Comment by war1025 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by war1025 | Hacker News Reader

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I think the movie / book "Fight Club" does a good job of pointing out how ridiculous American culture can be. Up until they go off the rails and start bombing stuff, it's a really nice critique on society.

For example: "We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. "

"We're consumers. We are the byproducts of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra."

America has a problem with raising people to have realistic expectations. Whatever your parents' station in life, that's probably right about where you'll end up. You can't be "anything" you want. People grind themselves into the ground trying to be things they aren't.

That movie was made in the 90s, right? I think that culture has shifted some since then and people are less obsessed with brand names. But maybe that obsession has been replaced with looking good on social media?

You bring up an interesting thing I noticed in the film (released in 1999 btw). There's a scene where Brad Pitt is on a bus and pointing to an ad of a ripped Calvin Klein model and commenting to Edward Norton "As if that's what real men look like".

And yet, what do people remember most about the film? Brad Pitt's shirtless physique during fight scenes. Look up "Tyler Durden Fight Club fitness" on Youtube. Tons of hits. People may conceptually understand that Fight Club is satire, but their actions indicate otherwise. They want to have that kind of body, even though they know it's not going to make them a movie star or a rock god.

That's a good point about missing the satire and why movies like "Boiler Room", "Wolf of Wall Street", etc can rub me the wrong way. Sure, there's a fall and consequences after all the money and partying but that money and partying looks pretty good (especially if you don't get caught).

I didn't like WOWS for the reason you describe. They went completely over the top with the party/drug/girls scenes, and you can tell the film is trying to overtly glorify that kind of lifestyle, as opposed to showing the trappings of that life. I got the same feeling I get when I see some random flexing on Instagram. It felt fake.

Boiler Room on the other hand might have been a worse movie, but it had a low-budget feel about it that at least grounded the characters and story within some sense of reality. I think they were going for the Glengarry Glenross aesthetic.

Hmm... I still see people cracking "sent from -Android- a potato" or "when his text has a green box" jokes on Twitter, and the street scene is so brand-obsessed it's become a weird critical-mass self-reflective meme (supreme hypebeast).

People are obsessed with social status of various forms. How that is expressed may have changed, but I don't think the underlying motivation has.

Well I think that's deeply rooted in human psyche.

Are people really less obsessed with brand names? I think it's just not proper these days to point out the brands they wear but I think people still obsess about it.

I consider all of your examples a form of corruption and fraud. It's not criminal, like embezzling, bribery, or extortion. But it has a similar deleterious effect on the individual and society through massive opportunity cost, and even psychotic disorder. Perhaps all of the hyper consumer people I know vacillate between purchase regret and social inadequacy when they resist purchasing. They've set themselves up to fail no matter the choice, and they're always stressed out about buying shit they don't need. It's a little bit stressful to even hear these stories of manufactured problems.

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