Consumption as a modern hobby // The commodification of identity
Or: How late capitalism is killing our community and our soul
I came across an interesting debate motion a while ago. This House Supports the rise of the "stay-at-home" trend (The "stay-at-home" trend is a trend where young people demonstrate a significantly reduced tendency to go out or engage in experimental activities. This includes: less clubbing, less casual sex, and socialising more online.)
This motion helps articulate a broader trend that has been slowly consuming a large subset of society. That of bed rotting, of endlessly doom scrolling on the internet or watching Brooklyn 99 for the hundredth time; basically consuming until our brains rot at the core. 46% of teens report being online "almost constantly" (Pew Research 2022). The rise of the 'stay-at-home' trend is more than just a shift in how we spend our leisure—it’s a symptom of a deeper malaise in modern society.
Historically, human relaxation and leisure has not looked like this. Our leisure has usually always involved creating or engaging actively in something. Painting, writing, playing sports, whatever. These are all activities that invoke in them some sort of community, and an active action being taken. If nothing else, stuff like hanging out at the mall still involves you in the real world engaging with your friends. The shift towards media consumption has resulted in a catastrophic loss of social cohesion, creativity and identity.
The Death of Community
25 years ago, American Political Scientist Robert Putnam wrote Bowling Alone - a significant piece of sociological literature that pointed out the demise of American Civic Society and by extension, traditional hobbies and leisure activities that people engaged in. He highlighted the demise of social capital in society at large - the slow death of community. People weren’t going to church, meeting at town halls, or participating in traditional social activities or civic organisations.
Okay, cool. But what does some old book have to do with anything? Putnam argued that one of the contributors to the demise of social capital was the rise of passive entertainment. Cable TV, radio, and other media at the time. In the quarter century since he penned Bowling Alone, passive media has only become more accessible and active in our lives, and the media consumption of the time seems incredibly tame and insignificant by comparison. There are many other reasons for the slaughter of communities with reckless abandon (the way our cities are designed, for instance), that can be the subject of lengthy articles of their own (and probably will be, depending on how bored I am).
What is social capital exactly? Put simply, it’s social connections. The connections we have with others. Our social network and the level of trustworthiness, reciprocity and reliance that exists within such a network. This demise in social capital is clear in the data. 49% of Americans report having fewer than 3 close friends (2021 Survey Center survey). Since Putnam wrote Bowling Alone, the perverse infiltration of media consumption in our lives has exponentially increased. We can infer catastrophic impacts on our social capital. Let’s look at this consumption in a little more detail.
Modern Media Consumption
Netflix (or your pirate website of choice; I don’t judge) has made it so you can watch whatever you want, whenever you want. The way these websites are structured, with auto play and entire seasons of content packaged together encourages binge watching. Keep in mind, TV episodes were designed to be watched one at a time weekly. Now, people binge for hours at a time. Netflix users watch 3.2 hours per day on average.
The worst culprit for the dominance of passive media consumption is the rise of TikTok’s (or Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, whatever’s your poison). Short, sudden bursts of dopamine that are designed to keep you hooked. The next shot of dopamine is just one scroll away. Every single scroll is another hit of dopamine. We are slowly trapping society in a hedonistic treadmill of short term dopamine bursts, delivered continuously over the day. This content is endless - there is no limit. There’s also nothing you have to do in order to earn this dopamine. There is no process. There is no incremental improvement. You consume it like a drug. Short term gratification is now for sale and you are paying with your data. The average American spends 7 hours per day on digital media (2022 Nielsen data).
YouTube especially has democratized and lowered the bar for content creation. Here is a platform where anyone can create content with no standard for quality or production. Whereas children’s media of old like Sesame Street used to be made under scrupulous ethical guidelines for what messaging we can show impressionable kids, YouTube has exposed society’s most vulnerable to whatever grabs their attention the most. Channels like Cocomelon abuse this, creating content lab tested to maximise the attention of children, with no other goal or messaging in mind. We are now weaned on mindless media consumption before we can walk. The iPad kid is a mainstream parenting methodology.
The commodification of identity - The role of corporations and society
This unprecedented societal shift towards media consumption and short term gratification is an inevitability of a purely capitalist approach to the nascent digital world. Let's look at one of the few truly late capitalist societies - Japan. Japan’s hikimori or shut-ins are young adults who have chosen to isolate themselves from society completely. This is almost never done in the pursuit of some skill or active hobby. Rather, these individuals spend their time watching TV, doom scrolling the internet or playing video games - AKA passive media consumption. This is not some fringe subset of people. Government estimates say 1.5 million people in Japan are hikimori.
This reliance on media consumption as the predominant hobby - as well as the complete isolation of the hikimori showcases an inevitable alienation from labour, community and from oneself. In a society where immense productivity is prioritized and indeed deified to the extent where people derive their self esteem from it (as is the case in most capitalist societies), individuals who may be lagging behind in this regard see no place for themselves within the confines of the real world. The presence of digital communities provides connectivity and escapism from a real world that seems to have rejected these people.
However, these aren’t wholesome public spaces. These are predatory, for-profit town squares where your every action is being recorded and sold off as metadata. The predatory profit mechanism for these companies involves selling your data to streamline you into consumption. This is done via targeted ads. And so, your entire identity is commodified. You are spoon fed entertainment and media tailored to you, integrated within these so called town squares. It is more accessible than ever before, for all the reasons I’ve outlined in this article. The end result is that people fall into inevitable consumption cycles. Very well paid software engineers and data scientists are paid to curate algorithms with one very simple goal: keep you scrolling. Keep you hooked.
It is worth noting here that digital communities have had positive outcomes in society, too. They connect people of common backgrounds from different nations, ethnicities and backgrounds. They are also an important weapon for grassroots journalists and political movements for reform and progress. They can also just be fun, in moderation! I am not advocating for some grandiose return to the “good old days” where we eliminate the internet. I do not want a return to caveman society where we pretend we haven’t discovered fire yet so we can maximize social capital. I am simply arguing for a more regulated, less predatory digital public square.
Consequences of consumption centric life
Another aspect to the commodification of identity is that people have started to define themselves by their media consumption. Their personality is the books they read (yes, reading is media consumption, no matter how intellectual BookTok makes it seem). Their personality is the movies they watch and rate on Letterboxd. Identity is now entirely tied to consumption. This is where alienation of the self is birthed. You are, now, what you consume. And through social media, you are given the means to project this consumption of yours to the world. Look at this book I’m reading. Look at this film I watched. Look at this product I purchased. Aren’t I interesting? Aren’t I worthy of your attention? Or so we scream into the void.
Our interactions with others are also redefined as a result of this. They are centered around consumption and the gratification gained from it. Modern mental health and the way it is sold (because it is a product, lets face it) has also commodified much of what used to be traditional human interaction. Don’t tell your problems to your friends, that’s trauma dumping! Pay money to a therapist to do the same thing. We are taught that it is bad to rely on our community for support through our problems, and rather the better thing to do for everyone is to pay someone money to listen to us and support us through our problems instead. Emotional support be damned, even asking your friends for regular support with life and favours like helping you move, is becoming more and more stigmatized in late capitalist society. Friendship is magic, but it is becoming more and more transactional in our society. And of course, in the digital sphere, very predatory apps like Betterhelp are popping up to provide you therapy (and sell your data).
Pop psychology has also been detrimental to how we treat others. Words with very clinical definitions like trauma, depression or anxiety have become catch-all nomenclature used everyday to shirk accountability for one's own behaviours. 84% of therapists report patients misusing clinical terms learned from social media. "Gaslighting" was Dictionary.com's word of 2022, with searches up 1740%. That’s not to trivialize these mental health conditions, but rather to say that people are weaponizing and misusing the terminology. It has become a cover for people’s flaws and misdeeds; an easy copout on taking accountability for your actions. People are more than ready to cut others off, citing pop psychology.
Where did we derive identity?
So, what was identity before? Well, it was still intrinsically linked to your hobbies, but it had a lot more to do with the community you lived in, accepted customs within that community, etc. And for a lot of our history, your community has been intrinsically tied to your faith. Someone who went to church every Sunday had an identity that was intrinsically linked to the practice of Christianity in their local town. Their identity was tied to their interactions with others at church, their adherence to the moral code of their religion and the common ground this generated. Without getting into any philosophical arguments around religion, it has to be accepted that the sacred canopy it provides as a basis for societal function and a foundation for community is a very real thing. That’s not to say that religion was not commodified. Many of these structures still existed within the realm of a broader capitalist society during our recent history, where religion was used for exploitation en-masse (see: televangelists, for example). However, on a smaller scale, grassroots level, religious centres tended to be community centres for us to congregate in our humanity, and shared lived experience.
An important clarification here is that I am not some crusader calling for a return to Christendom and the Caliphate. All I am saying is that there were quite a few positive aspects to organized religion that we should be thinking about how we can keep going, even as society in the developed world does tend towards irreligiosity. Just because religion used to be our source of community, doesn’t mean it has to be one now. The trend towards agnosticism/atheism is unignorable, and arguably isn’t worth reversing. But preserving local communities is important. In the absence of organized religion, a coordinated promotion of civil society, volunteering and regular community activities will be necessary to fill that void. None of that seems to be happening right now.
The rapid rise of secularism and lack of faith as the predominant view in many late capitalist societies is directly tied to a sudden loss of identity and a lack of belonging that capitalism and corporate entities are more than happy to plug with consumerism and consumption. This is only allowed to happen because of the way our housing is designed. Nowhere is this more apparent than in American suburbia. Your home is your castle. You are in a big house with an even bigger garden, surrounded by wide, hostile, unwalkable streets. There is no public park. There is no community centre anymore. You are on an island of isolation, detached from your neighbours. You drive to work, you drive to places where you can consume, or you consume via the internet. There is no end to consumption. There is no community anymore, not here. This is the ideal capitalist housing setup.
This setup becoming dominant in late capitalist society has spurred the creation of digital communities as a replacement. People are faceless, nameless, united by algorithms and a need for attention. It’s a thoroughly dehumanizing community. While digital communities broaden your horizons and allow people of common interests/from marginalized communities to meet and bond, they are no substitute for the real world.
An interesting phenomenon worth mentioning, particularly in the United States, is the reversal of the rise of secularism in Gen Z men. In a scrounge for identity, a lot of the short form content on social media - particularly that in the manosphere is tilting towards encouraging religiosity as a source of discipline in aimless young men who are otherwise detached from society, due to economic hardships and unemployment resulting in the same alienation from labour we see in the hikimori. The messaging here is that there is still a place for you to be accepted as a productive member of society through religion. However, we see this message presented in a significantly commodified way. Andrew Tate has weaponized Islam as a way to sell his courses, for example.
Beyond religion, you were linked to the civic societies you were in. The neighbourhood you lived in. Where you volunteered. Maybe you went bowling on the weekends with a group of friends. These things aren’t gone. But they are dying. Consuming media from your bed is just easier. It feels better in the short term. The loneliness, isolation and demise of community and a long term sense of aimlessness and despair will inevitably follow.
Rebuilding Community
Broader societal trends are scary, especially when we can’t really stop them. But what can you do about it? You do not have to be a slave to consumption. Paint. Write. Play guitar. Do your terrible standup routine in front of your family. Meet your family, at least. Organize a football match with your friends every weekend. Push yourself to do things that you actively participate in and where you actively create. That is at least an individualized antidote to the late capitalist hell we have slowly manufactured for ourselves.
There is nothing stopping you from being the force for change in your community as well. You can be the individual who makes their neighbourhood into a living, breathing community. Organize events! Organize hangouts! Bring people together for a shared activity! I promise these pursuits will feel worthwhile and fulfilling.
Thanks Rafay, wasn’t too proud of looking at my daily average for instagram after reading your article, but I’m glad I checked. Sometimes, rude awakenings are really what we might need. Time to go touch some grass 🫡 🥹