Active Consumerism
Version 1.0.0 - June 25, 2025
In a consumer landscape dominated by passive consumption of food, media, and technology, how can we see ourselves act less like sheep—"browsing" our "feeds" for the newest content to spike a little hit of dopamine in our heads—and more like intelligent and self-determining individuals? It occurred to me long ago, when confronting this and similar questions, that simply not consuming is an incredibly difficult and lonely path—if it's even possible in the first place. It's been done, and one can think of men in popular culture who retreated into the wild in order to escape whatever ills they ascribe to society, but that's not truly a life that I'm interested in, even if it were one of which I'm capable. I enjoy people, and I enjoy things, and I'm greatly appreciative to global supply chains for being able to deliver the most good to the most people—even if the penalty for that is a cycle of corporate-advertising-driven waste. While I can't and don't want to check out of the system completely, I can at least check myself in the ways in which I'm choosing not to participate in a culture of waste.
All preordained, a prisoner in chains
A lot of people reckon the world of action as a thing that happens unto them, rather than a place for them to act and to exercise free will. Those with an external locus of control are far more likely to describe (though not necessarily explicitly in word, but certainly in action and attitude) their own personal decision making as being a product of forces outside of their control—and which act on them whether to their delight or detriment. Oftentimes one can see this on display in individual attitudes towards the dominant political party or ideology. Generally those who have the most to say about (and who are most emotionally and physically disregulated by the opinions of) their political opponents fall into this category of people with external loci of control.
I want to dispense with this dogshit right here and right now. While I may be in the process of drafting my manifesto (maybe that's what this whole website is), I can say now that this is a fundamental aspect of what I believe—that there exists a movement of agency (free choice of which the individual takes responsibility) in any system that someone participates in willingly or unwillingingly. No, this does not mean that the circumstances that everyone is in are necessarily their fault or their just desserts (as in a wrong view of "karma"), because obviously people choose to change their circumstances, and wish for things to be different than they are.
What it means is that, regardless of the circumstances, everyone possesses an inalienable right to choose their own attitude, feelings, and response to those circumstances. That right is inalienable, not for being divinely granted, but for the fact that the sanctuary of one's mind is under the complete and sole dominion of that mind's owner. Short of some MKUltra poisoning by psychedelics, that faculty cannot be taken away.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
How does this attitude toward fate which I've called out apply to the topic at hand—being in relationship to consumerism? When I talk to others about digital privacy, digital minimalism and unplugging, and even dietary and exercise science, the most common objection that I hear is that they've been doing it one way for so long that they would have trouble changing now. This is a fair argument—after all, objects in motion tend to stay in motion. In order to change, they'd have to work against the momentum they've built in the direction they are headed. However, this ignores that each decision to sign up for a new service; to make a poorer eating decision instead of a better one; or to buy a convenient but privacy-invasive product rather than a less convenient but more privacy-respectful one; was a small decision that would not have taken nearly as much effort to resist in the moment as the total effort required to reverse course on a trend of bad decisions.
Second, and interrelated with the first objection, is that the consequences of accumulated actions were unknown by the individual when they made the first or first few independent actions. I hear this mostly in reference to digital privacy—that everyone else was signing up for this service or that, or everyone else was using this new technology or that, so it was convenient enough to adopt at the time, especially provided the support and community around it. This goes principally for social media1 and smart technology (phones, watches, cars, refrigerators, baby monitors, sous vide machines), which both have a tendency to sneakily increase our dependency on them over time (all the while collecting more data about us to sell to advertisers) until we forget how we even did anything before.
I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose free will
The solution to this, then (and put simply), is to take responsibility for your actions, and to recognize the long-lasting and far-reaching consequences of even the smallest decisions. The way I've done this (and what the original intention of this essay was, though I think the scope of these ideas can be expanded much further) is by trying to engage actively with the things that I buy that I enjoy and appreciate. Take for example my favorite brand of notebooks - Field Notes. I settled on this brand after some testing and comparison with other brands (and also after deciding that I was going to prioritize physical, analog notes over digital notes—a much harder choice) for their quality, availability, diversity of options (they have notebooks in a few sizes with different grids or ruling, as well as some special edition notebooks—though their core offerings remain basic and incredibly versatile), and community (there is a hardcore fanbase of Field Notes users from all walks of life, and the company makes a point to engage with the community through a monthly newsletter and collaboration with artists, photographers and writers for their special releases). It's a brand that I can get behind which provides me with a product that genuinely enhances my life - no trade offs.
This certainly differs from the sort of reddit Funko Pop (boomer Beanie Baby) collector mentality—where the thing itself becomes the end to which the brand loyalty works. That's just the same passive consumerism I've been talking about but done with a depressingly enthusiastic attitude. The brand loyalty that I'm advocating for is one in which the company provides such an excellent value for their product that their customers are willing to give them free advertising (Field Notes was just the example here, but I'll throw Uniqlo, Duluth Trading Company, and Darn Tough out there for apparel, Nite Ize for my carabiners, Tim Horton's for coffee beans, Nutricost for supplements, and even Tom's of Maine for my toothpaste - not an exhaustive list). These brands are the first I'll go to for what I need from them, I've eliminated the choice anxiety from those facets of my consumption.
Support the companies that give you a genuine value and enhance your life (bonus if you can shop small or local). Do you love your favorite brand of kimchi for it's quality, price, availability, community, locality, or some other reason? Write a poem about it. Send a letter to the companies founder expressing your appreciation. Share it with the people you care about in the hopes that they can take back a little bit of their own agency and make a decision that's truly theirs.
1Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Youtube/Google were the big ones when I was younger (I missed the myspace and MSN days). But as the years went on it felt like it was just more and more. Messaging apps (Snapchat, kik) took over the instant messaging space before being brought back into the fold of social media (so you ended up with Facebook messenger and other DM services tied to the social media), until real dedicated and genuinely functional apps took back some territory (Discord being the big one, but also Slack, Teams, and Zoom - all of which taking over for the role that Skype and Teamspeak had played). Over in the shopping space the original was eBay of course, and Craigslist for local stuff, Amazon came in as a genuinely decent digital storefront; but now there's so much shop slop with AliExpress and TikTok shop and who knows what else; sites like Etsy are flooded with mass produced crap and scams, so you don't know what you're even getting. To keep it short, there's just more and more and more, and some things get better but most of it just gets shittier - and at what point do you just decide to stop; but that's the point of this essay, right?