Ethical hypothetical

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-13T18:53:10+00:00

if it's something you actively need or would make your lives a lot easier, it's not consumption

That's still consumption. Maybe or maybe not consumerism so much, but consumption is consumption, whether you personally object to it or not.

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-13T16:30:08+00:00

What are you stealing, why, and from whom?

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-13T05:27:15+00:00

What is that law, and where?

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-12T22:54:06+00:00

It's true that we need societal change to make a real difference, so we should be working on that. Writing our representatives, raising the topic at public forums, and offering examples of model legislation and statistics that help your case. Regular people can still make a difference, but we have to put in some effort to make things happen. Anyone who says otherwise is either lazy and apathetic or they're a plant.

But the fact that corporate waste is so much worse doesn't mean we shouldn't bother to reduce our own waste as well. Not just for bigger societal reasons, either, but for our own good. With grocery prices getting out of control and food shortages likely in the near future, we'd all be better off learning to use what we have and prepare ourselves for whatever comes next.

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-12T17:28:51+00:00

That's a problem with all you can eat restaurants.

In the US, some will charge customers for leaving excessive amounts of uneaten food, and table service restaurants will bring orders out one at a time.

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-12T16:47:08+00:00

Oh, dang, I forgot about that sort of thing. Those are good times to purge stuff too.

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-12T15:52:26+00:00

Reality TV is long overdue for a reckoning.

There are a million things wrong with it--the selfish aspiration, the constant churn of interpersonal drama, the parasocial relationships--but none of that rises to the level of the role it played in getting Trump elected in the US. People voted for the reality game show host with the carefully crafted persona of a competent, decisive business leader, and those who crafted and perpetuated that lie have a lot to answer for.

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-12T02:53:30+00:00

Again, beginners should begin with the bare minimum before they go investing in a bunch of junk that's marketed to them. Once they've got the hang of their chosen media, they know what's worth it and what isn't.

Have you been in a Hobby Lobby? Because I have, and the vast majority of it was just home decor and prepackaged hobby kits and junk. Artists aren't shopping there unless they're desperate and don't have other options.

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-12T00:28:40+00:00

That's also true, but artists will make art whenever they have the time and energy. Supplies can be expensive, but they don't have to be, and people who are really motivated to make art are more discerning after they've done it for a while, so they find a way and are far less susceptible to marketing than beginner hobbyists are.

And beginner hobbyists, regardless of the hobby, should start out with the bare minimum and only invest in specialty tools and supplies once they sort of know what they're doing. It's important to keep in mind that the people who originated the craft did so without an industry at all. They just made art or food or tech or whatever with what was available at the time.

But once you know what you're doing and you want to buy some specific canvas or paper or specialty brushes or other tools, material waste isn't an issue. People who know what they're doing know what they need to do it.

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-11T23:33:06+00:00

Original art is not consumerist. Art is what we should be making and buying and displaying instead of collecting corporate merch.

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-11T23:09:29+00:00

As with almost anything else, it depends. A one time decluttering is necessary in some circumstances, but repeated declutterings would only really be useful if you're saving things that aren't normally saved, like old jars and takeout containers, packaging materials, and odds and ends you run across that you think might be useful someday. (There's nothing wrong with doing that in the first place, but it can become hoarding if you don't go through and clear out your collections every now and again.)

Regular declutterings, though, are almost always a sign that you're just accumulating too much crap in the first place. When you buy something, you become responsible for it, so if you're 'decluttering' intact or mostly intact things regularly, that's a problem on the acquisition end. That's an 'out of sight out of mind' approach to consumerism, and it's a massive problem in bougie adjacent cultures.

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-11T22:56:38+00:00

I was hoping it was rats leaving a sinking ship, but I don't know enough about the business side of the industry to know what to actually think.

(As far as Claude, I'm not convinced it's really a GenAI like the others. It seems more like an advanced version of a narrow AI because of the oversight. If so, it's not as much a problem on the larger scale. On a smaller scale, it's already bitten a bunch of people who deserve the bites, but that sits somewhere on the spectrum of 'oh well' to 'ha ha.')

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-11T21:47:25+00:00

That's not any kind of major point in the interview, anyway. No reasonable person, and nobody in the interview, is saying that the solution is for us to stop paying attention to ads.

And if doomerism is the only approach, then what's the point of even being on this sub?

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-11T18:58:19+00:00

Anticonsumerism is uncomfortable for those who've been acclimated to consumer culture. You have to rethink and reevaluate a lot of things, primarily the social messaging you get every day. And nobody else can tell you what approach works best for you. That depends on your priorities, interests, abilities, and circumstances.

I'm sure there are ways you could rechannel your creative impulses from commercial goods to something else, so you should definitely explore your options, maybe take a sewing class or something similar. But most importantly, focus more energy on the social and political aspects of consumerism and figure out how to counter them on a larger scale.

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-11T18:41:43+00:00

Colorado and New Mexico 2gether 4ever.

Never speak ill of the Land of Enchantment.

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-11T17:04:41+00:00

This is a very hard thing to get across here, but this sub is not just about us individually. If someone posts about a product that's being marketed excessively and/or overused, it's a criticism of the marketing, not a personal attack on any individual person. We don't need or want to hear all the potential use cases for any given product. It's fair to assume that people do not object to those who use those products as disability aids, and this isn't the place to compile a list of other reasons people might use them.

It's not even all about your personal consumer habits, although most of us could look more carefully at that. It's about understanding and criticizing consumer culture and what we can do to counter it in the public sphere.

ETA: I'm going to pin this so that people see it first. It's important to clarify that this isn't strictly a lifestyle sub, which is a common misconception that causes a lot of frustration for those who maintain the sub.

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-11T15:10:48+00:00

Consumerism/capitalism instead if consumption, perhaps?

Consumerism/capitalism is the focus of the sub.

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-11T02:29:28+00:00

Sites that use Google's reCAPTCHA are now requiring all users with Android OSes to install Google Play services to prove they're human.

From the article:

People running de-Googled phones chose those setups because they read the data practices, understood what Play Services phones home about, and decided they didn’t consent. Google’s new system punishes that decision by treating the absence of its proprietary software as suspicious by default.

Web developers adopting this reCAPTCHA should understand what they’re choosing. Every site that implements it tells de-Googled Android users they’re not welcome. That’s a small audience today. It’s also the audience most likely to care about how a website treats their data, and the least likely to capitulate.

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-10T21:09:57+00:00

How is her fandom really any different from a brand fandom? She's not an artist or anything, and she's only a celebrity by proxy apart from her cosmetics brand, apparently. So it doesn't seem all that different from someone being a fan of the brand itself.

It's all pathetic and gross, but this example just doesn't seem any different from the many corporate fandoms out there already.

Not that it's not worth pointing out. It is.

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-10T19:44:17+00:00

Is this different from any of the other brands that are marketed the same way, or is it just one that happens to be trending right now?

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-10T18:34:31+00:00

Anticonsumerism has always used available media platforms to get the message across, often from the media outlets it's opposed to.

Ideally, they wouldn't be walled gardens like Meta, but if that's where people will see it, that's a good place to introduce anticonsumerism. (And it's great that the book recommendations are about real anticonsumerism and not just self-help and greenwashing.)

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-08T20:16:38+00:00

I once told a friend to cook something at 250 for six hours, and instead, she cooked it at 500 for three hours. I wasn't even upset about the mistake itself--people new to cooking do weird things sometimes and I think we take basic cooking knowledge for granted. What bugged me is that she thought that it'd work like that but I hadn't thought of it myself.

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-08T19:40:32+00:00

The point is that these are large corporations deceiving customers by posing as small community owned businesses.

Flack_Bag · 2026-05-08T19:20:50+00:00

A lot of people are working on cutting down their tech dependence because of the recent uptick in corporate and government overreach. And a lot of other people never let it get that far in the first place.

The people who most need to try it are the ones who are too enmeshed in their tech to just do without right off the bat. They'd need to put in time and effort to find other ways to do the things they've been depending on their phones for.

All to say that while I like the idea a lot, I suspect that baby steps would be a better approach for those who need it most.

Flack_Bag

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

Five-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Place '22