It inspired me to create a food blog on facebook. Every week I would upload something tacky and anti-yuppy. My posts included Choco Tacos, Wendy's hamburgers, and cups of ramen.
Now I'm thinking of posting my experiences at the grocery story, Home Depot, etc.
Conspicuous nonconsumption [0], as I call it, is all the rage in SF and among engineers. That's why everyone wears hoodies and tshirts: to show that they're different from MBAs and the suits and the bankers. But that's just another way to show your status: you are the member of an exclusive club that doesn't need suits to have high status.
And so with your blog. You're identifying as part of a group that's too good for status symbols. You're explicitly saying "I'm not like you" and implicitly saying "I'm better than you because I don't need whatever things you find valuable".
You're showing off your non-consumption for high status, in exactly the same way that they're showing off their consumption for high status. At the end of the day, you're both just showing off for high status! [1]
[0] See also "stealth wealth"
[1] No judgement here, btw: in tech, I think we all do this, me included.
Compare Burners who fly a helicopter into camp, vs people who go for a hike in the city park.
That's a really weird conclusion to come to. I wear hoodies and tee shirts because 1) my job doesn't require more, 2) my hoodie and tee are comfortable and easily adaptable to changing temperature, and 3) clothing shopping is a chore, an extreme annoyance.
Well-fitting "slob" clothing looks better than poorly-fitting mid-range "nice" clothing, particularly when one doesn't fit the body type of the target audience for the latter.
Perhaps if conspicuous philanthropy found its way down to everyday people, that would be a nice addition too.
i like choco tacos but wendys and ramen cups are pretty tereible.
Let's put it this way, if all the people, no matter what their income, just took their income, spent it on the basics and then saved or invested the remainder, we'd all pretty much end up poorer. No titans of industry (who would buy consumer goods in a if consumption was avoided), few service workers, few skilled jobs, fewer blue collar jobs. Mostly we'd have government employees and people in essential services (farmers, physicians, educators, etc).
No work at Starbucks, or Amazon, or Google or Tesla. I mean, who would need to buy anything beside the basics from Amazon, and since commerce would be de-emphasized, no need for advertising (adwords) on google.
I guess we could live pretty retro lives, living like we were all Amish or similar, but is that what would be best?
Certainly disposable consumerism is arguably bad, but what if we all decided quality was paramount and instead of buying ten cheap things, we bought one expensive but durable thing costing the same as the ten cheap things?
Anyway, our economic system, neo-liberal capitalism, (and others as well) depend on consumption, frugal wealthy people would impact the economy negatively.
Look, I dislike Hollywood (it's cheap, base, and unimaginative, rarely is there "Art") for various reasons, but, at the same time, I understand that overpaid actors mean that lots of ancillary jobs in Hollywood exist due to their opulent, unfrugal, spednthrift lifestyles.
Just one example. Everyone cooked at home. No restaurants. No cooks, chefs, sole proprietors, severs, etc. in the restaurant industry. There would be no restaurant industry. We could go on. Extending this, "getting rid of conspicuous consumption" might hide things, which, I understand, it makes us feel better, but solves nothing by itself.
I just learned this myself recently as I was kindly corrected for using the term improperly. I then had to do the research to verify and found that THRIFT (thrive) in this case refers to success or prosperity. A SPENDTHRIFT is someone that wastes (SPENDS) their success (THRIFT). In modern usage it is someone wasteful with money. This is contrary to the assumed or obvious "being thrifty with spending" where thrift=frugal.
You are so right, hold on a sec while I just step out of the economy we live in, into a the next economy. Because it is so easy to do. Why bother trying to change anything, when all we have to do is to take a single step into the new better economy?
Because we have no choice. If I choose not to pollute, I am still going to die from everyone else doing it.
The idea of "showing off" with vacations, weekend events or even professional accomplishments seems preposterous to me. How is this socially acceptable is beyond my comprehension.
Likewise, I'm probably only interested in knowing where 10 or so people spent their vacation, and even then, only when the narrative is directed at me or a small number of friends. I can't understand how a public parade of general info and photos can be anything other than utterly shallow and boring.
Needless to say, I don't get Facebook.
I don't see people doing anything like this. Maybe I'm selective but really next-to no friends share their consumption. I think the share-your-sunsets-and-dives-into-waterfalls is the movie version of Facebook. We wind up sharing cats, snark and sad moments.
i'm 33, sf now oregon raised, and i'd say in general i see less fb usage by my friends, but those that still do use it, it's almost all positive, brag-ish sharing.
people i know with kids, especially, it seems almost impossible to imagine sharing 'cats, snark, and sad moments'.
Are you in the Bay Area? The Bay Area is obsessed with travel. Not that there's anything wrong with that, since I do feel that travel is great, but many in the Bay Area have no idea what it's like to come from a background where it's not even considered a possibility.
When I lived and worked in Arizona, the only "travel" anyone was interested in were weekend trips to Mexico, or maybe visiting an iconic American city (e.g. SF). If I'd brought up Thailand, they wouldn't even have known enough to make ladyboy jokes.
-- Francis Bacon
