Consumer Diary it Did Not

Consumer Diary

It did not take long to enter into consumer culture - the alarm on my phone is a ringtone I downloaded a while back. Immediately I have to consider that I paid for that sound, when I could just as easily have used one that came with the phone. Ever since alarm clocks were invented, nobody paid for customized sounds. Customization is an interesting component of today's consumerism. It not engages the consumer, and gives them a reason to pay for things, like ringtones, that they would not otherwise pay for. So immediately there's a lesson here - give people an excuse to spend money and they will probably do it. The morning was fairly straightforward - a shower (body wash, shampoo), getting clean (deodorant, toothpaste). I note this routine is fairly standard. We all do the same things with the same stuff. Heather Hendershot's article discussing gender roles comes to mind - everything in my morning routine has been laid out by my gender. The individual products vary - I get recommendations from my friends - but the routine is exactly what we've been trained to do by marketers of these products.

Breakfast is a toasted bagel, then out for coffee. In a way I wish I wasn't so into coffee, but the caffeine has me hooked, and that there's a Starbucks on every corner makes it so easy, every time I want to cut back, to get right back on that horse. The service was kind of terrible and totally disinterested. Marx pointed out that the lack of ownership in work causes this, which makes me wonder why other baristas actually seem to care. I spend the rest of my morning in class. This is also a part of consumer culture - I pay for this schooling and it has been drummed into my head that I need this. So I pay the money and I go to class and learn. I skip lunch, I'm too busy, but head for a little walk in the park since the weather is nice. I am driving everywhere I go, of course. I live too far away. This fact further puts me deep into consumer culture, since I not only need a car, but gas, insurance and maintenance. All of these things eat into my budget.

The afternoon is mostly video games, a nap and a snack. After that I split my evening between homework and television. That's more consumer culture, as I'm inundated with ads. But even my choice of shows is heavily influenced by the culture around me. Malcolm Gladwell's article about Levi's shows some similarities to television. The Levis ads were successful ads because they were structure specifically to appeal to certain audiences. Television shows are like that as well, and even entire channels. I like what I like because it was made for my demographic. But the element of passivity strikes me as well. The Levis ads were passive, focusing on limited amounts of information. The ads were likeable, unchallenging, and spoke to a need. Television as a whole is like that - it sucks you in because it is an easy diversion that speaks to a need. I watch Dexter because I like to see criminals get their due. I watch South Park because they say things I can't get away with saying.

Day Two: After a quiet day yesterday, a little busier. After going through most of the same routine as yesterday, I stopped at the coffee shop because I didn't have to be anywhere. I received a barrage of texts as I tried to study, and realized I forgot a big consumer culture factor yesterday - the constant communications. I send and receive texts all day, plus email, and messages on Facebook, too. I had not even thought of these things when writing in my journal. This brought two things to mind. The first was how important communication is to our consumer culture. It happens constantly, and without it our consumer culture cannot thrive. One text was about plans for the evening. Which movie, which bar, which restaurant, that sort of thing. Purchasing decisions are impacted heavily by communications.

The other thing I thought about was how much consumerism we take for granted. How could I forget about communications when I'm doing them all day? It made me wonder what else I forgot...I listened to a lot music, used my phone, ate dinner, surfed the web...all of this stuff so normal that I didn't even make a note of it.

A did some shopping in the afternoon, to buy some new clothes. Erika Rapp port's piece on the shopping experience can be seen everywhere when you're out shopping.

The way that everybody congregates in the same place to do the same task - the social aspect of shopping is definitely intriguing. I also thought about No Logo. All the stores, in fact almost everything I'd seen during my two days to that point, were branded. Klein and Shuh both had asked their readers to think critically about their purchases, their brands, and any other form of communication that they receive from corporations. Even the store displays are carefully contrived communications, as shown by both Leach and Rappaport. My own choices are the sum total of many different influences, but the fact that so many other people come to the same choices by way of completely different sets of influences is amazing.