Coming around a corner, I saw him again, now in an intense discussion with another, similarly clad, youngish man leaning on his bicycle. Walking past them, I saw that The Jogger had produced an A4 leaflet (from where?) from a kitchen design firm and was now vividly describing his dream of minimalist cabinetry or elegantly built-in appliances to his friend The Cyclist. In the rain. A scene which had a certain poetry to it, two men in functional, brightly coloured materials producing aesthetic visions on a wet pavement. After years of coquettish self-hatred in the middle class over our love of sleek interiors, why not get over it and give in to modern life’s strange beauty?

‘Welcome to the new WillSmith.com. In the coming months we’ll be bringing you several ways to communicate with friends and interact with content and information from around the globe.’

willsmith.com

Oh dear.

For another day: let’s talk about the power of daydreaming in digital consumption and, yes, production.

It was never quite like this, but I wish it would have been.

… sometime in the future … but this month, Crédit Lyonnais finally decided that enough was enough. After five years of non-activity – save the odd deposition to cover fees – their bloody-impossible-no-hope-customer algoritms have, correctly, identified me. They’re closing my account for me.

With some types of products and services, consumers are thought to be profoundly boring. Like with bank accounts. Either hyperrational assessors of offers or safety junkies, clinging to a brand because it feels like an institution stuffy enough to lack the imagination needed to do anything remotely risky.

Well, I had a bank account for five years after moving from France, because I liked to toy with the idea that I was back in Stockholm temporarily.

Also, I thought 1 euro per month plus the additional sporadic 27 euro fee (I could never figure out what that one was for, actually), was quite cheap for this pleasurable sensation of faux cosmopolitanism.

I’m not suggesting that this is the most common rationale for keeping a Crédit Lyonnais account. I’m not even suggesting that I’m not an utterly, utterly silly girl. But I think that there’s some kind of poetry in the power of humans to take the most prosaic of services, and just go crazy romanticizing it. And it should be taken into account when trying to figure out the intricacies of ‘consumer behaviour’. That is all.

In New York, I once saw a middle-aged hobo type sitting on the street with a tin cup in front of him and a hand-lettered sign reading I USED TO BE QUITE ATTRACTIVE. I noticed his tin cup was flush with bills. Another time, in San Francisco, I spotted another grimy homeless guy with a sign that simply read I NEED $ FOR A HOOKER, which also seemed to be inspiring charity from the local citizens.

from John Waters: Role Models (2010)

(image flow from northia.tumblr.com)

1. A man explains how he put all his possessions online and sold basically everything, in order to live a “minimalist, digitally-centered life”. (Watch »)

Also, he seems terribly smug about it, probably in part due to the “Oooh! You are CRAZY!” tone of the presenter, who apparently came straight from year 2000 (“You’ve digitized ALL your music…?”). What this man’s done, obviously, is to take his bachelor’s pad to its extreme consequence, where he erases everything in it that can signify anything about him. Women (and gay men, see Queer Eye for the Straight Guy) are traditionally thought to be the family specialists in the symbolic language of consumer goods – knowing and appreciating what a pair of shoes or yellow walls say about you, compared to the traditional male stereotype who “don’t know what they want”, or “don’t care about how it/he looks”. Everytime someone gets attention in media for leading an ascetic, digital life, it’s a man – usually of the badly dressed, geeky internet start-up entrepreneur variety.

I’d say that escape from this difficulty is a part of the temptation to sell all your shirts (including, yes, the “Unidentified Robot t-shirt”).

But don’t think this is an easy way out, oh you worn-out ironic t-shirt wearers who roam the internet. Because if my research isn’t completely wrong, girls and better dressed men than you are quickly moving symbolic value online too, and you’ll be lost again. Look at this, for example:

2. An NYT article about Polyvore (read »)

It’s a year old, but it’s a good read. Polyvore, the site where you can appropriate designer clothes and other items by putting them together in image sets, has two million users, by the way, did you know? (In related news, Polyvore wants to make fashion more data-driven, which is yet another opportunity to ponder if one should do an Apple 1984-style uprising against the tyranny of the crowd, or try to find another level of creativity on top of the giant pile of user data. Let’s go with the latter, shall we.)

3. Janice Denegri-Knott on how we act on Ebay, among other things (read »)

I couldn’t find an original article that didn’t require uni access, but this second-hand account will do fine as an introduction to Denegri-Knott’s research on digital virtual consumption.

These things are now everywhere, even though I’ve more often seen them talked about than used by someone I know, to be frank. It’s sustainable and smart for the most part, so let’s go for it. One or two things can be noted from this little promotional film, however. For example, having objects you’ve collected and consumed earlier, in your home – library style – is, at least in future consultant’s speak, now totally reframed into having things “idling around”. The turn from downloading to streaming points in the same, interesting direction – the ideal of no dead meat, always staying a fresh, white, clean canvas that can experience the next thing without looking back. But that’s another (long, windling, rambling) post.

In short, I’m interested in when digital ways of consumption (especially communication as consumption) are integrated into this (unembeddable, so click here, please). It’s that great scene from Manhattan, when Diane Keaton’s character uses language basically as cultural warfare in an art gallery. Art consumption might be at the extreme end of a scale, but this complicated dance with signs is driving the vacation home barterers too. The vacation home barterers more than your average city weekend tourist, in fact, as the very idea of this form of consumption is a more deliberate sign.

And that’s what’s missing in all these consultants’ accounts of an exciting new, Negroponte-esque world of How we do it now: the Why and the What of leisure consumption on a cultural level. Which is where it gets really interesting: the crossroads between new digital possibilities and Consumer Culture, and how it affects how we build our selves with symbols. Someone who has never lived in a modern society would probably have problems grasping the idea of a p2p handbag rental.

This picture, by the way, is from the exact moment (around 0.53 in the clip) where Diane does one of the most skilful dismissive ah-eh-ah-ah’s (truly the sound of cultural capital) I’ve ever heard. Very impressive.

Any item seen and desired, but not yet decided on or affordable can be “placed” in this personalized area (the wishlist), achieving a liminal status where they are not yet owned by the would-be buyer, but neither are they not owned. Their digital virtual image remains in the “possession” of the individual providing pleasure as an item that when acquired will fulfill his/her wishes of the consumer. Although much focus has been on the economics of the “long tail” that such functions promote (where consumers consider goods well outside the most popular that physical retailers stock and display), the implications of such practices are that consumers are invited to seek out and want more and more obscure commodities and to promote these to each other as objects of desire.

From Janice Denegri-Knott & Mike Molesworth’s 2010 article “Concepts and practices of digital virtual consumption”.