Valeriia Miller / Pexels

Literal thirst trap?

Dear Hipster:

One cannot help but grow up in America without being sold on the virtue of individualism, personal liberty, and the right for “you to do you,” as it were. At the same time, I feel like mainstream Americans are some of the most conformist people on the globe, because they’re so quick to pile on whatever is trending at the moment. How is it possible for people to profess a commitment to their individualism, yet at the same time display such conformism? I just don’t get it. I figured you would have some input on this matter, because being super hipster often involves taking the idea of being quirky and individualistic to its logical extreme, yet even the hipsterest hipsters tend to conform themselves to some vague hipster stereotype.

— Tiffany

The problem here is that most people try to individuate themselves through consumption, i.e. expressing themselves via the things they buy, as opposed to the things they create. This approach towards individuality is ultimately doomed to fail. You can think about this is in terms of pumpkin spice lattes, if seasonally delicious metaphors are your kind of thing. ‘Tis the season, after all, and nobody can resist the pumpkin spice.

If you’re anything like anybody, you probably love the pumpkin spice. But imagine if you were able to get pumpkin spice 24/7/365. Would you tire of it? Would the novelty wear off for you? Of course it would. Sure, you can try to convince yourself that you wouldn’t want a pumpkin spice flavored beverage in the middle of summer simply because it’s a “fall drink,” but you know that’s probably not accurate. This is America. People stride down the frozen streets in the middle of winter in places like Chicago and New York, desperately sucking on iced coffees. You can get a turducken in the mail any day you want one, and not a day goes by when you can’t waltz yourself down to the local grocery store and get everything you need to make a pumpkin pie and a strawberry shortcake at the same time. In fact, the only reason you, me, and the rest of the world perceive pumpkin spice as a “fall” flavor is because our corporate overlords permit us to partake of that orange nectar only during the fall and winter shopping seasons.

Of course, the purpose behind limiting access to pumpkin spice is to keep people thirsty for it. If they let us have it year-round, we would probably end up drinking less of it in the aggregate. I would be willing to wager that an army of brilliant quants has crunched the numbers and arrived at a perfectly calculated set of annual release and rescission dates for pumpkin spice beverages, precisely engineered to maximize consumer desire.

This is why you can’t ever successfully express individuality through consumer culture. You’re always buying someone else’s vision. In case you were wondering, why the embittered rant about pumpkin spice beverages and corporate marketing strategies? Well, if I had simply told you that our desires are actually shaped by market forces (as opposed to market forces being responsive to our desires), you might not have believed me. But when the message comes packaged in a pumpkin spice-flavored metaphor, well, nobody can resist the pumpkin spice.