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Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

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Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#41

Post by coldtea »

deltron3030 wrote: post #31
captainmuon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: What do you think "fashion" is? I used to think there were some very cool, fashion-adept people, who have the ability to predict what will considered modern next year. The reality is, the clothing industry decides what to produce at least 6-12 months in advance. It's not like they produce everything and public opinion decides in the end what is "cool". Granted, the industry tries to predict what will be…

>The reality is, the clothing industry decides what to produce at least 6-12 months in advance. It's more the mainstream you're referring to, late adopters basically. of course they can produce in advance as the styles are already validated on urban streets and within subcultures who really set the trends. There are inventors, early adopters and late adopters, quite similar to SaaS.

That's the party line, but it's just some sub-cultures, teens and troubled personalities that "express themselves" through fashion (the most shallow thing you can do, a juvenile thing in any case), the "early adopters", and then a huge industry copying them at various levels and with various delays. On top of that, there are also top-level mandates "this year let's push yellow strayjackets" or whatever.

This results in a huge industry, selling junk people don't need, which are enviromentally harmful, with the ludicrous insistence that the clothes you bought last season are not good anymore because "fashion".

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#42

Post by postoak »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #35
cushychicken wrote: post #20

As a 30-something tech worker, time is definitely the scarcest and most valuable thing I possess. Even more so now that my wife and I have a dog. This statement gets orders of magnitude truer once you factor in the scarce overlapping time I have with my friends, all of whom are like me: 30-somethings with tech careers and young families. Whether the shortage of time is by corporate design or no, I'm in a phase of my…

Just wait till you have kids. You'll look back on this time as a paradise of freedom.

Or don't have them =)

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#43

Post by coldtea »

blablabla123 wrote: post #26
captainmuon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: What do you think "fashion" is? I used to think there were some very cool, fashion-adept people, who have the ability to predict what will considered modern next year. The reality is, the clothing industry decides what to produce at least 6-12 months in advance. It's not like they produce everything and public opinion decides in the end what is "cool". Granted, the industry tries to predict what will be…

More subtly a smaller but far more interested proportion of the population tries more experimental things and the big shops just copy that. That's both cheaper for the buyer and the producer. It's the same for tech, various gadgets or technologies that are hyped right now have been gathering traction since years but have been picked up by the big brands only very recently. Best example is the trend of using non-x86 C…

>Looks kind of planned but it's not. It's just that some things fall out of fashion for whatever reasons...

"Not planned? Whatever reason?" There are huge billion dollar campaigns for what things "are in fashion" this season. For starters, the thousands of ads by fashion brands with the same "current fashion" messaging.

Without that, the majority of the population could not care less what some "small proportion" of idiots consider "experimental/cool/etc". Sub-culture fashion would stay with the subculture (like most of it does, unless it's picked up by the mass fashion industry and promoted to hell).

It's the endless branding, messaging, adverting, PR, articles, etc, that get Joe/Jane Average buying into this season's fasion.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#44

Post by tonyedgecombe »

throwthere wrote: post #33
SuoDuanDao wrote: post #2

I've noticed an interesting congruity - people in the FIRE community tend to target saving two-thirds of a modern western income, with most finding that living on less than one-third begins to have serious impacts on quality of life. From some studies I came across while studying sustainable energy it also seems as though a well-designed community in which residents make certain lifestyle choices can reduce resource…

It’s kind of an interesting thought experiment. Think for a second how much many of our incomes depend on ad revenue. Certainly if a large contingent of consumers massively cut their spending we have to work harder and longer for the same pay. And so on across all jobs producing discretionary goods and services.

>Think for a second how much many of our incomes depend on ad revenue.

I don't think advertising makes that much difference. Most people spend all their earnings. The only thing advertising does is direct where it is spent.

>Certainly if a large contingent of consumers massively cut their spending we have to work harder and longer for the same pay.

If we all did it then we wouldn't be working longer and harder for the same pay.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#45

Post by aiisjustanif »

pipthepixie wrote: post #30
martincmartin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FIRE = Financial Independence, Retire Early for those who don't know.

I like the concept. There are even young people experimenting with retirement but for typically one year, also known as a 'gap year' where they don't work/study - they just explore.

In Europe, a gap year has been a thing for couple decades now, if not more.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#46

Post by jbcdhn »

coldtea wrote: post #38
ilamont wrote: post #5

Western economies, particularly that of the United States, have been built in a very calculated manner on gratification, addiction, and unnecessary spending. Calculated, like in planned-economy, directive-from-the-top? I disagree. A lot of the "fluff," as the author describes it, is excess capital finding its way to things people find pleasurable, whether it be dope, travel, beauty, or rock and roll. Purveyors of suc…

> Calculated, like in planned-economy, directive-from-the-top? Doesn't matter. You don't need to give "directive-from-the-top" is your interests as an industry with the interests of other industries are more or less the same, and you can all push individually in the same direction. > A lot of the "fluff," as the author describes it, is excess capital finding its way to things people find pleasurable, whether it be do…

Citation needed for every claim in this post.

> Most things, people find it pleasurable because they are in a state where they take pleasure from buying shit.

Counterpoint: my largest purchase ever was my house. I enjoy owning it much more than I enjoyed buying it.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#47

Post by aiisjustanif »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #35
cushychicken wrote: post #20

As a 30-something tech worker, time is definitely the scarcest and most valuable thing I possess. Even more so now that my wife and I have a dog. This statement gets orders of magnitude truer once you factor in the scarce overlapping time I have with my friends, all of whom are like me: 30-somethings with tech careers and young families. Whether the shortage of time is by corporate design or no, I'm in a phase of my…

Just wait till you have kids. You'll look back on this time as a paradise of freedom.

That sounds depressing.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#48

Post by mateo- »

pipthepixie wrote: post #30
martincmartin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FIRE = Financial Independence, Retire Early for those who don't know.

I like the concept. There are even young people experimenting with retirement but for typically one year, also known as a 'gap year' where they don't work/study - they just explore.

Can confirm. Am young person considering this. Though I'll be taking it to study, mostly :)

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#49

Post by coldtea »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #12
markus_zhang wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a planned economy not by government men but by mega corporations. Then they put up some facade to pretend that you have the freedom of choice.

It's more akin to evolution operating on culture rather than genes. Corporations are trying various things to differentiate themselves and be profitable. The ones that consumers like either due to real interest or due to marketing keep getting made/refined, the rest die off. And the process repeats from there.

>It's more akin to evolution operating on culture rather than genes.

Only there's no evolution. It's just "buy this" and "now buy that", because if you continued to buy the previous (or a perennial) model, they'd be out of sales. That's not some cultural evolution.

Before 19th-20th century marketing and mass advertising societies could do decades without changing fashions.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#50

Post by jjcxfjmb »

coldtea wrote: post #41
deltron3030 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The reality is, the clothing industry decides what to produce at least 6-12 months in advance. It's more the mainstream you're referring to, late adopters basically. of course they can produce in advance as the styles are already validated on urban streets and within subcultures who really set the trends. There are inventors, early adopters and late adopters, quite similar to SaaS.

That's the party line, but it's just some sub-cultures, teens and troubled personalities that "express themselves" through fashion (the most shallow thing you can do, a juvenile thing in any case), the "early adopters", and then a huge industry copying them at various levels and with various delays. On top of that, there are also top-level mandates "this year let's push yellow strayjackets" or whatever. This results…

I don't think you can make such a pretentious comment about how juvenile it is to follow fashion without posting a selfie of yourself in your fedora
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