We are people, not consumers

I do not like the word consumer. There's belittlement and malice in the cadence of its syllables. I hear it pronounced with the same bite of a Ferengi saying hyoo-mahns. My brain seizes with confusion whenever a student or colleague utters the phrase "consume media" in casual conversation. When I was a tech journalist, I felt sick the moment I realized I subconsciously typed "consumer" into a product review or buying guide.

I never heard that word during the 10 years I worked in customer service. Shoppers, patrons, guests, patients, tenants, clients, fans, students, campers, gamers, regulars, end-users — I heard precise and contextually-dependent words that humanized the people I spoke with on a daily basis.

It feels like those of us who have ever worked in service journalism have been slowly reprogramed by press releases to replace those humanizing words with "consumer." Yes, people consume things, but we are not consumers. We're stuck in the Capitalist culture of over-consumption, a culture that brands personal identities with company logo stickers and encourages us to spend money we don't have. We've been born into a system that was forced upon us.

On the eve of Black Friday, the first in seven years that I haven't worked extra hours writing SEO-dependent gaming tech and laptop deal posts, I'm thinking about the Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope. I'm thinking about how it's not a coincidence ancient and contemporary cynicism both have a lot to say about consumerism.

Cynic with a capital C

If you call someone (or yourself) cynical today, you're saying they've come to expect the worst from people or establishments, or others are motivated only by selfishness — which is often motivated by money. That's not too different from the original definition, though it had a more positive framing and it was an entire school of philosophy that was founded in ancient Greece by one of Socrates students, Antisthenes.

Scholars are still unsure of how and when Diogenes was introduced to Antisthenes' teachings, as much of his biography is more legend than fact. Some say it was before he was exiled from Sinope, arguing that he intentionally defaced a large quantity of coins in protest. Allegedly, Diogenes' father was a banker, responsible for minting Sinopean currency, so he had easy access to physical currency. There isn't a ton of evidence for this, so the other theory is that Diogenes met Antisthenes during his travels to Athens. (Diogenes the Cynic, 2012)

Arguably, ancient Cynics were more like a blend of modern activism and modern minimalism in some respects. They loudly rejected social conventions and material possessions, sometimes choosing to live unhoused and beg on the streets, which pissed a lot of people off (Di Leo, 2021). Diogenes of Sinope was perhaps the loudest Cynic of ancient Greece. He was not shy about sharing his beliefs with anyone, anywhere at anytime; a major principal of Cynicism is to practice what you preach, often to the point of annoyance (Foucault, 2012). It's truth-telling through action.

It was also about caring for your soul, and Diogenes thought the best way to do that was to "return to the simplicity of nature" (Treister, 2025). Literally. He cared little for what we consider today as the richest parts of ancient Greek culture, and humanity in general: literature, math, science, art, music, and — ironically — philosophy (Diogenes the Cynic, 2012).

I assume most if not everyone reading this vehemently disagrees with Diogenes on that point, like I do. Interacting with and creating art is how we can care for our souls, along with getting outside every once in a while. We probably would have agreed, and maybe even bonded, over our thoughts about Black Friday, but there is so much about the modern world that leaves some of Diogenes' beliefs feeling, well, ancient.

Cynicism in the age the consumerism

Pieces of Cynicism's "reject excess" ideology still remain in our contemporary definition, though through the lens of feeling helpless to push back against a society caught in consumerism's machine, ground like meat between the gears of materialism. Arguably, consumerism isn't strictly materialism. Individual motivation can come into play just as much as a company's marketing tactics.

Our purchases can hold memories or sentimental value. "Every object has a story and when individuals assume ownership of those items, they often ascribe meanings that might not be the original intent of the producer" (Scarpaci, 2016). I bet many of us have fond memories attached to our first car or first cell phone. I know I do. I also have many family heirlooms, several of which are over 100 years old, that don't hold nearly as many memories, but they are of much greater value because they are my connection to my ancestors, to my personal history. (My engagement and wedding rings are now the most important things I own.) This is why house fires are so emotionally devastating; people don't just lose "things." They lose physical representations of their identity.

Now, if you need to drive your kid around in your car, there are laws that tell you what kind of car seat you'll need to buy. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has an entire webpage dedicated to buying the correct car seat for your child, complete with an on-page search feature for recommendations. Public policy make some purchases unavoidable, but it's generally a good thing when those policies are there to protect our health and safety.

There are no laws that say you have to own a car, but if you live in suburban America, you might have to buy one because of a "lack of public transport and a dispersed socio-economic and cultural infrastructure" (Trentmann, 2004). The same goes for smartphones. There are plenty of “dumbphone” alternatives that you can use instead, but without access to app-based interfaces you can literally be locked out of anything from your work email a restaurant menu. These are consumer-based infrastructures created by corporate interests to put people in a position where they are forced to buy a product.

Not only that, press releases and marketing campaigns are really effective at making us believe we need something. Many inflate the importance of a product by making all kinds of promises of how it will improve our lives (Scarpaci, 2016). Some do this through fabricated scarcity, or cultish-sounding language. Whatever the method, the goal is to produce an emotional reaction that will get us to think a Black Friday purchase is just as important as a family heirloom.

This is a place where consumerism and materialism become hard to separate.

Think like a philosopher

On the eve of Black Friday, I'm wondering if humanity has what it takes to become a little more like the ancient Cynics, not just for our own mental health but also for the sake of Mother Earth. There are movements like Mass Blackout, a quick jab of a protest that won't knock large corporations anywhere near the ropes in the short term, that has the spirit of Diogenes' Cynicism: "Wisdom and happiness belong to the man who is independent of society" (Treister, 2025).

If Diogenes was a modern-day philosopher, I believe he'd ask you to do what I'm about to: take a mental inventory of what you currently own. If there isn't anything screaming to be replaced, don't buy anything. If you think something needs to be replaced, see if you can fix it or clean it instead; buy a knife sharpener instead of a new knife. But don't buy something just because it seems like a "good deal." Don't feel pressured to buy something on Black Friday just because you saw it in a buying guide or because it's a "big-name brand."

The system is rigged, yes, but the thing that keeps us independent of society is the ability and freedom to think for ourselves — even if your job requires you to hawk Black Friday deals.

(I'm so glad I don't have to do that any more.)

Sources

Di Leo, J. R. (2021). [Review of The Function of Cynicism at the Present Time, by H. Small]. The Comparatist, 45, 370–377. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27085530

Diogenes the cynic: Sayings and anecdotes with other popular moralists (R. Hard, Trans.). (2012). Oxford University Press Inc.

Foucault, M. (2012). The courage of truth: The Government of Self and Others II; Lectures at the Collège de France, 1983-1984. Macmillan.

Healy, M. (2020). Theories of Alienation – Seeman and Marx. In Marx and Digital Machines: Alienation, Technology, Capitalism (pp. 7–26). University of Westminster Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv199tdf0.5

Larsen, L. B. (2025). The secret life of control: Suzanne Treister’s Radical Enlightenment. In Hexen 2.0 Tarot (Boxed reprint). cosmogenesis. (Original work published 2012)

Scarpaci, J. L. (2016). Material Culture and the Meaning of Objects. Material Culture, 48(1), 1–9. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44507769

Treister, S. (2025, February). IV The Emperor: Diogenes of Sinope. https://www.suzannetreister.net/HEXEN2/TAROT_COL/TAROT_EMPEROR_DSinope.html

Trentmann, F. (2004). Beyond Consumerism: New Historical Perspectives on Consumption. Journal of Contemporary History, 39(3), 373–401. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3180734