The belief that the trendier our things, the more relevant we are.
Today’s society has an obsession with having the latest technology, the best clothes, the nicest cars, etc. We are so obsessed with our wants that eventually they change to needs. Guy Debord’s “The Society of the Spectacle” talks about the “spectacle” that we are part of. We as a society are being fed an illusion that we need certain material things that, in reality, we could have lived fine without because we simply wanted them, but didn’t need them at all. Media has taken over our lives and minds and has made us believe that in order to be happy we must have the flashiest, newest things. Advertisements, social media, celebrity endorsements, all add to the tools that have made us believe that we need what we want.
To Debord, the spectacle is a “permanent opium war designed to force people to equate goods with commodities and to equate satisfaction with survival that expands according to its own laws.”1 Debord compares our addiction with consuming to that of a drug war to point out how serious this problem of consuming is. We are now addicted to the high that having the best material goods bring us. We can no longer live without that high. We are officially junkies. He is also saying that we are now unable to tell whether a good is something we want or actually need.
The buyers are addicted to the high that consuming brings them.
Debord writes “commodification is not only visible, we no longer see anything else; the world we see is the world of the commodity.”1 Here, Debord is pointing out that we are so blinded by the commodities that we are ignoring the world around us and what is really important because we are too busy trying to keep up with what is the newest trend is. We ignore the fact that these goods will eventually fade away and we will once again be unhappy and looking for something new to obsess over.
Even though Debord wrote about all of this in a time when technology was not as advanced and there was no such thing as social media, it is still relevant. The main factor that is to blame when talking about how blinded we are by trends and materials is social media. We get to see the celebrities and Internet famous people in a way that no one has ever before. We get to enter their world and see how they live and we are taught to believe that what they show us is all real. Therefore when we see the celebrities and the bloggers wearing the latest trends and owning the newest phone and driving the best cars that we become obsessed and hypnotized by it all that we make a point to be just like them. Eventually we forget that they are also just part of the media and are trying to sell us things.
People are so programmed to not see the line between needs and wants that we will do insane things for it. Whenever a new phone comes out or the new Yeezys drop, we have to have it, and have to have it now no matter what. People are willing to stand in line for hours and will camp out nights before to get what they whatever it is they want. They are willing to pay thousands for a pair of shoes that were originally retailed at a little over $200. Media has done a good job at convincing us that our happiness is directly related to the amount of things that we have.
This image depicts the difference between our wants/needs and how they may end up confusing the consumer.
Work Cited:
Debord, Guy. "The Society of the Spectacle." Chapter 2: The Commodity as Spectacle.
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