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The other day, I found myself walking around a large grocery store, after a several-month hiatus from stepping foot inside one.<\/span><\/p>\n I hadn\u2019t avoided shopping out of a fear of COVID-19; rather, our family had just gotten into the habit of having our groceries delivered, because it\u2019s so dang convenient. <\/span><\/p>\n After being away from in-store shopping for a while, I felt like I saw the store with fresh eyes. And what I was so strongly struck by, was just how full it was of absolute \u2014 and pardon my French, but this is really the most apt word here \u2014 bullsh*t food. <\/span>Flamin\u2019 Hot Funyuns, 3D Doritos, Twix-topped yogurt, Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies Cereal (which admittedly does sound really good). A dozen different kinds of Oreos. Endless varieties of soda and frozen dinners. <\/span>Aisle after aisle of unnecessary, unhealthy, laboratory-created, market-tested, packaged products that could only be called food in the most generous sense. <\/span><\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the observation of a health food crank, a rigid purist. My diet is relatively healthy, but also often includes a daily pack of Pop-Tarts. I\u2019m not opposed to eating a smattering of processed foods. <\/span><\/p>\n It also isn\u2019t at all an original observation. Health experts have for years described grocery stores as being nutritional wastelands, and advised the public to only shop the perimeter of the store, the areas where the fresh, whole foods \u2014 fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy \u2014 are generally positioned. <\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s simply that after having a little sojourn away from the store \u2014 becoming a little less acclimated to what, for all the prior decades of my life, was the taken-for-granted backdrop of my grocery shopping experience \u2014 I could finally see, for the first time, what these folks had been talking about. <\/span><\/p>\n The experience made me want to hastily vacate the premises and return to shopping online.<\/span><\/p>\n It also got me thinking not just about the future of the grocery business, but about the future of consumerism in general.<\/span><\/p>\n Along with the rise of mass production at the turn of the 20th century, came the specter of overproduction. The amount of goods companies could produce exceeded consumers\u2019 demand for them. To resolve this issue, corporations worked throughout the ensuing decades to increase this demand. This they did through advertising, through branding, and, crucially, through novelty \u2014 constantly coming out with new models and updating existing products with new flavors, features, colors.<\/span><\/p>\n Novelty triggers dopamine in the brain, and dopamine triggers excitement and desire . . . and desire leads to impulse buying. <\/span><\/p>\n Whereas a company might have once produced one variety of hand soap or shampoo, now they made six. Whereas they might have manufactured a couple styles of jeans, now they made a dozen. And whereas consumers would once buy the limited number of products available in the marketplace at a one-stop-shop \u2014 the local general store \u2014 in order to make room to display the ever increasing number of goods available, new stores had to be created dedicated to particular categories: a store just for groceries, a store just for pharmaceutical\/hygiene products, a store just for clothes, a store just for home improvement supplies, etc. <\/span><\/p>\n Rather than shopping being a straightforward, functional chore \u2014 walk up to the counter of the general store; ask for an item which was shelved behind the counter in a utilitarian way; buy it \u2014 it became an <\/span>experience<\/span><\/i>: music was piped into the background; aisles were designed with evocative displays. <\/span><\/p>\n Even if a consumer went to a store or mall with a list of certain items to buy, they invariably walked out with things that weren\u2019t originally on it, having discovered products they hadn\u2019t planned on buying, but which had grabbed their attention as they browsed. <\/span><\/p>\n This kind of shopping experience was well in place by the mid twentieth century and became enormously successful in expanding the public\u2019s desire for goods. At the start of the 1900s,<\/span> an average American still spent nearly 90% of their income on food and other necessities. By 1960, as V<\/span>ance Packard<\/span> reported in<\/span> The Waste Makers<\/span><\/i><\/a>, that picture had dramatically changed:<\/span><\/p>\n Today, the average citizen of the United States is consuming twice as much in the way of goods as the average citizen consumed in the years just before World War II. Nearly two fifths of the things he owns are things that are not essential to his physical wellbeing. They are optional or luxury items. And there are signs that physical possessions are becoming too plentiful to accommodate comfortably. Visiting foreigners comment that the abundance of America seems to spill over into the aisles of stores, spread along the highways, and bulge out the doors, windows, and attics of houses.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This picture painted 60 years ago remained largely the same up until the 21st century. <\/span><\/p>\n Up until the advent of online shopping began to weaken consumerism\u2019s hold. <\/span><\/p>\n When you shop online, you\u2019re more likely to only buy things you really need; when you shop in a store, you\u2019re more likely to pick up extra stuff. <\/span>Statistically<\/span><\/a> and specifically speaking, consumers spend an average of $50 more when they shop in a store versus online. While retail websites also try to lure you into adding things to your cart by showing you related products and whatnot, in the absence of the 3D, multi-sensory in-person shopping experience \u2014 the sights, sounds, and smells corporations have carefully coordinated to entice you to open your wallet \u2014 it\u2019s far easier to stick with purchasing only the things you originally intended to. You\u2019ve used an item before; you know you like it; you just keep on replacing it. <\/span><\/p>\n I know when our family orders groceries online, we end up getting less stuff than when we go to the brick-and-mortar store. It cuts out impulse buys almost entirely.<\/span><\/p>\n Society\u2019s shift towards online shopping, which began more than a decade ago, has exponentially accelerated during the pandemic. While prior to the coming of COVID, people had already converted to buying things like clothes online, many still held out on shopping for things like groceries at physical stores. Over the last year and half, however, more and more folks have started doing almost all their shopping digitally. Online grocery sales increased by <\/span>more than 50%<\/span><\/a> last year. While only 6.6% of major retailers offered the option of curbside pickup in early 2020, now more <\/span>than half do<\/span><\/a>. And 64% of respondents to a recent survey said they planned to order more online in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n For those who feel that our previous century of rampant consumerism, heedless materialism, and pointless stuff accumulation has carried significant downsides for our mental, physical, spiritual, and financial health, this is hearteningly good news. <\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s been plenty of talk over the last year and a half about how the pandemic may permanently change our individual habits and collective culture for the better. A lot of this talk is more flattering than realistic; while we like to believe in our capacity for turning over a new leaf, as things revert to how they used to be, most of our habits will too.<\/span><\/p>\n But a change in our consumption patterns may, happily, be one shift that proves both positive and enduring. It\u2019s not as if corporations don\u2019t have other ways, outside the in-person shopping experience, to entice us to buy their wares. But in a time where people discard the catalogs they receive in the mail without looking at them, block ads on websites, and watch television shows on ad-free streaming services, in-person shopping was one of the last fronts companies had, as Packard put it, to get people to buy things they don\u2019t need and didn\u2019t know they wanted. Thus, its decline may very well represent the death knell for the West\u2019s entrenchment in excess consumerism. <\/span><\/p>\n As visits to stores and malls become more and more rare, when people do set foot in them, maybe more and more will get the feeling I had the other day while shopping for groceries \u2014 that, you know, this is all pretty weird, and kind of gross. Maybe one day the idea that people considered shopping to be a leisure activity, that they would stroll around buildings for the express purpose of inflaming their material desires \u2014 that they would spend their money on that kind of \u201cexperience\u201d instead of putting it towards real, participatory experiences out in the world \u2014 will seem sort of dystopian. <\/span><\/p>\n In a lot of films set in the future, people live in minimalist, streamlined homes and wear utilitarian jumpsuits, and I\u2019ve always kind of wondered why that was; what was it about the future that made people stop caring so much about fashion, about stuff?<\/span><\/p>\n Well, maybe it all began with curbside pickup. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The other day, I found myself walking around a large grocery store, after a several-month hiatus from stepping foot inside one. I hadn\u2019t avoided shopping out of a fear of COVID-19; rather, our family had just gotten into the habit of having our groceries delivered, because it\u2019s so dang convenient. After being away from in-store […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137773,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[218,42273],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-137769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leisure","category-living"],"featured_image_urls":{"large":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2021\/08\/consumerism_blank-538x280.jpg","aom":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2021\/08\/consumerism_blank-372x230.jpg","reactor-320":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2021\/08\/consumerism_blank-320x197.jpg","reactor-640":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2021\/08\/consumerism_blank-640x394.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137769"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137776,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137769\/revisions\/137776"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137769"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=137769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}