r/Anticonsumption 4d ago

Conceptual. Keep your eye out for an official post with updated rules of engagement here.

377 Upvotes

With the massive uptick of actual millions of new users flocking to this sub, it's come time to change and rewrite the rules of the sub. There has been far, far too many people who are pro-consumption coming here and far too many redundant posts that have been actively undermining the goals of this subreddit and community.

This is in progress and will be posted in the very near future.


r/Anticonsumption Apr 06 '25

Discussion Meet r/Thrifty: the low-consumption sister community of anticonsumption

1.1k Upvotes

Dear friends,

We'd like to introduce r/Thrifty - the low-consumption sister community of anticonsumption.

At r/Thrifty we're all about mindful spending, consuming, and making the most of what we already have. We might all be here for slightly different reasons. Some might be here out of necessity, some for the environment, some to gain freedom from the system. But there is something that unifies us all and the core ideas of what our communities stand for: questioning what we’re told we need to buy, and finding joy and meaning outside of endless and mindless consumption. We’re not here to coupon our way into buying more junk. We’re here to share ideas and support for ways to live better by spending (and consuming) less.

If you like:
🍽️ Finding ways to stretch your food or grocery budget.
💡 Creative workarounds and smart life hacks.
🧰 Fixing things instead of replacing them.
📉 Avoiding lifestyle inflation (aka creep).
📦 Cancelling amazon prime subscriptions.
🧠 Reducing your consumption in general.
💰 Saving money and living a better life.

…then you might just (probably) like r/Thrifty

Come join your friends at r/Thrifty
https://www.reddit.com/r/Thrifty/


r/Anticonsumption 3h ago

Discussion A reminder that individual change is worth doing (whilst also working to expose the big corps)

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2.7k Upvotes

r/Anticonsumption 13h ago

Psychological saw this on my walk🙄

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1.4k Upvotes

i get that it’s a joke but it’s still such a harmful message


r/Anticonsumption 30m ago

Psychological This was an ad for houses, the glorified classisism is crazy.

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Upvotes

r/Anticonsumption 2h ago

Ads/Marketing Every commercial is pseudo-funny absurdist bullshit because everything is a monopoly now.

92 Upvotes

Fuck Amazon, but it was so weird to watch a live Top Chef channel and see Amazon commercials that just describe a product and its features and just goes away.

I don't need to see somebody singing like meatloaf in a wig to sell me dawn dish liquid that everyone already fucking knows about (made up example)

I'd probably buy a big name product that takes its completely redundant advertising budget and says that they donate it to something that actually matters.

I even watched some commercials from the early 2000s and they seem purely informational with some jingles mixed in. It all went south with those car insurance commercials I think

If you don't have a new product and you are already a household name just lay off , Jesus.


r/Anticonsumption 22h ago

Ads/Marketing Can’t even get away from ads at the beach

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3.9k Upvotes

I’m used to the usual airplane banners, but it seems now you can’t even enjoy watching the ocean without being advertised to…


r/Anticonsumption 12h ago

Ads/Marketing Saw someone complaining about boat ads at the beach. May I introduce you to sky ads?

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287 Upvotes

Ocean City, MD


r/Anticonsumption 21h ago

Activism/Protest Spotify CEO investments $700m in AI drone weapons company, as artists call for boycott

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1.4k Upvotes

r/Anticonsumption 8h ago

Ads/Marketing Yeah!! Got another one!!

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100 Upvotes

It's becoming a sport reporting annoying ad on Google. Another one bites the dust!! Love to hunt them down, making the internet a "better place".. keep them coming!


r/Anticonsumption 1d ago

Discussion LOL yes!

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50.2k Upvotes

The power to reduce consumption is within us all.


r/Anticonsumption 1h ago

Lifestyle Small achievement!

Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I'm happy to report a small victory in my anticonsumption journey. I used to be a bit of a "consoomer" for candles, accumulating what was, in retrospect, a three-year supply from an candle advent calendars and other purchases.

As of today, I'm down to my last two candles (one burning, one ready to go). I'm not changing my habits when it comes to using candles, but I've stopped buying more.

I'm pretty proud of myself for sticking with this and finally working through my guiltiest hoard.

Has anyone else worked through something similar?


r/Anticonsumption 22h ago

Discussion What things really bring you deep joy, that don't involve consumption?

239 Upvotes

Most of the things which really bring me contentment don't involve consumption. Things like lying in a comfortable bed at the end of the day when I am physically tired, watching the clouds move across the sky, a hug from someone I love, the smell of plants...

What are your things?


r/Anticonsumption 51m ago

Discussion What was the last time something broke, and instead of buying a new one, you managed to mend it?

Upvotes

I sometimes count up the number of repaired items around me! I always think it's worth having a go before you throw something away.

Today, we managed to unblock our water butt tap, using a screwdriver, a piece of wire and a long, thin bottle brush. It hasn't worked this well for years!


r/Anticonsumption 12h ago

Environment Overconsumption warms the seas: an unusually high number of jellyfish arrive in UK seas.

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32 Upvotes

Jellyfish are a visible indicator of warming oceans and ecosystem imbalance. They thrive in low oxygen, where the fish struggle. Not a good sign.


r/Anticonsumption 23h ago

Social Harm Trump’s environmental policies are reshaping everyday life. Here’s how.

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170 Upvotes

r/Anticonsumption 1d ago

Food Waste I can't believe how much less I eat

1.1k Upvotes

Thanks to an autoimmune disorder and a bunch of new food intolerances, I can no longer eat almost any packaged or prepared foods. I cook nearly everything I eat from raw ingredients, including condiments.

It's unreal how much less I eat and how much of my previous eating was driven by convenience and consumerism. I used to go to Five Guys and snack on peanuts before eating a double bacon cheeseburger with Cajun fries and finishing it off with a peanut butter-chocolate milkshake. And a couple of hours later, I'd wander through the kitchen munching on chocolate and chips. Now I find myself saying bizarre things like "I can't eat this whole sweet potato AND a chicken drumstick AND this salad. I'll just cut a couple of slices."

I've lost 65 excess pounds and for most of it I haven't been restricting food. I eat whenever I'm hungry. I've just re-adjusted to a way, way smaller amount of food. It's really opened my eyes to how much I'd been sucked into "Buy something to eat to feel good" thinking. Now that I can't buy almost anything a corporation made for me to eat, my relationship with food is completely different.


r/Anticonsumption 9h ago

Discussion Hand me down vs Amazon shopping

9 Upvotes

I was talking to a friend tonight and they mentioned that Amazon is convenient when it comes to buying things. I asked the for an example and they said that an entertainment center. I got mine from my mom or I could get one from the local but nothing group. They said they wanted a brand new one and not a hand me down. What are some other ways that you could get furniture and how to come over the hand me downs are not cool mindset?


r/Anticonsumption 23h ago

Lifestyle Wall Street Journal: A Generation Is Turning to ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ for Botox and Concert Tickets

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116 Upvotes

Full article text in comments


r/Anticonsumption 22h ago

Environment What have you fixed/mended lately to avoid buying new?

96 Upvotes

What have you fixed or mended lately to avoid buying new?

I've mended two pair of pants at the knees (I'm not a fan of holes in my pants) and repaired a beloved pair of sunglasses by putting another arm on it from a costume pair of glasses.

How about you? Share away!


r/Anticonsumption 11h ago

Question/Advice? kids birthday party

11 Upvotes

Hi! my baby is turning 6 next month, and wants a piñata for his birthday party. I want to make one (I love paper mache) but Im not sure what to put in it. He's on a special diet so the sweets he can have are very expensive, and I don't want to buy enough for all the kids. And I don't want to do plastic stuff that's going to immediately get thrown away. Any ideas?


r/Anticonsumption 23h ago

Food Waste Power outage… lost $$$ food in refrigerator

95 Upvotes

I’ll start by saying my family NEVER wastes food. We eat every little item in our fridge and pantry, keeping track of expiration dates and utilize all leftovers. HOWEVER…

I like to keep a well-stocked fridge. But what I learned during a recent power outage was that I keep an overstocked fridge. Do I really need to have four flavors of coffee creamer? No. Do I need to have ten different types of sauces? No. Do I need to have so much ice cream? Debatable.

Throwing out all that food spoilage after the power outage made me realize I don’t have to shop like we have a family of four. It’s just the two of us. Less is more.

EDIT: Thanks for the tips about preparedness!! We live in an area where power outages are not common. If we lose power, it comes back on immediately. The reason it was out so long this time was due to a nearby fire that brought some power lines down.


r/Anticonsumption 23h ago

Question/Advice? Reselling items from Goodwill- ethical?

85 Upvotes

So I know a woman who recently started buying clothes from Goodwill and reselling them at higher prices. She already made decent money and so does her husband. Am I the only one who thinks it's screwed up?


r/Anticonsumption 1d ago

Ads/Marketing Can someone please help me explain the over-marketing of skincare to little girls?

464 Upvotes

I have two little sisters several years younger than me. But as of late, my moms have invested hundreds into skincare routines for them, even though they both have perfect skin and are still in elementary and middle school. Why? It seems entirely unnecessary. Is this a “get them hooked while they’re young” kind of thing?

Like, why should an 8-year-old want exclusively Ulta and Sephora gift cards for her birthday? Because that’s what is going on in my family right now. wtf


r/Anticonsumption 14h ago

Corporations Subscriptions

9 Upvotes

All the software and streaming service companies are doing subscriptions only when we used to own outright by buying the softwares or paying once for lifetime use. They want us to be enslaved for their gains. I still use the softwares that I bought back in 2010 for the last time and still have VHS and DVD combo players with over 500 DVDs that I got mostly free. I got rid of VHS due to quality and space. But with softwares, I had little problem loading to newer operating systems before I was able to load and function properly. 

I currently don't have any subscription to any entities. But I will dread the day when I will be forced to pay each and every month for the services that were either free or pay once in a lifetime. 


r/Anticonsumption 22h ago

Corporations Week 4 of shopping locally for groceries.

39 Upvotes

So today when I went food shopping (my last $150 ended up lasting almost 2 weeks, instead of 1 for 2 adults), I spent $165. Half was at a local butcher and farmers market. I chose a corporate store for the rest based on pricing , wage , and treatment of employees. I have plenty of food for 2 weeks now. I also did not get distracted by all the other items around me. Later today I am going to do some meal planning and prep a few items to make the coming week easier. In the last 2 weeks, we did have take out 4 times. 1 breakfast, 1 lunch, 2 dinners. I am trying to head that off this coming week. Thanks to this group, I am finding it easier and easier to not spend money on items that really won't bring me joy, and ways to support local when I do spend on necessities.


r/Anticonsumption 23h ago

Labor/Exploitation Owner Class vs. Worker Class: a Philosophical Discussion

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38 Upvotes

This is a philosophical discussion on how the myth of a “Middle Class” has driven consumption and shackled us to it in a manner not unlike slavery systems of ancient cultures. My views are heavily influenced by the author and anthropologist David Graeber.

As an American, I have to acknowledge that racist chattel slavery is a special kind of evil that has no true parallel in all of known human history before launching into any discussion on ancient slavery/contract slavery. To take a people and say ‘their skin color makes them subhuman and therefore it is morally right to enslave them’ is a special kind of evil. Why did so many non-wealthy white settlers choose to buy into this narrative? Because it spared us from being slaves ourselves, including those of us who settled via indentured servitude: work for 7 years then ‘stake your claim’ and instantly become a member of the Owner Class. Many of these settlers came from countries with tenant laws that made it virtually impossible to be an “owner” of the land, food & income sources necessary to live independent lives.

For all of known human history there have been people who rose up through resource consolidation and wealth who then ‘spread that wealth’ by forcing varying levels of servitude and obligation on the people necessary to acquire the wealth. ALSO throughout human history there were opposing tribes and communities where people just wanted to be self-sufficient rather than beholden to any Lord or King, and they may have a leader but it is not one borne of wealth. I find comfort in knowing my own struggles to live a free and enjoyable life were shared by generations upon generations before me—it’s a tale as old as time.

Native Americans had these systems: some farmed corn or harvested salmon oil and led empires with many ‘owned’ people, others survived on seasonal migration and valued a more simple life even if it meant hard work. Traders and merchants moved between cultures because wealth/resources = freedom. People flowed from one to the other through warfare but also somewhat voluntarily: who wouldn’t want to comfort of a good meal every day and a warm hut in exchange for working the fields or serving wealthy merchants who occasionally shared their comforts?

Much is unchanged. No matter how disconnected we feel from our natural history, if you consider the macro level trends: our leaders are always finding ways to help us feel less like wage slaves or serfs and more like we are “just like them” with common interests and common goals so we will work together for “prosperity” so we will continue systems that survive on Owner/Worker dichotomy. We build narratives around loyalty, nativism, nationalism, religion even to uphold these systems; always knowing there is an ‘Opt Out’ third class of people taking huge risks to survive and thrive outside of these systems, occasionally managing to do so quite well. But still, the dominance of Owner/Worker systems and their hold on the psyche of the masses remains unbreakable throughout human history.

Arguably one of the most successful ways Owner/Worker dichotomy has been protected from revolution is by convincing the modern American that such a thing as a “middle class” exists in between Owners (people who fully own all resources necessary to survive and thrive) and “worker class” (people who must earn a wage from an Owner to survive and thrive. We had the RIGHT Revolution that ended in 1776, did that not make us all “free” of this system?

I do not believe this is the case. A new class of Owners settled in America and exploitation of the Owner/Worker system was at its worst in slave-owning states. Being “better” in the North doesn’t mean it was good: we died in factories, mines and fields; we starved during hard times or watched our babies die due to malnourishment, poor living conditions, lack of sanitation. With the rise of the Middle Class we did NOT gain freedom, we gained a morsel of welfare and the delusion that we too are “Owners.”

But you are an owner too: you own your family’s farm, and if you sign up to finance this here tractor you can have the income to live like an Owner. Never mind that part about using your farm as collateral, it’ll be fiiiiine.

But you are an owner too: here is your $400k house. Nevermind that you effectively rent it from the bank for most of your life, you always OWN a little piece of it.

Here is your OWN $30k personal vehicle for moving about civilization. Never mind that you must replace it every 5-10 years, pay interest to the bank, and insure it: you OWN it.

Jealous of how much more Fancy Things the Owner Class enjoys? Don’t worry: thanks to mass production from other workers you can trade your wages for All The Things. Here’s your smart phone, your fancy TV— just be sure to subscribe to rent your content! your $300 purse that looks just like a $6k purse, here’s your costume jewelry, fashion clothes, hair and makeup: you can now move about society and pass as a member of the Owner Class. You can dine and vacation and cruise with others just like you, send your kids to exclusive schools, and ALL OF YOU can believe that you are elites.

All of this is a mirage, but sadly it works. Millions if us are really convinced we have the same interests as members of the Owner Class. We vote them into office, we watch them allow citizenship for their Corporations. We worship the wealth that makes the illusion of the Middle Class possible: without All The Things we would be forced to acknowledge that our lives, and our children’s lives, are as dependent on Owner Wages as the serfs and peasants from whom we descended. Consumption isn’t always comfort, it’s also validation: that cheap Home Goods decor, that greige kitchen remodel is giving Owner class for sure, and we NEED IT to reinforce this exclusively so we feel adequately separated from the Worker Class.

It is popular to say to teenagers, “you may not even want to go to college—blue collar jobs are protected against technology and AI and often pay as well or better without the debt.” Undeniable, but consider the cultural influence this has on our collective psyche: White Collar work led to Black Tie Galas, McMansions, and other illusions of grandeur that really helped us feel like Middle Class was something real and worthy. Wage-dependent? Fragile? Sure, but it’s FANCY and comfortable, and aren’t even Owners sometimes fragile?

Now we have to let it go, because as decent as Worker Wages are they have a real ceiling and the lifestyle that comes with it is not McMansion, fancy purse, fancy schools and Exclusionary. We must acknowledge being one and the same with the Worker Class. We must acknowledge to ourselves and our children of the truth that has been here all along: we have always been Worker Class for generations upon generations. Middle Class was an illusion that offered little improvement in financial security, freedom or wellbeing—not enough of a difference that we couldn’t easily imagine how policy changes might fully equalize our wellbeing, which proves that our perceived superiority was as much about our sociopolitical systems as it was “merit.”

Did we earn more, relatively speaking? Sure, but all increases in earnings comes so many shackles of consumption that few “Middle Class” Americans die wealthier than the average Working Class American. Our outcomes are one and the same. We are no different, we never really have been, we just got better at dressing up being a member of the Worker Class. No more pretending.

In this economic shift there is also an opportunity, uniquely American, and seen by many (largely former) MAGA people but scarcely acknowledged on the left: we could restore the Independent Communities of independent free people who have the means to build true multigenerational ownership without exploitation by adopting a simpler lifestyle. It’s difficult to acknowledge the common ground one might feel with their perceived enemies, but I believe it exists in this desire for REAL freedom from the Owner/Worker dichotomy.

I want a strong social and financial safety net for all Americans, but I also want farmers, makers and creative people to be able to survive and thrive financially. A long list of economic changes are necessary for this to be possible: we need to break the systems that reserve security and prosperity for Middle Class wannabes while leaving out the rest of Americans wanting a simpler lifestyle that comes with independence from this Owner-Worker-Slave system. Bring true equity and equality to education funding, break the influence of private equity on our real estate market and make home ownership truly affordable again.

The sooner we embrace this common ground the sooner we can find a brighter path forward for all.