TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHY : ELLIOT ROSE
CONSUMERISMADDICTION
It ’ s time to think about how we can stop ourselves from shopping our way into oblivion . With ever more people , ever fewer resources and a compulsive need to shop , our addiction to consumerism is hurting more than ourselves
Our generation has a lot of addictions . Raise a hand if you ’ ve heard a friend say ‘ I ’ m totally addicted to Starbucks !’ or completely without irony , ‘ my shopping addiction is way out of hand ! Lol !’ Aside from an addiction to overuse of the word itself , it seems the only real problem we have is an unfaltering , debilitating dependence on buying stuff we don ’ t need .
Assuming you are a person who ’ s between sixteen and twenty six , who grew up in Western Europe or North America during the 1990 ’ s and 2000 ’ s ( which if you ’ re reading this magazine , you most likely are ), you ’ re very lucky indeed . Titled by many as Generation Y , the successors to our parents Generation X and our Baby Boomer grandparents , but referred to as millennial and Generation D by others , we ’ ve been very lucky . From the mid 1990 ’ s through to the late 2000 ’ s recession that we all remember so fondly , the UK economy grew , unemployment fell and borrowing money was oh so simple . Not to get weighed down in figures , but when government types appear on television , celebrating that the economy grew by 0.1 % this year and that it ’ s a Christmas miracle , well the economy grew every year between 1991 and 2008 . Which was a very good thing .
Similarly , during our very cushy childhoods , the famine and war that struck much of the world wasn ’ t around in the suburbs of Western Europe . There was never a malaria outbreak in the Home Counties . The residents of Ile-de-France weren ’ t troubled by guerrilla warfare . Madrid ’ s commuter belt didn ’ t experience a devastating tsunami . We ’ ve had an easy life , and with the lack of hardship and increase in our ( parent )’ s disposable income / increased credit card limits meant that we ’ ve become accustomed to being able to have more than any generation before us . We truly grew up in a time of excess .
Because as time went on , very American ideas of consumption and branding drifted across the globalised world . Like the gulf stream , if the gulf stream carried Toys ‘ R ’ Us franchises and overpriced coffee chains over the Atlantic . A new business model emerged where companies didn ’ t actually make anything , but instead spent all their time designing and marketing their products , ‘ creating brands ’ rather than manufacturing goods . As we well know now , companies like Nike and Apple instead like to pass on the unsexy , dirty task of actually making their stuff to people in countries most of their customer ’ s can ’ t place on a map , paying their workers 12p a day to do so . And it ’ s been going on for all of our lives .
Yes , it ’ s evil and shady and quite wrong , but this is obviously why the power-brands of our time have been able to sell their products and services at such a low price that we can consume them near constantly . Imagine if the price of cocaine dropped to a level where it was affordable to be high all day and all night .
With the financial barriers lowered , sooner or later a great deal of people could be addicted . And with the power of so many consumers , the producers could easily suppress knowledge of the negative effects their product has both on its users , and the people who make it , and even advertise it ’ s perceived benefits . Now imagine that it ’ s not coke , but it ’ s £ 10 self -assembly wardrobes , £ 5 pairs of shoes or 99p cheeseburgers and you really don ’ t have to imagine at all . We are all addicts .
Much like actual drugs addicts , we consumerism addicts will deny our problem and happily ignore the damage it ’ s doing to us and others . I say ‘ we ’ and ‘ us ’, because I ’ m no different . Last night I bought three pairs of Nikes on eBay for reasons I couldn ’ t rationally explain . But then again , when everyone ’ s all suffering from the same substance abuse problem , there ’ s a world full of people who will happily empathise with your latest binge .
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AMERICAN IDEAS OF CONSUMPTION AND BRANDING DRIFTED ACROSS THE GLOBALISED WORLD . LIKE THE GULF STREAM , IF THE GULF STREAM CARRIED TOYS ‘ R ’ US FRANCHISES AND OVERPRICED COFFEE CHAINS OVER THE ATLANTIC .
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Because of course , much like how smokers are told many times a day how dangerous a habit it is , we regularly have the bitter truth nagged at us . The campaigners who see what ’ s really happening will write article after book , make film after TV special about what a bad position we ’ re putting ourselves in . And the educated ones of us will probably listen , and will shake our heads and say ‘ how terrible ’. We may boycott that coffee franchise that doesn ’ t pay its tax or avoid that high street retailer after a TV exposé on sweatshop labour , but when push comes to shove , it ’ s pretty impossible to avoid the malevolent superbrand . Either because we ’ re hooked , or because they are so pervasively unavoidable .
The problems they cause are as well publicised as they are ignored . In the same way that the Western world ’ s taste for the occasional dabble in party drugs has a devastating effect on communities and people in countries many of us have never heard of , our thing for consumerism