{"id":373899,"date":"2025-12-28T22:11:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T22:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/373899\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T22:11:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T22:11:08","slug":"from-no-buy-to-buy-everything-how-2025-became-the-year-of-overconsumption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/373899\/","title":{"rendered":"From no-buy to buy everything: How 2025 became the year of overconsumption"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the start of 2025, finance and business headlines were as optimistic as the person who joins a gym on January 1: It was a new year<\/a>, and we were going to turn over a new leaf. \u201cAmericans Rebel against overconsumption and inflation with \u2018no-buy\u2019 challenges<\/a> in 2025,\u201d announced Fortune magazine back in February 2025, when it predicted that Americans would pump the brakes<\/a> on spending. In April, Investopedia weighed in with an explainer: \u201c\u2018No-Buy\u2019 2025: A paradigm shift in consumer culture?\u201d And The Wall Street Journal<\/a> noted that searches for the term \u201cno-spend challenge\u201d on Google<\/a> had\u00a0 \u201creached an all-time high and [were] up 40% year over year,\u201d and that 20% of Americans participated in such a challenge in 2024, stating, \u201cIt\u2019s in part a way to feel some power over the volatile economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lovely thought. If TikTok is any indication, though, there\u2019s plenty more taking a hard turn in the other direction, competing for eyeballs and affiliate income by way of content glorifying a high-volume consumption that can be hard to look away from. \u201cI watched a few pantry-organization TikToks, and then the algorithm decided I wanted to watch someone set up a purse-restocking station<\/a>,\u201d a friend ranted several months ago. It\u2019s increasingly hard to ignore acts of extreme acquisition that felt like a retail version of \u201cJackass\u201d<\/a> \u2014 dozens of silicone kitchen tools spilling from a Temu box, car consoles packed with enough first-aid items to qualify them as rolling infirmaries, a shower wall\u2013turned\u2013grid of colorful disposable razors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Shawna Ripari, a Toronto content creator who launched her YouTube channel<\/a> after recovering from her own shopping addiction, says her \u201ceyes were really opened\u201d to overconsumption as entertainment on TikTok in 2024. \u201cThe more I watched, the more specific patterns emerged in how people talked about consumption, and the more people [were] duplicating that kind of content because it does well.\u201d Overconsumption as a category of content that users seek out makes sense: Ensuring that everything done online is also an opportunity to shop has succeeded beyond tech companies\u2019 wildest dreams \u2014 why would they stop now?<\/p>\n

Battle of the Beige<\/p>\n

Social-media influencers once built their followings with personal style and unexpected aesthetics, but the May 2025 conclusion of a court case involving two \u201cclean-girl\u201d influencers<\/a> \u2014 each of whom alleged the other was biting her style and siphoning off her Amazon affiliate revenue \u2014 highlighted the weirdness of the current influencer economy. A personal aesthetic based on blandness already exists all over the internet. How can one person claim it \u2014 and, more to the point, why would they want to?<\/p>\n

Glass carafes, white shirts, minimal jewelry: The key to Amazon influencing is to have enough of an individual aesthetic to build a following around, while ensuring that the products pushed to an audience are broadly appealing enough to maximize sales that creators receive a cut of. The \u201cSingle White Female\u201d vibes were alarming \u2014 but so is competing not to stand out but to blend in<\/a>. Riley, 39, a high school teacher and home seamstress, finds the beige new world unsettling. \u201cShilling for Amazon is bad enough. Shilling Amazon\u2019s most generic offerings is dystopian.\u201d<\/p>\n

Home sweet store<\/p>\n

My friend who got unwittingly sucked into what\u2019s called \u201crestock\u201d content<\/a> was mystified by their pull. \u201cI get nervous when I have more than two open bottles of shampoo in my shower at one time,\u201d she admitted. \u201cThe thought of having 40 or 50 makes me hyperventilate.\u201d Restock videos are part ASMR<\/a>, part Martha Stewart Living and part \u201cSupermarket Sweep.\u201d<\/a> In one restock TikTok, manicured fingernails tap along a line of Stanley mugs<\/a> in a rainbow of colors before choosing one and packing it with color-coordinated dividers, lids and charms; in another, different manicured hands open a closet to reveal shelves packed floor to ceiling with Bath and Body Works products organized by category and scent.<\/p>\n

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Showing off huge collections of everything from Funko Pops to sneakers to makeup on social media isn\u2019t new; what stands out in restocks is the expense and effort put into turning one\u2019s home into a shopping experience. The point of having 50 different body lotions isn\u2019t to use them all up; it\u2019s the feeling of abundance that comes with having 50 options to choose from. If these weren\u2019t new products pleasingly arranged, we might call this hoarding. But sampling, comparing and contrasting is the normative behavior that we\u2019ve always been told makes for successful, informed buying.<\/p>\n

In one of her \u201cde-influencing\u201d<\/a> videos, Ripari recalls a time when she\u2019d watch overconsumption content and \u201cwould laugh and say, like, \u2018Yeah, that\u2019s me. That\u2019s relatable.\u2019 . . . [It made] being financially irresponsible a joke.\u201d These days, she worries that influencers, many of whom don\u2019t pay for the products seen in their TikToks, are putting forth an idealized vision of the right way to live that isn\u2019t even realistic for them \u2014 yet risks making others feel that they don\u2019t have enough.<\/p>\n

The little-treat economy<\/p>\n

Young people are feeling pessimistic<\/a> about their futures. On Reddit, twentysomethings vent about financial insecurity, flagging employment and a general sense that things aren\u2019t getting better anytime soon. \u201cI\u2019m trying to save money, but if I can\u2019t afford a house and I can\u2019t afford to have kids, what am I saving for?\u201d asks Riley, and they\u2019re not alone in wondering.<\/p>\n

Gens Z and Alpha are on the receiving end of a fearsome tag-team: Social media that urges constant documentation of themselves and their lives, and tech innovations that make online shopping as frictionless and reflexive as possible. The result, as an August New York Times piece<\/a> suggested, is a generation motivated by little treats<\/a>, innocuous indulgences that have \u201cbecome a shared, normalized and celebrated experience.\u201d A cookie, a bag charm or a blind box makes it easier to get through each day \u2014 but minor purchases add up and lead to taking on debt<\/a>, something roughly 40% of Gen Z is reportedly doing.<\/p>\n

Intentional spending resets like no-buys and low-buys<\/a> help. That said, what good is buying nothing but necessities for a year when the larger forces of commerce are doing everything possible to separate people from their money, one little treat at a time? \u201cI sometimes have conversations with people who are like, \u2018Well, I\u2019ve really pulled back on [buying] clothing.\u2019 But then they replace that with home-decor pieces,\u201d says Amanda McCarty<\/a>, whose \u201cClotheshorse\u201d podcast interrogates the toll of fast fashion and hyperconsumerism. \u201cBut beyond the environmental impacts \u2014 because more of that [stuff] is plastic that you want to know \u2014 we don\u2019t talk enough about how overconsumption robs us of our financial futures. And I think we need to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Secondhand turns suspect<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought that I was doing my part by buying almost everything secondhand \u2014 clothing and furniture and even kitchen appliances,\u201d says Mari, 36, who discovered online secondhand-fashion destinations like Poshmark and ThredUp during the pandemic and became a booster of pre-owned clothing. \u201cI thought Forever 21 and Shein hauls were wasteful and kind of tacky. But I was buying 10 or 12 pieces at once every couple of months, knowing that if something didn\u2019t work on me, it didn\u2019t matter because the price was so low.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, buying secondhand became Mari\u2019s version of fast fashion \u2014 \u201cbetter quality, but the same cycle,\u201d as she puts it. It\u2019s a kind of thriftwashing that makes consumers feel virtuous but doesn\u2019t stem a tide of clothing waste that washes up in Ghana, Chile and other countries where textile waste is offshored. A 2025 study published in the journal Scientific Reports<\/a> titled \u201cSecondhand fashion consumers exhibit fast fashion behaviors despite sustainability narratives,\u201d found that \u201cresale has not slowed activity in primary markets; instead, both have expanded simultaneously . . . This parallel expansion casts doubt on the environmental benefit of resale and suggests that secondhand purchases may often supplement, rather than replace, conventional fashion consumption.\u201d Mari curbed her thrifting, but remains a bit disillusioned by how readily she bought into, as she puts it, \u201csomething posed as a solution that\u2019s\u00a0 just another part of the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

The knockout knockoff<\/p>\n

Knockoffs of Herm\u00e8s\u2019 famed Birkin bag have been around for decades, but 2025 might have been the first time a dupe itself<\/a> became almost as much of a social-media status symbol as the original. In late 2024, the Kamugo Genuine Leather Handbag, sold by a third party on Walmart.com, was dubbed the \u201cWirkin,\u201d<\/a> and it took only a small handful of pleasantly surprised TikTokkers showing theirs off to send others scrambling to score their own. But the unexpectedly high profile of the Wirkin also spotlighted Walmart\u2019s ethical lapse in doing business with a third party that infringed on another brand\u2019s IP, and after barely a month, Walmart quietly removed the bags from the site.<\/p>\n

Their sudden scarcity, however, soon made the Wirkin a true fashion anomaly: A counterfeit bag that people wanted to carry. Herm\u00e9s is notoriously protective of its status, and even people who can afford to spend $12,000 on a handbag often have to jump through hoops for Herm\u00e9s to deem them worthy of one<\/a>. The Wirkin\u2019s virality had several genuine Birkin owners salty enough to film explainers on the subtle differences<\/a> between them. But as onetime Real Housewife and longtime Birkin enthusiast Bethenny Frankel<\/a> suggested, it didn\u2019t actually matter: The fact that the manufactured scarcity of the genuine item led to the Wirkin\u2019s actual scarcity \u201cillustrates how crazy the luxury brand space has gotten.\u201d<\/p>\n

Put a pin in it, it\u2019s done<\/p>\n

For Elisa, who owns a small home-staging business, Pinterest<\/a> was once the spot: the place where she assembled mood boards, experimented with color palettes and got inspired by everything from decorative-tile patterns to breathtaking island vistas. In 2025, she says, \u201cIt got overtaken by shopping and AI. Everything looked like garbage or was an ad suddenly. It genuinely made me upset to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

The image-based social-media platform launched in 2010 with a goal to \u201cinspire and ultimately get people offline,\u201d as founder Ben Silbermann<\/a> told CNN Business in 2019, and it quickly became a comprehensive source of eye candy for everyone from fashion designers and wedding planners to mom bloggers and travel junkies. Fifteen years later, the platform is a textbook example of ensh**tification<\/a>, the term coined by tech theorist Cory Doctorow to describe the process by which a formerly user-friendly platform degrades, by design, in service to profit.<\/p>\n

Elisa started noticing a decline in search function and rise in sponsored pins a few years back, but wasn\u2019t prepared for the flood of AI slop that\u2019s now part of the Pinterest experience \u2014 a development that\u2019s not only aesthetically repellant but also predatory: the tech blog Futurism<\/a> took note last February of the number of pins \u201clink[ing] back to AI-powered content-farming sites that masquerade as helpful blogs.\u201d On Reddit, longtime users were both angry and betrayed: Pinterest\u2019s pivot \u201cfeels like it\u2019s built entirely on exploiting user loyalty while gutting everything that made [the platform] worthwhile,\u201d one post complains, while another sighs \u201cI know there\u2019s a need to turn a profit, but Christ, it\u2019s awful.\u201d<\/p>\n

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about overconsumption<\/p>\n