Comment by juleiie
3 days ago
Honestly most often it isn’t actual kitchen nerd stuff but just hyper consumerism under thin guise of “it’s my hobby”, “I am a kitchen/bathroom/garage/phone nerd”. Just an excuse for powerful chemical sensation of buying
I have caught myself in this many times, mesmerised by shining advertisements that promise when I buy this super duper kitchen appliance or material, my life will be finally complete.
The worst thing is that it indeed works and you are indeed in heaven for the first two weeks of usage but the thrill fades fast.
To keep up the dopamine you must keep looking for ways to increase your revenue just to make more purchases that feel so good.
Of course this is unsustainable usually so you decide that fuck it, what a dead end, let’s read the books from the library instead.
That tension nowadays between becoming prey to marketing and living authentically I can feel it all the time. Everyone wants to sell me some kind of identity.
In my opinion books are the true cure for it all. When you read the books, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, for completely free, you no longer consume. Government probably hates that.
If everyone did this economy would collapse immediately.
Surely reading is also a form of consumerism, and real freedom is writing/creating?
Reading itself is an intellectual and imaginative activity, not consumerism. However, how people acquire and treat books can easily slip into consumerism and overconsumption
When Reading Becomes Consumerism:
Book Hoarding & Hauls: Buying massive stacks of physical books faster than you can realistically read them (often driven by social media trends like BookTok or Instagram).
Aesthetic Collecting: Treating books as interior decor, buying multiple special editions of the same title, or prioritizing how a bookshelf looks on camera rather than the text inside.
Surface Level Consumption: Reading purely for status, volume goals (like churning through 100 books a year for a tracking app), or keeping up with hype rather than deep engagement.
Why Reading Itself Is Not Consumerism:
The Act Is Immersive: Engaging with a story, learning a concept, or exploring ideas requires time, mental effort, and imagination. the exact opposite of passive commercial consumption.
Low Cost or Free Access: You do not have to buy anything to read. Public libraries, used bookstores, digital swaps, and public domain archives make reading widely accessible outside of retail markets.
Long Term Relationship: Unlike fast fashion or single-use goods, a well-loved book is often kept, reread, annotated, or passed down for decades.
So as you can see modern publishing relies on consumerism to drive profits and exist in an economic sense but it is not remotely the same as a pure act of experiencing literature detached from collectible drive or acquisition.
In similar vein you can experience a sunset by consuming a product - a travel agency trip. The act of watching the sunset is not consumerism. Yet the purchase of the holiday trip is consumption.
Buying a brand new, special edition hardback from a massive retail chain is the equivalent of buying the holiday trip. Actually sitting quietly, turning the pages, and letting your mind build a story is the equivalent of watching the sun go down.
However I am not claiming that capitalism or consumerism is inherently bad. No one managed to ever establish the connection in a rigorous scientific way that capitalism is morally bad and eg. Communism is morally good despite countless attempts to prove so. (When Cohen realized that a pure exploitation framework could actually justify inequality (like a naturally gifted person earning millions and keeping it all, à la Robert Nozick's Wilt Chamberlain argument), he had a "Road to Damascus" moment. He realized he didn't actually care about arcane Marxist economic formulas; he cared about human beings having enough to live a dignified life.)
Too much of consumerism is definitely unhealthy and so it is important to know what is consumerism and what isn’t to apply the antidote once in a while while keeping the economy we all profit from in a good shape.
>If everyone did this economy would collapse immediately.
So true. Kafka and Dostoyevsky are also quite a dopamine detox, because they're flat out boring and the pleasure is really fed with a syringe and worked hard for.
But the bit about society collapsing reminds me of Rick and Morty Covid* season finale after the credits. Where they made a small outro about their merch, asking people to buy their merch, buy anything, keep consuming, to keep the economy going and the world running. Read by Rick's drunk hiccup filled voice.
* everyone one was scared of a real recession, but ppl did keep buying stuff.
I am not so ideologically driven, merely mental health driven but you have to admit that irony of a Reddit communist buying communist merch or identity brand is delicious.
Frankly, pertaining online religions, I am more into anti church, gnostic feminist type of Christianity focused on the way Jesus lived and what he teached as opposed to later perversions of his teachings than either of the nowadays fashionable ideologies or the horror of what Catholic Church has become or always was.
Not that I manage to live such life as Jesus but I consider it significant.