# For those angry at vapid consumer culture, why not just opt out? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 19, 2015, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593 "2015-07-19T10:42:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/61 "2015-07-21T15:18:18Z")
> [@Fubaya](#): > > I understand why advertisements are necessary and all, but when you step back and think about it, don’t you think it’s strange that the price people pay to be entertained is being interrupted every few minutes by hucksters trying to separate them from their money? Good insight. I think the short answer is because people think of the ads as being “free” or not involving them or optional or… what was the phrase in the adjacent thread? “Compensating us when they’re not altogether irrelevant”? As long as people regard ads as being “cheaper” (including “free”) payment for TV than any kind of fee, even the nickel-and-dime costs of Netflix or Hulu, they’re going to put up with them. IMHO, they cost a lot more than most people think, and the cost is shared by all of us as a culture, a society and an economy. But the forces of “I never watch TV so it doesn’t affect me” are pretty dominant here, so we’ll leave it at that. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/62 "2015-07-21T17:53:45Z")
Well, let’s roll tape. 🙂 > [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > While stressing that I\* don’t\* want to start an argument about it, I have yet to be in anyone’s house who could claim such a level of dissociation - or, more precisely, claimed it but could ignore the plentiful evidence to the contrary I could point to. Like sex, money, literary taste and drinking, it’s a position subject to a lot of willed blindness and self-deception. Just because someone doesn’t have this week’s heavily advertised brand names everywhere doesn’t mean they are free of the larger tides of influence. OK, so here **you’re making a claim** that there’s a lot of self-delusion on this point - that a lot of us who think we’ve put a fair amount of distance in between ourselves and consumer culture are fooling ourselves. Your claim, you’re the one who’s got to support it. I don’t have to disprove it. But I point out that you’re going to have to make some sort of distinction between partaking of your ‘larger tides of influence’ and merely adapting advances in technology, if that expression is to have meaning: > [@RTFirefly](#): > > Well, if you mean I don’t live like an 1850s farm boy, sure. 🙂 > > I mean, the fact that we’ve got a fridge, and an electric range, and a dishwasher, and washer and dryer, and a TV, means we’re not “free of the larger tides of influence” right there: Toto, we’re not in 1850 anymore, and if you want to call the technological changes between then and now “the larger tides of influence,” well, you can. > > But in order to have a more meaningful discussion, you’ve got to draw some sort of distinction between incorporating such progress into one’s life, and buying a bunch of shit because we’re in a culture that tells us to buy. Now **you** are asking **me** to make that distinction for you: > [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Okay. Define the acceptable level of consumer products in the average home, in objective terms. No, that’s your job, not mine. > [@](#): > > I’ll wait. Then you are waiting on yourself. I am concluding that you have no interest in a real discussion. You’re just throwing claims around without trying in the least to back them up. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/63 "2015-07-21T18:16:13Z")
I’m not looking to prove or disprove anything; this isn’t as much a debate for me as it is for some in here. I’m not challenging you, or questioning your values, or (despite the way these discussions usually go) trying to claim some superior position. My entire point above is that it’s a very difficult subject to discuss without assurances that we’re talking about the same things, and a whole lot of terms and assumptions and notions are more subjective than absolute. Trying to have the discussion among anonymous electronic avatars makes it ten times more difficult, because not only is there the disconnect between assumptions, but as much… masking, deliberate or unintentional, as the participant cares to throw in. It’s a bit like trying to have a discussion about alcoholism. I can say I’m a “moderate” drinker, and we can slide around defining that term for days. Or we can make the mistake of assuming “moderate” means exactly the same thing to both of us, and waste days in discussion that’s all passing ships. This isn’t just an issue in this casual bar-room, either. It’s a barrier at the peer-professional level because we’re all prone to take our own position, immersed in consumer economics, as being surrounded by norms and common understanding. Only by sitting at a table in the same room and cross-checking every term and assumption does it become clear that even what seem like very basic concepts have widely varying individual interpretations. If you want to maintain that the topic is based on common and shared assumptions, I completely understand, but it leaves us both being self-defined in our ‘drinking habits’ and thus sharing a false understanding of what’s being said - both ways. ---
**Author:** ![Aquadementia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aquadementia/32/555_2.png) [@Aquadementia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aquadementia)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/64 "2015-07-21T18:22:53Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I think that’s a ridiculous argument. The consumer is not obligated to watch commercials if he/she can avoid them. > > Edited to add, am I obligated to sit through the commercials and not go to the bathroom or the kitchen during them? Of course not. Yeah, it would be ridiculous to say viewers are obligated to see every single commercials. Let me know if you find anyone saying that. However, eliminating ALL commercials from a commercial broadcast means the show got zero support. > [@Fubaya](#): > > … > > I understand why advertisements are necessary and all, but when you step back and think about it, don’t you think it’s strange that the price people pay to be entertained is being interrupted every few minutes by hucksters trying to separate them from their money? It is annoying and perhaps a goofy way to do things but at least the show and the commercials were separate things. Since everyone wants to skip the commercials they will probably merge. When you watch an old episode of The Rockford files it didn’t center around reasons for people to talk about Polaroid. In the future you might get people stopping to eat the newest thing from Taco Bell and that’s going to be stuck in the show forever. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/65 "2015-07-21T18:28:03Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > My entire point above is that it’s a very difficult subject to discuss without assurances that we’re talking about the same things, and a whole lot of terms and assumptions and notions are more subjective than absolute. IOW, you’re happy to make plenty of subjective claims, until challenged. I got it. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/66 "2015-07-21T18:31:39Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > IOW, you’re happy to make plenty of subjective claims, until challenged. If all the subjective claims made in any given day here were challenged (instead of discussed as ideas, as most are), the board would come to a halt. Now run back and tell your queen shrew what an asshole I’m being. Again. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Nylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/77aa72/32.png) [@Mr.Nylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Nylock)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/67 "2015-07-21T22:35:53Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > I’m not sure where my exposure to “pop culture” would happen with those sources though. > I guess it would depend on what you term “pop culture” in the first place but certainly over the last few months I’ve learned a lot about Magna Carta and the history of Rome but precious little about popular music or celebrities. I guess I consider NPR, BBC etc. pop intellectual culture - just one of the many flavors of pop culture out there. If you are learning about the magna carta, or the history of Rome form these sources you are getting a highly abridged version of events viewed form the general perspective of the times we live in. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I have nothing against pop culture. ---
**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/68 "2015-07-22T01:40:23Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Good insight. I think the short answer is because people think of the ads as being “free” or not involving them or optional or… what was the phrase in the adjacent thread? “Compensating us when they’re not altogether irrelevant”? > > As long as people regard ads as being “cheaper” (including “free”) payment for TV than any kind of fee, even the nickel-and-dime costs of Netflix or Hulu, they’re going to put up with them. > > IMHO, they cost a lot more than most people think, and the cost is shared by all of us as a culture, a society and an economy. But the forces of “I never watch TV so it doesn’t affect me” are pretty dominant here, so we’ll leave it at that. 🙂 I agree with you but that wasn’t what I was getting at. I totally understand why there are ads, I’m just musing about how funny it is if you think about it. You’re watching the news about war and famine and other serious things and, hang on… Boner pills! Laundry detergent! Diarrhea medicine! …then back to the world ending. It’s like walking through a carnival and everywhere you turn there’s some scumbag trying to cheat you out of your money. ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/69 "2015-07-22T01:47:25Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Okay. Define the acceptable level of consumer products in the average home, in objective terms. I’m \*\*\*not \*\*\*giving up my lovely new handbag! Or the ice cream maker! ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/70 "2015-07-22T05:26:27Z")
I mostly have. I use adblock. I watch everything online so I never see commercials. I don’t really buy anything but what I need or the occasional treat. But I still know the consumer culture exists, and if it breaks through all that, I’m going to say something about it. And if someone tries to make me feel guilty for opting out, I’m definitely going to say something. ---
**Author:** ![analogqueen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/898d66/32.png) [@analogqueen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/analogqueen)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/71 "2015-07-22T06:19:37Z")
> [@Mr.Nylock](#): > > I understand your post and it’s tongue in cheek sarcasm - but it actually lead me to think more seriously about the meaning of pop culture today vs when I was a teenager. I’m so old I remember being a teenager pre-internet. It was soooo different back then. There were far less options than there are now for everything. > > Beer - Anything “fancy” was imported. There were very few options beyond major brewing companies besides Heinekin. > > TV/Movies - There was 1 video chain that had offbeat/arthouse rentals - and they required a $50 deposit because many things they had (like _Altered States_) were so rare and hard to find. HBO just showed run of the mill box office stuff - no great original TV series. > > Music - That was a little better - but you were dependent upon college radio DJ’s to get an introduction to anything new, cutting edge, not top 40 pop. > > Sports - Before the internet I had to stay up till 3am to see any sumo wrestling. > > Coffe - I remember when I was 16 or 17 reading about coffee shops that they had in Euorpe where people just sat around and drank various coffee drinks and had intellectual conversations - I thought it was the most amazing thing ever - we had nothing even remotely like this in the suburbs before Starbucks. > > The list could go on and on - but I think if anyone who is 40 or older tries really hard to remember what it was like when they were younger, they would be amazed at how much more cultural diversity there is now in the US compared to then - almost to the point that it is hard to say what “pop” culture is any more. Disagree on the “cultural diversity” part. I see no diversity whatsoever. I see the same type of “culture”, and zero diversity. If by “diverse” do you mean the true sense of the word? I am over forty and remember pre-internet days. I also remember people, of all ages and colors and creeds, having actual real honest-to-God cultural differences in tastes in music, books, art and so on. The white stoner kids listened to metal, the urban or black kids listened to disco or R&B, the olds listened to oldies, smart kids would practice Chopin. Music and arts tastes could be defined- they had hues and flavors that were practically diametrically opposed, and nary the twain shall meet. Music now almost is all the same, in that all the same genre’- it all kind of blends into itself- I mean the popular stuff that is well known. No one seems to subscribe to particular genre, as in it is all kind of “mixed up”. EVERY one has been to a Starbucks- so how is that “diversity”? no one particular culture is an “Apple” culture, or a Honda culture, we’re all kind of in this weird, homogenous “Global Awareness” kinda thing. Someone said something about people being hanged for blasphemy in old days too- that was before my time. I don’t remember any of that. I DO remember when you could tell a Ford from a Chevy just by looking at it. I do remember TV being _smarter_. I think someone is putting something in the (bottled?) water, or I have gotten crotchety in my old age- because everything in media seems so banal, uninspired, well- kinda dumb! The music sounds all the same. The books out now are awful- unless the good ones just don’t have good PR agents… ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/72 "2015-07-22T07:23:38Z")
> [@Mr.Nylock](#): > > I guess I consider NPR, BBC etc. pop intellectual culture - just one of the many flavors of pop culture out there. If you are learning about the magna carta, or the history of Rome form these sources you are getting a highly abridged version of events viewed form the general perspective of the times we live in. > > Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I have nothing against pop culture. Unless we are all reading Cicero in contemporary latin then I guess we are all consumers of pop culture. I don’t think that’s a helpful term. I’ve pulled a straw poll of the people around me in the office. And asked them what they think “pop culture means” with the following answers. “celebrities, tabloid newspapers, talent shows, reality shows, chart music, twitter, facebook” No-one even mentioned Radio 4’s “the moral maze” let alone “the Reith Lectures” ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/73 "2015-07-22T08:48:37Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > If all the subjective claims made in any given day here were challenged (instead of discussed as ideas, as most are), the board would come to a halt. Good. Then let’s \*discuss, as an idea, \*my point that there’s a distinction between adopting current levels of technology in one’s household, and being driven by consumer culture. Presumably it’s possible to do so without the sort of GM v. UAW labor-negotiation-level definition of terms (whose necessity you claimed here) that would bring _this_ discussion to a halt, and if applied generally across the board, would bring _all_ threads to a halt. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/74 "2015-07-22T09:26:04Z")
And the thing is, in the absence of drawing some sort of distinction between the two, we can’t meaningfully discuss your idea that we’re pretty much all in thrall to consumer culture: “I have yet to be in **anyone’s** house who could claim such a level of dissociation - or, more precisely, **claimed it but could ignore the plentiful evidence to the contrary I could point to.** Like sex, money, literary taste and drinking, it’s a position subject to a lot of willed blindness and self-deception. Just because someone doesn’t have this week’s heavily advertised brand names everywhere doesn’t mean they are free of the larger tides of influence.” See, without being able to draw that distinction, you can point to anything you want in anyone’s house. Look, there’s a microwave! And what’s that? A smartphone! Is the holder of these items simply adopting useful technology as it becomes common, or is that person in thrall to consumer culture? If there is no distinction drawn, then you’re of course free to say the latter about _anything._ In the absence of such distinctions, your _idea_ just exists as something to wave around, without any way to judge its validity. We cannot meaningfully _discuss_ it. But it is, at heart, a claim, an assertion, and a very broad one at that. _Everybody_ that you see is in the thrall of consumer culture. A claim like that \*should \*be tested in a discussion like this. That’s what we _do_ on this board. I don’t get to say, “the top 0.1% are running everything,” say, without a discussion of what that means, so it can be tested. Otherwise, it’s just an airy-fairy leftist claim, but by your standard I’d be free to wave it around, unchallenged, as long as I cared, because a more rigorous discussion would grind this board to a halt. Sorry, but this is the Dope. ---
**Author:** ![GreenElf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@GreenElf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenElf)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/75 "2015-07-22T10:22:29Z")
This thread reminds me of _Idiocracy_ where people go to Starbucks for prostitutes and replace water with Gatorade for most everything including crop irrigation. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/76 "2015-07-22T13:38:21Z")
> [@analogqueen](#): > > I do remember TV being _smarter_. I have to take issue with this, TV is perhaps the best and most intelligent it has ever been from cartoons targeted at kids to adult drama. No contest, there are few shows older than a decade or two that can compare to more recent offerings. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/77 "2015-07-22T14:46:30Z")
**[Cite](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/the-irrational-consumer-why-economics-is-dead-wrong-about-how-we-make-choices/267255/)**, with a chain of deeper cites, on why most people are completely deluded in their belief that they are uninfluenced in their consumer choices. There’s an entire branch of consumer economics behind it - just not the one that argues about what color to make soup labels or how big to make an iPod. My preference, in a pop forum, is to discuss this general topic as a chain of ideas instead of a cite-v-cite battle, but I’ll leave this for those who believe no argument is valid unless it’s someone else’s. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/78 "2015-07-22T14:55:30Z")
I have opted out. I don’t own a smartphone, hi def tv, or blu-ray. you won’t find a dvd player in my car either. I do have a 23 year old dvd player. It hasn’t been turned on in at least a year or two. I just don’t care about that stuff. YMMV I do use tech when I need it. But have no interest in wasting money on it. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/79 "2015-07-22T15:20:47Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > **[Cite](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/the-irrational-consumer-why-economics-is-dead-wrong-about-how-we-make-choices/267255/)**, with a chain of deeper cites, on why most people are completely deluded in their belief that they are uninfluenced in their consumer choices. There’s an entire branch of consumer economics behind it - just not the one that argues about what color to make soup labels or how big to make an iPod. > > My preference, in a pop forum, is to discuss this general topic as a chain of ideas instead of a cite-v-cite battle, but I’ll leave this for those who believe no argument is valid unless it’s someone else’s. There are many statements I take issue with in that article but here is a particularly glaring example. > [@](#): > > Rational consumers with consistent intertemporal evaluation should treat the trade “$300 for an attractive but unneeded accessory versus 3 days” the same whether it is executed right now or executed in 30 days. Not rational if you need a car now, not rational in many different scenarios. If I can wait thirty days I can wait three more, if I need a car now it may be rational to take the more expensive model. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593/80 "2015-07-22T15:45:18Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > **[Cite](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/the-irrational-consumer-why-economics-is-dead-wrong-about-how-we-make-choices/267255/)**, with a chain of deeper cites Ah yes, another of these “here, **you** do all the work” cites. 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-angry-at-vapid-consumer-culture-why-not-just-opt-out/725593.md?page=5)