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r/Anticonsumption: Appealing to Outrage

The Platform

Reddit: the front page of the internet. Born in 2005, Reddit has championed itself as the cultural hub of the internet. Reddit’s “about” page states that “Reddit is home to thousands of communities, endless conversation, and authentic human connection,” (Reddit Inc., 2019) The building block of their platform, which has over 430 million active monthly users, is the subreddit (Reddit Inc., 2019). Subreddits are internet communities formed by a collective of like-minded users. Some subreddits, like r/pics, are massive, with over 26 million members (r/pics, 2020). Other subreddits, like r/pottedcats, only have a few thousand members (r/pottedcats, 2020).

There are certain subreddits that have made a name for themselves outside of Reddit, usually by way of controversy. For instance, r/the_donald gained internet fame for its racist posts in support of Donald Trump’s presidency. When the community was banned by Reddit in July of 2020, news outlets including Wired wrote about the fall of the problematic subreddit (Peck, 2020).

Yet while r/the_donald may have been an outlier in terms of its popularity and controversy, it echoed a culture war that exists across Reddit. For as many subreddits as there are devoted to cat videos, there are likely just as many that espouse political and cultural angst. R/Anticonsumption is one of these.

The Community

According to the community’s “about,” page, r/Anticonsumption is a subreddit concerned with “criticizing, questioning, and discussing consumerism and current consumption standards,” (r/Anticonsumption, 2020). It is a relatively small subreddit with a membership of over 254 thousand users (r/Anticonsumption, 2020). While there is no comprehensive breakdown of the community's membership, I believe that it’s demographics generally align with those of Reddit as a whole. Statistics reported by websitebuilder.org state that 58% of Reddit users are between the ages of 18 and 29 (WebsiteBuilder, 2020). And looking at r/Anticonsumption, this seems like an accurate reflection of the subreddit’s users, who appear to be primarily young adults in their late 20s. This conclusion is based on the content and nature of the posts featured on r/Anticonsumption, which embody a disillusionment with consumer culture. The people making these posts would have to be old enough to be conscious of consumer culture, but also young enough to be concerned with its wastefulness. People who are outside of the 18-29 demographic may be too young to be aware of consumerism or too old to be upset by it.

And upset they are. As the community’s “about,” page states, the foremost goal of r/Anticonsumption is the criticism of “consumerism and current consumption standards,” (r/Anticonsumption, 2020). The page also lists topics for discussion, which include “consumerism, planned obsoletism, economic materialism, inefficiency, advertising, sustainability, exploitation, conspicuous consumption,” and “intellectual property,” (r/Anticonsumption, 2020). However, these topics might be more succinctly categorized as a community concern for “waste,” “unnecessary consumption,” and “corporate greed.” These categories are by far the most popular topics for discussion, and are heavily represented within the top 40 most upvoted, or liked, posts of this year (r/Anticonsumption, 2020). Of those posts, I observed that 17.5% were concerned with the physical waste produced by consumerism. Another 27.5% were related to unnecessary consumption or purchasing items in excess. And 30% were specifically critical of corporations and their excessive wealth. The last 25% did not fit neatly into any of these three categories. Given the content of these posts, it’s easy to tell that the general tone of the community is one of frustration. Referring again to the top 40 posts of the year, 65% bore a negative or cynical tone. This is compared to the 20% that were clearly optimistic or the 15% that were tonally neutral.

Shared Assumptions

From these overarching sentiments, one can devise a rough outline of the community’s shared assumptions. First and foremost, the community agrees that capitalism is a flawed and in some cases immoral, system. While there are few posts that explicitly attack capitalism by name, the issues which pervade the community, including conspicuous consumption, waste, and corporate greed, are all a direct result of consumerism and, by association, capitalism. Secondly, the community agrees that these issues are important because of their impact on people and the planet. The subreddit's tagline is, after all, "Consumerism kills," (r/Anticonsumption, 2020). Some posts state this outright, referring explicitly to climate change, worker exploitation, and pollution (u/MutantAussie, 2020). Yet even on posts that are not explicit, one can find commenters who take the post to its environmental and humanitarian conclusions (u/fatnerdfromnextdoor, 2020). The subreddit also aligns itself with more explicitly environmental subreddits, including r/Environmentalism (r/Environmentalism, 2020).

A third assumption accepted by the community is that there are alternatives to consumerism. While this is hardly the main goal of the subreddit, there are those posts that provide solutions to the consumption opposed by the community. For instance, a recent post by u/Bydanielpearce showed how he had transformed old socks into couch cushions (u/Bydanielpearce, 2020). Another popular post on the subreddit pictures a painted sign, the author of which challenges viewers to grow their own produce instead of purchasing it (u/madigolightly, 2020). The community also aligns itself with other self-sufficiency subreddits, such as r/fermentation (r/fermentation, 2020).

But this assumption is in contradiction with the community’s final, and perhaps most surprising, shared understanding: that consumption is unavoidable, at least in the present moment. In a subreddit called r/Anticonsumption, one could assume that the members would be entirely opposed to consumption in all of its forms. However, this is not the case. Obviously, the community does not oppose necessary consumption of food, clothing, and housing. But besides that, there is leniency in regards to other forms of nonessential consumption. For instance, many of the community members engage in consumerist hobbies. Looking at the profile of u/SaltNext, a user responsible for one of the most upvoted posts of the year, reveals that they posted on r/Disney, linking to a sweatshirt that they had put up for sale (u/SaltNext, 2020). Other users post to r/Anticonsumption while posting elsewhere about their plant hobby, or about the shoes they ruin while skateboarding (u/S8r-Boi-Cya-L8r-Boi, 2020).

While this contradiction can contribute to a sense of performativity amongst certain users, it does not invalidate the goals of the subreddit. Members of the community must still participate in the system that they are critical of. If anything, the juxtaposition between what members post and what they engage elsewhere on the platform clarifies how the members of the community define “consumption.” For them, to be anti-consumption is not to be against any one purchase, though there are posts that focus on a single item. Rather, it is frustration with the overarching systems in which these purchases occur. A system that necessitates frivolity; engorges the wealthy; and perpetuates human suffering.

Entering the Conversation

In posting on r/Anticonsumption, I sought to emulate the rhetorical style of the community to maximize members’ engagement with my post. In doing so, I attempted to employ these assumptions and norms to varying degrees of success.

Post 1

I made my first post to r/Anticonsumption regarding the thrifting website Depop (u/Looney_Goon, 2020). In a lengthy paragraph titled “Depop and the Thrifting Industry,” I asked the community what they thought about services like Depop and the justification its sellers gave for huge markups on secondhand items.

In crafting this post I had worked hard to give evidence, develop an argument, and ask a thought-provoking question. I had assumed that this post’s academic rhetoric would catch the attention of the entire community and that I would succeed in sparking a thoughtful dialogue between users. However, this did not happen. At the time that this essay is being written, the post has only received 13 upvotes and six comments. And, of the few comments that I did receive, not a single user agreed with my suggestion that the popularization of thrifting negatively impacted low-income communities.

At first, I was disappointed with the lack of engagement. However, I came to understand that my rhetorical style did not match that of the broader community. Looking back at other discussion-based posts, I noticed that they generally received fewer upvotes and comments than their image-based counterparts. This was despite the fact that they explicitly asked a question of the community. Successful posts were, instead, short and to the point, with an image and snappy title that immediately invoked the emotions of the community. In my future posts, I sought to emulate this formula.

Post 2

However, my second post was even more of a failure than my first. In making this post, I decided to comment on an existing post rather than create my own (u/Looney_Goon, 2020). I figured that, in the comments thread, the wordy style that had failed before would find success amongst the other text-based remarks.

Once again, I crafted a long-winded comment, this time describing my own experiences with wasteful practices at my workplace. I even tried to express my anger and frustration through the comment, in the hopes of eliciting the same response from the community. But I have not received a single upvote on this comment to date.

This comment suffers from the same issues as my previous post. It is text-based and it is wordy. But I think that the bulk of its failure can be attributed to where it was posted. I made the comment on an existing post, one which had been made days earlier and had already received 45 comments before mine. Buried in the comments section of (by the internet’s standards) an already old post, my comment’s chance to be seen, let alone be engaged with, were slim to none.

Post 3

In my third post, I embraced the rhetorical strategy that I had identified during my first few weeks in the community (u/Looney_Goon, 2020). I abandoned my inclination for dense text posts and made an image post instead. I posted a picture of a cooler filled with mochi in plastic containers and captioned it “Individually packaged mochi, so many little plastic cups.” In observing the subreddit, I had seen that waste, and especially plastic waste, was a popular topic for discussion on r/Anticonsumption. Posts about wasteful packaging often evoked the frustration of the community, and in return received a great many upvotes and comments. I hoped that by touching on this topic with an image that could be immediately understood and reacted to, rather than a text post that required further reading, I could accomplish that same level of success. By now, the post has received 57 upvotes, far more than I had expected. The succinct, emotional appeal made by my post succeeded in eliciting an emotional response from the community, and therefore saw high engagement.

However, what most surprised me were two of the comments that I received on the post. On the same day that I published my post, u/Morgenjol commented “Our grocery store only did this because of covid. Before they weren't individual packages,” (u/Morgenjol, 2020). Their comment was quickly followed with another by u/kit-kat315, who said “Same here. You used to scoop your own into a take away container but now they're individually wrapped, ” (u/kit-kat312, 2020). What surprised me about these posts was their measured tone. While I had tailored my post to evoke the frustration of the community, these two users tried to explain, or at least contextualize, the issue. Compare these with the third comment by u/Lemonyclouds, who said “Let me guess...is this Whole Foods? Bougie-ass pretentious greenwashing overpriced grocery store. They charge for water now...the store workers gave me a salty-ass attitude when I asked to buy water but fill up my own bottle (marked with fl oz). Jeff Bezos can go choke on mochi,” (u/Lemonyclouds, 2020).The comments by u/kit-kat315 and u/Morgenjol conveyed a level of sympathetic understanding that is not always expressed by community. In doing so they embodied the community’s fourth assumption: that consumption is inevitable, at least in the present moment.

Post 4

In my fourth post, I tried to recreate the success of my third post. I posted a picture of pears wrapped in paper and titled it “ 68 pears, each individually wrapped in paper and packaged in a plastic-lined box. This is just one of the six or so boxes that we receive at our store every day.” (u/Looney_Goon, 2020). I also added a comment to my post which essentially recited the story that I had told in my second post. In crafting this post, I hoped that the image would elicit the frustration of the community and that the comment would give the post further context and emotional appeal.

Ultimately, this post was not as successful as my last, receiving only 30 upvotes. This could be due to the fact that it has not been in circulation as long as my last post, though I think there is more to it than that. First, I don’t think that r/Anticonsumption considers paper waste is as egregious an offense as plastic waste. Second, the paper waste that I had featured in my post had more of a function than that of my previous post and was therefore more excusable. That is to say, the paper had a purpose. This second point was echoed in the comments section. u/SeoulTezza wrote, “If they weren’t wrapped in paper you would have 68 wasted pears,” (u/SeoulTezza, 2020). Another user, u/DarthFader4205 , wrote “Youre right, but its all for safe consumption,” (u/DarthFader4205, 2020). Again, this illustrates that while the general mood of the community is one of frustration, they accept certain forms of consumption and waste as necessary.

Conclusions

I chose to explore a subreddit as my networked community because I believed that Reddit, more so than other social media platforms, facilitated discussion. Reddit is fundamentally a collection of discussion forums. Therefore, whether a post is image or text-based, the comment thread always presents a bridge between the poster and the community. For many subreddits, such as r/askreddit, the comments thread is the essence of the community discussion.

For this reason, it seemed that r/Anticonsumption would be the perfect community to analyze for this project. More so than Twitter or Instagram, the conversational format of Reddit would allow me to have a dialogue with other Redditors, helping me to drill down into the rhetoric and psychology of the community. And for this reason, I began my project by posting a question to r/Anticonsumption. Yet after the lukewarm response to both my first and second posts, I came to realize that I had overestimated the community’s propensity for conversation.

Instead, I noticed that on r/Anticonsumption, emotion, rather than discussion, garnered engagement. Reddit’s “upvote,” button, just like the “Like,” button on Instagram or Facebook, is the measure of success for any given post. This is why posts are categorized based on the number of upvotes they receive rather than the number of comments. Therefore, the posts that succeed are those which trigger the most acute emotional reaction from the audience. The upvote button becomes an immediate expression of that emotion, and the fewer steps there are between the audience and that emotional response, the more upvotes it receives. For this reason, image posts, rather than text-based posts, rise to the top of r/Anticonsumption. In fact, the top 40 posts of 2020 were all pictures that appealed to emotion. Take this post by u/SaltNext, for example (u/SaltNext, 2020):

Like most of the posts which succeed on r/Anticonsumption, there is almost no supplementary information given. The picture and its message are self contained. Even the caption refers directly back to the image. And the message that the picture delivers, that we are being manipulated by brands, is meant to frustrate the audience. R/Anticonsumption is particularly receptive to this message of manipulative advertising because it confirms what they understand about the world. And this receptiveness can be seen in the 5.7 thousand upvotes that the post received. But notice how there are only 66 comments. The emotional appeal of the post does not directly translate into a particularly robust conversation. And why should it? The community is already in agreement with what the post is telling them, and their upvotes signal their approval. And it is worth noting that this same image was shared just nine months earlier and had similar success (unknown, 2020).

This is not to say that my initial evaluation of the Reddit platform was incorrect. The comments thread is a key aspect of Reddit and is integral to the site’s functionality. However, there are a great many subreddits, including r/Anticonsumption, in which the immediate controversy of a single post is more important than the conversations it might spark. This means that posts which are quickly understood and empathized with rise to the top. In this way, much of Reddit mirrors the individualistic nature of sites like Instagram, veering away from the site’s collectivistic, community-centric ideals.

In conducting this project, I saw how a networked community can become an echo chamber for highly emotional, but not highly substantial, ideas. Seeking the approval of the community, users like myself will tailor posts to the subreddit’s rhetorical climate, paring down ideas to their most effective emotional appeals. Thus, the most controversial posts become the most widely circulated, buoyed by their upvotes while less exciting posts drift to the bottom. This results in a climate where posts amass approval not because they are thoughtful but because they match the aesthetics of the community.

Luckily, there are those community members who attempt to inject some civility and common sense into the conversation. In my own experience, users like u/SeoulTezza and u/Morgenjol saw through some of the emotions of my otherwise shallow posts and attempted to contextualize the object of frustration. In an environment where emotions run high, it is important that such people exist to make us question our gut reactions, not just on Reddit, but across the whole of the internet.

Sources

Cavanagh, Joe [u/Looney_Goon]. (2020, October 13). Depop and the Thrifting Industry [Online forum post]. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/jakj1y/depop_and_the_thrifting_industry/

Cavanagh, Joe [u/Looney_Goon]. (2020, October 19). I work in the produce department at a local grocery store and it's infuriating to see how much goes [Online forum post]. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/jcuer9/packaging_is_garbage_i_watched_a_johnny_carson/g9dnqji/?context=3

Cavanagh, Joe [u/Looney_Goon]. (2020, October 26) Individually packaged mochi, so many little plastic cups [Online forum post]. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/jiqw1n/individually_packaged_mochi_so_many_little/

Cavanagh, Joe [u/Looney_Goon]. (2020, November 4). 68 pears, each individually wrapped in paper and packaged in a plastic-lined box. This is just one of the six or so boxes that we receive at our store every day [Online forum post]. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/jocjuy/68_pears_each_individually_wrapped_in_paper_and/

Reddit Inc. (2019, December 4). About. Retrieved November 6, 2020 from https://www.redditinc.com/

r/Anticonsumption. (2009, September 25). Reddit. Retrieved November 6, 2020 from https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/

r/askreddit. (2008, January 25). Reddit. Retrieved November 8, 2020 from https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/

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[u/Bydanielpearce] (2020, November 4). Cushion covers made with my old socks (washed and whitened). Cushion stuffing made from project scraps. She was a better behaved model this time but soon had enough due to lack of treats [Online forum post]. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/jo3k7o/cushion_covers_made_with_my_old_socks_washed_and/

[u/DarthFader4205] (2020, November 4). Youre right, but its all for safe consumption [Online forum post]. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/jocjuy/68_pears_each_individually_wrapped_in_paper_and/

[u/fatnerdfromnextdoor] (2020, August 3). Shopping local, but out of season is often worse for the environment than just importing it from [Online forum post]. Retrieved November 6, 2020 from https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/i2vby4/i_live_in_an_italian_region_which_produce_2/

[u/kit-kat315] (2020, October 26). Same here. You used to scoop your own into a take away container but now they're individually wrapped. [Online forum post]. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/jiqw1n/individually_packaged_mochi_so_many_little/

[u/Lemonyclouds] (2020, October 27). Let me guess… is this Whole Foods? [Online forum post]. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/jiqw1n/individually_packaged_mochi_so_many_little/

[u/madigolightly] (2020, April 1). Permanent permaculture [Online forum post]. Retrieved November 7, 2020 from https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/ftblxz/permanent_permaculture/

[u/Morgeljol] (2020, October 26). Our grocery store only did this because of covid. Before they weren't individual package [Online forum post]. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/jiqw1n/individually_packaged_mochi_so_many_little/

[u/MutantAussie] (2020, November 6). God loves you. God hates the environment [Online forum post]. Retrieved November 6, 2020 from https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/jp0d6t/god_loves_you_god_hates_the_environment/

[u/S8r-Boi-Cya-L8r-Boi] (2020, September 1). My Travis dunks after skating them to death [Online forum post]. Retrieved November 6, 2020 from https://www.reddit.com/r/Repsneakers/comments/ikg9zb/my_travis_dunks_after_skating_them_to_death/

[u/SaltNext] (2020, October 26). Brands aren’t your friends. [Online forum post]. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/jilhpq/brands_arent_your_friends/

[u/SaltNext] (2020, October 31). Im here for the snacks [Online forum post]. Retrieve from https://www.reddit.com/r/disney/comments/jlrljm/im_here_for_the_snacks/

[u/SeoulTezza] (2020, November 4). If they weren’t wrapped in paper you would have 68 wasted pears [Online forum post]. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/jocjuy/68_pears_each_individually_wrapped_in_paper_and/

[unknown] (2020, January 21). Brands aren’t your friends [Online forum post]. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/erv8yk/brands_arent_your_friends/

WebsiteBuilder (2020, October 27). 109 Ridiculous Reddit Statistics & Facts to Know in 2020. https://websitebuilder.org/blog/reddit-statistics/

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