Of Conspicuous Consumption

" What plans for the long weekend?" A friend asked
"Nothing much, the usual -housework, rest and hopefully some reading too  ", I remarked
"Oh that's it, not going anywhere" she said
"No, not really", I said

Conversations like these are common these days.If you are in the age group of 25-35, you definitely have some friends who at some point of time have asked you this. Nowadays, it has become almost like a crime to not go out during the weekends. If you don't do it, it's almost like abnormal. I also remember a friend asking me given that both of us work and earn, how come we don't go abroad every year? Hotelling , weekend getaways ,regular  mall shopping, and holidays abroad seems like a norm to today's young working populace.

I was definitely not brought up in such a upbringing. For me, weekends meant change of work. My definition of relaxation till date is change of work and adequate sleep. Yet I feel the definition of change, enjoyment has undergone a great transformation in last 5-8 years. I was looking to understand what caused this.
 Then I came across a term called as "conspicuous consumption". Conspicuous consumption was a term coined by the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen. Conspicuous consumption is the spending of money on acquiring goods and services so as to display economic power/ wealth/ status. Basically it is the kind of consumption used to signal status to others. With the advent of social media, signalling status to others is possible at the click of a button. No longer do you need to buy expensive goods to signal status. Experiences shared on social media can signal status too.

In his book "the theory of leisure class" , Veblen  summed it up aptly .. "The serviceability of consumption as a means of repute... is at its best in those portions of the community where the human contact of the individual is widest and the mobility of the population is greatest...In the struggle to outdo one another the city population push their normal standard of conspicuous consumption to a higher point, with the result that a relatively greater expenditure in this direction is required to indicate a given degree of pecuniary decency in the city "

I think this is what explains why everyone suddenly wants to look cool on Facebook. It is just status signalling in a medium where virtual human contact is maximum.Whether that is really status, or what is status is debatable. But probably status signalling by sharing cool things on facebook is super easy. And most of us being cognitive misers, chose the easy path!

( more on Veblen in next part)
- Dhanashree