Consumerism is Tiring
Subscriptions, subscriptions, and more subscriptions.
An Introduction – Personal Anecdote
Perhaps I am turning into an old man (at the ripe age of 22 years old), but consumerism is tiring. I came to the realization while going for a morning walk around Colonial Williamsburg (CW). On this walk, I listened to a baseball podcast while trying to get my mind off things. It did not take long till I felt overwhelmed by the world around me. I first grabbed a black iced coffee from the nearby Wawa then found a table in CW. While sitting at this table, I listened to ad reads on my podcast and saw people trickling in and out of the Lululemon across the street. Part of me thought that I should go into Lululemon to grab some new workout clothes, but I decided against it. I really didn’t need to spend any more money on clothes. Amidst all of this, I also saw a group of people taking pictures in front of the Lululemon store. I whispered to myself, “Man, people really do love their clothes huh?”.
A mix of podcast ad reads and the Lululemon store got me to think. How much of our time is surrounded around consumerism? It is a powerful question in my eyes. This is not to say that all consumerism is bad, but how often do we spend time just on ourselves without the pressure of advertisements and spending money? For instance, I just scrolled through my Twitter feed after writing that last sentence (Warning: I am foreshadowing my next point right here). While trying to find out what was happening in the financial world, three advertisements hit me in a span of 15 seconds. That is an egregious amount of advertising.
Twitter is not the only one to succumb to this as I am directly looking at Instagram, TikTok, and others. I am trying to find ways to escape consumerism through all of this, whether it be for a temporary amount of time or for an entire day. Part of me feels reconnected to the physical world by doing activities like listening to The Strokes’ The New Abnormal on my record player or reading Peter Doggett’s You Never Give Me Your Money (A book about The Beatles after their breakup). All of this may seem a little off-topic, but it is not straying far from my point. Our well-being is not dependent on the consumption of goods. But Jakob, didn’t you have to purchase The New Abnormal and You Never Give Me Your Money? To that point, I say “well sh*t”. So, is there an escape from all of this? Who knows. Probably not.
Overwhelming Environment for Consumers (Case Study on Streaming Services)
We are going to pivot now by looking at streaming services. To consume all the latest content requires having subscriptions to a bunch of services. This list includes, but is not limited to Amazon Prime, HBO Max, Netflix, Spotify, Disney+, and Hulu. A Prime membership comes at a heftier price tag since it includes other benefits such as Amazon Music (does anybody actually use this?) and Prime shipping. Merely subscribing to the “basic plans” for all these services will run you a bill of about $60 per month. On a yearly basis, that is equivalent to $720.
It never really registered in my mind how fast that these subscriptions add up. They are advertised at a low price per month, but you are paying eternally. Well… until you decide to cancel or the company ceases to exist. From my perspective, it is frustrating to be paying a dollar amount and not actually “own” anything. Streaming services are fantastic for consuming new content, but are they worth paying that much annually?
I want to take another step back from this. The direction of the subscription service industry is not static, as it is a work in progress still. This became abundantly clear as Netflix will soon offer an ad-supported plan. Why? Netflix reported, “a loss of 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022” (Singh). A market leader is now struggling with growth, and this will likely lead to the creation of more subscription plans. Plans that will range across different price ranges while also either excluding or including certain features. Netflix’s ad-supported plan will be cheaper than their current basic plan since the company will now bring in ad revenue.
My final point is that it is becoming increasingly expensive to enjoy content in a “viewing environment” that it deserves. In other words, the charges for streaming services will dramatically increase if you aim to enjoy content with no ads and at a higher resolution quality. In the case of Netflix, you must pay for the “standard plan” to even watch content in HD. I realized this yesterday when Better Call Saul looked poor in terms of streaming quality. Did it take away from the fact that it is a fantastic show? No, but I would enjoy it more in HD. It just seems regressive to offer content in SD quality when HD has been around for a while now.
Conclusion – The Future
When diving deeper, I find even more ridiculous instances of consumerism. I recently found one in Drew Gooden’s (a YouTube comedian) video titled I can’t stop buying weird ads. In this video, he goes on Instagram and purchases almost any item that is advertised to him. He came across a pair of headphones called NURABUDS. It is just an ordinary product; however, you are charged $5 a month to use them. In other words, you are SUBSCRIBING to a piece of HARDWARE. Drew Gooden points out that this pair of headphones is likely worth around $20, so what is the point of turning this into a subscription? As the consumer, you will never own the headphones and must pay perpetually to keep the product. I certainly hope that this never becomes a trend, but weirder things have happened.
Lastly, I found a company with a confusing price model. It is a clothing brand called Fabletics and they implemented a subscription model when making a purchase. In terms of clothing, they offer similar products to Lululemon. To start, you are charged $54.95 monthly to become a “VIP Member” and are given monthly member credits. You can then save a bunch of money through offers like “2 for $24 all bottoms”.
Once again, this just seems like another subscription model that is out of place. I guarantee that most customers will use the VIP program to initially round out their closet, then cancel or never use the subscription again. Not only all of this, but they heavily market on Instagram with Kevin Hart as their spokesman. I legitimately see their ads anytime that I hop on Instagram. Down below is how the VIP membership works, but I just find it over-complicated for something as mundane as purchasing workout clothes. I can only hope that companies will stop turning everything into a subscription model, but that unfortunately does not seem like the case.
Well, looks like we reached the end here. Thank you for reading till the end. All these thoughts accumulated over the months, and it felt ~good~ to finally write it all out. Hopefully, more long-form posts like this will be coming soon. With all that being said, hope you enjoyed and cheers!
Sources:
The views expressed [on this site/in this post] represent my personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the position of EY.
Jakob. This is fantastic!! Consumerism drives capitalism and vise versa. Some times I think there has to be a limit on all the stuff we by. Do we really need it ? Just more stuff to take to good will in a year , right. Don’t wSt your money , save it .