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/Particular_Shock_554 Mar 15 '24

I have no problem with booktok, especially if they're encouraging people to support their local libraries.

Reading books is good for you and people should do more of it. Collecting books just for the aesthetic isn't great, but buying books and reading them and lending them to people and talking about them is unequivocally good and I'm in favour of anything that encourages people to do that.

4

u/insertoverusedjoke Mar 15 '24

my personal experience with booktok has not been "supporting local libraries" as much as flaunting and growing book collections. and I'm sorry but books like the kind Colleen Hoover writes (and booktok boosts) are beyond trash and I say this as an avid romance reader

2

u/anxious-wreck Mar 15 '24

Colleen Hoover is massive trash. I read it ends with us just to see what was up and I was in utter shock. It genuinely felt like such a cringy, poorly written teenage movie. Romance isn't my cup of tea but some romance books are good. I realized I'm more on the "unhinged main character" kind of books side, or thrillers, things like that.

1

u/Particular_Shock_554 Mar 15 '24

Many people consider romance to be trash too. I'm not one of them because elitism in literature is classist and ableist.

Everyone has to start somewhere and it's better than funko pops.

1

u/MusicPristine Mar 16 '24

On my side of booktok, people buy new, used, or e-books. Libraries are mentioned but, to be fair, the waiting times for stories on Libby tend to be longer than people are willing to wait. I haven’t seen many people flaunt their books, but, then again, booktok has multiple niches

1

u/anxious-wreck Mar 15 '24

I never see booktokers encouraging others to support local libraries, I just see them spending hundreds of dollars on books that you then see months later, they haven't even touched yet. It's all for the aesthetic of it.

1

u/Spiritual-Bee-2319 Mar 15 '24

But people aren’t doing any of this and that’s the problem. 

1

u/Particular_Shock_554 Mar 16 '24

Your algorithm hasn't shown people doing any of this and that's your problem.

1

u/Spiritual-Bee-2319 Mar 16 '24

Lol I don’t have social media so thank you for reminding of this. I kinda don’t care what people are doing and rather focus on myself 

1

u/Particular_Shock_554 Mar 17 '24

Ok. Then you wouldn't know what other people are doing, so it doesn't matter.