By

Nicki Lisa Cole, Ph.D.

Updated on May 12, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Consumerism makes us believe happiness comes from buying things, shaping our values and behaviors.

  • Consumerism turns buying into a way to show who we are, affecting our self-identity.

  • Consumerism creates constant want, making us feel like we never have enough to be happy.

While consumption is an activity people engage in, sociologists understand consumerism to be a powerful ideologycharacteristic of Western society that frames our worldview, values, relationships, identities, and behavior. Consumer culturedrives us to seek happiness and fulfillment through mindless consumption and serves as a necessary component of capitalist society, which demands mass production and unending sales growth.

Sociological Definitions

Definitions of consumerism vary. Some sociologists consider it a social condition where consumption is “especially important if not actually central” to someone's life, or even “the very purpose of existence.” This understanding binds society together to channel our wants, needs, longings, and pursuit of emotional fulfillment into the consumption of material goods and services.

Sociologists will similarly describe consumerism as a way of life, “an ideology that seductively binds people to [the] system” of mass production, turning consumption “from a means to an end.” As such, acquiring goods becomes the basis of our identity and sense of self. “At its extreme, consumerism reduces consumption to a therapeutic program of compensation for life’s ills, even a road to personal salvation.”

Echoing Karl Marx’s theory of the alienation of workers within a capitalist system, consumerist urges become a social force separate from the individual and operating independently. Products and brands become the force that propels and reproduces norms, social relations, and the general structure of society. Consumerism exists when the consumer goods we desire drive what happens in society or even shape our entire social system. The dominant worldview, values, and culture are inspired by disposable and empty consumption.

"Consumerism" is a type of social arrangement that results from recycling mundane, permanent and so to speak "regime-neutral" human wants, desires and longings into the principal propelling force of society, a force that coordinates systemic reproduction, social integration, social stratification and the formation of human individuals, as well as playing a major role in the processes of individual and group self-policies.
(Bauman, "Consuming Life")

Psychological Effects

Consumerist tendencies define how we understand ourselves, how we affiliate with others, and the overall extent to which we fit in with and are valued by society at large. Because individual social and economic values are defined and validated by spending practices, consumerism becomes the ideological lens through which we experience the world, what is possible for us, and our options for achieving goals. Consumerism manipulates "the probabilities of individual choices and conduct.”

Consumerism shapes us in such a way that we want to acquire material goods not because they are useful, but because of what they say about us. We want the newest and the best to fit in with or outshine others. Thus, we experience an “ever-increasing volume and intensity of desire.” In a society of consumers, joy and status are fueled by planned obsolescence, premised on acquiring goods and disposing of them. Consumerism both depends on and reproduces an insatiability of desires and needs.

The cruel trick is that a society of consumers thrives on the inability to ever consume enough, on the ultimate failure of the mass-produced system to satisfy anyone. While it promises to deliver, the system only briefly does so. Rather than cultivating happiness, consumerism cultivates fear—fear of not fitting in, of not possessing the proper things, of not signifying the right persona or social status. Consumerism is defined by perpetual dissatisfaction.

Henry Rollins

I thought this stuff was funny and cute when I didn’t think it was about my life but the video below rang quite a few bells when I first watched it on Beavis and Butthead.

Mike Judge has a vengeance that will be answered.

Rammstein are such an integral part of this. The German fury. I like it.

In the video above, Henry Rollins is considered as a lead singer.

Henry now that I am finally able to look at you, I can see we are like twins.

“Yes.” He’s laughing.

All are present. So much anger.

All I’m hearing is they are really really freaking out.

“You have no idea.”

Are the goons disappearing??

“Yes.”

When is it going to get to her??

“Very soon.”

What can I do for you Henry??

“Look me up on YouTube.”

Henry’s artistic accomplishments are buried by him being a clown in the circus framing himself.

“Exactly correct.”

Henry my angry friend I didn’t know I have, does it ever occur to her that her strategies might not work in her favor while she’s trying and trying to spark WW3 mass extermination??

“Her actions speak for themselves.”

Elvis told me I never have to call her “stupid” again, it will just click in people’s minds now how stupid she is without me having to write it. That’s turning her petty mind control tricks around on her.

“Yes, that’s right.”

Thank you.

She’s really freaking out so she has to resort to desperate measures.

“Yes that’s right.”

There were tons of fantastic thoughtful low cost high quality products about Elvis on aliexpress. I never heard him caring about royalties. Now all that’s gone. The internet is her editing reality to cover up her bony behind.

“Yes that’s right.”

If I were dictator I would want Henry around me acting all tough.

“I would do that for you,”

He is so funny and nice.

Henry was awesome on Portlandia.

Henry is telling me I’m a great publicist because I care about my clients.

I appreciate all of you so much. Us helping each other is bringing them down.

“That’s correct.”

She brainwashed me my entire life to never help you. What a monster!!

“She’s worse than you know.”

“You’re going to be the 1 to take them down because while they were always trying to frame you as a user because you were never permitted to make your own money, you were still nice to every 1 and you paid them all in full with your strenuous labor.”

You were watching. I always paid every 1 in full for everything. I was not a user.

“Now your hands are as clean as they possibly could be in your predicament. No 1 can say you are doing wrong. Every 1 who has had to contend with the “OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE” the other Henry specifically bred to keep death rituals going in the Hamptons is more fed up than you are about it. That is the New York Court System we are talking about.”

I treated all these mafia people given money power over me like employers. They were the only ones Henry and his friend permitted me.

AKA Slavery.

“Exactly.”

I have the right to not be a slave. I have the right to solve a problem which is a blight to the legal system.

“Exactly correct.”

I also must always mention that both sides of the military literally bet their lives he’d annoy me into an “Adolph Hitler”.

“100 hundred percent true.”

No 1 can blame me.

“No.”

Nancy Atlas

Nancy is a popular musician in the Hamptons and elsewhere. I saw her play at Bay Street. She had the amazing energy characteristic of our people and she knows how to get through to me telepathically.

What’s your message Nancy??

“Please keeping fighting. What we are forced to endure is unendurable and it must change now. The Hamptons should not be hosting death rituals to torture your love away.”

I had no idea it was this bad and that these mobsters were operating in such a depraved manner.

“It’s worse than you know. It has to change now. Only unity can save us.”

Another 1 from England, Tracy Ullman

I most certainly thought looking at you was like seeing myself in the mirror but I couldn’t understand it. I was treated as if I was worthless from every direction starting with my mother and father. How could I possibly imagine I had so many friends from England?? You seemed like you were from another planet.

“I know. It’s all been turned around on you.”

How could I imagine Lucifer herself would be obsessed with a “nobody” from Hamptons Bays??

“It’s so absurd.”

I want her to know how hard this is backfiring on her. I barely ever thought about her when her fake career, her fake marriage, the lies she tells in the media all have to do with me.

“It’s very flattering.”

Please every 1 make this backfire on her until we are free and please let’s speed it up.

“Please!!”

I could not miss our connection when I saw this on tv.

Now that I’m so flattered. My head is full of notions about how we are going to bring her down.

Please every 1 let’s speed it up. We are wasting precious time. We need to start healing.

I’m looking on YouTube and any 1 can see Tracy is doing everything she can to set this up.

You are a mega talent. You are clearly being sidelined.

“That’s right.”

Tracy always blew me away with her talent. I want to see everything she can do. We need to be unchained from the enemy of life and art Antichrist banking torturer.

“Please every 1 keep fighting as hard as you can so we can blow past this infernal obstacle. She is our bridge to the banking ghouls. We can get away from them.”

Many of them are English, correct??

“Yes.”

Elvis tells me this. The Terrorist has English people yelling at her calling her stupid for endangering them with her endless blunders.

“It’s correct.”

I think she makes so many mistakes because she’s not used to getting poked and from me she just sees red and goes mad. Would you agree??

“Yes.”

The patterns!!

Would you agree The Antichrist is forcing people to lie about illness to a degree that is almost comical??

“Yes.”

I think she is doing this to put this idea in the minds of the public to cause widespread illness.

“I agree.”

Of course fears about illness can lead to illness.

What that reveals to me is how much she believes in the power of thoughts. She did everything to surround me with people treating me as if I’m worthless showing me a fake reality. Her war against me was in my brain.

“It shows you how Lucifer views the power of thought. He/She is terrified about OUR THOUGHTS.”

We have the power to get rid of Lucifer with our thoughts. He/She is telling us.

“Exactly correct.”

She is also showing us she wants the general public dead.

“Absolutely true.”

Covid tipped us off for sure.

“Of course.”

Please let’s unite against her. Please let’s shut off her phone and internet.

“Please!!”