The slow death of consumption. How badly do you want it?

Influencing, de-influencing, and overconsumption. Did the economic blackout work?

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I had left the store with a vintage scarf in my bag. $12.99, thrifted and paid in cash for a tiny spark of gratification, but it was merely a distraction. It was Election Day. I needed to leave my apartment because my willpower isn’t as strong as I pretend it is and that pleasant jolt of retail therapy was what I needed to keep myself off screens.

I reached for that scarf for the first time last week when the temps hit past 50 and was reminded of how I spent that morning feeling hopeful. That purchase was supposed to commemorate…something. Well, you know how that went. I put the scarf on, wrapping the silk fabric around my neck once and tying it into a bow. I look in the mirror and decide that I still love the painterly gestures of the pattern that lured me into a purchase that day, even if the day didn’t go as I had hoped.

I still don’t know how to properly style a scarf like women who do so effortlessly, but damned if I won’t stop trying.

I think that was the last time I actually bought something frivolous. No, I’m not counting holiday gift buying (though, maybe that’s cheating) or the casual browsing I did while on a trip earlier this year. The shopping I’m talking about is the thrill of a good deal, or a hunt to emulate a look you see on someone, or because you desire something that someone else has.

Remember when we used to go shopping with friends? Do people still do this? We’d act as each other’s trusted opinions and stop for lunch in between stores to replenish our reserves so we can go at it for a few more hours. I’m glad to see that my kids spend time with friends this way, but I can’t remember the last time I’ve done it. Five years? A dozen, even? At some point it became a solo activity, usually online or as a quick errand done in a perfunctory manner like everything else in life when you’re working and running a household. Yes, it sounds incredibly banal when shopping can be such an enjoyable social pastime, but it gradually evolved into something more like a task than for pleasure and I didn’t even realize it.

Gen Z loves thrifting. It reminded me that I love it too.

It’s no coincidence that the slow death of my personal consumption habits coincides with less time spent on Instagram. It wasn’t so much about low engagement on posts for me—I got tired of being marketed to all the time. It’s inescapable when every conceivable space, real and virtual, is taken up with an ad. You may be served fifty or more ads in a single day and not even be aware of it, not when so many are cleverly disguised as content in your scroll.

Influencer marketing is big business because people trust people more than ads and the TikTok algorithmic engine, specifically, works almost too well to hyper target the right audience. It’s disconcerting when you fully grasp how well these systems know us, maybe even more than people who know us do, but parasocial relationships blur that line which is why it works.

Marketing bleeds into entertainment when you’re watching YouTube or reels or even getting recommendations from your favorite newsletter. There’s still a place in consumption for curation and I think there’s a lot of value in that, but that’s not the kind of influencing I find exhausting. I’m talking about the kind that makes me feel like my life is not enough. So while I can’t control the ads that I’m forced to stare at while riding the subway, I at least have control over the addiction to my feeds.

Buying things is the true American pastime

When I read the data on how 70% of the U.S. economy is driven by consumer spending, the fragility of the scaffolding that holds our economy together boggles my mind. Digging further is a recent study that reveals that the top 10% of earners account for more than 50% of our consumer spending. Makes sense when inflation and cost of living is up but wages are stagnant or down.

Our spending surpasses any other country in the world. Think back to the Mad Men era of advertising which sold this image of the good life and keeping up with the Joneses as the American way, and you can begin to see how we built an entire economy on consumers. In order to keep our economy running and healthy, advertising and marketing engines need to keep cranking in order to keep us spending, but how sustainable is this cycle of buy, declutter, repeat? It feels like it’s propped up like a house of cards.

I have no use for sparkly shoes anymore, but how I love them.

I was always on the hunt for vintage teacups when we had our food business.

There are signs of de-influencing and a shift. Maybe you’re also fed up with overconsumption, of distrust in authenticity, of aesthetic-fatigue. Or, at the very least, more conscious of waste and the effects of what fast fashion, tech upgrades, and disposable goods are doing to our planet. I keep hearing my internal voice asking, do I really need this? Do I even want it?

Economic activism is about power

That was what last Friday’s economic blackout was about. There’s lots of noise and skepticism questioning if one day can have impact. It won’t. One day of lost sales isn’t going to make a difference to corporations, and shareholders won’t feel it unless it becomes a trend that’s noticeable on a quarterly result that reaches leadership. While that could still happen if boycotts gain traction and grow into a bigger, more widely adopted movement, I think the point of a one day spending freeze was to make consumers pause and really think about their shopping habits.

I’d consider it successful if a consumer spent that day researching alternative sources for the vitamins they usually buy on Amazon. Or if they dropped into their local hardware store instead of running to Target to replace that lightbulb that suddenly went out. My optimism wants to believe that the boycott made some people more conscious of their consumption, and hopefully it showed corporations that Americans actually do have organizing power—and that, in my opinion, was the point of it all: to remember that we aren’t powerless.

If the pendulum is indeed starting to swing the other way it will be a slow process, but small individual shifts can move the needle over time. We can be more selective about who gets our money: local businesses over corporations; independent artists, filmmakers, and writers over billionaire-owned media empires.

I’ll still love the occasional hunt and the thrill of that special little purchase, but I’ve always been frugal so I don’t know if my proclivity for spending less came out of recent necessity or if I’m finally learning to be more content. It doesn’t matter. It feels liberating because I’m no longer chasing after empty aspirations. I can’t stop this ship from sinking if things go down, but I can at least stop feeding the machine.

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Related reading

Decision paralysis and the chase for the perfect experience

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A round up links

To read:

• Retinol: The Skin-Care Ingredient With a Horrifying History (Teen Vogue)

  Well. This is indeed horrifying.

• ‘I told him to stop’: the elite restaurant culture that consumed me - To enter a four-star dining room like Jean-Georges is to enter a world of perfection. But in dark corners hidden from guests is its cruel and seedy underbelly. (The Guardian)
  I’ve heard plenty of stories about the restaurant world from my spouse who worked in that industry for years. A toxic workplace was the norm.

• How to be enough - Our obsession with self-improvement is making us miserable. (Vox)
  “Hedonic treadmill” is a great phrase for all this happiness chasing.

• My Errant Uterus - In a time of heightened threats to reproductive rights, a women’s health scholar and mother of two comes face to face with her uterus. (Sapiens)
  “I KEEP MY UTERUS on the bottom shelf of my dresser.” What an opener to this essay.

• Extreme heat silently accelerates aging on a molecular level − new research (The Conversation)
  Okay :/

To watch:

• We’ve all seen and been captivated by the murmurations created by large flocks of starlings, but Catalan photographer Xavi Bou, captures them in a single frame using long-exposure photography and digital compositing to reveal the invisible trails left by their movements. Stunning.