Quotes About Consumerism

How many McDonald's gift certificates would it take to sway a lot of Americans to pledge to never publicly criticize the U.S, President?

The consumerist culture insists that swearing eternal loyalty to anything and anybody is imprudent, since in this world new glittering opportunities crop up daily.

People make you feel like a bad guy for asking for seven quid for your album, like you are slapping them in the face, when they'll go and pay two grand for a scarf somebody knitted in a sweat shop and stitched a designer label on.

I want to know who is spending $1,000 on a sweater! That makes no sense!

You can feel how much money goes into commercials by how swiftly they act on your mind. And they've got, like, a hypnotic quality to the way they present their products.

The ideology of consumption is so prevalent that it has become invisible: it is the plastic soup in which we swim.

Rather than empowering all, consumer and shareholder activism gives greatest voice to those with the most money in their pockets, those who can switch from seller to seller with relative ease. Consumer and shareholder activism is a form of protest that favours the middle classes, an outpouring of the dissatisfaction of the bourgeoisie.

New York City has changed enormously. My gut impression of it now is that it's like being in a sci-fi novel: 'Blade Runner' syndrome. Nothing seems real anymore; everything is pre-packaged.

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

Now it's as if buying a new phone is like winning some kind of contest. I felt as if I were in a bidding war for the color I wanted, not that I actually care, because I'll get a case to prevent the thing from shattering the first time it falls out of my bra strap.

The problem probably started when I refused to call the process of purchasing the device an "upgrade." When I buy a new roll of toilet paper, I do not refer to it as "upgrading" my toilet paper even if, for some uncanny reason, the new roll is slightly better than the previous one.

It's almost seems as though there's a battle going on between the public and all the fast-food establishments, and, believe me, I think it's very tasty food.

The distance between Don Quixote and the petty bourgeois victim of advertising is not so great as romanticism would have us believe.

If you want to restore your faith in humanity, think about Christmas. If you want to destroy it again, think about Christmas shopping. But the gifts aren't the important thing about the holidays. The important thing is having your family around resenting you.

Stella had seen his corduroy jacket and ostrich boots in the Neiman Marcus catalog, and together those two items cost more than her car.

After years of working on the periphery of the fashion industry, she had come to realize the whole thing was an underhanded attempt to force women to keep buying clothes. Fast fashion had taken over. Topshop, H&M, Primark. What was in would be out in a month.

Money is sad shit

The more stuff a child gets in December, the less stuff the child will remember having gotten by January.

had failed to learn the value of money and how to work for it. And in a Center for a New American Dream survey, a vast majority of parents (87 percent) reported that the consumerism of modern society makes instilling good values in their children a much harder job. That the amount of

They have convinced their customers that the entire shopping experience is an orgy of bargain hunting, and go out of their way to reinforce that image.

Bargains and Rip-Offs

Once I have a mug, I don't want to give it up. But if I don't have one, I don't feel an urgent need to buy one. What this means is that people do not assign specific values to objects. When they have to give something up, they are hurt more than they are pleased if they acquire the very same thing.

Ask any Ferrari, Porsche or Ray-Ban salesperson about their average customer and you will very likely hear that he is not, as the adverts would have us believe, a virile young footballer with shiny hair, a rippling six pack and a trouser pouch like a new punch bag. He is, in fact, a middle-aged bloke wearing more chins than he started life with and carrying the clear evidence of forty years of beer and pies slung across his midriff.

We make things so efficiently that they're all disposable; none of them endure, none can belong to us for long before they end up on the scrap heap.