What comes after conspicuous consumption?

In the final section of Buying In, three forward-looking chapters explore where the evolving 21st century relationship between what we buy and who we are might go — or rather where we might take it. This section includes my argument that the conspicuous consumption, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, status-signal, “badge” theory of consumer behavior is counterproductive and out of date.

In this original essay for ChangeThis, I explore “the invisible badge” as a more useful construct for understanding, and shaping, our own behavior. Short outtake:

The framework of the invisible badge is wholly different [from conspicuous consumption]. It can only be a reflection of who you really are. It can’t be faked. The invisible badge need not derive from religion or environmental consciousness. Your belief system can be drawn from membership in a subculture, or the military, or any number of other sources. Possibly that belonging manifests itself in a tangible, badge-ish way – an old Misfits T-shirt, or a patch signifying service in the 3rd Infantry Division of the United States Army.

But (and this is crucial) even absent the visual signifier, the identity, and its meaning, remain.

I hope you will check it out.

For another view on the subject, Virginia Postrel coincidentally offers “a new theory of the leisure class” in The Atlantic.

Off topic: This was an interesting writing experiment for me, for two reasons. One is that the writing on Change This is in the form of “manifestos,” meaning it’s a much more direct exhortation than I’ve been used to writing lately. If you’re interested in more about that, read on.

Basically, for the past four or five years, with Consumed and the book, and most of my magazine work during that time, I’ve been working in a style that leaves a lot up to the reader: I’m not telling people what to think, I’m presenting things, albeit with a particular point of view, but leaving it up to the reader to take the last step and decide for himself or herself whether something is “good” or “bad” or whatever.

This is a writing-style choice. For some years previously I’d written a lot of more straight criticism — just passing judgment. I enjoyed that, but I was interested in this other, less didactic form because I think it ends up forging a deeper relationship with those readers who understand what I’m up to.

The downside is that readers who don’t understand what I’m up to — and who I guess prefer everything to be written in more of a thumbs-up, thumbs-down style — those folks really dislike it. That’s fine, of course, no writer is liked by everybody. What’s more annoying is the subset of such readers who simply project into the writing things I didn’t say, or who are simply to lazy to think about what they’ve read and thus judge it by some random set of criteria based on what they were “expecting.” This leads to some really hare-brained reactions, and that, as I say, is annoying.

The rub is that having spent all those years writing straight criticism, I found that similar things happened anyway, but without the payoff of those deeper reader connections that come from really making people think.

This all sounds rather pompous, I’m sure.

Anyway, the point is, the “manifesto” form is a different variation, in that I’m forced to pretty much say to the reader: Hey, think this way. In fact, I’m pretty much exhorting the reader to change an aspect of the way he or she lives in the world. Which isn’t usually my thing.

On the other hand, it’s not exactly criticism, in the sense that it’s not about passing judgment. So it was an interesting writing experiment, and you’ll have to tell me whether you found it successful or not.

The second reason this was an interesting experiment for me is that I’m curious about Change This itself. I have several other ideas that I can imagine would work in this format, but I don’t have a handle on the Change This “audience,” and what they want. So I’ll be curious to see if anybody reads this thing, and what they make of it.