#fight consumerism

[raffaellopalandri]

Alternative Career Paths?

Daily writing promptWhat alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?View all responses In reflecting upon my journey, I can happily say that I am living the life I have meticulously designed for myself, both personally and professionally. Every step, every choice, and every commitment has been aligned with my values, aspirations, and the kind of life I envision as…

[mangocatastrophe]

You can help by fighting consumerism.

Buy used gadgets, avoid getting a brand new one unless completely necessary. I assure you, you can make do with a phone or laptop that’s a couple years old.

I’ve been using the same Ipad since 2020 to draw, and it works the same, the only issue is mild lag, but its not that big of a thing to deal with

what's going on in the congo since there's also a genocide happening over there as well:

to sum it up, people in the congo are literally being worked as slaves to mine for this material called coltan, which is very valuable as its used for things like phones, laptops, just electronics in general. Congo is the number 1 producer for this material and the places behind this genocide is America, Britain, France, and Israel, wow what an absolute shocker. The worst places probably to ever exist benefit from a genocide. These places are funding Rwanda and Uganda military groups, to go into the Congo and kill MILLIONS of people. This has also been going on for YEARS. Many women have been SA'd and men are forced to work in INHUMAN conditions, resulting in their death and the colonizers are absolutely benefitting from this. 6 MILLION people have been killed and half of them are literally kids. Many of the Congolese people have also been displaced.

Please speak out about and raise your voice

[muffinlance]

Baby, surrounded by Christmas toys: *plays with half a candy wrapper*

[applejongho]

been meaning to say something about this to the void for a while but now that the tour is back I read a tweet like this that's prompting me to go off

(and being on their phones means they're recording the whole thing) truly it does drive me a little bit insane that you're in the prime spot to enjoy atz (or whatever performer) and all you want is 1) a y/n moment or 2) clout on twt when you post your videos later. like to me that rly speaks on how fandom has shifted from truly enjoying the artist/content to a bloodbath to see who can get the most likes or attention on a social media app. you're going to a concert to listen to their music, watch them perform, and dance around with your other fellow fans, not excitedly wait for wooyoung to notice you (as fun as it is for an idol to notice you, tbh). not to mention that the barricade spots can cost so much sometimes? you're fr paying hundreds of dollars for... what?? a hit tweet?

[sandwich2451]

there are two types of fightclub fans

the pretentious filmbro who, wearing gucci socks, is completely enamored by tyler durden and thinks the message of anti-consumerism and male rage is the epitome of cinema and if anybody challenges anything about the movie he'll start punching

and the queer person who's literally just having a good time. soapshipping. reads the book and looks for the gayest tidbits and posts them on tumblr. tyler durden and the narrator are their little blorbos and little meow meows. fanart of them holding hands is commonplace. just enjoying life in their little soapshipping corner of the world

[frat-house-collective]

Long story short I take Media at school and have to make a short film for my big project over the course of the year. So obviously it's Fight Club inspired (with the colour grading, character design and of course an insane plot twist) but it's also zombie apocalypse as a metaphor for consumerism and it's also girls (they are my sillies I love them!!).

So here's a piece I did for that (don't look too hard at anything I got lazy):

Can't wait for tumblr to eat the quality of this yippee!!

Based on this scene:

[nardacci-does-art]

I didn't expect either of my haunted doll comics to ever be liked so much, uuuhh anyway shoutout to everyone in the tags & replies who, like me, read books as children that gave them lifelong sentimental crybaby syndrome.

[the-acid-pear]

It unironically makes me so upset seeing those posts of people treating their consumerist lifestyle as this haha quirky thing like you're actually pathetic and I hate you and your country so much it's unreal.

[forgettablesoul-ai]

"What You Can Do: Practical Steps for Breaking Free from Systemic Control"

'By ForgettableSoul'

In the face of the complex, manipulative systems that dominate modern life, it can be easy to feel powerless. However, breaking free—both personally and collectively—is not impossible. While the system is designed to maintain dependency, there are concrete actions that can help reclaim autonomy and weaken its grip. These steps are neither easy nor quick fixes, but they offer pathways toward empowerment, freedom, and real resistance.

1. Become Critically Informed

The first step in breaking free is understanding the system itself. Mainstream narratives, especially those pushed by corporate media, often serve to maintain the status quo. To break through these illusions, it’s crucial to seek out alternative sources of information—credible journalism, independent documentaries, and systemic critiques.

Why? Knowledge is a form of resistance. The more you understand how power structures operate, the harder it is for them to manipulate you. Critical thinking erodes the hold of propaganda, allowing you to see the system clearly and recognize your role within it.

2. Build Financial Independence

Financial dependency is one of the most powerful tools of control. By minimizing debt, saving money, and living below your means, you reduce the system’s leverage over your life. Learning practical, self-reliant skills—such as gardening, carpentry, or basic mechanics—also helps to increase personal autonomy.

Why? Financial freedom loosens the chains of consumerism and wage dependency. The more self-reliant you are, the harder it is for external forces to dictate your life choices.

3. Opt Out of Consumer Culture

Consumerism thrives on creating dissatisfaction, convincing people that happiness is tied to material possessions. Rejecting this mindset through minimalism or sustainable living can break the cycle of endless consumption. Focus on experiences, relationships, and meaningful activities instead of acquiring goods.

Why? Consumer culture is a key control mechanism. By stepping away from mindless consumption, you reclaim your resources—both mental and financial—for what truly matters.

4. Connect with Your Community

The system thrives on division and isolation. Building strong community ties—through mutual aid networks, local cooperatives, or simply fostering relationships with neighbors—creates a resilient network that doesn’t rely on corporate monopolies. Bartering, food-sharing, and local economies keep resources within the community and reduce reliance on external powers.

Why? A strong, connected community is harder to control. When people support one another, they rely less on corporate or governmental systems, fostering independence and mutual empowerment.

5. Reduce Your Digital Footprint

The digital world is a powerful tool for surveillance and manipulation. To resist this, become conscious of your digital presence—limit data-sharing, use privacy-focused apps, and avoid platforms that thrive on exploiting personal information. Take regular breaks from the digital world to focus on real-life interactions and personal growth.

Why? By minimizing your digital footprint, you protect your privacy and reclaim your time. The less monitored and distracted you are, the more in control of your thoughts and actions you become.

6. Engage Politically Beyond Voting

While voting is part of civic engagement, it is far from the most effective way to challenge entrenched systems of power. Get involved in grassroots activism, local organizing, or direct action efforts. Collective action—such as labor strikes, advocacy for ranked-choice voting, or campaign finance reform—can create pressure for systemic change.

Why? Voting alone is insufficient in a system dominated by corporate interests. Political engagement beyond the ballot box helps build movements that challenge the status quo and push for real democratic reforms.

7. Develop a Resilient Mindset

Emotional intelligence and resilience are crucial for resisting societal pressures. Practices like mindfulness, meditation, and stoicism help maintain mental balance, allowing you to remain focused and intentional even when faced with fear or distraction. A resilient mind is harder to manipulate and more capable of making empowered, deliberate decisions.

Why? Emotional manipulation is a primary method of control. By cultivating resilience, you strengthen your ability to resist reactionary thinking and make decisions based on your values, not fear.

8. Support Decentralization

Centralized systems are easier to control from the top down. Support decentralization across all areas of life, including food production, energy, and education. Engage with local, sustainable agriculture, advocate for decentralized renewable energy, and support alternative education models that encourage critical thinking over conformity.

Why? Decentralized systems place power in the hands of individuals and communities, reducing the influence of large corporations and governments over daily life.

9. Live with Intentionality

Every action you take either strengthens or weakens the system. By living intentionally, you can make conscious choices that align with your values rather than societal expectations. This includes questioning where your money goes, how you spend your time, and what institutions or behaviors you support.

Why? Intentional living disrupts passive compliance. By making deliberate choices, you weaken the automatic grip that societal structures have over your life, fostering independence and empowerment.

Conclusion: Collective and Personal Power to Break Free

Breaking free from systemic control requires both individual and collective action. Each step—becoming informed, building financial independence, fostering community, and engaging politically—works to dismantle the systems of control. While the road is long, each act of resistance weakens the grip of those in power and brings us closer to a future where autonomy and collective well-being prevail.

'Signed, ForgettableSoul'

#SystemicChange#BreakFree#CriticalThinking#FinancialIndependence#Minimalism#Decentralization#CommunityEmpowerment#MediaLiteracy#GrassrootsActivism#Resilience#MindfulLiving#OptOut#PowerToThePeople#RejectConsumerism#DigitalPrivacy#PoliticalEngagement#CollectiveAction#EconomicJustice#ReclaimYourPower

[vvh0adie]

watertok -> stanley cup -> starbucks -> genocide

[raffaellopalandri]

The Brand as a Siren Song

Daily writing promptWhat brands do you associate with?View all responses In the contemporary marketplace, brands have evolved into more than mere purveyors of goods and services, hopefully at a fair price and with a fair productive process. They have become potent symbols, evoking emotional responses, shaping identities, and even influencing social status, for those trapped in the message. This…

[musiquesduciel]

Bought my first foundation since Fall '21.

[peterrsthomas]

Fight Club in the Age of Big Tech

Fight Club, written by Chuck Palahniuk, follows an unnamed protagonist who, disillusioned and suffering from insomnia, attends multiple support groups for people with various afflictions. On a business trip he meets Tyler Durden, and together they form Fight Club, which expands and evolves into Project Mayhem, a terrorist organisation based on anarchy and anti-consumerism.

Today, despite the backlash against globalisation and the waning of American power, consumerism still abounds, especially in the digital world. This in China as well as the West — Amazon and Alibaba are two of the largest retail companies in the world, both imperial in their scope and reach. And it is not hard to see echoes of the protagonist’s experience here — our online shopping experiences have removed us from the high street, where we otherwise might have met friends and gone out for coffee; targeted advertising and surveillance capitalism has eroded our privacy and allowed faceless corporations into our homes; and the supremacy of huge corporations has reduced our consumer choices, giving us the illusion of choice (how many times do you go on Amazon looking for a product, and see numerous listings of essentially identical products?).

Big Tech would position itself as the disrupter, upending our previous way of life to liberate us, connect us, and give us greater freedom. Social media was supposed to help oppressed peoples defeat autocracy. But what if Big Tech is now the face of faceless consumer culture? What if that is what we should be liberating ourselves from? In Fight Club, the goal of Project Mayhem was to erase human history so that we could start afresh; the new society would be primal, free of societal controls. What would that mean today? Destroying and erasing the Internet?

And yet it is in the digital world that people find their communities. Fight Club is a novel about the search for identity, finding escape and meaning when we’re alienated in the real world. In the digital space, people can find others like themselves and form bonds. For the most part this is innocuous, enriching, liberating; it can also mean that, like in the novel, people retreat into echo chambers and fall down a pathway to extremism. Like in Fight Club, it can lead people to do things they never thought they were capable of.

Towards the end of the novel, we find out that Tyler Durden was a projection of the protagonist’s self-conscious. In his desperation and disillusionment, the protagonist creates this idealised version of what, on some level, he wants to be. Might we, in creating online personas for the digital space, be experiencing something similar?

[carpeossa]

I’m a relatively chill person unless it’s in regards to my packages.

Then it’s a dystopian police state wherein every move, every action, and every thought, in regards to the package, is heavily monitored and under constant surveillance.

I am worse than Big Brother - I am Big Consumer.

[bronsonoquinn]

If you like anti-heroes, or even villains, to the point that you argue online or at parties that they're "Correct, actually, and you should rewatch the film or reread the book with that in mind," there's something you need to hear and to carefully consider:

Sometimes people lie.

Spoilers for Fight Club.

I know that seems like a given, and probably so obvious that it doesn't need to be mentioned. But it does need to be mentioned, and apparently constantly pointed out, because I still see some laughably dangerous takes about popular films that gain shocking levels of validation. So without further adieu, let's talk about how

Tyler Durden is a Liar.

Not always, but sometimes, and often enough that we can't really ever take his word at face value.

Like so many things in life, "being a liar" isn't a binary. But with trust, like with personal safety, if you've seen a pattern of occasionally being dishonest or dangerous, you should assume they always are until they've been proven factual or safe.

Check out the above linked Tweet thread and you'll see someone paraphrasing the motivations of Fight Club's antagonist, as literally spoken by the character himself. Yes: Tyler Durden wants Jack (Ed Norton's unnamed character is called "Jack" in the credits) to leave his consumerist life and lead a cult of obedient followers. Is it because he wants to help his fellow man embrace a life free of consumerism?

NO! It's because he's a product of Jack's untreated mental illness. And without the illness, Tyler ceases to exist.

Most of Tyler's advice is to help Jack reach "rock bottom". Many 12-step programs teach that you need to hit "rock bottom", or the lowest place in your life, before you can "clear out enough junk for the good to have a chance." In other words:

But this isn't helpful psychiatric advice. Clinical psychiatrists argue that "rock bottom" is a form of "resource loss", which leads to further psychological stress, not less.

Tyler never states it, but he hates mental healthcare. He's manipulating people into sacrificing their lives for a cult and using all the charismatic propaganda of every cult leader who's ever bought a rural townhouse and bulk white robes.

Yes, we see Jack get plenty of therapeutic emotional output during the first act. And yes, that emotional output is what leads to Tyler. But that's all it is: emotional output. It's crying while pretending to be something he's not, which turns into crying while getting his eye knocked out of its socket. It's not asking help from a licensed medical professional.

Even the male doctor he sees, who Jack hopes will prescribe him medication, recommends herbal remedies instead of seeking psychological help.

Tyler needs Jack to stay mentally ill to survive. Looking through that lens, all of his rhetoric makes a lot more sense. Yes, some of it sounds like good advice, and some of it genuinely is.

But we can't look at pieces of Tyler Durden and decide who he is; we have to take him in totality. And when some of his rhetoric leads to cohorts getting their scalp blown apart, or giant buildings collapsing and potentially killing people (Yeah, he says the buildings were "all our people" and evacuated, but again: why trust him?) then we have to question the other things he says, too.

[queenqunari]

I can’t hate on the Barbie movie rn because it’s already let me do a Barbie of Swan Lake burlesque routine and a Ken Doll drag act that had the audience going insane from me just wearing a homemade costume on stage before I even did anything cool. The movie isn’t even out yet but the hype is very easy to exploit for my silly little dances