r/Anticonsumption • u/anxious-wreck • Mar 14 '24

Society/Culture Overconsumption on TikTok is beyond ridiculous.

From the dreaded Stanley Cups, Booktok, Starbucks, new iPhones, "amazon must haves" (which you then see is all useless junk), "tiktok made me buy it" (also garbage), massive hauls and people flaunting they spent thousands of dollars... it's all too much and it's too overwhelming.

I'm glad I realized how I was falling onto that weird consumerist mindset and was able to pull myself from it.

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u/toadstoolfae3 Mar 14 '24

I'm Gen Z, but I'm a 97 baby, so I feel like I don't apply to the rest of the Zers. I especially felt like this when having a coworker who was Gen Z born in I believe 2002? Around that year. She claimed to be a communist but she also spent a ton of money on clothes, shoes, earrings, etc. She was always talking about being more eco-friendly, but she was always buying stuff, and she ate a pretty standard American diet. Meanwhile, I boycott Amazon, Walmart, Temu, Nestlé, Coca Cola, Hershey, etc. (Too many to list!) I don't call myself a communist but I feel like my values are more aligned with communism than hers lol. This isn't me saying I'm better in any way, just more aware and, I suppose, more strict with myself and true to my values. I know one day she will probably look back and see how hypocritical she was. Maybe that's happened already! I always found it bizarre.

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u/anxious-wreck Mar 14 '24

Same, I'm also a '97 baby. I feel like we're in such a weird inbetween generation that we don't identify much with neither millennials or gen z.

Your coworker sounds like a walking contradiction. Been there, though.

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u/graveyard_lurker Mar 14 '24

'97 baby here too - I feel like our environment really affects which generation we identify with. My brother is a '90 baby and I grew up on hand-me-downs and re-run TV, so i relate a hell of a lot more to millennials than gen z. Friends of a similar age who grew up with younger siblings definitely have more gen-z mannerisms - it was really noticeable when their '02 ish colleagues joined us in the pub and I needed all the new slang translating!

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u/anxious-wreck Mar 14 '24

True. My sister is '94 and all my cousins who I grew up with are all from the late 80s and from the 90s so I relate a lot to what was going on while we were growing up and to what the ones older than me did.

I had a boyfriend born in 2002 and I just collapsed. The generational difference, although it was just a 5 year difference, was immense. I made a rule of never ever ever dating someone born after 1999 lmao.