I recently watched a video on consumerism by Damon Cassidy, a psychology student from Austin, Texas.  In the video, he emphasized that we are people, not consumers. This made me think about how much the word “consumers” bothers me. In our personal lives, we never refer to each other as consumers. However, in professional settings or while watching the news, people are often labeled as such. It seems that the complexity of human experience, even when related to the usage of objects, is reduced to a simple activity – to consume.
Unlike consumers, no one is ever defined by other activities; we do not refer to people as sleepers, eaters, or toilet-goers. Consuming, however, is associated with bringing money to someone and making the economy grow. The word “consumers” even when referring to a certain activity, feels so incredibly passive, as if there is no alternative but to consume.
Some companies probably gain a lot from so-called “consumers”; people who buy and use their products but have no critical thinking and sometimes no choice. But for most of us, do we really want to create products for “consumers”? I believe that we do not need consumers at all. We need collaborators, supporters, evaluators, critics, and conscious users – not consumers. It goes both ways. People should buy from companies that take them seriously, provide real value, and actively seek feedback (not just on paper). We need to build economies based on value, respect, and service, not consumerism.