I remember the first time I really sat with the word consumerism. It was not a teacher. It was Lauryn Hill in my headphones. That “Consumerism” track felt like she was standing in the middle of America with a bullhorn, listing every way this country chews people up and spits out products. It hit like church with drums. A whole sermon inside a song. That is Lauryn for you.
She was already warning us about something we still do not like to name. America does not just like to shop. This place operates on the principle that you should always strive for more. More clothes, more gadgets, more status, just more, more, more. If you are not buying, this system acts like you barely exist.
Fast forward to 2025, we are under a new administration that treats tariffs like toys and regular people like collateral damage. Groceries are up. Rent is up. Shipping is up. Just existing has a cover charge now. At the same time, you have people calling for economic blackouts, boycotts, buy nothing days, and no-spend weekends. Big box stores are reporting softer sales. Small businesses are stressed and smiling through it. Online numbers keep breaking records while half the country is saying they are tapped out. So the real question is not “are we still shopping?” The question is deeper. Are we actually watching consumerism die, or is it just learning a new trick?
If you look at the numbers, the machine is still running; Retail sales are still creeping up, just slower than before. People are still swiping, but they are picking and choosing. Folks are cutting back on extra stuff and trying to stretch basics. The mall might be virtually empty, but the digital cart is packed. This past Black Friday season, estimates still pointed to almost the whole country shopping at some point between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. Holiday sales are lined up to cross another huge milestone. At the same time, more people are saying they plan to spend less than last year.
Online is a zoo. Every year, the internet breaks a new record. The apps stay full even while people complain about how tired and broke they are. That is the twisted part. Consumerism is not in a coffin. It is alive, but the mood is different. People are not shopping for joy. A lot of us are shopping from habit, pressure, and fear of missing out, while resenting how expensive everything feels.
The wildest part of this era is that the cost of being a consumer went up while our stability did not. New tariffs on imports were sold to us as a strategy, but in real life, they feel like an invisible tax. Prices float higher across the board. Companies are not eating that difference. They pass it straight to us. Families are basically being handed an extra bill every year through higher prices alone, and it has nothing to do with them working less or wanting too much. It is policy.
Small shops feel this heavy. Some independent retailers entered the holiday season with a fraction of the inventory they would normally carry because they simply could not afford to stock up. The big chains have more wiggle room. They can move production, squeeze suppliers, or ride the wave until they figure out a new angle to make their money back. When it costs more just to get a product through the door, everybody down the line gets squeezed. The customer who was already choosing between gas and groceries now has to choose between gifts and groceries.
That tension is why we are hearing more talk about boycotts, buy nothing days, and just saying no. Some of it is an organized strategy. A lot of it is chaotic and hashtag-driven. Either way, it matters. Buy Nothing Day has been around since the nineties as a direct clap back to Black Friday. Now you have newer campaigns calling for national no-spend days and targeted economic blackouts to prove a point. People are being asked to sit still on purpose and notice how wired we are to shop whenever the calendar says sale.
Is everyone sticking to it perfectly? Of course not. Some people join a boycott in spirit and still place an order on the low. But even that tension says something. It means people know that money is a language. They are starting to say, You cannot disrespect us and still assume our dollars are automatic.
Target is a clean example of how fast the vibe can flip. For years, they played the friendly big box cousin. They leaned into diversity, equity, and inclusion. They highlighted different communities, pushed diverse brands, and made a real effort in their marketing. Black shoppers in particular built a quiet loyalty off that. Then 2025 rolled around, and you could feel them backing away. Some of the racial equity talk vanished from public view. Goals went quiet. Pages got edited, and some were deleted. You did not need a press release to know something had changed.
People noticed. Customers felt played. Boycott calls and call-outs hit social media. Folks pointed out how quickly Target seemed willing to soften its DEI stance to calm backlash. Then you started hearing about weak performance and layoffs. And instead of doubling down on the equity work they had promised, they rolled out a new rule for employees that basically boils down to forced cheerfulness. Eye contact, smiles, and scripted greetings are all pushed as a way to add more “joy” to the season.
So now you have underpaid workers with shrinking hours and more pressure, being told to put on a bigger smile, while the deeper justice work quietly gets watered down. That is consumerism in this era. The smile gets bigger while the foundation cracks.
At the top of the market, luxury brands are getting exposed too. Workers and suppliers have started talking openly about what it actually costs to make some of these designer pieces that sell for the price of a used car. You see claims that a bag that sells for tens of thousands costs a tiny fraction of that to produce. Investigations have found workshops being paid small amounts to assemble items that hit the sales floor with four-digit price tags. Industry people will tell you that you are paying for design, marketing, status, the boutique experience, and the logo. That is true. But once people see the raw cost of labor and materials beside the retail price, it starts to look less like glamour and more like the extreme markup that it is.
This is what Lauryn was naming. Consumerism is not about wanting something nice now and then. It is a whole system that treats human beings as revenue streams and runs best when we are too tired or under-informed to fight back.
If you judge consumerism only by sales, it is not dead. Money is still moving. Black Friday still breaks records, especially online. But underneath that, something is shifting. People are more careful. Households are stretched after years of rising costs, unstable work, and now another layer of price pressure from tariffs and corporate greed. More people are saying no, even if it is just for a day. Others are swapping habits, joining challenges, or refusing to spend with companies that disrespect their communities.At the same time, the system is splitting. Wealthy households are still holding up luxury and premium retail. Everyone else is downgrading, delaying, or stepping away whenever they can. So maybe this is not the funeral of consumerism. Maybe this is a crisis of legitimacy.
The old story said if you work hard and follow the rules, you can shop your way into safety and respect. You can buy your way into feeling like you matter. The reality we are living in is tearing that story apart. Tariffs show how quickly your cost of living can jump because of choices made in rooms you will never enter. Corporate retreats from DEI show how fast values get tossed once they feel inconvenient. Luxury pricing shows exactly how much of what we pay is about fantasy.
People see it now. That awareness alone is a problem for a system that depends on blind spending. The quiet good news is that some people are reaching back toward community, even if they do not call it that. You see it when someone skips the fastest shipping and waits a little longer to support a local maker. It’s even more apparent when you see folks organize economic blackout days to remind themselves how much power they actually have. You see it when a shopper, like I did with those Ghetto Gastro treats, goes out of the way to support a Black owned brand inside a store they are otherwise done with.
It is messy. People boycott in the morning and scroll sale codes at night. We are all learning in real time. But even that tug-of-war is different from the blind consumption Lauryn called out years ago. Back then, a lot of us did not have the language. Now people casually talk about tariffs, equity rollbacks, luxury margins, and boycott strategies in comment sections. We are naming what is happening.
Are we witnessing the end of consumerism? Probably not. What we are watching is the end of its innocence. The fairy tale that buying more always equals living better is falling apart. What comes next depends on us. We can keep feeding a machine that eats our labor, our time, and our communities and spits out debt. Or we can use this uncomfortable moment to build something different, rooted in dignity, fairness, and real connection.
That is not a slogan. That is a choice we make every time we reach for a cart, open an app, close a tab, or decide to back a neighbor instead of a logo.
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