Consumers: don’t buy into the hype

Sharon Kim Send Kim comments at [email protected].

I was in the post office the other day, when a man came up and
asked me in a quiet voice, “Excuse me, do you go to Sunset
Cove Beach?”

In response to my quizzical half-glare, the man explained he had
seen an advertisement for Sunset Cove Private Beach on the back of
the shirt I was wearing.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him the shirt was
mass-produced for Abercrombie & Fitch stores, and that
thousands of people who have never even heard of Sunset Cove
Private Beach own the shirt. I didn’t have the heart to tell
him I myself had not bothered to read what was printed on the back
and simply bought it because, well, I wanted a green shirt.

This incident made me reflect on other times I fell into
purchasing mass-produced items, like those “parachute
rip-cord bungee jump standard issue pants,” or whatever it is
they’re called now.

I didn’t buy those pants solely because of their long,
adventurous name ““ but I must admit my inclination to think
the pants were “cool” was slightly motivated by the
description of them.

It is capitalistic mass hypnosis at its finest.

This tendency to sell a sense of lifestyle along with
merchandise is found everywhere. Indeed, the promise of a better
life in something as innocent as a can of soda lies at the heart of
advertising.

Flipping through a Pottery Barn catalog or walking into a Crate
& Barrel store, one finds a myriad of simply charming furniture
and home accessories, all with the air of serene country-modern
themes. The plush sofas seem to beckon for someone to curl up on
them some Sunday afternoon with a favorite old novel, and the
simple armoires and coffee tables look aged from their many
generations of use.

This is notwithstanding the fact that these items cost well into
the thousands ““ and they’re not even real antiques. The
furniture, though weathered and aged to look antique, is churned
out from a factory and shipped via Federal Express; they have no
history because they were just recently put together off an
assembly line, the paint scraped here and there to give the
appearance of previous use.

Illustration by RODERICK ROXAS/Daily Bruin I don’t mean to
say we should all be rummaging through flea markets to find that
special coffee table. But there is such an obsession with believing
our living rooms should look a certain way (or what kind of coffee
should be in one hand and what brand of cell phone in the other)
that we have become nothing more than drones of a mass consumerism
society. Individual taste? Discouraged.

Time plays a role in this ““ in that nobody has any. There
just isn’t the leisure to develop personal tastes ““ and
even less time to think about life ““ because we’re
always hurrying to get to and from our jobs in our SUVs.

And when we buy an SUV, don’t we have visions of taking
the vehicles to a remote snowy cliff and snowboard down treacherous
precipices with the Lenny Kravitz song “Fly Away”
blasting in the background?

It is the lifestyle we think we are supposed to be living. And
it can now be conveniently purchased, if you have the money.

What’s so great about pretending to live a lifestyle
supposedly admired by others, the presumably sexy and wild life
that we should at least aspire to fake and imitate? Who says there
is a particular life you have to live?

Occasionally, people seem to realize this and temporarily snap
out of the materialistic hypnotism; such has been the case since
Sept. 11.

Our daily routines have been disrupted and we have reevaluated
our priorities. As a result, people are reportedly reflecting more
on their real lives, instead of getting mindlessly caught up in
work or a complete frenzy of money spending (for the sake of
helping out the economy, of course).

News stations say that Americans are making a different set of
New Year’s resolutions this year. Fewer have resolved to
“lose weight” or “stay in shape.” Instead,
more people are concerned with spending time with their families
and appreciating what they have, vowing to “just be
happy.”

I’m sure all this is easier said than done. These
resolutions, albeit of better substance, will probably be
forgotten, like those of New Years past.

Oh, well. I think I’ll go get myself a grande soy latte,
wearing a shirt that claims I’m a longboard
semi-finalist.