Consumer Culture Quotes

“Wait long enough, and what was once mainstream will fall into obscurity. When that happens, it will become valuable again to those looking for authenticity or irony or cleverness. The value, then, is not intrinsic. The thing itself doesn’t have as much value as the perception of how it was obtained or why it is possessed. Once enough people join in, like with oversized glasses frames or slap bracelets, the status gained from owning the item or being a fan of the band is lost, and the search begins again.
You would compete like this no matter how society was constructed. Competition for status is built into the human experience at the biological level. Poor people compete with resources. The middle class competes with selection. The wealthy compete with possessions.
You sold out long ago in one way or another. The specifics of who you sell to and how much you make—those are only details.”
― David McRaney, You Are Not So Smart

“I wouldn't mind if the consumer culture went poof! overnight because then we'd all be in the same boat and life wouldn't be so bad, mucking about with the chickens and feudalism and the like. But you know what would be absolutely horrible. The worst? ... If, as we were all down on earth wearing rags and husbanding pigs inside abandoned Baskin-Robbins franchises, I were to look up in the sky and see a jet -- with just one person inside even -- I'd go berserk. I'd go crazy. Either everyone slides back into the Dark Ages or no one does.”
― Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet

“The most effective and enduring form of warfare against liberation is the implanting of material and intellectual needs that perpetuate obsolete forms of the struggle for existence.”
― Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society

“The military institution is evidently absurd. The absurdity of non-military institutions is more difficult to face. It is even more frightening, precisely because it operates inexorably. We know which switch must stay open to avoid atomic holocaust. No switch detains an ecological Armageddon.”
― Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

“So my life has come to this:
all I ever make is laundry.

Awake or asleep, I'm always
shuffling round some shopping mall,

raking through knitwear carousels
that whirl into infinity,

searching, with the fever or teething gums,
for the ultimate cardigan.

Is it any wonder the wardrobe's bursting,
the linen basket overflowing

like an archive of disproved hypotheses?
The grey bras, the shrinking T-shirts,

that embarrassed puddle of lycra,
my favourite dress -- now ruined dress --

my lost remembered, perfect dress:
all laundry, in the end. More laundry.”
― Joanne Limburg, The Woman Who Thought too Much

“By charging wildly different prices for products that have largely the same cost, Starbucks is able to smoke out customers who are less sensitive about the price. Starbucks doesn’t have a way to identify lavish customers perfectly, so it invites them to hang themselves with a choice of luxurious ropes.”
― Tim Harford, The Undercover Economist

“Life is conceived as a vast supermarket through which one moves with one’s shopping trolley, fetching down ways of life from shelves marked “Existential choices.”
― Theodore Dalrymple, The New Vichy Syndrome: Why European Intellectuals Surrender to Barbarism

“[When we feel there's a void within us which we have to fill, many of us try to fill it by consuming more stuff: more things to read, more knowledge to consume, more youtube videos to see, more social media posts to look at, more stuff to experience, more stuff to buy.]

For most of us, however, the void has nothing to do with a need to consume more; in fact, the opposite is true: when we consume too much, we experience stress, anxiety, and depression, effectively deepening the void. [...]

We must realize the real void is on the other side of the equation: the void most of us feel is a creative void—we’re so caught up in our consumeristic mindset we forget our inherent need to create.

The solution, then, is to create more and consume less. [...]

So let’s each select one meaningful thing we’d like to create—one thing that will add value to the world—and let’s create it: let’s fill the real void together.”
― Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus

“Encouraging consumers to think more seriously about the financial, environmental, and personal costs of their consumption would be a major step in addressing the crisis of quality and the environmental and social impacts of too much stuff. Better yet, it would spur businesses to seek economic incentives to design and market better products. Today's secondhand economy, faltering in search of quality, should have more than it can handle.”
― Adam Minter, Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale

“Kapitalismus heißt, man kauft Dinge, die man nicht braucht, von Geld, das man nicht hat, um Menschen zu beeindrucken, die man nicht leiden kann.”
― Volker Pispers, ... bis neulich - Der letzte Abend

“Consumerism is not bad, but reckless and mindless consumerism is not just bad, but downright injurious to the health of not just the individual, but of the entire society.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“Soon the day will come when only the children of billionaires will have the right to a healthy and prosperous life, and all the other children will simply be lost in the cruel exploits of politics and consumerism.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hurricane Humans: Give me accountability, I'll give you peace

“Those in power love it when we hold on to our fake optimism year after year, instead of revolting against these worn out celebrations. They love it when they see millions of mindless consumers storming stores to buy and consume more shiny and glittering gifts, as if they are genuine signs of loving and caring for each other. They love it when we keep quiet and do business as usual while ‘hoping for a better new year.’ So, let’s declare it loud and clear: We are not happy! Also, there is nothing new with these traditional celebrations hijacked by businessmen who have reduced them into nothing more than an excuse for consuming goods.”
― Louis Yako

“Why does the world not rebel against a capitalistic society that places the right to pursue greed ahead of the collective good of a community? Why do so many people who live next door or across a hallway from one another never speak to their neighbors? Why do so many people go to great lengths to avoid interacting with their neighbors by installing tall privacy fences and timing their ingress and egress to avoid unscripted encounters with one another? In an age where electronic advances makes communicating with people a rapid convenience, why is it that we live as a species more isolated than ever before from people outside our immediate enclave?”
― Kilroy J. Oldster

“When unmoderated materialism is the world's norm, consumer is the product, product does the consuming.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Giants in Jeans: 100 Sonnets of United Earth

“It's not enough to be just a consumer, you gotta be a conscious consumer, otherwise there is no difference between a consumer and a slave.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mucize Misafir Merhaba: The Peace Testament

“To succeed with omnichannel, companies needs to focus on creating cohesive experiences… that means breaking down functional silos and certainly data silos!”
― Sally El-Akkad

“Remember… consumers want it all, a richer experience, a purchase at the comfort of their homes, a friendly searchable brand with brain/ eyes stimulating content & an engaging experience at store”
― Sally El-Akkad

“Everyday, Marketing teams around the world are scratching the surface of unlimited knowledge, building brands and experiences that lasts in the hearts and minds of consumers ... The best is yet to come!”
― Sally El-Akkad

“Responsible consumerism is a crucial part of civic duty.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavictor: Kanima Akiyor Kainat

“Nos sentimos libres siempre y cuando nuestra imaginación no exceda nuestros verdaderos deseos y ni una ni los otros sobrepasan nuestra capacidad de actuar”
― Zygmunt Bauman

“Money this, money that. Only when they've cut down the last tree, poisoned the last river, and caught the last fish; will they realise they cannot eat their money.”
― Joss Sheldon, Other Worlds Were Possible

“Young people had always wanted to do things their own way, and Bert had been no different. Only nowadays, there seemed to be this compulsion to eat up everything that was available to you and to let everybody know about it in real time, without figuring out things for yourself first.”
― Charmaine Wilkerson, Black Cake

“[Shopping is a] Mardi Gras of consumerism.”
― Russell Brand, Revolution

“Bien plus que le vieux désir de sa balader ailleurs, c'est la pression de la société toute entière qui pousse le travailleur à rendre à l'auto ce gain qu'elle lui procure. C'est pour cela qu'elle l'enchaîne à la chaîne, et que pour être sûre qu'il ne la trahira pas, elle le condamne aux travaux forcés de l'achat à crédit. L'auto le lie au travail, et quand le travailleur est bien crevé, elle le mène se distraire là où il doit consommer.”
― Bernard Charbonneau, L'Hommauto

“Comme le souligne un technicien pince-sans- rire : «La marge de sécurité apportée par l'amélioration d'une route est en partie compensée par les risques plus grands que prennent les usagers.»”
― Bernard Charbonneau, L'Hommauto

“A pre-recorded message, timed to go off just as the crowd was reaching a fever pitch. A way to get them to take that one step further and push them from civility and into madness. Stocks are running out. Stocks are running out. STOCKS ARE RUNNING OUT.”
― Joshua Krook, Black Friday 2050: The powerful psychological thriller set in a terrifying high-tech future

“There was nothing he needed or wished to buy; but he liked to see the display of goods, any goods, objects made by men, to be used by men. He enjoyed the sight of a prosperous street;”
― Ayn Rand

“As Mullan and Marvin say, in a line of theirs I finally agree with, 'Zoos represent the power of human beings to command the presence of living creatures which [sic] would normally absent themselves from human gaze.'

I go to a zoo. I see animals on display. I push a button and hear: 'All the animals in the zoo are eagerly awaiting you.' I come home. I open a newspaper and see an article titled, 'Animal Planet: From India’s famed camel fair to Indonesia’s fierce Komodo dragons—all the world’s a zoo.' And the subhead, large font, boldface: 'Animal World Awaits.' For whom? For you, of course.”
― Derrick Jensen, Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos

“The modernization of zoo cages and their renaming as “habitat” fits perfectly into the story of our own confinement. Modern cages—the kind in zoos—use fewer bars, not because moats or electrified fences provide more freedom for those encaged, but because they provide the illusion of freedom to those who watch. The fantasy of the consumers of the spectacle, the fantasy of the consumers of the animals—the fantasy that the animals are eagerly awaiting us, awaiting our use—will be slightly less brittle. As the real world is increasingly consumed and turned into artificial habitat, or rather Habitat™, for humans and nonhumans alike, we increasingly attempt to blur the distinction between habitat and Habitat™ until multiple authors can state with a presumably straight face that the whole world is a zoo.”
― Derrick Jensen, Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos