Consume Me!

We’re always being sold something. We turn on the TV, they’re selling us something, we flick through a magazine, they’re selling us something, we walk through the streets and they’re selling us everything. Why? Because we’re buying.

You can moan all you want about consumerism, but it’s our fault. Without humanity’s constant desire to own more and more useless things, there would be no consumerism. As a man, I see an advert for a new razor and I’m sucked in, like Yogi to a pic-a-nic basket. I’m yet to indulge in the new battery powered Gillette razor with super-duper micro-pulses that indubitably do sod all, but it’s only a matter of time.
Women, on the other hand, often fall prey to the advertising of products that promise fountain of youth type qualities. You can blame it on Hollywood, you can blame it on beauty magazines, you can blame it on men, but I blame it on nature’s twisted design. Mother Nature, God, Rupert Murdoch: somebody unfortunately filled us humans with varying degrees of greed, pride and the gnawing ambition to be better than everyone else. It is of course, an impossible dream. There will always be greater and lesser persons than ourselves. I may be preaching to the choir here, but it’s a choir that doesn’t read the lyric sheet.
I have always been crap with money. Even when I was at my most impoverished in my first year at college, I was with a girl in Truro after an already expensive night out, and decided to splash out £80 for a hotel room rather than wait for a taxi home. Don’t get me wrong, we had a good time, but was it worth it? It became the catalyst for some serious credit card abuse that I will probably be paying for years down the line. I’d like to think I’ve learned my lesson, but you should see me let loose in a record shop. It’s almost offensive.
Credit card companies, of course, love suckers like me. We keep them in steady supply of Mercedes, expensive suits and golf club memberships. We consume so that the greediest of all can consume even more.
We can boycott the big cheeses all we like, but we’re still pandering to some ideal; be it for or against consumerism, and we still have to spend money to think we’re achieving it. Some people may shop in thrift stores to show that they don’t need the Gap, but they’re still shopping. I’m not saying that shopping in Oxfam isn’t a noble thing to do, because I’m sure many people do have a benevolent agenda, but it still fuels that human need for objects to identify us. As Bob Dylan said, “You Gotta Serve Somebody”. You may wear a T-shirt emblazoned with anti-corporate sentiments, but you still bought it
Unfortunately, I don’t have the answers, I only know the problem. But as long as there is a currency, we will continue to slave for it, squander it and wish for more. Sellers will keep selling, buyers will keep buying, and more fool you if you think you’re above it.

Luke Tuchscherer

© Substance Magazine 2005