Generation Bubble
Consumerism
The Knack … and How to Forget It: An Inquiry into Consumption Deskilling
Contemporary capitalism seeks to make us all into rabid collectors, constantly crossing off items of a list we think we’ve devised but is actually just an edit of a list dictated by retailers to suit their own ends. Overall, consumption goods, like labor in the production process, become somewhat generic; demand becomes perfectly fungible, ready to soak up the ever-increasing amount of stuff that will be dumped on the market as capitalist production necessarily expands.
The Joe You Know: On Shakespeare and "Stealth Starbucks"
It seems a growing contingent has shown itself unwilling to pony up the premium Starbucks attaches to their elaborate coffee drinks…. Duly alarmed by this defection and the dwindling flow of tribute it represents, Starbucks has thus decided to don a “more bohemian guise featuring live music performances, poetry readings and sales of alcohol as well as hot drinks ” in order to recapture the public’s fealty and shopping dollars. Such a guise goes by the name “community personality” in Starbucks’ corporate idiom.
"Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be": Americans Dash for Cash after Wall Street's Crash
The Depression saw unemployment rates much higher than we’ve seen yet in this recession, and it lasted for nearly a decade. Also, American culture wasn’t nearly as integrated by various forms of media as it is now, which meant that the experience of poverty was far more isolating and devastating. So while Americans have lost confidence in the economy for sure, it’s not yet clear whether Americans have suffered enough in this downturn to confidently predict a return of the “modest consumer” who is wary of indebtedness.
A Debt to Treasure: What Makes a Bubble Generation Most?
What might the term “generation bubble” mean? I’d argue for this conception: It refers to those who have come of age in a society in which increased access to debt replaced wage growth as the key to an improved standard of living.
Le Bateau Ivre (Aphorisms for a Sunny Thursday)
Without misanthropy there can be no certainty. * * * Excellence is a result of making a virtue of necessity; mediocrity, of making a necessity of virtue. * * * The only burden one bears is that of his own potential. Related Posts:I Peggior Fabbri: Millenial Versifiers and the Decline of PoetrySuper-Surprise Me: Boston University [...]
Reality Bites: Whole Foods and the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Delimited-beforehand grocery purchasing options, which come courtesy of the cultural logic of late capitalism, are likely exacerbated by such entities as Whole Foods, but this may just mean that the terms and conditions under which smug, sanctimonious people express their smugness and sanctimony have shifted. The world will always have its a-holes; the only relevant question is whether they wear Puritans’ somber fustian or treehuggers’ earnest hemp.
Not so Lonely Swedish: Ikea as Economic Engine
Via Tampa Bay Online comes this Tampa Tribune story on Ikea. A veritable whale shark of the big-box ocean, Ikea has come to attract smaller interests looking to attach themselves remora-like to its blue-and-gold bulk: It isn’t just fans of European furniture and Swedish meatballs who are awaiting Ikea’s opening. Other stores likely will ride [...]
Goodbye Motherlode
Sometimes I’m sad the bubble burst. The age of lenders pushing jumbo mortgages gave rise to eateries pushing jumbo portions — The Cheesecake Factory, as well as my personal fave, Claim Jumper. A California chain famous for its obscene portions and California Gold Rush theme, Claim Jumper opened its doors in 1977. Its website promises [...]
Annexing Bohemia
Whither away the American intellectual? The American public intellectual didn’t so much disappear as was transformed, or was perhaps transmogrified, under an increasingly puissant regime of Capital in its post-industrial iteration, where emphasis shifted from production to consumption. Consequence: the expanding hegemony of consumerism gradually eroded the public intellectual’s function to such an extent that [...]
Anton Steinpilz
Rob Horning
Ylajali Hansen
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