Back in 2017, I wrote an article about porn. I was reminded of this article today by @riverflows, who likely never knew of the text, as she joined several months later, and likely had no idea of it. She also didn't mention porn at all,
It is just where my mind went.
Which is strange since we were talking about poverty.
If you read the article linked above, it was about success porn, but what brought it to mind was this part of the comment from @riverflows, talking about the "handy home hints" to save money.
I bloody hate the ads and the magazine articles about 'cooking on a budget' - ffs. Like it's a war and it's our responsibility to soldier on with handy home hints, and if we are starving, well, we should just budget better, even though THEY have told us that happiness means the bigger house, and the developer squeezes even bigger ones onto even smaller blocks that cost more yada yada yada.
The "Own nothing and be happy" mentality is in full swing, and it is being pushed by forcing people into increasing economic hardship, while the corporations are making increasing profits. It is a scam created to keep the abusive financial system spinning for a few more rounds, so that all of the global resources are in the hands of the few. When we don't own for ourselves, when we can't provide for ourselves, we have to rely on others, and what that means is - someone else chooses how we live, or we die.
Poverty Porn is the new Success Porn
"Do with less" is a good approach to life in many ways, but this is not what this is about. This is marketing for profit and has no intention to make our lives better. It isn't a choice that someone makes, it is forced by engineered circumstances that have been designed to maximise profits. Right now, since the wealth gap is so incredibly large, the only way to squeeze more profits out of people, is to force them to do with less, so that they will be able to keep buying more. That seems like a crazy statement, but it is not - it is part of the debt cycle and goes hand in hand with taking on more debt in order to keep purchasing, and then reducing expenses to keep purchasing lower and lower quality and amounts.
For instance, I mentioned almost a week ago in an article about the tariffs forcing an increase in coffee prices in the US, since all of it is imported. And then BBC wrote an article yesterday about the same thing. However, coffee prices have been increasing already for a while, and it has been part of the conversation for a year or more in Finland, as Finns are supposedly the largest per capita consumer of coffee in the world. Bad coffee - but coffee. One quote from the BBC article caught my attention.
"Most customers just get plain coffee, instead of adding syrups and milks. The prices on the menu have gone up by 25% and people are now buying smaller coffees."
People haven't stopped buying coffee, they are just taking the trimmings off and buying smaller cups. But, they are paying the same amount. It is a "less for more" position that is being forced upon us by government and corporation alike, where governments are reducing services for people, and corporations are reducing product offerings - but prices keep increasing, because people keep on demanding, keep on consuming - even though they are not getting near what they would have got earlier.
"Shrinkflation" of all things consumable.
This isn't to make us happier, this isn't for environmental considerations, this is singularly for an increase in profits for corporations and their investors. And it is supported by Poverty Porn where for the last decade there have been shows coming out about the lives of the poor, and social media is now filling with "povpo" (my own term) where "savings hacks" for everything from shopping to cooking, to home workout tips and more, are being peddled. They might "help" someone save, but they don't help the situation, they make it worse.
They make it worse by helping people accept less and less in return for their time, effort and money, in the same way that porn and Tinder help people accept less from their relationships, turning everything transactional and short-term, rather than developing and evolving together.
Learning to live with less doesn't automatically mean living a better quality of life, it just means that quality of life is continually reduced until survival is the only thing left. We are going backwards. And when survival is the only purpose left, society falls apart, as violence increases, communities fail, groups and individuals suffer. And these conditions are being systematically designed in the pursuit of more profit.
Don't buy into it.
It isn't easier to live with nothing for most people, but nothing is where most are headed, because we as a society keeping buying into the idea of reducing ourselves in return for a continually lowering quality of luxury. We are choosing to be renters rather than owners, reliant rather than self-reliant.
The purveyors of porn don't care about you, they aren't trying to make your life better, your relationships better, your opportunities better. they are just taking advantage of our insecurities, our inabilities, our unavailabilities to sell us an inferior substitute as a replacement for the real thing. One thing is for certain though....
NSFW
We are all getting fucked.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
I've really, really noticed the difference between the US and Australia in regards to consumer protections. When I was last in Australia, companies were so scared of the ACCC that even the threat of dobbing in a company was usually enough to convince a company to treat you properly.
I think the comparable agency in the US is the FTC and no one is scared of them at all, so companies have stopped convincing you to buy their superior service and instead make it incredibly hard to get out of subscriptions or monthly payment plans. Yesterday I cancelled a service, and there was no option to cancel on the website, there was no option to call them. The only option was to schedule a call a day or two later where they threw everything they could at me to get me to stay. Some companies don't have call centers at all, your only option is a chatbot that can only handle the most basic requests.
Companies will always do what's most profitable, even if it harms their customers or communities and it's getting harder and harder to vote with our wallets because they're all doing it.
I feel that consumer protection is falling down everywhere now. It probably has something to do with the amount of international purchases. Back in the day, most things were coming from a few companies that had local bases in country - now, they are coming from all over the world from almost anonymous sources.
Damn I hate being put into chatbot service loops....
Yeah, that is a big problem, but I think a country can still provide good consumer protections on local products and services... potentially to the point where people prefer to shop local because of those protections.
Did you see that Trump added exemptions to the China tariffs... all the electronics :D
I did see that. I wonder if Tim Apple provided a fun little bribe for that.
I suspect there were a few kicking in on the bill.
I noticed package shrinkage trend even at Costco, which was known for selling mayonnaise in buckets as the minimal size.
The idea of not owning anything never set well with me. The only place I really made money consistently and every time was real estate.
And you can't save your way into wealth, you have to make it.
I hear they supplied Duddy with a lot of lube too...
This is something a lot of people don't get.
Wow, I really like the implication in the word "porn". At first I thought the analogy was clear, it's supposed to express something that excites us. Like food-porn, or word-porn, etc. But there's so much more you've explained:
This really sums it up so well. Short-term and transactional, which is also superficial, reductive, and ultimately wasteful. In fact, "porn" is the most appropriate term I can think of to encompass all this.
We are tricked into believing the useless has value, while giving up our rights to the useful.
I'm really glad that I don't drink coffee :)
I hope you aren't into Asian porn... ;D
:)
This is feeling like the control freaks are trying to pretend to be "libertarian paternalists" (an oxymoron) nudging us to be "less consumerist" in response to the backlash to COVID naked authoritarianism while they pretend the consequences of their policy blunders are somehow good for us and we should be grateful.
It is a load of nonsense and it may backfire heavily if the rest of the world choose to take advantage of the situation.
Remember your ABCs: ammo, bullion, and crypto. But seriously, I doubt it'll come to that. Still, I'm glad I have a bit of a prepper mindset and can probably withstand some chaos. The US produces power and food. We have timber and mining. Manufacturing isn't completely dead here, and industrial companies to support heavy industry are already somewhat established in my region. It may get rough, but I'm not anticipating Mad Max.
You are channeling George Carlin, but showing a lot more restraint that he ever did.
I like it!
I never listened to George Carlin - I should check him out. If I remember, he used to get in a bit of trouble back in the day.
This article article is kinda personal to me. The idea that "poverty porn" is being used to manipulate people into accepting lower quality of life for the sake of corporate profits is disturbing. I think about all the "savings hacks" and "budget tips" I'm bombarded with online, and how they're often presented as empowering, when in reality, they're just a way to keep us in a cycle of consumption and debt. Your points about how this mindset can lead to a transactional and short-term approach to life is thought-provoking. It's making me think more critically about the media I consume and the values I'm being sold.🤔
Well, this is a good thing at least I think! I reckon if more people thought about what they consume and why they value what they consume, they would see they are being manipulated heavily.
Exactly. It’s like a subliminal influence over time
We are what we consume. We reflect what we surround ourselves with, we are made of our environment.
Explicitly
We have been living off smell of an oily rag so that we can survive and then maybe own a house if possible. I don't have any hope whether it will be better anytime in future.
I have little hope either - which is why I hope people will resist the temptation to own nothing.
People work so hard but still can't afford basics. The save money tips just help companies, not us. We need real change, not smaller coffee cups
What a great article you've written, it's quite deep. We just have to keep on struggling for the best