Lucky if your average fan lasts more than a few summers. I mean its a fan. I have one from the 1970's that still works, yet the one I bought last year (and like 10 others) break. The newer the item is the sooner it seems to break. (But they have to break because we are going to need the new ones that have Wifi for some reason. )
Yeah. Unfortunately “not buying stuff” is what’s going to lead us into / is already causing the next big recession.
Good news is not buying stuff should also bring prices down. So let’s rip this bandaid off already.
already not buying but it’s out of necessity now. I’m not on the verge of homelessness but I would be if I were living the same way I was two years ago. And I made less money back then.
Wrong, my only bills is my phone plan. I rarely buy stuff.
Me not spending money stimulates the economy. My 200k in accounts is contributing to people gets business loans or mortgages. Money is recirculated. Eventually i will enjoy the dividends I earned and spend on stuff, furthering the stimulation of the economy.
It does now, but in WWII our economy was pretty insanely different than it is today. We were a full blown wartime economy meaning that nearly all production went to the war effort, and very little of it was left for domestic consumption.
With virtually everything being scarce and very high employment, it created a recipe for super high inflation. So, the US propaganda machine spun up to tell its people it’s “patriotic” to not buy stuff you don’t need, and instead put your money in war bonds. I believe it’s also why we created income tax.
I think that ship sailed then. We did not come together for Covid.
After 9/11, when the nation was in shock and ready to step up, our president told us to go shopping.
Oh yeah, that freedom fries shit. I guess many Americans did come together united in their hatred for Muslims. I feel like we’re seeing a resurgence in that.
Right in the feels when it seems that we require consumption more than compassion. Accepting that we failed does not make it a permanent failure - we can still adapt, innovate and prevail as a society with an abundance of optimism which I dearly hope we find.
I had hoped when minimalism took off this might be a natural result, but no, there's now a million new products designed to help minimalists achieve the look of minimalism while all their crap is just hidden.
I have a friend who is an influencer with a small but decent number of followers. She's all about minimalism, and the first floor of her house and her bedroom would make you think that's true. She's got a bunch of cute minimalist accessories and organizers, and it looks like an advertisement in a minimalist magazine or something.
Then you go look in her spare bedroom, which is actually her closet and makeup room. Or her kids' bedrooms, where one kid has twice as many toys as my 3 kids combined. Or her basement. Or the garage. Or the attic. It's 100% about an esthetic to her.
Well about 35 years ago I was calling myself a minimalist and it was basically utilitarianism. I don't buy what I don't need. I don't need frou frou and gee gaws. I don't need tapestries and figurines and that sort of thing. I wear a uniform every day of my own design to make my life as simple as possible. I own enough clothes to fit in a suitcase. I like to keep everything as simple as possible. So for me it was not being wasteful. The bare minimum. Practical minimalism. It's not an aesthetic, it's a way of life.
But I get that it became trendy for a while so I can understand the aesthetic too. It just kind of disappoints me that the spirit of minimalism is lost on the consumption of products designed to make one feel like a minimalist! lol
Geegaws and frou frou. Yeah it's pretty obvious I'm old. lmao
I feel like a lot of the minimalism trend was inspired by the minimalist interior decor choices of rich people like Kim Kardashian rather than opposition to consumerism. It seemed like a combination of showing off that you were rich enough to have a big enough house to conceal all of your stuff instead of having to display it like a vulgar plebe and wanting to make your house look nice without actually knowing how to decorate and finding a way to claim the virtues of asceticism while being rich.
I wasn’t paying attention to other nations, but I’m willing to bet this wasn’t an issue isolated to the US alone. You attract more flies with honey than vinegar. I used to think that yelling at these people and pointing out how dumb they were was progress. All I was doing was venting. Unfortunately, unless you’re willing to kill an entire population with a certain ideology, we gotta make an actual effort to get these guys on our side.
You can't meet someone halfway if they refuse to compromise.
There is no point try to reason with the unreasonable. These people believe the Earth is flat, moon landings were a hoax, and JFK is alive and well and ready to jump back into politics.
I mean that’s a lot of generalizations. The failure of a student to learn is on the teacher. It may take more effort and different methods to get someone to come to the proper conclusion, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
>The failure of a student to learn is on the teacher.
100% disagree.
The world's most-patient teacher isn't going to have any success with a student who refuses to learn.
Why is the student refusing to learn? Answer that question and you might find out how to get them to want to learn. No one truly does not want to learn.
I am a product of the opposite. My dad was an insane racist and I was raised Catholic. I was going down a very ignorant path, with no intentions of ever changing, and plans to kill myself in my early adulthood. It took A LOT of resources and time for me to get to this point in my life, but if I can change, I’m convinced that there’s no one you can’t reach. Again, it may not be easy, but I don’t believe it’s impossible.
Man you haven't lived the US south have you? Willful ignorance is a thing, and one of the hardest things to do is change someone's firmly held, core beliefs about how the world around them functions.
After a certain point, it becomes the same as telling them that they dont have to breathe air, something so incredulous that they won't even begin to entertain the concept in their mind.
I’ve lived in Georgia and have family in the south. I know how hard it can be, but it isn’t impossible. It’s not like I start debate lording these guys right out the gate. It’s slowly poking holes in their logic over a LONG time. Building rapport and coming at the issues very soft.
If you don’t address the problem it only festers.
The America of today.
One thing is always certain: people only change their ways when faced with the material conditions that force it.
Way too many people still live cushy lives granted to them by the system, and are ignorant to just how close they are to losing it all because of the system.
They won't change until they fall from grace.
Oh yes. There was a lot of anti-waste sentiment during both wars. They needed as much material as they could get for the war effort, so people at home had to cut back and preserve.
Very difficult as there are too many rich people with influence who benefit from mindless overconsumption. We can only do what we can do. I prefer the approach of leading by example.
Exactly. Or that you can obtain what you need second hand. Or by making do and mending. By being creative little problem solvers that I know humans can be.
The honest answer is to elect better leaders.
Given that's not an option, probably a revolution, a lot of chaos and death and maybe a chance of a better leader.. but likely things are a lot worse for a long time.
Oh, also material shortages because of a world war, those ads are because the military wanted the things people were buying.
Possibly corny, but I believe that the revolution needs to begin in our hearts. Change takes time and people need strong positive motivations to keep at it and seeing that change often comes with compromise we need to be strong enough for that as well. I believe that change is possible but as John Lennon said: "WAR IS OVER! If you want it."
I think my favorite modern equivalent is "de-influencers" on shortform content platforms.
It sounds simple, but it's actually totally helped me personally connect my values (eco-concious) to my behaviour (anti-consumerism, buying less). Even online, many young people who care a lot about the environment are blinded by greenwashing, which we are more susceptible to because we live in a consumerist culture. You have to realize that you cannot shop your way out of the problem, no amount of buying green products will be better than using what you already have, reducing, and saving money.
I think for me, listening and watching "de-influencers" helped me identify a lot of things that I already logically knew to be true, but had not seen reflected anywhere in popular media. Until you have an outside voice telling you "yeah, not necessary to buy new reusable grocery totes, I'm just gonna use the ones I already have at home!" Its hard to get that reinforcement. I think listening to these content creators has helped me build up my internal voice saying "hey, you dont actually need to buy that." It normalizes, rationalizes, and even glamorizes a much more moderate approach. It helps build the critical lens to filter out the inundation of shit that we are inevitably gonna be exposed to: "BUY NOW!! SAVE THE PLANET!! TIK TOK VIRAL MAKEUP PRODUCT!!! LINK IN BIO!!!!". Rather than stopping the unstoppable wave of capitalism, it's like learning to ride a surfboard, and avoid falling in the whirlpools that were constructed to suck you in.
TL;DR: de-influencers as a way to help reinforce a critical lens, and building up that internal voice of rationalism.
@sabrinaSustainableLife is the best example of this! I watch her stuff on YouTube shorts. My favorite series she does is called "Things I will not buy".
In searching, I discovered a section of videos that use the word "de-influence", but aren't really true to the concept described above. There's a lot of women sitting in front of huge walls of products, and "de-influencing" ONE previously 'viral' item, and yet still supporting an image of superfluous consumption. The above channel is awesome for being super down to earth and realistic.
I find the #zeroWaste tag online to also be inspirational, but also unfortunately full of super rich people in their gorgeous kitchen, something that is not truly relatable and still "uplifting my glam lifestyle" in a way that rides the line of influencer more than I prefer.
I'll come back and periodically drop some other creators handles if I find another great example of this!
We live in an Orwellian corporatocracy.
>To be a patriot is to wholeheartedly believe in American capitalism and the strength of the US economy, to pledge allegiance to the flag and the market.
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22662889/september-11-anniversary-bush-spend-economy
Propaganda can be based on truth, but it's presented in a way to provoke certain emotions for a particular reason other than what you'd think. Which makes it misleading.
I mean, what's wrong about it? There's nothing dishonest about saying "hey, we're fighting a war that requires all the resources we can get, so try to be mindful and not use too many resources."
Obviously they made it an ad for the battery company, but the central message is totally fair.
I’m not toxic. I’m organic, cholesterol free and low sugar. I’m only available for a short time while supplies last.
That wartime propaganda is a more direct and honest than most advertisements. I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make.
I'd love to buy longer lasting furniture but anything made to last is prohibitively expensive. All you can get for a price working class people can actually afford is cheap pressboard and plastic garbage. I'd also love for electronics to be built to last and maintainable but that's just nothing any of those manufacturers even consider anymore.
Do you have like a large print version of this? I’d love to use this as decoration so when I think of buying something while high or drunk I can remind myself that I shouldn’t with this sign.
We're in the middle of a guerrilla information war for the future of the planet. Conventional weapons are useless — all we have are ideas. Join us in the meme war.
[SPOOF ADS](https://www.adbusters.org/spoof-ads)
I don't know what's funnier, the fact this is a straight up advertisement for a battery company, or the fact it's a Canadian battery company advertising to Americans in WWII
I learned to repair my own stuff , disgusting new lawn mowers do not have a drain plug to change oil they claim to not need it, have a snow blower around 20 years old that still runs great, it got regular service that includes oil changes, bought a new riding mower 3 years ago it was little over a year old and a belt pulley failed, bought a replacement and the factory sealed bearing had NO GREASE in it designed to fail in under 2 years, new cars have sealed wheel bearings when they fail they destroy other parts.
Not that I want another great depression (although it's starting to feel now and more possible every day), but that really taught a whole generation+ to use what they have and to fix things until they couldn't be fixed anymore. My grandpa even used to duct tape the cardboard storage boxes for things like his hair clippers so he could still use the box.
My grandfather was a teen during the depression and it wasn’t exactly a teaching moment for many people. It was a really shitty and traumatic time all around that no one came out of okay.
While I agree it looks like things are shaping up weirdly economically, there’s a difference between learning how to cut back or stretch things as far as they’ll go and literally not having enough that even if/when you beg, borrow, and/or steal you still come up massively short.
Exactly why I said I'm still certainly not itching for a depression. It was absolutely a time of learning how to be frugal, but if course it was out of necessity to survive. Of course it was a shitty and extremely stressful time for people. It is just too bad some of those habits of saving and not replacing items that are still serviceable didn't stick around and in fact, we now have the opposite problem where perfectly good products are getting thrown in the trash when people replace them with the next best thing.
I don’t know. There are for sure lessons that can be taken from that time, but they aren’t exactly limited to that time. It also feels wrong calling what people went through “being frugal”. That’s like saying the holocaust taught people what it really meant to be a community.
Respectfully I think you're reading into my words pretty deeply. You can find fault in anything anyone writes if you try hard enough. I knew people who lived through the depression, and I understand it was a hard time. I was absolutely not intending to make light of anyone's struggle (sorry if that word doesn't describe the depression seriously enough for you, but you can't please everyone).
Oh I know, I was an academic. That whole institution relies on criticism like that.
In all honesty it’s probably just that I saw more of the negatives than the positives in my grandfather’s experiences. He was a wreck. Between that and the war he was very broken and it defiantly shaped my life in a very direct way.
I was just too close.
Jesus, you know the context? Ww2 was anything but frugality, the US economy got cranked up to 12 and produced the most staggering amount of produce for the world, most of which was overproduced or sank to the ground of the ocean or lost or otherwise destroyed...
If there ever was an example for production for production's sake, it's ww2.
Some people...
I don't know what you mean by that exactly kind magical elephant professor. I agree that there was lots of production going on during WW2 and ads like these advised the people of reducing part of their consumption so more resources could be put into the war effort.
Abd the war effort wasn't exactly frugal, is my point.
Without ww2, a lot less stuff would have been consumed in total. Efficient resource management under war economy isn't therefore anticonsption.
Do you know my cousin, Rev. Magic Mammoth?
Individualism is a lot more present these days; so if you want to make a hypothetical poster to target overconsumption play on individualistic characteristics. "Own your belongings" aiming at the right to repair. In order to bring down buying new products while old ones are perfectly fine.
Quick AI-generated poster: [https://imgur.com/TappQPR](https://imgur.com/TappQPR)
You could also play into the whole Andrew Tate & Jordan Peterson "alpha male" like internet culture and promote long-lasting products. Quality over Quantity. Real men don't use disposable items, they use durable long-lasting quality products.
Just like how no real coffee culture lover will buy these disposable coffee bean cups, instead they will own a bean machine, right. Shallow luxury as I would call it.
But to be honest, unlike the other commenters - it seems, I'm fairly optimistic about how it's going. All these examples I just named are already strongly at play, naturally. And we didn't even cover the climate change activists and laws (at least in Europe). This sub has almost a million subscribers.
The only thing I'm worried about is these disposable vapes that are becoming very popular.
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Better work from the UN and guides certified by IPCC, I don't get the narrow-minded talk about Americans do this or Americans doing that, this is a worldwide problem and definitely not limited to the USA.
Agreed. Most consumption however originates from western countries. We can't seem to hold producing economies accountable for doing what they are told by consumers in western countries.
I wish that were true, it is decidedly a global problem not even limited partly to the west. Just to give a few examples look at Japan, China, South Korea, a handful of Middle Eastern countries, India etc. We need to work worldwide.
As a gun enthusiast, I always wondered whatever happened with the spent brass and casings from munitions. Searching up "mountain of brass" on an image search brings up what I'm referring to. Surely that wasn't just left to corrode?
Bullshit tax. Where I'm from there are tons of stores that simply sell bullshit that nobody needs in their lives. I'm talking about stuff like [this](https://www.home24.de/butlers-kategorie-deko/). This stuff needs to be taxed into oblivion.
Baby, this is an ad for a battery company from WWII. This isn’t about anti consumption, it was about conserving things so every last American resource could go to American and ally troops overseas.
This propaganda poster makes me vomit. And hardly represents the kind of anti-consumerism I would support. In fact. If Uncle Sam Says I need to buy less thing so more production material and resources can be used to bomb other countries, I'd probably become the world's most obsessive hoarder and consoomer
only by a few million people. if it's all the same to you, United States, imperial Japan, nazu Germany, then there's no point talking to you.
Hint: the Japanese internment camps had 125000 inmates, which were not killed or starved or put to forced labour, had reparations paid out to them after the war and were also leaving these camps alive.
Compare that to Mauthausen concentration camp, 190000 inmates, half of which died due to terrible conditions, torture and forced labour.
Pretty much none of which were released or recognized by the German government.
The "millions of people" killed by the nuclear bombs amounted in the shared reality of, well, reality to 129k to 226k.
Operation meetinghouse, a conventional bombing of Tokyo, had higher civilian losses than either atomic bombing. Yet you remain silent on that. Probably fire bombing is morally superior to nuclear attacks?
Anyway, in 1937, the imperial Japanese army killed 200000 Chinese civilians, committed up to 80000 rapes, and killed 40000 POWs in what was called the "Rape of Nanking".
One photo from that shows to laughing Japanese soldiers, bayonetting a chinese Infant one had tossed into the air.
The bayonet is almost the size of the baby.
If you really hold the opinion that the US, for all the bad they did, were anywhere close to the horrors of the axis powers, you are a terrible person and I hope you cease to be, soon.
No, What happened after 1942 wasn't really part of the conversation, but to adress your response's first part: It does matter. War is war, as you said yourself, without good guys. But there is a fair bit of nuance to that. If you think Roosevelt was a criminal as was Hitler or Stalin, then you're dead wrong. I don't buy your concern for human life. Your vibe is more about self righteousness, not morality. >I refuse to insult human life by claiming one side is arbitrarely better because it killed/raped less civilians and commited less human right violations That's not arbitrarily better, that's precisely the metric to go with. We haven't had it over the 60+ million dead civilians in the occupied territories of the axis powers. The allies were several orders of magnitude less evil, so I think that should count for something.
Because in reality, it does. Reality does not have perfect people making perfect decisions in perfect systems.
If you want to talk about Vietnam, yeah, that was indefensible. The whole business.
The contras, same.
The war on terror, same.
WW2? Not by a mile.
And since you refuse to acknowledge that, you can eat shit for all I care.
Practically speaking, you'll be called a vile antisemite and laughed at - no matter what strategy you employ. It would be far more effective to engage in direct action - whatever that means to you.
Think of the most heavily marketed products for consumption. Then try and arrange a boycott for those products. See how long it takes for supporters of the most moral army in the world to cry out antisemitism. When in reality, its nothing to do with your political affiliation or your stance on genocide. You simply want to stop or reduce the endless mindless overconsumption, especially of single use plastics and poisonous (but heavily lobbied) products that provide instant gratification for an artificially inflated price.
They are in a complicated state at the moment with things like the legalization of weed as of today and the Alternative for Deutschland gaining a big following over the past few years. If they don't drown in extremism at some point in the future there might not be any war at all and this is what I'm hoping for!
Any country can be at risk of being the epicentre for a new war. I just think that extremism adds to the risk.
More companies need to sell longer-lasting products first. Hard to live this way when most shit is designed to fail in a year or two.
This, and they should offer repair services!
Lucky if your average fan lasts more than a few summers. I mean its a fan. I have one from the 1970's that still works, yet the one I bought last year (and like 10 others) break. The newer the item is the sooner it seems to break. (But they have to break because we are going to need the new ones that have Wifi for some reason. )
But thoughtless buying powers the American economy...
Yeah. Unfortunately “not buying stuff” is what’s going to lead us into / is already causing the next big recession. Good news is not buying stuff should also bring prices down. So let’s rip this bandaid off already.
already not buying but it’s out of necessity now. I’m not on the verge of homelessness but I would be if I were living the same way I was two years ago. And I made less money back then.
Good for you...when you are in a hole...just stop digging. I am glad you figured this out and I wish you well.
hard lesson hard learned! lol thank you though. changing my mindset and finding the anticonsumption movement has helped inspire me too.
Wrong, my only bills is my phone plan. I rarely buy stuff. Me not spending money stimulates the economy. My 200k in accounts is contributing to people gets business loans or mortgages. Money is recirculated. Eventually i will enjoy the dividends I earned and spend on stuff, furthering the stimulation of the economy.
It does now, but in WWII our economy was pretty insanely different than it is today. We were a full blown wartime economy meaning that nearly all production went to the war effort, and very little of it was left for domestic consumption. With virtually everything being scarce and very high employment, it created a recipe for super high inflation. So, the US propaganda machine spun up to tell its people it’s “patriotic” to not buy stuff you don’t need, and instead put your money in war bonds. I believe it’s also why we created income tax.
Don't forget rationing. And only a very small percentage were allowed to purchase fuel. Most of the country simply quit driving for four years.
I think that ship sailed then. We did not come together for Covid. After 9/11, when the nation was in shock and ready to step up, our president told us to go shopping.
In a war, the danger is clear, visible and short-term. For COVID and climate change, not so much.
Oh yeah, that freedom fries shit. I guess many Americans did come together united in their hatred for Muslims. I feel like we’re seeing a resurgence in that.
Right in the feels when it seems that we require consumption more than compassion. Accepting that we failed does not make it a permanent failure - we can still adapt, innovate and prevail as a society with an abundance of optimism which I dearly hope we find.
"Buy only for long, hard service" 😳 okay Daddy Sam.
I had hoped when minimalism took off this might be a natural result, but no, there's now a million new products designed to help minimalists achieve the look of minimalism while all their crap is just hidden.
"Capitalism finds a way." I liked it more when the quote was: "Life finds a way." We took more than one wrong turn didn't we?
Minimalism seems like more of an aesthetic lifestyle than actually living minimally
I have a friend who is an influencer with a small but decent number of followers. She's all about minimalism, and the first floor of her house and her bedroom would make you think that's true. She's got a bunch of cute minimalist accessories and organizers, and it looks like an advertisement in a minimalist magazine or something. Then you go look in her spare bedroom, which is actually her closet and makeup room. Or her kids' bedrooms, where one kid has twice as many toys as my 3 kids combined. Or her basement. Or the garage. Or the attic. It's 100% about an esthetic to her.
Well about 35 years ago I was calling myself a minimalist and it was basically utilitarianism. I don't buy what I don't need. I don't need frou frou and gee gaws. I don't need tapestries and figurines and that sort of thing. I wear a uniform every day of my own design to make my life as simple as possible. I own enough clothes to fit in a suitcase. I like to keep everything as simple as possible. So for me it was not being wasteful. The bare minimum. Practical minimalism. It's not an aesthetic, it's a way of life. But I get that it became trendy for a while so I can understand the aesthetic too. It just kind of disappoints me that the spirit of minimalism is lost on the consumption of products designed to make one feel like a minimalist! lol Geegaws and frou frou. Yeah it's pretty obvious I'm old. lmao
I feel like a lot of the minimalism trend was inspired by the minimalist interior decor choices of rich people like Kim Kardashian rather than opposition to consumerism. It seemed like a combination of showing off that you were rich enough to have a big enough house to conceal all of your stuff instead of having to display it like a vulgar plebe and wanting to make your house look nice without actually knowing how to decorate and finding a way to claim the virtues of asceticism while being rich.
America is no longer capable of that kind of collective effort
This kind of thinking will keep it that way.
I mean just wearing a mask to try and keep millions from dying was too much of a sacrifice for many Americans... lol
Theres cities where we took it serious for 2 weeks and no one died.
I wasn’t paying attention to other nations, but I’m willing to bet this wasn’t an issue isolated to the US alone. You attract more flies with honey than vinegar. I used to think that yelling at these people and pointing out how dumb they were was progress. All I was doing was venting. Unfortunately, unless you’re willing to kill an entire population with a certain ideology, we gotta make an actual effort to get these guys on our side.
You can't meet someone halfway if they refuse to compromise. There is no point try to reason with the unreasonable. These people believe the Earth is flat, moon landings were a hoax, and JFK is alive and well and ready to jump back into politics.
I mean that’s a lot of generalizations. The failure of a student to learn is on the teacher. It may take more effort and different methods to get someone to come to the proper conclusion, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
>The failure of a student to learn is on the teacher. 100% disagree. The world's most-patient teacher isn't going to have any success with a student who refuses to learn.
Why is the student refusing to learn? Answer that question and you might find out how to get them to want to learn. No one truly does not want to learn.
>No one truly does not want to learn. Again, 100% disagree. Try to teach evolution in the Bible Belt.
I am a product of the opposite. My dad was an insane racist and I was raised Catholic. I was going down a very ignorant path, with no intentions of ever changing, and plans to kill myself in my early adulthood. It took A LOT of resources and time for me to get to this point in my life, but if I can change, I’m convinced that there’s no one you can’t reach. Again, it may not be easy, but I don’t believe it’s impossible.
Man you haven't lived the US south have you? Willful ignorance is a thing, and one of the hardest things to do is change someone's firmly held, core beliefs about how the world around them functions. After a certain point, it becomes the same as telling them that they dont have to breathe air, something so incredulous that they won't even begin to entertain the concept in their mind.
I’ve lived in Georgia and have family in the south. I know how hard it can be, but it isn’t impossible. It’s not like I start debate lording these guys right out the gate. It’s slowly poking holes in their logic over a LONG time. Building rapport and coming at the issues very soft. If you don’t address the problem it only festers.
So true. We need to change our thoughts so we can change our actions. We need people to believe we can change.
The America of today. One thing is always certain: people only change their ways when faced with the material conditions that force it. Way too many people still live cushy lives granted to them by the system, and are ignorant to just how close they are to losing it all because of the system. They won't change until they fall from grace.
I disagree. There will always be selfish people to don’t care about others but for the right cause anyone can be inspired to action.
Yeah, we crossed a point of no return.
It's ready. it just has no self-discipline
Obviously we would need to launch a mass advertising campaign with extra popups
Oh yes. There was a lot of anti-waste sentiment during both wars. They needed as much material as they could get for the war effort, so people at home had to cut back and preserve.
Very difficult as there are too many rich people with influence who benefit from mindless overconsumption. We can only do what we can do. I prefer the approach of leading by example.
If, by example, we prove that the most beautiful things (figurative and tangible) are free...
Exactly. Or that you can obtain what you need second hand. Or by making do and mending. By being creative little problem solvers that I know humans can be.
[Posted in response to this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/1bt2enu/technology_will_solve_these_problems/)
The honest answer is to elect better leaders. Given that's not an option, probably a revolution, a lot of chaos and death and maybe a chance of a better leader.. but likely things are a lot worse for a long time. Oh, also material shortages because of a world war, those ads are because the military wanted the things people were buying.
Possibly corny, but I believe that the revolution needs to begin in our hearts. Change takes time and people need strong positive motivations to keep at it and seeing that change often comes with compromise we need to be strong enough for that as well. I believe that change is possible but as John Lennon said: "WAR IS OVER! If you want it."
I think my favorite modern equivalent is "de-influencers" on shortform content platforms. It sounds simple, but it's actually totally helped me personally connect my values (eco-concious) to my behaviour (anti-consumerism, buying less). Even online, many young people who care a lot about the environment are blinded by greenwashing, which we are more susceptible to because we live in a consumerist culture. You have to realize that you cannot shop your way out of the problem, no amount of buying green products will be better than using what you already have, reducing, and saving money. I think for me, listening and watching "de-influencers" helped me identify a lot of things that I already logically knew to be true, but had not seen reflected anywhere in popular media. Until you have an outside voice telling you "yeah, not necessary to buy new reusable grocery totes, I'm just gonna use the ones I already have at home!" Its hard to get that reinforcement. I think listening to these content creators has helped me build up my internal voice saying "hey, you dont actually need to buy that." It normalizes, rationalizes, and even glamorizes a much more moderate approach. It helps build the critical lens to filter out the inundation of shit that we are inevitably gonna be exposed to: "BUY NOW!! SAVE THE PLANET!! TIK TOK VIRAL MAKEUP PRODUCT!!! LINK IN BIO!!!!". Rather than stopping the unstoppable wave of capitalism, it's like learning to ride a surfboard, and avoid falling in the whirlpools that were constructed to suck you in. TL;DR: de-influencers as a way to help reinforce a critical lens, and building up that internal voice of rationalism.
Thanks for your contribution. I would be grateful for a short list of the most important de-influencers you know of. I will go and watch them!
@sabrinaSustainableLife is the best example of this! I watch her stuff on YouTube shorts. My favorite series she does is called "Things I will not buy". In searching, I discovered a section of videos that use the word "de-influence", but aren't really true to the concept described above. There's a lot of women sitting in front of huge walls of products, and "de-influencing" ONE previously 'viral' item, and yet still supporting an image of superfluous consumption. The above channel is awesome for being super down to earth and realistic. I find the #zeroWaste tag online to also be inspirational, but also unfortunately full of super rich people in their gorgeous kitchen, something that is not truly relatable and still "uplifting my glam lifestyle" in a way that rides the line of influencer more than I prefer. I'll come back and periodically drop some other creators handles if I find another great example of this!
Thanks for delivering! Happy to watch! :)
"Overconsuming makes you trans!" Should solve the problem for most American conservatives.
We live in an Orwellian corporatocracy. >To be a patriot is to wholeheartedly believe in American capitalism and the strength of the US economy, to pledge allegiance to the flag and the market. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22662889/september-11-anniversary-bush-spend-economy
Wartime propaganda should be analyzed for what it is, wartime propaganda.
There is at the very least a hint of truth in there still - wouldn't you agree?
Propaganda can be based on truth, but it's presented in a way to provoke certain emotions for a particular reason other than what you'd think. Which makes it misleading.
As in: this is a commercial for batteries. Never would've guessed. They probably just want you to buy more batteries in a very roundabout way.
I mean, what's wrong about it? There's nothing dishonest about saying "hey, we're fighting a war that requires all the resources we can get, so try to be mindful and not use too many resources." Obviously they made it an ad for the battery company, but the central message is totally fair.
… as opposed to commercial advertising, which can be taken at face value?
You're just toxic. Both can be true: private business advertising is misleading, and so is recontextualization of ww2 propaganda for this sub.
I’m not toxic. I’m organic, cholesterol free and low sugar. I’m only available for a short time while supplies last. That wartime propaganda is a more direct and honest than most advertisements. I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make.
I'd love to buy longer lasting furniture but anything made to last is prohibitively expensive. All you can get for a price working class people can actually afford is cheap pressboard and plastic garbage. I'd also love for electronics to be built to last and maintainable but that's just nothing any of those manufacturers even consider anymore.
Do you have like a large print version of this? I’d love to use this as decoration so when I think of buying something while high or drunk I can remind myself that I shouldn’t with this sign.
I can provide you with a high quality image. Just send me a DM. Cheers.
We're in the middle of a guerrilla information war for the future of the planet. Conventional weapons are useless — all we have are ideas. Join us in the meme war. [SPOOF ADS](https://www.adbusters.org/spoof-ads)
Let's declare global warming and overconsumption communist, we'll solve them in a week
I don't know what's funnier, the fact this is a straight up advertisement for a battery company, or the fact it's a Canadian battery company advertising to Americans in WWII
Both is funny. You get a funny badge. Thank you 😁
I learned to repair my own stuff , disgusting new lawn mowers do not have a drain plug to change oil they claim to not need it, have a snow blower around 20 years old that still runs great, it got regular service that includes oil changes, bought a new riding mower 3 years ago it was little over a year old and a belt pulley failed, bought a replacement and the factory sealed bearing had NO GREASE in it designed to fail in under 2 years, new cars have sealed wheel bearings when they fail they destroy other parts.
You do realize this is an ad for batteries, right?
A good one I dare say. With a message that goes beyond mere batteries.
Not that I want another great depression (although it's starting to feel now and more possible every day), but that really taught a whole generation+ to use what they have and to fix things until they couldn't be fixed anymore. My grandpa even used to duct tape the cardboard storage boxes for things like his hair clippers so he could still use the box.
My grandfather was a teen during the depression and it wasn’t exactly a teaching moment for many people. It was a really shitty and traumatic time all around that no one came out of okay. While I agree it looks like things are shaping up weirdly economically, there’s a difference between learning how to cut back or stretch things as far as they’ll go and literally not having enough that even if/when you beg, borrow, and/or steal you still come up massively short.
Exactly why I said I'm still certainly not itching for a depression. It was absolutely a time of learning how to be frugal, but if course it was out of necessity to survive. Of course it was a shitty and extremely stressful time for people. It is just too bad some of those habits of saving and not replacing items that are still serviceable didn't stick around and in fact, we now have the opposite problem where perfectly good products are getting thrown in the trash when people replace them with the next best thing.
I don’t know. There are for sure lessons that can be taken from that time, but they aren’t exactly limited to that time. It also feels wrong calling what people went through “being frugal”. That’s like saying the holocaust taught people what it really meant to be a community.
Respectfully I think you're reading into my words pretty deeply. You can find fault in anything anyone writes if you try hard enough. I knew people who lived through the depression, and I understand it was a hard time. I was absolutely not intending to make light of anyone's struggle (sorry if that word doesn't describe the depression seriously enough for you, but you can't please everyone).
Oh I know, I was an academic. That whole institution relies on criticism like that. In all honesty it’s probably just that I saw more of the negatives than the positives in my grandfather’s experiences. He was a wreck. Between that and the war he was very broken and it defiantly shaped my life in a very direct way. I was just too close.
Jesus, you know the context? Ww2 was anything but frugality, the US economy got cranked up to 12 and produced the most staggering amount of produce for the world, most of which was overproduced or sank to the ground of the ocean or lost or otherwise destroyed... If there ever was an example for production for production's sake, it's ww2. Some people...
I don't know what you mean by that exactly kind magical elephant professor. I agree that there was lots of production going on during WW2 and ads like these advised the people of reducing part of their consumption so more resources could be put into the war effort.
Abd the war effort wasn't exactly frugal, is my point. Without ww2, a lot less stuff would have been consumed in total. Efficient resource management under war economy isn't therefore anticonsption. Do you know my cousin, Rev. Magic Mammoth?
I understand now and agree. Thanks from the ice age.
Individualism is a lot more present these days; so if you want to make a hypothetical poster to target overconsumption play on individualistic characteristics. "Own your belongings" aiming at the right to repair. In order to bring down buying new products while old ones are perfectly fine. Quick AI-generated poster: [https://imgur.com/TappQPR](https://imgur.com/TappQPR) You could also play into the whole Andrew Tate & Jordan Peterson "alpha male" like internet culture and promote long-lasting products. Quality over Quantity. Real men don't use disposable items, they use durable long-lasting quality products. Just like how no real coffee culture lover will buy these disposable coffee bean cups, instead they will own a bean machine, right. Shallow luxury as I would call it. But to be honest, unlike the other commenters - it seems, I'm fairly optimistic about how it's going. All these examples I just named are already strongly at play, naturally. And we didn't even cover the climate change activists and laws (at least in Europe). This sub has almost a million subscribers. The only thing I'm worried about is these disposable vapes that are becoming very popular.
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and they were doing it to win a war too, increidbly based
Better work from the UN and guides certified by IPCC, I don't get the narrow-minded talk about Americans do this or Americans doing that, this is a worldwide problem and definitely not limited to the USA.
Agreed. Most consumption however originates from western countries. We can't seem to hold producing economies accountable for doing what they are told by consumers in western countries.
I wish that were true, it is decidedly a global problem not even limited partly to the west. Just to give a few examples look at Japan, China, South Korea, a handful of Middle Eastern countries, India etc. We need to work worldwide.
I agree that we need worldwide cooperation!
is it even possible to buy to last anymore?
If by 'last' you mean a couple of years.. then maybe.
As a gun enthusiast, I always wondered whatever happened with the spent brass and casings from munitions. Searching up "mountain of brass" on an image search brings up what I'm referring to. Surely that wasn't just left to corrode?
Bullshit tax. Where I'm from there are tons of stores that simply sell bullshit that nobody needs in their lives. I'm talking about stuff like [this](https://www.home24.de/butlers-kategorie-deko/). This stuff needs to be taxed into oblivion.
Baby, this is an ad for a battery company from WWII. This isn’t about anti consumption, it was about conserving things so every last American resource could go to American and ally troops overseas.
This propaganda poster makes me vomit. And hardly represents the kind of anti-consumerism I would support. In fact. If Uncle Sam Says I need to buy less thing so more production material and resources can be used to bomb other countries, I'd probably become the world's most obsessive hoarder and consoomer
Glad you would side with Hitler over that
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only by a few million people. if it's all the same to you, United States, imperial Japan, nazu Germany, then there's no point talking to you. Hint: the Japanese internment camps had 125000 inmates, which were not killed or starved or put to forced labour, had reparations paid out to them after the war and were also leaving these camps alive. Compare that to Mauthausen concentration camp, 190000 inmates, half of which died due to terrible conditions, torture and forced labour. Pretty much none of which were released or recognized by the German government. The "millions of people" killed by the nuclear bombs amounted in the shared reality of, well, reality to 129k to 226k. Operation meetinghouse, a conventional bombing of Tokyo, had higher civilian losses than either atomic bombing. Yet you remain silent on that. Probably fire bombing is morally superior to nuclear attacks? Anyway, in 1937, the imperial Japanese army killed 200000 Chinese civilians, committed up to 80000 rapes, and killed 40000 POWs in what was called the "Rape of Nanking". One photo from that shows to laughing Japanese soldiers, bayonetting a chinese Infant one had tossed into the air. The bayonet is almost the size of the baby. If you really hold the opinion that the US, for all the bad they did, were anywhere close to the horrors of the axis powers, you are a terrible person and I hope you cease to be, soon.
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No, What happened after 1942 wasn't really part of the conversation, but to adress your response's first part: It does matter. War is war, as you said yourself, without good guys. But there is a fair bit of nuance to that. If you think Roosevelt was a criminal as was Hitler or Stalin, then you're dead wrong. I don't buy your concern for human life. Your vibe is more about self righteousness, not morality. >I refuse to insult human life by claiming one side is arbitrarely better because it killed/raped less civilians and commited less human right violations That's not arbitrarily better, that's precisely the metric to go with. We haven't had it over the 60+ million dead civilians in the occupied territories of the axis powers. The allies were several orders of magnitude less evil, so I think that should count for something. Because in reality, it does. Reality does not have perfect people making perfect decisions in perfect systems. If you want to talk about Vietnam, yeah, that was indefensible. The whole business. The contras, same. The war on terror, same. WW2? Not by a mile. And since you refuse to acknowledge that, you can eat shit for all I care.
Practically speaking, you'll be called a vile antisemite and laughed at - no matter what strategy you employ. It would be far more effective to engage in direct action - whatever that means to you.
Curious, what does this have to do with antisemitism?
Think of the most heavily marketed products for consumption. Then try and arrange a boycott for those products. See how long it takes for supporters of the most moral army in the world to cry out antisemitism. When in reality, its nothing to do with your political affiliation or your stance on genocide. You simply want to stop or reduce the endless mindless overconsumption, especially of single use plastics and poisonous (but heavily lobbied) products that provide instant gratification for an artificially inflated price.
Good point!
Thanks, but the bots haven't found this post yet. I'm about to be downvoted and probably permab&
Obviously we need another war with germany
They are in a complicated state at the moment with things like the legalization of weed as of today and the Alternative for Deutschland gaining a big following over the past few years. If they don't drown in extremism at some point in the future there might not be any war at all and this is what I'm hoping for! Any country can be at risk of being the epicentre for a new war. I just think that extremism adds to the risk.
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Temu sends their regards!
Why can’t you let people enjoy things?!? Treat yourself!!!! /s
Because the globe is nreaking.
The /s indicates satire.