Consume Product / Consoomer

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Part of a series on Oomer Wojaks. [View Related Entries]

About

Consume Product refers to a genre of memes poking fun at consumerism, particularly at fans of the major pop culture franchises such as Star Wars and superhero films. In November 2019, Consoomer, a variation of -Oomer Wojak meme, gained popularity as a part of the trend.

Anti-consumerism

The ideology of anti-consumerism originated from criticism of consumption. 1899 treatise The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions by Thorstein Veblen is recognized as one of the earliest literary works containing such critique.^[1]

Anti-consumerism ideology received a larger spread in the 1990s and 2000s, with 2000 book No Logo bu Naomi Klein and documentary films The Corporation and Surplus: Terrorized Into Being Consumers being notable examples. Books American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk and their film adaptations are examples of anti-consumerism in the popular media.

Spread

Consume Product

On October 16th, 2018, YouTube channel RedLetterMedia posted an of The Nerd Crew podcast titled "The Nerd Crew: Franchise Movie News!!!".^[12] In the episode, RedLetterMedia host Jay Bauman tells guest Rich Evans not to question Ben Affleck, who portrayed Batman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, being cast as Batman's archenemy Joker.

- Won't it be weird to have the same man who played Batman playing the Joker?
- Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

In the following months, the phrase has been used as a copypasta on Twitter,^[13] 4chan^[14] and other websites, with the still image paired with the quote used as a reaction (example shown below, left).

Starting in August 2019, a number of popular tweets critical of consumerism were made on Twitter, most notably by users @OrwellNGoode and Ian Miles Cheong. For example, an August 6th tweet by @OrwellNGoode received over 170 retweets and 680 likes (shown below, right).^[15]

Starting in September 2019, several 4chan boards such as /pol/ and /tv/ saw an increase in a number of discussions in which users expressed views critical of consumerism (results for "consume product" use on /pol/ board and example posts shown below).

On 4chan, Twitter and Reddit, the trend is strongly associated with Nu-Male and Soyjak memes, with respective images and memes often utilized to illustrate the posts. Additionally, images and videos of YouTuber Eric Butts have also been used as a part of this trend.

/r/ConsumeProduct

On September 16th, 2019, subreddit "/r/ConsumeProduct" was created by Redditor Herr_Teapot.^[11] In the following months, the community collected memes critical of consumerism and popular culture, including those using Soyjak images (examples shown below).

As of November 14th, 2019, the subreddit had over 4,200 subscribers. The subreddit was banned ^[16] as a part of the June 2020 Reddit banwave, with some of its users fleeing to consumeproduct.win.^[17]

Consoomer

On September 16th, an anonymous 4chan user made a post describing a person whose identity was based on consuming popular culture products as "21st Century Consoomer" on /pol/ board, referencing -Oomer Wojaks. (shown below, left).^[2] In the following days, more posts using referring to people overindulging in popular culture as "consoomers" were posted on /tv/ and /pol/ (example shown below, right).^[3]^[4]

On September 21st, iFunny user DeadBoyLife posted the earliest known Consoomer Wojak based on the Withered Wojak image by an unknown author (shown below, left).^[5] The post received 38 smiles and did not receive notable spread. On October 16th, 2019, Redditor VAPORMACHINESLTD2001 posted an image of a "20 Year Old Consoomer" to /r/ConsumeProduct subreddit, gaining over 540 upvotes (shown below, right).^[6] On the same day, the image was posted on /tv/^[7] and /vp/^[8] board of 4chan.

On November 9th, 2019, Twitter user @mashcore4mums posted an image of an -Oomer Wojak titled "The 38 Year Old Consoomer," describing him as a mindless consumer fond of comic book movies and having a skewed perception of society (shown below).^[9] The tweet received over 1,500 retweets and 5,500 likes. In follow-up tweet @mashcore4mums said that the character was created by tracing over the Twitter profile picture of film and gaming writer Bob "Moviebob" Chipman.^[10]