Fall Overconsumption:: How Autumn Became a Consumerist Nightmare
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- Опубліковано 15 вер 2024
- As a born and bred New Englander, fall is near and dear to my heart. But companies are destroying our actual seasons and trying to sell us their version of fall.
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My sister works in marketing. Nothing has cemented my anti-consumerism minimalist values like overhearing her Zoom meetings. All the schemes they come up with to sell stuff nobody needs is mind-boggling.
such a gross system that we've created 😥
I work in marketing and we have to think about 2 months ahead.
I feel a bit better about my job since I work for small BnBs and Campgrounds instead of mega-corps, but it's still marketing
@@bringing.mae.flowers we're all caught up in capitalism 🙃
Everyone should take a marketing class…just the basics. I know so many master degree educated who don’t understand “up to 50% off”. I worked for a dentist who insisted that I must have lost the applicator tips for a product that obviously had more than three applications. I told him that one must order additional tips separately…costing almost as much as the whole kit. Seems like a better deal to buy the whole kit again doesn’t it? And of course we had other similar tips from 3M that were highly specific to their product. That’s marketing.
@@marylhere That's actually a great idea. That and psych 101.
I am 49 and remember when you didn’t really see Halloween things in stores until the end of September at the earliest. I also luckily grew up in a household that used the same decorations year after year for every holiday. Because of that a lot of our decor had more meaning to it.
As a 36 year old, I definitely remember most of my life there wasn't this fervor for fall. It's new in the last decade. Love that you have meaningful decor!
I’m 45 and our Halloween “decor” consisted of those colorful, printed die cuts of cute Halloween scenes that we hung in our front room window and kitchen wall with scotch tape. We had plastic costumes with masks you couldn’t breathe in or see out of and had ONE round of trick-or-treat on Halloween night.
Same here. October baby and I'll be 41 this year. I love fall and Halloween but despise the overconsumption. Give me vintage pieces any day!
Same here, I'm 54. I don't remember seeing Halloween merchandise until October. And, a lot of our decorations were paper and cardboard, but we took them down carefully and packed them away until the next year, along with the more durable things.
My wife just brought this up to me! It is NOT fall yet.. it’s still summer!
the consumerist calendar in action!
Thats what I said when a saw a fall episode of a booktuber and it was in August! Even work has fall decor!
Depends where you live. September 23rd is not the one true date to decide if it's fall. Climate and seasons are much more complex than that
Try finding a swimsuit in July….just try…cackled the Halloween witch.
Remember though it depends where you are in the world. Here in Scotland where I live fall is most definitely in the air and in nature around us. School kids have been back in school a few weeks already. Many, myself included are still hoping for an Indian Summer (late Summer) in the early to mid Autumn, but the trees are definitely already changing their leaf colour and there are crab apples on the trees.
That said what is sad is that our local supermarket already has begun stocking Christmas food items. So I do get it.
Also for me the seasons have always been decided by the months of the year so
March to May = Spring
June to August = Summer
September to November = Autumn
December to February = Winter
And that's what I grew up with and I'm just turning 50.
I was born and raised in New England- I had to leave because colleges were too expensive in the northeast (even in the 1990s), then jobs took me all across the south. Quite a bit of this country has no external indicators for fall at all. I lived in the southwest and South Florida- fall doesn’t really exist in Florida at all. As a fall baby from New England, it was soul crushing. It actually does my mental health good to see the stores put out fall decor. I don’t buy it, but seeing it means my summer seasonal affective disorder will be alleviated soon. What a privilege to live in a part of the country where seasons exist outside! You can decorate with actual foliage from actual trees! Palm trees don’t change fall colors. And of course I’d love to move back but the housing prices for New England are some of the highest in the country. Count your blessings! Oh - to live in a place where there is fall!
Wow never heard of summer seasonal affective disorder. I have it for fall and winter because of not enough sunlight.
Yes! I totally get it. This year I began celebrating Autumn in July. I'm 65 and live where there's heat and awful humidity and it's harder than ever to get through Summer with a decent attitude. I can barely focus and find it difficult to be grateful for anything (I'm huge on showing gratitude!). The first level of my house is actually decorated year around for Autumn (in subtle ways) and when I began watching autumnal YT videos and thinking about Fall in July? Oh my. Instant peace and the ability to wait a bit longer for cooler days and 'real autumn.' And now that the cool days are actually here, whew, I feel totally back to normal. Thanking God that I survived another Summer much these days. Again, I totally understand and may you keep discovering ways to keep Autumn in your heart whenever you need it most.
I also have summer seasonal affective disorder! Learning that was a real condition was very helpful in keeping my depression in check during the summer . Thankfully I live in Ohio so I get my beloved fall and winter .
Same, I have severe summer SAD and I grew up in Oklahoma where it's summer 8 months out of the year 😭 I moved to Wisconsin a couple years ago though and oh my god, _nothing_ has been better for my mental health. I can actually feel my mood lifting once September hits and summers here are so mild that I don't even hate them. I don't buy nearly as much fall decor anymore either. In OK I used to go nuts storming Michael's and Hobby Lobby as soon as they put out the fall stuff, but now that I live in a place where we actually GET fall I don't feel much need anymore. I'll still buy little things here and there and I still leave my fall decor up year-round cause it just makes me so happy to look at it, but absolutely nothing beats being able to just go outside and enjoy fall.
Come to Wisconsin! CoL is about the same as south FL and we get glorious falls here 🍁🍂
I love fall- it’s a reward for making it through the hot summer!
The irony of buying those plastic "fall leaves" as decor, destroying nature in the long term, instead of drying real fallen leaves as we used to back in the days. I remember in my country we used to gather fallen chestnuts to craft with as a tradition, also at schools you made a "fall table" with chestnut crafts etc... now you can just buy those ready made in the store.... so weird to see that.
I dry plants all summer for fall!
Now kids have allergies so we can’t do crafts like that
@@jessinicole7998 you could look them up online and have the kids pretend to be botanist. Even make a book for each season.
I will admit that this works on me more than other ploys. Mostly because I hate being hot. I do look longingly at phony pumpkins in stores in August.
it works on a lot of us because who loves 110 degrees for 4 months straight??? Summer is getting tough out here
Me too! Especially because I live in the desert!
I went into my local store last week, I’m in 🇬🇧- we have a delicacy called a mince pie that we eat at Christmas- the store had freshed baked mince pies in the last week of AUGUST!
I know in Disneyland and Disney World here in the US, they have already started selling their Halloween themed stuff and having their Halloween themed nights. Halloween isn't until October, and the Halloween themed nights started in late August. I don't go to the parks, but you can see videos being posted here on UA-cam from those Halloween themed nights.
That’s crazy! Egg nog (a Christmas drink) starts appearing on the shelf in August, here in the US too!
Fellow New Englander here. I completely agree! When we lived in Texas and had no fall, it was so easy to get sucked into the fall nostalgia marketing, trying to pretend it was not still super hot outside.
I've always lived in TX, thinking of "real" fall looks so perfect! It's hot here until November.
I also spent time in TX and man, I absolutely longed for fall when it would be 100 degrees out on September 29th
I mean... I'll also add that more and more people are chonically online, start copying those around them in that limiting space, and see people like myself who have literally always been about Autumn and its trappings talking... So now instead of making fun of the people like me as I was when I was a child, they act as if that's been their thing the whole time. It's happening with everything from reading physical books to even the kinds of food that people enjoy, so it really doesn't surprise me to see a rise in people touting themselves as totally Autumn people when we really see them flourish in other seasons irl. It's all about image and companies have picked up on that aspect of our zeitgeist quite handily. Tbh we wouldn't even need climate change happening for this marketing to be a thing since it's just a different flavour of the same Koolaid from days gone by.
I hate summer so seeing fall come early in the stores is hope for me 😂
I have family in the midwest while my husband grew up in AL. I grew up in MA and this is where we live now. Talking to our families, living in New England is a privilege. We have all 4 seasons, but most of all, we have a beautiful fall. All these companies, their profiting off bringing the New England fall experience to the rest of the country.
We get to go harvesting amongst the changing trees, we get to eat fresh apple cider donuts, we get an authentic spooky new england Halloween and most of all we get to live in the place of the first Thanksgiving.
Today, my 2 year old son and I went on an hour hike through forest preserve. We found sticks, walked on crackly leaves, and looked up at the tall trees to find the ones beginning to change color. At work, I look outside my window, and there's a tree filled with bright, brilliant red. That's a privilege the rest of the country doesn't get. We can give them the produced version. Let's let them enjoy it.
I mean, huge swatches of the midwest experience all four seasons, and it's the literal farming center of the whole country. New England is marvelous, but to act like kids in Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, etc, can't access the outdoors/food forests/or literal sticks is just incorrect.
Autumn arrived suddenly here (south east UK) at the beginning of September, so I feel no guilt at all for celebrating it early with cosy jumpers, pressed leaf decorations (handmade) and we'll be going mushroom hunting in the local forest this weekend if the weather isn't too abysmal. What I can't stand is the early marketing of it and the endless plastic decorations. I'm slowly working on my own decorations, one knitted item each year should do. Autumn is about cooking heartier food, and making jams, drawing slowly inwards again after the Summer. I do want to try a pumpkin spiced latte for the first time this year as last year I missed it (sold out by the end of September). Ridiculous. Thank you for your video, and I hope you all get a comfortably cool season soon!
It’s so off-putting. Here we are suffering through 100+ degree weather and multiple fires and they’re shoving Fall decor down our throats. It’s disgusting.
It seems to be a lot of people know this. What's funny to me is she wants you to pay to be hear to listen to it...
I’ve already decorated for fall with foliage I’ve had for many years. I did buy a couple of items this year, so I guess I’m guilty of the outside-of-season consumerism discussed here. Even though I live in Southern California, I actually live in a mountain community where fall is in abundant evidence per the leaves changing colors. There are many black oaks on my property and in the area that provide beautiful fall color. This is my favorite season and so are pumpkin spice lattes. I understand your point but I’m not giving up what little joy this world offers.
'Little House in the Big Woods' is my immediate Fall reading every year and then the Christmas chapter for Christmas.
I celebrate the pagan sabats, so in my mind, fall started at the beginning of August, and I love welcoming a earlier fall. BUT there are plenty of companies that start selling halloween and christmas stuff in May/June, and I can't stand this as this removes our ability to fully embracy everything that's great about summer.
Because I like to have all my Christmas presents wrapped by Halloween, I enjoy the early store decorations. I like to spend my November and December free time on cleaning, food and parties. December is mostly about parties, concerts and singing with friends. Home-made holiday cards and handwritten letters consume evenings filled with seasonal music and candles. It's a real logistics challenge.
Where are you seeing places start selling Xmas stuff in May 😭
Overconsumption is a year-round problem.
informative, organized, concise, and thought provoking. this was such a great video!
Been getting into trees recently. Want to protect them
I'll just plug finding a tree planting org in your area! I've done it for years and it's a great way to protect and grow nature and meet cool folks
I LOOOVE Halloween, but the last thing I want to do while sweating my @ss off in June is to go Halloween hunting. Because it started in ~June this year, and if you want a chance of finding the stuff you want, you have to go asap. This is probably my last year of doing that. As much as I love the holiday, I don't want it to occupy 5 shopping months of my life. It stops being exciting once the oversaturation hits
I don't understand the people who buy new seasonal decor every year. I've been using the same pieces for 10 years and it's a joy to have them appear for my family to enjoy (the fall stuff isn't getting unboxed until Sept. 20th)
If you have to have those decorations, buy them second hand. You'd be surprised (maybe not) how many people buy that stuff new and then get rid of it.
You can get gently used, fun stuff cheap. And when you get tired of it, you can give it back without feeling terribly wasteful.
I’m so glad to see people talk about this. I understand people want little things sometimes, but the overconsumption has been out of hand for a while and is only getting worse. I do think people will eventually catch on and something will change at some point
Up north in MI, fall officially starts after Labor Day. All the stores in my small town switch to fall hours. There’s a real chill in the air, especially in the mornings and nights. Apples, pears, and plums are ready to harvest.
I live in the western part of Ukraine. It has a temperate climate. Forests, rivers, and swamps in the northern parts. Cranberries and blueberries grow here... It has always had warm summers and winters with a lot of snow and severe frosts. I remember when I was 7 years old, on my birthday on April 7, there was knee-deep snow outside. Now I'm 30, and the last time I saw a “real” (typical for our area) winter was in 2012/2013. Now, if there is snow, it lasts for a week or two at most. This year, we had a winter without snow, spring and summer with almost no rain, and a thunderstorm probably 2 times during the whole season. And for the past few years, every summer there have been 2-3 weeks of unbearable heat. Almost no one here has air conditioning in their homes and apartments, and the humidity is always VERY high. So during those few weeks it felt like you were in the oven 24/7. When you go outside, it's like taking a hot shower because of the heat and humidity, even though it hasn't rained for weeks. And in the apartment, you take a cold shower five times a day. It's just that I don't want to live during these periods((
I like that they sell earlier. I don't have a lot of money to drop of a fall or Christmas spree but I'll pick up little pieces here and there and store them away. Come time to decorate,a nice surprise awaits us.
I am one of those crazy fall people. With that said, I use the same decor every year and just move things around. I see people constantly buying new items every year and that’s just crazy. Why go broke over something you love.
I refuse all pumpkin spice untill the autumn equinox. It's like wearing white after Labor Day.
I just moved from Alaska to New Mexico and am struggling through the heat. Autumn is in full swing in Alaska and I'm sad to miss it, but it doesn't last very long, winter takes hold pretty fast and lasts too long! 🤣 Looking forward to cooler days.
I'm also originally from New England and LOVE New England so much. I live outside of NE due to career reasons. I'll say, there are many places in the US that don't get to experience all that comes with the true Fall/Autumn of New England - changing of the leaves, chilly air, etc. But I think humans have been conditioned for thousands of years by the change of the seasons, and we probably all have some primal urge to cozy up with a warm drink for some part of the year. And while I hate mass consumerist culture and the waste that comes along with it... I say let the people have their pumpkin spice lattes. Let them have their candles with cinnamon spice notes. Let us gain some simple pleasures of experiencing an idealized version of fall because life is hard and we need escapism right now more that ever, IMO. Not everyone can experience a (free) walk in the park in autumn to feel the cool air on their skin, to smell the leaves as they fall, to burn a campfire and roast marshmallows... So some need to chase this feeling in other ways. I think it's okay :)
This and Christmas everything being pumped out before Halloween has even happened now. I'm New England born and bred and I love fall, I even love winter. But fall stuff being shoved out in July now and then that allowing the super early Christmas stuff is so irritating! Thanksgiving is a fall holiday, people, and we don't need 24/7 holiday music and decor for 2 effing months.
The leaves changing and the chilly days are amazing as the seasons pivot, but it also means I'm that much closer to having to shovel multiple feet of snow out of my driveway. I feel like a lot of this commercialization is heavily driven by people in areas who don't experience winters with real cold and real snow. (Definition of "real" here being temps consistently below zero for many weeks and snow that sticks and piles up as the norm.)
I loved your Little House reference! It actually took place in the early 1870s.
As a fellow born and bred New Englander, I so agree with you!
Super interesting take on this issue! I hate the rush to market autumn while it’s still scorching hot out, and had never thought about how climate change plays into it and how it’s a symptom of our disconnect from nature. Great job!!
Only feedback would be more graphics would make the video more engaging.
Fall decor for august 1st!!!!! 😅 I complain about that every year. I don’t actually remember a lot about fall as a child, other than the leaves. Leaf crafts, and walking the dog in autumn woody areas. Nothing to do with pumpkin spice 😂
I love your take on community vs. consumerism! Also: I find it so interesting that in America the idea of fun is always centred around decor and "aesthetic" aka buying something? I'm Austrian (Europe) and look i'm a goth, I buy my house decor whenever Halloween hits the stores, but I do not have Decor for valentines day, spring, easter, any other random holiday? This is not a thing here anyways. A lot of seasonal things here are food related: Pumpkins, Mushrooms, Sturm (sweet slightly alcoholic grapejuice/wine), Cider or activity related. But I can see that the consuming trend is growing around here (Pumpkin Spice Lattes, Stanley Cups, Fall Candles or scents in general)
It leads to so much clutter!
@@Surreal452 Absolutely ! Can't have that in my house tbh
It true. I have always loved fall, fall decor, all of it. But this year I don’t have the money to buy all the new cute stuff. Just trying to feed my kids, put gas in my car and pay my bills. With that I’ve learned to stop buying into all the you have to have this or that.
Speaking of consumerism and fall, people would do well to inform themselves of how unhealthy Starbucks is and attempt to limit how many Pumpkin Spice Lattes they have and any other seasonal themed drinks.
Starbucks has a ton of sugar, so while they are good tasting they aren't good for your health. They should be considered as a treat, maybe once a week or every other week... they SHOULD NOT be a daily drink let alone having more than one in a single day.
I am not saying stop drinking them entirely, but they should be consumed in extreme moderation.
If you crave community please go to your local library. It is free and they have events and resources to build community. Also the more resources that get used by their patrons the more $$ they get for more resources (at least in theory)
Halloween used to somewhat hold back christmas in stores. Now its all out on shelves by the end of July.
I would ask that people be mindful of the fact that some folks have allergies to pumpkin and apple pie spiced scents . My daughter cannot go to some Stores or even festivals this time of year because of cinnamon allergies. Same with perfumes and clothing scents.
Love this analysis. It's been on my mind a lot lately as well. Subscribed!
When I was a kid growing up in the midwest, we would often go to a metropark for a walk/run as a family on Sundays. I remember sitting in the car on the way to the park thinking how weird it was that we were taking a car, a very unnatural thing, to go to nature. My brain still feels glitchy when I think about it!
What a great video! Excellent topic especially now that fall shopping hauls are the norm.
I will say I love the fall decor and I feel guilt over really loving fall decor and fall things. But I was raised to re use things, so we bought a bunch of fall decor from antique stores etc, and every year around this time we pull all of our decor out and decorate. We do this every year! All of our fall decor practically is thrifted. So I like to think all of our fall decor habits are more sustainable. This time of year when it starts getting really cold at night for us, the only fall stuff I really buy every year is flavored coffee grounds for my coffee pot and scented candles.
I have a garden and next year I really wanted to try growing a pumpkin. I’m glad I didn’t this year because we had brutal drought where I am.
Good video analysis. I totally agree about the loss of third spaces and connection to nature. We do live in a partial dystopia I would say. I definitely recommend getting into gardening to reconnect with nature, especially food growing. I grew a lot of squash last year, they're usually easy to grow. If you don't have any outdoor space then community gardening is great.
1870’s to 1880’s little house in the Big woods
Thanks for making this video, subscribed!. This topic makes me really sad and angry, and wish more people spoke about it / understood it. I guess even if we do understand it and speak about it, the companies do their own thing and sometimes we just end up following the trends. Fall prey to it. Over consumption is stressful. No wonder there are now SO many videos on decluttering and minimalism too. We need huge overhauls of our homes to find mental peace and sanity after we have filled our homes with things we found on the made up ridiculous Prime Day.
Really pisses me off when I go to buy fall decor/candles the first week in October and all I can find is a bunch of picked over stuff and loads of cheap Christmas crap.
I made a post in r/Halloween linking to another creator's video about being more aware of fall/Halloween overconsumption and I think the mods deleted it. 🫠 Needless to say I don't go on the subreddit as much since 90% of the content is just people buying stuff. 🥲
And I think it got worse this year because companies have found out about Walpurgis Night/Halfway-to-Halloween so they started shoving stuff out in April (it's a Central/Northern European celebration used to ward of witches). It's frustrating because it used to be a holiday that we were forced to be inventive about in order to celebrate since it wasn't really observed in America, so me and my friends would go camping or to a historic place and make bonfires - which is pretty much *all* they do to celebrate this obscure holiday in Europe! It's sad that community and nature are being commodified. 😭
I've never heard of that holiday! The endless demands of capitalism will commodify more and more of our rituals, habits, and pleasures 😰
super on point. also if prime day has no haters i'm dead!!!!
What an excellent video! Thank you very much! New subscriber.
June is gay month for me but sadly, something that corporations have also decided to grab and commodify
I agree with not liking the commercialism aspect of the seasons. The only “fall” purchases that I have made are apples and apple cider from local orchards. You haven’t seen me sipping a PSL from Starbucks or my local café because I am still in apple mode.
However, I’ve started defining “fall” as the time when the trees change colors and drop their leaves where I live. In 2024 the leaves started yellowing in July and noticeably falling onto the ground in August. Yesterday morning we had a weather advisory saying that frost was possible. Frost = Fall. The temp dropped to 34.3 and was brief enough that it wasn’t frosty in my yard. This morning it was 39.9. This is Ohio where the temperatures fluctuate greatly from day to day. Yesterday was Fall. Later this week we will be back to Summer temps but the plants are giving Fall colors and leaf drop.
They have stolen fall, and winter, and Christmas, and spring, and summer...
The only things setting "fall" appart from other seasons its the fact that marketers are able to capitalize on post-vacational stress and temporary depressive feelings sparked by the reduction in natural lightning hours. And this only for the north hemisphere BTW. I am really curious about how people in argentina for example, reconcile the white Christmas imagery with their summer season, or how they experience fall while media celebrates spring.
I'll grant you fall-winter fashion seems to ever reach up stores earlier. Thanks in no small part to an overblown "halloween season" that has made it so october is almos exlusively dedicated to pumpkin spice and bat decorations.
But I don't know if you remember a time were lots of collectible plublications flooded the press shelves in september, urging people to get into mineral collecting, wooden fans, tarot reading, pocket watches or whatever; precisely taking advantage of that existential dread associated with the harvest season I mentioned earlier.
This was such a good video. I’m gonna share it with my mama.
Autumn is my favourite. Always has been. Its been interesting to see it become big buiness in the uk over the last, say ten years. Theres so much endless plastic tat that gets pumped out every year. Im over buying things to mark autumn... except candles 😅
I live in SW Florida by September I need whatever relief I can get !
To deinfluence you all from buying out Starbucks pumpkins drinks: the Walmart great value brand has a pumpkin spice coffee ground that is so delicious and so much cheaper. It’s $5 in my area. It tastes so good. I buy it instead of Starbucks every year.
You make valid points about the over consumption and the disconnect from nature. And I’m for viable climate change solutions, but the solutions that I’ve seen promoted our solutions that are very expensive or they require some discomforts as you probably heard about from the athletes in the Paris Olympics games having to sleep on cardboard beds.
I absolutely love fall but I live in a rural town in the P NWest, I have backyard chickens, a free roam garden rabbit, I compost, don’t own a car and I grow my own pumpkins. Im also pagan:) I think its strange to live so removed from nature. My home is minimal but also gothic year round. I feel Christmas more applies to over consumption to the extreme, I don’t celebrate it at all. Fall is lovely and encourages being in sync with nature.
I think you mean June is for 4th of July not memorial day
What I find even more disturbing is that if you fight against this consumerism and company forced season changes, people get all pissy with you! "Yolo" and "leave me alone". It's so disturbing how companies have hyped this stuff so much and these brainwashed turds fall for it, not realizing they are being sold to. I have purchased 3 things, only because I really loved them, but they aren't on display yet. Not until AFTER September 23rd! Loved this video!
Oh my god, so true. I made a tiktok about this and people were basically telling me to off myself and I was such a bitch for ruining people's fun. It was wild!
I absolutely loved that you did a video commentary on climate change. Just subbed!! Looking forward to more great content! 😊
Thank you #SaveSoil #Consciousplanet
I totally disagree and I am so sorry you are so paifully distracted by marketing and trends. Focus more on your own actual needs.
I'm 67 and my experience is that buying cycles pivot more on a calender of needs and weather changes. Children who wore shorts all summer while they grew out of last years pants and shoes need bigger clothes to go back to school. School supplies are also needed. We made costumes from old clothes, boxes and art supplies. Christmas is a time to give needed items like sweaters, coats and boots. Even Santa always gave socks and underwear. My parents grew up during the depression with little clothing and eating oatmeal three times a day. They also endured shortages and rationing with World War II. Learning from their values, I made all my own clothes until i graduated from my college.
I don't know why you are complaining about companies marketing to you when you are responsible for saying no to them.
You made good points about climate change. I am participating in removing political barriers to climate solutions. I would have prefered to hear your climate arguments separated from the marketing complaints.
In general, arguements are better received if they are not framed by complaining about your own victimization-- especially when you have the power to say no and noone is forcing you.
I listened til you started the climate change BS. Out of here.
it’s real whether you believe it or not, honey
@@wearesatellites91 Climate change is real. Always has been. Man-made climate change is not real. You believing the lies does not make it real. And I am not your honey.