Friday 13 February 2015

Consumerism - Persuasion, Brand, Society, Culture

Consumerism is something I am both for and against. I am for consumerism because it has and still does help the country develop, but the means in which consumerism is taken advantage of are still really unethical. The consumerist society is all driven by the products we buy and the gratification society gains from it. The devices we own, the movies we watch, and the objects we bought, they are all drawn by our egos and the sense that we our accepted if we own these products. Granted, after looking at psychoanalysis (which does play a large role in consumerism), I've grown to accept that our culture is solely driven by the things we own, since changing this would be like changing human nature, almost impossible. We all have a tendency to compare ourselves to others, and advertisers take advantage of this to sell their products. Again, it's unethical but effective, and it seems to be the only possible method towards advertising at this point.

My problems with consumerism come from personal feelings of anguish, having never owned a smart phone whereas literally everybody I know owns one. It's a really dumb thing but what with most of the marketing these days being focused towards people that own smart phones, I sometimes feel left out. This because I don't own a god damn phone. This is exactly what the companies that makes these products want me and everybody else to feel. It's a screwed up system indeed, now that a product as simple as a portable phone can cause disharmony because of consumerism.

Knowing this would be beneficial if I wanted to be an animator for advertising companies, since I know it's all about ego gratification, and what we as a society deem pleasurable.

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