Core77: Rob Walker’s Buying In carries the reader on a frenetically paced tour of senseless consumption spanning from Viking ranges to custom high-tops. Along the way he introduces the reader to a diverse cast of characters like Dietrich Mateschitz, the entrepreneur who brought the world Red Bull, the sponsor of both the Flugtag air races, and in the opposite direction, the late night drunken falls of people who’ve imbibed too much alcohol along with the cough syrup caffeinated punch of that narrow little can. Other characters include an assortment of white guys without any discernible street-cred who’ve managed to build clothing empires around hip-hop and urban culture, and even viral marketers who pretend to be customers, proselytizing to others about the merits of products (and apparently not always disclosing their affiliations).
By presenting both uber-consumers and the professionals who deal with trying to sell us the stuff to fill our endless appetites, or the holes in our souls, Walker indirectly addresses what he coins the “pretty good” problem: What distinguishes a product when assembly lines or underpaid third-world workers can make even the cheapest products “pretty good?” Since quality really isn’t much of a criterion any more, there must be other signifiers, and that’s where our subconscious steps in.
Most of us have been inundated with advertising for our whole lives, so on some level we know that we’re being sold … which is why some hipster crowds gathered around PBR precisely because they weren’t being given the hard sell. So if somebody cracks open a can now, knowing that the trend is played out, what does that act of consumer disobedience say about them? Now that PBR is so “yesterday,” shouldn’t that make it cool again? Plus, the conception of consumption as a statement is in itself reflexive. In other words, if a hipster cracks open a can in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it, are they still being cool? It gets pretty meta.
2008.05.23 at 7:31 am
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