RE: Subcultures and Social Trends: Haul Girls – The Excessively Lucrative Side of Naked Consumerism
It's a significant social trend but it doesn't make me comfortable at all. The underlying message of these brands and products is: "you're not beautiful/worthy/deserving unless you buy this makeup/dress/gadget". Then you get frenzied consumerism which drives young people into debt, and ties them to corporate slave jobs to maintain a lifestyle that's harmful to themselves, the planet and the culture as whole.
Instead of pushing the "buy more" agenda I look forward to the time when we live in a culture of "connecting more". We should be encouraging people to make art/memes/music/writing and become creators and producers rather than encouraging this trend of everyone becoming mindless consumers with the aspiration of becoming famous for being famous.
@alexc thanks for taking the time to read and comment. I enjoy interacting with readers and I appreciate it.
To your point about the discomfort of the social trend, I agree with that point, but it's something I don't see dropping off anytime soon. Brands have discovered an incredibly inexpensive way to get their message and their product out to their target market through influencers which cost them a fraction of what it would normally. After watching several of these videos during the research stage of this piece - personally I don't get the massive interest in haul videos.
Services such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Klout and (eventually) Steemit are known for targeting the "attention economy" which is truly nothing more than a buzz phrase for the advertising industry as a whole. More and more companies are bombarding everyone with advertisement, creating a wall of noise which is almost impossible to get through. Klout was one of the first to look for what Malcom Gladwell referred to as "connectors" of diverse groups of individuals, and attempted to quantify it so brands could target them to become brand ambassadors.
Based upon the more recent growth of tech tools to help optimize this more, and the public declaration of many brands to divert more advertising budget into the "attention economy", I don't see how this trend stops or reverses before much larger macro trends of personal savings rates and consumer debt finally implode forcing it to stop or reverse.