctional hunk of scrap and the pickups that are there are just kind of shoved in with no housings which is ok because it doesn't even have a pickup selector switch, there's like a half pickguard that doesn't fit with no volume knob...in other words the thing is a total mess clearly pieced together over time and played very heavily.

Yet tons of boomers worship EVH, he's a household name, and he was admittedly a great guitar player, so the lesson you'd think fans would take away would be that it isn't about having expensive or flashy gear. Just take what you have, make it your own, and play.

Well in 2007 Fender produced the Frankenstrat replica model, which is an exact duplicate of the trashy beaten up guitar EVH played, down to the cracks and missing features.


They made 300 of them, each selling for $25,000, and they all sold out within 15 minutes.
300 people spent $25k each to get a guitar meticulously designed to mimic another guitar that looks like crap and is missing multiple basic functions that was haphazardly patched together by a guy who didn't care about appearance or expense.

If you want to know what brand of enormous fag would drop thousands of dollars to proudly show off how much they wish they were another far more talented musician, probably the least cool thing a musician could do, at least one Van Halen fan springs to mind:

Spoiler: There he is

There's all kinds of consumerist garbage in music, but some of the more egregious examples I've seen tend to revolve around electric guitars. When it isn't someone paying 4x as much for identical quality Fender or Gibson products that they never actually bother using, it's someone paying 2x as much for Kirk Hammet Metallica signature guitar picks, so they can declare to the world how much they want to be like one of the least inspired and most transparently closeted men in metal.

Spoiler: KH signature pick

If there's anything straight male metalheads like in their products, it's purple, glitter, and heart shapes.

I don't think music consumerism is quite as bad as having your life revolve around worthless plastic garbage because equipment at least holds some resale value, but there's also way more money involved, so just one middle aged white man going through a midlife crisis can make the amount your average funko pop collector spends look like pocket change.

 

[Twinkletard]

This is a slightly different example, but a few people have brought up music equipment.

The late Eddie Van Halen had a favorite guitar he played on constantly that was referred to as "The Frankenstrat". This sad looking piece of shit:
View attachment 2156841View attachment 2156844

The thing has scratches and cracks all over the finish, the middle pickup slot is occupied by an actual nonfunctional hunk of scrap and the pickups that are there are just kind of shoved in with no housings which is ok because it doesn't even have a pickup selector switch, there's like a half pickguard that doesn't fit with no volume knob...in other words the thing is a total mess clearly pieced together over time and played very heavily.

Yet tons of boomers worship EVH, he's a household name, and he was admittedly a great guitar player, so the lesson you'd think fans would take away would be that it isn't about having expensive or flashy gear. Just take what you have, make it your own, and play.

Well in 2007 Fender produced the Frankenstrat replica model, which is an exact duplicate of the trashy beaten up guitar EVH played, down to the cracks and missing features.
View attachment 2156948

They made 300 of them, each selling for $25,000, and they all sold out within 15 minutes.
300 people spent $25k each to get a guitar meticulously designed to mimic another guitar that looks like crap and is missing multiple basic functions that was haphazardly patched together by a guy who didn't care about appearance or expense.

If you want to know what brand of enormous fag would drop thousands of dollars to proudly show off how much they wish they were another far more talented musician, probably the least cool thing a musician could do, at least one Van Halen fan springs to mind:

Spoiler: There he is

View attachment 2156985View attachment 2157186

There's all kinds of consumerist garbage in music, but some of the more egregious examples I've seen tend to revolve around electric guitars. When it isn't someone paying 4x as much for identical quality Fender or Gibson products that they never actually bother using, it's someone paying 2x as much for Kirk Hammet Metallica signature guitar picks, so they can declare to the world how much they want to be like one of the least inspired and most transparently closeted men in metal.

Spoiler: KH signature pick

View attachment 2157060
If there's anything straight male metalheads like in their products, it's purple, glitter, and heart shapes.

I don't think music consumerism is quite as bad as having your life revolve around worthless plastic garbage because equipment at least holds some resale value, but there's also way more money involved, so just one middle aged white man going through a midlife crisis can make the amount your average funko pop collector spends look like pocket change.

The Kirk Hammett guitar pick had me cracking up because I saw the commercial for it. Wow, so it's got a chunk missing and that helps with your grip on it? The fuck?

You could also go down the pedal consoomerist rabbit hole as well.

 

[Croco]

The Kirk Hammett guitar pick had me cracking up because I saw the commercial for it. Wow, so it's got a chunk missing and that helps with your grip on it? The fuck?

You could also go down the pedal consoomerist rabbit hole as well.

Ideally if you buy music gear (not picks) on the used market per Reverb, the resell value either goes up over the years or at least retains value. Buying new gear from a store is foolish, though.

 

[The Grognard]

Obviously the mastering process will partly determine how a recording will sound, but the dynamic range of vinyl in and of itself is inferior to that of a well mastered CD or lossless digital recording. There are inherent qualities to vinyl that make it sound "warmer", but at the end of the day it's distortion, and not related to the music being played. Depending on what type of music you're playing (like classical, for example) it can really dampen the audio quality of the music. (This is a good article about the vinyl vs. CD debate with input from sound engineers.)

The main problem that happened with CDs is the Loudness War. The vast majority of record buyers don't care how a record sounds as long as it can be played on any old piece of shit CD player, so as a result dynamic range is sacrificed for extra volume and the vast majority of CDs released sound worse on a good sound system compared to the original vinyl releases where they actually bothered to do the mixing properly.

 

[Dick Justice]

We shit on EA and Activision Blizzard all day long, but apparently legitimate fleecing scams happen within the china realm and foreign territory that happens to land in our web space and the U.S government does nothing.

It's funny because it's actually the least egregious in the west where there's a strong tradition and history of making actual games, ergo resistance to microtransaction cancer. To see how much worse it is for places that were a tabula rasa, read Gamble your life away in ZT Online, and note that we've had 14 years of evil innovation since then.

"Show me the coolest thing you own that isn't expensive"
...One of these is the stupid $300 Iron Man helmet from earlier
View attachment 2154184

...and then we saw the dad hyping his kid and everything is right in the world again.

 

[NoReturn]

2020:

2021:

 

[Vingle]

2021:

Cringed throughout the video at how orange her foundation is.

 

[Gar For Archer]

Ex-Funko consoomer talks about why he stopped collecting Funko Pops:

tl;dw, he hates their predatory artificial scarcity business model that targets “completionists” (e.g. mindless consoomers) and doesn’t feel like collecting something he can never have a complete collection of, lmao.

I’d say this one’s definitely worth a listen, dude’s genuinely pretty knowledgeable about vintage toys and shows some examples comparing Funkos to the older brands they’re trying to emulate.

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

Now I can’t say for sure, but maybe this is why the NBA 2K series has gone down in popularity over the years.

 

[Toolbox]

Now I can’t say for sure, but maybe this is why the NBA 2K series has gone down in popularity over the years.

The horrors these eyes have seen.

 

[Vingle]

View attachment 2160191
The horrors these eyes have seen.

Felt he had a very punchable face in the actual videos.

 

[Gar For Archer]

Archer’s daily Funko Pop update: can you make money buying and reselling Funko mystery boxes? (tl;dw fuck no you dumbshit, that should be fucking obvious).

This nigga spent $33,000 on mystery boxes and after getting what he wanted and selling everything else, he lost around $1500. And that’s after keeping $7000 worth of Funko pops from the boxes.

The best part is the conclusion he comes to at the end: no, Funko pop mystery boxes are not a good way to make money, but we’re not in it for the money, we’re collectors and we love opening mystery boxes!

You fucking nigger, a collector would just go save up and seek out the pieces they wanted. You could’ve done that and saved $1500. You’re not a collector paying for the value of an item, you’re a consoomer paying for the dopamine rush of opening a stupid fucking mystery box.

 

[h0387]

Archer’s daily Funko Pop update: can you make money buying and reselling Funko mystery boxes? (tl;dw fuck no you dumbshit, that should be fucking obvious).

This nigga spent $33,000 on mystery boxes and after getting what he wanted and selling everything else, he lost around $1500. And that’s after keeping $7000 worth of Funko pops from the boxes.

The best part is the conclusion he comes to at the end: no, Funko pop mystery boxes are not a good way to make money, but we’re not in it for the money, we’re collectors and we love opening mystery boxes!

You fucking nigger, a collector would just go save up and seek out the pieces they wanted. You could’ve done that and saved $1500. You’re not a collector paying for the value of an item, you’re a consoomer paying for the dopamine rush of opening a stupid fucking mystery box.

Lol @ 15:10. A net loss of $1300 is "not too bad"? What a cope. Even if you aren't a reseller and intend on keeping every item for your collection, you've still paid $1300 more than retail, and as the cherry on top it's for items you probably wouldn't have even gone out of your way to obtain in the first place. These Funko consoomers are something else.

 

[mr.moon1488]

Lol @ 15:10. A net loss of $1300 is "not too bad"? What a cope. Even if you aren't a reseller and intend on keeping every item for your collection, you've still paid $1300 more than retail, and as the cherry on top it's for items you probably wouldn't have even gone out of your way to obtain in the first place. These Funko consoomers are something else.

Right at the start of the video, you can tell the dude is mildly retarded. He starts talking about how this mystery box company has "guaranteed value" so if you buy a $100 box, you'll get at least $100 worth of shit in it. If this was true, the nigger running the mystery box company would be broke in no time.

 

[Gar For Archer]

Right at the start of the video, you can tell the dude is mildly retarded. He starts talking about how this mystery box company has "guaranteed value" so if you buy a $100 box, you'll get at least $100 worth of shit in it. If this was true, the nigger running the mystery box company would be broke in no time.

see, with any normal “hobby” you’d be right, but the way these mystery box companies usually work is they buy entire collections off of people trying to sell off their entire stock at 50-70% “market value” (which is documented via Funko’s own app, which.. who the hell knows where that data is actually pulled from). Many of Funko Man’s (real name: Pop Fun to Play) videos show him doing exactly this - buying $7000-10000+ collections off of people looking to leave the hobby for a fraction of the “market value” to resell in his shop.

It’s like the water cycle, but with shitty plastic figurines. Some dumbass buys them, gets bored of them (or horrified with the years and thousands of dollars poured down the drain) and offloads their entire collection to these resellers at pennies on the dollar to sell to other gullible idiots.

 

[mr.moon1488]

see, with any normal “hobby” you’d be right, but the way these mystery box companies usually work is they buy entire collections off of people trying to sell off their entire stock at 50-70% “market value” (which is documented via Funko’s own app, which.. who the hell knows where that data is actually pulled from). Many of Funko Man’s (real name: Pop Fun to Play) videos show him doing exactly this - buying $7000-10000+ collections off of people looking to leave the hobby for a fraction of the “market value” to resell in his shop.

It’s like the water cycle, but with shitty plastic figurines. Some dumbass buys them, gets bored of them (or horrified with the years and thousands of dollars poured down the drain) and offloads their entire collection to these resellers at pennies on the dollar to sell to other gullible idiots.

So basically the dealers are running a massive racket that operates by milking retarded soyboys on a cyclical basis... It's unfuckingbelievable how retarded people are these days.

 

[NoReturn]

Time for the 2-Minutes TikTok Hate:

 

[Neet Tokusatsu]

Organized religion really isn’t all that much different from corporate consoomerism. Like, the Church selling microtransactions to forgive your sins is a thing that literally happened at some point.

IMO, religion and spiritualism should be practiced on a familial or community level. Anything larger and it will inevitably develop into a system for exploitation. My stance on religion is very similar to my stance on consoomers. You should strive to give back to your community and not be a dick to those who don’t deserve it not because you think it’ll guarantee you a place in heaven, but because it’s what you genuinely believe is the right thing to do.

E: Just thought of another kind of consoomer that I don't recall being brought up yet: audiophiles. While we could sit here and debate the merits of $600 headphones and whether or not you can even tell the difference (hint: you can't, the price-to-quality curve flattens at around $300 and will give serious diminishing returns beyond that that no normal person will even notice) we're talking about people who spend likely tens of thousands of dollars buying dozens of pairs of $500-$1500 headphones, plus thousands of dollars on other audio equipment like amps and DAC's, just to listen to "reference tracks" for the purpose of (theoretically) appreciating the audio quality instead of enjoying the music itself. Tens of thousands of dollars for dozens of pairs of headphones, all for a difference in quality so poorly quantifiable that it might as well be a placebo effect. And if you thought a $1000 pair of headphones would at least be sturdy and well-built? Think again, a lot of these "high end" companies are notorious for their shoddy build quality, poor QC and terrible customer service which people are willing to put up with because muh audio quality.

Last I checked, there was a huge influx of cheap (<$30), well-built, and great-sounding in-ears coming out of Chinese audio companies that were giving the big name brands a run for their money, offering maybe 98% of the audio quality (e.g. good enough for anyone without superhuman hearing) at less than 10% of the cost.

Unfortunately I don't have any specific persons of interest to point at, but the /r/Audiophiles Reddit and the Head-fi forums (which are notorious for being a massive circlejerk around their golden-child favorite brands and fertile ground for shills and snake-oil salesmen) are certainly a good place to start digging, for anyone interested in the subject.

Your post made me remember this meme.

Can't tell which one is worse to be honest, Funko collectors or audiophiles, Funko collectors hoard hundreds or thousands of Funkos, the vast majority of them being from franchises they don't know or care about, owning as many Funkos as posible seems to be the end goal, Audiophiles aren't too different, like you and other users already said, they expend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on audio equipment to not even listen to music they enjoy, much less to watch movies or play videogames, like with Funkos, the end goal seems to be about owning as much expensive audio equipment as possible.

 

[NoReturn]

Most of these are Glitterandlazers who is herself a cow, but I'm posting these because I think PR kits are themselves pretty gross:

Spoiler: More examples

 

[Slimeball92A]

What I hate the most about audiophiles is that they care more about the technical aspects of the sound than the art. They all have horrible taste in music, it's truly incredible how I've never met an audiophile in my life who isn't a listener of boring daddy boomer rock or some similar shit.

Now just for laughs let's appreciate this classic:

The dude spent 3 years worth of his salary in a god-tier audio system but didn't acoustically treat his room. he literally listens to music in his kitchen.

With the noise from his ancient ass kitchen fridge feet away from him, the idiot might as well have bought some entry level component setup.

Your post made me remember this meme.

View attachment 2165735

Can't tell which one is worse to be honest, Funko collectors or audiophiles, Funko collectors hoard hundreds or thousands of Funkos, the vast majority of them being from franchises they don't know or care about, owning as many Funkos as posible seems to be the end goal, Audiophiles aren't too different, like you and other users already said, they expend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on audio equipment to not even listen to music they enjoy, much less to watch movies or play videogames, like with Funkos, the end goal seems to be about owning as much expensive audio equipment as possible.

Knowing someone that was in retail for this stuff, audiophiles are far, far more autistic.

Heard stories of one guy that wouldn't wear clothes while listening to his favorite albums for fear of dampening frequencies.
Another guy banned digital watches from his listening room.

The batshit hilarious accesories these fucking lunatics buy is worthy of a whole thread.