The Terrible Spiral of Consumption Communities
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- čas přidán 2. 06. 2024
- Many online communities perform marketing functions essentially free of charge. Some communities have realized this. Others haven't.
00:00:00 - Intro and Definition
00:04:52 - How I Get Sucked In
00:09:30 - Causes for Concern
00:12:11 - Bits of Resistance
00:14:20 - Loose Advice
00:16:27 - End Part
That one research paper I mention:
www.researchgate.net/publicat...
LEGO has transitioned entirely from a children's toy company to an adult collector company and the community is 90% about CONSUMPTION rather than creatively utilizing the bricks
I went into a Lego store with my rich extended family whose children love the place, but it felt so sterile and sad because of the obvious pandering to adults apparent in the store’s layout.
What struck me when my kids got into Lego was the sheer volume of "special" bricks they have now vs when I was a kid. Sure, the models do look more realistic now but costs are driven up by the extra tooling required. That and how most of the stuff now is based on licensed IPs instead of the old "builder kits" I remember that had instructions for like 10 or more basic models to get you thinking creatively.
@@Swodie_Jeetin the creativity now is happening in the design office, where they are actually the ones making the decisions about how to re-use weird brick shapes. that's where the disappointment comes for me.. maybe I couldn't design and build an orchid vase but all I'm doing is following instructions to make a display piece, pretty much. it's not the same
When I was a kid lego had a tonne of original sets and themes. If you look at lego now, its mostly all sets based off of media franchises. Pretty sad to see.
Indeed🎉
You dont need a $2000 camera, you need to go take 2000 photos.
Absolutely. Some of my happiest days in photography were when I had nothing, and had to learn how to make due. How to make it work.
I think you may have just altered something in my brain, thank you
I'm a guitarist but this still hit hard
Exactly! I'm a seamstress and that's what I tell people just getting into the hobby. No one *needs* one of the fancy digital machines with a thousand stitch options: straight, zigzag, and button hole. That's it. The skill comes from practice, not the machine you start on. That and you can buy *presser feet* that imitate certain types of stitches if you *absolutely need* a certain stitch for a project-- an $8-10 purchase compared to a $1,000+ purchase.
@@MoonLitChild I've made it all the way from complete amateur to professional on a sewing machine from Aldi! You're 100% right.
I'm into 3d printing. 10 years ago it was a dynamic community where everyone was experimenting and even commercial printers were really, uh, hobbyish. At some point something changed. Now the only thing anyone ever talks about is the latest AMAZING NEW PRINTER YOU SHOULD BUY NOW. The field was crushed by an absolute flood of 'sponsored' content, affiliate links, creators getting free stuff, and most likely, companies selling things at a loss to drive out the competition. Can we just not have anything good anymore?
i today just went to the reprap festival and the maker room was full of people just selling stuff off thingiverse they had printed. nothing really new or interesting it was just a bunch of people with bambu’s trying to sell multicolor pikachi prints and articulated dragons and stuff. it bummed me out a bit because i feel thats not in the spirit of the maker scene but what do i know, i just hang out with wolves all day
@@connors3356 Yeah and in general now those events seem like more of a place for manufacturers to show off and sell their latest products, than a place for hobbyists to show off what they have done. It really has a flea market vibe. It wasn't like that before 2020.
@@connors3356that's really sad to hear, it sounded like it was gonna be pretty cool but that really is like 90% of 3D printing now is hyper consumerism
Maybe I just follow different 3D printing creators, but I feel like after the P1P and similar printers came out, there was way less content about actual printers, since a lot of the previous printing content about printers was "How to fix _____ on your Ender 3", and now, at multiple price points, you can buy a 3D printer that just works, and doesn't need 5 CZcams videos of trouble shooting each week just to stay functional.
You should try I out the elegoo printers they are vary nice and fun 😊
What really baffles me is that I became more aware of this hyper consumerism attached to hobby community’s. So i decided to be way more mindful about what I buy and just trying to not fall for it. And then I started getting ads for reusable bags to put my bread into, glass containers to buy food without the packaging, eco friendly laundry detergent that need to be shipped to my house from another country across the world. In general a whole hyper consumerism based on being more eco friendly, when in reality you need to buy less shit in order to live more eco friendly. I have a bunch of Tupperware from my grandma and parents and a few newer things I bought since living by myself, it wouldn’t make sense to me to replace them with glass jars. I don’t need reusable veggie bags I already have a bunch of paper ones I can perfectly reuse or I just buy vegetables loose. I wash my food before I cook it I don’t need a freaking separate bag to buy a cauliflower I’m gonna clean and cook. I don’t need reusable cutlery for my lunch I just grab a fork and knife from home. Straws I still have a lot from before but I barely ever use straws I just drink from a glass. It’s so stupid seeing people make an aesthetic out of reducing waste by creating even more waste.🫠
Ah yes, commodification of "sustainability" as a lifestyle. God I am exhausted 😂
This is mostly true but occasionally it is good to replace older things that may be functional-like plastics that contain BPA-for health/safety reasons.
I like to look at all the eco products as “when it’s time to replace” rather than a “switch to be green”.
I have diagnosed ADHD and am supremely guilty of "hobby-hopping." Since getting diagnosed and becoming aware of my habits, it's gotten much better. I inherited the ADHD from my dad and he's not so aware. Recently he wanted to try drawing again. He started with pencils and notepaper, said he wasn't good, and then bought about $100 worth of supplies in the hopes that they'd make him "better" (at the recommendation of online friends). He hasn't drawn since and the stuff is sitting unused. Consumption communities are especially bad places for neurodivergent folks to be.
That's a really huge problem. I'm suspected of having ADHD (not planning on looking into diagnosis, but my family and friends all point out the symptoms) and hobby hopping is a huge problem. Thankfully, I have a lot that I sorta rotate through, and they're mostly art/craft mediums, so I just pick them back up every now and then. When my dad tried to get into drawing, he listened to my advice of "get a cheap sketchbook and a small pack of #2 pencils" thankfully.
ok, so idk how much these are a thing but a friend of mine said there are some facebook groups and stuff for trading hobby supplies for people who do "hobby-hopping"
@@GraphiI was gonna say, I’m an artist and recently I’ve been making a point to buy new art supplies secondhand if at all. It makes a huge difference and for me makes me consume more mindfully, but I also don’t tend to hobby hop so maybe it won’t work for everyone.
@@Graphi Those are a really good start, I just wish there was a similar option for folks without fb accounts (I've never had one for various reasons). Then again, it'd be pretty hard to have an app/site for that kind of thing bc of scams and such. Swapping with friends/family is my backup lol
Oof. Biggest art rookie mistake is thinking the power of good art lies in the materials.
I started calling it aspirational consumption when it relates to a skill based hobby-- "oh I NEED to buy the best gear to be good at this skill, and when I end up using it it'll make my work way better!" but then they end up sitting on a shelf for years until you sell them on.
All commodity consumption is aspirational lol
With cosmetics and skincare I can absolutely speak to a hoarding and consumer culture. They also go hand in hand as frequent makeup use can tear up your skin, and people with problem skin are encouraged to use makeup.
There is a counter-current in cosmetics writ large- “no buys” and “anti-hauls” and “declutters” are popular content. However, I have seen one woman, Hannah Lousie Poston, have to pull herself out of a shopping addiction, which she documents on her channel.
Other hobbies that are VERY guilty of this: coffee/espresso, cleaning products, fitness/wellness.
100%
Cleaning products reminded me, it’s really wild seeing how many cleaning TikTokers use and promote scrub daddy products. I’m sure it’s a decent product, but to see it used almost exclusively is weird.
I used to work at Ulta. Confirming. The marketing is infuriating. Haven't worked there for years. STILL working my way through my stash 😭
@@foxgloved8922 I own one and I genuinely think that it's a great product, and even I think that it's weird how they exclusively use Scrub Daddy products.
my ol m8 jen was always astounded that i use dawn dish soap for everything face n hair n stuff. im like jen, it’s no worries it’s all strewth if it’s good for the oily ducks it good for me
Got my degree in marketing a year ago, and the consumer behavior class was maybe the freakiest and strangest class I've had. One interesting thing is that we generally will only buy something once it transforms from a want to a need. That usually happens once we adopt said item of our affection as our own, even before we've bought it, imagining how different our life would be with it, and owning it becoming a part of our identity, all before we've even completed the purchase. I think consumption communities and influencers really fast track us through these stages and create a lot of un-necessary need from us, when we would be happier if we'd never even heard of something in the first place.
That's really interesting
Technical hobbies have been absolutely hollowed out by this behavior in the last decade. 3D printing, digital photography, PC building, emulation, keyboards, nerf blasters - I was on forums for all these things when I was a kid. With the decline of specialized forums, everyone gets their information from undisclosed ads instead of expert advice. It's all tied into the decay of the web, and the corporate takeover of communication.
so heavy on the nerf blasters... it used to be just removing air restrictors from mavericks, then everyone was running FDLs and caliburns, and now it's probably something crazier.
Fountain pens. I was stream of consciousness journaling for my mental health (still so), my hand was cramping, some reading suggested a fountain pen would help (it did). Went to the local store that sells fountain pens, tried to ask pragmatic questions about use cases, it swiftly became clear that they were not using tools for writing, they were collectors of nostalgia. Wanted black ink. Got pressured into buying something sparkly that's very pretty but constantly clogs my nib. Not exactly what you want for stream of consciousness. Have since gotten into pretty ink colors and multiple pens (with some angst about consumer habits that curtails my actual purchasing), but will always resent that initial experience of knowing what I wanted and "upgrading" to something that was actively detrimental to my stated use case.
I feel you. I have a small collection of cheap pens and I got inks in all the colours I want as an artist (plus a handful thast are water/alcohol insoluble) and that't it! I use every pen almost every day. The ink comes in such big amounts I won't need to restock any of 'em basically ever... But there's definitely a big culture around collecting and stockpiling. I have a colour for all my favourite colours and a couple of cool ones and I don't. I don't need more colours. Sometimes want them though.
I was in the same situation of wanting a fountain pen for writing, got a "starter pen" and played around with a few brands of ink, found favorite and now I'm good. Shouldn't the point of reusable pens be saving money and resources in the long run by not having to buy extra pens?
sounds like you went to a crappy store and also lacked confidence to stand up for yourself. it's important to be able to say no, i want black ink, not shimmer. buying online probably would have been easier if you're easily pressured
Yeah I had thime same thing happen when I was a young cook. Wanted to get myself a reliable, decent-quality knife to use at work. Wound up. getting convinced to buy a premium, collector version carbon-steel knife. Turns out if you cut onions with it it makes them taste like metal and it will literally rust if it touches anything wet without being dried immediately. So basically completely useless as a daily use knife in a commercial kitchen.
@@amandak.4246 The literal point of this post was to say "I was more naive I'm the past but I have learned my lesson now", your comment is extremely unnecessary.
Loved the emphasis on, if your skill and knowledge of your craft hasn’t progressed, a new product will not make you better at your craft. It’s all in practice and the mind. You can’t buy taste.
I remember when I was coming up in the art community and there was a lot of pressure to get a tablet, best advice I've ever heard is "you don't want to learn to drive on a ferrari"
I always say "if you feel like you have a grasp on something and want to move to the next stage, just stick with whatever it is a bit more just to see how much you really didn't know and can still learn"
True
Definitely. In my photography journey I've always kept in mind that I should only upgrade gear when my skills surpass the limitations of my camera (I do sports frequently which is heavily gear oriented). Pushing the envelope of what my crappy a500 could do helped me appreciate an a9 I borrowed from a friend.
This isn't true for musical instruments and things like bikes. I am saying this for a practical reason, of encouragement. I learned to play guitar on an old acoustic Martin and not only did it make me feel bad about myself but it physically injured me. I played thousands of hours and couldn't do basic things that other people could do because the guitar was too hard to play. There are a lot of reasons professional musicians don't play student instruments. You can get a moderate, normal, mid-range instrument that will not impede your progress through intermediate playing. Cruddy instruments limit beginners in particular, especially because they often take more strength and skill to get good results from, which beginners do not have and will usually not acquire from a cruddy instrument
The point is having discernment and researching things you buy. If you buy a well researched guitar used, you can sell it to someone else if it doesn't work out. Because it's valuable. And $50 student models aren't. They are future garbage
I feel like “buying” your way in/into a hobby has ,strangely, become easiest away to bypass the “poseur” or dilettante test. Harsh community gatekeeping has done this to many a subculture.
I used to call myself a cinephile, but after looking at the money people spend building their criterion libraries… I’m okay just being a movie buff. Less expectations and people are shocked you can list off foreign art house directors😄.
Same with books, bibliophile just carries too much expectation. I keep a 1 book shelf library. I like classic, I like smut, but I’m definitely not spending $100s at Barnes and Nobles when the $2-$5 dollar bin at the thrift store is available.
plus i'm sure as a bonus no one assumes you wanna fuck movies or books
You don't need to be a physical media collector to be a cinephile.
I love films and filmmaking and just absolutely abhor the fine art community built around it.
Music scenes are so guilty of this. You can buy a membership into any music scene by buying a shit ton of Vinyl records and an expensive turntable, without having to listen to any of them.
It's easy to be a cinephile/bibliophile without spending a cent, just look up what a private tracker is lmao
knitting and crochet is so bad for this. you obviously have to keep buying yarn but the amount of other things you might “need” gets kind of crazy
the art community videos are 90 percent hauls/reviews. Even some people that when they DO paint I like their stuff it's just...why are all their videos basically ads?
God yeah, I'm in the fiber arts and the push to just BUY BUY BUY is wild. Back in the short time frame when I could afford to buy 30 dollar skeins, and now I'm trying to get rid of my drawer sized stash because as fun as knitting and crochet is I don't need or want a ton of stuff.
Also a lot of that I'm realizing was buying just to buy, after growing up being told everything other than necessities was Expensive and not worth it.
But ... yarn is purse sized ○_○
@@FeatherVoid Its because companies want you to buy their products so you become more dependent on them, and they pay people you watch to do that because they dont care about you enough to not do it.
Only way to stop it is to get rid of those companies
Yes! Especially with hand dyed yarn, you never know if that colorway will exist again so you feel the urge to get it before it’s gone. I learned to dye my own yarn and doing that also requires buying more things. I essentially broke even. Made no difference financially
The internet, like most things in our Capitalist society, has just become a large shopping catalog.
I think the most important part is the “once you have your basic setup.” It’s easy for someone just getting into any hobby to think there’s a buying culture everywhere because there is, at first. It’s supposed to exist on a curve. At some point, it’s supposed to plateau. (And this is usually pretty early on.) And the thing I’ve noticed with a lot of these buying cultures is it never does.
Something I would like to point out, is that everything talked about in the video and the comments are all REAL marketing concepts. They’re not conspiracy theories, they’re not speculation, they’re not accidental, they’re what business majors are taught explicitly. The concept of getting organic free promotion is called buzz. Any marketer would tell you (behind closed doors, probably) it’s far more effective than paid advertising.
and tbf its not necessarily a bad thing if you have people promoting your stuff simply by using or talking about it. Word of mouth is very good in both marketing and helping people discern what's worth buying. I think it's mainly a problem with toxic social media culture, the way influencers work and that cut throat attitude of getting a product review out first before any one else, and of course sucking up to the producer of whatever you're talking about.
Knew a business major in college-- real nice guy, he was only majoring it in because he wanted to keep the family business (small scale construction) going. He'd tell me about some of the dystopian, sycophantic things he learned in the early classes and it made my stomach turn: like, this is how you exploit certain psychological urges that everyone has to a certain degree, this is how to spot someone who is neuro-divergent or has compulsive tendencies and will become addicted to the product easier than an a-typical person. It was *sick.* Seeing it play out all over the internet has been one of the "we really are living The Worst Timeline" reminders.
As a college student who typically works with digital art, I’ve seen such toxic consumer culture from my professors. Just this last semester, I had a professor tell us a specific $100 Art kit was necessary for the course. It was physical art supplies, which made me skeptical, so I didn’t purchase. This kit was only used for ONW homework assignment, which I did digitally (got chewed out by the professor for not buying the kit though). THEN he made us purchase an Adobe subscription and if anyone knows anything about Adobe, as a college student, it’s very expensive and though it’s “industry standard”, offering NO assistance for anyone who needs a cheaper option is disgusting. Basically: professors will sometimes feed into this consumer culture and may accidentally encourage students to do the same in a vicious cycle.
Ok, as a former art student I’m actually on your prof’s side. If you want to work in INDUSTRIAL ART which is something I’d say 85% of art students intend to do you MUST know Adobe products, just how industry is, and $100 is a very reasonable price for what i assume is brushes and paint tubes. Often art supply stores and Adobe heavily subsidize the price for students, if you see what I a working designer and artist pay for this stuff it’s intense. I’m also a part of the independent digital artist scene so I’m aware of why people say you don’t need need x and y, but foundation art school is suppose to diversify your artistic tool set and familiarize you with mainstream industry conditions. I’m happy my first year profs convinced me to buy spools of wire and try sculpting, I got to learn how to make art I never knew existed and it expanded how I approached problem solving. The most annoying classmates I had were people who set to become a narrow niche type of artist and unwilling to compromise their identity as a watercolourist or whatever to do an assignment. If they already know they want to do X for the rest of their lives and they’re already doing it then why are they here in school?
Also unpopular opinion: physical paint is a must for color theory class.
It's very common for college courses to require specific materials and programs. There's ranges IMO, I think your example is an acceptable range. I knew a professor who purposefully included his books he wrote, and spoke of it gleefully. It was done and explained in a way that it didn't matter. I knew another professor who also purposefully included their books, but didn't tell the students. People did not like that nearly as much.
In regards to adobe; Adobe sucks, you also are going to have a very, very hard time in the industry using anything else. Especially if you're working with vectors, psh. Good luck, lol..
one of my geology professors had created the textbook. We had to pay $350 for fucking PHOTOCOPIED pages that he couldn't even be bothered to try to bind together. We didn't even get a binder, we were required to buy one. And that text book was mandatory. He was also a colossal asshole, and I dropped out shortly after taking his class. It just wasn't worth the stress.
Wondering if I could pass that adobe assignment by using free software and converting my file to psd or whatever file format adobe uses.
Anyway, universities are obligated to pay for this stuff. That's what your tuition is for.
@@NoiseDay Class supplies and required readings aren't included in tuition, unfortunately
I find this fascinating. Been noticing for a few years that production and consumption is getting faster and faster. People get really into something, order it, talk about how excited they are, and by the time they get it, they don't care any more, and need to get something else. We share the excitement with others, that's basically what marketing became now. It's collective. I'm not pointing fingers, that's how we're conditioned by the system we live in. The question is, how far can it go on accelerating like this? Every cycle of want-order-buy gets shorter. Eventually, the production won't be able to keep up with the ever-changing demand for things nobody actually wants or needs.
it drives me insane when i see tiktok’s with shop links and the person only ORDERED the product!!
I've been trying to minimize what I own and ramped things up within the past year or two, and it's been a great joy to get back to interest I sort of skipped out too early on, and also helps managing current urges to consume.
I think the answer to your question of how far the acceleration can go is, unfortunately, right up to the point of climate catastrophy collapsing the supply chains. That's our near future imo.
@@alligatorjonesphd I’m kind of surprised people but stuff from TikTok directly
It seems so scammy
Music production has gotten absolutely terrible for this. The plugin market is an absolute hellscape at this point with a lot of active deception. It’s all so expensive and there’s a bunch of people throwing thousands of dollars at it instead of sitting down and working on making music. This idea that if you get this thing it’ll make everything sound amazing is a hoax. It takes work, time and effort. Consumer culture is awful and I do my best to buy everything I can second hand and not give any money to companies that don’t deserve it
This is why it got so overwhelming for me as a sound recording student and it made me realize having to deal with that “gear hype” gets in the way of my love for creating music
As a graphic design student, I also feel the pain of plugins. Motion design is so guilty of it and my professor was even endorsing it at some point (he has splurged grands for it). It's the one course people have repeated multiple times for where I study, and the tutorials that end up endorsing plugins or using them without context or not disclosing it doesn't help either.
I could even say a thing about spending too much for the graphic design community as well. If I don't spend a hefty sum on adobe software, I'm doomed to using canva; canva is heavily stigmatized, but it's the most a beginner or struggling designer can afford.
plugin hype killed almost all my interest in making electronic music
Ive had people be like LOOK AT THIS PRESET- without realizing they could have whipped up the same sound in a default oscillator plugin and not have spent 70 dollars
Same, thankfully I just don't have money cause I am a minor and am too lazy to pirate. Mostly just use Vital, Valhalla, Sforzando and kilohearts and Melda free effect bundles lol.
United States hoarding culture was the most jarring the two times I moved back from working in other countries. It takes a bit to get used to and there’s a lot of pressure to purchase. I’ve been incredibly broke the last year and I think my brain is finally shifting over to mostly thinking about purchasing necessities. I still like to look on websites and put hearts on EVERYTHING, but I don’t buy any of it (cause I can’t), and that’s ok.
I'm not American, but currently living in Japan and before I came here I thought I was coming to be Marie Kondo and have a Buddhist Zen lifestyle haha. Forgot this was THE land of merch, there are so many things to buy that serve no other purpose than being cute and nice to look at that my impulsivity is really struggling. I've also been broke (it's also my first time living in a first world country so the lifestyle creep is intense) and trying to get to that place of it being okay.
@@TheCameraLuvsMe I mean the whole Kondo concept (koncept?) is an antithetical reaction to Japan's advanced consumer society
Fighting game controllers, people will buy expensive sticks before even learning the fundamentals of the games, meanwhile people are winning majors with their standard pads.
People in the makeup/skincare sphere started doing "antihauls" where they talk about new releases that they're not buying and why. Obvi there's a lot to unpack if those same creators still promote consumerism in other videos/posts, but I still think a lot of communities could benefit from more content like that
I'm not into makeup at all, but I follow a couple people who were posting "project pan" videos and I had to Google wtf, like are we talking Peter Pan? hook? what's this pan lmaooo but yeah using it all up to see the bottom of the pan 😅 gottt it 🤦🏻♀️ this is where we are at now
that's honestly pretty cool.
i have a couple of hobbies but the one that has the potential to be the biggest money sink is warhammer (as in, i might _occasionally_ have cause to spend £30-40 on a new box of models, because that's how expensive they are these days. i can't picture myself spending that much on wool or embroidery floss, for example, at least not in one go). you do sometimes see people in the hobby saying very loudly "i _won't_ be buying [new model kit]", but unfortunately it's mostly due to short-term tantrums about the "rules" (how the little toy soldiers behave when you play games with them) and almost nobody ever changes their spending habits; many people still chase new releases out of fear that stock will run out, and _everyone_ in the hobby has a huge backlog or "pile of shame" (models still unpainted, usually not even assembled or even taken out of the box). it's rare to see people saying "i won't be buying [new kit] because i'm broke", or "…because i already have plenty of stuff to work on", or "…because, even though the models are nice, i just don't need to have them".
Agree. I do skincare for myself cause I'm so sensitive, and there's a lot of simple household items (but of good quality) that can replace skincare creams and cleaners etc if we were just educated and proactive.
Every hobby has been slowly and sometimes not that slowly or subtly engineered for addiction
There isn't a single corner of our social world you can go to escape marketing, vile marketing, constant pushing you to buy and consume, and trying to convince you you MUST have that thing to continue being you, to be you better than you could be without it
I can't take it anymore, as consciously as I can live my life, no effort can fully free me from feelings of inadequacy, I feel poor, I feel ugly, I feel weak
we can always go to communities of friends who we share values with, who we have built relationships with based on authenticity, who we have chosen ourselves 💗 we always have a choice and we still have power in this world. I don’t have any money and my friends still make me feel capable and plentiful and beautiful. you are all those things, too, and there are good people out there waiting to love you and be loved by you.
@saucewizard69 over time I lost my connection with most of the friends who were with me for my authenticity and vice-versa
My anxiety is the consequence of my choosing to live consciously and being aware of every defeat I have, because being deeply regretful and lonely as I have become over the years, I have more often than not lived in contradiction with my values just because it's easier and I hate the fact that it's much more likely for me to worsen simply because I don't know how to create connections anymore, it seems like a lost ability, a vestigial trait of something that I lost throughout my devolution
But thank you and sorry about my pessimism 😢
You are.
@@Exigentable I am what? All of those negative things I sometimes think I am? Be clear on what you are trying to say
Try gardening mate. Go volunteer at a community garden, start growing some plants. Read about permaculture. The people and community and culture have actually blown me away with how kind, cooperative and grounded they are and I'm a natural pessimist and a cynic. They're less into shiny tools and more into upskilling. Big into sharing from a sincere place. Get involved in local cooperatives and trade schools. I still feel like you sometimes, but when I'm involved in a communal project, at a workshop, or just working on my own shit I can forget about it for a bit. At least that's the circles I'm in, with people focused on practical and sustainable gardening. I'm sure there's elements of competition and consumption in fancy flower shows and stuff but I don't bother with that.
Currently clawing my way out of the photography black hole while falling right into mechanical keyboards. Boy this video was timely. Fantastic stuff as always.
I'm in the audiophile community and it's the same shit unfortunately. I got into to try to enhance my engagement with my music and at some point, I'm getting funneled all of these videos on which IEM is the best and worth your money, the latest and greatest cables. It's sad.
omg I hate the mechanical keyboard community. They are such bad elitist, fomo, over consumers. They only ever get excited about someones crazy expensive set up. If you put something great together with actually affordable supplies its all crickets. I've also never been able to shake the feeling that its a super fucking lame thing to be into... I haven't been able to really explain why very well so maybe thats just a me problem lol
@@Graive17 As an outsider it seems like audiophiles are a level of tribalist-impressionable-delusional-religion-cult similar to the flat earth cohort in that no level of reason or proof will dissuade people from believing some marketing drivel about how *this thing* will make the MP3s sound cleaner. Like there are audiophile USB hubs and network switches.....ummm. That's not how digital signals work. At all. And it doesn't seem like any of them want to hear it. You can make an arugument for the quality of a DAC or a pair of speakers/headphones - but once you claim a gold plated USB cable is "absolutely necessary for maximum fidelity" you might as well be saying the rapture happened last tuesday and the chosen ones are currently ascending.
I'm typing this comment on a 300$ keyboard and it's not worth it
@@xcryxbabyx2001 It is a really fucking lame thing to be into lmao. It's a keyboard. What rational human being gets elitist over a keyboard? 😂
They're trying to make interior design something that changes super fast so you have to buy whole new interiors every year too.
You are soooo right.
That fast/disposable furniture/decor stuff is even more predatory given that many of us are moving every year or two as rent outpaces inflation. Most of my peers are having to job hop every 1-2 years because internal raises and promotions are a thing of the past. As gas prices and traffic (due to lack of public transit options) get worse, you’re forced to move frequently to follow your job-then people feel justified buying particle board “live laugh love” nonsense from target that will be ready for the trash (due to low quality and trends) by the end of their rental lease anyway.
It’s so disgusting it makes me want to live in a van down by the river, but of course influencers have commodified that too 🤷
I notice this too. Better to buy one nice thing that you can afford than the cheapest thing you can that will burst and break in less than a year
So right! I'm working in movies business in Russia, making interiors for movie scenes, it's crazy how fast trends are changing, it has become such a waste of resources.
I fight this urge with just cleaning my space, using pillow covers that feel modern or updated in style, and replacing my used up candles with more updated aesthetic jars and seasonal scents. Otherwise I keep everything the same until it looks super dowdy or it’s broken. I’ve had to remind myself it’s not normal to change your interior regularly, nobody does that and it’s a waste of money. Influencer culture is not real.
I miss decorating according to your own unique tastes instead of the trends. I’m trying to get back to that, even in clothing. Fast fashion and influencers have killed creativity.
I’m in the American Girl Doll community. It’s literally a community of people who love the dolls and media from a single company. Granted, most buy mainly secondhand and try to limit their consumption. We post a lot of repair jobs, discussions on the books and media, upcoming releases, etc. There are some that consume too much but most are chill. Sadly, the company has noticed this community of collectors and have started to market to us. Rereleasing dolls that have been discontinued for a decade, limited edition collabs, and historical doll merch aimed at adults. It’s a mix of nostalgia marketing and hobby consumerism
Oof as a kid I loved them. But my mom spent every penny to buy me the doll and handmade her clothes. We were not doing great financially and I know that I was lucky to have a talented mom! When I see the prices now I’m shocked 😭
@@NotesNNotes funny enough, they’re actually cheaper now than they used to be when inflation is considered
The comment section here is gold. Thanks, guys. Made me want to sort my hobbies according to how much i feel like i need to buy stuff to get better, from worst to best.
Oil painting - probably the worst, because you'll want to buy the best canvas, gesso, paints and brushes. A remedy for this is knowing that you probably just need good pigments for the basic colors and that you will do a lot of studies using limited palettes. So no, you don't need 10 shades of green. Just add blue or red or yellow to "season" your green. Also, I have 100+ brushes but only use like 10. Size variety matters, shape variety doesn't. (At least for me).
Sewing - Terrible. You WILL overbuy on fabric. Some things you can do are: Have a specific project for each bunch of fabric you buy. Don't shop online. Don't buy blind bags of scraps from someone else.
Pottery - Glazes are dangerous. You will want to buy them all and test them all. The best thing is to focus on coloring with colored slip and then cover it later with a clear glaze. If you want it, you can buy glazes with different effects only.
Drawing - Don't fall for it. You will end up using at most 2 pencils: one lighter and one darker. The same ones you used in school. Use tissue paper for smoothing it out. Carve into regular erasers to make them pointier. This is THE hobby where it is SUPER CLEAR that the only way up is by drawing and it doest matter at all if you do it using shitty paper and shitty pencils.
Sculpting - Surprisingly, it is very accessible. We are encouraged to make our own tools using chopsticks, use old t-shirts to help keep the pieces moist, and it is obvious that changing clay won't make you a better sculptor. It does get expensive when you get to make molds and cast your pieces in resin, but that happens because the material itself is expensive, not because "if you get a different resin your piece will look better!".
Embroidery - caveat: I only embroider using black string on a white canvas, as I like doing manga panels. For this reason I only need the canvas, scissors and any black string/floss. The urge to buy different colored string came and I bought a cheap kit with all the colors I wanted, then it was over.
Thanks for the video, man. I'm very prone to impulse buying and it hasn't been great lately..
So much good advice, thank you! I'd never thought of embroidering manga panels before but it's definitely going on my list of future projects. There's so many pages in Clover which would look great
I am miraculously not into any of the hobbies you listed (yet), but I'm sure many people will find this breakdown helpful.
it’s kind of fun to read through the comments and see how many different hobbies this issue relates to…lately i’ve forgone some of my other hobbies for digital art, and i can’t even remember the last time i purchased new supplies unnecessarily. but as i consider new hobbies, i will be on my guard!
this is the monthly meeting of hobbyists anonymous; "Hi I'm Mark and I've been into Eurorack for five years" "Hi Mark!"
Backpacking. Coffee. Instruments. Bicycles. Denim. T-shirts. Woodcarving tools and other hand tools.
Being a fan of anime and manga, the culture around collecting is crazyyyy. Like it's so normalized to buy every volume of the manga, and buy every figure and merch item of the series for no reason other than it being from that series. It's almost like a competition to prove who's the "biggest fan" instead of buying things you actually use, or because you genuinely want to support that work. It's been so hard for me to scale back my collecting of manga specifically since it's so easy to get swept up in the completionism and needing to have every single volume.
i agree, i watch a few girls who buy huge hauls of merch using buyee. it makes me feel like a fake fan because i read the manga from the library, watch the anime when it's free...and that's it. i agree with you there feels like a competition to prove you love a series most.
How can you read if you don’t collect EVERY tome? Do you also miss crucial times in different book series and later don’t know what’s happening? Also afaik mangakas are like bands, they earn more money from merch than from the comic sale, so you are significantly helping your favorite creator to create more of your favorite stuff. Sounds absolutely normal.
@@PLKinka you can swap volumes with friends or borrow them from the library. or even just read a volume online. i personally pretty much only read manga i can get physically, but i have swapped manga before with friends. i like getting merch too but some people do get a hoarder mentallity, and tbh i think most people don't buy merch usually to support the creator, its to have some cool from a series they like on their shelf
@@PLKinkamost non japanese fans of manga are not reading the series for the first time when they get the physical copy. It takes months for books to be translated and printed or for a bluray run after the show is over. Most anime fans pirate shit or read/watch digitally and buy the physical book/bluray for sentimental reasons or to collect them.
I’ve noticed the same thing in the kpop collecting community 😕 so many people joke about buying merch over food/necessities but I know for a lot it’s not actually a joke…. Companies have been taking advantage of fans too lately by releasing SO MUCH limited edition merch and preorder benefit photocards that it makes you feel like you have to buy them before they become pricier and harder to find. Idk how completionist collectors do it honestly
something has always bugged me about these sorts of communities and you nailed it on the head. i can't help but feel like its spreading to like, every community!
It is! It doesn't help that for hobbies, people expect it to become all encompassing.
Because some youtuber makes all their own clothes, why do you want to make just some of your wardrobe? Don't you care about the planet? Why are you growing a tomato instead of going full homestead?
Why aren't you selling birdhouses and 3d printed models as a side hustle so you can afford a multi grand tool to elevate your work?
@@dismurrart6648This!! I'm an artist and painter hobbyist and sooo often, I get, "You should start a business" or "You know how much stuff like that could sell for?" even after I tell them that I don't like the idea of capitalizing off my art. It's for me, it's for people to look at for free.
This sort of all or nothing mentality with our hobbies is really harmful for creativity, and it's unsustainable! For the planet and for ourselves.
I like your phrase "buy to belong". I felt this pressure strongly in fandoms. From people posting and praising collections and "shrines", experience completionism through "you MUST go to this concert/event" (FOMO), and being walking advertisements so everyone around you knows what a big real fan you are.
I still enjoy occasionally indulging at places like conventions or concerts, I feel like it's similar to a festival or carnival. But then you're left with a pile for the other 360 days of the year. You could get lucky and have it increase in value, or you could get unlucky and it being so niche no one wants it.
I find that creating is a healthier outlet than mass consumption. I'm not against all merch, but the constant endless rotation frustrates me.
I realized I didn't have an issue with the image quality because the sound quality is good! Much worse to try listening to a video I have to struggle to hear
It's so startling seeing just how many diverse, different communities are being mentioned in the comments. Everyone is poisoned.
I'm slowly crawling into goth. An, as a person who lives in small city in a third world country, I can't express enough how consumist the online scene became. Every time I ask how to dress goth in social media, I get store reccomendations. The same goes with makeup.
I'm inverse evolutioning. I'm dying my clothes, ripping them off and trying new ways to use the same eyeliner I bought, wich is, the old way of doing goth as far as I know lol
This is literally what goth fashion was going into the early 80s after the surge of post-punk and new wave. There were no goth or alternative stores. Goth/alt fashion was shopping at thrift stores and modifying pieces of clothing yourself. You're doing it correctly, keep it up 🤙🤙🤙
Absolutely embodying the goth spirit!
Not to sound mean but I think it's pretty lame to ask "how do I goth?" just do what fits you and what you like. If it's goth to others then cool, and if it isn't then who cares
@@jk6971 apart from the music, wich basically makes everyone goth no matter the clothes. I do find the aesthetics appealing and if you don't have alternative clothing stores you would wonder how tf to dress alt. Specially because I've never tried styling myself before, I'm literally learning how to do a simple eye liner at 27
@@lilacKurage I love that you’re DIYing to reduce consumption!
Here’s a pro tip to make your black clothes last longer AND to repurpose old or thrifted clothing into goth fashion:
One of the cheapest things from a craft store is dye. Different kinds for cotton and polyester, so read the bottle. They even sell pods to dye clothes in the washing machine set to the hottest water. They are used for “re-blacking” faded black clothing and to make all your blacks match better (since some have brown or blue undertones that clash in sunlight, this better equalizes the darkness and shade of black across your batch).
It’s a super neat way to make your clothes last longer and to dye old clothes in a color you don’t love so you don’t need to repurchase. A $3 bottle of black dye can save you hundreds of dollars by refreshing the wardrobe you already have.
Hey, it's not about the image quality ! I'm here for the content ! Thanks for posting !
Your cat should be a regular contributor to these videos
I loved all the head butting.
As a fashion enthusiast, it couldn't be any more true here. Too many trends going too quickly, brands like Shein perpetuating this unhealthy trend cycle that simply can't be sustained. Even in the secondhand space where I focus on, hauls are so commonplace that buying massive piles of clothes from thrift stores has become normalized. I have felt cases of overspending on clothes, but I do try my best to reuse and restyle all the clothes I buy and continue to buy instead of chasing the next microtrend and failing to develop my own tastes in fashion.
Did you know they burn unsold clothes so that they can introduce new ones.
@@ISureDont absolutely and it disgusts me just how much the fashion industry is willing to destroy to keep their unsustainable production lines going. Even if I like the stuff that comes out of luxury, high end, and indie brands, I can't always justify buying more and more new clothes when so many thrift stores have good stock rotting away.
And the worst part? This exists for non-fast fashion spaces too. Just look at how people perpetuate overconsuption of designer brands, or shit like Issey miyake, Arcteryx, etc.
@@theholypopechodeii4367 even more ironically, I've actually seen people wanting to buy entire hauls of sustainable clothing brands while throwing out their old closets. That ruins the entire point of the brand's message, like huh?
Fashion community is sooo hostile towards any anti-consumerist sentiment too. Anyone I’ve seen talking about this gets immediately bombarded with comments about how they’re shaming people or being hypocritical even if they’re just earnestly trying to consume less
Espresso is like this. Almost everybody is just looking for someone else to convince them to spend money on a new grinder or a ball to put in the freezer or a self-levelling spring loaded tamper or a smart scale or a contraption that drives needles into your coffee grounds to make little channels for water to infiltrate and that's without even getting into the quagmire of buying a whole new espresso machine. Well this one heats up faster. This one has a more consistent temperature at the group head. This one has two boilers so you can steam milk at the same time you're brewing. This one lets you specify a pressure profile. This one lets you specify a *flow rate* profile. Obviously your machine isn't good enough.
Bruh I got a chemex and I'm good. James Hoffman mentioned this in a book my wife bought me. He likened espresso to getting into a new hobby.
i feel like there's always been consumption-heavy or buying-heavy hobby communties but i think the problem is that they're trying to erase the existence of non-consumption-based hobbies.. even for many hobbies, there are ways to engage with with more reasonable costs of entry... coinciding with the erasure of non-spending-based 'third places' (not work or home)
It's nice to see someone else make this observation.
I've definitely found this with a number of communities I was subbed to on reddit. In particular the mechanical keyboard ones were full of massive collection photos. People had dozens of different keyboards just laid out. They also were constantly making these jokes about "oh we're such silly beans spending so much money on this tat we just can't help it oh me oh my", and it's like... no, you're humble-bragging about how much disposable income you have, right?
This is a status symbol. Just like expensive wine or Lamborghinis, you're lighting money on fire because you can, and that carries status in our society. It's conspicuous consumption.
And just like with wine there's all this posturing about being such a connoisseur that you know the best materials and the best switch types to get that perfectly satisfying "thock", but I'd bet that if you actually blind tested any of these folks they wouldn't know the difference.
I commented one time about how I got brown switches because I know I wanted tactile and quiet, and that's what they're supposed to be, then I figured out the layout I wanted, made it and never felt the need to buy anything else. I got downvoted to hell. Even though I had "bought in", I hadn't bought their idea that I should buy way more keyboards than I need.
I have since bought a keytester sample thingy with like 10 different switch types, and like... I don't care. Yeah, they feel a little different, but it really doesn't matter.
Also in 3d printing, I've got the kit I built like a decade ago and apart from adding a raspberry pi to host it and an upgraded hotend after I killed the original, I don't need more. It's open source, I can tinker with it, and I don't want a proprietary alternative.
Oh and that hypothetical consumer you talked about is the person with the massive collection, and certain industries call them "whales". It is an explicit strategy of gambling firms, casual game companies, any industry that relies on addictive behaviour, to hook and keep whales. Some can spend tens of thousands of dollars per month on useless garbage, and these companies love it.
Can confirm that the digital art community is largely non-consummerist, at least in my experience. Sure, they don't escape it entirely. There's discussions about which program to use and what tablet to buy, but a lot times I see it pop up as questions from someone already looking into new options. And even then, free programs are still pretty popular. Tablets, meanwhile, will last a long time. I know several people still using the same tiny, non-screened tablet they originally bought years ago. I'm personally glad I decided to upgrade to a screened tablet, but I still went for the cheapest option at the time and it's more because drawing on a screen feels more natural, not because it's popular
Funnily, though, not having the "proper" equipment tends to be a bragging right amongst digital artists. It's one thing to make a masterpiece with the latest and best tech. But it's far more impressive to make something that actually looks good when you're not even using a tablet and are limited to a tiny phone screen or are powering through with nothing but a mouse
Also, the image quality of your video isn't at all a concern as my adhd brain doesn't look at the screen the entire time anyway
I definitely see some elitism going on now when it comes to graphics tablets. To be honest, I started with a tiny wacom graphire4 and then two wacom bamboos, before learning to draw on my bro’s hand me down ipad 3 with one of those little disc styluses at the time. I used that until I was finally able to invest in a Bosto Kingtee and later a XP-Pen (and only because Bosto disappeared and it became impossible to get drivers/updates for it) That was all over the course of 10+ years. Now that I’m learning Blender, I’ve gone back to my wacom bamboo because I just prefer a non-screen tablet for 3d work. Ngl, screen tablets are stupidly overrated, and simply don’t fit every workflow. It sucks that more artubers and influencers keep pushing expensive sponsored tablets to their viewers when it’s just not necessary, especially starting out.
The mspaint and mouse artists haha. Gotta love it
@beanpasteposts Oh definitely, it's still very much there, but at least it's better than in other communities. But I haven't really been in art influencer spaces much in the past couple of years, so I'm not familiar with how the recent surge of streaming may have changed things outside private communities and the few youtubers I still watch
Hard agree on screened tablets being overrated, though. I have a good handful of friends who say they could never switch to a screened tablet, yet they're not hindered in the slightest. Heck, most of them are better at art than I am with my screened tablet. And the screened tablet isn't without flaws. While it's more natural for me, I do hate that it's more prone to driver issues so I'm forced to uninstall and reinstall them a lot more often. I've got it worked out to a system with the reinstall file having a place on my desktop, but it's still annoying. That is probably because I got the cheapest one, but still
I usually used a non screen tablet but finally ended up buying a full screen tablet. Hated it and went back to my non screen one that’s scratched and dented.
Don’t forget brush downloads and tutorials. I think those are big money makers
You look like someone I would’ve seen in a Radio Shack in 1992. Subbed without further consideration.
In vinyl collecting it's very common to be told that your turntable is bad because it will wear out the records in 1500 plays instead of in 10000. It only matters if you have very expensive records, but the community loves its consumer caste system
Nah, it has to do with RCA classification, which states that a vinyl records must be able to carry needle-weights of 1gramme to 6grammes for everyday use. These are of course engineer-estimates, so at the top-end add 2grammes. Basically, if your needle-weight is anywhere between 1 to 6 grammes, you're good. Vinyl records MUST be compliant with the RCA classification.
Somehow, that got translated to needles must be as light as possible, so you got the weird clowns that run needle-weights at sub-1 gramme and as a result can't move around when they play a record (skipping and scratching). As far as I know, the recommended weight is (I believe) 2.5 grammes there abouts, but yeah, engineer-estimates again.
You have record-players that all have the same mechanism and all have a 5.4 gramme needle-weight. Well within the RCA classification. Cheap and expensive records are whatever, really. There are but few vinyl presses left and they all use the same resources. So yeah...
Old records? You have to go far back in time to find vinyls that are from before the RCA classification. (Most old timey vinyls were destroyed in the eighties when the CD became the defacto standard.) The RCA classification is older than that I am... I'm 62.
Saffire or diamond needles is another thing. You could make a case for signal clarity, but for vinyl longevity? The clown who came up with that should be shot.
For the sake of argument one could say that lighter is better, but the less weight on the needle raises changes of needle-skipping if the cat sneezes in the other room (Legendarily sensitive: Technica. -.-), resulting in scratches and ticks faster than running with a heavier needle-weight. With the RCA classification in mind, vinyl preservation as a reason is moot (Your record can handle it.) as you don't play the same record everyday all of the time. I have a bunch of records and most I haven't played in years. They're fine.
My advise? If you ever get an audio-snob in your house and they start clowning on your record-player- kick 'em out. They're fools.
What difference does it make for people who collect vinyl, though? They don't play it or anything
And it's not like they hate audio artifacts that much anyway, otherwise they would hate vinyl xD
@@Bukkie661
to boil it down from my perspective
"but muh fugly $20,000 hyper turbo vibration isolated turntable with meteoric diamond tipped $35,000 stylus to play my objectively lossy and easily damaged format"
"erm, is that a suitcase style turntable I see, don't you know that it'll instantly incinerate your records the moment the spindle touches the plastic"
just have fun and accept the fact that we're being slowly poisoned with heavy metals and VOCs used in the production of the records either way
Yeah that is a particularly weird community. I have a ton of vinyl and for the living room a 200€ pro-ject turntable that’s wall mounted. Love it. Besides that i listen to vinyl on techbics sl-1200s as I used it DJ. I do not recommend getting them. They are HORRIBLY overvalued. I bought mine for 300€ in a set of 2 and one broken one. This was in 2007. now one is supposedly 1000€?! What?!
@@Bukkie661thank you for writting this comment out. Do you have any recommendations for turn tables 300€ and below. Most I can do is 500€ in the near future. For years I have been dodging getting a record player because communities like this one made it seem like less expensive turn tables damage the vinyl. It's been a while so I'm not aware like I use to be about the amplifiers and speakers and the whole circus that goes along with having a turn table. I didn't ever wanna be a record collector, but here I am after 3 years.
This describes the retro video game handheld community so well. Especially since every month there is a new handheld with the same specs and then it’s people talking themselves and others into buying it. You couldn’t pay people to be more die hard advocates for products.
What makes the consumption minded community members more prominent over the innovators, helpers, and repairers?
Having the latest and the baddest gizmo feels good. Everybody succumbs to it at least once in their lives. (Disproportionally people who can't afford to do so.)
Was about to write a comment on that, literally all about buying the same products but in different shape, but they almost never bother to talk about emulator settings or ways to make games more playable which should be the first reason why you are buying one of those things.
Lol I got curious about those retro handhelds recently and noticed that toxic consumption shit immediately. Put me right off and never bought one. Why do you need 8 different consoles to play snes games from 30 years ago, one for the bus, one for the office, one for the garden, one for lying in bed ffs gimme a break
I started getting into retro gaming lately and what did I do? I had a PSP laying around and decided to turn it into a retro handheld
Only needed to get ROMs and emulators. That's it. I'll also buy an adapter and micro sd card to have more PSP games, but that's like 10€
I got curious about those handheld systems and searched some of them. Granted, while being more powerful than Game Boy "clones", some like Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck are far better, but I already have a pretty good laptop for anything beyond PS1 graphics
Every hobby I get into is like that...
Reading, drawing, videogames, boardgames and tabletop rpgs could be super cheap but as long as I engage with these hobbies online, I'm always tempted to buy more and more stuff.
Not trying to be disrespectful but how could reading be expensive? Theoretically it's free because you just go to the library right?
@@dollgen Online content about reading has people showing off their packed bookshelves. Constant hype about new releases and limited editions. ADs for subscription boxes.
I listed hobbies that are cheap or free on purpose. Spending more money is optional but highly encouraged in many online communities.
also funny side note: I saw a watercolor youtube channel I'm subbed to say "reverse haul" and I thought they were going to talk about how they didn't get something or decided what wasn't worth buying but it just ended up being an actual haul from stuff they got a while back lol. I was kind of mad because I wanted to see them pare down to the bare essentials but it was opposite of that lol.
being in a hobby community (warhammer) that feels very "haul"-driven (at least it seems that way when looking at other people's hobby spending habits), i'm reluctant to take too big a shit on people doing a "reverse haul" and it just being stuff they already had. i guess it's baby steps, but in a hobby when even people who buy very infrequently (like me. i need to restock a paint pot or two every second or third month, and my last model purchase was a _year_ ago) nonetheless have large inventories of hobby "stuff" lying around that just hasn't been touched yet, i think it could be healthy to encourage others to treat their backlog as "new stuff!!!!!!" (or at least, it could be less harmful than the continued normalisation of _getting more and more new stuff all the time)_
@@soupalex yeah people call that "shopping their supply closet" or whatever you keep your stuff in lol. It's a good way to remember what you have just go through everything and see what you can use up etc.
The issue I have is that I'm in the doll and flocked critter communities. I had the sylvanian families basically the second they came out when I was a small child, obviously I grew up, and now I have adult money to get the things I wanted so desperately as a lower middle class child. It's hard to resist. I was also raised by collectors. The "this will be valuable some day" kind as well as the "omg let's put this pretty thing with the other pretty things and never touch it so it doesn't get damaged" kind. SO I have *all* of that. Add in consumerism and it's so easy to justify the new, the pretty, and the vintage. And the only thing holding me back is irl bills because these things genuinely make me happy and I enjoy owning them, seeing them, touching them when I walk by, cleaning them, and taking pictures of them. So it's like... consumerism, excess... but also it's the intended point for me too.
I don’t have hard evidence, but I often feel people highly overestimate the potential future value of their collectibles. Every kid from the 90s or early 2000s has a huge collection of Pokémon or Yugioh cards and the fact is that most of their cards are binder filler likely kept in poor quality and barely worth pennies
@@iBenjamin1000things are only worth what people are willing to pay for them. In most cases, those people are only other collectors. So you're relying on other people's whims as to whether or not your collection will ever have monetary value. More than likely- it absolutely won't.
Candlemaking is very much like this. There is so much newness (and amazing vessels, fragrance oils, waxes, etc.) coming out constantly. It's hard to step back and be content with what you already have in a space of endless opportunities for consumption.
There’s a saying in the cycling community about how to get faster: “Don’t buy upgrades, ride up grades.”
I was heavily into retro-game collecting.
One day, years ago...
It suddenly dawned on me that I was a 'Shelf Collector'.
As I rarely if ever actually used the original hardware and cartridges/CDs when playing those old games.
As I usually played the emulated versions either on my PC or my softmodded original Xbox.
Slowly, I began to sell off my collection and break myself of the habit of buying and hoarding those games and systems.
In the end. I managed to offload my collection on eBay.
Got a decent chunk of change, freed up a lot of space, and found peace of mind.
I'm just work-shopping with you here. What if we called it "pay to stay..." (As in pay to stay part of the community) sort of riffing on "pay to play". Could be trash, you don't have to buy it 😅
Pay to stay sounds catchy! I never really thought about how many communities and hobbies there are where paying to belong is such a central thing ☹️😔
@@caaaaats9890 yeah for real, especially in the tech and PC area for me. I think about speakers, mechanical keyboards, mice, mouse pads, headphones, Palm pilots, smartphones, laptops, tablets, Bluetooth speakers, earbuds.... Robot vacuums, pots and pans, blenders.... Oh my gosh, I might be one of the people that need to rewatch this video 😅
But I appreciate the awareness that this video brings 💪
i collect fashion dolls [barbie, monster high etc] and there is a huge classism issue, alot of ppl in the doll collecting community struggle with fomo, mostly with younger collectors ive noticed which = overconsumption.
I've been thinking about getting into fashion dolls, mostly because I want to learn to sew.
is it really a classism issue? when buying frivolous stuff for fun? some people are always going to have more money for hobbies and collections than others, so it's good to accept that and work on jealousy
@@amandak.4246exactly, just follow less privileged creators or get off social media entirely. I think people forget that they’re not forced to consume this content, it’s motivated by what you choose to watch and be a part of lol
I recently started VTubing, which is just various flavors of content creation with an avatar in place of a face cam. One thing I noticed kept popping up is people who bought or commissioned an avatar and spoke as though they felt sort of entitled to colleagues and friends, without putting in the work of socializing, as though they'd joined a club. I understand in the modern age, especially post-lockdown, how the loneliness epidemic is spiraling out of control, and as an introvert, that the hard work of meeting people and maintaining friendships is intimidating. But at the end of the day, I don't think there's any shortcut around the ways to make friends or build communities, no matter how tempting it seems to "buy in" like you say.
I feel you on mechanical keyboards. My sister and I were always super into them (for practical reasons we both type really hard for different reasons) and then they grew into a commodity and the parts got expensive...and Drop got bought by Corsair and now everything is terrible.
Same with photography. it breaks my heart. It used to be about enjoying the process, images with interesting composition and unexpected results and now...ugh.
I'm also into goth subculture and lolita fashion but as a subculture and lifestyle. A five second search of this on CZcams will show you how buying stuff driven these two things became. The former was always about music. The latter was a feminist movement moving in opposition to the male gaze. Both were very DIY and now if you make your own stuff you're a poser/cringe/cheuggy/ita (yes we have our own word for it)
I'm a practicing Buddhist. The consumer stuff genuinely is against my beliefs. It's extremely frustrating. I like stuff, I just don't always want to buy new stuff. I'm content with the stuff I have already. Why isn't that enough?
Ah, yeah, lolita fashion. Not being able to wear it due to being very tall and no longer as skinny as a stick is why I'm planning on learning some sewing over the summer. I don't know anyone else who wears it, so it's pretty unique in my town.
Weirdly, I'm noticing kind of the opposite trend with lolita -- BURANDO is not nearly as coveted as it used to be, especially as the community started to realise how many people who didn't fit most brand (for a variety of reasons) wore the fashion. I've also never seen anything other than loud praise for good handmade stuff.
By contrast though, I think it's easier to buy the fashion at a lower cost both through resellers and non-brand online stores. So it's kind of becoming more fast fashion than it used to be.
@@isabellamorris7902same! It’s becoming a more accessible hobby due to smaller, indie brands popping up more often, the relative ease of modern brand shopping, and dresses being in a bigger variety of sizes. Tbf most of the Lolitas I’ve seen have been plus size, it’s definitely not just for “tall and skinny” people!!
For me, the largest red flag is when someone's the kind of person who views one-of-a-kind DIY pieces as cringe instead of what they actually are -- bespoke art.
I am totally about to tell on myself. I am part of the Squishmallow community. The entire community is based on buying Squishmallows and collecting them. I have too many at this point and I should probably get rid of some, but I don’t want to because it’s a collector community that prides themselves on having tons of squishmallows that take over entire rooms
i knew this lass in uni that had mounds of those squashable marshmallow toys. absolute heaps of them, plushes stacked! i had no idea it was a collector community i thought she just a tad odd for the pillow creatures
Do you mind if I ask, how do they clean them? Are they mold resistant in some way or do the collectors live in dry places...?
@@nataliet4293mine have never gotten any mold on them and I definitely do not live in a dry place. However you can unstuff and wash them to get rid of any mold, then restuff and sew it back up
A hobby based entirely on consumption is not really a hobby dude
@@andreahighsides7756oh I know, I never claimed it was a hobby. Although some people in the community customize them which is pretty cool (like dyeing them and making and sewing on accessories).
I love the image quality… it’s nostalgic
Sewing is super bad for this. In my mothers words "whoever dies with the largest stash wins". Im generally good about not buying things unless I really truely need it, and then prioritize second hand. Unfortunately, sewing as a craft can get very expensive (see people who own 5+ sewing machines, like whyyyyy)
it's really interesting to look into these kinds of communities from the outside. i often find myself diving into them in order to find out what's best for me. headphones, keyboards, razors, etc. they do tend to be pretty good resources for learning about a particular thing and getting opinions and comparisons on different products. you also have to navigate around a lot of elitism and snake oil though. i've always just been happy to have the one nice thing that will last me a long time and suits my tastes.
it's really easy to see how people fall into the trap. people crave community (and with how hyperindividualistic and atomized things are getting, that's getting harder to fulfill), so they just end up buying and fixating over the shiny new thing so they have things to talk about and an excuse to stay in the community.
basically you have to endure the general smugness of one particular subculture (or in many cases; subreddit) but you do find great information there are people are too happy to help "beginners". just don't become a regular.
"Thank you for being able to look at this image quality for so long"
I kinda like the low-res aesthetic. It reminds me of 90s camcorder footage. And for a channel about not buying new stuff unnecessarily, it fits thematically that the video isn't super slick looking. You do you, though. Great video!
First time viewer: When the video first started, I 100% thought it was an intentional creative choice
You hit the nail on the head with car enthusiast communities. They are definitely a bad offender of this.
I really enjoy the videos, keep up the good work!
Art is pretty guilty of this, too. Probably about half of the digital art videos I was getting on TikTok were artists selling brush sets, palettes, courses etc. That feels more symptomatic of folks trying to monetize their hobbies, but also endemic of the supply haul/hoarding culture that exists for physical mediums.
The "Planner" and "notebook" community murdered me. I "had" to have every kind of notebook, every format of planner, every kind of specialized marker, fountain pen, gel pen, highlighter, etc. I became convinced that a perfect book could fix my life. My current theory: the entire internet is an advertisement.
Totally agree. I went through the same.
I did find it interesting seeing a lot of the online planner community going through a phase where they suggested having multiple planners with each for a specific area to many creators a few months later coming out and apologizing for this overconsumption message and focusing on simplifying and buying less. By then I had already gotten three different planners to try out and way too many pens.
I have full blown ADHD so I'm extremely susceptible to these communities and impulse buying. Before being diagnosed I described my hobby as "having hobbies"; I didn't understand the relationship between these mechanisms, dopamine and the neurodivergent brain.
I developed a core set of principles to help me bring my spending and endless search for "the next thing" under control. I still buy the things I want, but there is a multi step criteria these purchases need to go through!
Love the video and subscribed.
The internet ruins all of my favorite hobbies. It's nice to have a community to go to where you can share in your interests and meet likeminded people. I have a hard time calling the online shadows of them 'communities' anymore. They're terrible places to find human connection, though you won't notice once you're hooked into all of the FOMO incentives, and the identities they assign to ownership of this or that thing. You will lose yourself, as everyone inside them does. And because of that, you can never fully connect as people and share in a source of love and inspiration. No, to stay with those communities, you have to move with their narratives. And their narratives move with what's being sold to them. And after awhile, the kind of interaction that breeds just feels hollow and tiresome.
To me, this just makes them stressful places mired in exhausting and frankly meaningless arguments and strange identity constructs. I do my hobbies to relax and feel personal growth and fulfillment. What about these communities is actually conducive to that, if you stay long term? To me, it really is just a mire, a crater to keep you stuck in hobby purgatory. And to reach nirvana, you must go where the internet hobby plebs dare not.
To me, a community is your home. That's where your strongest connections to people and the world around you are. These communities are less homes to me and more dens... meager shelters you can step out from the rain under. But the moment that rain lets up, you must leave the den, before the jaguars come.
The critical mistake everyone in them makes is letting too many outside elements define what their hobbies are to them, defeating the whole purpose of having them in the first place, IMHO. Worse still, the natural dynamic is to enforce those ideas on one another, robbing each other of any kind of individualized joy. It's no wonder people burn out and switch so much. If the majority of your hobby times is talking to other people about your hobby, you've lost the plot. And it's probably making you unhappy, though you might not notice, and pump that frustration mainline through your community. It's almost like all of that stuff is designed to rob a person of any sense of peace or intimacy. Turn your dearest pasttimes into a market, where all participants are judged by their possessions. Sounds chill, right? Totally doesn't reach into the utmost intimate parts of people's lives in order to give them insecurities that will further drive consumption habits, yes?
Like... man. Show me where the 'cool' hobby communities are. I'll tell you to check back in 2-3 years and see if they're still as cool. There's a progression with things online where the more attention it gets, the more the sell comes in, and the more expensive it all becomes. And then people turn on eachother, like black friday hoards. Yet, you also need a steady influx of newcomers to sustain any online community, big or small. So there are two options: you have the cool, niche places that never reach a scale sufficient to see full longevity, and so eventually fizzle... and you have the ones that do climb over some level of mainstream scale in the attention they get, but as a matter of systemic consequence, become shells of themselves upon the passing of that very inflection.
For me, pocket knives. Flashlights. EDC gear. Things in these communities are priced right in a horrible strike zone where you can justify any individual purchase, but they are expensive enough that they really add up over time.
A lot of that stuff is chock full of lead too
Commodity communities is a phenomenal word. I've been looking for a way to describe this. Almost a form of collection without utilization. This leads to a glut of art that is at the same skill level filtered through higher and higher end equipment. Which can be detrimental to progress if a creator's disappointment that cost and expertise are un-correlated supercedes excitement or passion.
i feel like the rave/festival community is very guilty of this. there’s so much pressure to buy brand new outfits and accessories for each day of every festival you attend. showing off your festival outfits on social media for clout has been a thing for a long time now. it’s seen as “uncool” and almost taboo to rewear outfits or even to make outfits out of stuff you already own. you’re expected to buy brand new, cutesy matching sets for each event. plus all the jewelry, shoes, accessories, bags, kandi, etc. not to mention the price of festival tickets have gotten absolutely OUTRAGEOUS. you also have to pay for flights, ubers/parking, accommodations, food, etc. it’s not uncommon for people to drop thousands of dollars on a weekend. just ridiculous. i barely go to festivals anymore, it no longer seems like it’s about the music
I didn't expect this, what I remember from the rave scene is a shody infoline text at 2AM with the location and running in circles for hours in your beat up car until you find "the spot" then getting hammered on whatever was there to shitty music (in your everyday shitty clothes), and paying maybe 10 bucks to the organizer.
@@valdir7426They're certainly talking about the modern Americanised version of rave where it's pretending to be creative and interesting for a brief moment for the sake of being seen in a certain look online, not the classic letting all inhibitions and pressures from that world evaporate in the first place.
I was sitting here thinking about warhammer. And then you said it.
If the community doesn't drive you away, the constant "having to purchase new crap every other day to remain relevant" will.
the whole EDC community is super guilty of this, which is ironic considering emphasis on quality and longevity that the community seems to value so much. it quickly goes from cheap and practical tools you can keep on you to expensive artisan-made gadgets made with hand-machined titanium and zero tolerances. and at that point, those items start being worth too much value to even practically carry on a daily basis.
Yeah, I've seen this in the larger Japanese model kit community too. Well, what I've seen of it from the US. Buying kits is always going to be part of the community, but people talk about needing a lot of fancy tools that are just not needed, and there's a lot of artificial scarcity particularly with Gunpla(Gundam kits made by Bandai). Gotta buy the new thing before it goes out of stock, and you need super precise nippers and a glass file. I use a small subset of the tools my dad uses for putting together Warhammer miniatures- some worn-out nippers, and an exacto knife. Occasionally a sanding stick or pliers.
Also, in the PC gaming community. Gotta get the latest hardware, anything older is outdated the moment the new part comes out. Doesn't matter if it's good enough, you need that new part. Although, I actually feel that it's gotten better recently, as graphics cards have become incredibly overpriced and people have gotten a bit wise to it.
My first thought was PC gaming but really gaming in general now.
My rig is seven years old now, but it has become a ship of thesseus, LOL. It used to be much worse in the past when the technology was innovating hand over fist. At some point your PC was obsolete three months after purchase/self-build. Nowadays you can sit on your newly purchased/self-build four years at the minimum as games don't really innovate anymore as well. There's no point in having the latest as it has no practical use in the current landscape. I know fools with absolute beast-rigs that play World of Warcraft. That's just a waste of money. This year Nvidia will launch the RTX5080 while the heaviest games and professional software ask for RTX20xx platforms at the most...
But there will be fools that buy it. Meanwhile my RTX4060Ti is good for at least another five years... (My GTX1080FE served for six.) Right now, the PC-hobby is fool's money.
Word. I will never forgive bandai for their Premium Bandai bullshit
I don't actually build Gunpla, or any model kits, so my knowledge is rather second-hand, but my ex was very into Gunpla. Every time we went to an anime con (which was pretty often), he'd be scouting out the dealer's hall to find new kits he didn't have yet, and often he'd find some. Despite this, I never actually saw him build any. The boxes just took up space in his apartment, and then he'd buy more at the next con which would take up more space
My build was sub 500 and one of those parts was a gtx 1080fe. I can play every game I own at 3 figure fps ranges. And since most games plateaued in requirements years ago I'm not super worried about not being able to play new games, especially because most new games that demand more than that aren't worth the effort, being even worse hyperconsumerist marketplaces than most physical hobbies. Most of the new games that are worth buying are indie titles that can't take advantage of state of the art expectations anyway, instead emphasizing style in ways similar to games of decades past. There is hope indeed; though in the past there was more enjoyment in trying to find the used market hidden gems of hardware for performance increases, i barely feel compelled to consider any kind of upgrades any time soon
With some musical instruments, at least the commodity thing makes a *little* bit of sense. Clarinets, for example, require a lot of parts to maintain. Mostly reeds but cork and pads need to be replaced on occasion. Even gossip about the reeds was commonplace. (When I was playing, I was totally a Vandoren reed fan.)
Gunpla is another hobby that falls into the same space as Warhammer. It takes a *lot* of parts to be involved. Paint, sanding, nippers, etc and new models being released on a regular basis.
In my experience, guitarists are the worse by far when it comes to music gear elitism, even though guitars are some of the cheapest instruments available. You can get a professional electric set up for like 1000$ today, probably less, but some people still pretend it's 1955 and you need to spend thousands to even practice at home
@@CIA_Gnome_Patrol I just put together a blog with affiliate links to all the things I've determined are something worth getting after nearly 2 decades of playing guitar. Doing the math, I came out to 1.28 pedals "purchased" per year (many were gifted, so I didn't actually buy them). Everything else was strings and products for maintenance (which for the most part you will buy once and have for a minimum of 4 years
In my experience, the band/classical/jazz world where you would find clarinets is less consumerist than the pop/rock/electronic world. Certainly players in those worlds will spend a ton on one individual instrument, perhaps past the point of diminishing returns on price vs. quality, but then they will actually play that instrument for decades. Repairs to a quality instrument don't count as consumerism to me, nor do consumables like reeds or guitar strings. The problem comes when you have 8 guitars ("I swear they're all different!") and always need that next hardware synth that is just *so* much better than the last one and will finally take your music to the next level.
@@averyminya Over 20 years any hobby is gonna cost a lot, I dont have any problem there. If you are alright with sharing the blog I'd love to check this out
@@CIA_Gnome_Patrol Thank you so much!I'll share it soon, it's still being worked on pretty actively so I want to get it in really good shape before I fully start sharing it :)
As somebody genuinely obsessed with the art of photography I am fully guilty of falling into the hyper consumerist tendencies of the community itself. It genuinely feels awful and destructive, and no matter how many times I tell CZcams “not interested” on gear videos they always end up back in my feed. It’s such a shame because there is an endless wealth of interesting content to be made about photography itself but all the videos and posts that get the most views are just about the tool. It’s like painters making videos about paintbrushes
Having the algorithm point me to the anti consumption corner of CZcams makes me feel like I've achieved nirvana. I beat the game, lol. This was a great video (and bonus points for the Ridge Racer music!).
I've seen this behavior in the MiniDisc subreddit. The whole point of the medium is that you can constantly rewrite over old recordings without degrading the audio (meaning that you don't really need to buy a lot of blank discs), but people in the subreddit just post pics of their huge stacks of MDs they've hoarded.
i just found your channel and it’s fantastic. i appreciate how gently you make your arguments and how mellow the vibes are.
The Gunpla community is another good example. People spending massive amounts of money on kits they will never build. Paint, airbrush kits, supplies for said airbrush, tools for modeling you will never use because you're scared to mess up the models you do build. There is so much to sink your money into.
yeah, fountain pens and vintage jewelry are like this. thinking about new purchases becomes a bigger focus and takes more time than actually enjoying the items and the hobby themselves. it's less interesting to post about using the same pen or necklace you've had, and you'll get a lot more attention for posting a new acquisition, especially if it's expensive. even without social media or the desire for attention and validation, browsing for new stuff just feels inherently more fun, like the daydreaming and anticipation of a new thing feels better than owning something you've had for a while. the hedonic treadmill...booktube seems especially bad for this, although thankfully i'm not involved and use the library instead. books take up so much room that there are issues other than just money.
My main hobby is being in a community band. What we do, live (mostly acoustic) music, just doesn’t seem compatible with online communities, and just doesn’t seem well-connected to consumerism and consumption. The guy who has a big collection of different brass instruments is seen as an outlier, you can only play one at a time anyway!
Yeah… you should see the pocket knife community. Everyone wants to carry a good pocket knife, but when asked what they use it for, the top answer is opening boxes. And yet many are on a quest to buy the best knife with the best steel, best build quality, best ergonomics. Lots are over $100, $200, some are $500. You’ll often see people in the knife community say their “wife hates it” or something. And the mentality of “which knife should I buy? BOTH!” Sometimes there’s a self awareness though. If you buy one good pocket knife, and it cuts, it’s practically the only one you need. But knife review CZcams channels exist, and every video is called “THIS IS AMAZING.” Because it gets clicks, but that also leads to people wanting everything.
Bullet journal/planner community... people have a whole store's worth of stationery (especially markers, washi tape, and stickers), but barely use them up
I have four major hobbies and all fit into this: Books, Comic Books, Gaming, and Fountain Pens. And I have ALWAYS been a pretty big advocate for like ... not buying when possible, or buying affordably. I'm a library girl. I buy digitally. I lived abroad for a decade and didn't have physical access to English language books, so I did a lot of digital purchasing when I purchased, and subbed to Kindle Unlimited and Marvel Unlimited. I am a big promoter of student fountain pens. Now that I'm back in the US, I live near some pretty good thrift stores and I've managed to pick up some vintage pens for like NOTHING, we're talking 1940s Sheaffers for $5, no shit. Just needed a little TLC.
But in ALL of these communities, it's astounding how much pushback you can get from the idea that you just ... don't buy things. I just DO NOT BUY COMICS. What? That's unreal to some people. I READ comics, but I don't buy them. I don't have the space, and I don't have the money. Some people are SUPER into collecting comics, which is HILARIOUS to me, as a 90s kid. People my AGE are super into collecting comics, which is a JOKE. THey should know better. But that's another thing that doesn't really make sense, things that should make an item worth less - over production and poor quality - don't seem to be having the impact on price that it might have in the past.
I still do buy physical copies of things now and again. I have a hardback of Papaya Salad by Elisa Macerelli. I bought Tears of the Kingdom physically. Like when there's something I want want, I get it. But People buying just EVERYTHING, people buying multiples of everything is WILD to me. Where do they get the money? Where do they get the space? Where do they get the time?
I don’t know if anyone else here is apart of the K-pop collecting community but OH MY GOSH there is so much rampant overconsumption associated with the hobby! It’s very, very easy to be swept up into buying more supplies, and albums, and binders and cards and JUNK than you actually want or need.
Thankfully I have learned my limits and am strictly sticking to the three artists I really like to collect a select few things from but every single post I see is some one picking up a new collection, or collectors who are deep into their collections being overwhelmed with the amount of stuff they constantly need to buy to keep up. I’m really happy my small collection is something fulfilling to me and brings me joy but it makes me super bummed every time I see a storing video of collectors complaining about the amount of catch up they have. Like, if something is too much for you please sell your collection or take a break?! Don’t feel pressured to continue a hobby that isn’t 100% worth it to you.
The K-pop companies and distributors are also a huge issue in this over rampant market because as soon as they realised collecting was becoming popular they immediately increased the amount of cards available to collect by ten fold. Honestly it really sucks to see groups go from having 1-3 album versions to 5-20! I mean it’s just taking the mick atp and it’s extremely wasteful. If you like the songs on the album just get your favourite version! Why splurge on multiple versions of the same exact track list?!
There’s a lot more to it than I could semi coherently explain in a YT comment and of course I am in some ways a huge hypocrite because I still collect cards but it is disheartening how wasteful the community has become and how much of a completionist mindset many collectors adopt. My point is, please indulge in hobbies because they make you feel really happy! Don’t spend your time and money doing something that you don’t like! 😭
The fragrance community is like this, moreso even with the niche/indie frangrance community since the pricing is lower and people can buy more. I've seen pictures where people fill entire dressers, cabinets, just drawers full of fragrance and it's like... there's no way you can use all of that?
this is why i stopped playing magic the gathering - i got *so tired* of having to continually buy cards in order to remain in standard so now i have a huge box of random cards to go through that i can only play in casual format now
great example. I got into magic for like a year and stopped when I found out that legacy was a rolling thing to keep you rebuying what is functionally the same cards.
Building a draft cube was the best thing I've done. I haven't bought sealed product from that miserable shitstain of a company since Aether Revolt prerelease.
It's definitely possible to reach a point of being content as a magic player. I have a single paper legacy deck and I play online. Have borderline no reason to buy new cards unless they need to go in my one deck.
I chose to not play in person, since the pressure of buying new when they're releasing new sets every month is INSAAAAANE. I only play on arena, and only because it's free. I don't buy gems or anything else. I just play with the decks I have and that's good enough. I can't believe how much other people spend, WOW.
I'm in the ball jointed doll community and it is heavily purchase driven. There are frequent limited doll releases so the fomo is strong. Plus many companies offer layaways, enticing buyers to spread themselves thin on many separate layaways over excessively long payment periods(sometimes 6-12 months). A lot of selling is also done between collectors, as people sell off their impulse buys to get the next limited doll.
I noticed myself falling into this trap of buying stuff to feel connected with my hobby when I was too busy to play with my dolls. Seems counter intuitive, but when you're stuck working long hours and scroll Instagram on your break to look at doll photos, longingly wishing you were playing with dolls instead of miserable at your job, it's really easy to seek that dopamine hit by buying something and looking forward to it arriving in the mail, only to lack the time to enjoy it once it arrives and the cycle continues.
I'm fortunate that I enjoy the crafting and customization element of the hobby, so I've made it my goal to learn to craft everything for my dolls, from their clothes, to wigs, to eyes, to painting their faces. It keeps me connected to why I collect them in the first place and keeps me from falling back into the consumerism trap.
I wish I could add more likes to this!
I feel that hobby communities often have constant consumption implied for continued connection within them when really its the people that matter and fostering growth to see every persons vision of the world that makes communities vibrant, not gear.
Many thanks for making this video! ❤
Bro Im in the calico critter collecting, and it's crazy how much money people will spend. I have a fairly large collection, and one day I got board and made an excel sheet I had spent ~500$ in just the year on calico critters. That was the slap I needed to enjoy the ones I already have instead of buying buying buying. Especially for just a toy that sits on my shelf. I used to be active on discord and reddit, but the consumer culture, hauls, and just negativity on new sets that people will complain about and still buy the new sets became just too much. Since Cutting back on my interaction online I've bought less and spend more time with my collection instead of online.
I escaped the social media driven fashion commodification hole just to fall into the retro tech hole. Even in actively trying to minimalize, I went right back to buying more things. I really needed to see this video.
The most fulfilling part of a hobby is using your brain to problem solve with the limited resources you have and make them work for you, we’ve truly lost that part these days.
I've been into Magic:The Gathering for about a year and a half now, and I could relate heavily to the things you were talking about. There is a huge culture of buying packs, opening them up, and then that's it. They just go into a box somewhere to collect dust and never get used. You might as well be playing slots. When i first got into it, I was working two jobs to pay off my debt and I quickly found myself destroying all the progress I had made. I did form some wonderful friendships and I can't say i regret my decisions, but it's been more than a little difficult to disentangle myself since all my friends are into it too. 😅 Luckily we've pivoted somewhat to DnD so i can start over with the knowledge I've gained from this channel and elsewhere and make better financial choices for myself.
Everyone I know buys singles. I can count the amount of times I've goten a crazy hit in a pack on one hand. Packs are just the biggest waste of money possible.
This puts a good name on just more consumerist hobbies in general, because Ive definitely been thinking about that since a few months ago was my first time (more or less) getting into a commodity community: Legos and Bionicles. Although I dont really watch too much content about new sets coming out, more so things from the bionicle community which obviously does not have new products coming out for it. Though, I'd feel worse about my recent spending on it if I didn't quit nicotine recently. Buying legos and bionicles feels better than pissing more money away on an addiction.
I've also been into traditional art for a year now, but don't really watch any art content or get advertised things for it. I just draw with my pencils and stuff. Getting into digital art looks like the real cash sink to me....
congrats on quitting!
The problem you have is that there some high profile lego-bionicle creators who drive the prices up. That hobby is contaminated. At this point you have better luck buying random crypto if you hate your money that much.
This talk about free-advertisement for the big boys reminds me a lot of a strange discrepancy between big developers and clueless indies that are trying to escape obscurity.
If the lone indie, with just his person to their name posts their game on social media (because they have no one else playing their game to post it for them), they usually get berated and slammed for "spam" and "self-advertising"... But if material for another bigger game with an actual marketing budget gets posted, then it's "news" or "gameplay" and thus fine.
Marketing works wonders.
Was really liking this video. Subbed after the kitty hug.
Holy shit! Thank you! This is an amazing video. I feel like I'm going crazy sometimes and you've put into words what I feel like I've been seeing.
Oh my God. This is why everyone keeps commenting on my keyboard. I got it because the spacebar on my MacBook crapped the bed and that pink mechanical keyboard was the cheapest one i could find on Amazon but it looks very much like the one you showed in this video. Several "cool" kids have told me how cool my keyboard is, and now i know why.
LOVE this content.
I'm passionate about anti-consumption and don't see much content like this. Keep making it!
Have come across a few communities like this- mechanical keyboards, guns, oil painting, fountain pens
Some things that have helped me:
-Guying the most basic and reliable version
-Getting away from the online "communities" after the purchase
-Doing a 30-60 day delay before making a purchase
-Build/ modifying at home instead of buying a whole new thing
For me, the biggest eye-opener for this in terms of audio gear was when I met up with some local guys to test each other's headphones. One of them had two $4000 headphones that I had been fantasizing about. Not realistically getting them myself (except maybe used) but just being fascinated by the thought of them because going from consumer grade headphones to decent hifi headphones had already been such a leap.
Turns out that I did not even like either of those headphones, just as you said was likely to happen. That basically reminded me of the reality of the matter, even if I do still plan on some additions to my options/collection.
Part of it is a fantasy. In the end you go back to what you’re comfortable with
Needed this one. Love the stylistic and editing choices made here! I am glad I found the friends I made in my niche online hobby spaces but I have definitely been more critical of my consumption lately.
Consumerism fandoms. Yeah... This is why im a bit miffed with how fast-fashiony the cosplay community has become. I'm not a sew-it yourself elitist, but social media platforms that prioritize engagenent to grow followings lead people to believe they must be constantly doing novel content and new trends.. so its becoming like fast-fandoms and i cannot keep up. I liked making costumes mostly myself and sewing with thrifted materials. But a lot of cosplays of any popular media are now popping up on sites like dhgate and aliexpress. So I feel like it ate into the creative aspects. I feel like to recapture the magic i used to feel, i would have to create a costume for a very obscure character or original character , but then i would possibly have fun, but get so recognition of the character or what IP they are from, if i did any content on social media. So like ... Fun vs. originality vs. sustainability is a hard balance to find and strike.
something that fits in this category but really feels like it shouldn't is witchcraft and paganism. Despite being largely nature focused there is a HUGE consumer culture surrounding those communities. A lot of beginners are tricked into wasting money on tons of useless metaphysical junk before they even know what path they want to follow. There's this vibe in a lot of the online witch circles that everything you do has to be ultra aesthetically pleasing in order to be effective or even considered "actual witchcraft". Incredibly wild to me how easy it is for things to be corrupted by capitalism even when it seems to be utterly incompatible.
"metaphysical junk"! What a phrase; a bizarre contradiction that shouldn't make any sense and yet we all know exactly what you're talking about. 😂
people often ask me if i am lolita/kawaii, but i find both of those communities to be very "buy to belong" as you so aptly put it. i choose not to categorize myself or associate myself with any specific fashion communities. i think for any aesthetic, you can thrift or just put together outfits with what you already own or add small accessories to get a look without the pressure from online communities to essentially buy entire new wardrobes, one off outfits that cant be combined with anything, and simply hoard clothing. i also go thru my closet at the end of every season and donate. if i can go an entire winter without wearing a certain sweater, i don't need it.
My trick is that I barely have any spending money and I grew up broke too lol if I'm collecting something, it's $2 Edwardian postcards, cute pieces of depression glass from the thrift store, etc. I find online communities really overwhelming. I'm either screaming into the void for my own amusement or sticking to a few close friends. God, I would never get into a discord server or anything. Too much to keep up with
I think I was more vulnerable to this stuff when I was a kid. I bought a nice $60 set of copic markers at some point. I was into saltwater aquariums for a bit. These days, all my money needs to go towards rent. If I like something, I'll take a picture.
I also think a lot about whether I'll be yearning for something later, or if I'll forget about it within a month. I think about whether something is worth taking up physical space and further crowding my tiny bedroom.
I try to space things out nicely, so I get small joys over a span of time. I make sure to have a lot of time and space to sit and enjoy each new thing. If you buy a whole bunch of stuff at once, the excitement doesn't last as long. Spacing out small treats feels better for me.
It also feels great to have the one special pink mechanical pencil that I use all the time, rather than a million that I keep buying. Ya know? It feels more important if there's just the one
I’m recently getting into backpacking and this such and issue is. The amount of things that can be marketable (sleeping bags, boots, stoves, bags) and the recent trend of ultralight justa allows companies to have the newest lightest technology in your pants or whatever. There’s also this obsession with these expensive name brands and just new shiny things. Everyone says this is the one thing every person needs. It just makes it so difficult as a beginner to figure what you really need and how much you should invest. It’s also just so ironic to have the people who supposedly