The recording begins when a trendy pop song pulses in the background. Spotlighting a well-worn makeup palette, a dirty pair of shoes, and an aging blow dryer, the words “Underconsumption Core” splash across the screen. Yet just beyond the frame, a contrasting corner of the room overflows with pristine stacks of new makeup, gleaming shoes, and fresh equipment, revealing the hidden excess that lurks behind the carefully curated facade of social media influencers.
Consumer culture has conditioned us to indulge excessively, shaping a generation's perception of this practice as innate. However, the Underconsumption Core, a sobering TikTok trend, showcases practical, well-loved items as an alternative to wasteful overconsumption. But while promoting a sustainable shift, the trend can undermine sustainability by focusing more on individual actions than collective change.
Repackaging Sustainable Living
Underconsumption Core reshapes sustainable living into a social media trend, promoting valuing a few cherished items over influencer-driven overconsumption. This trend also resembles the de-influencing trend of 2023, resurfacing in mid-2024 as young people expressed their exhaustion with influencers and their burnout from spending money. From using the same makeup palette for years to maintaining a consistent shoe rotation, the trend emphasizes long-term commitment to a few select items.
Sustainable living encourages individuals to shift away from overconsumption and prioritize repurposing, reusing, and renewing items. This stems from anti-consumerism movements, such as the early 2000s minimalist lifestyle and the Zero Waste movement, which can be traced back to Daniel Knapp's 1980s Total Recycling concept. These movements emphasized how various types of waste could be diverted from landfills and repurposed within communities, addressing the growing concerns over overflowing landfills and waste accumulation.
The Underconsumption Core is similar to sustainable living, advocating for mindful choices that prioritize consuming less and adopting sustainable practices. The trend critiques overconsumption by encouraging individuals to resist impulsive, influencer-driven purchases, and embrace a more sustainable and mindful approach to consumption. However, it must be contextualized that social media trends like the Underconsumption Core are often styled to align with popular aesthetics the "core" trend.
The Rotten Core Trends
Underconsumption Core reflects people’s growing frustration with consumerism, much like past countercultures that challenged mainstream ideals. The emergence of subcultures during the 1960s was marked by social upheaval, as youth-driven movements challenged traditional values, as noted by Professor Bousalis, an Associate Professor of Social Science at Florida Atlantic University. During this period, “hippies” emerged as powerful counter-cultures, challenging mainstream norms on issues such as war, consumerism, and inequality. The activism of communities of subculture groups catalyzed radical social collective action in ending state-sanctioned wars and achieving civil rights for citizens.
The trend "core" turns away from this historical context and merely categorizes nuanced identities into specific aesthetic labels. Alongside reducing identities, trends risk diminishing political senses of self to simplistic aesthetic categories. For instance, cottagecore aestheticizes the desire to escape to a rural idyll while often neglecting the challenges associated with rural life. In the pursuit of fitting into the core trend, many overlook the isolation and economic discrimination faced by rural inhabitants, such as farmers in the Philippines who often lack land ownership, confining them to poverty and creating barriers to accessing social services. This fixation on trends diverts attention from essential discussions about social justice.
As underconsumption stops at merely appearing trendy, it can become a fleeting fad that perpetuates consumerism and leads to greenwashing. Greenwashing occurs when companies promote "eco-friendly" products without meaningful changes, as seen with the mass production of tote bags and straws in 2018 when there was a growing awareness of plastic waste.
Once the novelty of a trend fades, people may also easily shift their interest and move on to the next trend. An example of this is minimalism, which advocates for a simpler life, but eventually declined as vintage maximalism gained popularity, offering a more accessible and less expensive alternative. With Underconsumption Core being solely a trend in nature, individuals may easily revert to overconsumption by moving on to the next trend, creating a repetitive cycle of consumption without a unified call to action.
Beyond the Individual
The repetitive cycle of consumption arises not only from ever-changing trends but also from the mindset that these trends promote, which emphasizes individual responsibility and suggests that one’s actions are solely personal and devoid of politics. Purchases symbolize happiness but fail to provide real joy, fostering an isolated outlook that drives us to consume more while believing our choices are individual and have no impact on others, as articulated by French sociologist Jean Baudrillard.
Collective action for sustainable consumption necessitates an acknowledgment of our interconnectedness in a consumer-driven society. Holding ourselves accountable for our purchasing decisions coincides with the political action of demanding corporations to take responsibility for their environmental impact. Rather than succumbing to fleeting trends, the discussion of trends must venture into how to cultivate a deeper awareness of youth-led climate justice movements and advocate for environmental justice.
Moving beyond trends that perpetuate individualism, we transcend mere reliance on digital engagement and embrace a radical lifestyle change. This transformation requires a collective awakening to ignite a shared purpose, enabling the subtle shifts to evolve from a mere hashtag into a powerful movement that reshapes our world for a more sustainable future. ●
