The Rise Of Underconsumption Core: Why TikTokers Are Buying & Using Less

In a period defined by increasing economic hardship, people are buying less (and celebrating a minimalist aesthetic).

Like many TikTok users, Meghan Pexton found herself constantly bombarded with videos of influencers suggesting items she should buy — such as matching workout sets and $4000 couches, along with the aspirational lifestyle that goes with those items.

So, when TikTok served Pexton, 24, a stream of content over the Independence Day July 4 holiday weekend that featured scenes of luxury in the Hamptons in New York, she reached her limit.

“Is anyone just over the era of influencers recently?” she asked her TikTok followers. “I can’t do it anymore. I can’t watch any more videos of people going to Pilates at 5am and drinking their greens and bone broth and walking around the city and sending emails and going to the Hamptons on holidays.”

She was not alone.

After years of being told what to buy, TikTok users are trying something new: buying and using only what they need. They’re calling it “underconsumption core,” the latest move away from influencer culture. Instead of pristine fridge shelves, makeup bags with the latest products and fashion fads, users are posting simplified closets, secondhand clothes that have lasted for years, and minimal makeup and skincare collections.

Yes, being normal is now trending. But experts also say it’s just one way of responding to a period of economic hardship.

“I think it’s really refreshing to see this new takeover of more relatable content,” Pexton, a freelance graphic designer, said in an interview. “Even a dirty kitchen.”

Many of these videos try to romanticise using what you have, recycling items and finishing one product before moving on to the next, and they are usually set to a Norah Jones song.

“We need to make a shift in who we’re following,” Pexton said. “We are in control of our algorithm.”

TikTok users pointed to several reasons for turning their backs on influencer recommendations. Many said it wasn’t relatable or realistic to live like the influencers they saw, while others cited economic hardships or wanting to live more sustainably.

But in a world where everything becomes a trend — and tacking “core” onto the end of any word can make it a thing — this latest movement can be seen simply as part of a broader pattern of consumer spending that dates back 50 years, said Brett House, an economics professor at Columbia University’s business school.

After a major economic downturn, usually about every decade or so, a similar back-to-basics trend follows, House said. Take the 2008 financial crisis, for example, when a “new intensity around artisan goods and experiences” arose in opposition to mass-produced products from big brands, he said. We couldn’t stop drinking from Mason jars then, as many are doing again now.

This recent cycle may have begun in the wake of post-lockdown “revenge spending,” when shoppers bought large amounts of goods to make up for time lost to the Covid-19 pandemic. As that boundless period gave way to the “vibecession,” a term for consumers’ general feelings of anxiety about the economy, many people responded by tightening their budgets, which has brought us to the era of “underconsumption core,” House said.

He said people should think about the downward shift as appropriate consumption rather than underconsumption.

“There’s little new here beyond the names we’re giving macro-economically induced changes in consumer behaviour and the pace at which we’re casting one meme off for the next,” he said.

During the pandemic, people started buying more, sometimes out of boredom but also out of fear, said Diana Wiebe, a content creator who critiques influencer culture. They continued to do that as restrictions lifted, cementing influencers’ roles as figures who persuaded others to buy items that supported an aesthetically pleasing life, as they received commissions from brands whose products they had agreed to endorse or otherwise advertise.

Although some of the items being promoted were originally meant to be reusable and environmentally friendly, many were being shuffled through influencers’ rotations of products. “Every week, they have a different tiny purse to attach to their water bottle that’s supposed to be reusable,” Wiebe said.

“I’ve been really excited to see this trending lately, because it’s a good approach to showing that overconsumption isn’t the norm for most people,” Wiebe said in an interview. Underconsumption, she said, “rejects the influencer culture and also the companies behind the influencers who are always trying to get us to buy more and consume more.”

“It’s almost like breaking people out of the trance,” she added.

Hannah Siegel, 28, who works part-time as a children’s director at a church, said inflation “forced us to go back in time, in a way, and appreciate how things were.”

“It’s pretty rough out there,” she said. “I think people are just enjoying a slower-paced life, and they’re not looking for stuff to fulfill them, in a way. They’re being more creative.”

They’re also wanting to stand out, Siegel said.

“We’re tired of looking like everyone else,” she said. “Having that all-white house that’s soulless and boring — we want colour and patterns and more character.”

Between increased anxiety around climate change and the cost of living, “Flagrant displays of wealth that were once aspirational are now insensitive, out-of-touch,” Jade Taylor, a TikTok creator who posts about sustainable fashion, wrote in an email.

Some who preach underconsumption are perhaps not quite grasping the point — including people who are still suggesting products to buy as part of the trend, throwing out still-usable products and sharing images of collections of water tumblers.

But Taylor said she welcomed underconsumption as a trend if it could encourage more people to live sustainably.

“Something like sustainability and ‘underconsumption’ almost isn’t worth engaging with unless it’s romanticised,” she wrote. “Underconsumption is fighting fire with fire while also highlighting the fact that sustainability is a practice, not something you buy.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Remy Tumin

©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES

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