Too Much Stuff

   

"Illumious City" Poramit Thantapali

"Throw a Dog a Bone" Vandana Jain

"Result of Our Overconsumption"

  “Illumunous City” by Poramit Thantapalit and “Throw a Dog a Bone (ladder)” by Vandana Jain are pieces I chose. This piece does a great job of expressing consumerism in society. In recent years, it has been told to us we should recycle our plastic and metals to help the environment. Plastics take hundreds of years to degrade, plastic breakdown into micro pieces that enter our water supply and the food we eat. The excessive amounts of plastics come from society's overconsumption of it. We as people rely heavily on plastics because of their cheap cost. This cheap cost has caused us to use it in everything: dinner plates, utensils, bags, and clothing. “Illumionus City” depicts a society that relies on and consumes tons of plastic, it takes over everything, and it's incorporated into many things in our neighborhoods. I like “Throw a Dog a Bone” because it used plastic bags, something everyone has come in contact with thousands of times. It relates to society and overconsumption because when we receive and use plastic bags we are shopping and consuming goods. Plastic bags are found littered in every environment, due to them being “single-use”, as a society that constantly are buying new things, plastic bags constantly enter and leave our hands constantly. The effects of plastic bags have become so overbearing, cities and states around the world are banning them. The gold chains that link the plastic bag bones together bring in a sense of luxury. As a society we believe that having lots of stuff makes us luxurious, resulting in overconsumption. Media and marketing constantly push new items and trends onto us, resulting in people constantly buying new things to get a sense of being “luxurious”. Owning lots of stuff doesn't give you luxury, it gives a false sense of luxury because buying lots of stuff or expensive items, “Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion” (148) John Berger. 

    Society puts a value on the amount of stuff you own. Marketing and business teams put together campaigns that constantly push new things to us. They are constantly creating trends and we as a society consume them. Marketing teams have multiple strategies that appeal to millions of people from different cultural backgrounds. Sometimes marketing teams can put out an item and we as a society will push the product without knowing. Social media is a prime example of this. Every day people on Tiktok can post a random product, if it goes viral then a few days later this item will be sold out and a new product will go viral next. Trend cycles are accelerated with social media, causing overconsumption of goods. People believe that this new stuff will give them this sense of gratification. Society sees something that is new and shiny and wants a piece of it. The lower classes of society want similar lifestyles as the upper class and marketing strategists appeal to it. They use celebrities with the biggest names to show off, shout out, or simply place their product in the frame of a post. They have algorithms that track our activities to create ads that are catered to a specific person. The highways and public transportation are lined with multiple ads. As a society, we are constantly consuming because this certain lifestyle is constantly advertised to us. These ads can also conform to the idea of instant gratification. Food companies take hours of shooting, creating sets, and editing food to create this delicious image that will appeal to a viewer. We consume with our eyes and then have to physically buy these items. "Your eyes are bigger than your stomach",  is something parents say to their children when they order too much food. This same quote applies to our society's shopping habits, instead of your stomach it is our wallets, our living spaces, and our lifestyle. We are buying things that don't fit our lifestyle resulting in us constantly buying new things. Overconsumption comes from constantly buying your wants while buying your needs. Marketing also targets our "needs". For example, people need to eat, so they advertise these expensive restaurants. You need to eat, you don't need a $30 meal. People need to wear clothes, they advertise these cheap clothing stores that sell new and trendy things every day. We need clothes, we don't need new clothes every day and we don't need to buy the trendiest outfits. Things like these on a worldwide scale are what causes overconsumption.